Institute of Communications Research
PhD Students and their Research
PhDs: Update Your Information
Sayuri Arai | sarai2@illinois.edu
Arais research interests include critical race theory, mixed race studies, cultural studies, visual culture,
postcolonial theory, Asian American studies, and Japanese studies. Focusing on representations of race, nation, and gender
in a wide variety of texts in the media, her research explores ideological struggles between different social groups. Her
dissertation project seeks to provide insight into the ways in which national memories of World War II and the U.S. Occupation
of Japan are reconstructed through representations of mixed race people in Japanese media and popular culture in the political,
historical and social contexts of postwar Japan.
Cheol Gi Bae| bae30@illinois.edu
Telecommunication Policy, New Media
Adviser: Christian Sandvig
Meijiadai (May) Bai | bai10@illinois.edu
Previously a undergraduate student in Automatic Control, I got into ICR after
getting a Master's degree in Intercultural and International Communication. My research
interest is discursive regulation of Chinese women's sexuality. More specifically, I have
been working on censorship of pornographic information, resistance of slash fictions online,
contextual interpretation of match-making reality show in China, etc.
My dissertation is aimed to contribute to a comprehensive understanding of sexual ethics
and governance in transforming China.
Teaching Interests: Methods for Feminist Research, Feminist Media Studies, Chinese Popular Culture and Media
Adviser: Dr. Angharad N. Valdivia
Personal Site:Meijiadai Bai personal website
Martina Baldwin | msbaldwi@illinois.edu
Martina holds a B.S. from the University of Florida in public relations and a M.A. in mass communication
from California State University, Fullerton. Her Master's thesis, "What's up, bitch?" focused on women's acceptance
and use of the term "bitch" and what aspects of the popular media perpetuated the adoption of the word among
college-age females. She is interested in reality television and the networks that most prominently air this genre
of programming, specifically Bravo. Martina is exploring how advertising to a highly specified audience influences
programming, as well as the unique integration of social media into the world of reality television. She is
interested in studying Bravo's highly successful "The Real Housewives" franchise, the post-feminist representation
of women on the show, and the perceived authenticity and reception of those representations through a feminist lens.
Teaching Interests: Media and Theory, Sex/Gender/Sexuality in Popular Media, Feminist Theory
Adviser: Dr. Isabel Molina-Guzman
Tabe Bergman | bergman3@illinois.edu
Tabe Bergman worked as an editor in the Netherlands for the Associated Press and other
organizations. As a freelancer he published hundreds of articles in regional and national newspapers and
magazines. He holds a BA in Print Journalism and a BA in Language and Culture Studies with a major in
American Studies. He received an MA (cum laude) in American Studies from the University of Amsterdam and
taught English and Writing at two Dutch colleges. His research interests are in journalism studies,
specifically the history and political economy of the American and European media; foreign news coverage;
and new media. He has defended his dissertation, The Dutch Media Monopoly, which argues that Dutch news
content is biased in favor of the interests of political and economic elites.
Teaching interests: media history, global media, digital media, journalism production.
Courses taught: Intro to the Media; Media Literacy; Social Aspects of Media; New Media, Culture & Society; Media and Democracy
Dissertation title: "The Dutch Media Monopoly: a critical-historical analysis of journalism in the Netherlands"
Adviser: John Nerone
Ergin Bulut | bulut1@illinois.edu
While situated within media and communication studies, my scholarship actively interacts with a diverse
body of scholars from such fields as political geography, political economy, urban and labor studies,
whose insights help me to understand the production of video game workers subjectivities in their
spatialized, material, and global dimensions. Specifically, my dissertation is an ethnographic study
that addresses the materiality of production. In more specific terms, I look at the uneven and
contradictory nature of work in the digital game industry and its extended platform into the micro-urban
spaces of the city, the domestic sphere, the cafe and other sites of recreation and leisure that are
normally thought to be outside of work. Following Toby Millers call, to Follow the money, follow the
labor, I ultimately aim to link game studies with global political economy and urban studies and explore
the material conditions of game production. In situating production beyond the workplace, my contention
is that a critical analysis of media industries needs not only to investigate work practices and workers
subjectivities but also take the conditions for social reproduction of labor (in the city and the domestic
sphere) into serious consideration.
Teaching Interests: New Media and Culture, Critical Cultural Studies and Political Economy of Media,
Labor and Production Studies
Dissertation Title: Producing the Ludic Dystopia and Precarious Urban Space in the Microurban City:
A Case Study of Studio X
Adviser: Cameron McCarthy
Personal website: www.cultural-tech.org
Christina Ceisel | cceisel2@illinois.edu
Christina M. Ceisel is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Institute of Communications Research at the
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.She has a B.S. in Media Studies from the University of
Illinois at Urbana Champaign, and an MA in Social Science from the University of Chicago. Her research
considers the role of identity, hybridity and authenticity in contemporary culture. She has presented and
published on these themes as they relate to transnational childrens media, popular Latin American
celebrity, and transnational foodways. Her dissertation work draws on cultural studies and qualitative
methodolgies as she analyzes the role of food through ethnographic analyses of transnational media and
culture, particularly as related to questions of gender, ethnic and racial identities and global
consumption patterns.
