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D. Michael Cheers is an Associate Professor. He teaches visual journalism in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications at 

San Jose State University. An award-winning documentary filmmaker, Cheers also teaches master photo classes in Ghana and South Africa.     

A National Geographic Faculty Fellow and a Fulbright Scholar, his research interests include examining the slave dungeons along Cape Coast, Ghana, digitizing the W. E. B. Du Bois photo and documents collection at the Du Bois Institute for Pan African Culture in Accra, Ghana, and researching township music in Alexandra Township,

in South Africa.

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He’s the co-editor and contributing photographer to the bestselling books, Songs of My People: African Americans, A Self-Portrait and co-authored the bestseller Still Grazing: The Musical Journey of Hugh Masekela. He holds BA and MA degrees in journalism and an MS in African American Studies from Boston University. Cheers earned his PhD in African Studies and Research from Howard University, in Washington, D.C. His photographs have been exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide. In 2023, a portfolio of his photographs was acquired by the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture.

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Cheers began his career photographing high school sports for the St. Louis American newspaper. He then interned at the Boston Globe newspaper, before joining Jet and Ebony magazines as a photojournalist in Chicago, Washington, D.C, and later as managing editor of Ebony South Africa. He curated the Songs of My People traveling exhibition throughout the United States and abroad, before transitioning to photojournalism education in 2001. He’s taught at Auburn University and the University of Mississippi. He’s headed the photojournalism sequence at San Jose State University since 2006. Cheers most recently produced and directed the documentary I Needed Paris, Inspired by Gordon Parks.

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