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The Department
The Department of Communication is the academic center for the study of communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The mission of the Department of Communication is to pursue research, teaching, and outreach rooted in an understanding of communication as the primary process through which persons, societies, and cultures are formed and changed.
We research communication processes at global, national, institutional, group, and interpersonal levels. We promote a consciously critical disposition in communication 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.
We offer a distinctive set of research areas, embracing interdisciplinarity and scholarly approaches spanning the social sciences and humanities. Our areas of focus include digital technology studies; film studies; media and cultural production; media effects; policy and the political economy of global communication; rhetoric and performance studies; and social interaction and culture. From these research traditions, there are several cross-cutting themes and urgent social issues we directly address in our work, including identities and social group formations, communication flows and networks, democracy and discourse, and media power and social justice.
Our scholarly activity spans written, creative, and outreach modes, taking a number of forms including performances, public speech, documentary and media making, and the writing of essays, articles, chapters, and books. We believe that knowledge matters outside as well as inside of the academy, and we actively pursue ways of engaging our work with the concerns, priorities, and actions of communities, advocacy organizations, policy making bodies, and the general public. Widely known for our profile in public and community engagement and for our commitment to teaching and learning and student support, we are a place where theory meets practice and ideas shape action.
Our Values
Diversity, criticality, and social justice: In our research and creative activity, teaching, and outreach, as well as in the day-to-day practices and processes in the department, we have a commitment to addressing issues of (in)equality and (in)justice and working toward inclusion and equity, from the micro- (e.g., through social interaction or in the conceptions, attitudes, or behavior of individuals) to the macro-level (in structures and systems) of issues, topics, and concerns. There is a long department tradition of criticality in our practice, identifying systems of oppression and interrogating issues of power.
Community engagement and praxis: We use multiple communicative modes and means (including those that are creative and expressive in addition to those that are textual) to intertwine theory and practice to take action in the world. From public speaking as an
expression of civic engagement to writing or producing for documentary or television and from performance on the page, stage, and in everyday life to publishing for academic audiences, we ensure that the work of the students, staff, and faculty of the department matters for and in the world around us. We have a number of ongoing civic engagement and service learning activities in the department as well as a tradition of engaging with policy and advocacy organizations and the general public.
Global/international perspectives: We are a richly international group of people and we place strong value on students’ learning about and experiences with cultures and contexts outside of their own. We value research and creative activity that stems from or is informed by historical, economic, social, political, and/or cultural factors in various global contexts.
Innovation, Interdisciplinarity, intradisciplinarity: We bring a number of paradigms, fields, and intellectual traditions together in innovative, rich, and holistic ways in our work. In our department, familiar questions are expanded and recast, sometimes combining research methods and strategies that elsewhere would be considered unusual bedfellows (e.g. rhetoric and performance, language and social interaction and media theories, computational social science and textual criticism, critical theory and quantitative methods research).
We are committed teachers and active researchers whose perspectives and methods encompass social scientific as well as humanistic studies. Faculty members develop connections between theory and practice in order to advance knowledge in the field, to promote informed public debate, and to teach students how to think critically as citizens in a democratic society. We are dedicated to making our teaching and research accessible beyond the academy, as a force for sustainable social change.