The combination of a diverse group of graduate students with an emphasis in graduate coursework about understanding and embracing differences has engendered an environment, we believe, in which faculty are challenged and encouraged to relate to, and embrace, diverse backgrounds and ways of thought. As you can see in the list below, creating a diverse curriculum has been a high priority for our faculty, and we continue to include significant units on race and gender in our classes. A testament to our success is that our graduate teaching assistants feel empowered to include diversity issues in their courses, and to discuss these issues with the undergraduate students they teach.

Faculty and Graduate Student Teaching

Doctoral student Kate Bell has received a Huckabay Teaching Fellowship to develop an undergraduate course on Critical Reporting: Integrating Cultural Theory with Journalistic Practice. The course will explore how the news portrays the “Other” in terms of representations of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, culture, age, ability, and how reporters can begin to write the story differently. She is teaching the course in Autumn 2010.

Assistant Professor Ralina Joseph has developed and twice taught a new graduate seminar in “Representing Black: An Introduction to Black Cultural Studies.”

In Autumn 2009, Dexter Gordon (UW Visiting Professor and Director of the African American Studies Program at the University of Puget Sound) taught a graduate seminar course in Race, Identity, and Public Culture.

Associate Professor Crispin Thurlow has regularly taught a seminar on Discourse and Sex/uality, which is jointly offered with the Women Studies program.

Advanced graduate students in the department have opportunities to be Instructors of Record, where they teach an undergraduate course solo. In recent years our graduate students have done IoR’s for courses such as Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Media, Intercultural Communication, and Communication and Difference.

Faculty and Graduate Student Research

Doctoral student Vanessa Au presented a paper on “Camping the Oriental” at the annual conference of the National Communication Association in November 2010.

Doctoral student Katherine Bell presented a paper on “The Great White Savior: Celebrity and the ‘Problem’ of Africa” at the annual conference of the National Communication Association in November 2010.

Doctoral student Manoucheka Celeste presented a paper on “Distancing the ‘Other’: Framing Haiti as a Disaster” at the annual conference of the National Communication Association in November 2010.

Doctoral student Tabitha Hart presented a paper on “Conflicting Interests in an Online Intercultural Learning Community” at the annual conference of the National Communication Association in November 2010

Assistant Professor Ralina Joseph has written an article “Tyra Banks Is Fat: Reading (Post-) Racism and (Post-) Feminism in the New Millennium”

Assistant Professor Ralina Joseph has written an article “The Paradox of the Movement Child and the Tragic Mulatto: Rebecca Walker in Black, White, and Jewish” that was published in The Black Scholar special issue, “The Politics of Biracialism” (2009)

Assistant Professor Leilani Nishime was respondent to a panel on “Locating Asian American Agents and Audiences” at the annual conference of the National Communication Association in November 2010.

Doctoral student Elizabeth Scherman presented a paper on “The Unbroken Spell: Magic, ‘Cure,’ and Religion in Children’s Cinema” at the annual conference of the National Communication Association in November 2010. She received a top paper award from NCA’s Caucus on Disability Issues.

Doctoral Student Penelope Sheets presented a paper on “From the Selma Bridge to the Lincoln Memorial: National and Racial Identity in the 2008 Campaign of Barack Obama” at the annual conference of the National Communication Association in November 2010.

Doctoral student Anjali Vats presented a paper on “Black Face Chic: High Fashion and Racechange in a ‘Post’ Era” at the annual conference of the National Communication Association in November 2010. She received a Breakthrough Scholarship Award for this presentation.

Assistant Professor Christine Harold co-authored an article “Q.U.I.L.T.: A Patchwork of Reflections (honoring the 20th anniversary of AIDS Memorial Quilt)” in the journal Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2007).

Associate Professor Phil Howard has published a book Islam and the Internet: The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2010).

Assistant Professor Ralina Joseph has written an article “Tyra Banks Is Fat: Reading (Post-) Racism and (Post-) Feminism in the New Millennium” accepted for publication in the journalCritical Studies in Media Communication.

