Margena Christian
Senior Lecturer in English and Professional Writing
Biography
Margena Christian
Media scholar and professional journalist Margena Christian’s research and teaching interests explore the role of the media in education, Black popular culture and historical inquiry.
Before joining UIC, she was a professional journalist who was nationally published in the pioneering Black publications Jet and Ebony magazines. She became a senior editor and writer at Ebony during a nearly two-decade career with the Johnson Publishing Company. In 2018, she wrote her first book, “Empire: The House That John H. Johnson Built.” A forthcoming book about Sylvia Moy, Motown’s first female in-house songwriter and producer who helped revive Stevie Wonder’s early career as a teen, is slated for release in 2025.
A founding faculty member of the professional writing minor at UIC, she developed and designed a course focused on writing for digital and new media, advanced professional writing, and editing and publishing.
Christian’s UIC Honors College seminar course, “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud! Writing About African Americans in the Media,” explores the role of the Black media in political, social and cultural coverage regarding representation, dissemination, innovation and education.
