How did you become involved in AJHA?
My doctoral advisor, Dr. Janice Hume at The University of Georgia, is a long-time AJHA member and encouraged me to get involved early in my program. My first AJHA conference was in 2014 in St. Paul, Minnesota. It was my first academic conference ever. I feel very fortunate to have lucked into such an incredible community that has been supporting me from the very beginning of my career.
What drew you to the field of journalism and media history?
I was somewhat atypical of students in my cohort at UGA, and I think of most graduate students at large J-schools. My background was in entertainment, not journalism, and my masters degree was in education, not communication. I had a good bit of teaching experience before pursuing my doctorate but really had no idea what kind of research I was interested in doing. In my first semester we had a Research Methods class where we had to telephone surveys of registered voters and I quickly realized that kind of research was not for me. I was drawn to history for a few reasons. I liked the idea of storytelling and narrative playing an important role in the work. I also liked the detective work we get to do in the archives. But I have to say that a lot of the draw was getting to work with Dr. Hume and other fabulous media historians like Karen Russell and Jay Hamilton at UGA.
Talk some more about your research and how it has evolved.
I truly had no idea what I wanted to do for my dissertation when I started my doctoral work. Once I landed on history as a methodology, I went through many (many many) rounds of topic ideas. I ended up deciding to focus on copyright because I had always wanted to understand that side of the entertainment industry. In the digital age, independent artists can handle so many aspects of their careers on their own. You can design your own t-shirts and posters, build your own website, sell your own merch. But the legal piece is still really nebulous for most creative people to navigate. So much of the way that copyright law works in practice is by the fear of getting sued and the tediousness of its minutia. So I wanted to see if there was a way to put a human face on the history of copyright and make that history more accessible to the average creative person.
As for how its evolved, I think the methodological skills we have as historians are much more transferable than we often give ourselves credit for. My own interest in copyright history is pretty niche, but I’ve had opportunities to collaborate with people working on larger projects that intersect with copyright. I don’t know everything about their topic, but they wouldn’t have time to learn all the copyright minutia either. We can work together to produce something with more depth and richness than either of us would be able to do on our own. I’ve also really enjoyed working on different digital humanities projects that synergize my teaching and creative interests in media production with my research skills in history.
What hobbies/interests do you have outside of academia?
Music is my first love, and I still enjoy playing guitar and singing, though I don’t get to do it nearly as much as I used to. I am really into podcasts, both as a listener and a producer. My latest project was a podcast on President Jimmy Carter that has been well received. Its available at RecollectingCarter.com.
Jason Lee Guthrie is a media historian at Clayton State University interested in the intersections of creativity and economics. He has specific interests in the creative industries and intellectual property law.