Assistant Professor Ralina Joseph has written an article “The Paradox of the Movement Child and the Tragic Mulatto: Rebecca Walker in Black, White, and Jewish” accepted for publication in The Black Scholar special issue, “The Politics of Biracialism.”

Assistant Professor LeiLani Nishime has had an article “Aliens: Narrating U.S. Global Identity Through Transnational Adoption and Interracial Marriage in Battlestar Galactica” accepted for publication in CSMC: Critical Studies in Media Communication.

Assistant Professor LeiLani Nishime has published a book chapter “The Matrix Trilogy, Keanu Reeves, and Multiraciality at the End of Time” in the 2008 book Mixed Race in Hollywood, edited by Camilla Fojas and Mary Beltrán.

Associate Professor Crispin Thurlow co-authored an article “‘The other closet?’: Atheists, homosexuals and the lateral appropriation of discursive capital” in Critical Discourse Studies (2007).

Doctoral student Manoucheka Celeste has published a book review of Katherine Kramer Walsh’s book Talking About Race: Community Dialogues ad the Politics of Difference in the Journal of Communication Inquiry (2008)

Professor David Domke and graduate students Kevin Coe, Meredith Bagley, Sheryl Cunningham and Nancy Van Leuven collaborated on an article “Masculinity as Political Strategy: George W. Bush, The ‘War on Terrorism,’ and an Echoing Press” which was published in the Journal of Women, Politics, and Policy (2007)

Graduate student Kristin Gustafson published an article on “Constructions of responsibility for three 1920 lynchings in Minnesota newspapers: Marginalization of people, groups, and ideas” in the journal Journalism History (2008)

Graduate student Wenlin Liu presented a paper on “Social Networks, Community Interaction, and Political Participation of United States Immigrants” at the annual conference of the World Association of Public Opinion Research in May 2010. She was awarded the Naomi C. Turner Prize for the best student paper of 2010.

Graduate student Jamie Moshin co-authored with Ronald L. Jackson II a book chapter “Scripting Jewishness within the Satire The Hebrew Hammer” in the 2008 book Communication Ethics: Cosmopolitanism and Provinciality, edited by Kathleen Glenister-Roberts and Ronald Arnette.

Graduate student Jamie Moshin co-authored with Ronald L. Jackson II a book chapter “Identity and Difference: Race and the Necessity of the Discriminating Subject” in the 2008 book Critical Topics in International Communication Studies, edited by Rona Halualani and Thomas Nakayama.

Graduate student Madhavi Murty published an article on “Representing Hindutva: Nation, Religion, and Masculinity in Indian Popular Cinema from 1990s to the Present,” in the journal Popular Communication (2009).

Graduate student Madhavi Murty has published a book review of Kenneth Cimino’s Gay Conservatives: Group Consciousness and Assimilation in the Journal of GLBT Family Studies (2009).

Workshops, Lectures, and Service

Through its development efforts, the department created an endowment, the Janice and William Ames Fund, to provide support for graduate students doing research on difference and diversity. The Fund balance is at $50,000 and growing. Providing approximately $2,000 a year in research grants of $400 or less, the fund has encouraged research in this area and contributes to an environment in which such research is prized.

Graduate student Kate Bell has contributed an article on Turning dreams to shame: Susan Boyle’s Les Miz (2009) to the website Journalism Ethics for the Global Citizen.

Thanks to the entrepreneurship and support of UW Communication alumnus Peter Clarke, the department now can also offer awards of up to $1,500 per project to encourage graduate students seeking to improve the conditions of life experienced by people burdened by a disadvantage, such as low income or a condition that is stereotyped negatively. Those who receive these fund demonstrate research plans that seek to improve the lives of disadvantaged people, or the robustness of organizations that serve them.

Assistant Professor Ralina Joseph and graduate students Manoucheka Celeste, Nancy Van Leuven, Veronica Barrera, and Michele Poff all made presentations at the UW Women of Color Collective’s 2010 Dialoguing Difference conference. Celeste was a founding member of the Collective and a member of the 2010 conference planning committee.

Updated: August 2010