This is Ashley Newby and you’re listening to The Black Studies podcast, a Mellon grant sponsored series of conversations examining the history of the field. Our conversations engage with a wide range of activists and scholars - senior figures in the field, late doctoral students, and everyone in between, culture workers, and political organizers - in order to explore the cultural and political meaning of Black Studies as an area of inquiry and its critical methods.

Today's conversation is with Meredith D. Clark, who teaches in the Hussman School of Journalism at University of North Carolina, Chapel Heill. Her research focuses on the intersections of race, media, and power – covering everything from media processes like newsroom hiring and reporting practices to the digital narratives constructed by social media communities. Clark has studied Black Twitter since 2010, and is currently completing a book-length study of it. TheRoot.com named her as one of the most 100 influential Black Americans on their 2015 Root 100 list.