Seth Mulliken, ABD!

Don’t tell Seth, but it looks like these folks already wrote (and recorded!) his dissertation

Seth Mulliken completed his written and oral exams last week with flying colors.  His three exam areas

-New Critical Theories of Race in the U.S. Context

-Sound and Space

-Methodologies of Study in the “New Ethnography.”

will serve him well for his dissertation, which will employ ethnographic methods to examine the relationships between race, sound, and space in Philadelphia.

Seth’s committee includes Sheila Smith-McKoy (English and Africana Studies), Jonathan Sterne (Art History and Communication Studies, McGill University), Ken Zagacki (Communication and CRDM), Jeremy Packer (Communication and CRDM), and Steve Wiley (Communication and CRDM).  Jeremy and Steve are co-chairs.

Dr. Elizabeth A. Craig

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, 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, Andrew Binder, and Victoria Gallagher, and we recently caught up with Dr. Elizabeth Craig, Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication:

What are you reading?

For research: Journal of Family Communication. The journal is only a few decades old, so I’m trying to get caught up on trends in this area.

For fun: The Sword of Truth Series by Terry Goodkind. I’m a huge Fantasy/Sci-Fi Fan

What classes are you teaching?

I’m teaching Family Communication as an advanced undergraduate course. I love teaching this course because student really identify with the content. Additionally, these conversations help me as a researcher understand the applied nature of what I study, and how my research may impact individuals, families, and larger communities outside of academia.

What are you writing about?

How do you define family?

I’m currently writing a manuscript based off of in-depth interviews I conducted with Childfree individuals. I focused on their decisions not to have children, disclosures of this decision, and relational changes due to these disclosures. I continue to be excited about ways that we define/redefine what it means to be a family, and how family identity is solidified through communication with others.

What are you listening to?

My musical tastes are varied. When I write, I tend to listen to Civil Wars or U2, when I cook I listen to Ryan Adams or Kings of Leon, when I drive I listen to Metallica (doesn’t help with road rage), and when I hang out with friends on my patio I listen to Pearl Jam.

What are you watching?

I only have Netflix, so I’m currently watching How the Universe Works & catching up on the many seasons of Stargate…yes, I did mean it when I said I was a Sci-Fi fan.

A CRDMpressive showing on the job market

clearly didn’t get his PhD from CRDM

These redoubtable CRDMers have accepted tenure track positions all across the world. We applaud them and expect to get university keychains from each of them for the CRDM keychain collection.*

Dawn Shepherd, Boise State University

Kati Ahern, Long Island University

David Gruber, City University of Hong Kong

Jason Kalin, DePaul University, Chicago

Jacob Dickerson, Georgetown College

Nicholas Temple, Florida International University

Jordan Frith, University of North Texas

For a Google Map of CRDM alumni and a detailed description of where they’re working, click here.**

*”This doesn’t exist,” you say? “Doesn’t exist YET,” we reply.

**See an error/omission on the map? Please fix it–the map is open for edits!

Dr. Adriana de Souza e Silva

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, 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, Elizabeth Craig, Andrew Binder, and Victoria Gallagher, and we recently caught up with Dr. Adriana de Souza e Silva, Associate Professor in the Department of Communication:

What are you reading?

In my spare time now, mostly books about pregnancy and babies  

What classes are you teaching?

COM447 / COM547 (Mobile Technologies and Social Practices)

What are you writing about?

The use of cell phones in Brazil — specifically how artists/researchers develop locative media in Brazil.
Also writing about mobile narratives and how they shift the concept of location.

What are you listening to?

I rarely listen to music, but I do listen to NPR while driving to the University.

What are you watching?

Star Trek Next Generation.

It’s Summer, so CRDMers have been at the Pubs

Hooray (again) for consistency!

As has become tradition among CRDM blog faithful, we’d like to recognize the great work that’s been going on this past academic year. We’ve seen a frenzy of publications–they’re apparently on tap here at the Ricks Hall Annex– from CRDMers new and old.

“Brock, Kevin. (2012). Review: From A to <A>: Keywords of Markup. Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, 16(2). Retrieved January 16, 2012, from

http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/16.2/reviews/brock/index.html

de Souza e Silva, A., & Frith, Jordan. (2012). Mobile interfaces in public spaces: Locational privacy, control and urban sociability: Routledge.

Duarte, Fernanda. (2011). Mobility + Art. The Transborder Immigrant Tool.  Transfers, 1, (3), 113-118(6).

Frith, Jordan. (2012). Splintered space: The smartphone as the screen to the city. Mobilities, 7(1), 131-149.

de Souza e Silva, A. & Frith, Jordan. (2012). Location aware technologies: Control and privacy in hybrid spaces. In J. Packer & S. B. Wiley (Eds). Communication Matters: Materialist Approaches to Media, Mobility and Networks. (pp. 265-275). New York, NY: Routledge.

Kelly, Ashley R. (2011). “Book Review Essay: Persuasion, Emotion, and Interdisciplinarity. A Review of Two Perspectives.” Review of The Secret History of Human Emotion: From Aristotle’s Rhetoric to Modern Brain Science and Texting 4 Health: A Simple, Powerful Way to Improve Lives. The Communication Review14.4: 321-325.

doi: 10.1080/10714421.2011.624035.