Teaching Interests: Mass Media and Popular Culture; Advertising and Consumption; Food and Media; Gender, Race, and Media;
Transnational Media; Critical Cultural Studies; Qualitative Methods
Dissertation Title: From Pilgrims to Culinary Tourists: Authentic Identities in Galicia, Spain During an
Era of Global Nostalgia
Adviser: Angharad Valdivia
Wei-Fen Chen | wchen59@illinois.edu
Wei-Fen received her B.A. in English from National Kaohsiung Normal University and an M.A. in
Journalism from National Taiwan University (NTU). She is the recipient of a Fulbright grant. Before coming to ICR,
she started initially as a copywriter at a design house, a research assistant at NTU, and subsequently, a press
liaison officer in government. She is interested in exploring the relationship between the contemporary consumption
society and the mass media. Her recent studies focus on how advertisements of the fashion industry relate to the
dwindling middle class in Taiwan, and examine how these tailored commercial messages respond to consumers
identities under a special social context of economic recession.
Adviser: Dr. Michelle Nelson
Wenrui Chen | wchen34@illinois.edu
Wenrui Chen received her B.A. in Chinese language and literature and an M.A. in comparative literature from Sun Yat-sen University in China. She worked as an English teacher and later a newspaper editor in Guangzhou before coming to ICR. Her areas of interests include critical cultural studies, media studies, and Chinese cultural history. Recently, her research focuses on the history of Southern newspapers and their roles in the post-Mao Chinese culture. Wenrui is interested in clarifying the popular discourses in Chinese mainstream media by looking at the historical transformations of culture and asking the question of cultural modernity in the Chinese context.
Matt Crain | mcrain4@illinois.edu
Matt's research examines media, technology, and political economy with a focus on the Internet and
digital convergence. His dissertation looks at the historical development of online advertising and its
implications for digital media economics and culture. He has published work on search engines, the
financial sector and media ownership, and privacy. He received the 2012-2013 Graduate College Dissertation
Fellowship and is a researcher with the Center for People and Infrastructures. At Illinois, he teaches
courses in digital media and society, media economics, and mass communication.
Teaching interests: Digital Media, Media Economics, Mass Communication, Advertising, Media History
Prospective Dissertation Title: "The Revolution Will Be Commercialized: Finance, Public Policy, and the Construction of Internet Advertising"
Advisers: Dan Schiller and John Nerone
Personal website: matthewcrain.info
Letrell Crittenden | lcritte2@illinois.edu
Black Public Sphere Theory, History of African American Journalists, Citizen Journalism, Journalism as Methodology, Convergence Journalism, Political Economy of Communications
Prospective dissertation title: "History of The National Association of Black Journalists"
Adviser: John Nerone
Personal website: voiceofphilly.wordpress.com
Katia Curbelo | curbelo2@illinois.edu
Katia holds a B.A. in Modern Languages (French/Italian) from the University of Puerto Rico, and an M.A. in Romance Languages (Italian) from
SUNY@Stony Brook. After graduating (2002) she joined the research group from Universit degli Studi di Messina (Saija) as RA/interpreter of Italian<->English
during their research visit to NY/DC areas. Endowed by the Italian government, the group investigated transoceanic Italian-US immigration, its
resulting diasporic communities (through interviews), and connections to Mussolinis government through Italian embassies. It was this rich research
experience (i.e., qualitative) in NY/DC/Italy that opened the door to pursue graduate school. Between 2003-2007 she worked as grant writer/researcher
for InterAmerican University, Puerto Rico, and as Italian instructor (PR & UIUC-IL) before joining ICR in 2008. In ICR her scholarly interests found a
homefrom critical/cultural and media studies, cultural governmentality, rhetoric of democratic practices in art, to rural development through
instructional media in the Americas. Her current research focuses on the interplay between government-produced instructional media and nation
crafting discourses in redefining politico-economic and socio-cultural relations between countries. Her case study is Puerto Rico in its colonial
relationship with the USA after WWIIs postcolonial era. From 2009-12, she was Co-Assistant Director for International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry (UIUC-Denzin).
