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MetroArts begins work on Season 11
MetroArts Detroit has started production on Season 11. Most of the crew members are students in the COM 5610 Advanced TV Production class. Their first task was to hold host auditions, which are normally held in April but were postponed due to the COVID shutdown. Senior Lecturer and show producer Dr. Kim Piper Aiken is pleased to report that Carmen Mirachian will be the Season 11 host. Taping began September 26th and they plan to produce seven shows this semester that will eventually air on Detroit Public Television. | | Faculty/Staff updates |  | Associate Professor of Teaching Juanita Anderson Juanita Anderson will take the stage at Film at Lincoln Center as Executive Producer of Who Killed Vincent Chin? (Christine Choy, Renee Tajima Peña, 1987), when the new restoration of the film premieres at the New York Film Festival on October 2, 2021. This is her first national appearance with the film since its initial release 33 years ago. The film was restored by The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Film Archive and The Film Foundation, in association with the Museum of Chinese in America. Funding for the restoration was provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation, with additional support provided by Todd Phillips. The restoration, completed earlier this month, comes on the heels of a resurgence of anti-Asian violence across the United States. New York Film Festival curators describe the Oscar-nominated film as: "Not so much a documentary murder investigation as a meticulously constructed meditation on the race relations, economic forces, and failings of the American legal system that comprised the backdrop for the murder of a Chinese-American automotive engineer in Detroit in 1982....." They note, "Who Killed Vincent Chin? remains a stirring, absorbing elegy for justice unserved." The Wayne State University Libraries hold a streaming license to an original educational version of the film which can be accessed by instructors and students at: https://video-alexanderstreet-com.proxy.lib.wayne.edu/watch/who-killed-vincent-chin. Who Killed Vincent Chin? is a co-production of the Detroit Educational Television Foundation (DPTV) and Film News Now | | | Associate Professor Stine Eckert Stine Eckert received a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Council and will be a guest scholar at the Freie University Berlin during her sabbatical this fall semester 2021. She is working on a study to better understand how journalism is changing in Germany due to digitalization, discourses on diversity, and the recent impact of the pandemic. |  | |  | Associate Professor Michael Fuhlhage The Wayne State Media History Research Gang of Associate Professor Michael Fuhlhage, doctoral candidates Keena Neal and Darryl Frazier, and doctoral student Anna Lindner have been awarded the J. William Snorgrass Memorial Award for Outstanding Paper on Minority Journalism for their paper " 'If Ever Saints Wept and Hell Rejoiced, It Must Have Been Over the Passage of That Law': The 1850 Fugitive Slave Act in Detroit River Borderlands Newspapers, 1851-1852." They will present it at the American Journalism Historians Association annual convention Oct. 6-9. The convention is meeting virtually. Click here to register. Click here for the convention schedule. In addition, along with co-editors Dr. Melita Garza of Texas Christian University and Dr. Tracy Lucht of Iowa State University. Michael has signed a book contract for the Routledge Companion to American Journalism History, scheduled for publication in 2023. Finally, Communication professors at the WSU Humanities Center Associate Professor Julie Novak, Associate Professor Michael Fuhlhage, and Assistant Professor Anita Mixon are resident scholars for 2021-22 at the WSU Humanities Center | | | Part Time Faculty Member Adrienne Kozlowski shares advice on empathic listening From the August 2021 edition of Practical Tools for Leaders, Professional Development Currents (through Executive & Professional Development at Wayne State). Listening: What you are not hearing The role of empathy in building relationships It is so difficult to be heard in our busy world, and it is no wonder that empathic listening is hard to come by. If you want to build long-lasting close relationships, personally or professionally, stop talking and start listening. How do you become an empathic listener? Listen to the feeling of what is being said. What is the tone? What is the expression on the speakers face? What adjectives does the speaker use to describe what is being discussed? Do your best to try to sense or acknowledge what the speaker is feeling while talking. Listen to the content of what is being said. Intellectually try to understand the material. Ask questions. Ask for examples. Do your best not to react or respond until the speaker has finished their thoughts. Empathic listening is a choice and takes a lot of energy. You have two ears and one mouth – use them proportionally. The reward is a deeper, more emotionally connected relationship. |  | |  | Assistant Professor Anita Mixon Dr. Anita Mixon was competitively selected to participate in the inaugural cohort of the Faculty of Color Working Group Mentoring Program, which is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the University of Connecticut. | | | Associate Professor Hayg Oshagan Hayg Oshagan was a panelist for the Thursday Sept. 23rd screenings of Storm Lake at the Birmingham 8 Theatre during the FREEP Film Festival, speaking about the role of small newspapers. Associate Professor Hayg Oshagan The Detroit City Council recently bestowed the Spirit of Detroit Award to Associate Professor Hayg Oshagan. The text of the award reads: presented here with as an expression of the gratitude and esteem of the citizens of Detroit to Hayg Oshagan in recognition of exceptional achievement, outstanding leadership and dedication to improving the quality of life. By the City Council of Detroit, Michigan. Signed by all the Councilmembers. Read more about it here |  | |  | Associate Professor Pradeep Sopory Pradeep Sopory and Marc Kruman, history professor and director of Center for the