Sam Boerboom (Ph.D. student in Rhetorical Studies)
B.A., M.A. University of Nebraska
I am a rhetorical critic whose interest lies with prophetic rhetoric, the role of prophecy in the discourse of progressive evangelical groups and the intersection between progressive evangelical and secular discourses. In particular, I am guided by questions such as how prophecy acts as an agent for social and political change and how prophecy and prophetic rhetoric constitute political and moral subjects. I seek to understand how progressive evangelical groups use prophecy to create publics that affirm, rather than deny, particular secular values deemed coterminous with their own. Ultimately, my desire is to explore how progressive evangelical groups use prophecy to frame values in advocating social change. My aim is to advance scholarship in this area as well as develop pedagogies that empower my students to critically engage, in their own communities and beyond, the values attributed to the policies governing their lives.
Beth E. Bonnstetter (Ph.D. student in Media Studies)
B.A., Regis University; M.A. Colorado State University
As media critic, my research focuses on film, television, and the Internet. Specifically, I am interested in how film and television texts use parody and satire as rhetorical criticism and how people might and/or do use these texts in everyday life. I am also interested in fan culture, especially on the Internet. My work is influenced by several scholars, including Mikhail Bakhtin, Kenneth Burke, Roland Barthes and Michel de Certeau. Through primarily textual criticism, and secondarily reader-response (audience) analysis, I hope to further learn how texts, especially parody and satire, acquire meaning and function rhetorically in culture and in identity formation. Ultimately, the goal for my research is pedagogic. I want to teach students how to use and make socially beneficial meaning from media, and not merely succumb to ideologies it promotes.
Alyssa Isaacs (Ph.D. student in Communication Theory)
B.A., Winona State University
I am a social scientist who studies family communication patterns and adolescent sexual behavior. I am studying family communication patterns because I want to find out which communication variables contribute to family closeness and cohesion and which lead to the dissolution of the family unit. My interest in how family communication connects to adolescent sexual behavior stems from national trends concerning sex. My research is aimed at the general public with the intention of teaching communication strategies to families in order to help improve and/or save their familial relationships as well as trying to curb the STD, AIDS and unplanned pregnancy rates here in the U.S. I am currently writing my thesis and hope to obtain my M.A. in Communication Studies from the University of Minnesota this spring and then continue on for my PhD.
Thomas C. Johnson (Ph.D. student in Critical Media Studies)
B.A., Saint John's University
As a feminist media critic interested in the analysis of various media sources, I concentrate on how media shapes individual and societal values toward race, gender, and class. Particularly, I analyze the social construction of masculinities, specifically when the key elements of messages are focused on violence, toughness, dominance, nationalism, and whiteness. Current thinking in media studies, gender studies, men's studies, and sport sociology heavily influences my work. At the present, I am centering my research on the commercial and ideological symbiosis between sport and the mass media, as well as the correlations between sport viewing habits and attitudes about masculinity.
E-mail: joh01674@umn.edu
Casey Ryan Kelly (Ph.D student in Rhetorical Studies)
B.A., Gonzaga University ; M.A., Wake Forest University
As a rhetorical historian, my research focuses primarily on historical criticism of American public address in the early to mid-19 th century. I specialize in discursive texts and their surrounding historical and rhetorical contexts, both exemplar and otherwise, that are representative of the uses of religious discourse and argument, appropriations of classical Greek and Roman rhetorical themes and tropes, such as civic republicanism and prudence, as well as the discourse of conspiracy and paranoia in political and social debates, all of which that were foundational in the formation of the early American republic. Specifically, through the use of argument analysis matched with historical research methods I seek to investigate the ways in which these various strands of discourse, either independently or in combination, were fundamental in the construction of American identity and act as forces of history and were likewise mediated by their surrounding contexts. Through my research I hope to both build rhetorical theory by interrogating discursive concepts at works in specific texts and moments in history as well as add new dimensions and explanatory power to the disciplinary study of history by juxtaposing rhetorical texts with their corresponding contexts to understand historical events in a new light.
Mary Koppel (Ph.D. student in Rhetorical Studies)
B.A., Wake Forest University , M.A., American University
I have spent the better part of the past 24 years applying the knowledge and discoveries of the field of communication studies to my work, and I've practiced the development of resonant, targeted messages on behalf of strategic institutional goals. As the discipline has evolved and developed, the research literature has provided effective guidance in strategies to engage, educate, or influence public policy. As a non-traditional graduate student, in the traditional sense of the word, I'm pursuing a PhD program in a rather slow, deliberate fashion while maintaining my rather demanding professional role with the University.
My research interests now are focused on the elements of narrative related to health status. Experience in both the health sciences and in narrative storytelling activities suggests that an individual's ability to articulate a coherent personal narrative when engaged with a health professional is related to improved health status. Existing literature relating personal narrative to mental health status provides a guide as to the necessary elements of a health-inducing narrative. My interest is in pursuing qualitative research to connect narrative to health status, and to expand the literature and knowledge for narrative guides for health professionals and patients.