Teaching Interests: Katia's teaching interests run the gamut from: cultural studies, visual rhetoric, Latin America/Spanish Caribbean/US media history,
intercultural communications, international communications, media studies, cultural/colonial governmentality, post-colonial studies, and gender &
women studies. While finishing her dissertation this year (2012), she works as Adjunct Faculty at Colorado Mountain College (Roaring Fork & Aspen)
teaching public speaking, basic composition and developmental education (Eng), languages (Spanish, Italian, English), and US Citizenship/Civics course
(Non-credit/community).
Proposed Dissertation Title: "Mediated Nation: (Re)viewing the Constituting Operations of Puerto Rico, 1935-1965
Advisers: James Hay, Cameron McCarthy, John Nerone and Oscar Vazquez (Art History/LACS)
Ian Kivelin Davis | uiuccomm101@gmail.com
Ian's research focuses on comparative media policy in North America. His work investigates how forms of
national regulation respond to the emergence of new dynamic flows of international news media. His dissertation,
details Canada and the U.S. as exemplars of the situations in which many national regulatory agencies find
themselves vis-à-vis the conflicting desires for both control and openness, both cohesive identity and
multiculturalism. Insights from the Canadian and American experiences can shed light on this issue, with
implications both for structuring more effective regulatory policies and for forging more nuanced and accurate
social science theories.
Ultimately, his dissertation uncovers a hidden and rapidly changing media landscape in order to show how
domestic decisions take on international dimensions. As the national continues to encounter the global,
policymaker increasingly struggle to balance conflicting priorities between the protection of national
cultural-media norms and the affirmation of the global marketplace. His research suggests that media
regulation venues offer a prime site at which to see this conflict in action. By better understanding how
nations and subnational communities respond to foreign news media, we can develop better means for ensuring
that media continue to serve public interests in the 21st century.
Teaching Interests: Ian has developed syllabi for and taught the following courses: American Journalism History, International Communication,
History of Communication, Media Literacy, Introduction to Mass Media, Advertising and Society
Adviser: John Nerone
Richard Doherty | rdoherty@illinois.edu
My research goal is to study relevant and meaningful communication about nature and our environment to improve our treatment of and relationship with the earth and society. More specifically I'm interested in communication about the natural environmental through technological interfaces. Current research investigates the framing of television weather reporting, the news rhetoric of GPS, signage in natural areas, loss and omission of folk and native weather knowledge in media, and music/sound as environmental communication. Teaching interests include: Environmental Communication, Interviewing and Communication, Writing for Electronic Media, and Environmental Audio.
Personal website: http://tigger.uic.edu/~rdoherty/rdoherty/Welcome.html
Adviser: Ann Reisner
Steven Doran | sedoran2@illinois.edu
My research looks at the intersection of Media and Communication Studies, Technology Studies, and Queer Studies. Focusing on mobile information and communications technologies (ICTs), I'm interested in questions of queer identity and community as they are produced through, and understood from, a spatial/technological perspective. By producing and bringing together multiple types of spaces - virtual, media, commercial, geographic - mobile ICTs have important implications for queer bodies, queer activism, and queer sex.
Teaching Interests: Popular Culture, New Media, Queer Studies, Science and Technology Studies, Cultural Studies, Critical Theory
Adviser: Paula Treichler
Vernita Fort | vfort@illinois.edu
Vernita Pearl Fort completed a diplomatic career as an economist, scientist and manager with the United States Agency for International Development, working in 40 countries, managing development portfolios with budgets of up to $US 2 billion. She holds a Master of Science degree from Yale University in tropical ecology/ evolutionary biology and a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of California, Berkeley in natural resource systems management. She studied economics as a National Economics Association Ph.D. Fellow at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her primary research area at ICR is International Communications Ethics and her secondary areas are Cinema Studies and Performance Studies. Her dissertation title is "Notes, Norms and Neurons: Voices from Jamaica's Music World, Ethics and Neuroscience Intersect." She is developing a related film project, a small sample of which will accompany the dissertation. Her research goal is to develop theoretical and practical knowledge that support Jamaica's music community and communities around the world engage dialogically with each other to increase consensus around ethical universals. She also seeks insights on how to harness the power of music for contributing to transformative structural change that supports human thriving for every person. Vernita Pearl Fort continues to actively pursue her passions of dance and music.
Teaching Interests: Capitalism, Culture and Ethics, International Communications Ethics, Media Ethics, Beyond First, Second and Third Cinema, Music and Social Transformation, International Communications, Performing Research
Advisers: Clifford G. Christians, Norman Denzin, Cameron McCarthy, Kent Ono, Kathleen Howland (Berklee College of Music)
Wen Cheng Fu | fu16@illinois.edu
Wen Cheng Fu received his B.A. and M.A. in Journalism Department at Taiwan National Defense University. Before he started his PhD program in Institute of Communication Research at University of Illinois at Urbana and Champaign, he had worked for Taiwan National Defense Sector over six years to manage public affairs. His current research focuses on strategic communications practice in government organization especially emphasis on national defense sector in a multinational environment. In addition, Wen Cheng also engages in an adjustment model for global public relations and strategic communication practices in Taiwan. This model will make use of a strategic communications and public relations framework regarding moral and cultural differences reasoning that helps justify public relations and strategic communication decisions within the context of a national defense system. The model will incorporate interdisciplinary concepts drawn from the situational theory of publics, the excellence theory, and a rhetorical approach to communication, an ethics theory of just war and sense-making theory.
