PhD Students
PhD Candidates (ABDs) and Dissertation Titles
Recent ICR GraduatesBaez, Jillian jbaez@uiuc.edu
Jillian Baez is currently a second year doctoral student at the Institute of Communications Research. She is interested in media and cultural studies and her research in particular focuses on Latinas and popular culture. She is a recipient of the Graduate College Fellowship, Summer Predoctoral Institute Fellowship, and the Tinker Field Research Grant for Graduate Student Research in Latin America and the Caribbean at UIUC. Jillian has a forthcoming entry, "Latino News Networks," co-authored with Dr. Federico Subervi in the Encyclopedia of Latino Studies. She has presented her work at the Cultural Studies Association Annual Conference, Crossroads/Association for Cultural Studies Annual Conference and the Latina/Latino Studies program at UIUC. She is a member of the National Communications Association, Association for Educaton in Journalism and Mass Communication, Puerto Rican Studies Association, Latin American Studies Association, and Cultural Studies Association. Jillian has a B.A. in Media Studies and Puerto Rican/Latino Studies from Hunter College, City University of New York.
Bai, Ruoyon bai@uiuc.edu
Ruoyun Bai has a B. A. in English (1996) and an MA in American Literature (1999) from the Beijing Foreign Studies University. Her research interests include political economy of mass media, especially in the post-communist world. She is currently doing research on Chinese television drama. Her research builds on and develops theories of the relationship between the market and the Leninist party. It also provides a case study of the interpenetration and mutual transformation of communist ideology and commercial/popular culture. She has served as the managing editor of Studies in Symbolic Interaction (2001-2002) and as assistant editor of Qualitative Inquiry and Cultural Studies <-> Critical Methodologies (2000-2002). She has authored articles in the Iowa Journal of Communication and in Studies in Symbolic Interaction.
Brush, Heidi hbrush@uiuc.edu
Heidi M. Brush received her B. A. in English and her M. A. in Media Studies from Pennsylvania State University. She entered the Institute of Communications Research in 1999 with a University Fellowship, and has completed her coursework with a major in Technology and Culture and a minor in Cultural Theory. Her research interests include new and old technologies, social and technological networks, internet and politics, cultural, economic and technological globalization, and cultural reappropriations of space and technologies . Brush is currently writing her dissertation, entitled "Netwars: Information Technologies, Radical Politics and the Re-appropriations of Space." This fall, she will be teaching a course that she created at Rutgers University: "Global Networks, Technology and Culture." She has published articles or has articles forthcoming in Cultural Studies<-> Critical Methodologies, Information, Theory and Society, Encyclopedia of New Media (Steve Jones, Ed., Sage Publications, 2002), 9/11 in American Culture (Altamira Press, 2003), and New Frontiers in International Communication (forthcoming Rowman and Littlefield, 2004).
Bui, Diem-My dbui@uiuc.edu
Diem-My Bui's work focuses on identity making, subjectivity, memory, Asian/Asian American cultural studies, and transnational feminist studies. She has presented her work at the Third Wave Feminist Symposium at Purdue University, the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction, the Couch-Stone Symposium, National Communications Association, International Communications Association, American Studies Association, and the American Sociological Association. She won Top Student Paper award in the Asian American Studies division at the 2002 NCA conference for her paper entitled, "Reconceptualizing the Internment of Japanese Americans as Internal Exile." Another of her papers, entitled "Global Fantasies: Constructions and Commodifications of Vietnamese Women in Post-Embargo Vietnam" was awarded Best Graduate Student Paper in the Annual Women in International Development Paper Competition at UIUC and was published in the Women in International Development Newsletter (1999). Her performance entitled "Six Feet Tall: A One-Person Performance" on Asian American identity and power was published in Cultural Studies-Critical Methodologies (2001). Diem-My received her B.A. degree from Grinnell College, where she majored in Sociology with a concentration in Gender and Women's Studies. She received her MA in Sociology from UIUC.
Chan, Joan joanchan@uiuc.edu
Joan Chan recieved her B. A. in both Women Studies and American Studies (2001) from the University of California, Davis. Her research interests are focused in Feminist Film making, particularly transnational feminist documentary work on social issues that affect women.
Coleman, Catherine cacolema@uiuc.edu
Catherine Coleman entered the Institute of Communications Research with bachelor's degrees in English and Psychology with honors at the University of the South, Sewanee. Her work experience includes conducting research for a political polling and consulting firm in Washington, DC; working as an independent marketing consultant and as a marketing analyst for a GE subsidiary that was releasing an Internet content delivery network; and advertising with TMP Worldwide. Catherine's research interests include advertising ethics and ethical considerations in advertising regulation—from within the industry and by government—with special attention to how these issues relate to visual persuasion and gender.
