My path to teaching undergraduates has not been the wunderkind-to-terminal-degree-to-tenure-track-professor route that tradition might dictate. Instead, I started my career in higher education as a department assistant at Emerson College. After a handful of production gigs, I sought this position so I could take advantage of the employee tuition benefit to earn my MA degree. I then advanced up the staff ladder until I became an academic advisor to our Visual and Media Arts students. Somewhere along the way, Emerson earned MFA accreditation which motivated me to seek the terminal degree. In that pursuit, I continued my full-time work as an academic advisor in order to finance round two of graduate school. I am now in my sixth year of teaching media production undergraduates and my fifteenth year as a higher education administrator. I have found that my professional experience as both staff and faculty has significantly affected my perception of higher education and, ultimately, my approach to teaching.

As an academic advisor, I spend my days reviewing degree programs with undergraduates. Over the years, I have observed two common patterns. First, production students rarely know how to apply theoretical lessons to their artistic practice, leading to a disconnect in their creative exploration of social justice concepts. Second, instructors often fail to consider the barriers to success that students face both inside and outside the classroom. Because students of color face substantially more barriers to success than their white peers, this negligence becomes a matter of social justice.[1] Both of these common patterns highlight for me the need for applied social justice—the integration of social justice theory into active, intentional practice. Enacting social justice in the film and media classroom compels faculty to teach students to apply theories of social justice to their creative practice. It also requires that we apply the principles of social justice to our own pedagogical practice.

Teaching students with intention means that we must formally provide them with opportunities to apply theories of social justice to their creative practice. Film and media undergraduate programs often exhibit a pronounced curricular divide between theory and practice; courses are one or the other, faculty are hired as one or the other, degree requirements are one or the other, and assignments are anchored in one or the other. The more pronounced this programmatic divide, the more it feeds a mental divide in students, especially those in production. Often, production students simply do not recognize the symbiotic relationship between theory and practice.

When I began advising at Emerson, I saw excellent practice-based courses in every area of production. I also saw excellent theory-based courses that highlighted social justice filmmaking and screened the work of BIPOC, women, LGBTQIA+ makers, and filmmakers with disabilities. While exposing students to a diverse canon is an excellent start, the common curricular and cognitive disconnect between theory and practice presented little opportunity for students to add to that diverse canon. It seemed clear to me that students were interested in purpose-driven work, but I did not often see students making purpose-driven work. There was no curricular home for its production.

To address this, I created a course called Feminist Media Production, an upper-level production course that is open to students of all production backgrounds: narrative fiction, documentary, experimental film, animation, and others. The primary goal of the course is to link the conceptual understanding of contemporary intersectional feminist theory to concrete artistic expression—to formally combine social justice theory and media production practice. The course is organized into five theoretical spheres that function as a curricular unit that guides lectures, discussions, and screenings:

As each sphere begins, students are provided a substantial pool of theoretical readings. In my mind, feminism is not feminism unless it is intersectional, so the readings I provide center on how race, ability, class, religion, etc. intersect with feminist concepts at hand. Students comb through all associated readings, and select the one that most resonates. In response to their selected reading, students produce a two- to three-minute film or video and present it to the class. After the screening of each project, makers discuss how their selected reading shaped their artistic process. Students explore not only their perspective, but also the perspective of the reading. Because students share how their identity experiences relate to the reading, students functionally become peer instructors. This model is repeated for each sphere, resulting in five distinct production assignments. The course concludes with a freeform final project and public group screening, with each student taking on exhibition planning roles such as programming, event marketing, and technical execution.

The curricular framework of Feminist Media Production compels the repeated application of social justice principles to media production practices. The frequency of production and the emphasis on sharing the work publicly develops students as theoretically-informed makers, and directly grows the body of work made in this topic area. While the course results in intersectional feminist work, its model is transferrable and easily adapted to center on other social justice concepts such as antiracist or disability media. Beyond engaging the pedagogical notion of reiterative practice, the repeated application of theory to practice provides students with a functional cognitive pattern for future creativity. The result is a lasting impact that empowers students with direct experience in creating media that is rooted in notions of equity and justice.

Faculty cannot repeat the same mistake that students make in failing to connect theory and practice. Building and maintaining an inclusive classroom environment requires us to deeply consider how our approach to teaching impacts those we teach. In Creating Significant Learning Experiences, Dee Fink states that providing the “right level of challenge and the right kind of support needed” is critical for meaningful learning.[2] As faculty, it is our responsibility to both stretch our students’ capacities and ensure they feel empowered to succeed. While many of us may strike the balance between challenging and supporting our students inside the classroom, how many of us fully comprehend how that balance is experienced after they walk out the classroom door?

The American Council on Education’s recent report on race and ethnicity in higher education shows that students of color make up more than 45% of the undergraduate population, but graduation rates are not keeping up.[3] Students of color also experience “greater levels of unmet mental health needs relative to white students”.[4] Black students in particular have higher dropout rates and lower six-year completion rates than any other racial group. Black students also have more student debt and lower starting salaries than other graduates of similar ages.[5] Clearly our students of color are experiencing challenges that outweigh their available support.

