By Rachel Grant, University of Florida, Membership Co-Chair, rgrant@jou.ufl.edu
Jon Bekken’s (Albright College) co-authored chapter, “Spanish Firemen and Maritime Syndicalism, 1902-1940,” appears in Christopher J. Castaneda and Montse Feu, editors, Writing Revolution: Hispanic Anarchism in the United States. University of Illinois Press, 2019. The chapter explores the weekly newspaper Culture Obrera and its role in sustaining a union of marine firemen and their immigrant community. He presented a paper, “Participatory Journalism & Democratic Communication in the Working-Class Press,” to the Labor and Working Class History Association’s annual conference in May 2019, and reviewed Mediating America: Black and Irish Press and the Struggle for Citizenship in the most recent Journalism History 45:4. His entry on “Unions of Newsworkers” appears in the International Encyclopedia of Journalism Studies, edited byTim Vos and Folker Hanusch (Wiley Blackwell Publishing, 2019). And a commentary, “Restoring Labor to the Public Sphere,” is scheduled to appear in the next Journalism & Communication Monographs.
Jinx Broussard (Louisiana State University) and Sheryl Kennedy Haydel (Louisiana State University) along with Shaniece Bickham (Nicholls State University) will present their research “Framing an Acceptable Image: The Political Campaigns of Four of America’s First Black Mayors” at the 2020 Joint Journalism and Communication History Conference. The study examines the mayoral campaigns of the first black mayors in four major U.S. cities to determine how their images were cultivated on the campaign trail and the extent to which the race of their selected press secretaries influenced their ability to be more palatable to white citizenry. The conference will take place on March 14 at the NYU Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.
Teri Finneman (University of Kansas) is attending Podcast Movement in February in Los Angeles to learn more tricks for marketing the Journalism History podcast. The conference is a major event for the podcasting industry and will include sessions on livestreaming, monetizing podcasts, podcast listeners and transcription.
On Feb. 29, Will Mari (Louisiana State University) will be giving a talk on his book, “A Short History of Disruptive Journalism Technologies: 1960-1990” (Routledge, 2019) which covers the computerization of the American newsroom during the latter Cold War. The talk will take place at the Living Computer Museum in Seattle, Washington.
David T. Z. Mindich (Temple University) published his third book, “The Mediated World: A New Approach to Mass Communication and Culture” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019). The Mediated World departs from other mass communication textbooks by emphasizing history (including pre-printing press) narrative, diversity issues, and media literacy.
Founder and director Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez’s (University of Texas) Voces Oral History Project is now officially a Center at the University of Texas at Austin. This signals permanence – so that the oral histories will live on (vocesoralhistoryproject.org). Voces celebrated its 20th anniversary in November 2019. It has video recorded over 1,250 interviews and has over 10,000 digitized photographs and other documentation. Its physical archives are held at the Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection at the UT-Austin Campus. Collections include the Latina/o WWII, Korean and Vietnam eras; Political and Civic Engagement; Professions. The Voces Oral History Summer Institute will be held June 8-12, 2020, on the University of Texas campus.This workshop is for faculty and graduate students wishing to use oral history in research and teaching. Instructors have created oral history projects, published widely using oral history, and are leaders in oral history publishing and teaching. Applications accepted through March 9, 2020. Visit vocessummerinstitute.org for more information.
Kimberly Wilmot Voss (University of Central Florida) will be participating in Beacon College Salon Series on Jan. 22. Her talk is titled “Politicking Politely: Well-behaved Women Making a Difference in the 1960s and 1970s.”