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.
note: this post is written by Blogger Emeritus Matt.
The black and white filter in Instagram highlights Jason's study of the "monumentality of the mundane" in our everyday photosharing practices. Also, I hate Instagram.
As was predicted on this very blog 13 short months ago, Jason Kalin has passed his dissertation defense in grand style, making him the newest CRDM PhD in the world (sorry Adam, your reign has ended). Jason’s committee was made up of Victoria Gallagher (chair), Carolyn R. Miller, Hans Kellner, and David Rieder.
Jason’s dissertation, “Reanimating Memory: The Prospects of Rhetoric in a Digital Age,” argued for repositioning the centrality of memory in the rhetorical canon. Exploring digital ambient memory and aided by a smart analysis of Microsoft Photosynth, Jason examined photographs like these (which he called hauntography), and social media’s impact on what he calls the psychosis of digital imaging.
In celebration of his hard-earned status as a PhD, Jason tricked Matt Morain into using Instagram at the bowling alley and again at the dartboard.
Dr. J Bowling
Dr. J, staying on target.
(It should be noted, and strenuously repeated, that Matt hates Instagram.)
This has become something of a semi-regular post now, which can’t be said for most of the content that appears on this blog. It’s also the only type of post in which this image 1) appears more than once and 2) gets reused on a regular basis.
Hooray for consistency!
If you’re not familiar with our previous updates last fall or this spring, we like to keep our readers updated with the publication activities of the students in our program. Every so often, I’ll find myself trying to explain my own research, or my program, or digital media, or rhetoric, or the basics of having a conversation, apparently.
Faculty get their own announcements on their department websites, so this gives us a good outlet to show the PhD-program-blog-reading public just what it is we do here. Student names are listed below in bold and in full to make this list more search-friendly (citation style guide prescriptivists be damned!). When possible, I included a link to the journal or website in which the article appears, though I realize that everyone won’t have access to the same institutional subscriptions.
Berube, D., Cummings, Christopher L., Frith, Jordan H., Binder, A., and Oldendick, R. (2011). Comparing nanoparticle risk perceptions to other known EHS risks. Journal of Nanoparticle Research, 13(8), 3089-3099. [link]
de Souza e Silva, A., Sutko, D.M., Salis, F.A., and de Souza e Silva, C. (2011). Mobile phone appropriation in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. New Media & Society, 13 (3): 411-426. [link]
de Souza e Silva, A., and Sutko, Daniel M. (2011). Placing location-aware media in a history of the virtual. In D.W. Park, N.W. Jankowski, & S. Jones (eds.), The Long History of New Media (pp. 299-316). New York: Peter Lang. [link]
Gruber, David. (2011). Theatrical bodies: Acting out comedy and tragedy in two anatomical displays. Visual Communication Quarterly, 18(2), 100-113. [link]
Packer, J. & Oswald, Kathy. (2010). From windscreen to widescreen: Screening technologies and mobile communication. The Communication Review, 13(4), 309-339. [link]
Sutko, Daniel M. and de Souza e Silva, A. (2011). Location-aware mobile media and urban sociability. New Media & Society, 13 (5): 807-823. [link]
As always, the above list only includes published articles and doesn’t include submitted, accepted, or forthcoming; check back for the next update sometime in late summer/early fall.
Classes start at NC State next week, which signals the return of students, exasperated student emails, and most importantly, regular CRDM blog updates. With that timing in mind, we’re pleased to announce our most recent doctor to the world, Kathy F. Oswald, PhD. She sailed through her dissertation defense on Thursday, armed no doubt with her excellent research and a classic Philly Shell.
(Right? Because it’s a type of defense in boxing and she’s from Philadelphia? Right? Guys? Fine, I’ll be over here in the corner.)
Kathy’s committee consisted of Steve Wiley, Melissa Johnson, and Rebecca Walsh, with Jeremy Packer serving as chair. Speaking on behalf of the committee, Packer said “we were happy to pass her dissertation unconditionally.”
Kathy's dissertation wordle. Not pictured: Kathy.
That dissertation, titled “Smarter, better, faster, stronger: The informationalized infrastructural ideal,” is right in the wheelhouse for an interdisciplinary CRDM research topic, as you can see from her abstract:
As the public and private sector spend and invest billions of dollars maintaining, repairing, securing, constructing, and informationalizing infrastructure, scholars of communication continue to neglect the central role of infrastructure in shaping contemporary mediascapes. This neglect stems from a number of tendencies in the field of communication, including a move away from the transmission model of communication, a separation in thinking about the communication of information and the communication of people and objects, and a tendency to think about technology in terms of their historical development, mediation, effects, uses or potentials rather than to understand technologies as cultural forms subject to alternative arrangements. While these traditions make the study of communication, mobility, and technology challenging, this work takes an interdisciplinary approach that recognizes and works to move past historical divisions in the disciplines in the interest of exploring the ways in which informationalization is changing communication, culture, and mediascapes.
