Glen Feighery is an associate professor of communication at the University of Utah

How did you become involved with AJHA?

I was a doctoral student at UNC-Chapel Hill when I presented my first paper at the 2002 national conference in Nashville. I immediately felt welcome, and I appreciated the collegial atmosphere of the association.

How has your research on how journalists create and reflect communities in the American West changed as journalism has undergone significant transformations and challenges over the past two decades?

Recent transformations in journalism have prompted me to ask if there are historical antecedents. I’ve seen the phrase “transparency is the new objectivity” in the past couple of decades. My research comprises the century from the 1860s through the 1950s. In the first part of that time frame, most frontier papers were quite personal—you might say they were more transparent than objective. My recent research has focused on Japanese American newspapers, including those published inside the World War II prison camps that held 120,000 people who were forcibly removed from the West Coast. Most of these newspapers published personal opinion columns. Similarly, English-language sections of Japanese American papers in places like Denver and prewar San Francisco also had many columnists with vivid individual voices.

Last year you taught a class, “Documenting Topaz,” in which students in your class and a documentary production course created a film about an internment camp in Topaz, Utah. What drew you to create the course? What lessons did you take away from the course?

During the Japanese American mass incarceration, one of the prison camps was here in Utah. We drove to Topaz, 130 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, to film B-roll at the desolate camp site and nearby museum. For the main focus of the documentary, my students conducted 10 oral history interviews. They prepared by doing careful research about World War II, the camps, and the individuals they interviewed. Among the many things I learned: Few of my students can read cursive, which made it challenging for them to analyze primary sources like correspondence.

You have taught media law and ethics for many years, how are you integrating conversations about artificial intelligence in those classes?

I haven’t taught ethics recently, but AI now runs throughout many aspects of media law. I devote a unit to intellectual property, mostly copyright infringement and fair use. There are always new cases. For example, Taylor Swift recently filed trademark applications to protect her voice and image from being misappropriated by AI. I use such cases in the law class to demonstrate how pervasive (and potentially perilous) AI is so my students will be able to know when and how to use it.

What hobbies or activities do you enjoy outside of academia?

I like to spend time with family and hike in the mountains.

Elections for AJHA second vice president and three seats on the board of directors will take place electronically in October, ahead of the conference Nov. 4-7 in Greenville, South Carolina.

Willie Tubbs has been nominated for second vice president. Four members have been nominated for the board; three will be elected.

The 2nd VP, under normal circumstances, rises to the presidency in two years, then serves on the board as ex-officio for an additional two years. Board members serve for three years and are expected to attend board meetings at the annual convention.  

The election will be conducted via online survey, distributed in early October. A write-in option will be available for each position.  

Below are brief bios for each nominee. 

Second Vice President

Willie Tubbs, associate professor of communication at the University of West Florida, has been nominated for second vice president. A member since 2015, his first AJHA conference was in St. Paul.

“The open arms with which I was welcomed, often by people I had cited in my paper, reignited my passion for history and ignited an abiding love for this organization,” Tubbs wrote.

He said any scholar would be lucky to belong to a group filled with people who sincerely want to help their colleagues to succeed within the field and at their home universities. He praised AJHA for the exceptional support it provides to researchers. Tubbs has won numerous awards for teaching, presentations, and papers, including honorable mention for the Margaret Blanchard Dissertation Prize.

Tubbs is chair of Service Awards Committee and a member of the Education Committee and Southeast Symposium Committee. A former member of the Board of Directors, he has chaired the PR Committee and judged for the AJHA Book Award.

Tubbs said that leading AJHA requires one to lean into shared governance, and he is well suited to that task.

“My greatest strength in a leadership position is my ability to listen, establish a shared vision, and work with everyone to achieve those common goals,” he said. “Thus, I would view my job in the coming three years as primarily continuing the great work that is already done, while leaning into the many relationships I've been lucky enough to forge through a decade of serving in numerous capacities.” 

Board of Directors

David Davies, professor at the University of Southern Mississippi, has attended AJHA conventions since 1994. At that time he was a first-year PhD student at the University of Alabama, and his adviser David Sloan encouraged him to attend.

“I was amazed at the welcome the graduate students received, and I was hooked,” he wrote. “AJHA has been my primary academic conference home ever since. I take absolutely any opportunity to tell folks how important this organization has been to my career.”

He regards organization as the most important professional affiliation of his entire career, having relied on members for research ideas, professional support, and friendship for more than 30 years.

