DEPARTMENT OF BLACK STUDIES

Research Interests:

Cultural studies; Black and Latine popular culture; race and digital culture; Afro-Latin America, especially Panama and the Caribbean; history and politics of digital entertainment technologies; simulation of racial subjectivity; videogames; play and ludology; power, play, and pedagogy

Biography

Jalin Niamke Jackson (he/him) is a PhD candidate in Black Studies at Northwestern University. Focusing on popular culture, he studies how race and its intersections (with gender, sexuality, and so on) are produced, workshopped, and challenged within and through digital entertainment technologies and social media. His dissertation examines how concepts like race are (re)produced within the created worlds of videogames and reproduced through videogames for audiences. Using literary and archival methods, his research interrogates the videogame medium’s historical entanglements with race. He urges that we resituate contemporary manifestations of race as well as Black artistic thought prior to the invention of videogames in the medium’s historical developmental trajectory. His work highlights the convergences between Black Studies and Videogame Studies, as well as between Afro-Latin American Studies and Videogame Studies, and he conducts research in English and Spanish. His undergraduate training converged around the history of the Caribbean, especially the globalized contexts of Panama and Cuba, and textual analysis (English/Spanish) and archival methodologies. In addition, he earned a Master's of Science in Education (University of Pennsylvania) in 2021 rooted in reflective practice, course design, the context of schooling in the U.S., and structuring learning and pedagogical experiences. Alongside his studies, he facilitates workshops and presents on various topics related to pedagogy for graduate-student and other audiences.