Selective List of Graduate Students
Robin Anderson
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Robin is a 3rd year Ph.D. student in the Communication department. Prior to coming to UMass, he received his B.A. in Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his M.A. in Gender/Cultural Studies at Simmons College in Boston. In 2006, during his time at Simmons, he presented "Cyborgs in Our Imaginations: The Use of Technology in The Matrix" at the ACLA annual conference. In his first year at UMass he presented "Syberberg, Hollywood, and Storytelling: The Afterlives of Hitler on Film" at the Nexus Conference where the theme was "Collected and Collective Identities" held at the U of TN. He is currently awaiting publication of an essay in an anthology about consumer culture post 9/11. His current interest involves the food economy, immigrant labor and consumer culture. Other interests include visual culture and the politics of solidarity. He has extensive experience in restaurants and cafes, and in 2004, through the SCAA, became a certified barista. He currently lives in Northampton, MA with his cat Frodo.
Andrea Bergstrom
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Andrea earned her undergraduate degrees, a B.A. in Mass Communication with a concentration in Media Studies and a B.S. in Marketing, from Franklin Pierce College. Her M.A. is in Communication from UMass Amherst, where she is currently pursuing her doctoral degree. Andrea’s main areas of interest are media effects on children, representations of gender in the media, and media literacy. Her master’s thesis was titled “From Fantasy Dates to Elimination Ceremonies: A Content Analysis of Gender, Sex, and Romance on Reality Television.” Additionally, Andrea has also participated in both the ICA and NCA conferences, and has recently published an article on media literacy in Academic Exchange Quarterly co-authored by Angela Paradise and Professor Erica Scharrer, Ph.D.
Lori Bindig
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Lori Bindig holds a BA in American Studies, a BFA in Musical Theatre, and an MA in Communication from the University of Hartford. Along with her doctorate in Communication, Lori is also pursuing an Advanced Feminist Studies Certificate through the department of Women’s Studies at UMass. Lori’s main areas of interest are critical cultural studies and media literacy particularly dealing with the construction and commodification of young femininity. Lori has presented at ECA, NCA, ICA and UDC. Lexington Books is publishing Lori’s book, Dawson’s Creek: A Critical Understanding, which will be available October 28, 2007.
Chris Boulton
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Chris Boulton received a B.A. in History with a concentration in Media Studies from Macalester College. Since graduation, Chris has worked for Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, taught documentary film production at the University of Cuenca in Ecuador, and wrote scripts for the Travel Channel, CourtTV, and Discovery. Inspired by the emerging media reform movement, Chris re-entered the academy in 2004 to research media literacy and consumer culture. For more about Chris, visit his website.
Alison Brzenchek
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Aliison Brzenchek holds a BS in Human Development and Family Studies from the Pennsylvania State University and a MSW from the University of Michigan. Prior to starting her work as a doctoral student, Alison worked for three years as an Adjunct Faculty member at the University of Michigan in the Communication and Women’s Studies Departments. Alison is the founder of RECLAIM Media Literacy Services and she has served on the Board of Directors for the Action Coalition for Media Education since the fall of 2000. Ms. Brzenchek has presented at regional and national conferences for organizations, such as: The American College Health Association, International Association of Eating Disorder Professionals, American Sociological Association, Academy for Eating Disorders, Action Coalition for Media Education and Alliance for a Media Literate America, regarding her prevention research, media reform efforts and her media literacy, activism and advocacy programming. Additionally, Ms. Brzenchek has been featured as an expert on Public Radio based on her body image research at the University of Michigan. Alison’s current research interests include critical cultural studies and media literacy. In particular, she is interested in media portrayals of gender, media representation in reality television and the role political satire (e.g. The Daily Show) plays in public awareness of political, social and cultural issues.
Matthew D’Aprile
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Matthew graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Clark University with a double major in Communication & Culture and Music Theory & Composition. Likewise, he finished his Master’s Degree at Clark University in Interactional Sociolinguistics. Matthew's communication perspective is rooted in the Coordinated Management of Meaning & American Pragmatism; his interests center around integrated medicines & spirituality. During his time at UMass-Amherst, Matthew has presented his work at various conferences, including NCA, ECA [Top Paper Panel, 2005], and to members of the Georgetown Linguistics Society; he also received a Student Research Grant from the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality.
Anilyn Díaz
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Gregory Dorchak
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Gregory earned an M.A. in Communication and Rhetorical Studies from Syracuse University, where he also attended as an Undergraduate. His main interest is the maintenance and evolution of traditional folk music communities, specifically the Celtic music of Cape Breton Island. He has presented at the American Folklore Society national conference, as well as Folklore conferences in Europe. His interests are in rhetorical theory, memory studies, folk studies, and performance theory.