Winner of the second Margaret A. Blanchard Dissertation Prize (in 1998) and mentor to several subsequent Blanchard honorees, Davies also has received a Joseph McKerns Research Grant. A former web editor for AJHA, Davies served a term on the Board of Directors more than a decade ago.

“I would be delighted to serve again,” he said.

Maddie Liseblad, an associate professor at Cal State Long Beach, has been a member of AJHA since 2016. She joined as a graduate student after Mike Conway invited her to participate on a panel with him, Michael D. Murray, and Mary Beadle to discuss television broadcasting.

Liseblad has served as chair of the Graduate Student Committee and as a member of the Nominations and Elections Committee and the Convention Sites Committee. In 2024, she served as a local host for the AJHA conference in Long Beach. Liseblad said her own research has greatly benefited from the Rising Scholar Award and the Joseph McKerns Research Grant.

“AJHA has been my ‘home’ since I was a student,” said Liseblad. “I go to the conference every year, even when I have don’t have funding. AJHA is important to me, not only professionally, but also personally. It’s a great support network, in more ways than one.”

After having served the AEJMC History Division in various capacities, including as the division chair and the publications committee chair for Journalism History, she said it’s time for her to get more involved with AJHA.

“I have a deep appreciation for the AJHA and its goals, and I think my time with AEJMC provides me with a unique perspective and experiences that can benefit AJHA,” she said. 

Professor Emerita Gwyneth Mellinger retired in 2026 after 10 years in the School of Media Arts and Design at James Madison University. She said she joined AJHA 20 years ago because she had found an academic home that provided opportunities for collaboration with media history colleagues who engaged with and critiqued her scholarship.

A former winner of the AJHA Book Award, Mellinger also has received the Joseph McKerns Research Grant and several AJHA research paper awards.

Mellinger has served two previous terms on the AJHA Board of Directors (2009-2012 and 2019-2022). She previously chaired the Outreach Committee and has coordinated Research-in-Progress submissions on the Research Committee. Additionally, she has been a member of the Book Awards Committee and DEI Task Force, and she serves on the American Journalism editorial board.

Mellinger said she has learned a great deal from mentoring and supporting her peers.

“Continued service to AJHA would be a demonstration of gratitude for all the organization has done for me,” Mellinger said.

Rich Shumate, assistant professor in the School of Mass Communication at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, has been a member of AJHA since 2016.

When he decided to focus on mass media history as a research area during his PhD program, AJHA was a natural fit.

“I definitely found a home among like-minded scholars who share my interest in exploring media history, and the experience has been invaluable to my career,” Shumate said.

The chief benefit Shumate has derived from his years with AJHA has been the opportunity to network with and learn from other media history scholars. He said he comes away from the convention each year with new energy and new ideas. He also has been honored by AJHA's recognition of his work, including the Margaret A. Blanchard Doctoral Dissertation Prize in 2019 and the David Sloan Award for top faculty paper last year in Long Beach.

Shumate served on the board of directors from 2020-2023. Because that tenure was affected by COVID, he is interested in serving again in more normal times. Shumate also has served as website editor and as a member of the Blanchard Dissertation Prize Committee and Public Relations Committee.

Shumate said the biggest strength he would bring is his past experience in a variety of roles within the organization, along with the relationships he has made throughout AJHA.

“I've enjoyed the time I have spent being part of AJHA, and I would appreciate the opportunity to continue to contribute,” Shumate said.

Christie Kleinmann is a professor of public relations and associate director of the Teaching Center at Belmont University.

How did you become involved with AJHA?

I first learned about AJHA in graduate school through my historical methods class. Attending my first AJHA conference changed everything for me. I was immediately drawn to this remarkable community of storytellers; scholars who were genuinely invested in one another's success. I knew right away that I wanted to be part of that kind of community. 

You were recently awarded a Joseph McKerns Research Grant supporting your examination of the public relations strategies for two Civil Rights protests in Nashville. How did you become interested in that project?

It started with a historical marker in Nashville's Centennial Park. I stopped to read it and thought, why have I never heard this story? The event it described had such a strikingly different outcome than the lunch counter sit-ins that occurred just a year earlier, yet it seemed almost forgotten in history. I'd heard about the sit-ins countless times, but this chapter had been quietly overlooked. That's exactly the kind of story I feel compelled to share, and I'm so grateful the McKerns Research Grant is making it possible.

One of your recent courses at Belmont University combined strategic communications with literature to create PR campaigns for literary giants of the 1930s and 1940s. What drew you to fuse PR and literature? How did students respond to the course?