Michael Lee (Ph.D. student in Rhetorical Studies)
B.A., M.A., University of Georgia
I am a rhetoric critic primarily interested in the process of conceptual change. Although my work tends to concern contemporary politics, such inquiries are guided by a supplementary focus on collective memory and rhetorical history. The common questions that characterize my inquiries are a) how do certain historical conceptions become common and, in the process, obscure other perspectives and b) once accepted as the historical norm, how do such conceptions shape societal understandings of contemporary politics? I plan to write a dissertation that examines the language of conservatism embedded in the texts and practices of the beginning of the modern conservative movement in the 1950s. Outside of this specific dissertation area, I am also interested in different articulations of identity politics. As a critic with this defining interest, I analyze the relationship between texts and political identities. For instance, in my M.A. thesis, I concentrate on the use of populist arguments to establish a stable and exclusive identity for Southerners in Lost Cause narratives. Throughout this line of research, I am interested in investigating how textual identity contributes to and/or determines modes of political participation.
Matt May (Ph.D. Student in Rhetorical Studies)
B.A. Arizona State University, M.A. University of North Texas
My research addresses the discursive limits of modernity, new materialism, and (un)organized labor as considered through rhetorical practices. I am particularly interested in questions regarding the nature of communicative practices and minor ontological politics. I imagine capitalism, complexity, difference, change, lightness, becoming-other, precarity, expression, the everyday, virtual worlds and languages yet to come as important problematics for communication scholars to engage with. So, I necessarily negotiate also with the limits of communication studies disciplinarity, discourse theory, hermeneutics, cultural studies, and Marxism. Current projects include a local case study of DIY culture in Minneapolis radical bookstores, a historical survey of minor communicative practices of resistance to capitalist productivity, and an ongoing love affair with Gilles Deleuze.
Anthony Nadler (Ph.D. Student in Media Studies)
B.A. Macalester College
I am a media studies scholar investigating the role that media technologies and institutions play in cultural shifts and ideological transformations. I am particularly interested in the relationship between contemporary activists and other critics of neoliberalism and their relationship with media institutions. Some of the questions I ask include: What groups of people do these activists try to influence and through what media do they communicate? What role do media institutions play in constructing the possibilities for such communication? How do practices of activists groups outside the normative uses of mass media, such extralegal media uses or creating alternative media sites, affect relations between activists and media institutions? Through this research I seek to articulate the kinds of media practices that have been or might be successful in precipitating cultural transformations. I am seeking ways to take part in participatory action research projects with media activists. I am constantly questioning the relationship between academic discourses and discourses about media and culture appearing in dialogues where participation in not limited to academic specialists.
Amy Pason (Ph.D. student in Rhetorical Studies)
B.A., M.A. University of Denver
I am a rhetorical critic who focuses on activism and social movements (specifically the events, protest actions, and discourses that constitute and identify specific organizations or movements) because I am interested in how collective action and civic engagement are practiced as well as the possibilities of reinvigorating that practice. My undergraduate thesis specifically explored how activism was manifested at the University of Denver to argue that popular conceptions and public discourse of "activism" obscures the actual manifestations of activist action at given locations. This further pushed me to ask questions on how discursive conditions promote or hinder the emergence of activism and social movement action. To this end, my master's thesis argued that the corporatization of the public sphere of the university limits student activism by promoting neoliberal discourse and undermining the potential of liberal arts discourse/education in motivating action by students. My work aims to engage in the debates of public sphere theory to explore the usefulness and limitations of this model. If democratic and civic engagement can be promoted through communicative action, I hope my work can be a resource for current activists and citizens to understand possibilities for their own action and participation.
Jessica M. Prody (Ph.D. Student in Rhetorical Studies)
B.A., Gustavus Adolphus College
I am a feminist rhetorical scholar who is interested in the role rhetoric plays framing or creating reality. Through textual analysis, I engage both contemporary and historical texts that range from media to public address, focusing on how they relate to traditional power structures built upon notions of race, gender, class, and/or sexuality. Examples of my work include a criticism of the television series Law & Order: Special victims Unit that examined how the characters' masculine performances interact with traditional expectations masculinity. I am also currently working on a rhetorical exploration of the rhetoric of Winona LaDuke that centers on how LaDuke, an individual that holds a marginalized, indigenous worldview, addresses audience members that ascribe to a dominant, industrial view. In my work I seek to highlight the spaces and ways in which challenges to traditional power structures have been raised. Ultimately, my goals are in line with feminist scholars who strive to disrupt the current patriarchal, white supremacist culture, to create a structure that allows social access to those not traditionally awarded power.
Emanuelle Wessels (Ph.D. Student in Critical Media Studies)
B.A., University of Iowa
My interests concern the ability and feasibility of popular entertainment media texts to impart oppositional and counter-hegemonic narratives. Currently, I am researching the ways in which contemporary cinematic and television horror texts discursively construct, problematize, and frame Othered and non-Othered bodies. My current research is informed by Michel Foucault, as well Feminist and Ecofeminist theory, postmodernism, cinema and critical media studies, gender studies, and audience research. The questions I strive to answer involve inquiries into the plausibility of popular media texts to communicate social critique given the commercial structure of their creation, and, second, the ways in which polysemic and polyvalent properties of such texts enable oppositional or resistant readings despite inherent structural limitations. Ultimately, I strive to maintain a space for popular media texts as pedagogical tools useful for bolstering understanding, recognition, and awareness of counter-hegemonic narratives drawn from mainstream entertainment media.