ABIDE committee announces 2023 funding recipients

By Beth Hatcher

The ABIDE (Access, Belonging, Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity) committee at the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media recently announced the recipients of its 2023 grants, which will fund a host of diverse projects and activities for the school’s faculty, students and staff.

Trevy McDonald, associate dean of ABIDE, called the grants foundational to ABIDE’s mission. “These grants allow our school community to receive a wealth of knowledge and expertise our students might not otherwise have an opportunity to meet,” McDonald said. 

DEI Guest Speaker Fund — Chad Heartwood

Heartwood, an associate professor at UNC Hussman, will be using ABIDE funding to pay stipends for two women of color to speak in his classes and during a PhotoNight event, which is open to all students and the general public. Sophia Nahli Allison, filmmaker, photographer and graduate of the school’s master’s program, will join the “MEJO 681: Documentary Projects” class on Feb. 22, 2023. Allison is the director of the HBO Films documentary "Eyes on the Prize: Hallowed Ground" (2021) and "A Love Song for Latasha" (2019), nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject.

Daniella Zalcman, a photographer whose work focuses on the legacies of western colonization, is the founder of Women Photograph, a nonprofit working to elevate the voices of women and nonbinary visual journalists. Zalcman will present in class and host a PhotoNight on April 12, 2023. 

“As I’ve become more aware of issues around implicit bias and representation of people of color in media, I have examined many of my lectures and re-engineered them to reflect a more holistic view of people, to counter racist stereotypes, and to include more people of color as guest speakers in the classroom to broaden student perspectives and to empower students of color as they see people who look like them in leadership roles,” Heartwood said. “This opportunity, offered by ABIDE, to pay speakers of color a stipend for their time and effort is a gesture of respect and recognition of what they have to offer our students.”

DEI Conference Travel & Professional Development Fund — Stephanie Willen Brown

Brown, director of the school’s Park Library, will use the funding to attend the biennial conference of the Association of College & Research Libraries. 

A host of speakers draw Brown to the conference, held March 15-18, 2023, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, such as Rebecca Nagle, an award-winning advocate, writer and citizen of the Cherokee Nation whose writing about Native American representation and tribal sovereignty has been featured in The Washington Post, The Guardian, USA Today, Teen Vogue, Huffington Post and more. Public policy veteran Heather McGhee will talk about her work promoting solutions to inequality in America. McGhee’s book “The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together” spent 10 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Brown’s Carolina colleague Michelle Cronquist, a special collections cataloger for UNC Libraries, will lead a panel discussion addressing biases and offensive terms in Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) titled “There’s no Library of Congress Subject Heading for the Middle Passage or the Great Migration?: African American Subject Headings and the Remediation of LCSH.”

Student Organization DEI Event Fund — Xpressions Club/Magazine

Xpressions, a fashion club founded in 2021, will apply ABIDE funding to host an event with a local fashion photographer. 

The club is associated with Carolina FashionMash program and is an opportunity for students who may not be in the UNC Hussman advertising/public relations track or who have already taken all the school’s FashionMash class offerings to keep a hand in the world of fashion. 

“The Xpressions students designed the event to have multiple touch-points. Their visitor will do a photo technique / model-directing workshop, a networking session and help advise on a live Xpressions shoot,” said Professor of the Practice Dana McMahan, the groups faculty adviser. “This funding is important because it will help our group further explore the importance of diversity in fashion,” said Nicholas Fantauzzi ’23, a co-founder of Xpressions. “It’s important that fashion is inclusive of all types of people — that comes from where you come from or looks like what you look like.”

Research/Professional/Creative Grant — Clay Williams

Williams, a master’s student at the school, will use his funds towards recruiting a representative sample needed for his survey research in a project exploring how stereotypes of gay male characters in entertainment media affect gay male viewers. Williams will measure the participants’ emotional affect and feelings of body image change when being exposed to different stereotypical portrayals.

“This project means a lot to me because I identify as a gay male. Growing up, I have felt and seen how stereotypes of gay men in media, especially television and movies, can affect our moods and how we perceive our bodies. Combined with the fact that only about 12% of characters in entertainment media identify as LGBTQ+, most of which are minor roles, we — as a community — don't have a lot of exposure to others similar to us,” Williams said. “Funding sources like the one coming from ABIDE are important to research in general because having access to research funds can advance the quality and amount of research scholars can conduct. These types of projects require funding so that we can recruit a higher quality pool of participants more efficiently through a panel company.”