Rate My Professor Brian Carroll

Brian Carroll serves as Professor of Communication and Chair of the Department of Communication at Berry College, a position he has held since 2015 after joining the faculty in 2003 and being promoted to full professor that year. From 2011 to 2015, he directed the college's Honors Program. Carroll earned his Ph.D. in Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2003, an M.A. in Political Science from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 1992, and a B.A. in Journalism with a public relations sequence and minor in Business Administration from UNC Chapel Hill in 1987. Prior to academia, he worked for over 15 years as a reporter, photographer, editor, and managing editor at newspapers and trade publications, including the Greensboro News & Record and Furniture/Today. He also taught as an adjunct professor in UNC Chapel Hill's School of Journalism and Mass Communication from 2003 to 2014.

His research interests encompass the black press's role in professional baseball integration, digital media, communication law and policy, First Amendment freedoms, media depictions of crime, race and public memory, and Shakespearean explorations of national identity. Carroll has authored six books, notably When to Stop the Cheering? The Black Press, the Black Community and the Integration of Professional Baseball (Routledge, 2007), Writing and Editing for Digital Media (Routledge, 2023, third edition), A Devil's Bargain: The Black Press and Black Baseball, 1915-1955 (Routledge, 2014), and Shakespeare’s Sceptered Isle: Finding English National Identity in the Plays (McFarland, 2023). He has published approximately 35 peer-reviewed articles in journals including Journalism History, Black Ball, Visual Communication Quarterly, and Journal of Sports Media. Among his accolades are five J. William Snorgrass Awards from the American Journalism Historians Association for outstanding papers on minority journalism history, the most recent in 2023 for “Transgressions: An Editor’s Crusade to Thwart America’s First Black Shakespearean Acting Company.” Additional honors include Berry College's Teaching Excellence Award in 2006 and recognition as UNC Chapel Hill's outstanding Ph.D. student in 2003. Carroll teaches courses such as media law, digital storytelling, visual rhetoric, sports communication, and sports journalism.