That course was so much fun to teach! I've long loved the writings of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Dorothy Sayers, and I found a teaching grant supporting the integration of Inklings writers into college classrooms, which honestly felt like a sign. I wanted to do two things at once: introduce my students to these extraordinary authors and then challenge them to introduce the authors to their generation. They became brand ambassadors tasked with translating the timeless wisdom of the Inklings to a Gen Z audience. The students wrestled with how to remain authentic to the Inklings writers while also making them relevant in a very different culture, and they responded with real care and creativity. For me it represented the perfect classroom experience: creativity grounded in wisdom.

What advice or lesson would you offer other faculty looking for new and creative ways to teach PR or advertising?

Lean into what you love, and trust that your students will feel it. My students didn't walk into my Inklings class as fans. When I asked one student if he liked the Tolkien movies, he said that there was just so much walking! But the students responded to my genuine enthusiasm for these writers, and little by little, they found their own appreciation. Passion is contagious in a classroom. When you teach from a place of authentic curiosity, students don't just learn the material, they learn what it looks like to care deeply. That may be the most important lesson any of us can pass on.

What hobbies or activities do you enjoy outside of academia?

I have what my husband generously calls "too many" rescues—dogs, cats, and horses who I've either found or, more often, who have found me. I'll admit that they create a fair amount of chaos, but the peace of grooming my horse on a quiet morning or settling in with my Great Dane at the end of a long day has carried me through more than I can say. My husband insists the house is full and perhaps I need another hobby, but I feel confident that I can squeeze in one more!

Mary Lamonica is a professor in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at New Mexico State University. You may also know her under her publishing name, Mary M. Cronin.

How did you become involved with AJHA?

I heard about AJHA as a graduate student and attended my first professional convention in October 1990 in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. My Mass Media Ph.D. program at Michigan State University focused heavily on social science theory and research; I, however, wanted to be an historian. I worked with a professor in the Department of History and was encouraged to attend history conventions. AJHA provided the right mix of media and history. And, importantly, I met wonderful, welcoming people. After I (very nervously) presented my first professional conference paper, Maurine Beasley came up to me and was very encouraging. I am forever grateful to her for her motivational pep talk. And she invited me to join other historians for lunch at a point when I did not know any media history scholars. 

How does your prior work in print and radio journalism inform your research of journalism history?

I spent a decade as a news reporter, wire editor and as an assistant news editor prior to going for my Ph.D. My experiences with chasing down sources, attempting to be fair and balanced and verifying information made me wonder about press performance in past decades. I also became fascinated with the idea of the power of the press. Were newspapers (and magazines) as well as certain publishers as powerful in influencing and shaping public opinion as they were sometimes credited as being? Examining the press during the nineteenth- through the mid-twentieth centuries has allowed me to explore these issues and practices.

Much of your prior research examined the role of journalism during wartime, however your most recent book Home Front: Alfred T. Palmer’s World War II Photography explores war through the photographer’s lens. What new perspectives about war time journalism did you gain through focusing on photography, especially photography highlighting war efforts at home?

I’ve long recognized that visual media can be more powerful than written words. The public today may not remember as much about reporting during the Vietnam War years, for example, but they remember the so-called “Napalm Girl” image of the child running down the road terrified with other equally frightened children right behind her.

Visual imagery is a really understudied area in media history. Since photography’s inception, its practitioners, including photojournalists and commercial photographers—have produced some visually stunning work. Many have produced images that matter, capturing people, places and events to document them to make a difference.

While some combat photographers have been well researched, many commercial photographers, including those who did home front work for the Office of War Information and other government entities, have largely been ignored. They engaged in propaganda work and that term has such a pejorative connotation. Yet, their images were widely disseminated during the early 1940s and, I believe, had a strong impact on public opinion and public actions. Many of the photographs were visually stunning. Palmer, for example, was one of the first to use Kodachrome film and was a master of studio lighting. Two of his key contributions were shooting images of women and ethnic minorities. He represented them as dignified, patriotic and hardworking—a necessary approach to shift public opinion—at a time when the public wanted neither group in factories. But their contributions were necessary. We forget that although sixteen million men were in uniform during the war years, millions of civilians were needed to build the ships, tanks, planes and other war materials that were needed.

Like all historians, I love finding treasure troves of archival material that have not been mined. I was extremely fortunate that Alfred Palmer, as well as his wife and his daughter, Julia, recognized the war’s importance. They saved every letter he wrote, every order he received from military and civilian authorities, kept his diaries, and other records and images. In fact, his entire life’s work has been preserved and privately archived. By going through the documents, I learned of the struggles that Palmer faced to produce the images that were needed to motivate the public—the story behind the image creation, including the lack of money, the infighting in Washington, DC among propaganda executives, and Palmer’s desire toward the end of the war to serve as champion for an unheralded group of men: the Merchant Marine sailors who had the highest wartime casualty ratio as they attempted to get the needed wartime supplies to soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen.

