Education
Ph.D Communication Studies, McGill University
MA Media Studies, Concordia University
BA Communication Studies, Concordia University
Teaching and Research Specialization
Critical Race Studies and Pedagogies
Race, Ethnicity & Media
Decolonial, Post/neo-Colonial Representations
Visuality, Representations and Culture
Gender & Development Communication
Rural Communications
Media and Propaganda Studies
South-South/Global South Communications
Biography
Christiana Abraham's teaching and research focuses on Critical Race Studies; Race, Ethnicity and Media; Visual Representations and Culture; Post/de-colonialism and Gender and Transnational and Global-South Media Practices. Prior to her appointment at Concordia she held the position of Lecturer in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus.
Her academic interventions are grounded in field experiences and expertise in media and Development-Communication. She holds extensive experiences in media practice having worked as a television news anchor, journalist and talk show host in the Caribbean. She was also Features editor of an international lifestyle magazine in Canada.
As a rural communications specialist, she coordinated several United Nations funded development-communication projects in the Global South. She is also an independent Curator, whose work revolves around the radical re-thinking of archives, community and orality as forms of grounded grass-roots activism that critically reclaims and re-narrates established aesthetics, cannons and cultural knowledges. Her scholarship in interested in the destabilisation and re-visualization of visuality in anti-racist and de-colonial pedagogies.
Dr. Abraham is the curator of “Protests and Pedagogy: Representations, Memories, and Meanings” an archival exhibition that marked the 50th anniversary of the Sir George Williams Students Protests. Held at Concordia University, the exhibition offered a rare glimpse into the archival records related to these 1969 protests.
Prior to this, she curated the photographic exhibition: “From the Archives to the Everyday: Caribbean Visualities and Meanings”. This experimental research and curating project engaged audience readings of vintage family photographs through complex, dynamic views of Caribbean life.
Academic/Research/Community Skills
Lecturer, Researcher, Writer
Independent Visual Curator
Development Communication/Rural Communication Specialist
Community Activist
Journalist
Media practitioner, Producer
Fall, 2023
COMS 361: Propaganda
COMS 424/524: Alternative Media
Winter, 2024
COMS 424: Race, Ethnicity and Media
COMS 361: Propaganda
Course Descriptions
COMS 361: Propaganda
This course in propaganda is designed to address propaganda as a phenomenon and as a technique. Propaganda can be though of as forms of mass persuasion that influence and shape public discourse and action. The course surveys a selected history of propaganda; investigates the impact of propaganda on individuals and citizens in general and the role we as recipients of propaganda play in the overall structure of information dissemination and cohesion. The course examines the relationship between nationalism and propaganda. It establishes the simultaneous interdependence and distinction of concepts such as propaganda, culture, education, and information.
COMS 424/524 Alternative Media
This course offers an examination of community and alternative media and various alternatives to mainstream media. These alternatives may include radio and video, independent film, the internet and other emergent cultural forms such as pastiche and parody of “culture jamming”. The concepts of mainstream and alternative are explored, and the relationship between alternative media and social practices are considered. In part, the allure of these media has to do with their non-conventional approaches and their critical coverage of contemporary events.
This course begins with theoretical engagements with the concept of alternative media and moves to diverse, grounded examples in practice. The course examines and engages with the limits of alternative and community media in effecting radical social transformation. The emphasis is on marginalized and subjugated knowledges and the role of diverse media in facilitating their dissemination. The course is designed as a participatory one that encourages students to practically explore the theoretical and creative possibilities, as well as the limitations of alternative media.
You are expected to actively participate in class discussions. Your participation should be informed by the readings, screenings, and lectures, as well as your own consumption of and experiments with alternative media.
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Selected
Abraham, Christiana. "Critical Curating as Decolonial Practice: Protests and Pedagogy: Representations, Memories and Meanings—Anatomy of an Exhibition." TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 44, 2022, p. 67-93. Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/article/854453
https://utpjournals.press/doi/full/10.3138/topia-2020-0018
Abraham, Christiana ""I Won't Take Bail Until We All Get It": Gender, Black Power, 1960s Student activism and the Sir George Williams Affair—An interview with Brenda Dash." TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 44, 2022, p. 48-66. Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/article/854465.
https://utpjournals.press/doi/full/10.3138/topia-2021-0019
Abraham Christiana. Toppled Monuments and Black Lives Matter: Race Gender and Decolonization in the Public Space. An Interview with Charmaine A. Nelson. Atlantis. Vol. 42.1 2021, pp1-17
https://journals.msvu.ca/index.php/atlantis/article/view/5552/4744
Christiana Abraham. 'Race, Gender and 'Difference: Representations of Third World Women in International Development' in Journal of Critical Race Inquiry, Vol.2. No.2 (2015) pp 4-24
https://jcri.ca/index.php/CRI/article/view/4723
