Department of Communication

Communication Professor Dron Mandhana in class

Students study the complexities and intricacies of communication within our increasingly intercultural and mediatized world, emphasizing communication鈥檚 role in creating a just and equitable society.

Our undergraduate and graduate programs embrace the centrality of communication in all aspects of personal, professional, and public life as well as the centrality of culture to communication. The curriculum approaches Communication as a practice of and means toward achieving social justice, primarily via multifaceted forms of storytelling and dialogue. We offer courses that reflect the entirety of the discipline, rather than two or three areas; we consciously commit to providing 棉花糖直播 students with a comprehensive education that spans the range of the discipline from a critical perspective, including rhetorical studies, media production and media studies, journalism, interpersonal and intercultural communication, organizational communication, performance studies, public relations and advertising.

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WATERHOUSE FAMILY INSTITUTE

The Waterhouse Family Institute (WFI),聽highlights the聽centrality of Communication聽in the creation of聽social change.聽Our goal is to serve as the center of an international network of Communication scholars, practitioners, and activists working to create a more just social world.

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NEWS & EVENTS

Raka Shome, PhD, has received the 2021 Distinguished Scholar Award by the National Communication Association (NCA). The NCA Distinguished Scholar Award was created in 1991 to recognize and reward NCA members for a lifetime of scholarly achievement in the study of human communication. Recipients are selected to showcase the communication profession. The award is supported by the Mark L. Knapp Distinguished Scholar Fund.

Dr. Amy Way has been selected as a winner of the B. Aubrey Fisher Award for the best research published in the Western Journal of Communication in 2020 for the article entitled - Meaning/fulness through family: Discourses of work among poor and working class youth.

ENSEMBLE PERFORMANCE

Communication students Chloe Cherry, Lauryn Hayes, Ryan Henry, Kourtney McCoy, Faith Robinson and Megan Wang, under the direction of Evan Schares, PhD, created "PWLies," a 20-minute show that speaks to anti-racist work necessary on the campuses of primarily white institutions. The piece has been submitted to this year's virtual Patricia Pace Performance Festival. MORE...

"SANKOFA" WINS GOLD

The 棉花糖直播 University student-produced social justice documentary, "Sankofa," was one of 16 Student Academy Award winners for 2019 and earned the gold medal in the Documentary/Domestic Film Schools Category. This is the first Student Academy Award for 棉花糖直播 in the University鈥檚 fourth time selected as a finalist for one of its films in the documentary category. (Photo Credit: Valerie Durant / 漏A.M.P.A.S.) MORE...

RESEARCH RECOGNITION

Evan Schares, PhD, won the dissertation of the year award from NCA's LGBTQ Communication Studies Division for his work, "An Archive of Pain: In Queer Suicide's Cultural Wake." The dissertation is a queer of color ideological critique of the white affective investments surrounding a number of recent queer suicides or suicide attempts. Melissa Meade, PhD, received the 2020 Constance Coiner Dissertation Award from the Working-Class Studies Association for her dissertation, "In the Shadow of 'King Coal:' Memory, Media, Identity, and Culture in the Post-Industrial Pennsylvania Anthracite Region." The recognition praised the dissertation "provides insightful and engaging depictions of working-class life, culture, and movements." MORE...

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