You have frequently collaborated with other scholars including on Home Front which was written with Bruce Berman. What advice or lessons do you have for other scholars interested in collaborating on research?

First and foremost, rely on each other’s strengths. My co-author has worked for decades as a contract photographer for the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, Time, Newsweek and many more publications. He has photographed two wars, protests, births, deaths and every aspect of life for news media. And he’s undertaken years of commercial photography projects as well. His knowledge of visuals, including the history of photography, is superb. My strengths lay within the realm of researching and writing media history. We’ve worked on a few journal articles as well as the current book, and it has been a joyous collaboration to share ideas back and forth. I find that sharing knowledge strengthens both of us and improves our finished work.

Second, if you can, talk things out in person both before you start a project and during the project. If two or three scholars are not in the same community, set up an online meeting. Each scholar’s varying perspective helps guide the final project. Collaboration often leads to new ideas and new research questions.

What hobbies or activities do you enjoy outside of academia?

I like to travel in the US and abroad when I can. And despite all the reading that I must do for my research, I love to read many different genres of fiction and non-fiction. I also try to spend some quality time with my daughter.

By: Michael Fuhlhage (AJHA President) & Erin Coyle (AJHA First Vice President)

The ad hoc Defense of History Committee has begun work to collect the oral histories and track the erasure and alteration of the historical record at public sites.

The committee’s charge is to give voice to members whose academic freedom is being violated, to chronicle challenges our scholars face, and to give all AJHA members the means to help track the erasure of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the nation’s history at public institutions where Americans expect to learn about our nation’s history. Such places include national parks, federal and state historic sites, museums, and other places where the public encounters history.

The committee wants to give you an opportunity to be part of the historical record while protecting your identity in case you fear reprisal for speaking out. And we need your help in spotting instances where public sites are altering the historical record under pressure from federal and state authorities. Here’s how you can be heard.

Oral history: Oral history is a valuable method for recording contemporary conceptions of challenges. Thus, our committee plans to perform oral history interviews to record people's perceptions of whether and how laws, policies, and practices are changing how people may teach journalism history and perform research on the history of journalism. This part of the research will begin in the summer and continue in the fall. Anyone interested in participating in an oral history interview may contact this committee by sending an email to academicfreedomresearch@proton.me.

Tracking historical erasure: The committee has begun gathering published reports of the removal of references to controversial subjects and alteration of the description of events that sanitizes the past. And we invite you to contribute by submitting an “I want to report historical erasure” request. The form asks for the following information:

• Name of historic site affected.
• Erasure or other alteration done to the site.
• Reason given for the change, if any.
• Group whose history was removed or altered.
• A link to a published description of the alteration.
• A link to the website of the site that was affected.
• Location of the affected site.

The committee will use this information to create an interactive map chronicling historical alteration and erasure. Contributors will not be identified; your identity won’t even be collected. The committee will verify contributed information before adding it to this crowdsourced map of historical amnesia.

Your contributions are important to both the oral history and the historical mapping projects. There are only a few Defense of History committee members, after all, but there are many AJHA members and other scholars. You know that saying that many hands make light work? Many eyes do the same, and the eyes of our members are all over the country. Please join us in chronicling the current moment.

Editor's Note: This piece is a follow up to "Introducing the Defense of History Committee" published in February 2026.

Jeremiah Favara is a feminist media studies scholar and assistant professor of communication studies at Gonzaga University.

How did you become involved with AJHA?

I first became involved with AJHA as a graduate student. When I was working on my dissertation, my advisor—Dr. Carol Stabile—suggested I submit my dissertation for the AJHA’s Blanchard Prize. I was fortunate to be recognized as an honorable mention awardee and had the opportunity to attend the annual conference in Salt Lake City, Utah in 2018. That was my first time attending AJHA and getting involved. 

How did you develop an interest in media history?

I somewhat stumbled upon my interest in media history as I was conducting research for my book (Tactical Inclusion: Difference and Vulnerability in the U.S. Military Advertising, 2024, University of Illinois Press). I really wanted to explore the ways the U.S. military used messages of difference and diversity in their advertising and how those messages changed over time. It wasn’t until I got into the archives and started looking through materials, collecting ads from magazines, and finding really interesting documents or pieces of media that I realized just how exciting working in media history could be. There’s such a special feeling about going through archives and finding sources that lead you to new questions and insights.

