Communications Faculty
Peter J. Kareithi
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Associate Professor of Humanities and Communication,
Coordinator of Communications Program.
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Phone: 717-948-6202
- E-mail: pjk12@psu.edu
- Personal Web site: http://www.personal.psu.edu/pjk12/
Education
- Ph.D. University of Massachusetts Amherst
- Wallace-Knight Fellow. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (1990-91)
- M.A. University of Wales, Cardiff
- Dip Journ. University of Nairobi, Kenya
- Certificate in Journalism. Kenya Institute of Mass Communications
Focus
Journalism and critical cultural studies.
Experience
Dr. Kareithi has a vast background in journalism in Africa, Europe and United States. He began his career in his native country, Kenya, where he rose to be news editor of The Daily Nation, the largest daily newspaper in the country. For more than a decade in late 1970s and early 1980, he was a correspondent for several major British news organizations. In the late 1980s, Dr. Kareithi was the editor and publisher of the controversial investigative weekly newsmagazine, Financial Review. He was arrested and detained by the government on numerous occasions before the magazine was eventually banned for exposing government corruption and abuse of power.
For six years in the 1990s, Dr. Kareithi was an editor with The Republican (formerly know as the Union-News and Sunday Republican) in Springfield, Massachusetts. In United States, his journalistic writing has been publishing in both large and small newspapers including The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, The St. Petersburg Times and the Cape Cod Times.
Dr. Kareithi has been a faculty member at Penn State Harrisburg since 2001.Before coming to Penn State, he taught at Ithaca College, University of New Hampshire (Durham), University of Massachusetts (Amherst), and American University, Washington.
In 1990, Dr. Kareithi was awarded the Lillian Hellman-Dashiel Hammett Award for his journalistic work in defense of freedom of expression. Dr. Kareithi is also one of the four founders of the Kenya Human Rights Commission and was the commission's first secretary when it was founded in 1992.
Teaching
Dr. Kareithi teaches courses in journalism, media criticism, critical cultural theory and postcolonial studies in the Communications Major and the Graduate Humanities Program.
Research and creative work
Dr. Kareithi has co-edited one book - Untold Stories: Economics and Business Journalism in African Media - and is the author of two others on the way - Freedom, Power and Responsibility: Toward a Critical Theory of Media and State in Emerging Democracies and White Image in Black Mind: Media Articulation of Race in Multiracial African Societies. His work has also been published in scholarly and professional journals, including Journalism Studies, Crime, Law and Social Change, Rhodes Journalism Review, British Journalism Review, and African Media Review.
He is working on a book comparing the communicative texts in the trials of Jomo Kenyatta and Nelson Mandela.
Selected Publications
Books
Journal articles and book chapters
“Black Hawk Down and the Framing of Somalia – Pop Culture as News and News as Pop Fiction.”(Co-authored with Nixon Kariithi). African Media Review, July 2007.
"IT'S OFF TO WORK YOU GO! A critical discourse analysis of media coverage of the anti-privatisation strike in South Africa in October 2002." (Co-authored with Nixon Kariithi). Journalism Studies, Volume 8, Issue 3, May 2007
“Rethinking the African Press: Journalism and the Democratic Process,” in Kareithi, P. and Nixon Kariithi, eds. Untold Stories: Economics and Business Journalism in African Media. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press. [2005].
“Institutional Challenges and Opportunities for Bourgeoning African Economics Press,” in Kareithi, P. and Nixon Kariithi, eds. Untold Stories: Economics and Business Journalism in African Media. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press. [2005].
“Development of Economics Press in Africa,” in Kareithi, P. and Nixon Kariithi, eds. Untold Stories: Economics and Business Journalism in African Media. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press. [2005].
“Reporting African Economies,” Kareithi, P. and Nixon Kariithi, eds. Untold Stories: Economics and Business Journalism in African Media. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press. [2005].
Global Narratives of Race
"The White Man's Burden': how global media empires continue to construct 'difference." Rhodes Journalism Review, Vol 20 2001
"The White Man's Burden': how global media empires continue to construct 'difference." [UNABRIDGED VERSION]
“Mass Media As an Independent Institution of Civil Society in Africa,” in Fox and Bratton, 1994, An Assessment of USAID’s Capacity for Rapid Response in Support of African Civil Society. ARD, Washington, DC, [1994]
"It Gets My Goat." British Journalism Review, Vol. 1, No. 3 1990
Selected Newspaper articles
"Time Ripe for African Peace Force," Sunday Republican, Springfield, Mass., November 3, 1996, p. B1.
"Nations Take Different Paths on Race," Sunday Republican, Springfield, Mass., October 13, 1996, p. B3.
"Years of Colonization, Betrayal Cause Crisis in Somalia," Union‑News, Springfield, Mass., December 19,1992, p.6.
"The Lonely Hunter." Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday Magazine, May 10, 1992 (PDF version)
"The Lonely Hunter." Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday Magazine, May 10, 1992 (HTML version)
"Tragedy in Africa should not be ignored"
St. Petersburg Times; St. Petersburg; May 12, 1991”Don't Ignore The Disaster In Africa." Philadelphia Inquirer, May 22, 1991,
"South African Politics Comes to a Sharp Point; Apartheid, Anthropology and the Spears of the Zulus."
The Washington Post May 19, 1991
Course Offerings Include:
Communications
COMM 332 Reporting
COMM 350 Comparative Media Cultures
COMM 462 Feature Writing
COMM 474 Depth Reporting
COMM 494 Online Journalism
COMM 496 Literary Journalism
COMM 456 Media Criticism & Theory
COMM 480 Media, Race and Representation
Graduate Humanities
IHUM 300W Interpretations in the Humanities: Magic and Magical Realism in Modern African Literature.
Graduate Humanities
HUM 500: Research Methods and Scholarly Inquiry in the Humanities
HUM 515: Writers and Politics in Post-Colonial Africa
HUM 535:Culture, Identity and Resistance in Creative Expression (course popularly known as "Power and the Story")
HUM 596: Cultural Studies Seminar in Stuart Hall
Some Media stories on Dr. Kareithi's Work in Kenya
The Police arrest, release business magazine editor, Associated Press, December 6, 1988
Police detain outspoken Kenyan editor, UPI, December 6, 1988
Kenya magazine editor released after interrogation, BBC December 8, 1988
Kenya government bans 'Financial Review' after MPs' criticism, BBC April 24, 1989
Kenya Bans Probing Magazine After `Mischievous Stories' on Government, Washington Post, Apr 26, 1989
Nairobi Orders Ban on 2d Magazine in a Year, New York Times, May 10, 1989.
Kenya: Exiles Ask for Aid Suspension before Paris Meeting, IPS-Inter Press Service, November 22, 1991
Kenya: Human-Rights, Exiles Hail Donors' Suspension of New Aid, IPS-Inter Press Service, November 26, 1991
Kenya: New Human Rights Group Formed in Washington, IPS-Inter Press Service, April 22, 1992