Hemant Shah is a Helen Firstbrook Franklin Professor of Journalism. He is affiliated with the Asian American Studies Program, Center for South Asia and the Global Studies Program. He earned his Ph.D. in mass communication from Indiana University, his M.A. in communication studies from Purdue University and his B.A. in communication and sociology from the University of California-San Diego.
Shah joined the faculty in 1990 and teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on mass media, race and ethnicity; critical and cultural approaches to mass communication; qualitative inquiry and research; and international communication.
In both the U.S. and international contexts, Shah’s research investigates the role of mass media in various types of social change, such as national development, construction of cultural identities, creation of racial anxieties, social movements, and other similar processes. Shah has conducted fieldwork in India and Uganda and his research has been published in African Media Review, Asian Journal of Communication, Communication Theory, The Communication Review, Critical Studies in Mass Communication, Howard Journal of Communication, International Journal of Intercultural Communication, Journalism Monographs, Journalism Quarterly, Media Asia, and other journals. Shah is the author of The Production of Modernization: Daniel Lerner, Mass Media and the Passing of Traditional Society (Temple University Press, 2011), co-author of Newspaper Coverage of Interethnic Conflict: Competing Visions of America (Sage Publications, 2004), and co-editor of Reorienting Global Communication: Indian and Chinese Media Beyond Border (University of Illinois Press, 2010).