Your recent book Tactical Inclusion relies on material from military archives. What was the process for gaining access to those archives? What advice do you have for other researchers working in military archives?

I found it really difficult to gain access to official military records throughout the research process. I tried a few Freedom of Information Act requests and tried contacting various military personnel to get information and gain access to different military records and archives but kept hitting walls. I turned to archives of advertising companies that had contracts for recruitment advertising. One of the most helpful archives was the Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History at Duke University. There were several collections for ad agencies that had contracts with various military branches during the time period I was focused on. I found such a treasure trove of materials in my time at the Hartman Center.

I would really encourage other researchers doing work on or about the military to be persistent. There were many materials that I got access to on the fifth and sixth attempt. I would also say to lean on the expertise of librarians and archivists. I learned about so many materials, collections, and resources from the insights of all the librarians and archivists that helped me as I worked on the book.

In previous conversations about Tactical Inclusion, you mentioned being struck by how extensive military advertising and the variety of media produced by the military. What piece of media did you find most surprising or interesting?

It’s hard to pick just one thing, because I found so many surprising and interesting things. I’d say the most surprising piece of media I found was a print poster for the Marine Corps that showed a picture of a young woman serving coffee to a group of men contrasted with a smaller photo her in uniform with the heading, “In the Marine Corps, you’ll serve the country, not the coffee.” The poster was from the 1970s and really showed me how extensively the Marine Corps, the branch most explicitly connected with man and warrior masculinity, sought to reach out to women as potential recruits while also dictating the narrow ways in which women could be included.

How does your expertise in feminist media studies inform your teaching?

My expertise in feminist media studies informs my teaching in a couple of ways. First of all, it really influences the content I draw on when designing classes. Most of my classes engage a variety of interdisciplinary literature from fields like media studies, feminist theory, queer theory, and queer of color critique. I try to bind all my classes together with a focus on social justice, informed by a feminist perspective. I feel really lucky to be at a mission-driven institution – Gonzaga University – where several of the tenets of the university’s mission align with intersectional feminist ideas of justice and liberation.

What hobbies or activities do you enjoy outside of academia?

One of the gifts of being where I am, in Spokane, Washington, is really convenient access to the outdoors and great trails, so I try to spend a lot of time outside. I really enjoy trail running, snowboarding, bike riding, surfing, and going hiking with my partner and our dog.

By: Jennifer E. Moore

Greetings, colleagues!

The 45th annual AJHA Convention is going coast to coast this year, moving from the Pacific shores of Long Beach, California, to the heart of Greenville, South Carolina. This year’s conference is later than usual, November 5-7, 2026, at the Westin Poinsett Hotel. Plan accordingly. Our board continues to recommend that the submission deadline remains close to our usual June deadline. Original research papers, panels, and research in progress submissions are due June 15, 2026 (11:59 p.m. CST). Visit the AJHA website see the full call. 

As your Research Committee Chair, I’m also writing to clarify some of the long-held guidelines our organization has honored to ensure we continue our tradition of excellence that defines our gathering—from students to senior scholars, along with the journalists we honor and the local community members we welcome each year. Page limits, formatting, blind review requirements, and required components are essential to make the process go smoothly for all involved. Submissions that do not meet guidelines may not be considered.

Please remember that AJHA permits one entry per competition category. If you choose to submit in more than one category, your topic areas must be significantly different from one another. Submissions must be original and not under review elsewhere.

Individuals may participate on only one panel, and moderators may not also serve as panelists. These policies are not merely procedural; they also help make sure we have a diversity of topics, broad participation, and a program that reflects the richness of our field.

Please consider submitting your own work, encourage your students to submit, and share our convention call broadly with colleagues on your campus and beyond. Our strength as an organization depends on seasoned scholars, emerging researchers, and those who work closely with graduate students seeing AJHA as a vibrant and welcoming home for their scholarship.

This year, there are some new colleagues helping with the competition. I’m grateful to Dianne Bragg, who is serving in her new role coordinating Panel submissions, and Patrick File, who is overseeing Research in Progress submissions this year. I also want to extend heartfelt thanks to outgoing Panel coordinator Susan Swanberg and Research in Progress coordinator Gwyneth Mellinger for their thoughtful leadership and dedicated service.

Speaking of service, this is my third and final year serving as Research Committee Chair. Who wants to step up and serve? I welcome the opportunity to train and mentor anyone interested in stepping into this role. It has been an honor to serve, and I’m committed to a smooth transition.

Ready, set, write! See you in Greenville this November.

