This was a bumper week for SOC! Check out all the entries below.

Also, Happy Thanksgiving, SOC friends!

SOC Accomplishments will take a short break and return on December 1

SOC Journalism grad students in Bergen, Norway

John Sullivan speaking to Norwegian Journalism grad students at IRW

The five SOC Journalism grad students in Norway show off what they've learned in back in their SOC grad classes and contribute to collaboration with the Norwegian professors and students at the University of Bergen

CEF associate director Larry Engel went into production on the doc projects in October. Along with graduate students Amy Young, Mar Cox, Sarah King, Brooke Williams and Phillip Bouknight, and support from other graduate students, a PSS package was produced for the nonprofit District Coyotes. Coyotes are inhabitants of DC and the PSAs aim to help the public better understand their canine neighbors.  

They also went into production on a mini-doc series highlighting volunteers with Adventure Scientist, a nonprofit that teams outdoor adventurers with researchers of the wild. 

If you're interested in supporting our long-running projects or want to get involved contact CEF_info@american.edu.  

SOC graduate students shooting on location

Jane Hall moderated an American Forum with Manu Raju, CNN anchor for "Inside Politics Sunday" and chief Congressional correspondent. Raju spoke with Jane and students in journalism, political communication, politics and policy about political chaos in Congress and how he covers it, the 2024 election, reporting from inside the Capitol on January 6, and Donald Trump and social media. Raju   also talked personally about his family and his career path with the audience, which included leaders from Sikh and South Asian student groups on campus. Thanks to Jacob Audoin, Abby Compain, Kati Vera, Tia Milledge, Veronica Castro, Grace Ibrahim, Tom Fish, Terry Bryant;  Joe Graf; KPU and AU student groups; Polson Kanneth and interim dean Leena Jaysawal. 

PC held its first PC Showcase recruitment event on Monday, November 6th. The event invited students from across the university to learn more about our BA, MA and BA/MA programs.  

Students met with faculty, current students and staff from the UG and Graduate offices.

The event was well attended with about 20 students attending. The majority of the students are first-year students, followed by those who are interested in both the Strat Comm BA/MA and the Pol Comm BA/MA. Many of the faculty have shared that students they spoke with at the event have already followed up to learn more. 

A big thanks to Christie Parell, Pallavi Kumar, and Molly O’Rourke for helping make the event happen! Thank you also to Anya Karavanov, Dario Bernardini, Joe Graf, Scott Talan, Rosalin Donald, Paula Weissman as well as Ana Maria Ulloa-Shields, Tara Flakker and Stephanie Rucker for participating.

Patricia Aufderheide gave an invited lecture to the Center for Korean Studies at University of California Irvine, "Copyright and Korean Documentary Film: "Public Memory, Human Rights, and Accountability at Risk," on November 13.

Patricia also participated in a retreat for the Documentary Accountability Working Group, which has now received three years of funding, from the Ford and MacArthur Foundations, at more than $300,000, to catalyze ethical practice in the documentary community.

Patricia also gave an invited talk to film students and faculty at University of California Santa Cruz, "Ethics and Accountability in Documentary Filmmaking," on November 16. 

Laura Waters Hinson will be a keynote for the Cilect North America’s Conference on the Ethics of Representation. Laura’s talk is titled “Street Reporter: A Case Study in Collaborative Filmmaking.” The one-day conference will be held online this Friday, November 17th.

Margot Susca gave an invited keynote to the WAMU Board of Advisors at Aerlie on Saturday, Nov. 4. Titled "On Crisis and Opportunity: The State of The Media," Margot discussed the challenges facing local news, but she discussed innovation emerging to address the crisis (and she snuck in mentions of great stuff we're doing in the Journalism division and the Investigative Reporting Workshop, too!). 

Margot also did a Q&A with Publisher's Weekly about the pivotal role private equity and hedge funds have played in the destruction of U.S. newspaper chains.

Ricardo Barbar is a Venezuelan journalist and grantee of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting specializing in health care issues in his South American country. Barbar addressed Bill Gentile’s Complex Problems “Why We Fight” class, in Spanish, on Monday 13 November. With him was a translator.

