Kristin Gustafson presents “Balanced Research Tools for Asian American Media History”

IAS faculty member Kristin Gustafson presented “Balanced Research Tools for Asian American Media History” at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication’s August conference. She shared two teaching modules as part of the AEJMC History Division’s Jinx C. Broussard Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Media History. Panelists – the five award winners – shared teaching practices addressing pedagogies of diversity, collaboration, community, or justice.

The two complementary pedagogies Gustafson discussed are part of several in-class workshops and online modules used for the Asian American Media in the Pacific Northwest advanced seminar. They are designed to help students develop skills incrementally. The workshop and online materials all have elements that can be used for onground or online teaching.

The in-class activity that Gustafson shared uses role playing where students are asked to imagine they are at an antique store and come across a four-page, 1969 issue of Gidra. Students use this to generate questions about producers, readers, content, context, social movement, identity, and more. Their interdisciplinary backgrounds help with the next step, which is to consider strategies they might use to investigate and answer their questions. Afterward, students make the connection to what they do next in the class, which is exploring regional newspapers.

The second activity that Gustafson shared helps students practice using an index to locate historical newspaper articles. Students do this work outside of class and asynchronously. They use a PowerPoint created by Nia Lam, our librarian, to address: What is an index? Then students work through a set of steps that helps them navigate an index, review its description, compare a digital and non-digital index, and look closely at an article found through an index.