So it has … been a minute since I last updated the blog part of this site. Here’s my brief attempt at a recap for 2023:

Since Theo arrived in January 2022, we spent the summer in France working on our French in May-July 2022 (as detailed in an earlier post!), and then had a busy but productive fall 2022 through spring 2023 academic year. I submitted my tenure packet in the spring (so I’ll be waiting on word on that this year). Ruth worked on her book with Oxford University Press, which is now out, as of fall 2023! It’s a pretty badass study of journalism in post-genocide Rwanda — check it out:
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/authoritarian-journalism-9780197623428?cc=us&lang=en&

We spent part of the summer of 2023 in Martinique for Ruth’s latest field work/research, and then I had a full month (!) as a visiting researcher at the
Département de communication, at the Université de Montréal, where I have worked on research with colleagues at the Paperology–A Reading and Activity Group (PAPG), based at the Artefact Lab, there. I divided my time between there at look at the archives at the Osler Library of the History of Medicine, at McGill. For the latter, I was funded by a generous travel grant (the Dr. Dimitrije Pivnick Award in Neuro and Psychiatric History — thank you, Canadian colleagues!). Ruth had a chance to write up her work and work on her (Québécois) French. My newsroom history book was also reissued in the fall in paperback; you can see my latest review here, in The Journal of American History.

In September, I got to attend the Future of Journalism conference in Cardiff, Wales, and shared some of the research-in-progress from Ruth and I’s (though honestly it was mostly all Ruth) visit to the Caribbean. Here’s a picture of the boys and I on a work one night after Ruth got back from one of her field-site visits and I had typed up some field notes. It felt like quite the traveling year, as I also squeezed in a trip in mid-August to see my brother in Brisbane (and get a sneak peak at the Gold Coast, where ICA will be this June), and earlier in the summer, before our trip to Martinique/Montreal, we went to see Ruth’s family in Colorado and I did a quick trip to Toronto for ICA there. Ruth did AEJMC solo this year, so she could have a bit of a break, before … Eleanor arrived in December! Both mom and baby are doing great, and she’s on family leave this spring semester (I’m on partial FMLA, so just have my grad media-law class, though we both have our committee/service work to do, too).

Here’s us (including Roux, of course) in Montreal from this past summer — we had a chance to spent a great deal of time when not working on Mont-Royal Avenue (which is closed to car traffic in the summer; Theo’s face is partially blocked out for his privacy, like some sort of Special Forces soldier, since this blog is public facing — and I’ll not post photos of Eleanor on here, in a similar way, until she’s a bit older :).

We both taught overloads in the fall — so three classes each, with one of them being in the Ogden Honors College (in my case, a course on propaganda in WW2; Ruth taught one on international communication); it was fun, but a lot, and we’re looking forward to a quieter spring with the new kid in the house. We’re also looking forward to spending more time in CO this summer and to visiting Australia for ICA, and Philly for AEJMC.

Based on my track record of very erratic posting, I can’t promise I’ll have another update soon, but I’ll at least keep up these yearly recaps. In the meantime, check out Ruth’s scholarship on her Google scholar profile, and my work on mine. Take care!