Kam Copeland, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Department of African American and African Studies at The Ohio State University. Prior to coming to OSU, he was a 2023-2024 Post Doctoral Fellow in the James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference at Emory University and the 2022-2023 Dissertation Fellow in the Program in African and African Diaspora Studies at Boston College. Currently, he is working on his book project titled “Muhammad Gazes: Islam, Blackness, and Resistance Cinema in the United States,” which is a representational history of U.S. Black American Muslims in cinema. This project also explores how Black Muslims have employed alternative gazes to craft liberatory cinematic practices—through home video, public television, and independent film—to challenge dominant representations of Black Muslimness.