So many of my advising appointments center on the roadblocks and frustrations that students face. I hear what they hate, I hear who they hate, I hear it all. Overwhelmingly, the most common concern that students express is the lack of financial and institutional resources, an obstacle that disproportionately affects marginalized populations. In 2020-2021, the average budget for a single year of attendance at a four-year public institution was $26,820 for in-state students and $43,280 for out-of-state students.[6] For students attending private colleges, the average yearly cost was $54,880.[7] When the lowest average cost of a college degree is $100,000 and can easily exceed $200,000, students and their families are sacrificing substantially for higher education. As graduation rates suggest, these sacrifices are often unsustainable, particularly for students of color. While instructors may not have control over astronomical tuition costs, integrating considerations of social justice into teaching and mentorship methodology can help meet these untenable challenges and provide a more inclusive film and media education to every student.

Below I offer three strategies that have made a difference for the students I teach and advise:

Consider the financial impact of how you teach

Truly inclusive teaching requires that we ensure universal access and benefit. To root out unnecessary barriers, consider class and socioeconomic diversity as you develop your courses. Whenever possible, focus on transferrable storytelling instead of specific production tools such as prohibitively expensive cameras. This will empower students to be lifelong creators, even after they no longer have access to resources provided by the institution. Screen impactful work that was produced inexpensively and explicitly discuss the ways it can serve as a production model. Assess and adjust where possible the cost of your assignments, both the financial cost of required consumables such as film stock and memory cards, and the time cost for those who need to be on-campus for all post-production. Consider the significantly increased challenge of completing a project when a student can only work on it when the on-campus lab is open. Recognize the investment your students make to take your class and do what you can to deliver on their investment. Do you offer something valuable in every lecture? Education is expensive; do what you can to make it feel worth the investment.

Tailor your mentorship

Applied social justice in mentorship means recognizing that advice is not universal. Colorblind, genderblind, and classblind mentorship does not work. Ask questions of your students to better understand their life circumstances and tailor your mentorship conversations accordingly. For example, hearing that an internship is mandatory for professional success is wildly disempowering for the student who does not have the financial or personal circumstances that would allow them to accept unpaid work. Directly address systemic barriers your students may face so they can grow better prepared to navigate them. If you feel unequipped to openly discuss systemic racism, sexism, ableism, etc., request training from your institution so that you can avoid referring students to the one or two faculty members that look like them. Those colleagues are likely already overloaded.[8]

Know your institutional resources

Students of color often face structural barriers to success that white students do not. Institutional resources that can help students overcome these barriers typically exist, but support staff cannot reach students in the direct way that instructors can. Know the support resources available at your institution so that you can guide students to make use of them. What resources exist at your institution for student retention? Do student assistance funds exist? Where is your accessibility office located? Do you have a multicultural center? Where can international students receive support? Where can students go for assistance with academic and career planning? Where can students connect with extracurricular groups that provide a social network for historically marginalized populations? What mental and spiritual health services are available? Does your institution offer specialized support for first generation students? Know available resources and regularly encourage your students to seek support early and often.

As scholars and practitioners, we tend to have a laser-like focus on our own specialized fields. As I have contemplated the full scope of the student experience, I have seen how this singular focus results in missed opportunities. We can talk about social justice incessantly, but until its principles are put into active practice by both students and instructors, such conversations make little practical difference. Applied social justice requires that we enact inclusive pedagogical strategies that empower both privileged and historically-marginalized student groups. We must apply our knowledge and experience to how we act in the world and we must teach our students to do the same. Otherwise, our stated commitment to social justice is merely performative.

Colleen Kelly Poplin is an instructor and academic advisor at Emerson College. Her documentary work and the most recent syllabus and reading list for Feminist Media Production can be found at colleenkellypoplin.com.

1. Lorelle L. Espinosa, Jonathan M. Turk, Morgan Taylor, and Hollie M. Chessman, Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education: A Status Report (Washington, DC: American Council on Education, 2019). ↑

2. L. Dee Fink, Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses (San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2013), 171. ↑

3. Lorelle L. Espinosa, Jonathan M. Turk, Morgan Taylor, and Hollie M. Chessman, Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education: A Status Report (Washington, DC: American Council on Education, 2019). ↑

4. Sarah Ketchen Lipson, Adam Kern, Daniel Eisenberg, Alfiee M. Breland-Noble, “Mental Health Disparities Among College Students of Color,” Journal of Adolescent Health 63, no. 3 (2018): 348-356, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2018.04.014. ↑

5. Sarah Brown, “Nearly Half of Undergraduates Are Students of Color. But Black Students Lag Behind.,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 14, 2019, https://www.chronicle.com/article/nearly-half-of-undergraduates-are-students-of-color-but-black-students-lag-behind/. ↑

6. Jennifer Ma, Matea Pender, and CJ Libassi, Trends in College Pricing and Student Aid 2020 (New York: College Board, 2020). ↑

7. Ibid. ↑

8. Padilla, A. M. (1994). Ethnic minority scholars, research, and mentoring: Current and future issues. Educational Researcher, 23, 24–27. doi:10.3102/0013189X023004024 ↑