Adviser: William Berry
Koeli Goel | koelig21@gmail.com
Koeli Moitra Goel received a Masters degree in English Literature from Jadavpur University in Calcutta, India. She was a journalist for the Indian daily, The Statesman, and her interest in womens rights, human rights violations and media bias stem from real life experiences in and outside the newsroom. Her research interests were further defined during her second Masters degree in Communication at Eastern Illinois University to include immigrant, ethnicity and area studies. In 2007 Koelis essay on communication practices of South Asian immigrant communities in the U.S. was selected one of the top five student submissions in the Critical Cultural Studies Division of the National Communication Association. Drawing from theories on assimilation and homogenization, she examined how marginal publics retained their native religious and cultural patterns to exhibit greater resilience of their indigenous heritage. After graduating from EIU with a Distinguished Graduate Student Award, Koeli joined the Institute of Communications Research in 2008. Her Masters dissertation, based on a case study of a peasants movement against government land acquisition in West Bengal, India, examined media coverage of sexual violence, used as a political weapon against women activists. Her work, which engages in cultural analysis of media texts and critical ethnography has been published in journals like Qualitative Inquiry and Studies in Symbolic Interaction. She has presented at the Chicago NCA conference in 2007 and the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry in 2009 and 2010. Her current research interests: new media and globalization, social movements, NGO participation in public policy formulation in emerging neo-liberal states and the transformation of cultural histories of 21st century burgeoning economies like India.
Stephen Hocker | hocker1@illinois.edu
Joy Yang Jiao | yjiao5@illinois.edu
Joy Yang Jiao holds a Bachelors degree in English at Shanghai University (China) and a Masters degree in Rhetoric at Miami University of Ohio. Her
research focuses on the projection of national images of China and other non-Western countries and how they are interpreted by mainly American audiences
within the context of the changing power structures of our globalized world. Joy is also an artist specialized in traditional Chinese watercolor on rice
paper, graphic design, and stone seal carving, which provides Joy with an artistic eye for her research, especially in the examination of non-Western
countries visual representations of their national identities to their international audience. Her artworks were exhibited by galleries in both China and
the US. Joy has co-authored an article which was published in Communication, Culture & Critique, and during her first year studying communication research,
several of her papers were accepted by national and regional conferences, including two paper presentations in the 2011 NCA.
Jeong-ho Kim | jkim34@illinois.edu
Molly Hyo Kim | hjkanjy@hotmail.com
Molly received her BA from Indiana University, Bloomington(Communication and Culture, Film Studies) and her MA from New York University (Cinema Studies). Her current interests lie in the use of sound and silence in early Korean horror films. However, she also looks at other possible topics for her dissertation, such as representation of space (e.g.prison) in revenge movies and vamprirism in contemporary Korean/Japanese horror films.
Ryuta Komaki | rkomaki2@illinois.edu
Ryuta Komaki is a Ph.D. candidate at the Institute of Communications Research. Previously,
he received his B.A. in Comparative Culture with a focus on anthropology and sociology from Sophia
University in Tokyo, Japan, and attended the graduate program at the Department of Sociology at
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign majoring in sociology of science and technology. His
broader interest in the field of communications research is in the relationship between traditional
and emerging forms of media technologies and society. More specifically, he is interested in the
social use and social impacts of new media, such as the internet, mobile media and social media,
particularly in the U.S., East Asia, and emerging markets. Combining this with his another research
interest in transnational movement of workers, elites and students, his dissertation project looks
at the use of the internet, mobile phones and other forms of new and old media by Japanese-Brazilian
return migrants in Japan. The study particularly focuses on the ways in which return migrants
utilize digital media technologies for transnational communication and self-expression.
Teaching Interests: New media; Media, technology and society; Social media; Immigration, migration
and the media; Ethnic media; Community media; Globalization and the media; Race and ethnicity;
Popular culture; Qualitative research method; Media ethnography
Dissertation title: Partially Connected, Partially Protected: New Media and Japanese-Brazilian Return Migrants in Japan
Adviser: Lisa Nakamura
Alicia Kozma | kozma2@illinois.edu
Alicia holds a B.A. from the University of Vermont in Religion and Film Studies and a Masters
degree from the Gradate Center of the City University of New York in American Studies and Film Studies.