Jennifer E. Moore is an associate professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth and the AJHA Research Committee Chair.

Joe Jones is an assistant professor of journalism in the Reed School of Media and Communications at West Virginia University.

How did you become involved with AJHA?

In 2017 during my doctoral program, I was a research assistant for longtime member, Earnest Perry. While looking up some research for him, I found some fascinating documents on the tobacco industry and funding of the Black press. We then started a side project and dug a little deeper. He then recommended we take it to AJHA which was in Salt Lake City in 2018. I met some other early career folks there like Bailey Dick and Ashley Walters and the rest was history (pun intended)! 

You describe yourself as an interdisciplinary scholar, how does that outlook inform your research?

I received my bachelor’s in history in the early 2000s at a small liberal arts school. At that time, postmodernism had challenged the fundamentals of the discipline. One response was to approach the world as radically interconnected, resisting the silos of discipline-specific thinking. I was also taking classes on philosophy, global politics (9/11 was a big influence on my course selection), gender, and colonization. Combine this with my master’s degree in German history (and the work of the Frankfurt School) and the advanced feminist theory of my doctoral program, and my research took on a specific flavor.

Basically, I found I couldn’t talk about anything without talking about history, power, and ethics. In my mind, to adequately understand any phenomenon we need to think about how it developed over time (history), how it is implicated in relations of power (sociology, political economy, Critical/Cultural theory), and how it contributes to living a good life or not (ethics). Given my undergrad training, I even see history itself as inherently interdisciplinary. To do good history you need to have a fundamental understanding of politics, how social structures work, a grasp on the mechanisms of culture, etc. And what’s the point of talking about history if not to live a better life or cultivate wisdom?

So, for example, in my research on food journalism I have to look at how it developed from the women’s pages and evolved into “lifestyle” content (history-shout out to Kim Voss), how it can potentially serve hegemonic notions of consumer culture and industrialized food production (power), and how it might operate to improve the lives of community members entangled in various systems of power, culture, discourse, and resource distribution (ethics).

My research on the Black press certainly involves history, but I am also interested in how Black journalists and media makers negotiated structural limitations (power) and responded with different orientations towards the world and ways of doing (ethics). My work on AI in media examines how the news and other media industries developed their economic models over time (history-power), how AI is currently employed, and what implications these hold for our moral autonomy and democratic worldmaking (ethics). I also look at the fundamental misunderstandings of what AI is—with such misinformation perpetuated by industry interests and routine-following journalists—and correcting these misperceptions to bring focus back to where we might assert our humanity (power-ethics). So, I’d probably consider my work on AI transdisciplinary but really, I can’t even imagine what my research would look like without a baseline of being interdisciplinary.

What makes you most excited about teaching or research?

As far as teaching, there is just something about talking with students and not knowing what’s going to come up or what kind of insights you’ll witness in real time. I teach courses on ethics, law, sociology, theory, and even my history course is more Socratic and conversational than a traditional lecture. It’s these conversations that get me most excited about teaching and the notion that I’m not just conveying information, I’m helping people develop their own sense of (socially grounded) self and moral character.

I get the most satisfaction when students tell me how a course made them rethink their relationship to the world and what they have the ability to do. My program, for example, has a lot of sports media majors (I try to convince them to think of themselves as sports journalists). One of these students recently told me that in his sports classes, he can tell which students have and haven’t taken my ethics course yet. Those who had, he argued, were more informed, attentive, critical, and caring, asking more piercing questions and pushing class conversations in more fruitful directions (well, he said this in so many words). Helping students to ask meaningful questions and having the confidence to assert their informed views and morally preferable ways of doing? Yes please!

Talking with students also helps keep me grounded. If I could have my way (and I’m glad I can’t), I would probably read books and just think abstract thoughts all day.

As far as research, I’m under no illusions that what I’m doing will radically alter the world. But at the very least, it does radically change who I am. Undertaking a new research project means I will learn something new, see things differently, and appreciate life all the more. Ideally, I can use this in my teaching, my service, my daily life as a community member, partner, and friend, to help improve the world in whatever small way I can. I also hold out hope that someone who reads my work (should I be so lucky!), will have their perspective changed, even in the slightest way, that helps bend the moral arc of the universe more towards justice, care, and those things necessary for our collective flourishing. We humans have so much potential for genuine happiness and wisdom, and research is my own humble means of helping to cultivate that potential.

As someone who co-led a study abroad course, what advice or lessons would you have for other faculty in that position?