Kelly, Ashley R., & Meagan Kittle Autry. (2011). “A Humanistic Approach to the Study of Social Media: Combining Social Network Analysis & Case Study Research.” Proceedings for the 29th ACM International Conference on Design of Communication. Pisa, Italy: ACM, 257-260. 10.1145/2038476.2038525″

Kittle Autry, Meagan, & Kelly, Ashley R. (2012). “Merging Duke Energy and Progress Energy: Online Public Discourse, Post-Fukushima Reactions, and the Absence of Environmental Communication.” Environmental Communication 6, 1-7.

doi: 10.1080/17524032.2012.672444.

Kalin, Jason. (2012). “Doing what comes naturally? Student perceptions and use of collaborative technologies. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.” http://academics.georgiasouthern.edu/ijsotl/v6n1/articles/Kalin/index.html

Larson, Stephen. “KANSAS: Towards a Rhetoric of the 1980s Farm Debt Crisis and the New Depression Film.” Senses of Cinema: An Online Film Journal Devoted to the Serious and Eclectic Discussion of Cinema. 60 (2011): MLA International Bibliography. Web. <http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2011/feature-articles/kansas-towards-a-rhetoric-of-the-1980s-farm-debt-crisis-and-the-new-depression-film/> 12 Apr. 2012.

Morain, Matt & Swarts, J. (2012). “YouTutorial: A Framework for Assessing Instructional Online Video.” [Special issue]. Technical Communication Quarterly, 21(1).

Snead, Robin. (December 2011).” Transfer-Ability”: Issues of Transfer and FYC, WPA-CompPile Research Bibliographies, No. 18. WPA-CompPile Research Bibliographies. <http://comppile.org/wpa/bibliographies/Bib18/Snead.pdf>.

Swift, Jeffrey. ( 2011). “Cascades and the political blogosphere” First Monday. 16.12. Web. Retrieved 16 January, 2012 from http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3744/3118

Wendi Sierra, ABD!

We are pleased to congratulate Wendi Sierra on passing her preliminary exams earlier this week. She is now ABD and has begun work on her dissertation. There needs to be a badge for that. Can we gamify the dissertation? Wendi?

Let’s hope the dissertation badge is closer to the lightbulb and the heart-filled glass than the fire or green person running away.

Having trailblazed academic gamification with her work on CstheDay, Wendi now moves on to her dissertation, titled “Gamification as 21st Century Education.“ Her committee is Chris Anson, Doug Eyman (George Mason U), Susan Miller-Cochran, David Rieder (chair), and Ken Zagacki.

Robin Snead, ABD

CRDMer Robin Snead has successfully passed her preliminary exams and has now officially attained the enviable title of ABD.

Robin’s dissertation is titled, “Tracing Activity: The Multimodal Composing Practices of University Students. Her committee includes Chris Anson, Deanna Dannels, Carolyn Miller, and Susan Miller-Cochran (chair).

We look forward to hearing/smelling/reading/feeling/seeing more of her work in the near future.

Congratulations, Robin!

Jacob Dickerson, PhD

note: this post is written by Blogger Emeritus Matt Morain.

Spectacle? From a Michael Bay project? THE HELL YOU SAY!

Hearty congratulations are in order for Dr. Jacob Dickerson, our latest CRDMer to successfully defend the dissertation. Writing about collective memory in framing the attack on Pearl Harbor, Jacob’s project was expertly co-guided by chairs Carolyn Miller and Steve Wiley, with Ken Zagacki and Carole Blair (from UNC) rounding out the committee.

To an audience of a dozen, Dr. Dickerson Tora Tora Tore it up in a 35-minute overview of his dissertation (a Dickertation?), titled “Framing Infamy: Media and Collective Memory of the Attack on Pearl Harbor.” Using Burke’s frames of acceptance to analyze popular texts depicting the attack on Pearl Harbor, Jacob artfully argued that the repeated use of the epic frame throughout the 20th century was instrumental in shaping and reshaping American identity and understanding the country’s role in world events. He utilized multiple examples in film, miniseries, and video games to introduce the concept of “memory ecology,” a collection of representations that influence our collective interpretations of a given event.

Movie posters like this one were part of Jacob's popular media analysis.

Jacob then went on to draw comparisons to frames used in popular texts of the attacks on 9/11. For generations of Americans, Pearl Harbor had become a lens through which to view other attacks; yet, for younger citizens, 9/11 became the dominant frame to view Pearl Harbor in turn. In doing so, Jacob demonstrated that an ecological frame analysis of popular texts can help us understand collective memory in a more nuanced way.

Steve Wiley, Jacob’s co-chair, remarked that “Jacob’s is one of the first dissertations I’ve seen that really takes the interdisciplinary bull by the horns, ” combining rhetorical analysis with media studies into a single, ambitious project. Whether this dissertation turns into one book or two, we wish him the best as he moves on to the details phase. Join us in congratulating Dr. Dickerson on Twitter, @jacob1480.

Jacob has accepted a position as an Assistant Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Georgetown College in Georgetown, KY, where I am sure no one at all will notice the uncanny resemblance he bears to Justified actor Timothy Olyphant.