Ralina Joseph

/in /by

Ralina Joseph

Professor of African American Studies & Vice Provost of Inclusive Excellence

Biography

Ralina L. Joseph is Vice Provost of Inclusive Excellence and Professor of African American Studies at UCLA. Prior to joining UCLA in 2025, Ralina served for served for 20 years at the University of Washington as Presidential Term Professor of Communication, Associate Dean of Equity & Justice, and founding director of the Center for Communication, Difference, and Equity (CCDE). Her scholarship explores intersectional racialized communication, multiracial identity, Black representation, and women of color feminism and includes the four books, Racial Exhaustion: How to Move Through Racism in the Wake of DEI (NYU Press, 2025), Generation Mixed Goes to School: Radically Listening to Multiracial Kids (with Allison Briscoe-Smith, Teachers College Press, 2021), Postracial Resistance: Black Women, Media, and the Uses of Strategic Ambiguity (NYU Press, 2018), and Transcending Blackness: From the New Millennium Mulatta to the Exceptional Multiracial (Duke University Press, 2012). Her latest book project, Intentional Relationality: How the Ethos of Women of Color Mentorship Sets Us All Free (University of Washington Press, 2027), is co-edited with her very first Ph.D. advisee, Manoucheka Celeste. Ralina is, at heart, a community advocate, dedicated to equity through radical listening and reparative dialoguing.

Education

Ph.D., Ethnic Studies, University of California, San Diego, 2005

B.A., American Civilization, Brown University, 1996

Publications

Books

  • Ralina L. Joseph, (In press) Racial Exhaustion: How to Move through Racism in the Wake of DEI, New York: New York University Press, 2025.
  • Ralina L. Joseph & Allison Briscoe-Smith, Generation Mixed Goes to School: Radically Listening to Multiracial Kids. New York: Teachers College Press, 2021.
  • Ralina L. Joseph, Postracial Resistance: Black Women, Media Culture, and the Uses of Strategic Ambiguity. New York: New York University Press, 2018.
  • Ralina L. Joseph.  Transcending Blackness: From the New Millennium Mulatta to the Exceptional Multiracial. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2013.

Samples of Journal Articles and Peer-Reviewed Book Chapters

  • Ralina L. Joseph, “Radical Listening for Racial Exhaustion,” International Journal of Listening. July 2025, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1080/10904018.2025.2527734
  • Helen Rosenboom and Ralina L. Joseph, “‘What Makes You Think I’m African American?’: Identity Performance, Code Switching, and the Strong Black Woman on Love is Blind,” Critical Studies in Media Communication, 42:3, September 2024, pp. 1-6, https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2024.2385459
  • Jas L. Moultrie and Ralina L. Joseph, “A Joyful Unsettling: Considering Black Media Studies and Social Justice,” Oxford International Handbook on Media and Social Justice, eds. Srividya Ramasubramanian and Omotayo Banjo. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024.
  • Meshell Sturgis and Ralina L. Joseph, (2022), “‘You’re the Whitest Black Person I Know’: Speaking Back to Microaggressions through the Poetics of Interruption,” Women’s Studies in Communication. https://doi.org/10.1080/07491409.2021.2020193
  • Manoucheka Celeste and Ralina L. Joseph, “Prying Open the Doors of Communication: Women of Color Mentoring in the Field of Communication,” Communication, Culture, and Critique Vol 14, No. 4, December 2021 pp. 657-662 https://doi.org/10.1093/ccc/tcab054; Co-editors for special forum pp. 657-695.
  • Thomas Locke and Ralina L. Joseph (2021), “All Intersectionality is Not the Same: Why Kamala Harris is Our VP and not Stacey Abrams,” Quarterly Journal of Speech, 107:4, pp. 451-456.
  • Anjuli Joshi Brekke, Ralina L. Joseph, and Naheed Aaftaab, “I Address Race Because Race Addresses Me”: Women of Color Show Receipts through Digital Storytelling,” Review of Communication, Vol. 21, No. 1, 2021, pp. 44-57, https://doi.org/10.1080/15358593.2021.1895294
  • Marcus Johnson and Ralina L. Joseph, “Black Cultural Studies is Intersectionality,” International Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol 23, No. 6, 2020, pp. 833-839. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1367877920953158
  • Meshell Sturgis and Ralina L. Joseph, “Visualizing Mixed Race and Genetics,” in Race and Media: Critical Approaches, ed. Lori Kido Lopez, NYU Press, 2020, pp. 39-56.
  • Ralina L. Joseph, “‘Mutts Like Me’: Mixed-Race African American Humor in the Obama Era,” in Are You Entertained?: Black Popular Culture in the 21st Century, eds. Simone Drake and Dwan Henderson Simmons, Duke University Press, 2020, pp. 29-43.
VIEW MORE FACULTY