Her research is concerned with the theoretical and practical issues surrounding gender in film, particularly
in the marginalized spaces of Exploitation films. Weaved through this work is research surrounding issues
of cultural worth, female media production, fan communities, cult media, affect, and sexuality. She also
works within television studies, specifically around the intersection of reality television and the
production and management of taste cultures, focusing on the Food Network.
An instructor in the University of Illinois Media and Cinema Studies Department, Alicia is a former Adjunct
in the Department of Film and Media Studies at Hunter College in New York City. Recent publications include
Ilsa and Elsa: Nazisploitation, Mainstream Film, and Cinematic Transference in the anthology
Nazisploitation! The Nazi Image in Low-Brow Cinema and Culture and Pinky Violence: Shock, Awe,
and the Exploitation of Sexual Liberation in the Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema.
Teaching Interests: Cinema Studies, Television Studies, Sex/Gender/Sexuality in Popular Media,
Media and Theory, Media Literacy
Adviser: Dr. Angharad Valdivia
Jungmin Kwon | kwon30@illinois.edu
Jungmin Kwon holds a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations and Communication and a Masters degree in Communication from Seoul National University. She studied the discourse about young generation and their visual culture in her master program. She primarily researched relationship and interaction between them and media industries which have gained power in capitalized society. In her doctoral program, her main interest is in the popular culture of young Korean women in their 20s and 30s. She particularly explores how their media use and consumption culture has been commodified by media industry. For her dissertation, she aims to historicize a process how media capital transforms young females from voluntary producer of queer contents to passive audience of those mediated texts and to reveal an institutional approach to gender culture. Her other areas of interest include transnational media consumption, queer theory, film studies, and new media.
Adviser: Kent Ono
Wanju (Alice) Liao | wliao3@illinois.edu
Lao received her B.A. in English from National Taiwan University and her M.A. in Film Studies from Boston University. She is the editorial assistant for the journal Critical Studies in Media Communication. Her current research focuses on identity formation in media, both popular and independent. Specifically, she analyzes the discourses of queer identities and politics during historically representative moments, including the Stonewall riot, the assassination of Harvey Milk, the AIDS epidemics, the murder of Matthew Shepard, and the melée surrounding California's Proposition Eight, et cetera. Her work on these cases reveals that discourse functions paradoxically to advance queer visibility and rights-oriented political campaigns but simultaneously to privilege mainstream gay politics over alternative and grassroots queer politics. The overall goal of these projects is to reconceptualize identities and the effects of them and thereby to make imaginable alternative cross-group coalitional strategies and non-legal-based political efficacy. Her other areas of interest include queer theory, film theory, post-humanism, new media, and avant-garde cinema.
Nina Luzhou Li | lli16@illinois.edu
Nina received her B.A. in Journalism from Fudan University, Shanghai, China, and her M.Phil. in Communication from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. She is currently interested in how media is related to political ideologies, power relations, and emancipatory politics in post-Mao China caught between socialist state, neoliberal capitalism, and modernization. She has presented her work in international conferences (e.g., NCA and IAMCR) and published co-authored articles in journals such as Communication, Culture & Critique.
Chunfeng Lin | clin59@illinois.edu
As a winner of annual China Journalism Awards, Chunfeng Lin worked sixteen years in several main
Chinese newspapers before joining the Institute of Communications Research in 2o11. During this period,
his articles and news reports have appeared in numerous publications and some of them were adopted by
Xinhua News Agency and China News Service. As an East-West Center Degree Fellow and fellowship awardee,
Chunfeng received his second MA from University of Hawaii in communications. He studied cultural
anthropology in China for his first Masters and journalism for his undergraduate.
Currently on the journalism fellowship in the ICR, Chunfengs interests lay in many areas, including
normative press theory, film study, cultural studies, political economy of communications and intercultural
communication. In normative theory, Chunfeng is attempting to build a model for Chinese journalism.
As for film study, Chunfeng is particularly interested in sound/noise theory, history, use, traditions
and aesthetics in the context of Chinese realist/neorealist cinema. Chunfeng also has a keen interest
in military communications as he enrolled in an Army ROTC class back in Hawaii.
Chunfeng taught Mass Communication (COM355) and Intercultural Communication (COM340) independently in the
department of Communication at the University of Hawaii for two semesters (2006-2007).
Shantel Martinez | martin68@illinois.edu
Shantel received her bachelors in History (with Distinction) and Comparative History of Ideas at
the University of Washington, and her M.Ed in Educational Policy Studies at the University of Illinois
Urbana-Champaign. She is currently a doctoral candidate whose research interests include cultural
studies; spatial theory; youth culture and studies; sexuality, gender; queer of color critique; and women
of color feminism. She is interested in how sexuality is spatially produced, reconfigured, regulated, and
consumed within digital online spaces and social participatory media. Shantel is an Illinois Distinguished
Fellow.
