Summer 2025: 2 minutes with...

  Antoinette Kendrick
PhD student, media studies

 “One minute, I’m sharing my phone with Deion Sanders, showing him the app,” said Antoinette Kendrick, recalling her visit to a CMCI course that features Coach Prime as a frequent guest lecturer. “Next, he starts calling Snoop, and suddenly I’m on a FaceTime with him. It’s going be a highlight of my life, for sure.” 

Responses edited for length and clarity.

  So you got Snoop Dogg to come to class. What will you do for an encore?
I was there as a guest, and didn’t want to interrupt the class. The students were pitching ways Prime could expand his brand. But at the end, he’s still asking, “Anyone else?” so I told him about Speechify, a text-to-speech platform with only two Black male voices—a stolen likeness of Barack Obama, and Snoop.

  And then he called Snoop. 
It was sur(actual)real. Surreal! Honestly, my first thought was, this is where the academy can take you—like, I can be on a Thursday night Facetime with Snoop, who just looks like someone’s grandfather in a regular den.

  Speaking of the academy, how does a social worker get to CMCI?
Working with kids illuminated to me what the digital age looks like for them—and how little guidance they have navigating these spaces. My supervisors suggested the problem needed to be studied at a research level. I found social work programs were not meaningfully engaging with media, so I looked at media studies.

  Children’s media literacy must be a fascinating topic. 
I’m actually looking at tech stress in young adults. I think it’s because I live in a sorority house— 

  Wait. You live where?
(Laughs.) Well, it’s a refurbished sorority house. A couple years ago the sorority disbanded. The owner rents to students, and I get reduced rates for being house mom.

  How does that influence your research? 
You see the stresses they encounter. At the low scale is how they respond to the three dots in their messages. Large scale, one girl broke up with her partner because he was looking at pictures of her friend on another social media platform. We have not navigated how to negotiate these encounters. 

  Back to Prime. Will the experience in the course change how you teach?
Prime comes to class with so much energy, which I think these young white students have never seen. And he doesn’t code switch. He stays true to himself in this highly regimented space. I’d like to do more of that.