Aca-Media

The seventh episode of “Presenting the Past” features Jean Walkinshaw, an award-winning documentarian and producer in the Pacific Northwest for over 50 years. In 2021, Walkinshaw contributed 44 public television documentaries and full interviews conducted for the documentaries to the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB). The Jean Walkinshaw Collection accessible online covers much of Walkinshaw’s lengthy career spanning the years 1972-2008. Her documentaries focused primarily on notable artists, writers, and social, cultural and ecological themes of the Pacific Northwest region.

In this episode, Jean guides listeners through her career and filmmaking process, highlighting titles in her collection available in the AAPB.

The sixth episode of our special series "Presenting the Past," a collaboration between The American Archive of Public Broadcasting and Aca-Media, features Bill Siemering, a radio innovator and advocate, who was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in October 2021.

As a founding member of the NPR Board of Directors, Siemering wrote NPR's original mission and goals, and as NPR’s first director of programming, led the development of All Things Considered. Siemering developed Fresh Air with Terry Gross at WHYY in Philadelphia, managed WBFO in Buffalo, NY, and KCCM in Moorhead, MN, was the executive producer of the documentary series Sound Print, worked with the Open Society Foundation, focusing on Eastern Europe, Africa and Mongolia, and founded Developing Radio Partners to enrich the programming of local stations in Africa.

In this discussion, he reflects on the influences that helped shape his ideas and approaches to public radio programming throughout his career.

Highlighted in this program are clips from Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR), including the inaugural FM broadcast in 1947, the Peabody Award winning series Afield with Ranger Mac, and the write-in radio program Dear Sirs. Be sure to also listen to “Strasburg, North Dakota” (1977) from Minnesota Public Radio. Co-produced by Siemering, it highlights his interest in incorporating soundscapes and compelling storytelling into radio programming.

This discussion is led by Neil Verma, assistant professor of sound studies in Radio/TV/Film at Northwestern University, and a member of the AAPB Scholar Advisory Committee.

Credits:

Hosted by Neil Verma

Recorded and edited by Christine Becker

Produced by Ryn Marchese

Post-production and theme music by Todd Thompson

What happens when communication scholars confront professional liars? The answer is weirder than you might think. In this episode, we talk with Drew Zolides, who organized a silent protest of right-wing propagandist Lara Logan when she spoke at his university and ended up getting pulled into her performance in unexpected ways.

The collaboration between Aca-Media and the American Archive of Public Broadcasting continues with episode 5 of our special series “Presenting the Past: Exploring the American Archive of Public Broadcasting.” This is Part 2 of our two-part episode on Latino Empowerment through Latino Broadcasting.

The fifth episode of “Presenting the Past” explores the history of Spanish language public radio and television programming and its roots in community activism. The discussion features activists Hugo Morales, Executive Director and co-founder of Radio Bilingüe Inc., and Jesús Treviño, television director, author and creator of Latinopia.com, along with scholars Dolores Inés Casillas, Professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies and Director of the Chicano Studies Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Gabriela Rivera Marín, a doctoral student at the University of Florida studying Hispanic Linguistics and co-curator of the AAPB Latino Empowerment through Latino Public Broadcasting exhibit.

To visit the exhibit on the AAPB website, go to https://americanarchive.org/exhibits/latino-empowerment.

The collaboration between Aca-Media and the American Archive of Public Broadcasting continues with episode 5 of our special series “Presenting the Past: Exploring the American Archive of Public Broadcasting.” This is Part 1 of our two-part episode on Latino Empowerment through Latino Broadcasting.

The fifth episode of “Presenting the Past” explores the history of Spanish language public radio and television programming and its roots in community activism. The discussion features activists Hugo Morales, Executive Director and co-founder of Radio Bilingüe Inc., and Jesús Treviño, television director, author and creator of Latinopia.com, along with scholars Dolores Inés Casillas, Professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies and Director of the Chicano Studies Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Gabriela Rivera Marín, a doctoral student at the University of Florida studying Hispanic Linguistics and co-curator of the AAPB Latino Empowerment through Latino Public Broadcasting exhibit.

To visit the exhibit on the AAPB website, go to https://americanarchive.org/exhibits/latino-empowerment.

We’re back with a great bleeping episode! First, we interview Dmitri Latsis, head of SCMS’s Scholarly Interest Group Coordinating Committee about the role of SIGs within the Society. Then we take on Rolling Stone’s list of “100 Best Sitcoms of All Time” with an all-star roundtable of comedy scholars that is even more entertaining than the sitcoms they are talking about. And Chris and Michael banter about pretty much every bleeping thing you can think of.

