We research communication processes at global, national, institutional, group, and interpersonal levels; we promote a consciously critical disposition in communication research, where familiar questions are expanded and recast, sometimes combining research methods and strategies that elsewhere would be considered unusual bedfellows (e.g., rhetoric and performance; content analysis and textual criticism; criticism and survey research). We aim to address matters of pressing social and cultural concern through the lens of communication as a process essential to our survival as a species and a polity.
Palestine as Paradigm: Communicative Epistemology and Colonial Racial Violence
Paula Chakravartty will examine how Palestine reshapes debates on communication, democracy, and colonial power in this year’s Department of Communication Annual Lecture.
First Gen Comm Prof Launches Family Scholarship Endowment for First Gen Honors Students
UMass Amherst has announced the launch of the Castañeda, Paredes, Krupczynski (CPK) Family Scholarship Endowment to support first-generation honors students, including Communication majors. Communication Professor and Commonwealth Honors College Dean Mari Castañeda started the endowment with her family.
The admission for the Ph.D. program happens around the end of every calendar year for the following Fall. Fall 2025 is closed.
Updates about Fall 2026 admission are expected around October 2025.
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