2016 Bios

Short bios of symposium participants.
### Aggie Ebrahimi Bazaz

Aggie Ebrahimi Bazaz is assistant professor of Film Studies and Media & Communication at Muhlenberg College.

### Miranda Bennett

Miranda Bennett is a rising senior communication major at Baldwin Wallace University. She has taken a course that uses the inquiry approach. She will be explaining how journals, which require students to construct questions concerning the readings, can be a useful part of the inquiry approach. She will also be discussing her experience with this form of teaching from a students perspective.

### Jeanita Blue

Jeanita Blue is a communication major at Baldwin Wallace University. She will explain how student led discussions can enhance participation. She will also describe her experience as a student in a classroom that use the inquiry approach.

### Jim Brancato

Jim Brancato is professor of Communication at Cedar Crest College.

### Irene Chien

Irene Chien is assistant professor of Media & Communication at Muhlenberg College.

### Amy Corbin

Amy Corbin is associate professor of Film Studies and Media & Communication at Muhlenberg College.

### Beth Corzo-Duchardt

Beth Corzo-Duchardt is visiting assistant professor of Media & Communication at Muhlenberg College. She holds a BA from Hampshire College and a PhD in Screen Cultures from Northwestern University. Her primary research focuses on early 20th century film and popular culture. She is particularly interested in how intersections of race, gender and ethnicity shape discourses about reception and spectatorship which in turn come to define media forms and determine their functions. She has published articles in *Screen* and *Feminist Media Histories* and is currently working on two book projects. The first, “Primal Screen: Primitivism and American Silent Film Spectatorship,” demonstrates how our ideas about the cinema’s power and universal appeal have been shaped by colonialist discourse. The second is a media history of the emergence outdoor advertising in North America that aims to provide crucial historical context for understanding contemporary multi-media outdoor landscapes.

### Andrew Dohanos

Andrew Dohanos is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Arts and Sciences at Baldwin Wallace University. He graduated from BWU (then Baldwin-Wallace College) with a Bachelor of Arts in business administration. He completed a Master’s degree in communication theory and research at West Virginia University and earned a doctorate in communication studies from the University of Utah. Dohanos teaches courses in interpersonal communication, public and presentational speaking, communication theory and communication research methods. Beyond the traditional classroom, Dohanos enjoys engaging with students as an advisor to the Baldwin Wallace Habitat for Humanity chapter, as the co-director of the seminar in Germany study-abroad program, a project manager for the Center for Innovation and Growth and as a faculty-mentor for the BW baseball team.

### Ryan Eanes

Ryan Eanes is an assistant professor in the Department of Business Management at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland. Just this spring, the WAC faculty voted to approve a brand new interdisciplinary major in Communication and Media Studies. As a holder of a BA in Communication from Wake Forest University, a MA in Media Studies from The New School, and a PhD in Media Studies from the University of Oregon, Eanes hopes to help to create an innovative and exciting major for his students in a liberal arts environment.

### Tarik Elseewi

Tarik Elseewi is a media studies scholar at Whitman College.

### Jennifer Fleeger

Jennifer Fleeger is an assistant professor in the Department of Media and Communication Studies at Ursinus College, where she is also the coordinator of the Film Studies minor. She has written two books, *Sounding American: Hollywood, Opera, and Jazz* and *Mismatched Women: The Siren’s Song Through the Machine*, both published by Oxford University Press.

### Jennifer Gauthier

Jennifer Gauthier is professor of Communication Studies at Randolph College in Virginia, where she teaches courses in film studies, rhetoric and cultural studies. Her research investigates the Indigenous cinemas of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the US, and she also focuses on gender issues in both feature film and documentary. In the fall 2011 she served as Fulbright Visiting Research Chair in North American Society and Culture at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec. She has contributed chapters to several books on global cinema and her work has been published in such journals as *Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies*, *Post Script: Essays in Film and the Humanities*, *Quarterly Review of Film and Video*, and *International Journal of Cultural Studies*.

### Sean Gilmore

Sean Gilmore is associate professor at Baldwin Wallace University. He earned a doctorate from the University of Illinois in communication. He has presented his research to conferences and organizations across the country. He has 29 research projects that have been published or presented at national conferences. He provides consulting on professional speaking to for-profit and non-profit organizations as well as political candidates. His training provides professionals the guidance necessary to greatly enhance a person’s ability to communicate effectively.

### Rebecca Gordon

Rebecca M. Gordon is a lecturer in English and Cinema Studies at Northern Arizona University, where she coordinates the Cine101 course and NAU’s International Film Series. Previously, she taught at Reed and Oberlin Colleges, and was a Cesar Chavez Dissertation Fellow at Dartmouth. In 2011 she hosted a Mellon symposium on Film and Media Studies in the Liberal Arts at Reed. She has published in *Film Quarterly* and *Film Philosophy*, and is currently preparing three book manuscripts. The first, *Between Thought and Feeling: Films within films*, traces the film-within-a-film as a narrative device that, over time, operates as an objective correlative for the frame film; the second considers how contemporary Chicano/Latino television and cinema indicate an emergent cultural norm based on affect (“feeling brown”) rather than ethnic representation; the third, a short monograph on Latinidad and cuteness examines the raced/classed dimensions of this aesthetic.

