UC Berkeley Journalism - Faculty

Joan Bieder

SENIOR LECTURER

Send E-Mail
Phone: (510) 642-4798

Joan Bieder, who teaches core television reporting and producing classes, spent a decade at ABC-TV Network News as a television news and long form producer. Before coming to Berkeley, she taught print and broadcast journalism at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. She has spent several summers working as a consultant to television news companies in Singapore and training new reporters and producers there.

Bieder teaches the introductory television reporting sequence at the Journalism school, where students learn the basic skills of television reporting and producing, the second year advanced long-form television class where students produce their Masters projects and a freshman seminar on producing a television news story. In 2006 graduate students in these classes traveled internationally -- to Afghanistan, Mexico, France, New Zealand, China, India, Ramalla, Cuba, Bolivia -- as well as throughout California and the States to shoot and report their stories.

In her own work, Bieder has produced a series of classroom videos on broadcast journalism, a film on female journalists in Asia and a video on the history of the Jewish Community of Singapore. A senior lecturer who holds a degree in history from Goucher College, Bieder is currently writing a book on the history of Singapore Jewry, a community that traces its roots back to mid 19th century Baghdad. Supported by grants from UC Berkeley and the Jacob Ballas Estate, the book's publisher is Suntree Media of Singapore. She has presented numerous papers and a video on Singapore Jewry at academic conferences in the United States, Canada, Israel and Singapore.

Books by Joan Bieder

The Jews of Singapore

Many would be surprised to learn that Singapore has been home to a thriving Jewish community for almost 170 years - and even more surprised to hear that the community traces its roots to Baghdad. Iraq. What brought this group of Jewish pioneers from Baghdad to an Asian Island in the South Pacific? How did a group of Judeo-Arab speaking immigrants in long exotic robes get along with their Malayan, Chinese, Indian and Indonesian neighbors? How did they survive World War II as prisoners in Japanese internment camps, even forming a camp “university” for a time, and why was it that, when the survivors emerged ragged and starved from the camps, a former Jewish prisoner led the colony to independence from British rule?

Joan weaves together information from interviews, oral histories, memoirs, personal letters, family documents, photographs, correspondence and government records from Singapore, Israeli, Dutch and British archives, and traces the history of its larger-than-life leaders and its everyday families through almost two centuries of trials and triumphs. The book reveals how Jewish community members in Singapore suffered, survived and prospered to the present time.

For information about purchasing the book, please send email.

View the PDF ordering form

View full book jacket as PDF

Stories by Joan Bieder

Sr. Lecturer Joan Bieder Publishes Book on the Jews of Singapore
Sr. Lecturer Joan Bieder's new book, "The Jews of Singapore," documents the history and heritage of the Sephardic Jewish community that immigrated to Singapore from Baghdad 170 years ago. Illustrated with 450 images, maps and documents,the book is a detailed account of the orthodox Baghdadi community that still thrives in Singapore today and the contributions members made both to the colony and the Republic. The author tells the story by weaving together information from interviews, oral histories, memoirs, personal letters, family documents photographs, correspondence and government records from Singapore, Israeli, Dutch and British archives. For more information email Suntree Media in Singapore.
Posted November 16, 2007

Einstein in Singapore
For onthepage.org, Senior Lecturer Joan Bieder covers her discovery of a little-known and long forgotten trip that Professor Albert Einstein made to the Jewish community of Singapore in 1922. With accompanying photograph.
Posted August 30, 2006

Dispatch from Burma
For FRONTLINE/World, Professor Joan Bieder's dispatch from Burma titled "Can US Sanctions Bring Democracy to Burma." Includes text and photos of her reporting trip to Myanmar in summer 2004.
Posted August 31, 2004

more about UC Berkeley's Television Program

IN FACULTY: Faculty Stories | Faculty Directory | Teaching at Berkeley