Programs › Amherst, MA
Studies language, race, and ethnic identity in face-to-face interaction, including code switching, naming practices, and street remarks, using discourse analysis of recorded talk.
Studies Latinx and ethnic media, global communication industries, and community-based civic engagement, with an engaged-scholarship focus on inequality and power.
Develops philosophy of communication and media theory, critically examining how cultural studies discourses reflect ideology and academic markets.
Studies everyday, media, and online interaction in Israeli and American culture and politics using conversation analysis, discourse pragmatics, and qualitative textual analysis.
Studies folklore, rhetoric, and performance as expressive culture, using rhetorical criticism and critical genealogy to examine New England legends and heritage tourism.
Writes performance autoethnographies on race, gender, and class that critique and decolonize knowledge production and the exclusion of bodies in academic spaces.
Studies race and racialization in media cultures, using critical race theory and cultural studies to analyze brand culture, commodity activism, and post-racialism.
Studies disinformation, digital humanitarianism, and tech justice in the Global Majority, using ethnographic and participatory methods with paid trolls and PR strategists.
Studies media as agents of socialization around gender and aggression, and adolescents' responses to media literacy education on ads, influencers, and AI.
Studies the cultural history of film and television, screen genres, and screen industries, combining industry analysis with close reading and audience construction.
Studies promotional culture, branding, and platforms in the digital economy, including how Amazon normalized monopoly, through critical cultural and audience analysis.
Studies how digital technologies are made and used in Africa, China, and the US, examining tech entrepreneurship and labor through ethnography and discourse analysis.
Studies the social and political impact of new communication technologies, focusing on user interaction and how news flows through social relationships on social media.
Studies technologies of statecraft such as smart cities, gov-tech, and automated decision systems in public agencies through ethnographic research on officials and tech firms.
Studies international and Global South cinemas, especially Arab, Asian, and African film, along with film festivals, co-productions, stardom, and diasporic audiences.
Studies how mass media and political communication shape stereotyping, prejudice, and public opinion about race, gender, and sexuality, including experimental work funded by TESS.
Studies narrative performance as a site of identity, relationality, and queer intimacy across race, gender, sexuality, class, and nation through performance scholarship.
Studies how deliberation, argument, and identity are constructed through language and interaction, especially in dispute mediation and conflict management.
Studies online political communities and coordinated behavior using computational and network methods, and develops agentic social science with AI agents as collaborators.
Studies civic media, digital public infrastructure, and how activists and citizens use new media for social change, free expression, and global connection.
Researches alternative histories of experimental film and expanded cinema by Black feminist media-makers, combining historical criticism with artistic film practice.
Studies Black feminist performance, Black transnational identity, and migration through autoethnography, poetry, and storytelling, exploring belonging and affective citizenship.