First, if you have the opportunity, do it! I’ve done it three times now and each time is a lifelong memory. A related bit of advice is to be honest with students about the experience and not romanticize it. Yes, it’s potentially fun and exciting. But studying abroad is also about making yourself uncomfortable in a way that encourages greater understanding and growth. It’s not a vacation, it’s a learning experience, and there will be times when students (and you!) are confused, frustrated, and maybe even homesick. This is all part of it. Some of those challenging times can even make for some of the strongest memories.

Second, I’d recommend an assignment that helps ground students. My own trip is built around art, design, and culture, so the first assignment is something called “Design Connections” where each student picks out some element (like doors, statues, street art/graffiti, archways, fountains, etc.) and has to document different iterations as we tour around. Being in a foreign country can be overwhelming, so giving something students to focus on can be quite helpful. Students also talk to each other about their chosen element, so they’ll even collaborate and point things out to each other. The assignment then requires students to articulate the differences and similarities between how these elements manifest and are used compared to back home.

Another useful assignment plays to the strengths of media students where, as a class, we create a culture/lifestyle magazine of our host culture. Students pitch their own stories, take their own photos, do research, identify sources, and really talk things out to articulate the cultural nuances they have observed. While each student has their own story, they are also encouraged to help each other by bouncing ideas of one another and sharing photos. Students thus have a sense of ownership over a specific cultural aspect while also engaging in conversations that help them reflect on the experiences they are having.

So in a nutshell, recognizing the challenges of studying abroad while also having very intentional assignments is key.

What hobbies or activities do you enjoy outside of academia?

I love to eat, so I also love to cook! Living so often in my head as we all do, it’s nice to do something physical and have a delicious outcome at the end of it. On a related note, I also like to swim, bicycle, hike, and paddleboard (and West Virginia is certainly great for such activities). Above all, I love spending time with my wife, going on long walks or dwelling over meals as we talk about life, wonder at the silliness of us humans, or contemplate the meaning of it all!

By: Michael Fuhlhage, AJHA President

The academic freedom of AJHA members is under growing threat as a result of state-level anti-DEI legislation enacted since 2023 and executive orders imposed since Donald Trump’s second presidential administration began in January 2025. In response, as president of the American Journalism Historians Association, I have established the Ad Hoc Defense of History Committee with these charges:

• To give voice to our more vulnerable members who may fear retribution if they speak against violations of their academic freedom.
• To chronicle the challenges our scholars face.
• And to give all AJHA members the means to help track the erasure of diversity, equity, and inclusion in public institutions where Americans expect to learn about our nation’s history, both the good and the bad.

By doing these things, we aspire to strengthen the academy, bolster accountability for our country’s deeds in the past as well as the present, and guard against the erasure of historical memory.

I am thankful to AJHA Vice President Erin Coyle, who will chair the committee, and AJHA members Deborah van Tuyll of Augusta University, Gwyneth Mellinger of James Madison University, Marquita Smith of the University of Mississippi, A.J. Bauer of the University of Alabama, and Susan Swanberg of the University of Arizona for agreeing to serve on the committee.

Threatening teachers and scholars for our discussion of race in the fabric of American society and history and all matters of diversity, equity, and inclusion is just part of an arc of tyranny under Trump’s second administration.

This arc extends from the classroom into the streets of Minneapolis and every place where the administration has run past its immigration enforcement responsibilities to quash dissent.

• Its agents have killed eight people in 2026: Alex Pretti, Renee Nicole Good, Luis Gustavo Nuñez Cáceres, Geraldo Lunas Campos, Víctor Manuel Díaz, Parady La, Luis Beltrán Yáñez-Cruz, and Heber Sánchez Domínguez.
• It has, as the American Civil Liberties Union states in a lawsuit against ICE, CBP, and other federal agents, violated the constitutional rights of Americans “by racially profiling, unlawfully seizing, and unlawfully arresting people without a warrant and without probable cause” because of racial and ethnic characteristics.
• It has threatened, arrested, and detained observers who sought to collect evidence that could hold Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents accountable, as detailed in a KQED news podcast.
• And it has assaulted and arrested reporters covering anti-ICE protests, treating journalists as agitators and participants, according to the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, which accuses police of using arrests to silence protest coverage.

These pieces add up to a picture of a federal government attempting to evade accountability in the present. But it is also trying to hide the evidence of its historical misdeeds and prevent educators from even discussing them when they pertain to the racism in America’s past. Historical memory and teaching are under siege. Our public museums and public lands are in the crosshairs. At the expense of telling a complete history of the United States that includes an accounting of not just its triumphs but also its less noble chapters, the Trump administration has targeted the Smithsonian Institution with a comprehensive review of selected museums and exhibitions.

