Graduate Student Profiles (D-J)

Damon Di Cicco is an M.A. student in the Department of Communication, specializing in Political Communication. He earned a B.A. in both Political Science and Journalism from the University of Washington in 2002. In 2000, he helped found an independent arts, politics and culture newspaper and spent the next several years as an editor and writer for this publication. After its demise a few years later, he decided to return to academia to pursue his interest in the study of the relationship between mass media in politics in the United States. Damon is interested in how the interplay between the state, mass media and other large corporations shapes the political and social consciousness of the population. He plans to pursue a Ph.D. in this field and become a college professor.

Sara Docan-Morgan is a PhD candidate interested in adoptive family communication about race. Specifically, she is interested in how White, adoptive parents communicate with their adopted Asian children about issues related to racial discrimination and teasing. Sara is also very interested in media representations of adoption, Asian identity, and the intersections between the two. At the University of Washington, Sara has taught courses in Interpersonal Communication (Com270) and Ethnicity, Gender, and the Media (Com489). In her spare time, she enjoys yoga, cooking, and spending time with family and friends.

Tony Docan-Morgan is a doctoral candidate and teaching associate in the Department of Communication (B.A., California State University Northridge; M.A., University of New Mexico). He teaches introduction to communication, interpersonal communication, and advanced public speaking at the University of Washington. His primary research objective is to examine how communication is used to facilitate, improve, and harm interpersonal relationships in instructional and intimate contexts. Tony's dissertation examines how relational turning points between college teachers and students affect outcomes such as student learning and motivation. He has published articles in Communication Quarterly, Communication Teacher, Journal of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Applied Psychology in Criminal Justice, and Journal of Loss and Trauma. Outside of academe, he enjoys photography, running, and spending time with family and friends.

Kate Dunsmoreis a doctoral candidate with a focus on political communication and international relations. Kate is interested in the role communication can play in making advances on intractable social problems such as racism and economic disparity. Her dissertation research examines the Canada-US relationship as an instance of enduring alliance. She is analyzing public diplomatic discourse and related media coverage to understand the role of discourse in this alliance and in international alliances more generally. She has also applied discourse analysis to enhancing understanding of teaching and learning. Her M.A. thesis, analyzing the discourse of African-American high school students regarding career and education aspirations, supported specific, community-centered approaches to career counseling.

Louisa Edgerly received her BA in Comparative Literature from Cornell, rowed competitively for three years after college, worked as a professional pastry chef and lived for two years in Turkey. Her research interests include language use in the media, migration and refugee movements and the discourse of citizenship. Her Masters thesis examined the use of the word ‘refugee’ in media coverage of Hurricane Katrina, and she hopes to pursue further discourse studies as a doctoral student. When not reading and studying she competes in long-distance rowing events and tries to get out and see the rest of the Northwest.

Deen Freelon hails from Durham, NC and arrived at the UW as an incoming Com master's student in the fall of 2006. After graduating with a BA in psychology (with honors) from Stanford University in 2002, he worked for four years as a technology trainer/web designer/multimedia consultant for Duke University's academic community. His two main areas of interest are American political rhetoric (how talking points and a loaded lexicon stack the conversational deck against unsuspecting interlocutors) and political communication on the Internet (how blogs, newspaper web sites, and collaborative web applications are changing the way people receive, interpret, and generate political messages). He has maintained a blog on his research interests continuously since June 2005, and also contributes to the group blog Blackademics. His online writing has been recognized by parties as diverse as NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen and syndicated radio-show host Neil Boortz. Deen is also adept in a number of programming and design languages, including HTML, CSS, PHP, Actionscript, Wordpress, and Linux command-line scripting.

Irina Gendelman is currently studying physical public space as an arena of communication. She is interested in the messages that are presented and contested around us on a daily basis in spaces such as the streets. She believes that by exploring the way such places are constructed and governed, the field of communication can gain valuable knowledge into relationships of power and the politics of representation. Irina lived in the former Soviet Union before immigrating to the United States. She received her B.A. in Comparative Literature specializing in Russian and French from the University of Michigan and Sorbonne University of Paris. During her first two years at the UW, Irina got her feet wet in ethnographic research. She completed her M.A. thesis on communication in public spaces by studying graffiti in Olympia, WA. Her experiences and interests have led her to explore how aesthetic and commercial management of public places reflect public attitudes toward of such places. As a Ph.D. student, she plans to expand her research to a cross-cultural comparative analysis of public space as a medium of communication.

Valerie Gilbert became interested in visual culture and visual communication while studying under the University of Washington’s Photography program. She graduated from the Photography program with a B.F.A. in 2000. As an undergraduate, she was influenced by artists who addressed race and gender in their work. Film studies classes also influenced her, and she began to investigate race, gender and identity in film and popular culture. Her B.F.A. senior thesis “Still Showing,” an installment of mock movie posters, mock poster-size movie reviews, popcorn machine and confection stand, is a satirical commentary on African-Americans in Hollywood. As an M. A. student in the Department of Communication, she plans to examine how notions of race, class, gender and identity are communicated through the mulatto character in film. Valerie is an American, born in the West Indies, reared in Canada. She has written articles for Where Seattle and the World Tribune; and her artwork has been displayed in exhibits at the Seattle Art Museum, the Seattle Center, and the SGI-USA Seattle Culture Center.

