The Department of Cinema and Media Studies is home to two academic journals: Feminist Media Histories (editor-in-chief, Jennifer Bean) and the Journal of Chinese Cinemas (editor-in-chief Yomi Braester). Department Chair Stephen Groening sat down with some previous managing editors of FMH – Kallie Strode (2021-2022), Cain Miller (2024-2025), and Ben Coldwell (2025-2026) – to talk about the experience of working at the journal while being a PhD student in the department.
[transcript has been lightly edited for clarity]
Stephen Groening: “Tell me about your favorite part of working at FMH.”
Cain Miller: “During my time at FMH, I accomplished, I think, some of my best writing with my dissertation. […] I was able to engage with such a wide array of scholarship. As someone whose research revolves around gender and sexuality studies, I was just reading so many fruitful pieces that were related to what I was doing. And so, just immersing myself in this dialogue, immersing myself in this research, just made for a very stimulating position to be in as I was going about my own writing and research.”
Kallie Strode: “[…] it also lent some comfortability to taking risks, especially during the third year of my degree and applying to more CFPs, because the veil over academic processes of writing was sort of unpeeled in a way that I probably would not have been able to access otherwise, so I felt more empowered to take those risks […] and getting out there as a writer.”
CM: “That’s another great point. I mean, in being managing editor for a journal, you kind of get to see how the sausage is made when it comes to how academic publications work. And it makes… it kind of demystifies the entire process when it comes to applying to CFPs, submitting to journals, things like that. I makes the whole thing less-”
KS: “Threatening.”
CM: “Mysterious.”
Ben Coldwell: “I was just thinking that it’s really nice to be in contact with a much larger ecosystem of faculty literally all around the world at all different points in their career… Just, you know, a diverse group of universities. It helps you feel that there is… there’s a world outside your department that you could imagine.”
SG: “Can you maybe talk a little about what a typical day entails?”
BC: “Often I am working with two to three different issues at different phases of publication at a time. And so it goes, you literally follow these issues from the very beginning, call for papers through the copyediting phase, where you collect all the materials, into the compositing phase where manuscripts get turned into polished PDFs to go on the FMH website. […] And you are the primary interlocutor at every step with the guest editors. It’s a fully guest-edited journal at this point, with Professor Bean as the editor-in-chief sort of overlooking and helping along, shepherding along, all of the pieces with the authors and the guest editors.”
KS: “I do remember it was a good practice, in creating the newsletter, or sort of email that goes out, looking at that editor’s introduction and kind of piecing together, collaging together, parts that felt relevant to sending out that mass newsletter because you would kind of collage the introduction to make something accessible to the average reader.”
CM: “Yeah, it also allows you to be creative as well in the position, particularly when it comes to the marketing. Something that FMH does is that when a special issue is published, they’ll make the introduction free to access even if you don’t have university access to it. But then every few weeks, every two weeks or so, they’ll make a different article free to read on the FMH website. Something I found very fruitful in the position was kind of curating what pieces are made free.”
KS: “I also remember there was kind of an effort to make winners of the graduate student writing contests free as well, so students gain more exposure in an otherwise, you know, worthwhile publication and get exposure that way.”
[Editor’s note: FMH publishes the winners of the SCMS Gender and Feminisms Caucus Student Writing Contest. Managing editors facilitate and organize the jury and selection of the winners.]
SG: “Are there any other aspects of the position you want people to know about?”
BC: “It’s nice to get a glimpse of a related but not strictly academic type of job working with the people at the press. There are ways to be involved in [academia] besides strictly research and teaching. There are so many jobs in this world where you’re creating something bad. And I have always felt that FMH is something that’s net positive for the world, that you are involved in putting out. I think it’s highly unusual, honestly.”
KS: “So maybe it’s like a soft launch into a potential, like, alt-ac position.”
CM: “Then I’ll also say one of my favorite things from the position was simply the people you meet and the connections you make in the position, because, I mean, with each special issue you’re communicating with 10 to 15 authors, give or take, and these are fellow academics, you know, whether they are working at institutions or they’re independent scholars. Just meeting them and conversing with them and helping them with the publication process is very beneficial. And it’s also just nice... when I go to SCMS, I will, you know, I won’t recognize someone’s face. I’ll recognize their name on their name tag, and vice versa. They’ll recognize my name tag, and we’ll be like, ‘oh you published in FMH’ and we chatted, you know, a million times via email but now we get to meet in person. And that’s you know, it’s nice on a professional level, because you’re networking, but it’s also nice on a personal level. You know, academia can be very isolating. It’s kind of going back to what Ben was saying. It’s sometimes hard to view academia outside of your own department and so meeting with and networking with people from other institutions; it’s very gratifying to meet other folks who are also dedicating their lives to teaching.”
BC: “I’ll just also say that Professor Bean is a wonderful person to work directly for. Very communicative, very gracious-”
KS: “Detail-oriented.”
BC: “Oh my gosh, detail-oriented. And you never feel any sort of, I don’t know, punishment coming down on you. There’s no fear in your role that it you make a mistake, you’re going to be punished.”
KS: “I felt trusted from the get-go. I just felt very trusted.”
CM: “I echo all of that. Professor Bean is great to work with, and since the journal also does special issue CFPs, she’s very good about curating the folks who work with the journal and the folks she feels are going to be like pleasant to work with. You could say she’s very good at having like supportive people involved in the journal at every process.”
BC: “And I guess one more thing, that may have shifted a bit, at least since Kallie was involved. It’s the journal is increasingly much more multimodal, multimedia. There are always at least three peer-reviewed, full-length research articles. But beyond that we are open to videographic criticism, creative work, short essays. I think we have zine coming down the pipeline.”
SG: “Wow. That’s very cool. Awesome. Well, thank you all. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me.”