Teaching Interests: Popular Culture, New Media, Queer Studies, Sex and Gender in the Media
Dissertation Title: Glitter Bombing the Web: The Digital Politics of Queer Socio-Spatial Relations
Adviser: Dr. Isabel Molina Guzman
Aisha Talé Mitchell | amitche4@illinois.edu
Mitchell earned a B.F.A. in visual communications (magna cum laude) and an M.S. degree from the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in advertising. Her work experience includes more than 10
years in visual arts and graphic design. Her research interests include media studies as it relates
to advertising and consumer behavior in connection with persuasion and influence on race, body image,
product placement and purchases.
Teaching Interests: Advertising, Consumer behavior, Marketing Research, Persuasion and Consumer Behavior,
Advertising Design Techniques, Marketing Creative Strategies and Tactics, and Public Relations
Dissertation Title: Branded Entertainment in Emotional Scenes: Excitation Transfer or Direct Affect
Transfer?
Advisers: Dr. Michelle Nelson and Dr. Patrick Vargas
Alexandra (Sasha) Mobley | ammobley@illinois.edu
My proposed dissertation will explore a genealogy of volleyball alongside U.S. discourses of counterinsurgency. Taking CLR James'treatment of cricket in Beyond a Boundary as an inspiration, I will examine the emergence of volleyball within the context of the American colonial state in the Philippines as well as its proliferation through missionary, Olympic, military, and penal enterprises. Volleyball's counter-hegemonic possibilities will also be considered as it has been informed by indigenous Asian folk games and provided spaces of recreation for subaltern subjects.
Prospective dissertation title: "A secret history of volleyball: rhetorics of American team sport and counterinsurgency"
Adviser: C.L. Cole
Molly Niesen | mniesen@illinois.edu
Molly Niesen is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois. She has two degrees in advertising and her research interests include the political economy of communication, consumer culture, and advertising. Her dissertation project explores the advertising industry during the economic crisis of the 1970s. Molly has taught classes in public speaking, communications history, public policy, and political economy. She is currently teaching Media Studies 264: Economics of the Media.
Proposed dissertation title: " Crisis of Consumerism: Advertising, Activism, and Neoliberalism, 1968-80"
Adviser: John Nerone
Rich Potter | rpotter2@illinois.edu
My research interests include community media and communications policy in Latin America, online video, deliberative democracy, and dialogic public sphere theory. I'm also an independent video producer—my 70-minute fiction film will be online soon. My dissertation proposes a political economic perspective based on a dialogic public sphere model of community knowledge creation. I approach my field research in Venezuela and my historical analyses of socialist media policies in Cuba, Chile, and Nicaragua from this critical perspective. I'm hoping to articulate a scalable, entrepreneurial model for planning and operating community media organizations. I discuss this, as well as other issues related to communications in the western hemisphere, at Trans[d]euce.
Adviser: Angharad Valdivia
Claudia Quintero Ulloa | uquinter@illinois.edu
My research interests include media, cultural, and womens studies with an analytical framework grounded in folklore, history, linguistic anthropology, and interpretative methods such as storytelling and narrative. I became particularly interested in Latin American popular culture in 1998, when I started to analyze womens stereotypes in Mexican telenovelas. This concern has developed into a study of the Cinderella narrative and, specifically, the image of the Cinderella-like heroine in these television programs.
Carolyn Randolph | crandol2@illinois.edu
Sarah Rasmusson | srasmus3@illinois.edu
Rasmusson currently serves as Division Chair for Cultural Studies Association. She won the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities (IPRH) award for 2008-2009 and received the Graduate College fellowship for three years. A former journalist with a number of alternative presses including The First Amendment Center/Newseum, WomensEnews, The Blade, and The Amsterdam News, her work has also appeared in Bitch magazine, Womens Review of Books, and The New York Times. She holds a BA from Boston University, a MA from New York University and has studied at Oxford University and Charles University. Among her publications, a yearlong ethnography of Hooters Girls is forthcoming (Sage) and she is completing a collection with nearly 1000 students titled, Transforming Abortion Culture. She is interested in ethnographic and critical feminist approaches to young womens lives at the nexus of race, sexuality and American history. Her dissertation examines resident hotels in New York from the opening of A.T. Stewarts Hotel for Working Girls to the co-ed condo conversion of the Barbizon and their effect on conceptions of affordable living, urban spatiality and young women.
