In 1900, brothers James Weldon Johnson and John Rosamond Johnson combined their creative expertise with their commitment to Black struggle and Black joy and wrote: “​​Lift every voice and sing/Till earth and heaven ring/Ring with the harmonies of Liberty….”

Their work became a common thread for many Blacks and African Americans. More than 120 years later, the song, “,” is widely recognized as the Black national anthem. 

When I paused to think about Black History Month—recognizing that, as someone who is neither Black nor African American, it is a luxury to pause in contemplation of Black history—I could not help but reflect on this powerful national anthem. It’s no surprise that it is experiencing a profound resurgence. If you haven’t followed this piece of Black history, the 122-year-old song was part of Beyonce’s and was integrated into the opening week of the . President Biden invoked it in his .

These individual moments are connected as small parts of a much longer history—one that should not be contained to one month. It’s an important history, not just because it is central to what it means to be African American, but also because it contains lessons for all of us.

As Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in CMCI, I spend a good bit of time thinking about what it means for our community to recognize and participate in the many months and days of recognition. Too often, we engage Black History Month in performative ways, maybe even congratulating ourselves for our commitment and “woke-ness.” Then in March too many of us go back to business as usual, which typically means ignoring Black history, Black presence, and the everyday anti-Black racism that pervades all of U.S. society. 

This year, let’s do something less usual. Let’s meet at the crossroads that Black History Month should produce. The month rightly calls attention to the mostly-invisible histories of African Americans, those that have never been just African American history. These histories have always been U.S. history. 

The story told in “Lift Every Voice and Sing” is the story of hardship and struggle. It is a tale of exhaustion, violence and dehumanization. It is also a narrative of resilience, survival and joy. This month, I invite you to listen, again and again, to “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” Find as many performances by as many different artists as possible. And when you hear the lyrics name the “harmonies of liberty” and “our native land,” pause and remember Black struggle and Black joy, Black brilliance and Black artistry, Black history as U.S. history, Black presence and citizenship. 

And then on March 1, continue the work. Follow the frightening spate of bomb threats currently being made against . Read or reread authors such as Zora Neal Hurston, Toni Morrison or Amanda Gorman. Revisit the work of Frederick Douglas, W. E. B. DuBois or James Baldwin. Listen to Black Violin.

Refuse to contain Black history to just one month.

Lisa Flores, PhD
Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
Co-Chair, CU Boulder IDEA Council

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By Lori Emerson (Intermedia Art, Writing and Performance)

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Happy Graduate Student Appreciation Week from CMCI and CU Boulder!

At CMCI, graduate students are an integral part of our mission to think, innovate and create. In each of CMCI’s departments, master’s and doctoral students are working to produce innovative research and creative work, think critically about pressing social issues, and serve as educators and mentors for CMCI’s undergraduate students. After an especially challenging year, we hope all of our graduate students know how much we value and appreciate all the ways you contribute to our community.

Are you a CMCI graduate student? Watch (above) and be sure to check out the list of graduate student events that Student Affairs is hosting throughout the week.

Not a CMCI graduate student? Be sure to reach out to a grad student you know today and thank them for all they do!

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Despite things being what they are, IAWP has still managed to continue to grow and produce over the past semester. Below are some highlights of IAWP doings and happenings throughout fall 2020. 

Following a very productive 2020 for the TECHNE Lab, the TECHNE crew (Amerika, Kim, Gallagher) are coming out of the 2021 box with their next IDMO (Imaginary Digital Media Object) in the just-released special issue of Media-N: Journal of the New Media Caucus, focused on "."

 submitted a course proposal for a class called The Body in Space to the Space Minor program, which was accepted and will be taught by her in the fall of 2021. De Koninck also completed her first-year review this past fall and is now preparing for her upcoming April residency in the B2 space by spending her Beverly Seares Graduate Student Grant on fabrics. In addition, she did a performance during the ATLAS Research Showcase where she wore a garment made of a textile she wove with dissolving threads. 

 participated in the online event .

