Graduate Students

There are about 75 M.A. and Ph.D. students in the Communication graduate program, with about 35-40 actively taking classes. All Communication graduate students are members of the Communication Graduate Student Association (CGSA), a professional and social community with the objective to improve the scholarly, collegial, and social atmosphere of the Department of Communication. The functions of CGSA are to facilitate the academic, social, and professional well being of graduate students and to help maintain a collaborative, collegial graduate student community. Please visit the Communication Graduate Student Association website (you will be directed to an external website) to learn more about our graduate students.

Our graduate students run a separate wiki-based website (see below). Please click here to visit the website in its full version to learn about their academic and social life at UMass Amherst and beyond.

 

 

Recent Graduate Placement in Faculty Positions

	Dr. David Boromisza-Hibashi (Ph.D., 2008) University of Colorado-Boulder Assistant Professor Dissertation: "Hate Speech as Cultural Practice" Advisor: Dr. Donal Carbaugh
	Dr. Kennaria Brown (Ph.D., 2007) Berea College Assistant Professor of English, Theatre and Speech Communication Dissertation: "Good Women Becoming 'Queens': Young Mothers on Welfare as Cultural Readers" Advisor: Dr. Mari Castañeda
	Dr. Garnet Butchart (Ph.D., 2006) University of South Florida Assistant Professor of Communication Dissertation: "Psychoanalyzing Communication: Language, Subjectivity, Symbolization" Advisor: Dr. Briankle G. Chang
	Dr. John A. Chetro-Szivos (Ph.D., 2001) Fitchburg State College Department Chair of Communications Media Dissertation: "Exploring the Meaning of Work: A CMM Analysis of the Grammar of Working among Acadian-Americans" Advisor: Dr. Vernon E. Cronen
	Dr. Lynn A. Comella (Ph.D., 2004) University of Nevada Las Vegas Assistant Professor of Communication Dissertation: "Selling Sexual Liberation: Women-Owned Sex Toy Stores and the Business of Social Change" Advisor: Dr. Lisa Henderson
	Dr. Amy M. Damico (Ph.D., 2004) Endicott College Associate Professor Dissertation: "Exploring the Complexities of Personal Ideologies, Media Literacy Pedagogy and Media Literacy Practice" Advisor: Dr. Leda Cooks
	Dr. Alpha S. Delap (Ph.D., 2003) University of Washington Director of Research Services Dissertation: "Recovering Trauma: An Ethnographic Study of Women's Storytelling within Contemporary Support Group Environments" Advisor: Dr. Leda Cooks
	Dr. Esteban Del Rio (Ph.D., 2006) University of San Diego Assistant Professor of Communication Studies Dissertation: "All of Us Americanos: Cultural Exhibition and the Rise of Latinos with a National Imaginary" Advisor: Dr. Carolyn Anderson
	Dr. Vincent Doyle (Ph.D., 2005) IE Universidad Assistant Professor Dissertation: "The Visibility Professionals: The Gay and Lesbian Alliance against Defamation and the Cultural Politics of Mainstreaming" Advisor: Dr. Lisa Henderson
	Dr. Maximiliano Duenas Guzman (Ph.D., 2003) Universidad de Puerto Rico Assistant Professor of Communication Dissertation: "Social Meanings of the Personal Computer in Puerto Rico: Consumption as the Communicative Praxes of Modernization and Social Power" Advisor:
	Dr. Julie Frechette (Ph.D., 2000) Worcester State College Associate Professor of Communication Dissertation: "Media Literacy in Cyberspace: Learning to Critically Analyze and Evaluate the Internet" Advisor: Dr. Leda Cooks
	Dr. Thomas N. Gardner (Ph.D., 2005) Westfield State College Assistant Professor of Communication Dissertation: "Framing an Execution: Death, Lies, and Videotape: ABC 20/20 and the Rhetoric of Law and Order in the Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal" Advisor: Dr. Michael Morgan
	Dr. Olga Gershenson (Ph.D., 2003) University of Massachusetts Assistant Professor of Judaic & Near Eastern Studies Dissertation: "Cultural Production and Zionist Idealogy: The Case Study of Gesher Theatre in Israel" Advisor: Dr. Anne Ciecko
	Dr. Janice L. Haynes (Ph.D., 2005) Xavier University of Lousiana Assistant Professor of Communications Dissertation: "Money Makes a Family: A Genealogy of Female-Headed Families, Welfare, and Media Representations" Advisor: Dr. Michael Morgan
	Dr. Will Hughes (Ph.D., 2005) American International College Assistant Professor of Communications Dissertation: "The Green Car: Television Automobile Advertising and the Environmental Attitudes of Television Viewing" Advisor: Dr. Michael Morgan