The administration framed this review as an effort to “reflect the unity, progress, and enduring values that define the American story” in the name of ensuring “alignment with the President’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions.” This includes a review of exhibition text, websites, educational materials, and social media content with an eye on “tone, historical framing, and alignment with American ideals.”

The result will be the substitution of the triumphalist history of great white men and their institutions that James W. Carey warned we didn’t need more of for the whole truth that recent generations of historians have labored to build. Most recently, Trump officials ordered national parks to remove signs and displays about settlers mistreatment of Native Americans at the Grand Canyon and George Washington’s ownership of enslaved people at the President’s House in Philadelphia.

Since 2023, Republican lawmakers have been targeting colleges that emphasize diversity, equity and inclusion in their recruitment and retention of students and faculty on grounds that these efforts violate free speech and waste public funds. In 2025, state legislatures enacted 14 laws in 12 states to dismantle DEI efforts, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. Targets include DEI offices and training, diversity statements, and teaching about white supremacy in courses required to graduate. These efforts, the Chronicle reports, were accelerated by Trump’s executive orders banning race-conscious programs, and they reach as far as the academic freedom of classroom instruction. In Mississippi, for example, HB 1193 prohibits teaching concepts that include “transgender ideology, gender-neutral pronouns, heteronormativity, gender theory, sexual privilege, or any related formulation of these concepts” in any university program, academic course, or office.

New laws constrain the academic freedom of administrators as well as teachers. In Iowa, HF 856 barred administrators from referencing “unconscious or implicit bias, cultural appropriation, allyship, transgender ideology, microaggressions, group marginalization, antiracism, systemic oppression, social justice, intersectionality, neopronouns, heteronormativity, disparate impact, gender theory, racial privilege, sexual privilege, or any related formulation of these concepts” in programs, training, or policies. Texas’s SB 37 went so far as to give public colleges’ boards of regents curricular control to prevent courses from including DEI and establishing a DEI complaint process and a statewide committee to determine what curricula should include.

These concerns are not abstract. AJHA members are affected in a variety of ways expressed privately in conversations at our conventions in Pittsburgh and Long Beach and in discussions via social media. When an instructor was suspended in Texas for including transgender identity in her teaching, it was chilling. Could the same happen to any of us?

My hope is that the AJHA Defense of History Committee can fashion a process through which members can confidentially deposit their accounts of living with DEI restrictions. What is the use of this? To ensure that the vulnerable are heard without fear of retribution. These accounts will be part of the historical record and part of historical accountability in the future.

I also hope that it can devise a clearinghouse for members to report instances where diversity is erased as part of journalism, media and communication history in their own locales, a sort of crowdsourced database of historical amnesia. Members could then engage in acts of guerrilla history, replacing the deleted diversity aspects in rebellious acts of remembering.

James Baldwin wrote in Notes of a Native Son, “I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” To criticize honestly and rigorously, we must have evidence. The Defense of History Committee will provide the ideas and means to implement the collection of that evidence.

How did you become involved with AJHA?

I found out about the AJHA via American Journalism and the annual conferences. Professor Kathleen Endres, whose work I had long admired, introduced me to several folks at my first AJHA conference many years ago! 

How did you develop your interest in the nineteenth century and media history in the South?

This may be a combination of a couple of different motivations. First, I was born in North Carolina and had a strong interest in the South growing up. That upbringing dovetailed with my father’s interest in the nineteenth century and specifically in early periodicals. He was a literature professor at the University of South Florida and introduced me to the fascinating world of journalism history.

How have you seen your field change since you started?

It has changed a great deal, and for the better in my opinion. We are much more attuned to the journalistic work of marginalized peoples, which has revealed really valuable history, some of which I wrote about in Women Writers and Journalists in the Nineteenth Century South (Cambridge, 2011).

You have been interviewed by a variety of news outlets, podcasts, and public organizations. What advice do you have for other researchers who want to engage in public scholarship?

It is important, of course, to know your audience so that you can pitch your responses the right way. And it is also important to be brief in your answers—something I’m very much still working on!

What hobbies or activities do you enjoy outside of academia?

I am a big baseball fan and also enjoy traveling and hiking.

Jonathan Daniel Wells is a professor of history in the departments of Afroamerican and African Studies, history, and the Residential College at the University of Michigan. His most recent publication The New York Kidnapping Club: Wall Street and Slavery before the Civil War (2020) won the New York Library Society Book Award 2020-2021 and the Victorian Society Book Award.