This episode of “Presenting the Past” features Newton Minow, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) under President John F. Kennedy from 1961 until 1963. Minow would become a key figure in the establishment of public broadcasting in the U.S., and in this conversation, he reflects on his early vision for public service television.

Highlighted in this program are clips from the AAPB collection, including Minow’s famed “vast wasteland” speech to the National Association of Broadcasters in 1961, his lesser known address to the same organization the following year, as well as a panel discussion with former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt on the role of television in society.

Joining the discussion is Mr. Minow’s daughter, Mary Minow, Presidential Appointee to the National Museum and Library Services Board at the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and current member of the AAPB Executive Advisory Council.

Since May 2020, Aca-Media has been bringing you a special series, “Talking Television a Time of Crisis,” organized by Hunter Hargraves, Lynne Joyrich, and Brandy Monk-Payton and featuring dozens of prominent academics and practitioners. These sixteen episodes over two seasons have helped us understand the relationship of TV Studies to, first, the COVID-19 pandemic, and then, following the murder of George Floyd, the struggle for racial justice in the context of multiple crises of political legitimacy, climate emergency, and more. In this finale, the organizers reflect on the series as a whole and offer their take-aways from this extraordinary series of podcasts.

In the third episode of "Presenting the Past," Shirley Sneve, Vice President of Broadcasting for Indian Country Today, reflects on her work with Indian Country Today, Vision Maker Media (VMM), and archiving with the AAPB. Sneve also comments on the history of Native American public broadcasting and presents excerpts from a few of the documentaries that VMM has supported that present a diversity of perspectives on traditional and contemporary Native American culture.

Our special series “Talking Television in a Time of Crisis” continues with episode 15: Academics. How have the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and racial injustice affected academia, and how might they force a reimagination of the role of television studies inside and outside the academy?

Our special series "Talking Television in a Time of Crisis" continues with Episode 14: Ethics. What ethical practices should television employ in depicting and framing the pandemic and struggles for racial justice? And moving forward, what are the ethical responsibilities of audiences?

Host: Taylor Nygaard [Arizona State University]

Participants:

Heather Hendershot [Massachusetts Institute of Technology]

Jorie Lagerwey [University College Dublin]

Taylor Nygaard [Arizona State University]

Yoruba Richen [Documentarian]

Rebecca Wanzo [Washington University in St. Louis]

Khadijah Costley White [Rutgers University)

Aca-Media is back with a fascinating conversation about the great Faye Emerson, actress, talk-show host, proto-feminist, and bon vivant. She was once known as “The First Lady of Television” but is now all-too forgotten. Chris talks with media scholar Maureen Mauk and archivist Mary Huelsbeck about Emerson’s remarkable life and career, the Emerson collection at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Television Research, and the joys of archival research into film and television’s past.

In the banter, Chris and Michael discuss ways that YOU can get involved with Aca-Media, including a new segment: “Ask a Cinematologist.” We even have a jingle!

This is the second episode of our special series, “Presenting the Past,” a collaboration with the American Archive of Public Broadcasting. We talk with broadcast historian Allison Perlman about the AAPB special exhibit "On the Right: NET and Modern Conservatism" and the state of conservative movement in the 1960s. What challenges did conservatives face following World War II and the defeat of Barry Goldwater? What were the debates and fault lines within the movement? And how did public media try to make sense of the conservative movement in this period when its future was unclear?

Link to this episode and show notes: www.aca-media.org/aapb#ep2

Link to the AAPB special collection "On the Right: NET and Modern Conservatism": https://americanarchive.org/exhibits/conservatism

Our special series “Talking Television in a Time of Crisis” continues with episode 13: Publics. What new viewing publics have been created over the past year? How have such TV publics both connected and disconnected us, particularly in these times of media bubbles, and with what effects?

Hear the conversation with:

Hannah Hamad [Cardiff University]

Charlotte Howell [Boston University]

Rahul Muhkerjee [University of Pennsylvania]

Swapnil Rai [University of Michigan]

Mel Stanfill [University of Central Florida]

In the first episode of “Presenting the Past,” a new special series from the American Archive of Public Broadcasting and Aca-Media, film scholar Michelle Kelley highlights a collection of 127 unedited interviews conducted for the landmark PBS documentary series Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965, first broadcast in January 1987. Kelley provides context for the making of the series and explores examples of interviews that give different, yet valuable, perspectives on the civil rights movement than the one presented in the final cut of the series.

Our special series “Talking Television in a Time of Crisis” continues with Ep. 12: Aesthetics. Questions include: How is television transforming aesthetically, and what new developments in TV form and style have emerged in this time of crisis? How have new forms of television changed our relationship to the TV image?

