Kathy Roberts Forde

U.S. JOURNALISM HISTORY, BLACK FREEDOM STRUGGLE, AND THE PRESS, NARRATIVE JOURNALISM

Ph.D., University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

Kathy Roberts Forde is Professor of Journalism at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a historian of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century U.S. press. Her research examines journalism as a political institution, with particular attention to democracy, race, authoritarian power, the First Amendment, and narrative form.

She is the co-editor with Sid Bedingfield of the book Journalism & Jim Crow: White Supremacy and the Black Struggle for a New America (University of Illinois Press, 2021), an award‑winning volume that documents how white newspaper publishers and editors helped build and sustain violent white‑supremacist political economies and systems of rule across the U.S. South from the end of Reconstruction through the early twentieth century. Her first book, Literary Journalism on Trial: Masson v. New Yorker and the First Amendment (University of Massachusetts Press, 2008), examined the legal and constitutional stakes of narrative journalism and received national book awards in journalism history and media law.

Forde’s scholarship has appeared in Journalism Studies, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Book History, Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism, Journalism Practice, Journal of Communication Inquiry, Communication Law & Policy, and American Journalism, among other venues. She is co‑editor of the Journalism & Democracy book series at the University of Massachusetts Press.

In addition to her scholarly work, Forde has held senior academic leadership roles at UMass Amherst. She served as Associate Dean for Equity & Inclusion in the College of Social & Behavioral Sciences from 2020 to 2025, where she led college‑wide initiatives on faculty workload equity, inclusive pedagogy, and democratic engagement. She previously served as Co‑Acting Dean of the college during a period of senior leadership transition and as Chair of the Journalism Department from 2014 to 2017, guiding its transition to independent departmental status and overseeing major curricular and facilities development. She was also a Chancellor’s Leadership Fellow, contributing to the launch of the university’s Office of Equity & Inclusion.

Forde is currently at work on a book‑length project, The Press and the Making of American Authoritarianism, which examines the role of the U.S. press in legitimating and normalizing antidemocratic power from Reconstruction through the twentieth century.

She teaches courses in U.S. journalism history, the Black freedom struggle and the press, and narrative journalism, and she places particular emphasis on undergraduate and graduate research mentorship. Students regularly work with her on sustained archival and historical research projects, often collaborating on co-authored scholarly articles and public-facing essays. She advises honors theses and independent research projects across journalism, history, and related fields, with a focus on close guidance, intellectual confidence, and preparing students for graduate study, professional journalism, law, and public-facing research careers. Her work has informed national conversations about journalism, democracy, and higher education, and she engages public audiences through essays, interviews, and invited talks.