Institute of Communications Research
PhD Students and their Research
PhDs: Update Your Information
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.
John Anderson | jander26@illinois.edu
Previously a broadcast journalist, Anderson's doctoral research breaks new ground in the comprehensive and critical analysis of digital radio. He's been writing about media policy and the practice of media activism for 14 years. John remains involved in grassroots media practice, primarily through Champaign-Urbana's community radio stations, one of which he helped build. He also produced a mashup EP during his tenure at ICR. Anderson received his master's degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication and his undergraduate honors degree from Valparaiso University. He finds teaching immensely rewarding.
Teaching Interests: Media law and policy; various aspects of journalism, including practice; remix culture; anything related to the development of critical and creative thinking skills.
Dissertation: Radio's Digital Dilemma: Broadcasting in the 21st Century
Adviser: John Nerone
Website: http://diymedia.net
Sayuri Arai | sarai2@illinois.edu
Arai received her B.A. in English literature from Aichi Shukutoku University
in Japan and her M.A. in communication from the University of New Mexico.
Her master's thesis explored how Japanese sojourners in the United States,
within a broad context of pro-white and anti-black ideologies, negotiate
their sense of racial identity. For the paper she derived from the thesis,
she earned the Top Debut Paper Award, presented by the Executives Club at
the WSCA annual convention in 2006. Before entering the ICR, Sayuri worked
in Tokyo for an international nongovernmental organization, IMADR, devoted
to eliminating discrimination and racism worldwide. She conducted research
on minority women, including the Ainu, Burakumin and Korean residents in
Japan. These research experiences motivated her to continue studying intercultural
communication with an emphasis on race, power and identity and to extend
her interest to related areas, including postcolonialism, whiteness studies,
critical cultural studies and media studies.
Cheol Gi Bae | bae30@illinois.edu
Cheol Gi Bae received his B.A. in sociology and M.A. in public policy from Seoul National University in South Korea. Before entering the ICR doctoral program, he worked for Korea Telecom as a strategy planner and a researcher for 7 years. Broadly speaking, his research interests lie in the neoliberal transformation of telecommunications industry and policy in South Korean context, and also the relationships between new media, communication infrastructure, technology, and society.
Meijiadai (May) Bai | bai10@illinois.edu
I got my B.Eng in Automation in China Agricultural University and M.A in International and Intercultural Communication in Peking University in China. My current research interest is how Chinese women's sexuality is morally regulated in China.
Tabe Bergman | bergman3@illinois.edu
Tabe Bergman worked as an editor in the Netherlands for the Associated Press and other media organizations. As a freelancer he published hundreds of articles in regional and national newspapers and magazines. He holds a BA in Print Journalism (Hogeschool Utrecht University of Applied Sciences) and a BA in Language and Culture Studies (Utrecht University). He also received an MA (cum laude) in American Studies from the University of Amsterdam and taught English and Writing at two Dutch colleges. At Illinois he has taught introductory media studies courses and has been ABD since March 2011. 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. His dissertation aims to show that the current deep crisis in Dutch journalism is mainly the result of its commercial underpinnings. The dissertation also aims to point to constructive ways forward for Dutch journalism. The dissertation committee consists of professors John Nerone, Robert McChesney, Lisa Nakamura and Matt Ehrlich.
Adviser: John Nerone
Prospective dissertation title: "Dutch Journalism in Crisis"
Tiffany Bowden | bowden3@illinois.edu
Tiffany Bowden received her Master's and her Baccalaureate Degrees from Ohio University in the areas of Advertising Management and Media Studies. She has background working in the advertising and marketing industries for companies like Procter & Gamble, Arnold Worldwide and Barefoot Advertising a BBDO company. Her primary concerns are about African American representation (causes, effects, resistance, production, etc.) in a domestic and global marketplace as well as consumer behavior. Her past research has been chiefly concerned with how Blacks are represented by others, how blacks represent themselves and motivations behind black consumer purchases. Her work lends itself to interdisciplinary work pulling from namely Advertising, African American Studies, Philosophy, Education, Performance Studies/Theater, Study Abroad, Media and Communication.
Christina Ceisel | cceisel2@illinois.edu
Christina's 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 children's media, popular Latin American celebrity, autoethnographic approaches to ethnic identity, and transnational foodways. Her dissertation work draws on cultural studies and qualitative methodologies, as she conducts performance ethnography located in Penang, Malaysia, Galicia, Spain, and Chicago, Illinois to critically analyze the role of food in discourses of authenticity and hybridity within global commodity culture.