Connell, Sara sconnell@uiuc.edu
Sara Connell is currently a graduate student at the Institute of Communications Research. Her research interests include media studies, gender theory and cultural studies. She is particularly interested in women's health care and how it is portrayed in the media and in the medical field. Recently, she has been studying how public health campaigns are used by the media and the effects of these campaigns on people's perception of health issues. Sara has given many conference papers and authored the "Journalism" entry in The Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women: Global Women's Issues and Knowledge (2000). Before she came to graduate school, she worked as a production editor for two publishing houses in New York City—St. Martin's Press and Oxford University Press. She continues to do freelance work for Oxford University Press. She also worked as a media intern for ABC News, "Nightline" in Washington, DC, where she assisted correspondents, editors and producers, and assisted with the 1990 Nelson Mandela Town Meeting. More recently she has worked as an assistant for Dean Stanley Fish at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Cornish, Sabryna cornish@uiuc.edu
Sabryna Cornish received her B.A. in journalism and M.A. in communication from Northern Illinois University. A media specialist, her research focuses on new media studies, specifically social aspects of the internet. Her work has been published by the Pew Internet and American Life Project and she has been interviewed by several media outlets about her research, such as Voice of America. Her current research examines the role of online advocacy groups in the democratic process and societal perceptions of the internet which she presented in Paris. She is an adjunct lecturer at the University of Illinois at Chicago teaching courses in media studies, popular culture and male and female communication at the undergraduate level. She is a member of the Association of Internet Researchers, the Society for Professional Journalists and the National and International Communication Associations.
Dolan, Kevin kdolan@uiuc.edu
Kevin Dolan received a B.A. in English literature at Montana State University at Bozeman and an MA in American studies from the University of New Mexico. He worked as a reporter and editor at daily newspapers for 16 years, the last nine as a copy editor at The Santa Fe New Mexican. His research interests include cultural and critical studies and race and ethnic studies, and more specifically the ways the news media protect and bolster the status quo, particularly what he calls the incumbency of whiteness. He has presented papers at UIUC's 2003 Latinidad conference, The University of New Mexico's 2003 Communication and Culture conference and the Crossroads in Cultural Studies 2004 conference. He has an article forthcoming in Studies in Symbolic Interaction: An Annual Compilation of Research, edited by Norman K. Denzin.
Doolittle, Matthew mdoolitt@uiuc.edu
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, Matthew Doolittle entered a combined MD/ PhD program at the Institute and the College of Medicine in 1995. His research focuses on the relationship between the use of language and the survival of physical pain. Through an examination of medical and non-medical sources, he is examining a broader range of language strategies than have previously been acknowledged by either medical or non-medical researchers in this area. His work is conceptualizing not only psycho-cultural but also neurological roles for such exercises of language in the mitigation of painful experience. During his graduate program, he has also pursued several projects related to the uses of narrative in the understanding and treatment of trauma, and in 1998 he was invited by the state of Kuwait to observe the comprehensive and ongoing trauma treatment program established after the 1991 Gulf War. From 1995 to 1998, Mr. Doolittle held a University of Illinois Distinguished Fellowship in Communications Research. In 1999 he held a Bloomfield Fellowship at the College of Medicine. For the coming academic year he has been awarded the Diane Gottheil Fellowship for "an outstanding MD/PhD Student entering the final year of the program."
Dubrofsky, Rachel dubrofsk@uiuc.edu
Rachel Dubrofsky's graduate work focuses on women and popular culture. Her Masters Thesis "All Consuming Selves: Women Reading Popular Psychology" examined the female gender lifescripts in popular psychology books by looking at the notions of empathy, identification and friendship in these texts. Her doctoral studies have centered on women and television, and she has an essay published in Communication Review entitled "Ally McBeal as Postfeminist Icon: The Aestheticizing and Fetischizing of the Independent Working Woman." She has presented her work at conferences of the National Communication Association (NCA) and of the American Sociological Association. She has also taught undergraduate courses in "Film Culture: Interpretation and Theories: Teen Slasher Films," "Social Aspects of Mass Communications" and "Women in Popular Film and Television." Her dissertation research examines reality-based relationship shows to explore the following: the construction of White, Western Middle-Class heterosexual female subjects through notions of empowerment and choice; to examine what is seen as an authentic, 'real' female American self; to investigate how surveillance can become a mode of authenticating the self; and to look at the appropriation of the rhetoric of the self-help movement in constructing what is considered an authentic self.
