Category Archives: Clio

Posts related to the division newsletter, Clio.

A Word From the Chair: Woman’s History Month, Feminism and My Father

Feminism is “the social, economic and political equality of ALL genders.”

*Rachel Grant is the chair of the Media History Division*

A sign on my desk says, “Behind Every Great Man is a Woman Rolling Her Eyes.” So, to say I am a feminist is not surprising, to say the least, but it might be surprising to know that one of my strongest feminist role models was my father, Richard Grant. Whenever I attempted to use my gender as an excuse, he quickly reminded me, “You are a Grant and we can do anything.” All my extroverted tendencies came from my mother, but my confidence came from my father. As a young child, I would threaten the beautician that if she burned me with the hot comb I was going to tell “my Daddy.”

It was his goal and determination that my siblings and I were going to be fully-equipped members of society. This included knowing how to cook, cleaning/dusting, wash clothes, iron clothes, and sew on a button. So traditional gender roles didn’t exist within the household and every Saturday morning we all did a deep cleaning of the house. I say deep cleaning because my father served in the Air Force so clean wasn’t really clean to him. It was clean.

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Notes for AEJMC History Division Business Meeting

The 2023 AEJMC Journalism History Division business meeting was held on Thursday, July 27, 2023, at 1 p.m. EST. At its peak, 38 members were in attendance.

Division chair Madeleine Liseblad (California State University-Long Beach) began the meeting by sharing a link to the call for the 19th Century Press, the Civil War, and Free Expression symposium to be held at Augusta University in Augusta, Georgia, November 3-4, 2023.

The meeting then started in earnest with the approval of the business meeting minutes from 2022. Teri Finneman (Kansas) motioned to approve the minutes, which were then seconded, and then approved unanimously.

“We will try to keep this to an hour, but that may be a failed attempt,” Liseblad began before offering an overview of the range of activities that run through the division in any given year, from publishing seven issues of Clio, to running multiple award competitions, to organizing research competitions for three conferences (the AEJMC annual convention, the Joint Journalism and Communication History Conference, and the Southeast Colloquium), as well as supporting the range of activities around the division’s journal, Journalism History, which in the past year included continuing to run the podcast, manage the website, support a popular essay series competition, and administer diversity micro-grants.

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Member Q&A: Nate Floyd

What is your current position, and what is your favorite aspect of your job?

I am a part-time journalism instructor in the Department of Media, Journalism, and Film at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where I teach journalism students the fundamentals of news reporting and writing. I also teach, mentor, and support first-year students as a full-time librarian at Miami University Libraries. I really enjoy doing research and supporting students and I get to do a lot of that in my role.

*Nathan Floyd is a journalism instructor at Miami (Ohio) University*

What inspired you to write “Boundary Work, Specialized Accreditation for Journalism, and the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938,” which won the second-place faculty paper award at AEJMC 2023?

My dissertation advisor Mike Conway at Indiana University introduced me to the boundary work framework. I thought it would be interesting to apply that framework to the history of journalism education, and the development of specialized accreditation. But then I just sort of stumbled upon this legal dispute between a newspaper in Jackson, Tennessee, and the federal government over the application of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Then I started seeing this court case get referenced in primary documents. So, it just sort of came together. Boundary work, specialized accreditation for journalism, and the Fair Labor Standards Act.

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History Division Mentorship Program Call for Participants – Deadline Sept. 22

The AEJMC History Division is seeking participants for this year’s mentorship program. Prior mentors and mentees have found the program highly beneficial, with many choosing to continue their relationships informally after their year has ended.

If you’re looking for help with your career, research, or teaching, sign up as a mentee. Whether you’re a grad student, assistant professor, associate professor, or other, our division’s mentorship program is open to you.

The program also needs willing mentors at all levels to provide guidance and support to the mentees.

To participate, you must be a current member of the History Division or be willing to join the division when you renew your AEJMC membership.

To apply, please email your CV to program coordinator Lisa Burns at Lisa.Burns@quinnipiac.edu and complete this brief application by Friday, September 22 at 11:59 pm PT: https://forms.gle/4sXvFdqEyXHs5P4f9

Pairings will be notified via email by early October. The partnerships officially last through August 2024. If you have any questions, email Lisa.Burns@quinnipiac.edu.

A Word From the Chair

The AEJMC conference countdown is on! We’re only a couple of weeks away from meeting in Washington, D.C. For me, I always get a personal and professional energy kick from attending the annual conference. I love listening to quality research and learning new approaches to things, but most of all, I love meeting and catching up with people.

*Dr. Maddie Liseblad, History Division Chair*

We have a great History Division conference program. Vice Chair Rachel Grant (Florida) and Research Chair Brian Creech (Lehigh) have worked hard on organizing our schedule of panels and research presentations. We start the conference with our annual Awards Gala on Sunday, Aug. 6 at 7:30 p.m. EST. The gala is a terrific opportunity to celebrate our award winners. You must pre-register for the event, but it only costs $5 to attend. There will be food, desserts, and drinks.

While we have something going on every day of the conference, I do want to point out two Wednesday (Aug. 9) events. We have the Jinx C. Broussard Award for Excellence in Teaching of Media History panel at 4 p.m. and our top papers presentation at 6 p.m.

