Oral Historian Rivas-Rodriguez Challenges Ken Burns Documentary at IU Kokomo Campus Feb. 27
February 6, 2008
Indiana University Kokomo will be hosting a lecture by Dr. Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez entitled Taking the Lessons to Heart: The Latino Challenge to the PBS/Ken Burns Documentary on WWII in Kresge Auditorium on February 27, 2008, at 7 p.m. IU Kokomo’s History and Political Science Club and The American Democracy Project are sponsoring her visit to campus.
Rivas-Rodriguez began teaching in the University of Texas at Austin journalism school in 1998, armed with more than 17 years of daily news experience, mostly as a reporter for the Boston Globe, WFAA-TV in Dallas, and the Dallas Morning News. Her most recent professional work was for the Morning News state desk as chief of the border bureau, based in El Paso, covering Border States.
Her research interests include the intersection of oral history and journalism regarding U.S. Latinos and the news media, both as producers of news and as consumers. Since 1999, Rivas-Rodriguez has spearheaded the US Latino and Latina World War II Oral History Project (http://www.lib.utexas.edu/ww2latinos/) that collected interviews with over 630 men and women throughout the country. The project has several components: a newspaper; academic/general interest conferences and symposia; books based on themes that have emerged in the interviews, as well as one summarizing 425 interviews; a play (through Arizona State University Public Events and the University of Texas' Performing Arts Center); a photographic exhibit; and educational materials. The centerpiece is the video and photographic archive. The project is self-supporting and has enjoyed support from the Austin American-Statesman and the San Antonio Express-News, and has received financial contributions from several foundations, corporations, and hundreds of individual donors.
Rivas-Rodriguez was on the committee that organized and founded the National Association of Hispanic Journalists in 1982. She founded two of the NAHJs most successful student projects: a convention newspaper produced by college students and professionals and a nationwide high school writing contest. The convention newspaper has become the model for most other industry organizations (ASNE, NABJ, AJA) as a way to develop mentoring relationships and to train students.
She received her Ph.D. as a Freedom Forum doctoral fellow from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1998. Rivas-Rodriguez received her master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism in 1977. She received a bachelor of journalism degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1976.
Contact the IU Kokomo Office of Communication and Marketing at 765-455-9579 or email efaunce@iuk.edu for more information about Dr. Rivas-Rodriguez’s lecture.