Guest speakers like Barbar are just one of the benefits provided by AU’s collaboration with the Pulitzer Center’s Campus Consortium. That collaboration also offers the AU/Pulitzer Center International Reporting Fellowships to students who win a competition conducted each spring.

To review Barbar’s work, click here. To see AU’s fellowship winners, click here.

Ricardo Barbar speaks to Bill Gentile's Why We Fight class

Filippo Trevisan gave an invited talk with Ariadne Vromen at the Australian National University in Canberra. The talk was based on Filippo, Ariadne, and Michael Vaughan’s forthcoming book from University of Michigan Press, and was titled Narrative Power: Storytelling, Technology, and Social Change Advocacy in Australia and the U.S. It took place on Thursday November 16 at ANU’s Australian Studies Institute, where Filippo is currently a Visiting Fellow.

Filippo Trevisan and Ariadne Vromen present their forthcoming book at the Australian National University on November 16

With a year under our belts, join us as we take a deep dive into our last year’s experience being a part of the SOC Mentorship Program. We’re joined by Lindsay Zimnoch, Grace Ibrahim and her mentee from last year's mentorship program, Jessica Newell as we discuss what makes a good/bad mentee, setting expectations and answering FAQs! Send this episode to your mentors and mentees! Listen to the podcast here.

Maya Livio presented her paper, "Queer Data Surrogacy: Activating Conservation Datasets with AI" at the leading Science and Technology Studies conference, Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S). 

Night of the Living Dead Live closes this Sunday November 20th. The show, produced by Rorschach Theatre, with video design by Professor Kylos Brannon, has enjoyed a successful 3 week run with great reviews and soldout nights. But there are still tickets for this weekend! Come of the zombies, stay for Kylos’ video work! Links to reviews below. Tickets at Rorschach Theatre.

“…a brilliant zombie comedy that still contemplates humanity” 

CityPaper

“Ghouls just want to have fun.”

DC Theatre Arts

“Ghouls just want to have fun.” (Yup, two reviews, the same pun)

Washington Post

“…a fast-paced, funny, amusingly meta adaptation that remixes, parodies, and expands on the original.”

Metro Weekly

On November 3, Kylos Brannon returned to the stage at 930 Club to mix live video projection for No Scrubs, the longest running 90s party in the country, that at one point held the record for most consecutive sold out dates at the 930 Club. Crowds are coming back to live events, as this was the first post pandemic date to sell out and to keep the dance floor alive after last call.

John C. Watson was interviewed by reporter Ralph Chapoco of the Alabama Reflector about the ethics of publishing photographs that apparently led to suicide by the subject. A far-right website published photographs of small-town Alabama mayor and local church pastor Bubba Coleman wearing women’s clothing. The Reflector reported that Colemen was deluged with online hate messages afterward and was later reported dead by suicide. Watson explained that newsworthiness does not automatically negate a journalist’s ethical duty to minimize the foreseeable harm a publication could cause. (Click here to access support resources).

Watson was also interviewed by a reporter from The Investigative Reporting Workshop about a proposal to provide guns to American University Police officers. He criticized the idea and traced the historical progression in the United States from peace officers, to public safety officers to police officers and the overall militarization of cops across the country. He noted that when he began teaching at AU there were public safety officers on patrol but just a few years ago the university changed the designation to police officers and painted those labels on their vehicles. According to Watson, labels are a part of how a person conceives and carries their role and how others perceive and interact with them.

Award-winning journalist and author Tre'vell Anderson did the talk  "We See Each Other: On The Limits and Possibilities of Trans Representation in Media" in the SOC on Tuesday. Anderson, the author of "We See Each Other: A Black Trans Journey Through TV and Film," spoke at AU a week before National Transgender Remembrance Day. Sherri Williams moderated a conversation with Anderson about transgender images in media and shifts in journalism. The Journalism Division, SOC Diversity Committee, AU President's Council on Diversity and Inclusion, and the SOC Film and Media Arts and Communication Studies Divisions were co-sponsors of this event.

Tre'vell Anderson in conversation with Sherri Williams in SOC's Doyle-Forman theater