By Teri Finneman, University of Kansas, History Division Chair, teri.finneman@ku.edu

Creating a greater sense of community among the History Division throughout the year has been a priority of mine since I joined the leadership team as a membership chair four years ago.

Initiatives like #MediaHistoryEngagementWeek, e-Clio and the Journalism History podcast have aimed to bring more multimedia to the division, to have more frequent communication and connections among members, and to open our work to a broader audience to illustrate the importance of media history.

Therefore, one of my first initiatives as your chair this year also fits this theme with the launch of a new virtual conference consisting of a series of History Division webinars throughout the school year.

We want our members to propose topics for these webinar sessions, which could include:

·         Research, teaching or PF&R panels similar to AEJMC sessions

·         Training opportunities (such as webinars with archivists, museum curators, multimedia specialists, book publishers, etc. who normally would not travel to our conferences)

·         A total wildcard of an idea that you think people would like to learn about to blow up the conference structure with something different.

Besides the objectives listed above, there are additional reasons why the division should give this a try. Frequent budget cuts at universities, increasing costs to attend in-person conferences, lack of time and minimal graduate student funds all present problems for regular conference travel.

This has implications for networking, CV building and equity among graduate students on the job market –and even professors themselves — who are trying to be competitive and get academic conference experience.

We are not the first division to try this endeavor. The Public Relations Division is now in its third year of hosting a virtual conference, which they have found to be quite successful for member outreach and engagement.

How this works

How the History Division’s virtual conference will work is members will pitch ideas for one-hour webinar sessions. The proposals will be peer-reviewed and a schedule announced by early October with the selected sessions for the year.

We will have our first webinar Oct. 17 as an example session. The topic will be Creating Podcasts and will feature the Journalism History podcast team.

The webinars will be offered on select Thursday nights at 7 p.m. Central Time during the school year. We understand picking a time is nearly impossible and tried to accommodate all time zones outside of heavy teaching hours.

The webinars will be offered via Zoom, which allows a large number of people to be in an online conference room at the same time and requires minimal technical experience. Members are simply sent a website link to click on and enter the conference room.

The day before each webinar, there will be technical support hours available for members to test that Zoom will work for them to be able to attend the session. More directions will be provided closer to the time.

All sessions will be free for members and panelists. We particularly encourage graduate students to submit proposals and aim to set aside at least one webinar slot for them.

As we give this endeavor a try this first year, we will stick with panel proposals. However, there is potential down the road for this to become a competitive research paper virtual conference.

The Virtual Conference Committee consists of Vice Chair Will Mari, Jennifer Moore, Kim Voss and Melony Shemberger. The team will help manage this experiment and provide recommendations for the future at next year’s business meeting.

We look forward to trying this out! Let me know if you have any questions, and we hope you’ll consider submitting a panel proposal. You will find the call below:

Virtual Conference Call for Panels

The History Division is launching a new initiative this year by hosting webinars for our members throughout the school year. Similar to the main AEJMC call for panel proposals, we are seeking your ideas for these webinar sessions.

You could:

1.         Submit a panel with the same type of structure as an AEJMC panel (i.e. three or four panelists who are AEJMC members will discuss a related issue that falls under teaching, research or PF&R)***

2.         Submit a panel that provides a training opportunity (i.e. a panel comprised of archivists or museum curators or documentarians or multimedia specialists or book publishers or campus visit/job market advisers or journalism history syllabus experts, etc.). If you go this route, you must confirm the panelists’ willingness to participate during evening hours before submitting the proposal.

3.         Wildcard. Feel free to blow up the structure and suggest something new!

***PLEASE NOTE YOU MAY NOT SUBMIT THE SAME PANEL IDEA FOR THE VIRTUAL CONFERENCE AS YOU DO FOR THE AEJMC PANEL COMPETITION. THE SUBMISSION WILL BE DISQUALIFIED.***

If you have an idea for a webinar, please email the following to aejmchistory@gmail.com:

1.    The title of the proposal

2.    A brief summary of what the panel is about and how it will be structured within the one-hour limit

3.   Who will be on the panel, including a short bio of each panelist and a short description of what each panelist would discuss.

Panel proposals are due by 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time Friday, Sept. 20. The final selection of panels and panelists will be announced by Oct. 4.