Kam Copeland (he/him) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of African American and African Studies at The Ohio State University. He was a 2023-2024 Post- Doctoral Fellow at the James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference at Emory University and the 2022-2023 Dissertation Fellow in the African and African Diaspora Studies Program at Boston College. His research and teaching broadly focuses on Black studies, film history and theory, critical Muslim studies, and Black radical southern studies. His work explores how Black Muslim communities have critically engaged the moving image, contributed to theoretical discourses on Black media, and actively used the cinematic to artistically express visions for liberation. Currently, he is working on a book project titled, “Black Muslims, Insurgent Gazes: Islam, Blackness, and Resistance Cinema before 9/11,” which is a representational history that explores how Black Muslims have used accessible forms of film technology—such as home video, public access television, public affairs television, and independent film—to challenge dominant representations of Black Muslimness in the U.S. media.