By contributor Katherine Fillion
In addition to our team of full-time faculty and staff, the Comm Department is home to a cohort of incredibly bright PhD students. One of these students is Shahnaz Bashir, who comes to us from the University of Kashmir in India where he obtained his Masters with Rank 1: University Gold Medal and Award of Merit in Mass Communication and Journalism. Alongside the pursuit of his Masters, Shahnaz taught classes on narrative journalism and conflict reporting.
Shahnaz joined us on our campus in January of 2021 after experiencing a unique first semester as both a doctoral student and teaching associate. He studied remotely during the fall of 2020, teaching and attending UMass lectures from across the globe. With a laugh, he mentioned that he often had to wake up in the middle of the night to join his live Zoom courses due to the near 11- hour time difference between Amherst and Kashmir.
Once in Amherst, Shahnaz continued to work towards his academic goals while simultaneously teaching courses like COMM375, Writing as Communication — the junior year writing requirement. When asked about the differences between teaching at UMass Amherst and the University of Kashmir, he mentioned how he quickly discovered that optimal teaching methodologies vary across continents, and should be adjusted to suit each unique group of students. He also explained that becoming acquainted with our local area helped him to incorporate colloquial examples into his teaching and engage students even more than before.
Engaging students is a major element of Shahnaz’s teaching philosophy. He believes that a maternal approach to teaching aids in forging connections that extend beyond a student’s time in higher ed. He points out that when this element is lacking, learning can feel robotic, noting that “[a student’s] life is not restricted to that classroom. They’re bringing with themselves a lot of complicated world, and also taking things into the complicated world when they walk out of the room. You have to take all of that into consideration to understand each student according to their needs. Otherwise it becomes like a machine, a factory where students come and go.” Shahnaz put this wisdom into action while teaching in Kashmir by encouraging connection beyond the classroom. He created a large WhatsApp group where students across numerous graduating classes could post and network. Although some of these students don’t even know each other, the group has proven to be an effective way to bridge the gap between academic and personal relationships.
Outside of academia, Shahnaz is the successful writer of two award-winning fiction books, The Half Mother (Hachette, 2014) and Scattered Souls (HarperCollins, 2016). The former was the first book from Kashmir to be translated into several foreign languages. He has also been published in the ever-prominent Time Magazine and has another novel on the horizon titled The Disease.
Moving forward at UMass, Shahnaz hopes to design a course on images — particularly, AI-generated “deep fakes” — tentatively titled, “Pixelated Lies: Decoding Digital Deceit.” The course will include visual analysis and discussion of what it means to be surrounded by fake images that have the potential to deceive, confuse, and frustrate the public. With AI-generated images slowly taking over the internet, it is essential for people to learn techniques to decipher the real from the artificial, and begin to consider the societal and legal challenges posed by such visual disinformation.
To learn more about Shahnaz and his success in both academics and personal writing, check out his Wikipedia page!