New Faculty Q&A: Catherine Martin

This summer, the Tufts Film and Media Studies program welcomed new lecturer Catherine Martin to its faculty. Beyond her work at Tufts and as a Ph.D. candidate at Boston University, Martin currently works with the Radio Preservation Task Force, a project of the Library of Congress, to preserve and identify its collection. The Tufts Daily sat down with Dr. Martin to discuss her background, her thoughts on the necessity of media literacy and what led her to Tufts.

The Tufts Daily (TD): To start off, can you tell us about yourself?

Catherine Martin (CM): I am a Ph.D. candidate at Boston University (BU). I am from California and I study media history, specifically gender in media. I am interested in this period right after World War II when there are a couple of transitions. There is a social transition, because after WWII, during the Cold War, there was something that we call containment culture where everyone was really worried about getting blown up by nuclear bombs and there had been a depression and world war and things had been chaotic. In the U.S., everyone just wants everything to be nice and calm. A lot of people wanted it, so we think this is really a calm and quiet period, and it wasn’t really, but most of the social disruption was pushed underneath the surface. So I am looking at the media of the time to see how those disruptions, like women who wanted to work, were represented on a media that was fairly conservative overall.

TD: What aspect of Tufts are you most excited about?

CM: I have taught in a few different places. I have taught in BU, [California State University, East Bay] in Hayward, [Calif.] I just find that Tufts students [are] really engaged, socially aware, very interested in the world around them, which, I mean, as someone who studies popular media, I think it’s really important, and it’s really great to see people actually thinking about taking a TV class not just, “oh I get to watch TV,” but as a way to understand the world around them. People like make fun of people who study TV because, you know, it’s just watching TV; but there’s a reason we study TV and it’s to think about how the world around us is represented. And I really find Tufts students get that in a way that students haven’t in other universities that I’ve taught. It’s great. I love Boston. I was living in California for about five years before I came back for this job right in long distance. So I am really excited to be back in this academic community. When I was doing my research before my interview, I saw there’s a podcast network and a radio station [at Tufts], all these different parts of the university I’ve had time to really look into them and get involved. Unfortunately, I am only here for a year, so I don’t know how much I will get to get involved in with that. It’s really inspiring because of these students, looking outside of themselves and figuring out what they want to do, even at school using the knowledge they’ve learned in hands-on ways.

TD: Why do you want to teach Intro to Media & Culture Theory (FMS-0054) here?

CM: I think, in this era especially, the political climate that we have, for better or worse in this country, has made people understand the media better in the way that people didn’t understand before, even just like four or five years ago. But that’s always been why I wanted to teach media — to look at the way that media shapes us and help people understand the way that media shapes us. My stepmom used to pick park ads when I was growing up. So I was always aware of the messages that we are taking in. I was aware of what people are trying to sell me and how different types of media talk to people. I think it is really important to teach that to other people because we are living in a media world. We are surrounded. 

TD: What would you like to accomplish by the end of the semester?

CM: What I tell my students on the first day of class is that I come in with my own very specific point of view, but I am not here to teach students what to think. I am here to help them learn how to think for themselves. I am here to help them be with the tools. What I want to accomplish is, when I see their final papers or their final projects, to see they’re looking at the media and thinking about the way that that specific media, TV show or radio show, thinking [about] them with a certain point of view. And I want them to think with that point of view and why that point of view is coming across. I mean, it’s basic media literacy, but there are a lot of what you just call basic media literacy, that just bosses over everything that goes into it.

TD: Will you incorporate global perspectives into your course?

CM: It’s always a hard thing for TV because there’s language barriers, and it’s been hard to just watch TV from another country. It’s hard to get your hands on TV from another country through a class that is very U.S.-centric. But it’s just not the way it is. It’s not the way [the] world is. I do try to incorporate, not just on one single day but throughout the course, international perspectives on TV. The way that usually happens in American media classes is by talking about how the U.S. has used TV and other media as soft power internationally. But it’s also important to notice how international influences are coming into the U.S., especially more and more since the 60s. Now we got shows like “Jane the Virgin” (2014–2019). Most of the formats of reality shows that we have are from other countries. The format is created in a different country. I really tried to incorporate that into my class to make sure that we are not just thinking about U.S. media.

TD: What would you say to students who are thinking about or are already pursuing a degree in film and media studies?

CM: [Laughs] Excellent taste. No, I think it’s really important no matter what they end up doing; I find a lot of undergraduate students especially are thinking about going into production. Sometimes they think about production and theory as being two separate things, and they don’t need to know all these media studies, history theories stuff because they just want to make movies. But it’s really important, when you are in that industry, to understand how it got the way it is, and why it is the way it is and also what tools you can use to tell your message. So I think just, history matters. History may not necessarily repeat itself, but it rhymes.

TD: Is there anything else you would like to share about yourself? Like a fun fact?

CM: I wasn’t allowed to watch TV growing up until I was 12. I thought our local radio was the only radio station. So, you know, never too late to start watching TV all the time.