Study of Citizenship, have been awarded $198,892 by the Michigan Health Endowment Fund to implement a deliberative democracy model to promote healthier behaviors in Detroit's HOPE Village neighborhood.Through the deliberative democracy model, residents will develop, implement and sustain solutions to health concerns in their community. Read more about it here | | | Tonya Thomas Part Time Faculty Member Tonya Thomas was recently appointed new director of educational technology innovation for the College for Creative Studies. She was also selected as research panelist for the 2022 EDUCAUSE Horizon Report (past reports available) |  | | | Student/Alumni updates |  | Doctoral Candidate Lacey Brim Lacey Brim and her partner Blake welcomed Vivian Blake Simon to the world on August 15th! | | | M.A. Student Toni Cunningham GTA Toni Cunningham was asked to participate as a panelist at the Good Pitch Local event on September 14th. Good Pitch Local is a branch a program of Doc Society and is in partnership with Detroit Narrative Agency and Trinity Films Entertainment Group. The program provides a platform for local storytellers to share their pitches and receive feedback, support and often times funding from their communities. It is supported by the National Endowment of the Arts. |  | | | | | M.A. Student Carrie Lezotte GTA Carrie Lezotte presented her new documentary, The Mackinac, at the Freep's Works in Progress Session, Thursday Sept. 23rd 4p.m. at Cinema Detroit. (The Dept. of Communication co-hosted the session.) |  | |  | Doctoral Candidate Erin Perry In June, doctoral candidate Erin Perry was named managing editor of the Detroit-based service journalism organization Outlier Media. There, she leads a team of reporters acutely focused on filling information gaps—positioning Detroiters to hold landlords, municipal government and elected officials accountable for long-standing systemic problems. Earlier this year, Erin presented an analysis of Michigan State University's response to COVID-19 at the Central States Communication Association virtual conference and earned a Top Student Paper award from the Strategic and Applied Communication Interest Group. She also presented a visual rhetorical analysis called "Combating the Angry Black Woman stereotype at work through demeanor and praise" at the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication Midwinter Conference in March and then again at AEJMC's national conference in August. The paper has been invited for publication in the Media Report to Women. | | | Doctoral Candidate Ariel Seay-Howard Doctoral Candidate Ariel Seay-Howard was recently chosen to represent the Communication department as the Graduate student Ambassador for Wayne State University. She will be joining an 11 member team representing a variety of disciplines across Wayne State University to help promote the Graduate School. |  | |  | Recent Journalism graduates land media positions Some recent graduates from the Journalism program have entered the work force. Emmitt Lewis, who graduated with his M.A. last May and served as the Department of Communication’s Social Media intern, was hired as a News Producer at WWMT TV, News Channel 3 in Kalamazoo. He started his position in September. Recent alum Lauren Turner joined the 9&10 News team (Cadillac - Traverse City) in August 2021 as Co-Host of the hour-long lifestyle show, ‘The Four.’ It’s an hour-long lifestyle show every weekday at 4 pm. Lauren joined Journalism alum Taylor Morris, who joined the 9&10 News Team in June 2021 Reporter for Michigan This Morning. | | | JIMD has Annual Retreat The Journalism Institute for Media Diversity has gotten off to a strong start this fall with a full-day on-campus retreat. We welcomed five new members, including Kate Vaughn, the daughter of our very own WDET news director and intern-mentor Jerome Vaughn. The South End is being led by Institute members Jenna Prestininzi, as editor-in-chief, and Irving Mejia-Hilario, as managing editor. The other members are filling positions as editors and reporters at the student newspaper. JIM members are also active as interns at The Detroit News, Detroit Free Press, Tostada, the WSU football team, and Jessica Taylor is serving on student senate. |  | | | | | | | Announcements/Upcoming Events | | Internship Fair This year, the Journalism and Communication Internship Fair will be held in person on Thursday, October 28th, from 9 – 11:30 a.m. at St. Andrews Hall. Alicia Nails was able to get approval for the event from the Campus Health Committee and Perry Farrell has started inviting recruiters. | | | Online Instructional Resources The following online instructional resources are available from last fall's Allesee workshop, "The Power of I: First Person Storytelling in Times of Crisis," conducted by Judith Helfand--the 2020 Bob Allison/Allesee Endowed Chair in Media, and co-hosted by Freep Film Festival. | | | | | Strong Island Discussion "Strong Island" discussion with Yance Ford and Judith Helfand--Filmmaker Judith Helfand and “Strong Island” director Yance Ford talk about the process of finding a film’s voice and its form. They also discuss the relationship between the structure of the Academy Award-nominated "Strong Island" and Ford’s vision for advocacy, fighting racism and battling for change within the criminal justice system. |  | |  | Alone Together: The I Becomes We Short film program and discussion--In this session from the 2020 "The Power of 'I' " conference, several filmmakers who made movies during the COVID-19 lockdown share their work and talk about their process and what they learned. We see pandemic-related short — and even shorter — films from around the globe including Iran, Canada and cities across the U.S. | | | The Feeling of Being Watched (Assia Boundaoui, 2018) In the Arab American neighborhood outside of Chicago where journalist and filmmaker Assia Boundaoui grew up, most of her neighbors think they have been under surveillance for over a decade. While investigating their experiences, Assia uncovers tens of thousands of pages of FBI documents that prove her hometown was the subject of one of the largest counter terrorism investigations ever conducted in the U.S. before 9/11. | | | | | | | | | | |