Kristin Gustafson joins the PhD program at the University of Washington after earning her master’s degree in Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota and working at several Minnesota newspapers. She is interested in the value and power of media, particularly in the role media plays in marginalizing and legitimizing issues, individuals, and groups. Her master’s thesis considered how 1920 Minnesota newspapers initially covered a lynching and talked about what or who was responsible for its occurrence. At the University of Washington, she looks forward to exploring media studies further, including looking at how media intersects with culture through language, social movements, news ownership and production, alternative press, gender and race construction, public opinion and policy, press freedom, and other related issues.

Katherine Hall is a Ph.D. candidate whose interests in political communication and environmental health are leading her toward a dissertation on the role of communication in environmental rule-making. She is a part-time student and is communication director of the University of Washington's Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences. In a previous life she was a newspaper reporter and copy editor.

Katherine's Website

Chris Harihar (BA, Communication, University of Massachusetts Amherst) is currently an MA student in the Department of Communication and will be acting as a research assistant in the fall. His main areas of communicative study include interpersonal and intercultural communication, while focusing on gendered communication issues as well. His ultimate goal is to attain a Ph.D.

John Harris believes his greatest asset as a Ph.D. student is his variety of experiences. Now in his second year as a visiting professor at Western WA University in Bellingham, John has written for magazines, researched nonfiction books and worked as a reporter, photographer and editor for metro and community newspapers. What he feels he needs now is a foundation in theory and methodology. John initially saw himself writing his dissertation on trauma reporting - he would like to research the impact of media coverage on victims and their families, and on reporters. However, a keen interest in the First Amendment was recently sparked and he may want to further pursue that area of study. He is intrigued by the concept of a socially responsible press as expressed by the Hutchins Commission and he wants to learn more. He spent the spring break teaching photojournalism to reporters in Albania and that may also be an avenue of focus.

Tabitha Hart, one of the 2006 Ph.D. cohort, is interested in international and intercultural communication, the transfer of cultural products across national boundaries, glocalization, call centers, and the ways in which the creation, perception, and use of internet-based technologies are mediated by culture. She has a B.A. in Communication from the University of California, San Diego and an M.A. in Communication Studies from California State University, Sacramento. Her Master’s thesis examined the transfer of Starbucks’ customer service practices to its cafes in Berlin, Germany, and their reception by the baristas there. In between her stints of studying she spent a number of years working as an ESL instructor in Japan, the Czech Republic, and Germany.

Jessica Harvey is a first-year doctoral student in the communication department. She received her B.A. in public relations from Purdue University and has just recently obtained her Master’s from Arizona State University West in communication. Jessica’s research interests focus on interpersonal communication, with an emphasis on family. She has worked on projects focusing on teenage pregnancy, marital trauma/recovery, children and the media, and social support networks among long-term married couples. For the past 6 years, Jessica has been teaching business and humanities courses at a junior college in Phoenix, Arizona.

Andrea Hickerson comes to the program after receiving an M.A. in journalism and an M.A. in Middle Eastern studies from the University of Texas in Austin. In 2002, Andrea was the recipient of a Federal Language Area Studies fellowship in Arabic, which she has studied for three years. Andrea’s prior research has focused on Kurdish media and how the Kurds use new media to construct an identity in spite of the many physical barriers in and around Kurdistan. Andrea is interested in pursuing further research on diasporic media or the diversity of opinion in the Muslim press. Her work on President Bush and the use of religion as a marketing tool was published in British Journalism Review. In her free time Andrea enjoys long-distance running and traveling.

Julie Homchick, M.A., Humanities, Arizona State University, 2005; B.A., English, University of Washington 2002. Julie’s past academic work was at first primarily literature-based, but during her graduate studies at ASU she became increasingly interested in the rhetoric of science, science communication and the history of science. She studied these subjects both at ASU and the University of Pennsylvania during her M.A. work and then was able to further pursue her interests as a graduate non-matriculated student at the University of Washington. This last academic experience fine-tuned her interests and reaffirmed her desire to continue her graduate studies at UW. She is now primarily interested in studying the rhetoric of science in the contemporary museum exhibit and how such rhetoric affects the public’s understanding of science and nature.

Patti Jean Hooper has taught community-based public relations at a variety of colleges and universities for the past 14 years. The 1997 flooding and evacuation of her home town enabled her to see how a government responds to its citizens; how non-profit organizations can be pulverized through the loss of their volunteer base; how community members were portrayed as victims by the press and how race, class and gender were issues throughout it all. The experience was the impetus for a new career track - Community Relations Field Officer for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). In earning her Ph.D, Patti Jean intends to study crisis, gender, Native American issues and how victims are portrayed in the media.

Mark Hungerford graduated with an MA in journalism and Middle Eastern studies from the University of Texas in Austin in 2005 where he primarily looked at how the news media portray religious people, particularly Muslims and Christians. Prior to moving to Austin, he taught English in Turkey for four years and received a BA in political science from Emory University. He is primarily interested in stereotypes and the construction of identity, especially national and religious identity. His outside interests include language, the outdoors (hiking, camping) and vegetarian cooking.