Faculty: Department of Communication
Devorah Heitner
Assistant Professor of Communication
(on leave 2012-2013)
Website
Specialization and Areas of Interest
Kids’ Media
African American Cinema and Media
Race and Ethnicity
Media Ethnography
New Media Studies
Television Studies
Classes at Lake Forest College
Communication 112 Introduction to Visual Communication
Communication 275 Introduction to Cinema
Communication 283 Race/Media/Culture
Communication 285 Modern Media History
Communication 380 Black Cinema
Communication 350 Queer Cinema
Communication 420 Senior Seminar: Kids/Media/Culture
Education
PhD Television and Film, Northwestern University
BFA School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Book
Black Power TV. Forthcoming from Duke University Press (Spring 2013).
Articles
“What to Ask Before Buying Tech Tools for Kids,” for PBS Parents website. December 2012.
“Performing Black Power in the ‘Cradle of Liberty:’ Say Brother Envisions New Principles of Blackness in Boston.”
Television and New Media 10, no. 5 (2009): 392-415.
“Say Brother: Televising Black Power in Boston,” for WNET (New York) website. December 22, 2009.
“The Good Side of the Ghetto: The Case of Inside Bedford Stuyvesant,” Velvet Light Trap, October 2008.
Book Chapters
“Regular Television Put to Shame by Negro Production”: Picturing a Black World on Black Journal.” In Watching While Black: Centering the Television of Black Audiences, edited by Beretta E. Smith-Shomade. Rutgers University Press, 2012.
“Training Black Media Makers after Kerner: The Black Journal Workshop.” In Reinventing Race, Reinventing Racism, edited by John J. Betancur and Cedric Herring. Brill, 2012.
“Identity and Performance in Yvonne Welbon’s Remembering Wei Yi-fang, Remembering Myself: An Autobiography.” Accepted for inclusion by editor. (Forthcoming).
Book Reviews
Laurie Ouellette, “Let Them Eat PBS: A Review of Viewers Like You?: How Public Television Failed The People” Framework (Spring 2004).
Arlene Davila, Latino’s Inc.: The Marketing and Making of a People. Journal of Communication (September 2003).
Grants and Awards
Society For Cinema and Media Studies Dissertation Award, Honorable Mention (Second Place) 2007
Alumnae Dissertation Fellowship, Northwestern University, 2006-2007
American Fellowship, American Association of University Women, 2005-2006
Graduate Affiliate Award, Alice Berline Kaplan Center for the Humanities,
Northwestern University, Theme: “African Americans and the Law,” 2005-2006
Graduate Research Fellowship, Northwestern University, 2004-2005
Travel Fellowship, Institute for Southern Studies, University of South Carolina, 2004-2005
Access Grant/Mentorship Program with Su Friedrich, Film/Video Arts, New York, 1998-1999
Community Arts Program Grant, Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, 1997, 1998, 1999
National Service
Selection Committee, 2012, Society for Cinema and Media Studies.
Selected Presentations
Invited Talk, Catherine Cook School, January 9, 2013.
Invited Talk, DePaul University, African American and Diaspora Studies, DePaul University, January 19, 2011.
Invited Talk, Race Workshop, University of Chicago, December 2, 2010.
Invited talk at the University of Minnesota, Department of Communication, “No Thanks for Tokenism: Telling Stories from a Black Nation” September 22, 2010.
Invited Speaker, University of Indiana, Bloomington “Cinematic Representations of Racial Conflict in Real Time.” March 24-25, 2010.
Invited Speaker, Reinventing Race, Reinventing Racism: the 40th Anniversary of the Kerner Commission, University of Illinois Chicago, Institute for Race and Public Policy, June 2008.
“Model Cities, Model People: Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant,” Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Philadelphia, March 2008.
“Oral History Research in Media Studies,” American Studies Association Annual Meeting, Oakland, CA, October, 2006.
“Urban Planned and Moynihanned: Televising Black Women’s Liberation,” American Culture Workshop, University of Chicago, October 4, 2006.
“Television as Development: Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant,” International Conference on Feminism and Television, Video, Audio and New Media: Console-ing Passions, Milwaukee, WI, May, 2006.
“Building Black Civic Space in the Black Power Era,” Race, Roots and Resistance, University of Illinois, Urbana IL, March, 2006.
“Activism and Public Television,” Society for Cinema and Media Studies, Vancouver, BC, March, 2006
“Black Power Television: Reading Say Brother’s Radical Pedagogy,” American Studies Association Annual Meeting, Washington DC, November, 2005.
“Training a Generation of Black Media Workers: The Black Journal Workshop,” American Studies Association Annual Meeting, November, 2004, Atlanta, GA.
“Gendering the Black Public Sphere: For You…Black Woman,” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference, Atlanta, GA. March 2004.
“Jive Talking Muppets: an Investigation of Sesame Street’s Anti-Racist Pedagogy,” Society for Cinema Studies Annual Conference, Denver, CO. May 2002.
“Sunny Days: Performing Whiteness on Sesame Street,” Bowling Green State University, Youth Culture and Everyday Life Conference, Bowling Green, OH. February 2002.
