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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Comprehensive List of Journalism History Articles Organized by Subject Available to Membership

In an effort to raise awareness about the depth of the Journalism History archives, Pam Parry and Teri Finneman have organized 600 Journalism History articles by topic. The hope is that this document will aid in the compilation of readings lists, literature reviews and syllabus development. The list includes more than 30 topics.

The list was distributed to History Division members in January. If you would like to receive a copy, please reach out to Teri Finneman (finnemte@gmail.com) or Pam Parry (pparry@semo.edu).

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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Member News: Dane Claussen, Cayce Myers

Dane S. Claussen taught on Semester at Sea as it sailed from Germany to Dubai via 11 ports in the Mediterranean, Suez Canal, Kenya, and India. During the Fall 2022 semester, he taught International Mass Communication, Media in Society, and an intermediate-level journalism course. Since March 2022, he has been copyeditor for a new Shanghai International Studies University-based scholarly journal published by De Gruyter, Online Media and Global Communication (Louisa Ha, editor). Since June 2022, Claussen has been leading the effort by the South Asia Communication Association (SACA) to launch its own scholarly journal. In September 2021, he completed his four-year term as Editor of Newspaper Research Journal. In Spring 2021, he was one of two official candidates for AEJMC vice president.

Cayce Myers (Virginia Tech) was elected to the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) National Board of Directors representing the Mid Atlantic District. He will serve a two-year term.

Taylor & Francis Launch New Submission Site for Journalism History

Update your bookmarks — Journalism History has a new submission site. This submission system will serve various Taylor & Francis journals, meaning users will only use one log-in when submitting manuscripts to Taylor & Francis publications. This means that there are fewer steps involved to submit and authors can see updates on the status of their submissions more clearly.

Applications for Microgrants To Encourage Diverse Research Due Feb. 1

American Journalism and Journalism History are offering a combined total of $5,000 in microgrant funding to encourage research relating to the intersection of diversity and media history.

Proposed topics should incorporate any of the following or an intersection of the following with media history: race/ethnicity, gender/sexuality, class, religion, disability, mental health, and/or rural populations. Submissions related to public relations and advertising diversity history are also welcome.

To apply, write a one-page description of your research project proposal that includes a brief description as to how you would spend the money. The maximum grant request is $1,250 in order to fund four proposals.

The firm deadline for submissions is February 1. Decisions will be announced by March 1. Submissions and questions can be emailed to Journalism History Publications Committee Chairwoman Teri Finneman at finnemte@gmail.com. Put History grant in the subject line.

Winning grant recipients will be invited to join a panel at 2023 AJHA in Columbus, Ohio. Research must be completed by Dec. 31, 2023, and submitted as a journal article to either American Journalism or Journalism History.

Call for Papers: the AEJMC Southeast Colloquium

Proposals are due December 12, 2022, for the 48th annual AEJMC Southeast Colloquium, held March 2–4 , 2023 at Middle Tennessee State University.

Conference registration includes a data analytics preconference in the School of Journalism & Strategic Media’s Social Insights Lab, the keynote address by Dr. Kathy Roberts Forde, co-editor of the award-winning book, Journalism and Jim Crow: White Supremacy and the Black Struggle for a New America (edited with Dr. Sid Bedingfield, Foreword by Alex Lichtenstein), a Friday night reception, optional activities in Murfreesboro, and multiple days filled with scholarship, advice, and networking.

Call for Proposals: the Joint Journalism and Communication History Conference

The Joint Journalism and Communication History Conference—co-sponsored by the American Journalism Historians Association and the AEJMC History Division—provides a forum for innovative research and ideas from all areas of journalism and communication history and from all time periods. The deadline for proposal submissions is February 15, 2023. More information, including the proposal call, is available here.

The free one-day interdisciplinary conference offers participants the chance to explore new ideas, garner feedback on their work, and meet colleagues from around the country interested in journalism and communication history in a welcoming environment.

Funding Opportunity: Virginia Museum of History and Culture

Applications for Andrew W. Mellon Research Fellowships for the Virginia Museum of History and Culture are due January 27, 2023. The fellowships support research on Virginia and American history in the following general categories of study, but are not limited to:

Political, constitutional, religious, military, and Black studies
Business history, economic history, and labor relations
Gender, women’s, and LGBTQ+ studies
Social, cultural, and literature studies

More information on the fellowship program and application process is available here.

Call for Papers: IAMHIST Conference 2023, “The Future of Archives”

The deadline for submissions for the 2023 IAMHIST Conference is January 16, 2023.

This conference aims to revisit these archival transformations by bringing into focus archives’ blind spots, notably in relation to their accessibility and ecological dimensions. How do existing archival institutions, associations or private collectors and archivists address technology and media transformations? What are the current and future challenges of archive research? Use? Configurations? What type of ‘new’ archives can be imagined and created in relation to technology and media transformations?

The IAMHIST Conference will be particularly interested in proposals dealing with media archives (film, radio, video, television, Web, photographs, etc.) but also warmly welcomes archives that use media and technology institutionally (museums, associations, vernacular archives etc.). For more information, view the full call for papers here.