Pandemic Perspective from an Adjunct

Welcome to The Academic Life. You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island, and neither are we. So we reached across our mentor network to bring you podcasts on everything from how to finish that project, to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Wish we’d bring in an expert about something? Find us on Twitter: The Academic Life @AcademicLifeNBN.

In this episode you’ll hear about: the paid and unpaid workload required of adjuncts, Dawn’s personal pandemic perspective as she had to suddenly pivot from teaching on campus to teaching online, the effect of the pivot on her students, and her love of film studies and why she’s hopeful for the future.

Our guest is: Dawn Fratini, who has nearly twenty years adjunct teaching experience at the community college and college level. She is currently an adjunct professor at Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts where she teaches courses in Film History, Animation History, the Walt Disney Company, the Horror Genre and more. She hold an MFA in Screenwriting and is a PhD candidate at UCLA’s School of Film, Television and Digital Media. She researches technical labor in Hollywood and is currently completing her PhD dissertation, The Genies in the System: The Motion Picture Research Council, 1947-1960.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, a historian of women, gender, and sexuality. Christina and Dawn are members of the Friday Morning Molas, a writing group founded during the pandemic. Christina is the co-creator the Academic Life channel for NBN with Dr. Dana Malone, a channel they started during the pandemic.

Listeners to this episode might be interested in:

• Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Margaret Herrick Library, Digital Collections.
• UCLA Oral History Digital Collection.
• Media History Digital Archive.
• The Internet Archive.
• Aca-Media podcast of the Society of Cinema and Media Studies, which looks at a variety of issues in the field, including teaching during the pandemic.
• Teaching Media, which hosts an online journal on media pedagogy, and also serves as open source for sharing teaching ideas and resources.
• SCMS Precarious Labor Organization. "The Precarious Labor Organization provides community and advocacy for the Society’s members who are in positions without job security or a clear route to promotion and advancement." 
• SCMS. "The Society for Cinema and Media Studies is the leading scholarly organization in the United States dedicated to promoting a broad understanding of film, television, and related media through research and teaching grounded in the contemporary humanities tradition.”