Dr. Jessica Jameson

Over the course of the next few months the CRDM blog will periodically feature a Q + A with one of our outstanding faculty members. We take classes with them and work with them on scholarly projects, but now we’d like to learn more about what else they’re doing. We’ve talked with David Rieder, Chris Anson, Matt May, David Berube, Susan Katz, Maria Pramaggiore, Susan Miller-Cochran, Robert Schrag, Carolyn R. Miller, Brad Mehlenbacher, R. Michael Young, Jason Swarts, Adriana de Souza e Silva, Elizabeth Craig, Andrew Binder, and Victoria Gallagher, and we recently caught up with Jessica Jameson, Associate Professor of Communication, Associate Head for Undergraduate Studies, and CRDM faculty member:

What are you reading?

Bloomsburg Weekly and Fortune are fairly regular reading to keep me up to date on what the “experts” are saying about theeconomy, leadership and organizational communication. When I read for pleasure, lately I turn to Janet Evanaovich, because I need to laugh. Otherwise I am reading email or checking facebook to see what crazy family members around the country are up to.

What classes are you teaching?

Organizational Communication; looking forward to teaching graduate seminars in Org Com and Conflict Management in the next academic year, as well as my first DE class (Conflict Management), hopefully this summer. 

What are you writing about?

A current chapter on conflict in healthcare coming out in the Sage Handbook of Conflict & Communication. Other projects I am excited about include a paper on power and organizational conflict management, a study of how people move from competitive to cooperative behavior in mediation, and ongoing ethnographic work on nonprofit board communication.

What are you listening to?

Very excited about Van Halen’s new release with DLR…hard to pick favorites since I listen to everything including classic rock, country, top-40, and broadway! (I also listen to NPR in the mornings so I know what is going on in the world!)

What are you watching?

Harry’s Law, Bones, Fringe, Big Bang Theory, Two Broke Girls (sorry, it’s funny). I watch a lot of Sci Fi, Super Hero, and/or action movies. Yes, I watch too much tv.

Dr. David Rieder

Over the course of the next few months the CRDM blog will periodically feature a Q + A with one of our outstanding faculty members. We take classes with them and work with them on scholarly projects, but now we’d like to learn more about what else they’re doing. We’ve talked with Jessica Jameson, Chris Anson, Matt May, David Berube, Susan Katz, Maria Pramaggiore, Susan Miller-Cochran, Robert Schrag, Carolyn R. Miller, Brad Mehlenbacher, R. Michael Young, Jason Swarts, Adriana de Souza e Silva, Elizabeth Craig, Andrew Binder, and Victoria Gallagher, and we recently caught up with David Rieder, Associate Professor of English and CRDM faculty member:

What are you reading?

Most anything I read is for work/research, and I’m usually working through several books. Currently, I’m reading Carrie Noland’s Agency and Embodiment, and I just finished David Berry’s The Philosophy of Software. I’m also rereading Tom Ingold’s book, Lines. Besides that, I’m reading through a couple of books on C# programming for a current grant project. Any additional reading is devoted to kids’ books for 2-4 year-olds. Lately, I’m reading a lot about witches and various kinds of farm animals.

What classes are you teaching?

Currently, I’m teaching a couple of undergrad courses, ENG 323 and ENG 426, which are “Writing in the Rhetorical Tradition” and “Analyzing Style.” Last semester, I taught undergraduate and graduate courses on humanities physical computing with Arduino and Processing. I’m happy to say I’ll be teaching “Digital Media Theory” again as a CRD 791 in the fall 2012, and Tim Stinson and I hope to team teach “Introduction to Digital Humanties” in the spring.

What are you writing about?

Right now, I’m working on my book manuscript titled Suasive Iterations: Experimental Approaches to Digital Rhetoric and Writing in Computational Media. Each chapter includes an original software program written in Processing. The chapter I’m working on right now is on the revitalized role of the gesture related to (grammatological) writing. The programming in that chapter is based on my recent work with the Kinect. In another two weeks, I’ll begin writing/participating in the “Critical Code Studies Working Group,” a three-week, online meeting for scholars/artists interested in developing critical approaches to writing about code in the humanities.

What are you listening to?

Not as much as I used to! I used to go out to shows regularly. Lately, with two young kids, I play the same stuff over and over again on my Shuffle when I’m at the gym: Fu Manchu, Sasquatch, Junkie XL, Quarashi, Chevelle, Beastie Boys, etc. Other than that, ‘lots of children’s music including some in French and Spanish. But if/when the Melvins come back to town, I’ll drop everything to see them.

What are you watching?

What about asking what I’m playing?! I’m playing Dead Island right now (it was on sale on Steam), and I always go back to Fallout3 for a nostalgic romp through the post-apocalyptic DC area. In answer to your question, when I’m not chasing zombies and mutants, my wife and I watch whatever is streaming on Netflix or Amazon for free. We just watched a movie called PontyPool, which I highly recommend. It’s all about speech, writing, and knowing. Brilliant. Other than that, Portlandia, Walking Dead, American Pickers, Flying Wild, and lots of action movies.

Journey into the land of… high schoolers!

This year, CRDM’s Rhetoric Society of America (RSA) Student Chapter is undertaking a variety of outreach projects to increase awareness of rhetoric in our community. As a part of this project, this week, Ashley R. Kelly and I (Meagan Kittle Autry) volunteered at a local high school, Broughton, to speak to International Baccalaureate (IB) program twelfth grade students in a Theory of Knowledge class. The class was just finishing up their semester, so now was the perfect time for us to come in to introduce another way of looking at knowledge (and perhaps to encourage them to think about studying rhetoric as they set off for college in the fall!). We taught two separate classes, one each day, and let me tell you – teaching high school is exhausting! Each class had 40 students, and we were outside in a portable, a fairly small space for that number of students. For both of us, this was our first experience in a U.S. high school, though overall, it wasn’t that much different from our experience in Canada.

We covered basic concepts of rhetoric (what is it? where does it come from? how do we talk about it?) before moving on to a topic that they had covered in the semester: science. They had covered concepts of knowledge in science, so by bringing in the perspective of rhetoric of science, we connected to some ideas they had covered but also challenged them to think about science in new ways. We talked about expert and inexpert audiences, adapting arguments based on the different audiences, and the importance of science for the general public and for themselves as individuals. We based a lot of the discussion on our research into nuclear energy in both a local setting (with the Duke-Progress merger) and on a global scale (with the accident at Fukushima last March and Germany’s reaction to the disaster). The students were bright, talkative, and engaged – and sure knew way more about nuclear energy than I did in high school!

All in all, filling a 100 minute class to engage 40 adolescents the whole time was a challenging experience. But we left encouraged that the students were so engaged, and their teacher indicated that afterword, they expressed interest in the work we are doing and the CRDM program – they thought it was all pretty cool. Taking on this outreach opportunity was a really great experience, and we can’t wait to hear what other CRDMers are doing for it, too!

Originally posted on my blog, Meg’s Road to PhD.