Durham, Aisha adurham@uiuc.edu
Aisha S. Durham is a third-year doctoral student in the Institute of Communications Research. Her general research interests include popular culture representations, black feminism and qualitative methods. She holds a bachelor of science in communications studies from Virginia Commonwealth University and a master of arts degree in journalism and mass communication from the University of Georgia. Durham is a former research/writer intern for Time magazine. She has presented her work on representation at conferences sponsored by the Association for Cultural Studies, National Communications Association, Popular Culture Association and the National Organization for Women. She has three publications featured in Qualitative Inquiry and her dissertation research examining hip-hop feminism will be featured in an upcoming anthology and documentary about hip-hop culture.
Elavsky, C. Michael elavsky@uiuc.edu
C. Michael Elavsky received his BA and MA in English from the University of Binghamton in NY. He worked as a lecturer at the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Ostrava, Czech Republic (1996-98), where he designed, coordinated, and implemented courses in Critical Theory, Popular Culture, American History, Academic Writing, and Communication. It was during this time that his doctoral research interests also developed, in light of his experiences in Central Europe. He entered the Ph.D. program at the ICR in 1998 and is currently a doctoral candidate in the latter stages of researching and writing his dissertation. He has been the recipient of 3 Title IV Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships in Russian and East European Studies, a CIC Traveling Scholar for the University of Illinois, and is currently a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Program Scholar for 2002-3. He has published several articles in the Czech media and academic circles, and published his first piece stateside this year in Studies in Symbolic Interaction: A Research Annual. Currently, he has two other academic articles under review in professional journals, and he is similarly seeking to publish aspects of his dissertation research in US alternative and mainstream popular media as well. His research interests include popular music and the global music industry, postsocialist cultural studies, Czech cultural identity, globalization studies, Critical Theory (Postmodernism, Postcolonialism), and Political Economy of Communications studies.
Filmer, Alice filmer@uiuc.edu
Alice Filmer is a doctoral candidate in the ICR whose research addresses a phenomenon she calls the acoustics of identity, i.e., those features of identity—whether cultural, national, racial, ethnic, and the like—that are performed in speech. With a concentration in linguistic diversity and language rights in multicultural societies such as the USA, Alice examines the sociopolitical construction of language standards and stigmas within the historical context of Euro-American colonialism. In her research on acoustic identity, she problematizes explanations of center-periphery power relations that have become obsolete in the face of worldwide migration and other demographic shifts. More specifically, she examines liminal spaces created and taken up by individuals and communities, who linguistically negotiate identities that defy hegemonic normativity and escape the confines of essentialism. Among several research sites, Alice has investigated a linguistic dilemma affecting many young speakers of African-American Vernacular English who struggle to negotiate a black identity in the face of peer criticism for "sounding white" when they speak standard English (in World Englishes, 22(3), 2003). In her essay, "Delivering Malinche" (in Studies in Symbolic Interaction, 26, 2003), she writes about the "mexicanization" of a gringa who begins to "sound Sonoran" as she learns to speak Spanish fluently. Alice has been the recipient of a multi-year Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship to study Quechua through the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. As an undergraduate, she first studied linguistics at UC Berkeley and Edinburgh University, and then music at UC Riverside. Her M.A. is in Speech Communication from San Francisco State University.
Harewood, Susan sharewoo@uiuc.edu
Susan Harewood received her BA from the University of the West Indies and her MA from Howard University. From 1990 she was the Coordinator of the program in Mass Communications at the Barbados Community College. In 2000 she gained a Fulbright Fellowship to pursue her doctoral studies at the Institute of Communications Research. Her current research interests include Caribbean popular culture, popular music, cultural studies, globalization, and gender. She has co-authored with Professor Cameron McCarthy, Jin Park and Michael Giardina Contesting culture: Identity and curriculum dilemmas in the age of globalization, postcolonialism and multiplicity for a special issue on Popular Culture and Education in Harvard Educational Review (2003). She has also co-authored with Professor Angharad Valdivia a chapter entitled Exploring Dora: re-embodied Latinidad on the Web in the forthcoming book Girls on the World Wide Web. Her article Masquerade performance and the play of sexual identity in the Caribbean will be appearing in Cultural Studies–Critical Methodologies.
