Who We Are
Board of Advisors
Dr. Robin R. Means Coleman
Founder and Director
Robin R. Means Coleman, PhD is a Professor of Media Studies and of African American and African Studies at the University of Virginia. She is Director of the Black Fantastic Media Research Lab. An accomplished, prizewinning administrator, she has held several senior leadership positions. Before joining the University of Virginia, Dr. Coleman was the Vice President & Associate Provost for Institutional Diversity and Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer, and the Ida B. Wells and Ferdinand Barnett Professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern University.
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An award-winning scholar-teacher, Dr. Coleman’s research focuses on media studies and the cultural politics of Blackness. Dr. Coleman is the author of Horror Noire: A History of Black American Horror from the 1890s to Present, 2nd ed. (2023); Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from the 1890s to Present (2011); and, African American Viewers and the Black Situation Comedy: Situating Racial Humor (2000). She is co-author of The Black Guy Dies First: Black Horror from Fodder to Oscar (2023) and Intercultural Communication for Everyday Life (2014). She is the editor of Say It Loud! African American Audiences, Media, and Identity (2002) and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Black Horror Film (2024) and Fight the Power! The Spike Lee Reader (2008). She is also the author of many other academic and popular publications.
Dr. Ashleigh G. Wade
Ashleigh Greene Wade is the author of Black Girl Autopoetics: Agency in Everyday Digital Practice (Duke University Press, 2024), which explores the role of Black girls’ digital practices in documenting and preserving everyday Black life. Broadly speaking, her work traverses the fields of Black girlhood studies, digital and visual media studies, Black Feminist theory, and digital humanities. Wade has a Ph.D. in Women’s and Gender Studies from Rutgers University and is an alumna of UVA’s Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African Studies Fellowship Program.
Dr. Charlton McIlwain
Author of the recent book, Black Software: The Internet & Racial Justice, From the Afronet to Black Lives Matter, Dr. Charlton McIlwain is Vice Provost for Faculty Development, Pathways & Public Interest Technology at New York University, where he is also Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication. He works at the intersections of computing technology, race, inequality, and racial justice activism. He has served as an expert witness in landmark U.S. Federal Court cases on reverse redlining/racial targeting in mortgage lending and recently testified before the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services about the impacts of automation and artificial intelligence on the financial services sector. He is the author of the recent PolicyLink report Algorithmic Discrimination: A Framework and Approach to Auditing & Measuring the Impact of Race-Targeted Digital Advertising. McIlwain is the founder of the Center for Critical Race & Digital Studies, and is Board President at Data & Society Research Institute. He was recently appointed to the U.S. National Committee For CODATA, and serves on the executive committee as co-chair of the ethics panel for the International Panel on the Information Environment.
Daphne Maxwell Reid
Daphne Maxwell Reid is best known as Aunt Vivian from the hit comedy, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Her 40-year acting career is still vital with roles on many new television programs including starring and guest-starring roles on TV and in film: Jacqueline & Jilly, Harriet, The Business of Christmas I & II, Trophy Wife, Bel Air, A Jazzman’s Blues, and Fantasy Island. Presently serving on the following boards, her involvement in the community at large rounds out a full schedule; the Richmond Ballet Board, the Richmond Forum Board, and the ChildFund International Board. Daphne Maxwell Reid is an avid photographer of DOORS from around the world and is exhibiting and selling her collection entitled Daphne Maxwell Reid’s Fresh Prints® at speaking engagements, art gatherings and on her website: http://www.DaphneMaxwellReid.com. Three beautifully published books of her photographs, DOORS, Opening Closed Doors: Cuba 2015, Belgium: Doors Old & New, are available on her website. She has taken her international door photos and created a fabric from which she makes a limited edition of her beautifully lined tote bags, also available on the website. Daphne collaborated with Stacy Hawkins Adams, a Richmond author of wonderful books, to create a note card collection of Daphne’s photos and Stacy’s thoughtful messages. In keeping with her desire to express all facets of her creativity, Daphne has launched her custom made, wearable art collection: Chinese silk brocade “toppers” called Daphne Style. Yes, she custom makes them all herself.
