Faculty Profiles
Eda Derhemi
217-333-1549
4150A Foreign Language Building
derhemi@illinois.edu
Education
Ph.D., University of Illinois (Communications)
M.A., University of Illinois (Sociolinguistics)
B.S., University of Tirana, Albania (Linguistics and Literature)
Affiliations
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Media and Cinema Studies
Research Associate, Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies
Lecturer, Italian Program-Spanish, Italian and Portuguese
Course Specialties
Propaganda as Communication (Media and Cinema Studies)
Italian social geography and language (Italian)
Background
Besides the above courses, Dr. Derhemi has previously taught Media and Democracy, sociolinguistics, and linguistics courses. In the past, she worked as a Deutsche Welle correspondent in Italy, and she has also taught in Albania and Italy. In the last two years, she has published over 30 analyses and critical comments in the main Albanian newspapers and newsmagazines (Shekulli, Shqip and Mapo) on theoretical issues of media representation, ethnic stereotypes in film and media, class stratification of media workers, what constitutes news in the Western Balkans, religion, politics and the media in ethnically and religiously diverse regions, and other current problems of post-socialist conditions in the Balkans and particularly Albania.
Research/Creative Endeavor
Dr. Derhemi’s research interests and her published and presented works are in critical discourse analysis of the media; qualitative approaches to media representation, especially representation of ethnic identity and ethnic conflict; propaganda and persuasion; post-socialist conditions in South-East Europe; issues of the Western Balkans: language, history, ethnicity, and EU integration; media and democracy, focusing on issues of journalistic responsibility and media effects on communities; the role of local minority press; migration and diaspora studies; linguistic and cultural endangerment; multilingualism; language contact, language change and language shift; language and ethnicity in minority contexts; the role of school and literacy for minorities.
She is currently working on three projects: one on the representation of ethnicity and ethnic conflict in the Kosovar press, one on the presence and role of socialist propaganda objects in a post-socialist cultural and media environment, and the third on the monological discursive representation of love and lovers in socialist realism songs in the Albanian radio and TV.