Hulst, Mary hulst@uiuc.edu
Mary Hulst is in her second year at the ICR and is majoring in Communication Ethics with a minor in the Philosophy of Religion. An ordained minister in the Christian Reformed Church, Mary is studying the intersection of preaching and ethics. She is particularly interested in the training of preachers so that their communication is ethical and rich with integrity. She studies moral philosophy, practical philosophy, and religious communication in her work. Before coming to Illinios she pastored a 650 member church in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Jamison, Kathy kjamison@uiuc.edu
Jia, Jia jiajia@uiuc.edu
Jia Jia earned her B.A. degree in Advertising from the Department of Art Studies at Peking University in Beijing, China. She started her doctoral program of study at the Institute of Communications Research at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2001. Her current research interest has been focused on visual rhetoric and contemporary Chinese visual culture. Her writing topics include Chinese films, advertising, art, and online animation. Her articles "Reconstruction of a Political Icon: Shilu's Painting Fighting in Northern Shaaxi" and "Contemplating Stuffed Animals and Chocolate at a Seminar" are both forthcoming in Qualitative Inquiry. Her video autoethnography "Tracing a Chinese Body" was presented at the Fifth Annual International Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference, and her paper "Lady of Metamorphosis: A Chinese Female Designer's Online Animation Practice" will be presented at the 90th Annual National Communication Association Convention. Jia Jia was awarded an Illinois Distinguished Fellowship by the Graduate College from 2001 to 2004, and she worked as a research assistant for the conference "Beyond East and West: Transnational Art Today" held at the Krannert Art Museum in February 2004. Jia is also skilled in graphic design, video production, and electronic publishing.
Kien, Grant kien@uiuc.edu
Grant Kien came to the ICR doctoral program in 2002 with an MA from the Communication and Culture graduate program at York University in Toronto, Canada. His research builds on the Toronto school of communications approach by looking at the way wireless digital portable media devices are implicated in social relations and inter-personal networks. Recent and upcoming publications include "The Masked People" (in Under the Lens of the People, Peoples Lenses Collective, Toronto 2003), "Culture/State/Globalization" (in Cultural Studies/Critical Methodologies, 4:4), and "Internet Time: Socio-Spatial Coordination Online" (2003 Association of Internet Researchers Annual, forthcoming). Grant presented works at the 5th International Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference, and his paper "Portability, Auto-Mobility and Ontological Security" has been named Top Student Paper in the Critical and Cultural Studies division of the 2004 NCA convention in Chicago. He has also recently been acknowledged with an award from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
Kim, Soochul skim36@uiuc.edu
Kosovski, Jason kosovski@uiuc.edu
Jason Kosovski is a 3rd-year doctoral student with a BS in Media Studies and an MA in Speech Communication from the University of Illinois. His research on popular culture is focused on film and television and utilizes feminist, psychoanalytic, postmodern and queer theory perspectives. His dissertation work is on reality television approached from both a theoretical and textual perspective. Jason has also taught several courses including "Women and Popular Film and Television," (Comm 256/WS 286) "Mass Communication in a Democratic Society," (Comm 231) and "Introduction to Freshman Rhetoric" (Rhet 105) as well as assisted in "Introduction to Public Speaking" (Sp Comm 101) and "Film Interpretation and Theory" (Comm 221).
Leger, Marie leger@uiuc.edu
Marie Leger is an MD/PhD student in the Institute of Communications Research. Her dissertation research examines globalization and pharmaceutical clinical trials through a case study of HIV/AIDS research in Mexico City. Marie spent the 1998-1999 academic year as an exchange student in the Sociology department at the Colegio de Mexico, supported by a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship. Her research has also been supported by the International Dissertation Research Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council, Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowships, and the University of Illinois Graduate College travel grant. She has presented her work at annual meetings of the Latin American Studies Association, the International Communication Association, the Society for the Social Studies of Science, and the American Sociological Association, and has published articles in the Journal of Medical Humanities, Emergences, and Television Studies (British Film Institute, 2002). Her research interests include globalization and health, social and cultural studies of science and technology, and health and the media. Marie has a B.A. (1995) in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California at Berkeley.
Levina, Marina levina@uiuc.edu
Marina Levina is a fifth year Ph.D. student. She received her MA in Communications from the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Pennsylvania and her B.A. in Political Science and BS in Psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her master's thesis studied the subculture identity construction in queer youth communities. Her dissertation examines how the scientific discourses of hematology and genomics have affected the management of the monstrous and freakish bodies in the popular culture. She has published her work in European Journal of Cultural Studies, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Psychology and Medicine and in book anthologies Vampires: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil and Science Studies and Science Fictions. She has also presented her work at various national and international conferences. In 2004, she was the recipient of the University of Illinois Campus-Wide Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. Her research was supported by the Graduate College Fellowship, Women and Gender Studies' Feminist Scholarship, and various travel grants. In 2004-05 she will be the Illinois Program for Research in Humanities (IPRH) Graduate Fellow and will present her work in the IPRH annual conference spotlighting fellows' research. Her current research interests include cultural studies of science and medicine, film studies, body studies, and critical theory.
