Programs › Pittsburgh, PA
Studies how public art and graffiti scenes create spaces of encounter across social difference, examining visual rhetoric, affect and public space in transnational contexts.
Studies media history, theory and criticism, analyzing how popular media and media technologies constitute identity, masculinity and emotion in American culture.
Studies the intellectual history of rhetoric, from Giambattista Vico in early modern Europe to Weimar-era German thinkers, treating historical work as theoretical inquiry.
Studies communication history through a biographical lens, using diaries and letters to examine print culture, disability and the lives of disempowered people in antebellum America.
Critically analyzes media representation in lifestyle genres such as travel journalism and food media, and how newsgames and global media shape discourses of diversity, migration and identity.
Takes a critical approach to political communication and public address, focusing on populist rhetoric by conservative forces in Western democracies, especially the United States.
Studies science communication about health and environmental hazards from a feminist STS perspective, using archival and ethnographic research on Chernobyl radiation in Belarus.
Studies propaganda, misinformation and conspiracy communities such as QAnon and Internet subcultures, drawing on rhetoric, media studies and psychoanalysis.
Studies rhetoric and argumentation in military and healthcare contexts, including missile defense advocacy, intelligence analysis, preventive force and debate pedagogy.
Studies computational propaganda and disinformation: how groups worldwide use social bots, AI, algorithms and influencers to manipulate public opinion online.
Studies Latina/o/x media representation, citizenship and labor in the culture industries, critically analyzing U.S. television portrayals of Latinx belonging and immigration as well as advertising.
Studies how automated technologies such as AI and robots are adopted in the workplace, using ethnography, design research and critical making.