Shara Dunn
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Shara Dunn received her B.A. from UMass Amherst with a concentration in Communication. She is interested in cultural studies, performance studies, and critical pedagogy. Shara’s research focuses on race in popular culture. Specifically, she studies colorblind discourse and racist script performance. She has also done work on media literacy, underground hip-hop culture, and the U.S. neoconservative political movement. In 2006 Shara was named Junior Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.
Matthew Ferrari
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Matthew Ferrari received a B.A. in Art History and Visual Culture from Bates College where he wrote a thesis on social and institutional theories of art. Following graduation he spent four years working as the Digitization Project manager and photographer for the H.F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, and then returned to school in 2004 to pursue an M.A. in film and media studies from Ohio University focusing on world cinema (and Thai film in particular). He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Communication at UMass where his work addresses politics of cultural representation and consumption/spectatorship in film and television culture. Matthew’s current research deals with popular “primitivism(s)” and post-colonial media commodity forms, primitivism and modernity, and discourses of rural/urban and “nature” in film and television.
Donna Halper
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I am a non-traditional student—that is, I got my Masters Degrees (two of them) in the 70s, but have always wanted a PhD. I am an adjunct professor at Emerson College in Boston, in the Journalism Dept. (15 years) and have also taught at a number of other colleges, including UMass-Boston and UMass-Amherst (Media Ethics). My expertise is in the history of broadcast communication as well as media stereotypes of women and minorities in radio and print journalism. I am an author of 3 books and a number of articles. My most recent book is “Invisible Stars: A Social History of Women in American Broadcasting.” I am one of the editors of the Boston Radio Archives.
Brett Ingram
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Brett Ingram is a Ph.D. student in the Communication department at UMass Amherst. He holds an M.A. in English and a Graduate Certificate in Cinema Studies from Northeastern University. His past work centered on alternative paradigms of masculinity–embodied in the figure of the “dandy” or “aesthete”– in Victorian and Modern British and American prose, and representations of sexuality in early Soviet film. His current interests include critical cultural studies, media literacy, rhetorical theory, and the moral politics of contemporary humor.
Perry Irwin
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Perry has joined the Department’s PhD program after 10 years marketing a variety of products and services for companies in Milwaukee; Columbus, Ohio; and Northampton, Mass. He holds an M.S. in journalism & mass communication from Iowa State University, where he completed a thesis on the professional socialization of mass media recruits, and a B.S. in communication from the University of Illinois. In addition to more than 15 years as an award-winning journalist, Perry has taught journalism and other media-related courses as Assistant Professor of Journalism at West Virginia University and elsewhere. Other past research interests include diffusion and adoption of innovations and communication patterns within broadcast news organizations. The main interest, presently, is representations of labor in the media.
Liliya Karimova
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Liliya Karimova joined the department as a doctoral student in 2005. She earned her Diploma of Higher Education in Philology with specialization in teaching Russian, English, and Literature from Kazan State University, Kazan, Russia. She received her first M.A. in English, Professional Writing and Rhetoric from Pittsburg State University, Pittsburg, Kansas, where she is also finishing work on another M.A. in Communication. At UMass, Liliya would like to conduct research in the fields of Intercultural Communication, Critical Cultural Studies, and Mass Media. Liliya’s specific research interests stem from her personal background and include issues related to formation of cultural/ethnic identity and cultural effects of globalization. An ethnic Tatar, Liliya was born in the former Soviet Union and grew up in the Republic of Tatarstan. Liliya also has practical experience in mass media and journalism. She has written articles for The Kansas City Star and The Richmond Times Dispatch and produced stories for National Public Radio, where she interned in the summer of 2005.
Stephanie Kent
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Steph is interested in intercultural group dynamics and group discourses as microsocial instantiations of macrosocial patterns. A U.S. nationally certified American Sign Language/English Interpreter, she focuses on the institutionalization of power relations through taken-for-granted assumptions about interpreter behavior, decision-making, and discourse. Steph has published in national and international interpreting journals and Critical Link 4: Professionalization of interpreting in the community (2007), and is always on alert for particular events theorized by James Cumming as “problematic moments” that present groups with the possibility of altering pre-established terms of interaction. Currently, Steph is researching the discourse of spoken language interpreters at the European Parliament, tentatively titled: A Discourse of Danger and Loss. One category in her weblog, Reflexivity, is devoted to teaching.
