May 2007 Vol. 25, #3
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
Department of Communication Studies
225 Ford Hall, 224 Church Street S.E.
Minneapolis, MN 55455
Editor: Beatrice Dehler
Secretary: Edward Schiappa
Senior Faculty
Donald R. Browne has received (April 2007) the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Broadcast Education Association for his scholarship in the study of electronic media, chiefly in the area of comparing media systems around the world in terms of history, regulation, and portrayal of mainstream and minority cultures.
Karlyn Kohrs Campbell went to the University of Iowa to deliver the Maud and Orville Hitchcock memorial lecture. She also led a graduate seminar and held office hours with graduate students on April 19, 2007.
Karlyn Kohrs Campbell participated on a panel at the Central States Communication Association that assessed the midterm elections and talked about what may develop in the upcoming presidential nomination/primary campaigns.
Ronald W. Greene has been chosen to serve on the editorial boards of Communication Monographs, Communication Theory, Critical Studies in Media Communication and Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies for the years 2007-2010.
Ronald W. Greene won an Office of International Travel Grant to present work on the users of "entertainment-education" in population policy at the Conference of the International Federation for Research on the History of Women to be held this summer in Sofia , Bulgaria .
In May 2007 the Board of Regents voted to promote Susanne M. Jones to the status of Associate Professor with tenure.
Susanne M. Jones & John G. Wirtz published "' Sad Monkey See, Monkey Do.' Nonverbal Matching in Emotional Support Encounters" in the March 2007 issue of Communication Studies.
Laurie Ouellette was invited to speak to the TV Studies Symposium "Nations, Networks, and Post-Networks" at Northwestern University Department of Radio-TV-Film in April 2007. Her talk was entitled "Building a Better Community: ABC TV and the Privatization of Welfare."
Professor Ouellette's book Better Living Through Television will be available Fall 2007 from Blackwell Publishers.
The Central States Communication Association Hall of Frame award was presented to Professor Robert L. Scott at their annual conference in March 2007. The award is in recognition of his significant contributions to the Central States Communication Association.
Amy Sheldon presented a paper on narrativity in a panel called "Narratives and narrative genres: texts and contexts" at the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) in Costa Mesa, California, organized by Professor Anna de Fina of Georgetown University.
Amy Sheldon was a panelist for the presentation by Professor Ana Celia Zentella on Spanish, Spanglish, and other Latino language varieties: Challenging the English Only Paradigm is the United States , organized by Professor William Beeman in the Department of Anthropology.
Mary Vavrus and Donald R. Browne made presentations to the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute spring semester 2007.
Mary Vavrus's article "Opting Out Mom's in the News: Selling New Traditionalism in the New Millennium" will be in Feminist Media Studies, 7 (1).
Mary also gave a keynote speech entitled "Women and Media Activism" at University of Dayton's Advocates for Women's Equality Dinner March 30, 2007, and another keynote speech entitled "The Search for Feminist Live in the Media Universe: A Detour to Neptune and Mars" on April 20, 2007 at the University of St. Thomas.
Kirt H. Wilson accepted the invitation of Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School Gail Dubrow to become Chair of the Graduate School's Social Science Policy & Review Council; the College of Liberal Arts nominated him for a 2007-2008 Leadership Fellowship; and finally, his three-year term as Book Review Editor for the Quarterly Journal of Speech will come to an end this summer.
International Communication Association Presentations/Activities
San Francisco , CA
May 24-28, 2007
Donald R. Browne has been named to the editorial board for a new ICA journal Communication, Culture, & Critique . It will be the first ICA journal to emphasize qualitative research. Members of the editorial board will be meeting at the conference.
Ascan Koerner will respond to the panel Uncertainty in Communication and Uncertainly in Relationships.
Laurie Ouellette will present two research papers. Paper titles: "Your Product is You: America's Next Top Model and the New Labor Economy" and "Reinventing Government" (co-authored with James Hay).
Edward Schiappa will present his paper "The Phenomenal Text of Will & Grace: Revisiting the Text/Audience Divide in Popular Culture Criticism."