### Matthew Holtmeier

Matthew Holtmeier is a postdoctoral teaching fellow in Screen Studies at Ithaca College. Before coming to Ithaca College, he was a visiting assistant professor of Film Studies at Western Washington University, and before that he taught composition and rhetoric at several community colleges and universities. His research focuses on the production of political subjectivity in global cinema, which he is currently extending to environmental media through the concept of bioregionalism. He also publishes on Screen Studies pedagogy, and has articles on teaching in *The Cinema Journal Teaching Dossier* and *Teaching Transnational Cinemas: Politics and Pedagogy*.

### Anne Kitz

Anne Kitz is a student at Muhlenberg College.

### Martin Lang

Martin Lang is associate professor in Communication Studies and Film and Media Studies, and program director in Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies, at Gustavus Adolphus College.

### Jonathan Lupo

Jonathan Lupo is associate professor in the Communication Major within the Department of English at Saint Anselm College. His research focuses on the politics of representation across media, and in particular within biographical films. His work has been published in the *Journal of American Culture*, *Journal of Popular Film and Television*, and by the British Film Institute. Other research interests include queer representation, gender in comedy, and film canons. Dr. Lupo teaches Introduction to Mediated Communication, Media Writing, Modes of Film Communication, Senior Seminar, and the Special Topics course Women in Stand-Up Comedy.

### Nicole Maurantonio

Nicole Maurantonio is associate professor of Rhetoric & Communication Studies at the University of Richmond. She teaches courses that reflect her research interests in public memory, race, and media in the 20th and 21st century United States. Maurantonio is currently working on a series of essays examining journalistic coverage of police abuses of authority and the propagation of contemporary myths surrounding black and white masculinity. She is also among the organizing faculty for the “Race and Racism at the University of Richmond” Project, a digital history project that explores campus history.

### Carmen McClish

Carmen McClish is an assistant professor in the Communication Major within the Department of English at Saint Anselm College. Her research specializes in the intersection of communication and culture. Her published work focuses on play and politics in public spaces and Caribbean culture. Her research on play, art, and public spaces includes the study of cultural geography and aesthetic politics, analysis of embarrassment as a viable activist tactic, and examination of the organization and communication tactics surrounding international playful events. Dr. McClish teaches Introduction to Human Communication, Communication Theory, Intercultural Communication, and Senior Seminar.

### Shannon McRae

Shannon McRae is a professor of English and director of the Film Studies at the State University of New York at Fredonia. Her research and teaching interests include modernism and post-modernism, American popular culture, psychoanalytic theory, and folklore, myth, and religion. She has published articles on modernist poetry, two popular books on local history, and is currently working on two books about the intersections between American popular culture and religion in the early 20th century. This year, she received the New York State Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.

### Stu Minnis

Stu Minnis is Associate Professor of Communication at Virginia Wesleyan College, where he teaches film production, film history, and media studies. His films include *Making Peace With Vietnam*, *Time and Zion*, *The Old World: Mistaken Point and the Ediacaran Fossils of Newfoundland*, and *Winter Shelter: College Students Encounter Homelessness at Home*. He is currently editing *Four Square Feet of North America*. Off campus, he is an avid backpacker and Go player…though not very good at the latter.

### McKayla Murphy

McKayal Murphy is a student at Gustavus Adolphus College

### Anthony Nadler

Anthony Nadler is an assistant professor in the Department of Media and Communication Studies at Ursinus College, where he teaches courses on digital culture, journalism studies, filmmaking, and critical approaches to promotional culture. His book *Making The News Popular: Mobilizing U.S. News Audiences* will be published by University of Illinois Press this June. With Julie Wilson, he is co-founder of [www.teachingmedia.org](http://www.teachingmedia.org).

### David Park

David Park is professor and chair of Communication at Lake Forest College.

### Lisa Patti

Lisa Patti is an assistant professor in the Media and Society Program at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. She is co-author (with Glyn Davis, Kay Dickinson, and Amy Villarejo) of *Film Studies: A Global Introduction* (Routledge, 2015) and co-editor (with Tijana Mamula) of *The Multilingual Screen: New Reflections on Cinema and Linguistic Difference* (Bloomsbury, forthcoming 2016).

### Jeff Pooley

Jeff Pooley is associate professor and chair of Media & Communication at Muhlenberg College. His research interests include the history of media studies, the history of social science, scholarly communications, and consumer culture and social media. His book, *James W. Carey and Communication Research: Reputation at the University’s Margins*, will be published by Peter Lang in July. At Muhlenberg, he teaches Media & Society, Social Media & the Self, and Media Theory & Methods. [Website] (http://jeffpooley.com)

### Traci Reeves

Traci Reeves is a doctoral student in Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago.