Elena Khatskevich
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Elena Khatskevich received her higher education diploma with specialization in teaching English and philology from the School of Foreign Languages at Buryat State University in Russia, and her Master of Education degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Throughout her professional career she has taught English as a foreign language to university students, worked for a variety of international non-profit organizations as well as the Center for Communication Programs of Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in Moscow. Her research focus is intercultural communication, ethnography of communication, health communication. She is also interested in developing, implementing and evaluating communication campaigns for behavior change.
hari stephen kumar
Han Lee
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Han earned his B.A. and M.A. degrees in Communication from the University of Illinois at Chicago. In Chicago, he was a research intern for the HIVNET 015 EXPLORE! Study through Howard Brown Health Center. Han has participated in Association of Internet Researchers, National Communication Association, and International Communication Association conferences, and won first place for the 2004 Carl J. Couch Internet Research Award competition. He has recently published a book chapter titled “Queering Race in Cyberspace” in “Media Queered: Visibility and Its Discontents” (edited by Kevin G. Barnhurst and published by Peter Lang). Han maintains the Communication Graduate Student Association and Department of Communication websites.
Hunju Lee
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Hunju Lee is a Ph.D. candidate in the department. She received her B.A. and M.A. in the Department of Mass Communication, Kyungpook National University (Taegu, Korea), and completed her Ph.D course work in Journalism and Mass Communication at Syungkyunkwan University (Seoul, Korea). She worked as a professional researcher in the Korean Press Foundation, the Korean Broadcasting Commission, and the Institute of Communication, Information and Cultural Studies at Syungkyunkwan University. Her research interests include sexuality, body, and gender issues in popular culture, East Asian cinema and Postcolonial studies, psychoanalytic film theories and film phenomenology, and the cinematic horror criticism, taking the relevant theoretical approaches from Media and Critical Cultural studies. She presented several papers on Korean society’s and audience’s discourse about a transgender celebrity, Queerness in Korea girls’ star fanfics, a Chinese male celebrity’s crossover stardom and media discourse, and the cultural economy of stardom and masculinity in contemporary Korean cinema, in recent NCA, ICA, Crossroads in Cultural Studies, and Society for Cinema and Media Studies conferences.
Sunny Lie
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I did both my undergraduate and Master’s studies in Communication. I finished a general communication B.A. degree at USC, and continued on to study global media and communication through a joint-degree program from USC and LSE. After being in the real non-academic world for 4 years, I decided to return and was lucky enough to be accepted into this program. The jobs that I had out there which included everything from being a communication specialist (that’s what they call their PR people) for UNDP Indonesia, a middle school teacher at a private Christian school (which was located right next to a Madrasah), to an office assistant at Voice of America (VOA) in which I had to cater to the whims of a bi-polar journalist (who threw office objects on the floor when she heard that I was leaving, but then hugged me 2 seconds later when she found out that I was leaving to pursue my dream of becoming a teacher) never gave me the full satisfaction I felt while I was immersed in the academic environment. My goal is to acquire as much knowledge of the field as I can and eventually teach whatever I know so that other students will be inspired to expand and refine it. My current research interests include ethnic/immigrant identities, culture and communication, and women in intercultural communication.
Zixu (George) Liu
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Zixu (George) Liu is currently a doctoral student, and received his M.A. in Communication from UMass Amherst in 2002 with his thesis titled “Commercial Ideology and Prime Time Advertising on China Central Television”. His current areas of interests include advertising study, audience research, theories of ideology and representation, commercialism, global television, and post colonial subjectivity. With popular culture as the major target of analysis, he is trying (in his dissertation project) to obtain a balance between empirical studies and abstract theories. Zixu has also presented at national and international conferences (e.g., ICA meeting in New York, N.Y. and and Asian Media Information and Communication [AMIC] meeting in Beijing, China). His paper on gender role in U.S. network advertising, co-authored by Daniel Kim, Keming Lin, and professor Errica Sharrrer, is in press for Mass Communication and Society.
Dawn Lovegrove
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Zachary McDowell
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Zach McDowell earned a B.S. in Communication Studies from Arizona State University at the West Campus, focusing on Rhetoric, Critical Theory, and the Philosophy of Communication. Zach earned his Masters Degree at Arizona State University as well, research and thesis focusing on Prophetic Advocacy, Language, and Being-in-the-World-Together. His current focus is in the area of advocacy, communication, and collaboration in a digital environment, especially the issues surrounding the Open Source / Free Software Movement, Digital Rights Management, Peer to Peer Sharing, and (Intellectual) Property. Zach has presented at NCA and has been published in Communication Research Reports.
