For two decades professor Amanda Frisken has been a member of the SUNY Old Westbury College, with a long-standing track record of service to OW and its students. She was recently promoted to acting dean of the School of Arts and Sciences.
Even though Dr. Frisken enjoyed being a faculty member, teaching students, and serving as department chair for several years in American Studies, she was surprised when asked to be an acting dean. “The last thing I was thinking of,” she said. “It’s not something I would have sought out.” But the college’s needs and interests through the new transition had to be a priority, therefore, she couldn’t refuse.
Dr. Frisken’s acting dean position fills the position Barbara Hillery, who was promoted to acting associate provost.
In May of 1999, Dr. Frisken received her Ph.D. from the Department of History at Stony Brook University, and immediately started teaching there. But not long after, she joined SUNY OW College in 2000 as a professor of American Studies. Since then, she has taught a range of courses in American history, society and culture such as American People I & II, the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Emergence of Modern America, and U.S. Social Movements. Being a member of OW’s faculty and being able to teach students has been a rewarding experience.
“I feel very lucky,” she said. “I love teaching here; I love Old Westbury. I had a great department, American Studies, wonderful colleagues, great students.”
She is currently focusing on the transition to the new role which is quite different from her previous experience as a professor. “It’s a different rhythm of life, day-to-day work is different,” she said. “It is almost the same responsibility but on a larger scale. It’s not like teaching where you gear yourself up to this presentation, and it’s a lot of energy and then you have like a down time afterwards. It’s a lot of slow problem-solving.”
But at the end of the day both roles have the same goal she said, which is making sure classes go well and students are receiving the best education.
Dr. Frisken is a visual historian, she studied visual culture. She created Songs Without Words, a digital exhibit. “For research reasons, I wanted to make the images accessible because very few people have studied how the black press tried to stop lynching with its own images,” she said. Using images in the black press was an intervention to protest the practice of lynching, and many people risked their lives publishing these images. Dr. Frisken thought the images needed to be seen; despite it taking her a great deal of time to find the images and track them down. She wanted it to be more broadly available.
Among Dr. Frisken’s achievements, she is the author of two books; Victoria Woodhull’s Sexual Revolution: Political Theater and the Popular Press in Nineteenth Century America, which was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2004, and her new book Graphic News How Sensational Images Transformed Nineteenth-Century Journalism, which will be coming out on the 23rd of March. The book examines the ways sensational images of pivotal cultural events—obscenity litigation, anti-Chinese bloodshed, the Ghost Dance, lynching, and domestic violence — changed the public’s consumption of the news. She also explores how images of events during episodes of social and political controversy enabled newspapers and social activists alike to communicate and understand racial, class, and gender identities and cultural power.
Dr. Frisken says she would like to support the chairs and the departments in the faculty and what they need, during her time as an acting dean. “The goal is to focus on the students and make sure that they get a good experience and good education,” she said.
Dr. Frisken expects that this new responsibility would add to her character “hopefully in good ways.” She has colleagues all over the college that she is really good friends with, but she reassures that as acting dean, “you can’t think about friendship. You have to think about the big picture. I think that’s probably the hardest part. It’s a different relationship with people. I missed chatting with my colleagues, and I missed talking to students” she said, “I hope it does not change my character. I guess we’ll see.”