Prospective dissertation title: "GIRLS ONLY: The Dubious Ideals & Delightful Failures of Womens Hotels, 1878-1998"
Adviser: Norman Denzin
Michelle Rivera | mmrivera@illinois.edu
Michelle Rivera is a transnational feminist media scholar who is particularly interested in pan-ethnic constructions of Latina/o identity in popular culture, music fandom, and digital representations online. Her dissertation will critically examine mainstream media representations of the musical crossover of reggaeton and the global discourses around reggaeton fandom and anti-fandom online. Michelle locates her work at the crossroads of Media Studies, Latina/o Communications Studies, New Media, and Popular Music Studies. She is a 4-year Diversifying Higher Education Faculty in Illinois Fellow. As a doctoral student, she has worked as a Research Assistant (Dr. Angharad Valdivia), a Teaching Assistant (Media Studies 320: Popular Culture), and served as a journal referee for the CENTRO: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies. She has a forthcoming chapter (2011, Cambridge Scholars Publishing) in an edited volume on Hispanic Visual Cultures. Michelle has presented her research on several panels and lectures at her home institution, at International Congresses for the Latin American Studies Association (2007, 2010), and at Cardiff University in Wales (2009). She most recently participated in global dialogues on Decolonial Theory (2010) at Rovira Virgili University in Tarragona, Spain.
Advisers: Angharad Validvia, Isabel Molina Guzman, Lisa Nakamura, Richard T. Rodriguez
Mel Stanfill | stanfil1@illinois.edu
My work can best be understood as critical industry studies undertaken through the lens of the
changing relationship between media companies and their fans in the Internet era. In this, I consider how
fandom has become normalized–both in the sense that activities formerly the province of fans have become
normal for all consumers, and in the sense that a normative idea of fandom has emerged in the mainstream
that traces out proper and improper modes of being a fan. I study this process with respect to both
speculative media fans and sports fans through representations of fans, the design of official websites
for media properties (television shows, sports franchises, etc.), and interviews with industry practitioners
who produce content for fans. My key concerns include the ways fandom is articulated to industry through
heternormativity, whiteness, intellectual property law, consumption, and labor..
More information: http://www.melstanfill.com/
Dissertation Title: "Domesticating Fandom: The Discursive Production of Sports and Speculative Media Fandom in the Internet Era"
Adviser: CL Cole
Ann Strahle | astra2@illinois.edu
Research focus: Media history and media law, particularly right to protest.
I hope to work on international connections with the right to petition and societal effects.
Teaching Interests: Media Law and History, Mass Communication Theory, Journalism (broadcast, print, social),
Advertising and Public Relations
Mandy Tröger | troger5@illinois.edu
Born and raised in East Berlin, Mandy Troger received her B.A. in North American, and Middle Eastern Studies
at Erfurt University (Germany) and her Masters degree in American Studies from the University of Amsterdam
(Netherlands). Her MA thesis 'Dallas in East Germany' received second prize of the Theodore Roosevelt American
History Award. After having worked as a translator and news editor in the Netherlands, Mandy joined the ICR in 2009.
Since then she has started various research projects that focus on the question how and for what purposes information
is used (and manipulated) for private and political interests and what consequences these have for our current
understandings of capitalist democratic societies. Asking for media's role in these processes, Mandy has delved
into media policy discussion in post-WWII Germany, radicalism in US and German thought in relation to Communication
and Media studies, and she the critical analysis of consumerism and concepts of consumer citizenship. Though her
main focus lies on historical research of the 20th century, her overall aim is to create an understanding for
continuities of struggle and the rationale behind them.
Mandy's dissertation project focuses on East Germany in the post-Wall era and the role West German commercial
and public media institutions played in the acquisition of the East German media market. For this project she
is working in affiliation with the University of Munich.
Mandy is the GEO steward at the ICR, and actively involved with the Education Justice Project.
Adviser: John Nerone
Gerardo Villalabos Romo | rvillalo@illinois.edu
I'm conducting research on media, representations, and minority groups, particularly the Latina/o
and the Mexican communities in the US. I have been exploring the production of cultural identity and media
practices of Mexican indigenous and Mexican Hometown Associations. Looking for a more critical approach to
the US-centralized analysis of media, my dissertation project is a transnational and historical analysis
on how the Mexican and the US media commodify undocumented migrants as strategy of nationalism. Based on an
interdisciplinary perspective, my research and teaching interests includes ethnicity, politics of
representations, and discourses in mass media and transnational communications between Latin America and US
Latina/o. Especially, Im interested in media studies, critical discourse analysis, cultural studies, and the
relationship governmentality-media.
