Straight Outta College
Part I: The Straight Bio
Kembrew McLeod is an associate professor of communication studies at the University of Iowa and an independent documentary filmmaker. His books and films focus on both popular music and the cultural impact of intellectual property law. McLeod’s Freedom of Expression®: Resistance and Repression in the Age of Intellectual Property received the American Library Association’s Oboler book award for “best scholarship in the area of intellectual freedom” in 2006. He co-authored with Northwestern Law Professor Peter DiCola the book Creative License: The Law and Culture of Digital Sampling, as well as the co-edited the anthology Cutting Across Media: Interventionist Collage, Appropriation Art, and Copyright Law, with Rudolf Kuenzli (both will be published by Duke University Press early-2011). McLeod’s documentary, Money For Nothing: Behind the Business of Pop Music, was programmed at the 2002 South by Southwest Film Festival and the 2002 New England Film and Video Festival, where it received the Rosa Luxemburg Award for Social Consciousness. His second documentary, titled Freedom of Expression®, is a companion to the book of the same name, and was also distributed by the Media Education Foundation. Most recently, he co-produced the documentary Copyright Criminals, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and aired on PBS’s Emmy Award-winning documentary series, Independent Lens. McLeod’s music and cultural criticism have appeared in Rolling Stone, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Wilson Quarterly, Village Voice, MOJO, SPIN, and the New Rolling Stone Album Guide.
Part II: The Indexical Bio
Kembrew is a cultural critic, teacher, student, record fetishist, sometimes-DJ, vanity publisher, provocateur, child, artist, spazz dancer, zinester, dreamer, misfit, lover (of music) and not a fighter, and much much more.
Part III: The Free(style) Association Bio
Who'da thunk that I would become a university professor after I failed my senior year of high school? Thanks to some inspiring teachers along the way, I decided to give the profession a try because it appeared to allow me the most freedom of any career option.
After graduating from, essentially, twenty-second grade and getting my Ph.D in Communication at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst (shout out to Western Mass!), I joined the faculty in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Iowa.
To use a Grateful Dead-invoking cliche (yecchhh), it's been a long strange trip, one that includes deconstruction, dancing (doing the bunny hop while old school hip-hop legend Afrika Bambaataa spun records for an audience that included only ten people, five of us professors ... that was awesome), and, memorably, a fellow grad student catching on fire (true story).
After seven years in Iowa City chasing the children of the corn through the field of dreams -- and after getting tenure, you punks! -- I still solemnly swear to put the "ass" back in associate professor (just as I put the "ass" in assistant professor for six years).
Lastly, as always, I reserve the right to rock. To poorly paraphrase Alice Cooper, school's in session 4-eva!
