Kirk A. Johnson
Assistant Professor of Sociology,
Anthropology and African American Studies
P.O. Box 1848
University, MS  38677-1848

Phone: (662) 915-5977
Office: Longstreet 305
E-mail:  kjohnson@olemiss.edu

Biography:
Some might say my career is confused; I call it merely unconventional.  Since devising my own undergraduate major (in environmental science), I’ve worked as an environmental bureaucrat, a public-interest lobbyist, and an assistant to a governor’s science advisor.  I’ve written several popular books on minority health, edited an award-winning medical journal devoted to health care for the poor, researched news images of Boston’s black community, and served as senior researcher for the Emmy Award-winning PBS civil rights documentary, “Eyes on the Prize.”  In my doctoral dissertation at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, I explored the resilient popularity of herbalists, voodoo priests, and other traditional African-American healers in Chicago, the home—ironically enough—of the American Medical Association.

Research:
Hurricane Katrina slammed into the coast just weeks after my family and I moved to Mississippi, and the many disturbing news depictions of African-Americans from New Orleans provided a ready-made research project.  Presently I’m working with a team of graduate and undergraduate research assistants to analyze the production and content of hundreds of newspaper and television images of the black community from the first days of the storm.

Publications:
2008    Johnson, Kirk A. and Dixon, Travis L. Change and the Illusion of Change: Evolving Portrayals of Crime News and Blacks in a Major Market. Howard Journal of Communications, 19: 1-19.

2004    Johnson, Kirk A.  “Atrocity and Atonement: One City’s Changing News Portrayals of
African-Americans,” in Clint Wilson II and Felix Gutierrez, eds., A Multicultural Media Reader (Sage)

2002    Johnson, Kirk A.  “Modern Doctors and Traditional Black Patients: Bridging a Treacherous Divide,” Annals of Behavioral Science and Medical Education 8(1): 21- 27.

1991    Johnson, Kirk A.  “Objective News and Other Myths: The Poisoning of Young Black Minds,” Journal of Negro Education 60(3): 328-41.

Teaching:
One way or another, my diverse experiences in minority health and mass media seem to trickle into the classroom.  Over the past eight years at Bowdoin College and the University of Mississippi, I’ve taught Introduction to Sociology, Minorities and the Media, African-Americans and the News, Traditional Healing in Sociohistorical Context, and Urban Sociology.