	Dr. Nina B. Huntemann (Ph.D., 2005) Suffolk University Assistant Professor of Communication & Journalism Dissertation: "Policy and Culture in the Digital Age: A Cultural Policy Analysis of the U.S. Commercial Radio Industry" Advisor: Dr. Sut Jhally
	Dr. Wenshan Jia (Ph.D., 2000) Chapman University Associate Professor Communication Studies Dissertation: "A Social Constructionist Perspective on the Chinese Lian/Mian (Face) Practices" Advisor: Dr. Vernon E. Cronen
	Dr. Susan C. Leggett (Ph.D., 2001) Westfield State College Assistant Professor of Communication Dissertation: "Atlanta's Sisters: Sport, Gender, and Technology in Popular Press, 1921-1996" Advisor: Dr. Sally Freeman
	Dr. Viera Lorencova (Ph.D., 2006) Fitchburg State College Assistant Professor of Communicaions Media Dissertation: "Becoming Visible: Queer in Postsocialist Slovakia" Advisor: Dr. Lisa Henderson
	Dr. Lauren Mackenzie (Ph.D., 2005) Fitchburg State College Assistant Professor Dissertation: "When Words Fail, Music Speaks: How Communication Transforms Identity" Advisor: Dr. Donal Carbaugh
	Dr. Shoshana Madmoni-Gerber (Ph.D., 2003) Suffolk University Assistant Professor of Communication & Journalism Dissertation: "Media Construction of Public Sphere and the Discourse of Conflict: A Case Study of the Kidnapped Yemenite Babies Affair in Israel" Advisor:
	Dr. Dora Martinez-Ramos (Ph.D., 2003) Universidad de Monterrey Assistant Professor of Information & Communication Dissertation: "The Desire to See: Western Iconoclasm and the Return of the Empty Image" Advisor: Dr. Briankle G. Chang
	Dr. Eric Morgan (Ph.D., 2002) New Mexico State University Associate Professor Dissertation: "Communicating environment: Cultural discourses of place in the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts" Advisor: Dr. Donal Carbaugh
	Dr. Carmen McClish (Ph.D., 2007) Northeastern University Post-Doctoral Teaching Fellow Dissertation: "Social Protest, Freedom, and Play as Rebellion" Advisor: Dr. Briankle G. Chang
	Dr. Kembrew McLeod (Ph.D., 2000) University of Iowa Assistant Professor of Communication Dissertation: "Owning Culture: Authorship, Ownership and Intellectual Property Law" Advisor: Dr. Sut Jhally
	Dr. Angela Paradise (Ph.D., 2007) Stonehill College Assistant Professor of Communication Dissertation: "Trait Aggression and Style of Video Game Play: The Effects of Violent Video Game Play on Aggressive Thoughts" Advisor: Dr. Erica Scharrer
	Dr. Saila Poutiainen (Ph.D., 2007) University of Helsinki Tenured University Lecturer Dissertation: "Finnish cultural discourses about the mobile phone communication" Advisor: Dr. Donal Carbaugh
	Dr. Makoto "Max" Saito (Ph.D., 2007) Westfield State College Assistant Professor Dissertation: "Silencing Identity through Communication: Situated Enactments of Sexual Identity and Emotion in Japan" Advisor: Dr. Donal Carbaugh
	Dr. Joel Saxe (Ph.D., 2001) Greenfield Community College Assistant Professor Dissertation: "Communicative practices of Yiddish-speaking Jewish elders on South Miami Beach" Advisor: Dr. Donal Carbaugh
	Dr. Michelle Scollo (Ph.D., 2007) Rutgers University Assistant Professor Dissertation: "Mass Media Appropriations: Communication, Culture, and Everyday Social Life" Advisor: Dr. Donal Carbaugh
	Dr. Katherine Sender (Ph.D., 2001) University of Pennsylvania Associate Professor of Communication Dissertation: "Producing the Gay Market: Sex, Sexuality and the Gay Professional-Managerial Class" Advisor: Dr. Lisa Henderson
	Dr. Matthew A. Soar (Ph.D., 2002) Concordia University Assistant Professor of Communication Studies Dissertation: "Graphic Design/Graphic Dissent: Towards a Cultural Economy of an Insular Profession" Advisor: Dr. Lisa Henderson
	Dr. Denise Stephenson (Ph.D., 2006) Western Connecticut State University Assistant Professor of Communication Dissertation: "The Politics of Help: The Rhetoric of Suicide and Suicide Prevention in the Mainstream Press" Advisor:
	Dr. Chyng-Feng Sun (Ph.D., 2002) New York University McGhee Professor of Media Studies Dissertation: "Stories Matter: Media Influences on Asian American Identities and Interracial Relationships" Advisor: Dr. Michael Morgan
	Dr. Cindy Suopis (Ph.D., 2002) University of Massachusetts Interim Dean of the University Without Walls Dissertation: "Women's Ways of Speaking about Menopause and Hormone Replacement Therapy: An American Discourse on Personhood" Advisor: Dr. Donal Carbaugh
	Dr. Rebecca Townsend (Ph.D., 2004) University of Hartford Assistant Professor Dissertation: "Deliberation and Democracy: Ethnography of Rhetoric in a New England Town Meeting" Advisor: Dr. Donal Carbaugh