Dr. Aymar Jean "AJ" Christian is the Margaret Walker Alexander Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern University and Director of the Media and Data Equity Lab. He published his first book, Open TV: Innovation Beyond Hollywood and the Rise of Web Television (NYU Press, 2018), and is currently writing his second book, Reparative Media: Cultivating Stories and Platforms to Heal our Culture (MIT Press, forthcoming), which explores how to repair systemic harm and discrimination in media, technology and research. He received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. A full CV can be found here.
Dr. Christian engages industry and community as part of his research. He regularly serves as executive producer of films and series, including Jules Rosskam’s Desire Lines (Special Jury Award, 2024 Sundance Film Festival), Sarah Oberholtzer’s We Call Each Other, and The Cookout with Emmy Award winning producer Makiah Green and Emmy-nominated director Sam Bailey. He has given lectures for and collaborated with the Sundance Institute, Vimeo, the SAG-AFTRA Foundation, Black Public Media, and more. He has juried television and video for the Peabody Awards, Gotham Awards, and Tribeca Film Festival, among others. His work has been recognized by the MacArthur Foundation & Field Foundation (Leaders for a New Chicago, 2019), Variety (Top 50 Entertainment Instructor 2020 & 2021), Filmmaker (25 New Faces of Indie Film, 2018) NewCity (Film Leader 2017 & Film Hall of Fame 2020), Chicago magazine (New Power List, 2021) and Seed&Spark (Filmmaker to Watch 2018).
Dr. Christian co-founded OTV | Open Television, a platform for intersectional television. OTV programs have received recognition from the Television Academy (Emmy Awards), Webby Awards, Streamy Awards, Gotham Awards, among others. Its programming partners have included the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Sundance Institute, and the city of Chicago, along with numerous galleries, community organizations, and universities. Artists supported by OTV have received offers from leading studios and distributors, including HBO, CBS and Hulu. From 2015-2020 while leading OTV’s transition from experiment to independent non-profit, Dr. Christian and Executive Director Elijah McKinnon raised over $1 million in multi-year support to sustain its operations. Building on the success of OTV, he co-founded an incubator for intersectional film & television, with Stephanie Jeter and Lilly Wachowski.
Photo credit (header): Felton Kizer
For 15 years, since the emergence of social media, I have been researching how the Internet is transforming our media, communities, and industries. I have been so inspired by independent artists and community organizers using digital tools to bring equity to an unequal society. As a child of immigrants who grew up in a diverse neighborhood outside New York City, my life has been a search for community and belonging. Media has been a critical tool in that search.
My first book chronicled the rise of YouTube and the independent storytellers who brought innovation to that platform, and later, Hollywood. Arriving in Chicago to start at Northwestern I was inspired by the city's rich artistic communities to create an alternative distribution that could repair some of YouTube's exclusions--the challenges of web 2.0--and highlight the value of local connections for global distribution. OTV was born.
OTV will celebrate 10 years in 2025, and my experience has attracted new collectives and organizations seeking my experience in platform building.
The Cookout is a hub for these diverse networks, including organizations across film, television, theater, social justice, tech, academia, and community organizing. Large social media platforms are not conducive to our organizing, and our data is used without our consent. My journey has shown me the power of owning our stories and our knowledges, and I'm excited to experiment with developing new protocols for cultivating these ethically and sustainably.
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