Hart enjoys the fact that his scholarly pursuits create opportunities to collaborate with students and departmental colleagues.
Award for Distinguished Scholar
Department Chair, Associate Professor of Communication and Media Studies
It has often been said that the best teachers are the ones who never stop learning. Indeed, a teacher’s passion for expanding his or her own knowledge base enriches the education he or she provides. This is certainly the case for Kylo-Patrick Hart, whose love for teaching is matched only by his love for learning and discovery.
Hart, who joined Plymouth State University’s Department of Communication and Media Studies faculty in 2002 and currently serves as chair of the department has three graduate/professional certificates, three master’s degrees (with a fourth on its way), and a doctorate—from schools such as the University of Michigan, the University of Southern California, and Dartmouth College.
In addition to teaching, chairing a department, and pursuing his own educational aspirations , Hart maintains an internationally recognized research program. Among his research interests are media portrayals of gay men and people living with AIDS and the impact of those portrayals. He is an author or editor of three books in addition to nearly 100 articles, essays, and papers, and his work is required reading at universities across the country. One reviewer describes Hart’s work as of interest “to all readers with a general interest in film history and the effects of the cinema on individuals.”
Hart enjoys the fact that his scholarly pursuits create opportunities to collaborate with students and departmental colleagues. For example, a number of his undergraduate students have worked on a television-based content-analytic study; a colleague of his joined him in co-authoring academic essays an conference papers, and another colleague has collaborated with him in co-editing a media-based anthology. It is collaborations such as these that make Hart appreciate the community feel of PSU. “There’s an openness here that you just don’t have at larger institutions,” he says.
Since 2004, he has organized and hosted six international media studies conferences at PSU that have drawn presenters from colleges and universities from all over the world. Hart has also assisted more than 70 PSU undergraduates in preparing and presenting their own research findings at these conferences alongside graduate students and professors, encouraging students to continue learning and discovering.
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