{"id":47,"date":"2026-06-17T09:29:41","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T13:29:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.georgetown.edu\/ides\/?post_type=gu-profile&#038;p=47"},"modified":"2026-09-21T12:53:25","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T16:53:25","slug":"j-r-osborn","status":"publish","type":"gu-profile","link":"https:\/\/sites.georgetown.edu\/ides\/profiles\/j-r-osborn\/","title":{"rendered":"J.R. Osborn"},"template":"","meta":{"gu_featured_image_display":true,"gu-profile-netId":"who3","gu-profile-salesforceId":"00336000014RgDlAAK","gu-profile-name":"J.R. Osborn","gu-profile-firstName":"J.R.","gu-profile-lastName":"Osborn","gu-profile-biography":"<p>J.R. Osborn is a scholar and experimentalist of communication, whose work explores media history, design, semiotics, visual communication, and technology with a regional focus of the Middle East and Africa. Dr. Osborn co-directs the Technology Design Studio for the <a href=\"\" target=\"_blank\">Communication, Culture, and Technology (CCT) Program<\/a>, and his courses frequently combine hands-on production projects with comparative and theoretical. In the past, Professor Osborn has taught and studied in Jordan, Yemen, Turkey, Mexico, Zimbabwe, the U.A.E, and Switzerland. He sits on the Board of the Association of Africanist Anthropology (AfAA), and he is a member of the  Substantial Motion Research Network. Some of his projects include:<\/p><ul><li><a href=\"\" target=\"_blank\"> <em>Letters of Light: Arabic Script in Calligraphy, Print, and Digital Design<\/em> (Harvard University Press, 2017<\/a>). This book presents an aesthetic and technical study of Arabic script and typography, from the advent of calligraphic tradition through the implementation of the Unicode standard. <em>Letters of Light <\/em>won the <a href=\"\" target=\"_blank\">2018 British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Prize<\/a> and received an Honorable Mention for the <a href=\"\" target=\"_blank\">2018 Albert Hourani Book Award from the Middle East Studies Association (MESA).<\/a><\/li><\/ul><ul><li><a id=\"\" href=\"\" target=\"_blank\"><em>African Art Reframed: Reflections and Dialogues on Museum Culture <\/em>(University of Illinois Press, 2020)<\/a><em>. <\/em>This authored book with <a href=\"\" target=\"_blank\">Bennetta Jules-Rosette<\/a> analyzes the global circulation of African art, drawing upon extensive curator interviews, ethnographic site visits, the visual and digital analysis of artworks (\u201cdigital unmixing\u201d), and studies of audience response.<\/li><\/ul><ul><li><a href=\"\" title=\"title\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cGlitter Dust: Finding Art in Dubai\u201d (directed by Katy Chang, 2012)<\/a> \u2013 This documentary feature film explores the burgeoning contemporary art scene in the United Arab Emirates. J.R. co-produced, co-directed and edited the film, which premiered at the 2012 Gulf Film Festival in the United Arab Emirates.<\/li><\/ul><ul><li><a href=\"\" target=\"_blank\">The Pilgrimage Project<\/a> \u2013 This collaboration with Evan Barba, Gretchen E Henderson, Lisa M Strong, Lesley H Kadish, and Don Undeen provides a model for engaged interdisciplinary education. During the 2015\u20132016 academic year, students researched Georgetown\u2019s historic Old North building from a variety of disciplinary angles and presented the results of their collective research in an on-site multimedia exhibit.<\/li><\/ul>","gu-profile-image":"https:\/\/gu360.file.force.com\/servlet\/servlet.ImageServer?id=0151Q000004WDwyQAG&oid=00D36000000rQpzEAE","gu-profile-titles":["Associate Professor"],"gu-profile-expertises":["African","Art"],"gu-profile-appointments":[{"appointment":"Associate Professor","unit":"College - Communication, Culture, and Technology Program","primary":true}],"gu-profile-email":"","gu-profile-phone":"","gu-profile-office":"","gu-profile-website":"https:\/\/gufaculty360.georgetown.edu\/s\/contact\/00336000014RgDlAAK","gu-profile-autoUpdated":"1","gu-profile-profileLinksTo":"on-site","gu-profile-chosenTitles":["Associate Professor"],"gu-profile-noNetId":"","gu-profile-specializations":""},"gu-profile-group":[7],"class_list":["post-47","gu-profile","type-gu-profile","status-publish","hentry","gu-profile-group-faculty"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>J.R. Osborn - Minor in Integrated Design<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"J.R. Osborn - Minor in Integrated Design\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"J.R. Osborn is a scholar and experimentalist of communication, whose work explores media history, design, semiotics, visual communication, and technology with a regional focus of the Middle East and Africa. 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