Adviser: Angharad Valdivia
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 marketing 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 is a 2011-2012 graduate fellow at the Illinois Project for Research in the Humanities and a researcher with the Project on Public Policy and Advanced Communication Technology. 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: "Media Convergence and the Construction of Online Marketing"
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
Ian Kivelin Davis | uiuccomm101@gmail.com
Ian's research focuses on media globalization and the relationship between world broadcasters and public diplomacy in the production of global news discourses. Globalization research offers a variety of concepts related to global media as intensified flows of information cross borders and challenge state-centered models of a global media system. But many aspects of a global public sphere remain undefined and contested. Examining mainstream and alternative news discourses that challenge Western, often commercial, news frames, his research aims to clarify the reconfiguring roles of public and private news providers.
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
Kevin Dolan | kdolan@illinois.edu
My research interests include critical whiteness studies, critical journalism studies, cultural and critical studies, and race and ethnic studies, and more specifically, the way the news media protect and bolster the racial status quo, particularly what I call the "incumbency of whiteness." I have more than fifteen years of experience working as a reporter, copy editor, and designer at daily newspapers. For my dissertation research I conducted an ethnographic study of two newspapers, a mid-sized daily in central California and a large metropolitan daily in the Midwest. The studies consisted of participant observation of daily news meetings and conversations between editors and reporters as well as working full time for five months at the Midwest daily. I also conducted semistructured one-on-one interviews with about sixty journalists to explore the degree to which whiteness is embedded in journalistic identifications and discourse. I have found that through such practices as focusing on institutions and avoiding the appearance of any bias, mainstream U.S. journalism consistently serves white racial interests by avoiding or marginalizing challenges to white incumbency.
Teaching Interests: I am well qualified to teach general courses such as news editing, U.S. journalism history, media ethics, media history, popular culture, and media and society. I also could teach more specific courses such as qualitative research methods, the sociology of news, race and ethnicity in popular culture, and whiteness in the media.
Prospective dissertation title: " Whiteness and News: The Interlocking Social Construction of 'Realities'"
Adviser: John Nerone
Matthew Doolittle | michael.m.doolittle@gmail.com
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.
Mariana Goya Martinez | mgoyam2@illinois.edu
During her master and doctoral studies in communication with a minor in cognitive science at the University of Illinois in the Chicago and Urbana-Champaign campuses, Goya-Martinez has done research on the effects of hypertext on academic writing (master thesis, published by VDM Verlag), on the motivations of human emulation in artificial intelligence and the benefits of blog writing in adolescent users. Her current research focuses on how media contexts affect news reception through priming effects. Mariana has presented her work in conferences organized by the ICA, the NCA, and AOIR. She is a recipient of a graduate scholarship from the Mexican Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT). Teaching interests include Media Literacy, Media Effects, Communication Theory, and New Media Technologies.
Prospective dissertation title: "Context Effects in News Reception"
Advisers: John Nerone, William Brewer, Kevin Barnhurst, David Tewksbury
Dong Han | donghan@illinois.edu
His experience and research interests lie at the intersection of communication, political economy, and law. His PhD dissertation studies copyright and media in todays China, examining how changes in media policy, industrial structure, production practices, and market conditions relate to the development of clear and enforceable copyright. Specifically, how have copyright law and practice registered and been reshaped in the process of Chinese media reform, and how do they in return impinge on media production and market conditions? His work is the first to study the transformation of television production and labor relations in the context of copyright growth, and copyrights role in digital culture and creativity in China. He also has interests and publications in media history and issues of racialization and migrant labor. Before entering the PhD program, he worked for five years (1999-2004) as an attorney for China Central Television (CCTV), Chinas only national TV network and its leading media company.
Teaching Interests: Communication law and policy, Iintellectual property and the cultural industries, New media and technology, International communication, History and political economy of the media
Proposed dissertation title: "Copyright and communication in contemporary China"
Advisers: Dan Schiller, Robert W. McChesney, John Nerone, Yuezhi Zhao
David Haskell | haskell2@illinois.edu
Stephen Hocker | hocker1@illinois.edu
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
With a background in science and technology studies, Komakis broader interest in the field of communications research is in the relationship between different media technologies and society. More specifically, he is interested in the social use and social impacts of the new media (the internet, mobile phones and the mobile internet in particular) in the U.S., East Asia, and newly emerging economies. Combining this with his another research interest in transnational movement of elites, workers and students, his dissertation project focuses on the use of the social media on the web and through the mobiles by Brazilian immigrants living in Japan. The study explores how the subject positions of Brazilian immigrants (of being immigrant workers, being expatriate Brazilians, being foreigners and members of a racial/ethnic minority in Japan, and being men/women) affect and are affected by the use of those new media technologies.
