Baruti N. Kopano is a professor in the Department of Multiplatform Production in the School of Global Journalism and Communication. He received his Ph.D. in English (Rhetoric and Linguistics) from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. His research interests include popular culture, Black masculinity, and African Americans in the radio industry. Dr. Kopano recently co-edited Soul Thieves: The Appropriation and Misrepresentation of African American Popular Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

Kopano has held several positions in commercial and noncommercial radio as an announcer and producer. He also is a principal for Next Tier Solutions, LLC. Next Tier Solutions received funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) in 2013 to launch New Visions, New Voices (NVNV). New Visions, New Voices garnered some of the nation's most important emerging voices to provide a series of short and long form programming aimed at providing more diverse voices to public media utilizing a variety of distribution formats including public radio, the web, social media and mobile devices. He won the 2014 National Association of Black Journalist Salute to Excellence Award Radio-Public Affairs Segment for his NVNV work.

Kopano enjoys traveling, walking, and listening to music. His most recent international trip was to Senegal and the Gambia in West Africa in 2016 as a participant in the Fulbright-Hays--Group Projects Abroad Program.

Research Interests:

Popular culture, Black masculinity, and African Americans in the radio industry.

Teaching Interests:

Radio station operations and management, media law and ethics, mass