Learning about Tyler Perry’s Legacy

While most people are laughing at the antics of Tyler Perry’s characters on the big screen, Tameka Cage Conley is looking for the message that characters like his tough, wise Madea embody. That’s why the assistant professor of English has been teaching a first-of-its-kind class at Emory’s Oxford College about Perry’s legacy to fourteen lucky first-year students this fall semester.

“Perry’s work has not been given the artistic merit it deserves. As an artist, humanitarian, philanthropist, visionary, and entrepreneur, he has transformed the landscape of individual and collective possibilities,” Conley says about the entertainment mogul, whose Tyler Perry Studios resides less than an hour away from the Oxford campus.

“In the wake of the rise of the Black Lives Ma er movement and protests following the killing of