Lingan, Eloisa elingan@uiuc.edu
Magnet, Shoshana magnet@uiuc.edu
Shoshana Magnet is a second year PhD candidate and SSHRC fellow in the Institute of Communication Research at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She received her undergraduate degree from McMaster University in Arts and Science, and her Master's degree from the University of Toronto in Sociology and Equity Studies. Her video, Genetic, was funded by a fellowship from Toronto's Inside Out Film and video festival, and has screened at festivals in New York, Toronto, and the Czech Republic. Her published work has appeared in Atlantis as well as Canadian Woman Studies. Her current research investigates how normative assumptions around ability, gender, sexuality, and race are maintained on the Internet despite utopian predictions to
the contrary.
Malagreca, Miguel malagrec@uiuc.edu
Miguel Malagreca is a doctoral student in communications at the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC). He is a psychologist, graduated with honors from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) Argentina, and the first Master in Communications and Culture from the same university. He has been a part-time researcher on ethics and human rights for the Queens University in Canada, the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina and Tel Aviv University in Israel. He also holds a certificate diploma from the Social Sciences from the Éinships, family transformations and their representation in queer cinema. Recently he has been granted the 2003 Tinker Field Research Grant for Graduate Student Research in Latin America and Iberia and has won the IPRH award three times for his reading groups on Psychoanalysis and Culture at the UIUC. Miguel's latest refereed publications in English include "Ominous Impunity" (2004, in press); "I Want Justice" (2004, in press); "From family to sexuation" (2004); "Psychoanalytic Theory And Everyday Cultural Politics: A Critical Reading Of The Argentinean Crisis Of 2001" (2003); and "Psychological Implications In The Culture/Identity Debate" (2002). He is co-editor of Aesthethika (www.ethika.org). Miguel's current work articulates European Queer Theory and Lacanian Psychoanalysis to pursue research on new forms of kinship that deviate from traditional models of the family. Specifically he intends to study the impact of non normative sexualities on family and kinship arrangements in contemporary Italian society focusing on media analysis in Italy and using contemporary Italian queer films, cultural studies texts and Lacanian theory.
Meinrath, Sascha meinrath@uiuc.edu
Sascha Meinrath is a community organizer, media activist, and avid researcher. He has overseen logistical support for numerous media projects worldwide - often working closely with people in many of the world's "hot-spots" - and is the current treasurer for the Global Indymedia Network. Sascha is the co-founder of the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center Foundation and created many of the groups and projects that are its hallmarks today. Sascha works as a project manager for two software and website development companies, recently leaving corporate America to join the Eggplant Active Media Worker Collective. He recently founded the Acorn Active Media Foundation, whose mission is to develop software and build websites to support the Global Justice Movement. Currently, Sascha is the coordinator for the Community Wireless Network and is helping to build a National U.S. Independent Media Center. In 2003 Sascha started a second PhD program at the Institute for Communications Research and was elected to the Board of Directors of WEFT 90.1 FM Community Radio.
Monje, David dmonje@uiuc.edu
David Monje has degrees in fine art, linguistics, and communications from the University of Oregon. His research interests include the ethics and epistemology of inquiry in the human disciplines, the political and rhetorical dimensions of state and non-state violence, and the discourses and processes of globalization and international/transnational culture, politics and economics. His dissertation research looks at critical creative practices that explore the cultural and human consequences of contemporary global culture, particularly those of artists and media producers whose inquiry and aesthetic work negotiates the complexities of cultural and individual identity in an era of global turbulence.
Moreira, Claudio cmoreira@uiuc.edu
Nimkoff, Mark nimkoff@uiuc.edu
Mark Nimkoff is a doctoral student in the Institute of Communications Research. He is a former member of the Mark Morris Dance Group, and a current member of the alt-country musical group Some Velvet Morning. He received his ABJ from the University of Georgia (magna cum laude) in 1997. Mark's dissertation will examine public museum narratives of media history, specifically those on display at The Newseum in Washington DC and the Museum of Radio and Television in New York City. Mark is interested in examining what present assumptions and future aspirations are contained in the stories these museums tell about the history of media, the contemporary public these historical museums address and seek to constitute, and this public's proposed relationship with the media.