Featuring:

Josie Torres Barth [North Carolina State University]

Elana Levine [University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee]

Yael Levy [Northwestern University]

Jason Mittell [Middlebury College]

Isabel Pinedo [Hunter College/CUNY]

Nick Salvato [Cornell University]

This episode features a Fan Studies Roundtable: what can Fan Studies tell us about our current political and cultural moment, and what is the state of Fan Studies within the discipline today? Then we bring you interviews with two more SCMS 2020 award winners, Rachel Webb Jekanowski (Best Dissertation) and Pansy Duncan (the Katherine Singer Kovács Essay Award). Finally, Chris and Michael banter about what they are watching, while Michael denies being a cat and/or French.

Episode 11 of our special series “Talking Television in a Time of Crisis” is here: Optics. How does television seek to manage social and political crises around the world? How does television manage its own internal crises (of representation and of legitimation) in such a precarious cultural moment and climate of unrest?

This conversation is hosted by Mimi White (Northwestern University) and features Eva Hageman (University of Maryland College Park), Darnell Hunt (UCLA), Melissa Phruksachart (University of Michigan), and Brenda Weber (Indiana University).

This episode is dedicated to the late Jane Feuer

Episode 10 of our special series “Talking Television in a Time of Crisis” is here: Economics. How has the business of television, from streaming to legacy media, changed in 2020? How can we rethink notions of value in the industry that might contest capitalist modes of production and consumption?

Hosting is Miranda Banks (Loyola Marymount University), and our guest scholars for this episode are Sarah Banet-Weiser (London School of Economics), Melanie Kohnen (Lewis and Clark College), Al Martin (University of Iowa), and Alisa Perren (University of Texas, Austin).

Our special series “Talking Television” is back for a second season, now as “Talking Television in a Time of Crisis”! In this second episode, we discuss tactics: How can we best analyze and address the power of television, particularly in times of crisis and controversy? How might we define a televisual activism—or is that a contradiction in terms?

Guest Scholars: Jonathan Gray (University of Wisconsin—Madison); Daniel Marcus (Goucher College); Quinn Miller (University of Oregon); Eve Ng (Ohio University); Samantha Sheppard (Cornell University)

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Our special series “Talking Television in a Pandemic” is back for a second season! In this episode we discuss how television manages, amplifies, and contains our collective anxieties about the election and about other political issues, and we ask: How can we best use television to promote democratic aims?

Guest Scholars:  Matt Delmont [Dartmouth College], Sarah Kessler [University of Southern California], Kayti Lausch [University of Michigan], Roopali Mukherjee [Queens College], Susan Ohmer [University of Notre Dame]

The organizers of the ”Talking Television in a Pandemic" series reflect on the previous six episodes, summarize key take-aways from these conversations, and look ahead to the coming months. With Hunter Hargraves, Lynne Joyrich, and Brandy Monk-Payton.

Our special series “Talking Television in a Pandemic” continues with a bonus sixth episode! What can non-North American perspectives teach us about television’s negotiation between the local and the global, both during the global pandemic and amidst global protest movements for liberation and racial justice?

Guest scholars: Chris Becker, Liz Giuffre, Misha Kavka, Jinying Li, Jeff Scheible, and Fracesca Sobande

How do we teach TV today? What issues are emerging at this moment in the classroom? How has the social context and the virtualization of everyday life shifted the ways in which we reflect on and teach media? What can we do to support the mental and physical health of our students and colleagues, and how might that tie to media themselves? What can we do to ensure that our discipline is supported by university administrators in a time of so much uncertainty about the future of higher education?

Guest scholars: Bambi Haggins, Julia Himberg, Derek Kompare, Jacinta Yanders

Host: Julie Levin Russo

How are old and new technologies impacting TV production, textuality, and reception? What possibilities are emerging, and what might be closing down? How does this impact media industries and/or media audiences? How do discourses of technology overlap and interact with discourses around the pandemic as well as the protests, and what might we make of that? In other words, how does the idea of “virality” resonate with televisual/video technologies in all of their forms?

What are the relations between televisual politics and aesthetics, identity and representation, communication and critique? How has the pandemic renewed interest in conversations around TV’s modes of address and how viewers make meaning from particular kinds of programming content? At a time when fraught politics are, one might say, on the very surface of texts today, how should we best deploy and/or aim to transform ideological analysis? This episode includes a special discussion of ideology in relation to the protests following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

In this episode, we discuss television and epistemology in a global pandemic: How do we know TV and how do we know through TV? What are the implications of people tuning in more and more to TV to attempt to gain knowledge (and cope with that knowledge) of the pandemic? What sorts of knowledges (or ignorances) might emerge, in various ways, from various genres on TV—not only news/documentary/public affairs but drama, comedy, fantasy, reality programming, etc.? What are the power effects of TV's production of knowledge and ignorance? How can we attempt to know television without just reproducing its own strategies, power dynamics, and blindspots?

