Jonathan Gayles, Ph.D. is Professor and Chair of the Department of African-American Studies at Georgia State University. He is a graduate of Morehouse College (B.A., Psychology), Winthrop University (M.S., School Psychology) and the University of South Florida (Ph.D., applied anthropology). His primary areas of interest include the anthropology of education, educational policy, Black masculinity, race and ethnicity and critical media studies. He is currently investigating the contested Blackness of the “Black Christ” of Portobelo, Panama. In 2012, he produced an independent documentary on African-American comic book superheroes entitled “White Scripts and Black Supermen: Black Masculinities in Comic Books.” The documentary is distributed by California Newsreel. The American Culture Association/Popular Culture Association awarded the documentary the 2013 Peter Rollins Best Documentary Film Award. More information on the film can be found at blacksuperherodoc.com. He also recently finished his second documentary film entitled “The E-Word: A Documentary on the Ebonics Debate.” The film examines the context of the national furor in response to the Oakland Unified School District’s Resolution on Ebonics. The film pursues a more informed understanding of “The E-Word” through the use of archival footage and interviews with former students, teachers, administrators, policy-makers and scholars that were directly involved with the Resolution and the national debate that ensued. More information on this film can be found here.
Jonathan Gayles 