I locate informationalization—adding a data layer to processes through instrumentation, interconnection and intelligence—at the center of changing articulations of communication, transportation, information and housing infrastructure. I take as central a double reorganization of infrastructure under two competing logics: a utopian view that positions the informationalization of networks as “smart” and can be traced across a variety of popular, industry, and government discourses as a compelling argument for connection; and a logic that positions infrastructure as “critical”, which while intensified by post 9/11 sensibilities, has clear origins in earlier beliefs about the dystopian potentials of connection including computer crime and cyberwarfare. I first develop a set of working definitions for a variety of terms as they relate to informationalization. I then explore specific contexts of informationalization, looking to connection as smart in a growing market for electrically powered automobility, dystopian discourses of informationalization in terms of critical infrastructure and cyberwar, and finally to disconnection, examining “grid away from the grid” life assurance solutions. Through these cases, I work to further understand informationalization as an apparatus that rearticulates infrastructure according to a new infrastructural ideal and an associated politics of security that are coextensive with both utopian and dystopian discourses of informationalization.
I ultimately argue that communication and mobilities scholars must look to processes of informationalization with a particular emphasis on those infrastructures that are designated both smart and critical in order to reveal the ways in which smart infrastructure can mean more than intelligent infrastructure, and to discern to what and to whom critical infrastructure is critical. It is my hope that this project will serve as an starting point for productive and meaningful interdisciplinary collaboration concerning a process that promises to radically alter the way that we access and use communication, transportation, housing and utility services and infrastructures.
From her Daft Punk title to her knock-out initials (boxing again! I’m coming out of the corner now!), it was pretty clear Kathy was going to come through with an excellent dissertation. Well done, you, a hearty congrats from all of us, and thanks for picking a title that gave me a relevant excuse to post “Daft Hands.”
Keep up with Kathy 140 characters at a time (@kfoswald) or check out her online portfolio for a little more depth about her research and teaching.
Not two days after my catch-all post comes news of our freshest doctoral candidate, Heidi Hess von Ludewig.
Not to be confused with Ludwig von Koopa, Heidi was newly minted as All But Dissertation on Wednesday afternoon and will now begin working on erasing the All But with her research project. Tentatively titled, “Networked creativity: Understanding the process and impact of interpersonal and networked interactions on computer-mediated workplace creativity,” it will focus on networks. (I’m guessing, as I haven’t seen the abstract yet). Keeping Heidi on track will be her chair, Jason Swarts, and committee members Elizabeth Craig, Susan Katz, and Chris Mayhorn (Psychology).
As a part-timer (and current IBM employee), Heidi’s road to the PhD takes a little longer than our full-time students, so it’s always encouraging to other part-timers in the program to see someone clear the high hurdle of the oral exams.
Gen. Buck Turgidson has been waiting months for someone at CRDM Blog HQ to pick up and resume posting. He's a patient man.
Well, this is awkward.
It’s been a while since we’ve posted any program updates (since May, actually) so we have a lot to report. Normally, each of these notes of interest would get their own dedicated posts, but with the heat wave this summer affecting Raleigh harder than most, our keyboards all melted together and we were helpless to prevent the build-up of program news.
Monday saw the culmination of four years of hard CRDM work and the simultaneous realization of a lifetime of waiting for a single joke as Shayne Pepper successfully defended his dissertation this afternoon. He’s the second student this year and the sixth overall to do so.
Huh. I never noticed that before today.
Shayne’s presentation on his dissertation, “Public Service Entertainment: Post-Network Television, HBO, and the AIDS Epidemic,” was well received by the audience in attendance. According to his website, the project
examines HBO’s HIV/AIDS programming in order to make a larger argument about what public service television looks like in the modern neoliberal state. By studying the formative years of HBO through these HIV/AIDS programs, I am able to analyze a complex historical moment in which intensified neoliberal strategies and tactics of governance, a new industrial formation of the television industry, and an unprecedented biomedicial crisis converge. This dissertation argues that HBO stands at the center of these discursive formations and can open up new ways of thinking about all three.
Among the students in attendance was second-year CRDMer Lauren Clark, who said she learned a lot from Shayne’s presentation about a subject she thinks isn’t visible enough in public discourse:
There is very little work done on AIDS programming, as well as little work done on HBO programming aside from the last 15 years which is where scholars gravitate to work on the new, exciting shows that air. So Shayne’s project attempts to fill a gap in the research done on the history cable network versus public network shows, while simultaneously using HIV/AIDS programming to theorize the networks’ attempts to govern and control individual and group interaction with people who have AIDS.