### Rashna Richards

Rashna Richards is associate professor and T. K. Young Chair of English at Rhodes College. She is the author of *Cinematic Flashes: CInephilia and Classical Hollywood* (Indiana University Press, 2013). Her co-edited collection (with David T. Johnson, associate professor of English, Salisbury University), titled *For the Love of Cinema: Teaching Our Passion in and outside the Classroom*, is forthcoming with Indiana University Press. She is now working on her next monograph, *Evocative TV: Mad and the Movies*.

### Meredith Salisbury

Meredeith Salisbury is a student at Muhlenberg College.

### Leah Shafer

Leah Shafer holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Theatre, Film & Dance at Cornell University and has taught courses in film, television, and new media at the Hobart & William Smith Colleges since 2008. Her research generally focuses on the comic, the banal, the amateur, and the commercial. Her work has appeared in *Cinema Journal Teaching Dossier*, *The Journal of Interactive Technology & Pedagogy*, *Flow: A Critical Forum on Television and Media Culture*, *Teaching Media Quarterly*, and *In Media Res*. She has chapters forthcoming in *The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to the War Film* and *The 25 Sitcoms that Changed Television: From I Love Lucy to Modern Family*. She is currently writing a textbook on the history of American television commercials for Rowman & Littlefield. Her experimental documentary “Declaration of Sentiments, Wesleyan Chapel” is on exhibit in the Iterations as Habitats exhibition of the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival.

### Andy Smith

Andy Smith is program chair of Film & Media Studies and associate professor of English at Lafayette College.

### William Sonnega

William Sonnega is director of Media and Film Studies at St. Olaf College, where he also teaches in the Theatre department. His current research focuses on media and globalization, and video and audio documentaries as a mode of inquiry and production in the liberal arts classroom.

### John L. Sullivan

John L. Sullivan is professor of Media & Communication at Muhlenberg College.

### Molly Swiger

Molly Swiger is professor and chair of the Communication Arts and Sciences Department at Baldwin Wallace University. She received a doctorate in American culture studies from Bowling Green State University. Her major concentration within this interdisciplinary program was in media studies, and her minor concentration was in philosophy. Her research interests focus on the role of media in the social construction of race, gender and age. Her work has been published in such journals as the *Journal of American and Comparative Cultures*, the *American Communication Journal*, *Journal of American Culture* and *Radical Teacher*. Courses she teaches include media and diversity, gender and communication and film and culture.

### Joe Tarantowski

Joseph Tarantowski received a Bachelor of Science from Eastern Michigan University in technical theater and radio, TV and film production. Before graduate school he worked at Tobins Lake Studios in Brighton, Michigan. He attended University of Wisconsin, graduating in 1991 with a Master of Fine Arts in theater. His areas of specialty are lighting and sound design but his studies also included film production, film history, art, art history and theater history. After graduation he taught at the University of Wisconsin-Superior and served as director of television. He is currently a professor, the Director of Broadcasting and the Chief Operator at WBWC, Baldwin Wallace’s campus radio station. Research interests include television and film production, media criticism and theater production and history.

### Lora Taub-Pervizpour

Lora Taub-Pervizpour is professor of Media & Communication and associate dean for Digital Learning at Muhlenberg College.

### Andrew Utterson

Andrew Utterson is assistant professor of Screen Studies at Ithaca College.

### Sara Vigneri

Sara Vigneri is a reporter with nearly 20 years experience in the magazine and book industry. She is the research editor for *Manhattan* magazine and serves on the editorial board for Jewish Federation of the Lehigh Valley’s *Hakol* newspaper. She currently teaches journalism at Muhlenberg College and is the faculty adviser to the *Muhlenberg Weekly*.

### Chelsea Wessels

Chelsea Wessels is visiting assistant professor in the Department of Performing and Media Arts at Cornell University.

### Pam Wilson

Pam Wilson is professor and program coordinator of Communication & Media Studies at Reinhardt University, a small Methodist-affiliated liberal arts college in North Georgia. She received her PhD in Media and Cultural Studies from the University of Wisconsin in 1996. Wilson teaches many of the major core courses ranging from Mass Media to Intercultural Communication to Media Theory and the current capstone course on Transmedia Storytelling, as well as many writing courses. Her scholarship has focused on indigenous media, cultural politics and digital cultures.

### Sarah Wolter

Sarah Wolter is a visiting assistant professor in Communication Studies at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, MN, where she teaches courses in critical media studies and communication and sport. She earned a M.A. in Speech Communication from Minnesota State University, Mankato and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. Her research focuses on media representations of female athletes and the larger cultural institution of sport.

### Louise Woodstock

Louise Woodstock is an associate professor of Media & Communication Studies at Ursinus College. The driving question that animates her research is “how do people talk about ‘communication’?” In mediated culture, most often this question is answered in reductive ways: communication is inherently healing, more communication is better, and all we really need to do to solve our problems is to communicate. She has tracked this issue in widely various venues, including self-help books, women’s magazines, news, reality television, and most recently among media resisters, people who avoid media often based on their critique that rather than extend and strengthen human connection, communication technologies actually make interpersonal communication more tenuous. Her work has appeared in leading communication journals including the *International Journal of Communication*, *Journalism,* and *The Communication Review*.