22: "Susan Douglas"

I've often said that I love my job, and how it compliments my career plans so well.  As someone who dreams of telling stories for a living, I feel very fortunate to be able to have a job that pays me to hear the stories of fascinating people, and then share those stories with the university community.

I write for the University Record, the newspaper for staff and faculty news at U of M.  My one role at the paper is to interview interesting or newsworthy staff and faculty members and write 600-word "spotlights" about their jobs and lives.

I've had the good fortune of meeting some fascinating people, and I've taken a lot of pride in being able to tell their stories.  One in particular stands out for me, though, and it registers at number 23 on my college memories countdown: my interview with Susan Douglas.

Susan Douglas is the chair of the UM Communications Department, and a fascinating woman.  I did the story on the advice of my friend, Julie, and Prof. Douglas had so much to say that I actually interviewed her in two separate meetings.

Now, I'll let the story do the talking.  The version here is my 1200-word rough draft, before I edited and trimmed it to the 600-words for publication. The shorter, published version is available here.

            Susan Douglas was out shopping in Chicago with actress Barbara Billingsley, television’s June Cleaver, when a bartender at a restaurant recognized her as the lady on that day’s episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show.          

For someone who has made a living analyzing the mass media, there may be no better barometer of success than seeing yourself on television alongside the queen of all media herself.

Professor Douglas is an award-winning author and the Chair of the Department of Communication Studies.  She came to Michigan after teaching at the small, experimental Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. Hampshire doesn’t give students grades and focuses on projects and student-designed curriculum.

“It couldn’t have been more different,” Douglas says.

The communications department at Michigan was small, and didn’t even have women faculty when Douglas joined in 1996.  But, she embraced the opportunity to help rebuild the program.

“I fell in love with the place,” she says of the university. “I loved the people I met.  It’s a very exciting place.”

Douglas was promoted to her current position as department chair eight years ago.  Her responsibilities include planning curriculum and courses, and managing the people and finances of her department.  She was even consulted on the design of the new North Quad, where Communication Studies is headquartered.

Douglas also teaches, of course.  Her classes include an introductory-level course on the mass media and a 400-level seminar on celebrity culture.  Part of her focus is to give students a way to properly judge advertising and cultural stereotypes and assumptions.

“Young people have been surrounded by every ploy in the book,” she says. “Our goal (as a department) is to give them a language to analyze what’s around them.”

Douglas herself graduated from Elmira College in New York (she grew up in New Jersey). She earned a Master’s and a PhD from Brown University, where she first gained an interest in being a teacher.

“It’s so undervalued in our society,” she says of the teaching profession.

Douglas taught her first course while at Brown, on mass media and culture. She says it was a very popular class as no others were being offered at the time that incorporated popular culture into the conversation. This would help pave the road for much of what Douglas teaches now, both as a professor and as an author.

However, Douglas, a proud feminist, says that one of her main interests was the depiction of women’s issues in the media.

“I’ve been very interested in the roles the media play on gender, shaping our ideas about gender,” she says, “and about which kinds of women deserve our admiration and respect and which kinds don’t.”

This interest inspired her to write her first book, “Where the Girls Are,” in 1994.  She says that most books written about feminism in the 1970s and 1980s were too high-brow for a general audience.  Douglas wanted to write a book that everyone could read and enjoy, and it worked.  “Where the Girls Are” was named one of the top ten books of the year by NPR, Entertainment Weekly, and the McLaughlin Group.

In order to gain the respect of a mass audience, Douglas aimed to make the book funny, which she says would also help fight the stereotype that all feminists have no sense of humor.

“Rather than be angry about this imagery,” she says, “it’s much more powerful to be funny.”

Douglas says that since the book was published, she has received several emails from male college students thanking her and saying that she changed their minds about feminism.

“It’s so gratifying,” she says.

Douglas says she was drawn to the movement by the massive, legal, and widespread discrimination of women in the society she grew up in. Women couldn’t get credit cards, there were quotas for graduate schools, and women were underrepresented in the media.

“It was a different world,” she says. “Feminism, for me, was about having a life, being allowed to get a PhD and be a college professor instead of being told, ‘no, you can only teach first grade.’”

Her two most recent books, “The Mommy Myth,” and “Enlightened Sexism” also deal with women’s issues.  Douglas said she tries to counter the popular belief that feminism is an anti-family, anti-men movement.  The goal, she says, is simply for equality with men, but that some people still don’t understand feminism.

“It’s hard to think of a social movement that has done so much (but) has been effectively vilified by the mass media,” she says.  “Women of my generation who are professionals owe everything to feminism.”

While much of her work deals with women and the media, that’s not all Douglas focuses on.  Her second book, “Listening In,” was an award-winning account of how radio came to be what it is.

“I think radio was a crucially important medium in our society,” she says.  “I’ve been fascinated by the role it’s played in shaping all kinds of things: politics, musical tastes and cultures, (and) youth cultures.”

Douglas was also a member of the board at the Peabody Awards for six years (2004-09), and was the chair of the committee in her last year.  The Peabodys recognize excellence in television each year (a less talked about, but more selective version of the Emmys).  During her tenure, the committee, comprised of industry insiders, columnists, critics, and academics like herself, awarded news coverage of Hurricane Katrina, and popular programs like “Mad Men,” “Friday Night Lights,” and “The Sopranos.”

One of the highlights of the experience was attending the awards ceremony each year.  Douglas got to meet tennis great Billie Jean King, and the cast of “Mad Men” and “Glee.”  But she also enjoyed the board meetings where the awards were decided after months of narrowing down 1000 submissions to 35 winners.

“The conversations and debates are really interesting, and you learn a lot from people in other fields,” she says.

Douglas has also contributed to magazines, including her current monthly column in the progressive magazine “In These Times.”  She lives in Ann Arbor with her husband, T.R. Durham, who owns a smokehouse in Kerrytown, Durham’s Tracklements.  Their daughter, now studying public health at Columbia, was a 2011 Michigan graduate.

Having her daughter go to school in Ann Arbor, she says, was a great experience, even though they rarely saw each other on campus.

“It gave me a great insight into student life here.”

What moment in the classroom stands out as the most memorable?

An African-American who wore a shirt that said: “Danger: Black Man with a Brain” who was not afraid to challenge and engage me. “I loved that he was a fierce and committed student.  It was a testimony to the fact that diversity works here”

If you were selling Ann Arbor to a faculty colleague, how would you describe what it has to offer?

It has many things that (big) cities have without the hassles of commuting.

What is your favorite spot on campus?

I love the Diag, especially in the fall when there is so much going on.

What inspires you?

My students inspire me.  I love teaching undergraduates: their energy, their optimism, their openness to new ideas.

What are you currently reading?

College policies, student papers, dissertations, and magazines

Who had the greatest influence on your career path?

“Hugh Aitkin, who was on my dissertation committee and also became a mentor and close friend.  He was hugely supportive, and a role model in his writing.”