The defense was well received by Shayne’s committee as well, judging by the outcome of the 2-hour meeting. Shayne worked under the direction of his chair and former CRDM program director, Jeremy Packer, and members James Hay (UIUC), Maria Pramaggiore, Sarah Sharma (UNC), and current program director Steve Wiley.
Shayne now prepares to take his many talents to Northeastern Illinois University as an assistant professor in the Department of Communication, Media, & Theater. His cheery disposition and ever-present headphones will be sorely missed around the CRDM office, as will his work ethic in making progress happen for our CRDM Student Association.
[Our second CCCC recap comes from 3rd-year Kati Fargo, who specializes in auditory rhetoric and sound in composition studies (hence the theme)]
Discussion of annotated playlists as genres available in the classroom (W6 all-day workshop) “Sound Teaching: Bringing Music and Audio into the Composition Classroom.”
Craig Saper’s unbelievable audio, sampled, performative work on “Epcot” on the panel entitled “Florida.”
Steph Ceraso’s Remix composition project in the “Sound Teaching” workshop
Making an audio-essay on noise using an incredibly loud barking dog sample and scream music with Geoff Sirc and Spencer Schaffner
Rebecca Black’s “Friday” –while not an auditory highlight, thanks to Matt Morain, this song has been seared into my brain. Literally.
Chris Anson’s We are 113! Ignite– bringing memory, delivery, (and humor) together in this highly oral form
Dawn singing my alarm clock ring tone back to me in order to convince me that she had turned it off and I should wake up.
Of course there were also innumerable highlights that were not necessarily focused on the auditory experience. NC State students and faculty represented well across the chart. If you want to know more about DSP ask Dawn and David, Oulipian writing ask Kevin, re-photography ask Jason Kalin, and C’s the Day (the game) ask Wendi. If you want to know more about internet culture and memes do NOT ask Matt; you will never be able to stop humming “Friday.” But seriously, a huge shout out to all who presented and/or attended!
This week, 16 CRDM students are presenting their research in Atlanta at 4C’s, known in its long form as the Conference on College Composition and Communication. We’ll be featuring several a recap post once it’s all said and done, but in the meantime you can download a schedule of our speakers and events – NC State at CCCC 2011.
You can follow conference tweets with the #cccc2011, #cccc11, and #4c11 hashtags (none of the C’s include “conformity”).
Time again for a publications update. You might have seen our first post back in October; this recurring feature is meant to highlight the kinds of research we do here in the program and the types of journals that fit our diverse research interests. It’s also an excuse to make the same pun 3-4 times a year and recycle the same pub sign over and over again. Hooray recycling!
Happy hour special: 2-for-1 citation index!
Student names are listed below in bold and in full to make this list more search-friendly (citation style guide prescriptivists be damned!). When possible, I included a link to the journal or website in which the article appears, though I realize that everyone won’t have access to the same institutional subscriptions.
de Souza e Silva, A. and Sutko, Daniel M. (2011). Theorizing locative technologies through philosophies of the virtual. Communication Theory, 21 (1): 23-42. [link]
de Souza e Silva, A. and Frith, Jordan. (2010). Locational privacy in public spaces: Media discourses on location-aware mobile technologies. Communication, Culture, and Critique, 3 (4): 503-525. [link]
de Souza e Silva, A. and Frith, Jordan. (2010). A critical analysis of locative social mobile networks: Merging communication, location and urban spaces. Mobilities, 5 (4): 485-505 [link]
Frith, Jordan, Morain, Matt, Cummings, Chris. and Berube, D. (2011). Reviews of the books: The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr and You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto by Jaron Lanier. Journal of Communication, 61 (1). [link]
Gallagher, V. J., Martin, Kelly N., and Ma, M. (2011) Visual wellbeing: Intersection of rhetorical theory and design. Design Issues, 27 (2): 25-39.
Gallagher, V. J. and Martin, Kelly N. (2010). Book review of Lester C. Olson, Cara A. Finnegan and Diane S. Hope, eds. Visual Rhetoric: A Reader in Communication and American Culture (2008). Southern Communication Journal, 75 (5): 547-551. [link]
Gruber, David; Jack, J., Keranen, L., McKenzie, J. M., and Morris, M. B. (2011). Rhetoric and the Neurosciences: Engagement and Exploration. Poroi, 7 (1). [link]
Wiley, S.B.C., Sutko, Daniel M., and Becerra, T.M. (2011). Assembling social space. The Communication Review, 13 (4): 340-372. [link]
Zuckerman, E., Roberts, H., McGrady, Ryan., York, J., & Palfrey, J. (2010). Distributed denial of service attacks against independent media and human rights sites. The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. [link]
The above list only includes published articles and doesn’t include submitted, accepted, or forthcoming; check back for the next update sometime in late summer/early fall.