Guest scholars: Herman Gray, Amelie Hastie, Taylor Cole Miller, Laurie Ouellette. Host: Lynne Joyrich.

For more on the participants, see http://www.aca-media.org/pandemic-tv

The start of something(s) new! Aca-Media continues remote broadcasting and introduces two new series for your listening – and streaming? – pleasure. First is a sneak peek of “Talking Television in a Pandemic,” a new series launching right here on Aca-Media, where television scholars Hunter Hargraves, Lynne Joyrich, and Brandy Monk-Payton discuss what it means to watch TV during the pandemic. Touching on everything from epistemology to pedagogy, this series will launch right here in your podcast feed, so don’t miss it! And not to be outdone, Chris begins an exciting new segment of Aca-Media and starts interviewing this year’s SCMS Award Winners, giving them a chance to claim the spotlight! This time we talk with Alisa Lebow, Patrick Brown, and Eliza Steinbock about their innovative and exciting scholarship and media projects.

SCMS is cancelled but the content rolls on! This episode of Aca-Media brings you a fascinating interview with Paul Taberham about animation and the avant-garde, including some great tips for teaching difficult media. Then Ryn Marchese discusses the amazing work being done at the American Archive of Public Broadcasting. Finally, Chris and Michael banter about how they are spending their self-isolation.

We move into fall with two fantastic interviews for you. First, Elizabeth Ellcessor talks with Margaret Price about disability and accessibility in academia, paying special attention to academic careers and the experiences of disabled faculty. We then talk with Catherine Grant in order to revisit the launch of [in]Transition five years on, discussing the state of videographic criticism as well as experiments with open access and peer review. Finally, Chris and Michael banter about “The Good Class,” Chris’s course (mentioned by THE Ted Danson!) on NBC’s The Good Place.

Chris has relearned how to sleep, and she’s back behind the Aca-Media mic. She and Michael bring you interviews with Alfred Martin and Michael Newman, members of the SCMS Katherine Singer Kovács Essay and Book Award committees respectively, as well as the inspiring backstory of the awards’ namesake. Then we head back in time to just before the 2014 SCMS conference, when we told you all about things to do in Seattle. Luckily, not that much has changed in the Emerald City since then, and Perry Como’s “Seattle” is still a killer earworm, so we’ve included the whole segment again on the eve of the 2019 SCMS conference. If you’re headed to Seattle, you’ll definitely want to listen to this one on your trip there to maximize the recommendations.

Aca-Media is back to ring in 2019! Join our hosts Michael Kackman and guest host Stephanie Brown as they explore what it means to build and nurture communities inside and outside academia. We first talk with scholar/filmmaker/activist/all-around legend B. Ruby Rich from UC-Santa Cruz about her illustrious career, representation and diversity in academia and industry, Film Quarterly and cross-cultural exchange, and the “dignity of the image” in a global context. We then hear from Derek Kompare on his experience as chair of the SMU Meadows Film and Media Arts department. We delve into the administrative, social, and even emotional aspects of this rewarding and critical role, providing some guidance on how to make it a success.

As fall semesters kick off, we’re back with the second part of Producer Stephanie Brown’s two-part series on job searching in this precarious academic job market! Stephanie takes us back into a multi-layered conversation with the job seekers, adjuncts, and search-committee members from the last episode as well as some new faces. After a montage of concrete advice for job seekers and search-committee members to make the process more bearable, our guests share their experiences with alternative career paths, open access publishing, and much more. Stayed tuned until the end for a happy ending!

Share this one with everyone you know who is on the academic job market! We present the first of a two-part series on job searches, with advice and empathy from those who are currently contending with the vagaries of the market. Producer Stephanie Brown talks with job seekers, adjuncts, and search-committee members in order to gain insight into the often frustrating process of gaining academic employment. Commiseration is provided! Then Christine Becker talks with Felan Parker about his new CJ article on Roger Ebert and the wars over video games as "art," including their relevance for more recent cultural struggles over games and gamers.

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In our final episode of 2017, we feature an interview with outgoing Cinema Journal editor Will Brooker addressing the past and future of the Society for Cinema Studies’ journal. In addition, we feature an interview with Maggie Hennefeld on her work as co-chair of the Comedy and Humor Studies Scholarly Interest Group (SIG) and her upcoming book Specters of Slapstick and Silent Film Comediennes.

In this episode of Aca-Media, we feature Amanda Lotz discussing her recent work on internet-distributed television and her Media Business Matters podcast. In addition, Brandon Arroyo presents excerpts of his Porno Cultures Podcast including interviews with Peter Alilunas on his entry into the field and an audio tour of the Little Theater in Newark, New Jersey with Whitney Strub.