Episode 049 - Tia Smith

In this episode, we speak with Tia Smith, Bellsouth professor of mass communication at Xavier University of Louisiana. She joined Xavier in 2015 as department head of mass communications, and her research focuses on gender, race, sexuality, and media. She has studied South African women freedom fighters and black women hip-hop fans. Tia’s background includes stints as a travel writer, journalist, and corporate communications consultant. She brings these diverse experiences to her work with students at Xavier, which has the distinction of being the only historically black and Catholic institution of higher education in the US. Tia was in Nashville for a conference, and she stopped by Vanderbilt to talk about the multimedia assignments she gives her students, the challenges her students face moving into professional work, and the importance of critical theory in creative practice. Links • Tia Smith’s faculty page, http://www2.xula.edu/masscommunication/TiaSmith.html • @drtiasmith75 on Twitter, https://twitter.com/drtiasmith75 • Center for the Advancement of Teaching & Faculty Development @ Xavier University, https://cat.xula.edu/ • Teaching, Learning, and Everything Else podcast, https://cat.xula.edu/food/topic/podcast/ • STORY Conference, https://storygatherings.com/