Areas of Emphasis

Critical Cultural research emphasizes critical inquiry into the broadly defined ways that cultural discourses, practices, and performances contribute to, resist, and transform relations of power in society, particularly as related to communication-based problems of class, race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, national identity, (dis)ability, environment, and globalization. We focus on fostering a more equitable and democratic public sphere as a way to promote social justice. Our critical cultural faculty conduct  their inquiry into a variety of forms communication, including rhetorical, mediated, and interpersonal. Some of our recent projects include analysis of the political economy of the dark web, Korean war memory, performance of childbearing identities in families, mediated portrayals of African American and Asian Americans, political and cultural underpinnings of obesity, tactics of activism in the U.S. and China, postcolonial memory, and environmental justice.

Critical Cultural Studies Faculty

Environmental, science, and health communication is the study of how individuals, organizations, institutions and cultures communicate about the environment, science and health through language, images, and practice.

We believe that how humans communicate about environmental, science, and health issues effects culture, knowledge, policy, important practices, and ultimately the health of people and the planet. Interpersonal conversation, popular culture, rhetorical situations, mass media, corporate communication, institutions, and consumer behavior are some of the contexts through which understandings of the environment, science, and health are constituted and communicated.

Our program focuses on how communicative practices in a variety of settings are both constrained and create resistance and change. Faculty have recently studied a variety of issues such as effectiveness of media health campaigns , Native American resistance to hazardous waste placement, environmental sustainability, historical media depictions of nuclear testing, Chinese environmental NGO strategies, Chinese NGOs, obesity narratives, and how the media frame cancer information. 

CommSHER Faculty

Digital Media scholarship emphasizes the production and reception of mediated messages designed to inform, persuade, educate, and entertain both historically and in contemporary society; the social cultural political, legal, economic, professional, and ethical implications of mediated messages; and the convergence that is both altering and reproducing historical assumptions about mass communication.

We are committed to understanding media broadly. We are interested in the relationships between people and media as well as media messages, uses, representations, and reception both historically and in contemporary life. Through critical dialogue, interpretations change as historians seek to deepen our understanding of the past as well as the evolution of today?s salient issues. Through the study of contemporary media including journalism, visual media, and social media we emphasize the myriad ways media play significant roles in society.

Our program includes scholarship devoted to history, journalism, broadcast, photography, media technologies and social media. Faculty have studied public broadcasting, historical leadership in the black press, historical coverage of nuclear testing, first amendment cases, how visuals operate in contemporary and historical media systems, and a variety of forms of social practice such as hacking, modding, networking, programming, and interface design. We explore questions such as: how is identity performed, shaped, and maintained in new social media systems? How are mobile and social media used in social movement, health communication, and strategic communication? How does unequal access to digital technology affect the culture, policy, and economics of new media? How do new technologies mediate our relationship with the environment? How are fields such as journalism and education adapting and being shaped by new technologies and modes of media production?

Digital Media Faculty

Rhetoric involves the study of discursive and non-discursive symbolic influence.

We share a common interest in the problem-solving dimensions of our communication theories and practices. We are a community that believes in the importance of social justice, sustainable environments, engaged scholarship, and interventionist practices, and we think of rhetoric as more than simply the detached study of aesthetically interesting speeches or discrete texts. We view rhetoric as a dynamic process that involves social change or resistance, where material conditions and power relationships influence the ways that we think about the communicative influence of class, gender, and ethnicity in volatile situations.

Our unique program focuses on the relationships that exist between rhetoric and concrete local, regional, national, and international problems, and our departmental members specialize in the investigation of environmental, health, legal, political, cultural, and military issues. For example, our faculty have recently involved themselves in theoretical and practical debates about effective social movement strategies, climate change, the study of violent image events, the storage of hazardous waste in the West, sex education in public schools, the Duke Lacrosse case, and the U.S. military's rules of engagement and interpretations of international laws of armed conflict.
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Rhetoric Faculty