UConn’s Digital Media & Design Department presents “The Diverse Perspectives in Digital Media & Design 2024 Speaker Series”
Breaking the Peripheral Barrier as the Other Brown Designer
Archana Shekara, Professor and Creative Director of Design Streak Studio at Illinois State University
Wednesday, January 31, 2024, 5:30 PM EST
via YouTube Live
Archana Shekara investigates her transnational identity as an Indian American by understanding racial equity and decoloniality through a brown cultural lens.
This event is brought to you by UConn’s Department of Digital Media & Design in partnership with
UConn’s Asian American Cultural Center.
Co-hosted by DMD professor Clarissa Ceglio with DMD undergraduate Zoe Orie
LEARN MORE AND REGISTER: https://dmd.uconn.edu/major/diverse-perspectives/diverse-perspectives-archana-shekara/
About the Speaker: Archana Shekara is a Professor of Graphic Design, Co-Director of Ethnic Studies Program, and Creative Director of Design Streak Studio, a research-based social innovation lab focusing on human-centered service design at Illinois State University. Shekara has 27 years of professional experience designing for diverse industry clients. She uses design to build cross-cultural understanding, acceptance, and respect. As a socio-cultural researcher, she investigates her transnational identity as an Indian American by understanding racial equity and decoloniality through a brown cultural lens and creates cultural awareness using ethnographic narratives. Her medium for creative expression takes on various forms, such as type design, curating immersive, participatory experiences, and interactive installations using mixed and various emerging digital media that evoke multi-sensory responses.
Her teaching and research in design pedagogy for cross-cultural awareness and identity, social justice, and community engagement have been featured in peer-reviewed national and international academic and professional publications including AIGA’s One Designer, One Work. Shekara is the founder and chair of the South Asian Design Educators Alliance (SADEA), which aims to promote and share South Asian design histories, pedagogies, and perspectives globally. She received an MFA in Graphic Design from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a BFA in Painting from the State University of New York in New Paltz. For more information about her work: The HER Project
About the Diverse Perspectives in Digital Media & Design 2024 Speaker Series:
To paraphrase James Baldwin, nothing can be changed until it is faced. This is certainly true of the inequities that have historically shaped digital media content, fields, and careers. Join UConn’s Digital Media & Design department in welcoming industry professionals, artists, and media scholars from the film, design, cultural, game, and other sectors to discuss how issues of equity manifest in their work, creative processes, and professions, allowing us to reflect on how our own practice can support greater equity, diversity, and inclusion.
For more information, contact: Digital Media & Design Dept at meredith.friedman@uconn.edu