by Luke Butner

Meet Dr. Hope Jackson, an incredible professor who joined our faculty last semester. She is part of the ECM department and specializes in African American media. Dr. Jackson is passionate about her work, always puts her students’ well-being first and actively involved in the community. We had the wonderful opportunity to chat with her about her classes, exciting projects she is working diligently at and her favorite hobbies.

Dr. Jackson is teaching three very interesting classes this semester with scholarly texts & contexts, American literature: slave literature and African American film & culture. In the future, Dr. Jackson desires to implement a film minor, stating, “There is so much you can play around

with when it is filmed… we have the equipment… [the professors] can teach the classes… why are we not offering a film minor?” However, this is not her only project that concerns film.

Dr. Jackson has another exciting idea involving film- she wants to start another film festival in the city of Greensboro. She got the idea from the mini film festival she started for her African American film class, where students create and showcase their own homemade motion picture productions. She stated that she is dreaming of upscaling this event to include the community of Greensboro as well. Although the previous two projects are huge in themselves, Dr. Jackson is currently working on three other projects.

In addition to the film minor and film festival projects, Dr. Jackson also has three other literary projects in the works. First, she is working on a book that spotlights women in the Hip-Hop industry and their mental health. She is curious about why some women in Hip-Hop struggle with severe mental health issues while others do not. Next, she is co-authoring an article that delves into “the performativity of black women from the film ‘Harlem Nights.’” Finally, she is using Afrofuturism as a lens to examine the popular African American rapper Megan Thee Stallion.

To wind down from all her hard work, Dr. Jackson appreciates multiple outlet sources. She mentioned her favorite way to relax is to get her heart pumping with Zumba and HIIT workouts, using YouTube videos or the LesMills+ workout app as guidance. She is also a bookworm, which makes sense when given the context that she is an ECM professor. She stated that she enjoys all types of books, with a slight bit more emphasis on nonfiction books since they focus on the real world. Dr. Jackson also loves to watch TV and film media, currently hooked on the show “Will Trent” that she watches with her youngest son.

During our interview with her, we got the feeling that Dr. Jackson is a super sweet and lovely professor. Although we were unable to attach the voice recording of our interview with

her to this paper, please know that she is super approachable, and we had a blast chatting with her. Her final request for what she wanted to be put in the newspaper, she responded “just tell students to come to class… [prepared and] on time.”