Department of Communication Studies Seminar Series
Tuesdays at 4:00 p.m. in 101 Becker Communication Studies Building
(unless otherwise noted)
Sept. 1 - John Peters
“State of the Department”
Sept. 8 - Kristine Fitch
“Intercultural communication theory and research: Is there any hope? Any point?”
Although intercultural communication is a perennial favorite in undergraduate curricula around the world, and thus one of the largest markets for undergraduate textbooks, the theories and methods associated most closely with the area have suffered isolation from the broader discipline of communication studies. In this presentation I will offer a corrective, expanding on Philipsen’s discursive force position within speech codes theory. I will focus on cultural competence, a term both central to intercultural communication, particularly in its applications, and hotly disputed as to its meaning and legitimacy. Consideration of what the opposite of cultural competence might be leads instead to a rich wheel of possibilities for discourse in response to unexpected actions. Beyond the contribution this concept can make to intercultural communication, it further proposes a connection between that area and the communication studies discipline.
Sept. 15 - Joanna Demers
Associate Professor of Musicology, Thornton School of Music, USC will present "William Basinski, Tape Loops, and Mourning" as part of the "Taping the World" lecture series.
Faculty profile: http://www.usc.edu/schools/music/private/faculty/jtdemers.php
Sept. 22 - Aimee Carillo-Rowe, Department of Rhetoric
"Dis-Placing Subjectivities: Biopower and the Category of 'Experience' in Indian Call Centers"
Bio: Aimee Carrillo Rowe is an Associate Professor of Rhetoric and POROI and the Director of POROI at The University of Iowa. Her teaching and writing address the politics of representation and feminist alliances, third world feminism, and whiteness and antiracism. Her book manuscript, Power Lines: On the Subject of Feminist Alliances (Duke University Press, 2008), offers a coalitional theory of subjectivity as a bridge to difference-based alliances. Her writing appears primarily in interdisciplinary outlets such as Hypatia (Summer 2007), Radical History Review (Summer 2004), and NWSA Journal (Summer 2005).
Sept. 29 - UAC Professionalization
Oct. 6 - Vershawn Young, Department of Rhetoric
"Performer's Performativity: Return to Performance-Rhetoric"
In this interactive session, the speaker will use a variety of examples ranging from classroom performances to excerpts from theatrical plays to explore how the concept of performativity can be useful to various kinds of performers and how the concept can be applied to various performance events both within and without academic domains. The goal is to (re)articulate performance to rhetoric by exploring what's lost or rendered invisible when the importance of delivery/actio/rhetoric's fifth canon is diminished in relation to the way other canons are adapted and adopted in communication situations. Audience members will be asked to apply the concepts discussed to a performance using Romare Bearden's collage The Block. Participants are asked to view the The Block prior to the talk: http://www.metmuseum.org/explore/the_block/index_flash.html
Bio: Professor Young teaches, lectures, and writes about the African American experience post Jim Crow, with specific attention to class, sexuality, urban education, and politics. He examines and critiques ideologies and rhetorics behind blacks' efforts to become full citizens. He takes an interdisciplinary approach to this work, blending three interconnected areas into a genre he calls performance-rhetoric: African American communication (language use in speech and writing), African American literature, and black performance studies.
Oct. 13 - Paul Johnson
"The Contradictory Character(s) of Alex Rodriguez and the American Game: The Story of a Democratic Paradox"
Abstract: This paper examines the public figuration of the "character" of Alex Rodriguez in the American public imaginary, and links this figure to the contemporary economic crisis. The paper argues that Rodriguez's public persona and popular news accounts of his character before and during the revelation that he had used steroids discloses something about the "Democratic Paradox" as explicated by Chantal Mouffe- that is, that the antagonistic character of egalitarian democracy and classical liberal individualism are consistently reconstituted and/or negated to preserve the unity of the national imaginary. This insight is interested when placed alongside contemporary popular discourses linking baseball cheats to America's current financial collapse.
Oct. 20 - Hsin-Yen Yang
"Japanomania in Post-Authoritatian Taiwan: Reading Identity Discourse in Media Globalization"
Abstract: In contrast to other former colonies of Japan, such as China and South Korea, the Taiwanese audience has engaged in consumption and shown a reaction toward Japanese popular culture thought to be "excessive" and "exorbitant" since the early 1990s. The fascination with Japanese popular culture occurs in spite of the Taiwanese government's more than 40-year-long anti-Japan propaganda, and its official bans on Japanese broadcastings between1974 and 1992. In Taiwan, the legions of young fans of Japanese popular culture are known collectively as the "ha-ri-zu" -- "the Japanomania Tribe" (the translation I use in this paper). Even though the content of most Japanese pop cultural forms is nothing more than entertainment, the discussions surrounding the Japanomania phenomenon have been highly politicized. Based on a discourse analysis of the discussions found in Taiwanese bulletin board system (BBS), this paper argues that the foreign media can serve as a resource for young audiences to generate discourse on local social change and nation building. This study ultimately calls for more heuristic theorization of audience discourse in non-western contexts.
Oct. 27 - Eva Hemmungs Wirtén
Uppsala University's Department of Archival Science, Library and Information Science, Museology will present "A Diplomatic Salto Mortale: Translation Trouble in Berne, 1884-86" as part of the "Taping the World" lecture series.
Faculty profile: http://www.abm.uu.se/evahw/
Nov. 3 - UAC Professionalization
Nov. 10 - NCA presentation rehearsals
Nov. 17 - Saila Poutiainen, University of Helsinki, Department of Speech Sciences
"Mobile Phone Discourses in Finland"
Dec. 1 - Xinghua Li
"'Enjoy Your Waste!': Psychoanalysis, Ecology, and the Real of Environmental Communication"
Abstract: This essay theorizes a Lacanian psychoanalytic approach to the study of environmental communication. I criticize the previous scholarship that aligns Freud and ecology for ignoring the centrality of communication and introduce Lacan to this conversation. This move avoids the danger to turn psychoanalysis into another "ecology of the mind"-a powerful technology of eco-governmenality. Acknowledging waste/excess as the necessary condition of enjoyment, I suggest "sexing up" environmental communication by sublimating our wasteful/useless jouissance.
Dec. 8 - Preparing for the Job Market