Mary Vavrus will present "Metrosexual Nation or 'We're Here, We're Queer, Get Used to It!'" which is part of a panel titled "New directions in Gender and Commercialism." She will also be a respondent for the panel "Starving Girls, Mean Girls, Trafficking Girls, Blogging Girls: Gender Deviance and Media in the Digital Age."
Graduate Student News
Robert Baron is completing his M.A. degree and will be moving to the Rhetoric, Science, and Technical Communication Ph.D. program this coming fall. His new office will be in Wesbrook hall and he welcomes visitors.
Beth Bonnstetter's article "Transmitting the Past: Historical and Cultural perspectives on Broadcasting, eds. J. Emmett Winn and Susan L, Brinston" appeared in the November 2006 edition of The Quarterly Journal of Speech.
Zornitsa D. Keremidchieva & Karlyn Kohrs Campbell published "Gender and Public Address" in the Sage Handbook of Gender and Communication.
Zornitsa's article "The Argument of Print: State Sovereignty and the publication of U.S. Congressional Debates" was accepted for publication. It will appear in The Proceedings of the 6 th International Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation.
Justin Killian accepted a position in the field department of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign for President. After the election he will return to the department to complete his final two years of the Ph.D. Initially he will be based in Iowa but his future is by no means static and he may be sent to other locations on behalf of the campaign. He can be reached at justinkillian@gmail.com
Michael Lee has received a University-wide Graduate School Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship for 2007-08. His dissertation is about the rise of conservatism in the U.S. and is called "Creating Conservatism: Postwar Words that Made a Movement."
Michael's article, "The Populist Chameleon: The People's Party, Huey Long, George Wallace, and the Populist Argumentative Frame" appeared in the November 2006 issue of Quarterly Journal of Speech .
Monica Moore attended the Southern States Communication Association Convention in late March and presented "Identifying Relationships in Cultural Representations of Class: An Analysis of Publications by A.J. Downing, Catharine Beecher, and Martha Stewart."
Recent Ph.D. Degrees
Zornitsa Keremidchieva
The Gender of Legislative Rationality:
Women, Immigrants, and the Nationalization of Citizenship, 1918-1922
Co-Advisers: Professors Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and Jacquelyn Zita
Recent M.A. Degrees
Alyssa Issacs
Adviser: Professor Ascan Koerner
Min Zhu
Adviser: Professor Dean E. Hewes
The Western States Communication Association Conference was held in Seattle , WA February 17-20, 2007. The following graduate students presented papers:
Beth Bonnstetter
"Poaching the Poachers: Fan Fiction and Media Branding"
"Promoting Social Justice through Criticism and Pedagogy: Revisting Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory "
Justin Killian
"Male-on-Male Gazing: Active Learners and the Commodification of the Homoerotic"
Michael Lee
"Distaste for Dewey: A Portrait of Nascent Conservatism in Postwar America "
(Top student and top rhetoric and public address paper overall)
Amy Pason
"Promoting Social Justice in Social Movement Studies: New Approaches to Narratives"
Jessica Prody
"The Balancing Act of Intertextuality: Exploring the Relationship of Text, Context, and Subjectivity in Genius of Universal Emancipation "
Emanuelle Wessels
"Reluctant Assassins: (Mommy) Tracking Post-Feminism in Kill Bill: Vol. 2 and Electra"
The Central States Communication Association Conference was held in Mpls. MN March 26-30, 2007. Approximately 30 faculty and graduate students were in attendance. Graduate student participation included:
Robert Baron
"Conflicting agendas: The presidency and the mass media"
Timothy Behme
"Making 'Noises and Marks' Ethically"
Samuel Boerboom
"Articulatory Politics and the Prophetic Style"
(Top Papers in Rhetorical Theory and Criticism Panel)
"Social (ir) responsibility and rhetoric in defense of heteronormative marriage"
(Top Four Graduate Student Caucus Paper)
"The Divided Prophetic Voice: Social Criticism and the American Prophet"
"Re-examining Popular Culture: Its Rhetorical Significance" (Panel Chair)
Beth Bonnstetter
"From Satire to Carnivalesque: The Question of 'Family Guy'"
Linda Freeman
"Emotional and Deception in the Context of Interrogations"
Alyssa Issacs
"Who's got to say what you do? The influence of parents, peers, and the media on adolescents' sexual attitudes and behaviors of adolescents"
Naomi Kagawa
"Attachment orientation as a moderator of the influence of peer communication on adolescents' parent-child emotional disclosure schema updating"
Casey Kelly
"Reframing American Democracy in the Progressive Era: The Rhetorical Praxis of Jane Adams"
Eunsoon Lee
"Now you are about to enjoy the excitement of your heart in public: The role of positive affect and metaphors in reducing speech anxiety"
Michael Lee and Justin Killian
"Diverse Gospels: An Exploratory Theory of a Fundamentalist Hermeneutic"
Amy Pason
"Arguments Against Marriage: Bringing Emma Goldman into the 21 st Century Marriage Debate"
Jessica Prody
"Look at what you've done: Challenging the production of men of war"
(Top Graduate Paper)
Emanuelle Wessels
"Postmodern Performance 28 Days Later"
Undergraduate Student News
Laura B. Gatz, an undergraduate in the department, received the Minnesota Association of Scholars Student of the Year Award.