Óndrew baoillo@uiuc.edu
Andrew Ólds an MA in communications and cultural studies from Dublin City University and a B.Sc. in mathematics from NUI, Galway. A former member of Ireland's state Broadcasting Complaints Commission, he worked for several years as a Market Analyst in eircom, Ireland's leading telecommunications provider. He is a licensed radio experimenter (EI7EIB) and experienced broadcaster, and was the founder of Flirt FM, one of Ireland's first permanent student radio stations, through which he gained exposure to the community radio movement. His work focuses on political economy and organizational structures in participatory and alternative media, and he has published and spoken on topics such as weblogs, community radio, electronic voting, online debate, and digital democracy. His weblog, funferal, concentrates on participatory media and current affairs, and he is involved with preparations to found a community radio station in Urbana, WRFU.
Park, Jin Kyung jkpark1@uiuc.edu
Jin-kyung Park received a B.A. in Public Administration in Sookmyung Women's University in Seoul, Korea and a M.A in Kinesiology with concentration on cultural studies of sport and body studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In the Institute, she is focusing on cultural studies, postcolonial studies and feminist theory. She is also pursuing a doctoral minor in the Women's Studies Program. Jin-kyung is currently working on her dissertation that examines Japanese colonialism, maternal health, and mass media in colonial Korea. Her dissertation research has been supported by the Cheris Kramarae Award from Women's Studies, the M. Nelle Fellowship from International Studies, and the Dissertation Travel Grant from Graduate College at UIUC. During the 2004-2005 academic year, as a recipient of a College Women's Association of Japan Fellowship, Jin kyung will be at the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies in Yokohama, Japan for her language training and dissertation research. Jin-kyung has won a Top Student Paper award from the Feminist Scholarship Division at the 52th Annual Conference of International Communication Association in 2002. She is also the author of an article (with Cameron McCarthy, Michael Giardina, and Susan Harewood)"Contesting Culture: Identity and Curriculum Dilemmas in the Age of Globalization, Postcolonialism, and Multiplicity that appeared in Harvard Education Review.
Perea, Elizabeth perea@uiuc.edu
Elizabeth Perea's research interests include cultural studies and feminist & postmodern theory. Her primary focus is on popular music production and consumption behaviors as they relate to translocal community formation and socio-political engagement practices that transcend traditional geographic boundaries. She is particularly interested in the socio/cultural cultivation of art, political discourse, and practices of social justice from an American communication/cultural studies perspective.
Pickard, Victor
vpickard@uiuc.edu
Pierce, Joy jypierce@uiuc.edu
Joy Pierce is a Ph.D. candidate in the ICR. She earned an MA in Mass Communication at California State University, Northridge, and B.A. in Journalism from University of South Carolina. Joy's dissertation, "Communication Unplugged," investigates the tension between the 'haves' and 'have-nots' in a local literacy program to bridge the Digital Divide. She works through issues of class, race and Gender in her project. Other research interests include qualitative research methods, minority representation in the media, and multicultural feminist theory. Her works in new technology, social problems and feminist theory have been presented at conferences in the US and Britain. Joy has also published in Television and New Media (forthcoming), Symbolic Interaction, and Minorities and Communication. Joy's professional experience includes teaching lower- and upper-level communications and sociology courses at the university level as well as computer software consulting and instruction for small businesses. Joy has also worked as a legal assistant for an immigration law firm. She was a journalist for nearly a decade; working as a newspaper reporter and editor for local and regional newspapers, and then as the communications coordinator for an art museum.
Pimplaskar, Uma pimplask@uiuc.edu
Uma Pimplaskar joined the ICR doctoral program five years ago after four years of work in book and magazine publishing. She has a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has pursued a focus on postcoloniality and transnationalism throughout her undergraduate and doctoral years. Her work in these areas has culminated in five conference presentations on Indian film and Indian fashion. Uma is pursuing the topic of Indian fashion for her dissertation, where she uses it as a case study of
how transnationality is lived and experienced everyday. She was recently awarded a Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Award to do this work, but was unable to accept. Uma is completing her dissertation while living in New York City and working as a Senior Research Analyst for an organization that runs consumer-awareness and anti-sweatshop campaigns targeted at reforming the practices of the garment and fashion industries.
Quinn, Roswell rquinn1@uiuc.edu
Roswell Quinn is an MD/PhD student in the Institute of Communications Research. After studying classical music at both the Juilliard and Eastman Schools he graduated summa cum laude from Case Western Reserve University in 2001 with a BA in medical anthropology. His research interests are concerned with the cultural history and political economy of antibiotics.
