Kristin Gustafson (she/her)

Teaching Professor

Kristin Gustafson

Ph.D. Communication, University of Washington
M.A. Mass Communication, University of Minnesota
B.A. English and Women’s Studies, St. Olaf College

Office: UW1-142
Email: gustaf13@uw.edu
Mailing Box: 358530, 18115 Campus Way NE, Bothell, WA 98011-8246

Teaching

My teaching in our Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences school is shaped by my years as a journalist and historian. I encourage students to ask questions, seek evidence, explore complexity, engage with communities, evaluate and create media, and contribute to the world as responsible citizens. Communication, media, and journalism studies bring together different disciplines, histories, and training. All three fields require that students stretch toward people and communities that are unfamiliar, apply critical thinking and analysis to social problems, evaluate and create communication, and learn from practice. Students in my classrooms move reflexively between the contextual and theoretical questions of why and the more pragmatic and methodological questions of how. Students do projects that encourage them to get out of the classroom and engage in their communities. I use a multiple-method approach in the classroom to address the diversity of student learning. This includes group work, multi-media projects, tiered writing, peer reviews, student leadership, and active discussions. I also work closely with students through independent research and mentor them in my classrooms as peer facilitators. These teaching strategies work together to help students become empowered learners ready to critically engage with the world around them.

Recent Courses Taught

BIS 490 Asian American Media in the Pacific Northwest (Advanced Seminar)
BIS 499 Portfolio Capstone
BIS 480 International Study Abroad (India)
BISMCS 472 Advanced Media Production Workshop: Multimedia Storytelling in Student Media
BISMCS 402 Community Media Practice (Husky Herald; Student News)
BISMCS 343 Media Production Workshop: Nonfiction Media Writing
BISMCS 333 Media and Communication Studies Core
BIS 313 Issues in Media Studies: Critical Issues in U.S. Journalism History
BIS 204 Introduction to Journalism
BCORE 207 Individuals and Society: Credibility, Journalism, Media
BCORE 104/110 Time Traveling Through Experiential Learning, Art and the Environment
BCORE 104/110 Absences in Archives
BCUSP 118 Critical and Creative Inquiry: Journalistic Interviewing

Research/Scholarship

Questions about journalism practices drive my scholarship. These practices are found in news organizations, within marginalized communities, during different periods of history, and in varied formats of media. My research and teaching are at the intersection of journalism history, ethnic/community media, archives, and activist movements. My scholarship on teaching and learning examines student and practitioner experience with reciprocity, diversity, and civic engagement. My past work for the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication History Division encouraged and promoted pedagogies of diversity, collaboration, community, and justice. My media history scholarship examines the symbiotic relationship between social movements and grassroots U.S. newspapers that is historically and politically intertwined. I ask how (and why) these newspapers began, operated, and changed over time. I ask how (and why) workers operated as journalists and balanced loyalties. The answers add complexity to the role of media in democracy and the role of community and activism in journalism. My media representation scholarship has explored two different examples of how newspaper publication’s words, visuals, and graphics framed responsibility. My media representation scholarship has explored how published words, visuals, and graphics framed responsibility. My publications appear in American Journalism, Columbia Journalism Review, Journalism, Journalism History, Newspaper Research Journal, and Visual Communication Quarterly. My most recent publication is a chapter in an award-winning book, Journalism and Jim Crow: White Supremacy and the Black Struggle for a New America.

Selected Service

Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Teaching Committee: Elected 2020–2023

University of Washington (Tri-Campus) Faculty Council on Teaching and Learning (FCTL): Appointed 2019–2022

University of Washington Bothell Campus Council on Assessment and Learning (CCAL): Elected 2019–2021

Selected Publications