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Member Q&A: Allison Frisch

Where do you work: Ithaca College Journalism Department, in Ithaca, N.Y.

Tell us about your journalism experience: I was a journalist and editor at newspapers in NY and PA for 15 years before transitioning to a career in higher education.

Current favorite class: I really don’t have a favorite. In Investigative Journalism, we are embarking on a podcast project to document homelessness in Ithaca. In Journalism Innovation, we will create grassroots startups to present to the community at the end of the year. And Introduction to Journalism is always a favorite because I’m heartened to hear a new class of student journalists talk about why they are pursuing the field!

Member News: Jason Lee Guthrie, Jon Marshall, David E. Sumner, Carolina Velloso, Ashley Walter

Jason Lee Guthrie, an assistant professor at Clayton State University, won the Leibner Cooper Grant for Creative Productions on the History of Media from the Broadcast Education Association (BEA). Guthrie was honored for his podcast Recollecting Carter, which explores the life of President Jimmy Carter. The full series will consist of several episodes and will feature oral history interviews with journalists, archivists, and academic experts, as well as archival media from the 1960s to the present day. The podcast is available through Apple podcasts and Spotify.

Jon Marshall of Northwestern University won the Best Podcast Guest Award from Journalism History. He is a guest in “Episode 105: Watergate and the Press,” a top-rated episode of the podcast with over 400 downloads. Marshall was also selected for his support of the show in the past year. Journalism History chooses its top guest from the prior calendar year.

A Word from the Membership Committee

When History Division Chair Maddie Liseblad asked us to write about what the membership committee does for this issue of Clio, I was initially at a loss at how to explain our role. At first it seemed obvious: We’re the people emailing you to participate in a membership Q&A or a book author Q&A, and we’re the ones reminding you to send in your recent news and updates. But as I reflected more on not just our committee’s monthly tasks, but how we fit into the mission of the history division, I realized that the membership committee’s work can best be described as creating a sense of community among its members.

*Caitlin Cieslik-Miskimen is a Membership Committee Co-Chair and an assistant professor at the University of Idaho*

Historians often labor out of the spotlight — tucked away working in a special collections room or sitting in front of a microfilm reader scrolling through old issues of newspapers. Too often, historical research can seem isolating. Much of our scholarship is solo authored, and many of us work in departments where we are the only faculty who ask historical questions and use historical research methods. We often have to explain the value of historical research (or at least its somewhat lengthy path to publication).

For me, the AEJMC History Division was a way to connect with other historians and learn the latest about scholarship in my area of interest. But the real value in joining the division was to meet other graduate students, early career scholars and established leaders in the field — people who could inspire me at each step of my academic journey.

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Membership Q&A: Dana Dabek

Where are you currently getting your Ph.D.?

Klein College of Media and Communication, Temple University

*Dana Dabek is a doctoral student at the Klein College of Media and Communication at Temple University*

What brought you to grad school?

Prior to starting my doctorate, I spent about fifteen years working in the non-profit sector. First, I worked as a program director at a historic site (which relates to my current research), and then for several years in fundraising and communications for grassroots community organizations. Over time, I became increasingly disenchanted with the sector. Not the organizations I was working for, but larger structural issues that would have been present no matter where I was working in the field. At the same time, I was craving the space to step back and take a big picture approach to social change, but my day-to-day was bogged down by the nitty gritty. I had gone into the non-profit sector after my master’s program because at that time I wanted to be in the nitty gritty. The circuitous nature of my career aspirations is not lost on me.

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Author Q&A: Matthew C. Ehrlich, Dangerous Ideas on Campus

Dangerous Ideas on Campus: Sex, Conspiracy and Academic Freedom in the Age of JFK (University of Illinois Press, 2021)

*Matthew C. Ehrlich is a professor emeritus of journalism at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign*

Describe the focus of your book.

The book is a historical case study about explosive ideas and the struggle to spark, spread, contain, or extinguish them on college campuses. The setting is the University of Illinois in the early 1960s: a traditionally conservative Midwestern campus in an era of idealism over civil rights and fear over nuclear annihilation. The protagonists are two Illinois professors: Leo Koch, a biology teacher and humanist who was fired after writing a letter to the editor that condoned premarital sex; and Revilo Oliver, a classics teacher and white supremacist who was not fired after writing an article that accused the recently assassinated President Kennedy of being a loathsome traitor. The book tries to cast fresh light on the meaning of academic freedom, the early 1960s, and the continuing debates over free speech on college campuses.

How did you come across this subject? Why did it interest you?

I’ve long been interested in how the news media have historically covered controversial subjects related to higher education. That interest comes from working in journalism and teaching at state universities. I found that premarital sex was a hot news topic in the early 1960s; everyone from Margaret Mead to Gloria Steinem was writing about it. That in turn alerted me to Leo Koch, who made news during that time period for what then seemed like far-out views on sex. After he was fired, the University of Illinois strengthened its academic freedom protections, and one of the beneficiaries was Revilo Oliver. I was reluctant at first to write about Oliver given that he was a racist and anti-Semite. But I decided that addressing the Koch and Oliver cases together would make for a stronger book with broader relevance to what we’re going through these days.

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