Karla Lyles, ABD

This month it seems like we’ve got so many ABD’s you’d think we’re the American Board of Dermatology  (there are only so many acronyms that work for this lead-in). Cue the good news, this time from Susan Miller-Cochran, Associate Professor and Director of the First-Year Writing Program at NC State:

Please join me in congratulating Karla Lyles, who passed her
preliminary examinations this afternoon.

Karla’s committee chairs are Carolyn Miller and Susan Miller-Cochran,
and her committee members are Adriana de Souza e Silva and Chris Anson.

The working title of Karla’s dissertation is “Remediating Perceptions of
the Basic Writer:  Basic Writers’ Constructions of their Identities
and Agencies through Image and Word.”

Congratulations, Karla!

Well done, Karla, and best of luck as you go from being incredibly busy to being somewhat more incredibly busy. That’s encouraging, right?

Christin Phelps, ABD

Good news about preliminary exams keeps rolling in. This time it comes from Dr. Jason Swarts, Associate Director of the CRDM program and Associate Professor of English at NCSU, who tells us that

Earlier this afternoon, after much vigorous and thoroughly engrossing discussion, Christin Phelps passed her preliminary examination and became CRDM’s newest doctoral candidate. Please join me in congratulating her on a job well done.

All that remains now is a dissertation that is currently titled “The human, the machine, and the in-between: The role of context in attributions of artificial intelligence.”

The members of Christin’s committee are Jason Swarts (chair), Carolyn Miller, Jessica Moore, and Michael Young (Computer Science).

Thanks for updating us, Dr. Swarts, and thanks for showing us how it’s done, Soon-To-Be-Dr.-Phelps. You may be slightly less well-known than your distant cousin for now, sure, but remember he’s retiring in 2012 while you’re just getting started.

Check out Christin’s research, teaching, and professional portfolio to see some of her practical web design experience at work.

Kathy Oswald, ABD

From Steve Wiley, Interim CRDM Director and Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at NCSU, comes some very good news regarding another 3rd year’s progress in the program:

Please join me in congratulating Kathy Oswald, who passed her preliminary examinations yesterday.

Kathy’s committee chair is Jeremy Packer, and her committee members are Melissa Johnson, Rebecca Walsh, and Steve Wiley.  Kathy’s working dissertation title is Everything Must Go (online)!: “Fire Sale” Logics and the New Infrastructural Ideal.

Congratulations, Kathy, and happy dissertating!

Congrats indeed, Kathy, though may we add that the phrase “happy dissertating” is one part cognitive dissonance and one part oxymoron for most, yet over 9000 parts possible when someone like you takes on something like materiality and fiberoptic infrastructure.

Check out Kathy on Twitter to read her micro-oeuvre and to see how she’s contributing to the Library of Congress.

Top Paper Award at ECA Puts CRDM on the Map

(See what I did there?)

Jordan Frith, a second year in the CRDM program, earned the “Top Paper” award in the Communication and Technology Interest Group at the Eastern Communication Association conference in Baltimore (April 22-25).

Titled “Where are You Now? Location Aware Technologies and the Organizing Logics of Space,” Jordan’s paper addresses the issue of mobile media on location-aware mobile phones in public spaces. Need a little more explanation? Cue the abstract:

People have used mobile media to shape their interactions with public space for at least two hundred years. Mobile media often do more than just help people shape perception of public space, they often bring previously private activities into public spaces. This paper examines mobile media use in public spaces, particularly how their use often disrupts our socially constructed conceptions of the private and public. The newest form of mobile media, location aware mobile phones, represent an evolution in mobile media use in public spaces. This paper argues, however, that location aware technologies require a new theory for understanding mobile technology use in public spaces. Because location aware technologies interact with the surrounding space rather than introduce an exterior code to the space, they provide users with new affordances but also present new concerns that must be addressed.

Cool project, no?

Congrats to Jordan on his efforts to make the his fellow ECA’ers more aware of our location within the field.