Nsenga Burton

About Me

Bio

Nsenga K. Burton, Ph.D. (she/he/hers) is an award-winning professor, writer, content creator and influencer.

Dr. Burton currently serves as Co-Director of the Film and Media Management Concentration at Emory University. Her area of expertise is intersectionality (race, class, gender and sexuality) and media with a focus on entertainment ndustries and digital journalism.

In addition to serving as a professor, Nsenga has worked as a journalist and cultural critic for the last two decades. She is a former editor-at-large for The Root, columnist for the Huffington Post, cultural critic for Creative Loafing and has contributed to The New York Times, USA Today, BET News, The Crisis Magazine and The Grio. She is the former Executive Director of the National Association of Digital Entrepreneurs. In 2012, Nsenga founded The Burton Wire, an award-winning news blog covering news of the African Diaspora. She currently hosts a livestream on issues impacting the Black community for Black Press USA Newswire and is Editor-in-Chief of HealthPlus Magazine, a digital-first publication published by The Atlanta Voice.. Through her writing and content partnerships, Nsenga's voice reaches over 2 million people online daily and 20 million people in print monthly. Never moving too far away from her first love of film, Dr. Burton worked as a behind the scenes producer on 2019's Shaft and Little, as a contributor to the short film, Flash Here and There Like Falling Stars: Remembering the Life of Dr. Pellom McDaniels (2020) and as line producer for Bamboozled, a documentary on women in film by iconic filmmaker Nina Menkes.

Nsenga has written extensively on race and media, most recently serving as co-editor of the book Black Women's Health: Balancing Strength and Vulnerability. In addition to co-editing duties, Dr. Burton contributed the chapter, "Representations of Black Women's Mental Health on Being Mary Jane and How to Get Away with Murder." She has also written about W.E.B. DuBois' theory of double consciousness and the question of race in AMC's Mad Men,South African Soap Operas as a tool for racial reconciliation and is working on a book proposal on race, gender and the reality television industry.

Nsenga recently curated Emory's Spring 2020 Cinematheque African Americans in American Film and served as director of the 2020 AfroComicCon International Short Film Festival (virtual) which took place in October. Dr. Burton is the immediate past co-chair of the Black Caucus for the Society of Cinema and Media Studies, a member of the African-American Film Critics Association, National Communication Association, National Association of Black Journalistsand Women in Film and Television Atlanta. Nsenga is the former chair of the Atlanta Youth Commission and former Bylaws Chair for the League of Women Voters Fulton County. She is also a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. and The Links, Incorporated.

Dr. Burton is a frequent commentator on television, radio and new media having recently appeared on The Dr. Phil Show to discuss "The Karen Phenomenon" on social media, WABE-90.1 FM to discuss the history of protest films in this protest era and African Americans in American Cinema, Rolling Out Magazine's podcast on the precarious relationship between Black Filmmakers and Hollywood, NNPA/Black Press USA Newswire's 2020 election coverage panelist and co-host, KCMPT's livestream post-election discussion and co-host of Camellia Rose Links livestream discussion on the State of Women in Georgia (2021).

Dr. Burton holds degrees in film and communication from Northwestern University (B.S.), New York University (M.A.), University of Pennsylvania (M.A.) and the University of Southern California (Ph.D.).

Dr. Burton is the recipient of NABJ's Entrepreneur of the Year Award, News One's 15 Top Black Blogs designation and is a Scripps-Howard Journalism and New Media Fellow Alum. A native of Virginia, Nsenga currently resides in Atlanta with her daughter and fur-sons Mr. Miyagi and Mr. Surprise.

Follow her on Twitter or Instagram @Ntellectual.

My Recent Academic Publications

Black Women’s Mental Health: Balancing Strength and Vulnerability (anthology), Eds. Stephanie Y. Evans, Kanika Bell Lewis and Nsenga K. Burton, SUNY Press, 2017 (Hardcopy; Soft copy released in 2018). In addition to serving as an editor, I have contributed a chapter on the representation of black women’s mental health in Being Mary Jane. (Editor and contributor – In addition to co-editing responsibilities, I wrote a chapter on The Representation of Black Women’s Mental Illness in HTGAWM and Being Mary Jane)

“Mad Men: Draper, Double Consciousness and The Invisibility of Blackness,” Mad Men (anthology) Eds. Ann Duncan and Jacob Goodson, Cascade Press, 2016. (Book chapter)

”Bert Williams: Lime Kiln Club Field Day.” Article written for the 20thAnniversary of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival 2015.

“South African Soap Operas: A Rainbow Nation Realized?” appears in the anthology, Watching While Black: Centering the Television of Black Audiences. Rutgers: Rutgers University Press, 2013. Winner: 2013 Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award.