Quinones Rivera, Maritza qunnsrvr@uiuc.edu
Quintero Ulloa, Claudia uquinter@uiuc.edu
Riismandel, Paul p-riism@uiuc.edu
Paul Riismandel has a B.A. in English from Trenton State College, now the College of New Jersey, where he also began his involvement in non-commercial radio at Trenton State's WTSR-FM. Paul's research interests focus on the history and political economy of the media, with a particular focus on community, grassroots and independent media. His dissertation research is on the Independent Media Center movement, attempting to situate it historically within the modern political economy and also comparatively with earlier and contemporary alternative and oppositional media movements. His chapter on the FCC's original dissolution of low-power non-commercial FM broadcasting in the 1970s appeared in The Radio Reader, edited by Michelle Hilmes and Jason Loviglio. Paul has been active in independent media in the community, beginning with community radio station WEFT where he has volunteered since arriving in Champaign-Urbana ten years ago. Currently he hosts a weekly half-hour radio program on media issues. Paul is also a founding member of the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center (IMC), which in just over two years has grown to be one of the largest and most active IMCs in the world. Professionally, Paul is the Audio/Video Services Supervisor for the Language Learning Lab, which is now part of the Applied Technologies for Learning in the Arts and Sciences unit in the College of LAS. There, Paul does digital audio and video production and production training, and provides a variety of A/V services to faculty and departments in the College of LAS.
Rivera Velazquez, Celianycrivera@uiuc.edu
An art and media events producer, Celiany Rivera Velazquez came to the ICR with a B.A. in Mass Communications from the University of Puerto Rico. Combining her research interests in cinema and queer studies, she completed an Honors Thesis titled, "Those dammed/gorgeous drags: a new discussion of transgenders in contemporary cinema." While living in Puerto Rico, she produced the renowned art expositions Universal Publics in Search of Sensorial Interventions (P.U.B.I.S., Spanish acronym) and worked as the Assistant Producer of the documentary film KZ, a piece that narrates the experiences of the Puerto Rican veterans in the Vietnam War. In addition, she worked at the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Georgia, while completing an internship with the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU). She is also an alumna of the UIUC sponsored Summer Research Opportunity Program (SROP) 2001 and the Summer Predoctoral Institute (SPI) 2002. Her current research advocates for constructive media inclusivity of a wide spectrum of GLBT identities. As a dissertation project she is seeking to create a visual multimedia piece in which queer voices can find a space to respond and demystify their existent media representations.
Rodriguez, Maria mariateresa_rod@excite.com
Salvo, Jamessalvo@uiuc.edu
James Salvo is a Doctoral Student in the Institute for Communications Research. His research interests include academic writing and psychoanalysis. He wishes to examine why "Theory" in the humanities is now in its twilight when just less than a decade ago it had experienced its heyday. He received a B.A. from Purdue University in English Literature with a minor in Women's Studies. His work experience includes working as a writing lab tutor and as an editorial assistant for the journals Qualitative Inquiry and Cultural Studies <=> Critical Methodologies. He has also served as a team leader and as a workshop instructor in the Summer Research Opportunities Program, a program designed to help underrepresented students prepare for graduate study.
Scott, Benjamin dbscott@uiuc.edu
Ben Scott is a doctoral student at the Institute of Communications Research the University of Illinois. He holds a bachelor of science in communications studies from Northwestern University and a masters degree in contemporary history from the University of Sussex. He is currently the Institute's Ford Foundation Fellow, working as a media policy analyst in the United States Congress from the office of Representative Bernie Sanders, I-VT. He is the author of several articles, including "Upton Sinclair and the Contradictions of Capitalist Journalism" in Monthly Review (May 2002), co-authored with Robert W. McChesney. His research interests include media policy making, journalism history, media and the labor movement, and online news production.
Shah, Rajiv r-shah4@uiuc.edu
Rajiv C. Shah is a Doctoral Candidate at the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He earned a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and a JD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was awarded a fellowship for his final year of doctoral research at the National Center for Digital Government at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. His research seeks to understand the relationship between the architecture of information technologies and society. Many fundamental societal concerns, such as privacy, are intertwined with the hardware and software of information technologies. He focuses on two aspects of this, the development of information technologies and how information technologies regulate behavior. More information on his research can be found at his web site, www.RajivShah.com. Shah's published work includes "Fool Us Once Shame on You - Fool Us Twice Shame on Us: What We Can Learn from the Privatizations of the Internet Backbone Network and the Domain Name System" published in the Washington University Law Quarterly, the forthcoming "Incorporating Societal Concerns into Communication Technologies" to be published in the IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, and the forthcoming "Manipulating the Governance Characteristics of Code" to be published in Info. He has also presented at numerous conferences including the Telecommunications Policy Research Conference, the Association of Internet Researchers Conference, the International Communication Association, the National Communication Association's Annual Convention, the Law & Society Association, and the International Symposium on Technology and Society.
