In our multiple or singular roles as faculty, staff, students, administrators, and/or alumni of colleges and universities, we must intentionally and urgently integrate antiracist approaches into all levels and all aspects of film and media education. The need has long been there; the pandemic, coupled with the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd and continuing institutional violence against Black, Indigenous, Asian, Latinx and other people of color, have further laid bare the longstanding inequalities and oppressive forces that divide members of our society into hierarchies of power, access, and opportunity. As readers of this journal are certainly aware, these systemic erasures and acts of violence take tangible form in the mythologies replicated in popular film and media. For these reasons, the teaching of film and media, in particular, demand a critical pedagogy that dismantles and deconstructs these oppressive semiotic regimes in order to imagine a just and equitable world and to create an educational space where students of all identities, backgrounds, and abilities can thrive as they develop their critical voices and creative visions.

EDIT Media (Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Teaching Media) was founded in 2017 as an inclusive teaching initiative driven by university and college faculty, staff, and students working in film and media departments and programs across North America. Our mission is to effect both pedagogical and administrative change in our academic fields to produce and engender educational experiences that are equitable, just, supportive, and engaged for all students and for all faculty.

Our first publication, “EDIT 10: Best Practices for Inclusive Teaching in Media Production,” grew out of surveys and focus groups with faculty and students in film and media production from around the United States Over the last five years, this document has been widely adopted by film and media faculty and departments alike, including at American University, University of New Mexico, University of Washington-Tacoma, University of Denver, Southern Oregon University, UNC-Wilmington, Bowling Green State University, and UC Santa Cruz.[1] Based on this research, we have also designed research-based documents that help administrators (the “EDIT 5”) and students (the “Student 7”) support inclusive teaching and learning. We are in the process of developing a similar document for film and media studies.

In an effort to make inclusive teaching and administrative strategies as accessible and actionable as possible, our website offers guides and other resources to support inclusive teaching and leadership, including sample syllabi, assignments, homework assignments, and links to video clips that address common filmmaking concepts and terms from films created by a diverse array of filmmakers.

In the Summer of 2020, we were moved by the many voices of faculty who were seeking support, solace, and community as we all tried to imagine the Fall term. Alongside a viral pandemic, a pandemic of racism raged. Antiracist inclusive pedagogy is an evolving process, not something we have reached as an end goal.[2] Antiracist teaching and learning grows and branches as past and current events and conditions change locally, regionally, globally. In a matter of weeks, COVID-19 had radically transformed the landscape and common practices of higher education across the globe. As institutions struggled to adapt to the financial and curricular impacts of this pandemic and rapidly shift to remote teaching, the vast disparities among and between communities of students, faculty, administrators, and staff that have long existed were brought into stark relief. Millions gathered in global protest after the world watched the killing of George Floyd on video screens. George Floyd and Breonna Taylor’s murders became symbols of deep-seated systematic oppression and institutional violence against Black people and other communities of color. This new reality created an increased urgency to implement equitable and inclusive practices in the classroom. Faculty, departments, colleges and universities could not–and many would not–move forward pretending education would go on as business as usual.

As two white cis-gendered women who wanted to foster change within our own identity group and beyond, we decided that EDIT Media was our work to do. We wanted to bring faculty together across divides, and to collectively work through and formulate a response to these unprecedented events. Together and with the support of so many folks—including but not limited to all those within this collection—we facilitated a year-long community of practice for film and media faculty across North America focused on developing inclusive and antiracist teaching interventions and holding difficult conversations around dismantling oppressive structures in higher education and in the film and media industries.[3] Within days, 180 people signed up to participate and Pledge the EDIT 10. As part of the workshop curriculum, we organized two public panels on antiracist film and media education that generated overwhelming participation: one of scholars and practitioners representing multiple approaches to media education, and one of students sharing their perspectives about their own media education. Together, more than 500 people registered for these events, which speaks to the urgency educators were feeling about how to integrate antiracist practices and principles into their pedagogies. We are grateful that some of the presenters from those events agreed to expand their thoughts in the articles we share here in this issue of Teaching Media.

Practices of antiracist pedagogy have long existed in film and media, but they have not always been acknowledged or respected. Faculty, departments, and programs are regularly required to assess learning outcomes and to provide examples of actionable changes made to improve and encourage students' matriculation rates and educational goals. We see tool-building for antiracist film and media pedagogy and peer-based co-education from faculty to faculty as concrete examples of how to bring about transformative change in our fields of study and in our institutions. The last seven years have turned a growing community into what we hope is a groundswell toward transformational change in our disciplines and in the lives of our students.

This collection of articles offers a broad range of approaches, perspectives, and practical applications to antiracist pedagogy in media education representing scholars, practitioners, and students. They come from a variety of institutions, teaching ranks, and geographical locations. There are many more voices and experiences that aren’t captured here which are vital to this conversation. So rather than seeing this as a completed dossier, we consider this as another chapter of the long conversation that we must continue to have with our colleagues, our students, our administrators, our alumni, and ourselves about antiracism. Together, this issue is one answer to the urgent call for support by educators, for educators, and with educators in our field.

Jennifer Proctor is a filmmaker and scholar whose internationally recognized, award-winning appropriation work deconstructs the history of experimental film, conventional cinematic language, and the intersectional representation of women in cinema. She is Associate Professor of Journalism and Media Studies, University of Michigan-Dearborn Her films have screened at such venues as the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Edinburgh Film Festival, Fantastic Fest, Ann Arbor Film Festival, South by Southwest, and Athens International Film Festival. Her scholarly publications have appeared in Screen, Jump Cut, The Short Film Journal, and the JCMS Teaching Dossier. She is Director and co-founder of EDIT Media. Along with her colleague Miranda Banks, she won the 2022 SCMS Innovative Pedagogy Award for her work with EDIT Media and Pledge the EDIT 10.

Miranda Banks is Associate Professor and Acting Chair of Film, Television, and Media Studies at Loyola Marymount University. She is the author of The Writers: A History of American Screenwriters and Their Guild (Rutgers 2015) and co-editor of the collections Production Studies (Routledge, 2009) and Production Studies, The Sequel (Routledge, 2015). Her scholarship has appeared in such journals as Feminist Media Histories, Television and New Media, Cultural Studies, Popular Communication, and Media Industries. She is Co-Director and co-founder of EDIT Media. Along with her colleague Jennifer Proctor, she won the 2022 SCMS Innovative Pedagogy Award for her work with EDIT Media and Pledge the EDIT 10.

1. This list of committed institutions has changed and we hope will continue to grow. If you as a department or program have adopted the EDIT 10 or would like to work with us to consider adoption or partnership, please contact us at EDITMediaProject at gmail dot com. ↑

2. While for our event in 2021, we used the term anti-racist pedagogy, here all of us as authors use the unhyphenated word “antiracism.” We understand that the language is evolving and even within JCMS, it is more common to see the hyphenation. We decided to follow the shifting trend towards using the compound word, in line with the National Museum of African American History and Culture. ↑

3. We want to express our gratitude and appreciation to Assistant Professor Leah Aldridge for her visioning around the pledge structure. Our thanks as well to Associate Professor and Executive Director of the Nate Parker Film and Theatre Conservatory Vaun Monroe for his contributions to our pedagogy panel. ↑