Where you work: I am an associate professor in the journalism department in the Lew Klein College of Media and Communication at Temple University, where I am also a faculty member in the Media and Communication Ph.D. program.
Where you got your Ph.D.: I have a Ph.D. in Mass Communication from The University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and MAss Communication. As a timely sidenote, alums of this program have been pushing to change the college’s name upon learning that Henry W. Grady, known for being a proponent of “The New South,” included in his vision continued segregation and white supremacy across the South. More information on the name change effort can be found here.
Current favorite class: I am very lucky to teach a range of classes in our Ph.D. program, and doubly lucky that Temple has long been a program committed to critical perspectives, qualitative inquiry, and theory-driven cultural studies work. I teach an advanced methods class on text-based methods, primarily critical textual analysis, mediated discourse analysis, visual analysis. This semester, I am excited to include units on the analysis of policy documents and institutional discourse, analysis of media objects and infrastructures, and approaches to using textual methods in digital spaces. I’ve found the methods and theoretical perspectives at the heart of British Cultural Studies to be a useful touchstone for this class and get really excited when our students discover how to think deeply and critically about texts and the ways in which they crystallize a range of social relations.
Current research project: I’ve got two projects running simultaneously, which is generally how I work. First, I am finishing a short book about journalism education in the digital age, looking at how discourses about digital changes in the news industry over the past couple of decades have situated journalism education as a particular site of discursive contest, where visions of the future are often struggles over who should have greater influence over the field of journalism. Secondly, I am continuing an ongoing project looking at how journalism and various other forms of public discourse have positioned tech industries as arbiters of the public sphere. Specifically, I am working on an essay looking at how Mark Zuckerberg has sat at the center of these discourses, finding that discussions and debates about his persona and personality often displace more urgent debates about what technology companies’ authority over our public lives should actually be.
Fun fact about yourself: One time, Bob Dylan’s road manager obliquely threatened to slice off both of my thumbs.