By Perry Parks, Membership Co-Chair, Michigan State University, parksp@msu.edu
Sid Bedingfield
Where you work: I’m an Associate Professor in the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.
Where you got your Ph.D.: I earned my Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communications in 2014.
Current favorite class: We have a wonderful “case studies” course at the Hubbard School that allows instructors to focus on journalism and mass media during a particular historical period or event. I use it to teach a course on mass media and the African American struggle for equality, from the antebellum period to the present. The Fall 2020 version could not be timelier.
Current research project: Fellow History Division member Kathy Roberts Forde and I are co-editing and contributing chapters to a book called Journalism and Jim Crow: The Making of White Supremacy in the New South. We have a strong lineup of historians from a range of subfields working with us on the project, which is under contract at the University of Illinois Press. With a little luck, it should be out in 2021.
Fun fact about yourself: As a failed jock, I tried out for my college baseball team just for fun. I was a pitcher, and during one practice, I struck out a star player who was later drafted by a major league team (he swung at a ball over this head). For the next few years, I tracked his progress through the minor leagues, eagerly awaiting the big day when he made it to “the show” and I could say, “I struck out an actual major league batter.” Unfortunately, he only got to Double AA. Saying I struck out a guy who made it to the high minors just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Jane Rhodes
Where you work: The Department of Black Studies, University of Illinois at Chicago.
Where you got your Ph.D.: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Current favorite class: U. S. Women’s History taught by Jacqueline Dowd Hall.
Current research project: A survey of radical black media in the U.S. from early to late 20th century.
Fun fact about yourself: I’ve become an avid birdwatcher.
Pamela Walck
Where you work: Assistant professor in the Media Department, McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts, Duquesne University.
Where you got your Ph.D.: Ohio University.
Current favorite class: It’s a toss-up between Multiplatform Newsroom II and a special reporting class I taught in Fall 2019 on Military & Veterans Issues. As a former military beat reporter, it was a lot of fun introducing my students to a challenging beat that I enjoyed covering the last three years of my journalism career. It was a balance between foreign policy, politics, and the harsh realities of war on society. All of which I enjoyed as a reporter. But my Newsroom 2 class was a lot of fun, too. (Even though COVID-19 made reporting a little more challenging.) I really like it any time a student takes what they learn in a foundational class and builds on it and hones their craft.
Current research project: I recently signed a contract with the University of Pittsburgh Press for a book about the men and women of The Pittsburgh Courier in the years immediately following Robert Vann’s death in 1940. This project, which has taken me to a dozen archives over the last five years, has been a labor of love that actually started as a paper in Dr. Marilyn Greenwald’s Biography Writing class at Ohio University. Telling Jessie Vann’s story— and more importantly, getting her behind-the-scenes journalistic work on the record—is a true privilege and honor.
Fun fact about yourself: I have a dog-tag that belonged to my paternal great-grandfather from when he was in World War I. (It is common to see it, along with a good luck charm that kept my grandfather safe in China-Berma-India, on a silver chain around my neck.) It was only after I had inherited the dog-tag that I discovered my great-grandfather had served with the Third Infantry Division, which held the Marne River in France, and was the same military unit I had covered as a reporter for the Savannah Morning News nine decades later. At the time I was reporting, I had no idea.