Invisible Wins

Abstract

Feminist media pedagogy produces ripple effects that are unpredictable and expansive. The practices of research and production create relationships that produce feminist engagements that can span across a lifetime, transforming as the years pass. In this audio podcast, Alexandra Juhasz (re)visits her former student Megan Cunningham, now the CEO and founder of Magnet Media, a production company and interactive marketing services firm based in New York. In 1994 Cunningham served as Juhasz's research assistant and a coproducer for her feature documentary video about the history of feminist media, Women of Vision: 18 Histories in Feminist Film and Video (1998). In this audio session, Cunningham reflects on how the values of her early production experiences translate in her current role as a leader in a male-dominated tech field. Cunningham identifies distribution as a significant game-changer enabling a new generation to bypass gatekeeping and magnify and diversify voices in the media; it seems that isolation is no longer the problem it was for Cunningham as a young woman thinking about entering the field. The two consider the role of mentors, teachers, leadership, and staffing, with Cunningham's commitments to diversity and inclusion a key lesson drawn from her formative work in feminist media history making. They discuss the speed and impact of contemporary feminist media hashtag activism and the need for its connections to more sustained forms of activism, history, and media.