By Erika Pribanic-Smith, History Division Chair
University of Texas at Arlington
Welcome to a new academic year! As I embark on my term as chair of the History Division, I am thinking a lot about what we do in the classroom and as mentors to our graduate students. Cultivating those young scholars as well as early-career faculty ranks high on my list of goals for the coming year.
As an organization, we cannot survive without a thriving cohort of history scholars at every career stage. My mission is to make sure young scholars understand that the division values their scholarship and their perspectives, and that we are interested in their success in all realms of academic life—teaching, research, and service.
Developing a base of young history scholars begins in our classrooms. As faculty, we must light the spark that creates interest in history among our students. It is no secret that journalism and mass communication history faces a tremendous challenge in the curriculum as departments value new technology and techniques more and our past less.
However, we know that some outstanding instructors still are teaching history courses. What’s more, we know that history-minded individuals are finding creative ways to sneak historical lessons and activities into their non-history courses. To celebrate these individuals and encourage others to develop inspiring historical pedagogy, Teaching Chair Kristin Gustafson is launching a new teaching competition; see the details here: https://aejmc.us/history/transformative-teaching-of-media-and-journalism-history-call-for-entries/
To specifically celebrate and encourage the scholarship of our graduate students, I am in the process of creating a new award to honor the Outstanding Master’s Thesis in Mass Communication History. Our friends at the American Journalism Historians Association already give the Margaret A. Blanchard Prize for dissertations in our field. My goal with the new award is to complement the Blanchard Prize by recognizing students who focus on history during their master’s programs. I’ll need some help with this; I’ll be sending out an email via the division listserv with more specifics on the new committee I’m forming within the next couple weeks.
Beyond teaching and scholarship, we aim to get more young scholars involved in the division’s activities. We already have recruited several graduate students and early-career faculty to assist PF&R Chair Melita Garza with new initiatives to promote diversity and inclusion in the division and to help launch the new podcast for our academic journal Journalism History (coming soon). We also have appointed two new Graduate Student Liaisons—Colin Kearney of the University of Florida and Bailey Dick of Ohio University—who are eager to engage their fellow students in the division and help build up our base of student members.
One of the initiatives we plan to pursue will help to connect young scholars with more experienced members, thereby engaging both more with our division. In 2015, the division launched the “Generations of Scholars” program. This project paired senior division members with junior scholars who would interview them for Clio. Each pair would then meet up at an event during the annual conference. (For a full description of the program as first conceived, see the Winter 2015 Clio, page 4.) “Generations of Scholars” lasted for two years, and participants found it valuable. We will be re-instating this program within the next few months; you’ll see the first installment and a fuller explanation of the process in a future Clio.
I am excited about everything we have in store for the coming year, and I hope that you are, too. If you would like to be involved in any of the initiatives mentioned in this column—or if there’s anything I can do for you—please don’t hesitate to reach out.