Decolonizing Media Higher Education: Building Critical Media Literacy Principles that Adopt Understandings of the Body and Performance

Media Education has the opportunity to provide positive change in the media industry. Additionally, media educators have the responsibility to ensure students from all backgrounds feel comfortable and accepted in the classroom. In my dissertation, I proposed that, for media education to instill positive change in the media industry, a more explicit objective of decolonizing media education is necessary by first integrating diversity and inclusivity in the higher education classroom. Using an autoethnographic approach to reflect on my experiences as a student and educator with an intersectional identity, I consider the gaps in understanding among media education programs for making their courses more equitable. By reflecting on my past experiences, expanding on some of my teaching methods, demonstrating materials and lesson plans used in classroom action research, and proposing additional principles and frameworks for the higher education media classroom, I further engage with what decentering whiteness and heteronormativity in the classroom could look like. In all, to decolonize media education, I propose an ambitious start: By dismantling current classroom norms and rebuilding from the perspective of performance as it is connected to the bodies of those in the classroom and the field, a refashioned critical media literacy (CML) framework contributes to equitable education. This adjusted CML framework provides an accessible model that educators can use when designing their courses and populating them with content. When educators include important principles of diversity, inclusion, and equity in their classrooms the greater likelihood that students will bring those skills with them into the field to bring equity and inclusion to media production.Doctor of Philosoph