Proposed dissertation title: "The Impacts of the Internet and Mobile Phone Adoption on Brazilian Immigrant Communities in Japan"
Adviser: Lisa Nakamura
Owen Kulemeka | okuleme2@illinois.edu
Owen's research examines public relations campaigns that aim to improve crisis preparedness in communities that have experienced catastrophic disasters. He is currently studying public relations campaigns in post-tsunami Thailand and post-Katrina New Orleans. He is a 2009 Institute for Public Relations Fellow and a 2010 National Science Foundation-Public Entity Risk Institute Fellow. Prior to entering the PhD program, he worked in public relations at Weber Shandwick, the American Insurance Association, the United Nations, the O.E.C.D, and Kearney & Company. His website is: www.owendk.com.
Teaching interests: Public relations, social media, digital public relations, crisis communication, risk communication, public relations theory, campaign planning, public relations writing, public relations research methods
Proposed dissertation title: "Public relations and crisis preparedness in post-disaster communities"
Advisers: William Berry, Michelle Nelson, Jeong-Nam Kim, Reginald Alston
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.
Robert Mejia | rmejia3@illinois.edu
My dissertation project, Playing the Crisis: Video Games and the Production of the Postmodern Subject, aims to understand how video games have worked to animate and mobilize remembrances of the past, the politics of the present, and the hopes and fears of the future, so as to produce the subjectivities necessary for sustaining present-day politics (as well as affect politics in the future). Considering that the video game industry is already and continues to more fully become a dominant media industry, my hope is that my dissertation and research more generally will speak to the needs of contemporary democracy. To this end, I plan to teach and develop introductory undergraduate and graduate level courses such as Mass Communication and Society, Media Criticism, New Media, and the Political Economy of Media as well as upper level undergraduate courses and graduate seminars focused on my area of specialization. Such courses could focus on the political economy of the video game industry and/or video games as a historical form; as well as the relationship between technology and culture more generally.
Teaching Interests: Cultural Studies; Game Studies; Gender & Women Studies; Media History; Media Studies; Memory Studies; New Media; Political Economy of the Media; Race & Ethnicity Studies; Technology Studies
Prospective dissertation title: Playing the Crisis: Video Games and the Production of the Postmodern Subject
Adviser: Kent Ono
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.
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
Sangdo Oh | sangoh@illinois.edu
My research focuses on two areas. First, my dissertation project is examining the concept of implicit consumer cognition. I study how the knowledge consumers have but are not aware of can affect their evaluation of sustainable products. I am also studying consumers beliefs regarding their ability to positively affect the environment through consumption. In the second area of my research, I work on two projects that analyze the process of visual attention and inhibition: how the information consumers ignore at one point can influence how they perceive the information later.
Teaching Interests: Consumer Behavior, Marketing Research Methods, Integrated Marketing Communication, Psychology of Advertising, Advertising and Persuasion, Consumer Information Processing
Proposed Dissertation Title: "Why go green? To save this planet? Or to save your ego?"
Advisers: Patrick T. Vargas, Michelle R. Nelson, Madhubalan Viswanathan, Sukki Yoon
Elizabeth Perea
Veronica Pomata | vpomata2@illinois.edu
The main research interest is based on the intersection between race, class and popular culture through the perspectives of children in Argentina. Specifically, my dissertation looks at children's interpretations of the lack of diverse racial representations in television today. Other research interests include the socio-cultural aspects of advertising and consumer culture.
Teaching interests: Advertising and Consumer Culture, Childhood Studies, Qualitative Research Methods. As an instructor, I have taught "The Socio-Cultural Aspects of Advertising" (ADV 493) in four different occasions.
Proposed dissertation title: "From 'Senorita Maestra' to 'Patito Feo': A cultural study on Children, Popular Culture and Race in Argentina"
Adviser: Isabel Molina-Guzman
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
Maritza Quinones-Rivera | quinones@indiana.edu
Quinones-Rivera's research interests are in media representations of otherness
in mainstream media and popular culture; media roles on diasporic cultures
in the U.S., Latin America, and Spanish-speaking Caribbean; popular culture;
ethnic identities; and gender. Quinones-Rivera is a recipient of the University
of Illinois Summer Predoctoral Program (2003) and the Center for Latin American
and Caribbean Studies Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship (2004/2005).