Sheldon, Peter sheldon@uiuc.edu
Silva, Maria Isabel mi-silva@uiuc.edu
Sloane, Rob rsloane@uiuc.edu
After receiving a B.A. in English Literature, Rob Sloane went to work for a small documentary film production company in Washington, DC. Over the course of two years there, he held a number of different positions-production assistant, associate producer, researcher/writer-and ultimately garnered credits on three films (on Edgar Allan Poe, the Fourth Amendment, and the National Cathedral) that aired nationally on PBS. When he returned to graduate school, he pursued his interests in the study and analysis of popular culture, earning an M.A. in American Culture Studies and writing a thesis on popular music. Currently, he is writing his dissertation on the economics and culture of an independent record store. He has published two articles in book anthologies about television and media studies, respectively. His research interests include popular music, cultural/media studies, aesthetics and taste, and the relationship between mass media and democracy.
Sredl, Katherine ksredl@hotmail.com
Sullivan, Lee Anne n/a
Tagliavia, Tanya tagliavi@uiuc.edu
Teets, David Bryan d-teets@uiuc.edu
David Bryan Teets has an extensive background in the textual and canonical world film experience. Prior to coming to ICR, he worked as a newspaper photographer, a television news cinematographer and a projectionist. He continues to project movies part-time, and over the course of his career he has viewed over 20,000 films. His undergraduate degree is in Cinema Studies with a minor in Italian. David came to ICR to combine his grounded knowledge of film with meaningful theory and scholarship. David is most interested in the nexus of American corporate film and post WWII international cinema. More specifically, he is interested in tracking and theorizing the rapidly disappearing distinction between theatrical content and advertising and promotion, a trend that has been emerging since 1945.
Velez, Melba mlvelez@uiuc.edu
Melba Velez is a third year Doctoral student at the Institute of Communications Research. She has a Bachelors and a Masters degree in Rhetorical Studies from Purdue University and is interested in Latin-American/Caribbean/Latina-o philosophy and intellectual history. She is also interested in the philosophical foundations of culture and philosophical humorism. She has taught courses in Advanced Research Writing, Fundamentals of Speech Communication, Spanish Level II, and is currently serving as a New Programs Coordinator for the Office of Minority Affairs at the Graduate College.
Villalabos Romo, Gerardo rvillalo@uiuc.edu
Wilcoxson, Brett bwilcox@uiuc.edu
Wilson-Brown, Carrie mj-cawb@uiuc.edu
Yomtoob, Desiree yamtoob@uiuc.edu
Desiree Yomtoob is entering her third year as a doctoral student in the ICR. She has returned to school after an 18 year hiatus. Having come from both an arts and scholarly background she plans to inquire into how meaning is implied in performance and how the implications of performance are active in scholarly work. Her topic of inquiry is agency of being through presence in performance. She plans to study the crossroads of time, space and the body/self with culture through music. Her area of interest is Brazilian Music with respect to the music of Portugal and Africa. Her other areas of interest are language as presence and the preservation of healing modalities of the world. A great deal of her inquiry will be done through the theory and practice of somatics and explorations through auto-ethnographic artworks. She has worked for many years as an English as a Second Language tutor, has been Assistant Program Coordinator for a university social issues theatre program, and has acted as creative consultant for her sister's independent film "Highlife." She has an article published in Studies in Symbolic Interaction, 2003.
Yoon, Sukki yoon3@uiuc.edu
Sukki Yoon is a doctoral student in the ICR majoring in advertising. His research interests include how counterfactual thinking influences consumer attitudes and behaviors and how a cultural third-person effect influences the perception of advertising. Counterfactual thinking refers to thoughts of what might have been (e.g. "what if I had not bought this product?") and the cultural third-person effect refers to a perceived difference between oneself and others in the degree of conformity to one's own cultural values. According to the cultural third-person effect, East Asians view other East Asians to be more 'collectivistic' than they actually are. He is currently studying this self-other discrepancy, which is manifested in the differential use of heuristic cues in persuasion such as source expertise in advertising. He teaches classes in international advertising and advertising research methods.
Zhou, Yuanzhi Alex yzhou@uiuc.edu
