Acknowledgments

This book started as a seed of an idea planted in our minds by Nadina Persaud, our incredibly supportive acquisitions editor at Oxford University Press. During the past 3 or 4 years of working on this project, we as co-editors have had numerous hurdles, such as a global pandemic, cross-country transition, and multiple family illnesses. However, Nadina kept us enthusiastic and energized about the handbook. As a fellow immigrant woman of color, she immediately saw the value of our project, continuously advocated for us, and checked in on our progress periodically without ever being overbearing. Thank you, Nadina!

Sincere and deep thanks to our research assistants—Shannon Burth, Melody Wilson, Soleil Andrews, and Maitreyee Shilpa Kishor—for helping us at every stage of the process. Through color-coded spreadsheets, multiple Google folders, careful proofreading, and constant reminders to contributors, they kept us on track and organized. Miraculously, we are here at the finish line exactly on the date that we proposed to do so. Without their labor and care, this project would not have been completed smoothly and on time.

We are sincerely grateful to our mentor, the one and only Dr. Mary Beth Oliver, whose lifelong support and encouragement has been vital to our successes. At Penn State University, she gave us a strong foundation on media effects and identity that have helped us become the media scholars that we are today. She allowed us a lot of freedom and flexibility to explore various methods and theories from critical perspectives that we found meaningful. Through her personal examples, she taught us to center care and excellence, which we have tried our best to emulate in our collaboration. We are thankful to all our mentors, well-wishers, collaborators, scholar–activists, and teachers who have made our work possible. In particular, Srivi acknowledges her students and collaborators at Media Rise, The Difficult Dialogues Project, and CODE^SHIFT for their unflinching support for social justice scholarship. More broadly, we thank all the numerous activists throughout the world doing incredibly courageous work under challenging and even dangerous circumstances.

We are also incredibly thankful to our contributors, without whom this volume would be impossible. Thank you for lending your intellectual minds, your passion, and your conviction and values to this space in collaboration with like minds and like hearts. May your academic, scholarly, and activist endeavors continue to reap goodness for you and generations to come.

Srivi thanks her parents Ramasubramanian and Lalitha, husband Gautam, son Sankalp, and sister Srinithya for their love, care, and undying support. Tayo thanks her parents Bolaji Oyefeso and Lanre Banjo for giving her a heart for justice and her daughter Morayo AdeYara for being her most personal reason to fight for it.