Published: Aug. 31, 2016
Angie Chuang

The听Hearst听Professional-in-Residence program provides fellowships for professionals to visit CU-Boulder each semester and provide helpful lessons and advice to students and faculty. Its purpose is to introduce nationally known, accomplished professionals to our students to enrich their studies.

The program is funded by the William Randolph听Hearst听Foundation.

2016 Professional听Angie Chuang听is an associate professor of journalism at American University鈥檚 School of Communication in Washington, D.C. Her research and teaching focus on race and media. She was an award-winning reporter for听The Hartford Courant, the听Los Angeles Times听补苍诲听The Oregonian, where she launched one of the first regional newspaper race beats.

Race, Violence and 'Sincerely Yours:' Letter-writing as a narrative response to the news

  • 顿补迟别:听Sept. 7, 2016
  • 罢颈尘别:听5:00 p.m.
  • 尝辞肠补迟颈辞苍:听Humanities 1B80

When news of racially motivated police shootings, hate crimes and bitter campus protests permeated Angie Chuang's class on race and journalism at American University, the issues felt too emotional and volatile to address only with traditional reporting assignments or academic analysis. Chuang led her 19 students on an experimental exercise: randomly select a name鈥擬ichael Brown, Tamir Rice, Vincent Chin, NYPD officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu鈥攐f someone who lost their life in racially motivated violence, then research and write a personal letter to the deceased. The simple exercise grew into a student-produced, self-published book, 鈥淕asping for Air: Letters About Race and Social Injustice.鈥

The letters provide insights into the power of personal narrative in confronting and learning about race, violence and other urgent and challenging issues. In disciplines that are actively wrestling with the roles of objectivity, first-person narrative and appropriate (or profitable) forms of news delivery vs. storytelling, what can the deceptively simple act of composing a letter tell us?

The letters will be read by Chuang and her former student听D. Ashley Campbell鈥攁 PhD student in media studies at 澳门开奖结果2023开奖记录鈥攚ho participated in the letter-writing project.

Campbellholds an MA in Journalism and Public Affairs from American University and an MA in religious studies from the University of Chicago Divinity School. She has interned at Interfaith Voices, the independent public radio show, and has written for听The Washington Post.