University of Southern California

Department Member, Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism

Deputy Director, The Norman Lear Center

About

Johanna Blakley is the deputy director of the Norman Lear Center, a research and public policy institute that explores the convergence of entertainment, commerce and society. Based at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, Blakley performs research on a wide variety of topics, including global entertainment, cultural diplomacy, celebrity culture, digital media and intellectual property law. Blakley has overseen two major research initiatives about the impact of intellectual property rights on innovation and creativity – "Ready to Share: Fashion & the Ownership of Creativity" and "Artists, Technology & the Ownership of Creative Content." Much of her work addresses the intersection between entertainment and politics: most recently, she conducted two nationwide polls, with Zogby International, on the relationship between political ideology and entertainment preferences. Blakley is a regular contributor to the Lear Center Blog, and she has guided more than forty manuscripts through the publication process at the Lear Center, including "Warners’ War: Propaganda, Politics & Pop Culture in Wartime Hollywood." Blakley developed course materials on cultural diplomacy for the Masters in Public Diplomacy at Annenberg, and she lectures frequently at USC. She received a PhD in English from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she taught courses on popular culture and twentieth-century literature. Blakley has held a variety of positions within the high-tech industry, including Web producer and digital archivist at Vivendi-Universal Games. She is on the advisory board of Kartemquin Films, one of the longest-running documentary companies in the country, and she’s on the board of directors for Les Figues Press, a venue for literary experimentation.

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