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Graduate Student Profiles

Home > Graduate Program : Student Profiles

Emily Ann Berg, (Ph.D student, Rhetorical Studies)

I am a rhetorical critic who specializes in feminist political rhetoric. I am primarily a historian focused on late 19th/early 20th century United States. My interest includes women and the presidency, women and party politics, and public persuasive campaigns. The arm of my current work is in the presidential campaigns of Victoria Woodhull and Belva Lockwood, but has extended a bit earlier in the 19th century to include the life of Frances Wright and women involved in the Whig Party. In addition to 19th century women's rhetorical history, I have worked extensively on what I believe to be post-feminist rhetoric of the present, particularly portrayals of powerful women politicians. Further, I am interested in memory studies and the role that collective memory plays in creating a usable past. I teach First Amendment Law and Argumentation. My goals as a scholar are to uncover neglected voices and contribute to the growing literature on women and the presidency but focusing on more or less invisible campaigns of the past.

Curriculum Vitae (DOC)

Brett Biebel, M.A. Student, Rhetorical Studies

A graduate of Saint John's University in Collegeville, MN, Brett enjoys all things athletic, especially Johnnie football. As a member of the Communication Studies department, he especially enjoys the teaching aspect of the program, and is a major fan of hanging out in the department lounge. His academic interests are varied, but he generally digs historical work. Presidential rhetoric, debates surrounding the First Amendment, and Civil Rights rhetoric are all topic areas of interest.

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.

Matthew W. Bost, Ph.D Student, Rhetorical Studies

am a rhetorical scholar interested in the way rhetoric structures and produces both individual experience and national and international policy discourse. My critical research focuses on the role of official or expert discourses in constituting publics and public debates around particular issues. My MA thesis, more specifically, explored the role of psychiatric and legislative discourse in both Congressional debates over the legal status of LSD and in the larger formation of the United States' drug policy and the policing of public discourse and debate about that policy. Theoretically, I am interested in the intersection between rhetorical ethics (both classically and as exemplified by the work of scholars such as Jurgen Habermas and Kenneth Burke) and various critical and philosophical traditions, particularly biopolitical theory,public sphere theory, Marxism, cultural studies, psychoanalysis and philosophies of difference, both as mani fested in studies of gender, race and national identities and in an ontological sense exemplified by the work of Gilles Deleuze. In particular, I am interested in developing a rhetorical or communicative ethics in conversation with both the philosophical and political projects developed by these bodies of work. Overall, I seek to explore how institutional discourses and relations of power produce particular types of speaking subjects and particular types of communicative relations between those subjects. I also seek to ask how we might think ethical frameworks for and concretely produce more equitable, open and democratic subjectivities and communicative/persuasive relations with one another, both at the individual and institutional/political levels.

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

I am a media critic primarily interested in the social significance and cultural meanings of mediated sport. For example, my dissertation focuses on the choreographed work of NFL Films in their first documentary, They Call It Pro Football (1965). Using techniques of textual analysis and social/cultural historiography I investigate the representational dynamics of professional football in this film. In doing so I place NFL Films in conversation with themes such as political economy, gender, and branding. Current thinking in media studies, television studies, gender studies, and sport sociology heavily influences my work. E-mail: joh01674@umn.edu

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.

Rebecca A. Kuehl, Ph.D. candidate in Rhetorical Studies

My research involves the connections between rhetoric, feminism, politics, and media studies. I am interested in questions about agency and political activism; how and why are audiences persuaded to take action on political issues? These questions have led me to work with a variety of texts and media, from U2's Vertigo DVD and the political activism of celebrities to political declarations of human rights and the restraints of international organizations such as the UN. I am currently working on a dissertation that argues for a feminist theory of global citizenship, in which citizenship is grounded not in the state or a particular territory, but is instead grounded in social belonging. Using theories about affect and emotion to justify this move to social belonging, my project hopes to speak to audiences in rhetorical studies, citizenship studies, and women's rights organizations. I find myself constantly negotiating the limits and opportunities of fields such as rhetorical theory, hermeneutics, and feminist theory.

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.

Kristine Weglarz, Ph.D candidate, Critical media studies

I am a political economy scholar currently researching constructions of authenticity, rock culture and the implications of live performance for popular music's engagement with state-level and transnational political concerns. In addition, I am researching the impact of increased conglomeration of the live performance industry on protest artists and the means by which they continue to express their dissent within this narrowing field of performance.

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.

Sarah Wolter, Ph.D. Student, Critical media studies

My research interests center on helping others learn about how identity, specifically gender identity, is shaped by mediated communication. Feminist theory with a concentration on identity proliferated in interaction and representations of female athletes in the media are most interesting to me within the realm of communication. My Master’s thesis examined the influence of student, colleague, and administrative governing relational communities on the formation and maintenance of professional identity of women Assistant Professors in two colleges at Minnesota State University, Mankato. I have also conducted extensive research on portrayals of women athletes in the media, especially examining the Ladies’ Professional Golf Association’s “Five Points of Celebrity” marketing plan. My current research is focused around girls' experience with sport; specifically, what messages mainstream publications directed toward girls send about physic al activity.

Curriculum Vitae (DOC)