 received a $25,000 donation from Google to support the Media Archaeology Lab. The MAL also initiated its  for work in the lab that relates to the intersection of race and technology. Emerson also developed a new undergraduate course she’s proposing to the College of Arts and Sciences called . In December, she published, “,”as part of Rhizome’s / The New Museum’s ongoing work to restore The Thing BBS. She also participated in the presentation of libi striegl’s short video, Frequency, which we aired for an event called Protected: Performing Media Archaeological Experiments that took place at the University of Luxembourg. Finally, Emerson gave a keynote presentation titled “Community x (Pedagogy + Play) at the Media Archaeology Lab'' for the MetaCulture Media Festival in Moscow, Russia. 

 was featured in the Daily Camera for her outdoor exhibit, Right on!, at Museum of Boulder. Her work responds to social crisis and systemic racism with 32 plaques. Eng is also running a  fundraiser called Dare to Care food drive for public school students––in which local artists decorate food collection crates––in collaboration with Naropa's  for brain-injured adults. She also  and was awarded a Gerald C. Bean Scholarship, as well as Colorado Music Relief Funds. Finally, Eng has been invited by Leon Gallery for a solo exhibition this summer for her work .

 was a virtual visiting artist at the Ruhr-Universität in Bochum, Germany, and in August at John Cabot University in Rome. Her film about yellow mealworms, Tenebrio molitor, showed on Australia's TV Science channel through the end of the summer months and her new documentary, Sacred Mountain, premiered in early September in Mumbai at the Indian Cine Film Festival. The Kontejner Collective also highlighted Espelie's art in Zagreb, Croatia. Finally, Espelie curated a show, , at Union Hall in Denver that was open through Jan. 9, 2021.

 gave a presentation at the Artificial Creativity conference in Malmo, Sweden, on Nov. 19 and 20 entitled “Do GPT-2s Dream of Electric Poetry?" He was also selected for an Atlas B2 residency, to be held from Feb. 22 to March 5, 2021. In addition, Gallagher completed his first-year review!

 was part of the group show The Archive to Come at Telematic Media Arts in San Francisco.

Her solo exhibition, Living Lab, also opened in November at Clark College’s  in Vancouver, Washington. In addition to displaying projects online, she offered a workshop titled Feeling without Touching: An Archive of Feelosophic Artefacts from the Living Lab and collaborated with virtual visitors to create intimate "feelosophic artefacts" that explore and reimagine how we language our emotions in digital spaces.

Kim's video, Cricket World, is included in the online, social VR, and in-gallery group exhibition  at Telematic Media Arts. Finally, her book, Entering the Blobosphere: A Musing on Blobs, has been reviewed on .

PhD candidate Darija Medic participated in a debate on “the new normal” during the literary festival . She also participated in the  workshop during the South Eastern European Dialogue on Internet Governance. Finally, she participated in Belgrade’s  via a panel on "Future Narratives," speaking from the position of the affiliation with the Media Archaeology Lab as a small intervention in narratives on innovation.

 book, , was published by the University of Chicago Press.

Last but not least,  presented a paper titled "Mapping Post-Reform Narratives: Hypertext Network as Literary Infrastructure" at the Youth Round Table as part of the Fifth-Annual Conference of Network Society, hosted by Institute of Network Society in China Academy of Fine Art in Hangzhou, China. The paper will eventually be translated and published in Chinese by INS. 

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The first new college at CU Boulder in 53 years, our mission was to build an education and a community that could match the times we live in. In our first five years at CMCI, we’ve created a strong foundation of academic excellence, community engagement and public scholarship. 

Today, we continue to think, innovate and create through

• Scholarship that matters in areas such as climate change, public health, representation and identity, dis- and misinformation, visual ethnography, and data ethics 
• Expanded precollegiate opportunities that set students up for success and help create a more vibrant, equitable and inclusive college community
• New academic degree programs that allow students to apply their skills in a broader range of industries, including data science, sports and documentary filmmaking

Today officially marks our five-year anniversary! And we couldn’t have done it without each of you. Because at the heart of CMCI is a sense of community––a vibrant group of scholars, educators and media makers learning and working together. 

As we reflect on all we’ve accomplished, here’s a snapshot of what’s next:

• Launching an online master’s in corporate communication
• Establishing a new media innovation laboratory
• Exploring virtual frontiers through extended reality 

Here’s to our first and to the next 95 to come.

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