Erin Meyers
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Erin A. Meyers holds a B.A. in philosophy from Tufts University and earned a Master’s Degree in Women’s Studies with a focus in feminism and popular culture from The Ohio State University in 2004. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Communication Department hard at work on her dissertation. Her article on the construction of Britney Spears' celebrity image in tabloids and reality television entitled "'Can You Handle My Truth?:' Authenticity and Celebrity Star Image" will be published in The Journal of Popular Culture in 2009. Her current research investigates celebrity culture and new media, focusing on celebrity gossip blogs and their audiences. She is currently conducting a survey of gossip blog readers via Survey Monkey, which you can find here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=ExT3Bk9D7pwuJpVpjrptmQ_3d_3d. Her other research interests include critical cultural studies and feminist analysis, particularly how they relate to the study of popular media and the construction of celebrity.
Elizabeth Molina-Markham
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Elizabeth Molina-Markham holds a B.A. in Comparative Literature with a minor in French from Haverford College. She received her Master's in Intercultural Communication from the University of Pennsylvania in 2006. Her interests include research in Ethnography of Communication, identity, and Coordinated Management of Meaning.
Eve Ng
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Eve Ng completed her undergraduate work at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and has a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the State University of New York-Buffalo. Along with her doctoral studies in Communication, she is pursuing an Advanced Certificate in Feminist Studies through the Women’s Studies Program. Her current areas of interest include class, taste, and distinction; online cultures; popular media; and queer representation. She has presented her work at venues including ICA, NCA, and the meetings of the American Anthropological Association, the American Sociological Association, and the International Gender and Language Association.
Fernando Rodriguez
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Fernando Rodriguez received an undergraduate degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the Universidad de Monterrey and an M.S. in Communication from the Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico. He worked as Quality Engineer and Instructor in quality assurance systems before going full-time into teaching at the Universidad de las Americas-Puebla where he taught communication theories and research methods for two years. He joined the UMass Communication Program in 2004 as a doctoral student. His research interest is in Media Effects, particularly Cultivation Analysis. Fernando has done research on the effects of soap operas and talk shows on Mexican adolescents’ beliefs and attitudes towards sex. His current research analyses the influence of television viewing on perceptions of control, self-efficacy, altruism, and social capital.
Sreela Sarkar
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Sreela holds a B.A in English Literature from St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi and a masters degree in Communication from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She has directed and scripted documentary films for Indian television and collaborative international projects. Her films include topics such as child labor in glass bangle industry in India, grassroots environment movements in different parts of India and intellectual traditions of one of India’s oldest cities, Banaras. Sreela’s M.A thesis (2004) was a case study of an inner city, community video group in Chicago and involved ethnographic methods as well as semiotic analysis. More recently, she is interested in exploring the role of ICTs in development programs and policies in South Asia and social movements around communication technologies. She has presented her work at Communication conferences including ICA and Central States Communication Association conventions.
Razvan Sibii
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Razvan earned his double B.A. degree in Journalism/Mass Communication and Political Science/International Relations from the American University in Bulgaria in 2001. Following graduation, he worked as a full-time political reporter for two Romanian publications. He is currently pursuing a doctoral degree at UMass Amherst (Communication). His Master’s thesis was built around the concepts of ideology & culture and “Romanian-ness.” Since 2003, he has taught more than 15 undergraduate classes as a stand-alone instructor, both in-class and online (e.g. Newswriting and Reporting, Media Ethics, Public Speaking, Interpersonal Communication, Media and Society, News Analysis, Cultural Codes in Communication) at UMass Amherst (departments of Communication and Journalism) and the Holyoke Community College. Raz’s academic interests include issues of identity, culture, and ideology; political communication; media & storytelling; and critical pedagogy.
Haijing Tu
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Haijing received her M.A. Degree in Communication from Auburn University in August 2005. She joined the Ph.D. program at UMass with research interests in mass media entertainment. At UMass, Haijing teaches a undergraduate course in public speaking as a stand alone instructor based on her teaching experience from Auburn University. Haijing participated in the Southern States Communication Association conference in 2005 and received top student papers honors from the Popular Communication Division.
Brion van Over
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Brion holds a BA in Communication from SUNY Oswego, and an MA in Communication from SUNY Albany. His reserach interests include the ethnographic investigation of communicative practices in a variety of cultural scenes. More specifically, he is interested in cultural conceptions of mystical and sacred experience and their intersection with cultural premises about and for communication, identity, emotion, sociality, and place.