Adviser: Isabel Molina
Kerry Wilson | kbwilso2@illinois.edu
Kerry Wilson received her master's degree in communication with an emphasis in women's studies in 2011
and a bachelor's degree in communication and a bachelor's degree in African American studies in 2009 from Saint
Louis University. Her research focuses on African American women's mediated, popular, and cultural representations
with a specific attention to the representation of African American motherhood. Current projects include looking at
the representation of race and gender in youtube videos and examining the representations of white savior narratives
in contemporary film. Kerry's master's thesis, "Yo' Mama's Been Misrepresented: Portrayals of African American
Mothers in Film Between 1959-2009 traces the representation of African American mothers from before the release of
the The Negro Family: A Call For National Action, also known as The Moynihan Report, to the release of Precious:
Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire. She situates her research at the intersection of race and gender, media, and
cultural studies.
Adviser: Isabel Molina-Guzman
J. Jenny Yang | jyang36@illinois.edu
Jenny integrates cultural, historic, economic and political perspectives to synergistically study globalization, international business and cross-cultural communication. While ethnography assuming a major role in her dissertation, Jenny excels in statistics and quantitative methodologies as well. With her undergraduate background in Pharmaceutical Sciences and Administration, Jenny has been pursuing research on the global pharmaceutical industry since 2004, integrating both natural science and social science epistemologies. Her previous and current research has been providing insights to areas of this industry, including but not limited to, regional industry development, product marketing communication, cross-cultural management, transnational entrepreneurship, social network, and business models and strategy. Jennys dissertation looks at the current strategic restructuring and new orientation of the global pharmaceutical industry and its dynamics with the contemporary diasporic labors from China. She addresses and interprets innovations and controversies emerging from the above process, across the individual, organizational, industrial and social levels, to discover original evidence to nourish the theorizing of globalization. Jenny enjoys teaching and mentoring. She believes in and incorporates leadership and engagement in both her teaching and research, the outputs of which are often aimed to facilitate policy-making, social change, or citizens philosophical outlook on and daily conduction of life worldwide.
Prospective dissertation title: "Globalization Zoom-In: Case Study on Contemporary Oversea Chinese in the US-Based Global Pharmaceutical Industry
Adviser: Cameron McCarthy
Desiree Yomtoob | yamtoob@illinois.edu
Yomtoob's area of research involves the development of a qualitiative movement
methodology that works to reconfigure the social disciplining of the body.
Currently she is formulating an aesthetic direction for her multimedia work,
which allows for ways of being through performance, other than those established
in these neo-colonial globalized times. Her area of interest is transnational
culture, cultural resistance and the artistic and musical projects of the
Persian Diaspora. She works extensively with somatics practices, including
Alexander Technique, Hakomi and Bartenieff Fundamentals. Her desire as she
continues her research is to formulate communications/cultural studies theory,
which explains the meaning making process of the body in relationship and
communication and as culture. Ideas of love and compassion are key in her
work as she seeks to understand the technology of presence in resistent
practices in the modern and post-modern discursive fields. Yomtoob has been
a multimedia artist and vocalist for many years. Before entering graduate
school she formulated a method for language teaching based in performance,
which she taught in the ESL context. She has worked as the assistant program
director for a university-based social issues theatre program. She also
served as creative consultant for the independent film, "Highlife," which
should be hitting the large screen anytime now. Her work has been published
in Studies in Symbolic Interaction.
Jungmo Youn | formarxist@gmail.com
All of his academic interest would be reduced to his long-term goal, which explore a weak link in the reproduction of the capital mode of production. He has been concerned with the paradoxical inverted self-betrayal of subaltern class, pondering the historical formation of an entity of capitalist social relations through the mediation of communication realm. In his doctoral course, he explores how the conception of time has been constructed by media technology. Concretely, he examines hegemonic struggles over appropriation over time to produce a certain expressive form of temporal structure. He assumes temporal transformation by media technology played crucial role to condition temporal experiences, and to consolidate capitalistic rationality(instrumental reason) in common sense level. He attempts to trace back a historical co-evolvement of three capitalistic element- temporal structure, capitalistic rationality and (media) techne- within the relations of 5 levels of the social totality a) changing regime of accumulation b) the mediation of communication in the circuit of capital c) the inflows of academic commodities, particularly based on nominalistic tradition d) ways of re-organizing social division of labor and e) other aspects like isolation, reification and fetishism.
Proposed Dissertation Title: "Circe We Invited: The Production of Time, Praxis and Modern Pantheism"
Adviser: John Nerone
Gunwoo Yoon | gyoon3@illinois.edu
Adviser: Patrick Vargas
Ying Zhang | eclarezhang@gmail.com
Zhang's research interests include media and democracy, and Chinese media
history. She received a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from Qingdao
University, and a master's degree in communication studies from Peking University.
She worked as a news editor for China Central Television (First Channel)
for two years and as a journalist and an anchor person for local televisions
in China for another two years.