Event Details
Join us for our major annual lecture in Media and Cultural Studies. This year's speaker is Maya Washington, a 2025 Creative Change Maker with Kofi Annan Institute for Global Citizenship.
Talk title: "Story as Sanctuary"
What are the stories we tell ourselves and one another about media’s role in our collective peace or comfort? With digital tools at our fingertips at all times, we choose how and where we engage with story. With examples from her personal media practice, Washington will discuss how consumption, creation, and dissemination shape our experience of security within society.
Maya Washington is an award-winning director, narrative and documentary filmmaker, actress, writer, poet, creative director, and arts educator. Her background, on stage/camera and behind the scenes, has given her the opportunity to work on everything from public art, live theatre, commercials and print ads, to web series, films and television. Her award-winning film, Through the Banks of the Red Cedar, about her father Vikings Legend Gene Washington and the desegregation of college football aired on the Big Ten Network and is currently available on PBS platforms including PBS Documentaries Channel through Amazon Prime, Comcast, and iTunes.
The annual Leola Johnson Lecture in Media and Cultural Studies is named in honor of Professor Leola Johnson, one of the founding faculty members of Media and Cultural Studies at Macalester College who retired in fall 2020. In over twenty years of teaching at Macalester, Professor Johnson’s commitment to her students’ success and her capacity to foster their intellectual curiosity was unparalleled. Her office door was always open, and there were often one or more students gathered around her discussing not only material from her classes, but also related analyses of current politics and popular culture. One often heard outbursts of laughter emanating from her office during these conversations, a testament to the pleasure she and her students took in these exchanges. Professor Johnson was the epitome of a scholar-teacher; deeply engaged with complex ideas and research and developing innovative ways to convey this to her students. We are delighted to name this lecture series in her honor.