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Dr. Heather E. Harris
Heather E. Harris, Ph.D. (Howard University) is a Professor of Communication at Stevenson University, as well as a communication consultant, media commentator, coach, and podcast host. Her academic research focuses on representations of Africana women, primarily, and on the Obama effect. She is the editor of Neo-Race Realities in the Obama Era, and co-editor of two books- Michelle Obama and the FLOTUS Effect: Platform, Presence and Agency, and The Obama Effect: Multidisciplinary Renderings of the 2008 Campaign.
Jasmine Nichole Cobb
Jasmine Nichole Cobb is a visual and cultural historian. She is Professor of African & African American Studies and of Art, Art History and Visual Studies at Duke University. Cobb is the author three books including Picture Freedom: Remaking Black Visuality in the Early Nineteenth Century (NYUP 2015), African American Literature in Transition, 1800-1830 (Cambridge UP 2021) which is an edited volume; and most recently, New Growth: The Art and Texture of Black Hair (Duke UP 2022). In addition to scholarly essays for Public Culture and American Literary History, her media appearances include, ABC news, the Tavis Smiley Show, Essence magazine, the Boston Globe’s Emancipator and “Left of Black.” Currently, she is at work on The Pictorial Life of Harriet Tubman, a visual history of the abolitionist, from the middle nineteenth century through the present.
John Jennings
John Jennings is a professor, author, graphic novelist, curator, Harvard Fellow, New York Times Bestseller, 2018 Eisner Winner, and winner of the Hugo Award for his co-adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s dystopian novel The Parable of the Sower. As Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California at Riverside (UCR), Jennings examines the visual culture of race in various media forms including film, illustrated fiction, and comics and graphic novels. He is also the director of Abrams ComicArts imprint Megascope, which publishes graphic novels focused on the experiences of people of color. Jennings is co-editor of the 2016 Eisner Award-winning collection The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art (Rutgers) and co-founder/organizer of The Schomburg Center’s Black Comic Book Festival in Harlem. Jennings also created Marvel’s new AfroCaribbean cosmic superhero Ghost Light with artist Valentine Delandro.
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Mark H. Harris
Mark H. Harris (UVa class of ‘96) has written about pop culture—and horror cinema in particular—for over 20 years for New York Magazine, Vulture.com, Rotten Tomatoes, About.com, PopMatters, Salem Horror Fest, and the Abertoir Horror Festival, in addition to founding and running his website BlackHorrorMovies.com. He co-wrote the book The Black Guy Dies First: Black Horror Cinema from Fodder to Oscar and has contributed to The Oxford Handbook of Black Horror Film, as well as penning liner notes for the re-release of the Lord Shango vinyl soundtrack and the Frontier(s) Limited Edition Blu-ray. He was a featured commentator in the Shudder documentary Horror Noire and the Shudder series Behind the Monsters.
Dr. Novotny Lawrence
Dr. Novotny Lawrence is the Director of the Black Film Center & Archive and an associate professor of Cinema and Media Studies in the Media School at Indiana University. A widely published scholar, Dr. Lawrence’s research focuses on Black cinematic/mediated experiences and popular culture, areas that reflect the historic racial discrimination that Blacks have endured and overcome as well as and Blacks’ ongoing struggles for equity and justice. He is the author of Blaxploitation Films of the 1970s: Blackness and Genre (Routledge, 2007), the editor of Documenting the Black Experience (McFarland, 2014), the co-editor of Beyond Blaxploitation (Wayne State University Press, 2016) and co-editor of the forthcoming anthology, The Oxford Handbook of Black Horror Films (Oxford University Press, forthcoming, 2025)
Robert J. Thompson
Robert J. Thompson is the founding director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, where he is also the Trustee Professor at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. He’s written or edited six books about American television, commentaries for NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered, and pieces for the New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, New York Magazine, Encyclopedia Britannica, and many other publications.