Department News
The Department Spring Reception honoring all graduates from July 2006-June 2007 was held on Wednesday, April 25 in the department conference room. A short program followed and the following department awards were presented:
Arle and Billie Haeberle Award
Beth Bonnstetter, Graduate Award
Sharman Ordoyne, Undergraduate Award
Garden Jones Award
Anthony Nadler, Graduate Award
Emily Squires, Undergraduate Award
Frizelle Reid Graduate Award
Casey Kelly
Old Buffalo Graduate Awards
Amy Pason
Matthew May
Donald V. Hawkins Undergraduate Award
Jens Loberg
Krauch Lund Undergraduate Scholarship
Adam Croft
Stuart A. Lindman Undergraduate Award
Leah Gruber
Nick Schoen III Undergraduate Scholarship
Jane Vollbrecht
Other awards presented include:
CLA Graduate Research Partnership Program - Summer 2007
Pamela Nettleton
"Masculinity and Critical Media Studies"
Faculty Adviser: Mary Vavrus
Julie Wilson
"Foucault, Television, and Technologies of the Self"
Faculty Adviser: Laurie Ouellette
Emanuelle Wessels
"Mixed Messages: (Re)Constructing Race"
Faculty Adviser: Gilbert Rodman
Summer Research Funding 2007
Naomi Kagawa
Casey Kelly
Matthew May
Julie Wilson
3 rd Year Ph.D. Summer Fellowships
Stacy Fitzpatrick
Naomi Kagawa
Eunsoon Lee
Michael Lee
Monica Moore
Under the direction of Professors Mary Vavrus and Gilbert Rodman , our weekly Wednesday Noon Research Meetings invited several special guests this past academic year. They included Fernando Delgado, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Hamline University , Marie Hardin, Associate Director, Center for Sports Journalism at Penn State University , and Henry Jenkins, John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities and Director of Comparative Media Studies graduate program at MIT.
Dr. Peter Gregg's COMM 3-204 Advanced Electronic Media production course held a public exhibition of their final short films and performance videos at the Coffman Union on Monday, May 7, 2007. Approximately 60 students, friends, and alumni of the department were in attendance and all enjoyed the night of good food and movies.
Director and visual effects artist, Jay Redd , who has worked on such films as Babe (1995), Contact (1997), Stuart Little (1999), Haunted Mansion (2003), and the Academy Award Nominated Monster House (2006), presented a special guest lecture to students in COMM 3110: An Institutional Approach to American Cinema on Thursday, April 19. In his talk entitled "Media Convergence, Medium Convergence, and the Bleeding Edge of Technology", Mr. Redd discussed the state of the filmmaking industry, the role of emerging media technologies in film production, and the future of computer animation. Mr. Redd showed actual behind-the-scenes footage of the making of Monster House and provided students with a first hand glimpse of what it is like to work in Hollywood today.
Thank you for your "Bits and Pieces" for composting. Please continue to send news items to dehle001@umn.edu .