Jhally to deliver Distinguished Faculty Lecture

Sut Jhally, professor of Communication, will give a Distinguished Faculty Lecture on Thursday, March 8 at 4 p.m. in the Bernie Dallas Room in Goodell Hall.

In his talk titled “The Factory in the Living Room: How Television Exploits its Audience,” Jhally will discuss how media critics tend to focus on how powerful messages in movies, programs and advertising affect the public. He contends, however, they miss something else. Jhally will explore the issue from a different angle: how the profit-driven commercial media organize themselves like the rest of industrial capitalism – to extract value from their workforce. When people sit in their homes watching commercial media, he says, their time is organized and sold in the same way that the activities of factory workers are controlled and organized. But in the living-room factory, there are no child labor laws.

Jhally is a well-known national commentator on the role of media in politics and culture who has appeared in such publications at The Nation, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, The Observer (London), The Toronto Sun and The Christian Science Monitor.

He joined the faculty in 1985 and in 1991, he founded the Media Education Foundation, based in Northampton, and is its executive director. Jhally is the producer, writer and editor of the videos, “Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear and the Selling of American Empire”; “Peace, Propaganda and the Promised Land”; “U.S. News Media and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” and “Wrestling with Manhood: Boys, Bullying and Battering.” Jhally has also published several books, including “The Spectacle of Accumulation: Essays in Media, Culture & Politics; Enlightened Racism” (2005) and “The Cosby Show, Audiences and the Myth of the American Dream” (1992).

Jhally earned a bachelor’s degree in history/sociology and a master’s degree in sociology from the University of York in England in 1977 and 1978, respectively; a master’s degree in sociology from the University of Victoria in Canada in 1980 and a doctorate in communication from Simon Fraser University in Canada in 1984.

The event is free and open to the public.

The final lecture in the series features Melinda A. Novak, professor of Psychology, who will speak on Monday, April 23.

A reception follows each talk. Faculty members in the series receive a Chancellor’s Medal following their lectures. The Chancellor’s Medal is the highest honor bestowed on individuals for exemplary and extraordinary service to the campus. The series is sponsored by the offices of the chancellor and the provost.

February 22, 2007.

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