Before coming to Illinois, she held a professional position as communications
manager (1999-2003) for the Office of the Vice President for Student Development
and Diversity at Indiana University. In addition, she held the position
of assistant executive director (1994-1999) for a historical African-American
organization of nine fraternities and sororities, the National Pan-Hellenic
Council, Inc., also at Indiana University. Currently she is a board member
for the alumni association at Indiana University's School of Library and
Information Science (2002-present). She is also a student member of the
National Communication Association, the Afro-Latin/American Research Association,
the Latin American Studies Association and the Cultural Studies Association.
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
Dennis Redmond | redmond2@illinois.edu
My research focuses on contemporary videogame culture as one of the premier transnational media of our day. I'm especially interested in the ways videogames provide a space where a range of established mass media and emergent digital media some based in industrialized countries, others rooted in developing nations all converge. Indeed, videogames are no longer monopolies of First World culture-industries. They have profound and pervasive links to the institutions of the digital commons (e.g. franchises, fan communities, file-sharing and open source software production), to the booming media-systems and vast digital publics of the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China), and to fast-growing flows of postcolonial media (emergent national and regional media cultures in South Asia, Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Eurasia). My dissertation project uses the concepts and tools of transnational cultural studies and communications theory to map out these institutions, audiences and flows, in the context of two landmark productions of contemporary videogame culture, Hideo Kojima's "Metal Gear Solid 4" (2008) and Square Enix' "Final Fantasy 12" (2006).
More information: dennisredmond.com/Uplink.html
Prospective dissertation title: "One Neoliberalism, Many Resistances: Videogames as Transnational Media"
Advisers: Angharad Valdivia, Lisa Nakamura, Isabel Molina, Antoinette Burton
Teaching and Research Specializations: Videogames as a mass media, an industry, and a culture; digital media; the digital commons; media cultures of the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China) in the context of the 21st century developmental state; emergent media-systems of the postcolonial nations (including regional media cultures in South Asia, Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Eurasia)
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
Rob Sloane | rsloane@bgnet.bgsu.edu
Mel Stanfill | stanfil1@illinois.edu
My work examines 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 that traces out proper and improper modes of being a fan. I study both cult media fans and sports fans and examine both representations of fans and the design of official websites for media properties (television shows, sports franchises, etc.). My key concerns include the relationship of fandom to heternormativity, whiteness, consumption, and labor.
More information: sites.google.com/site/melstanfill/home
Adviser: CL Cole
Darren Stevenson | darrens@illinois.edu
Darren Stevenson received a bachelor's degree in photography with highest honors from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Following this he worked in academic research for four years contributing as both a research assistant and an administrator at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, where he maintains an appointment in a technical role. His images and visualizations have been featured in hundreds of research publications and have won awards from NASA and the National Science Foundation. At Illinois he has served as a guest lecturer for undergraduate and graduate level courses in photography, architecture, and journalism. Darren joined the Institute of Communications Research in 2010. His research interests broadly exist at the intersection of communication technologies and society.
Mandy Tröger | troger5@illinois.edu
Mandy Tröger received her B.A. in North American, and Middle Eastern Studies at Erfurt University (Germany) and her M.A. 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. Before entering the ICR in 2009, Mandy worked as a translator and news editor making broadcast and online journalism her main field of interest. Currently Mandy is involved in a research project with the local radio station WILL on the use of online resources for community journalism.
Adviser: John Nerone
Ray Victor | svictor@illinois.edu
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
Myra Washington | mwashin4@illinois.edu
I am a PhD candidate in the ICR (which you probably already knew since you're on the ICR website). My dissertation explores Black/Asian (Blasian) multiracial identity and its representations through analyzing mediated constructions of Blasian celebrities specifically Kimora Lee Simmons, Hines Ward, and post-cheating scandal Tiger Woods. With their inclusion, my project examines whether this particular mixed race group challenges how we identify and classify multiracial people. Using the increase in recognition of multiracial celebrities who identify as Black and Asian and the popularity of these celebrities specifically, my project interrogates if and how their visibility and success allows for other similarly mixed up mixed-race people to claim visibility for themselves. My dissertation will also delve into identity negotiation research by investigating whether the tactics and strategies employed by Blasians are a form of resistance against current discourses on multiracial identity. The entertainment industry's adoption of corporate business models, and the rise in popularity and profit of social media networks has resulted in the self-conscious construction of celebrity images, which are marketed like brands. An additional focus of this dissertation will be on whether branding strategies are allowing these Blasian celebrities, and by extension mixed race people, the internal and external flexibility to identify themselves in a myriad of different ways.
Adviser: Kent Ono
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
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.