Students and educators from across the Southeast are converging on Murfreesboro March 2-4 for three days of sharing research about their discipline and networking with future colleagues when MTSU’s School of Journalism and Strategic Media hosts an internationally recognized journalism organization for the first time.

The 48th annual AEJMC Southeast Colloquium, a gathering of the Columbia, South Carolina-based Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, will feature an opening keynote address Thursday, March 2, that’s also open to the public.

Kathy Roberts Forde, a journalism professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, will discuss “How Journalism and Jim Crow Shaped the South — and Why It Matters Now” at 5 p.m. March 2 in Room 160 of MTSU’s College of Education Building, located at 1820 MTSU Blvd.

A campus parking map is available at https://bit.ly/MTSUParking. Visitors attending Forde’s talk can obtain a one-day permit at https://mtsu.edu/parking/visit.php or park free in the university’s Rutherford Boulevard Lot and ride the Raider Xpress shuttle to the event sites.

Forde, who also serves as associate dean for equity and inclusion in UMass Amherst’s College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, is the co-editor of the 2021 book “Journalism and Jim Crow: White Supremacy and the Black Struggle for a New America.” It won Book of the Year Awards from both the AEJMC History Division and the American Journalism Historians Association.

She’ll discuss how white newspaper publishers and editors worked together to build white-supremacist political and economic systems across the South after the Civil War that still resonate today.

The AEJMC conference, which is expected to draw 120 participants to MTSU, also will include research presentations by undergrad and graduate students and faculty on topics in broadcast and mobile journalism, community journalism, history, law and policy, LGBTQ coverage and representation, magazine media, newspaper and online news, and visual communication.

“It’s important for students to understand that we don’t just teach journalism and media concepts; we also formally study and publish on salient topics related to our discipline,” says Katie Foss, director of the School of Journalism and Strategic Media, which is part of MTSU’s College of Media and Entertainment.

“It is our job to engage with students, colleagues and the community. This conference also provides the opportunity for emerging scholars to present their work, connect to each other and established faculty through our barbecue, kettle corn, and rock-climbing events, and to learn about innovative ways to teach in our field.”

Foss, a professor of media studies specializing in health communication and television history who’s also served on the AEJMC’s board of directors, is the author of six books. The most recent, “Constructing the Outbreak: Epidemics in Media and Collective Memory,” analyzes more than 200 years of the history of disease and has seen her sought out by media outlets around the world for the last three years as an expert on coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The AEJMC colloquium features a data analytics preconference event and panel discussions with topics that include teaching the First Amendment in a rapidly changing legal environment, the status of graduate education, engaging students in local news by creating partnerships with media outlets, and building the next generation of community and investigative journalists.

Research paper topics range from studying the public’s response to pop music star Britney Spears’ conservatorship testimony to evaluating anti-gay legislation’s relationship to the First Amendment and from the impact that covering mass shootings has on photojournalists to the information and disinformation shared on social media about the war in Ukraine.

More details about the conference are available at www.mtsu.edu/secolloq23.

To learn more about the School of Journalism and Strategic Media at MTSU, visit www.mtsu.edu/journalism. More information about the College of Media and Entertainment and its programs is available at www.mtsu.edu/media.

— Gina E. Fann (gina.fann@mtsu.edu)