Our faculty and graduate students are busy delivering lectures, participating in symposia, and presenting at conferences in a wide variety of locations. Here's a sample of our department members' recent and upcoming travels:

2017

Prof. Alena Vasilyeva traveled to San Diego to participate in the mid-year board meeting of the International Communication Association from January 13-15, 2017.

Prof. Lisa Henderson is a Visiting Scholar as part of the Scholars Program in Culture and Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania in Spring 2017. She will teach a graduate seminar and deliver a public lecture on her new work on collaboration between scholars and artist/producers.

2016

Prof. Gonen Dori-Hacohen presented the co-authored paper "Barack Obama's Interactions on Late-Night Television Shows: Between Entertainment and Politics" at the National Communication Association convention in Philadelphia in November.

Prof. Marty Norden traveled to Keene, NH, in October to deliver a paper titled "The Folly of Faithlessness in Dracula Has Risen from the Grave" at the annual conference of the Northeast Popular Culture Association.

Graduate student Bohyeong Kim gave an invited talk at the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University in October. The event was organized by Oikos, an IPK working group focused on feminist political economy.

Graduate student Carmen Hernandez Ojeda took part in the Teaching Institute for Graduate Teaching Assistants in Communication (TIGTAC) with a focus on Communication Education and/as Social Justice in August at the University of Maine, Orono.

Prof. Gonen Dori-Hacohen presented a co-authored paper titled "Intersubjectivity and Authority: Keeping the Balance in Language Therapy with Children" at the Atypical Interaction Conference in Odense, Denmark, in July.

Venus Hottentot, a short play written and directed by graduate student Ayshia Stephenson, had its Off-Broadway debut in July at the Midtown International Theatre Festival. Produced at the Jewel Box Theater in Manhattan, Stephenson's tragicomedy brought the story of Saartjie Baartman to the 21st century. The show featured a cast made up entirely of UMass Amherst undergraduates, including Talya Sogoba, Callum LaFrance, and Leah Mertes.

Graduate student Katty Alhayek participated in the 2016 University of Southern California (USC) Annenberg Summer Doctoral Institute on Diversity in Media & Culture, June 20-24.

Graduate student Bohyeong Kim was awarded a Top 3 Student Paper in the Philosophy, Theory and Critique division at the ICA conference in Fukuoka, Japan in June. Her paper was titled "Think Rich, Feel Hurt: Affective Making of Financial Subjects Through Wealth-Tech Education in South Korea." She presented another paper titled "Financial Camaraderie through ‘Band’: An Ethnography of a Wealth-Tech Group on a Closed Mobile SNS in South Korea" at an ICA preconference on new media and citizenship in Asia.

Prof. Gonen Dori-Hacohen presented two papers at this year's International Communication Association conference: "Adjacency Pairs, Dialogic Syntax, and Creative Resonance: Achieving Misalignment Stance in Hebrew Interaction" and "Indexing Membership via Responding to Irony: Communication Competence in Israeli Radio Call-In Shows" (with Z. Livnit). The conference took place in June in Fukuoka, Japan.

Prof. Alena Vasilyeva traveled to the International Communication Association convention in Fukuoka, Japan, June 9-13, to participate in the ICA Annual Board of Directors’ Meeting and the meetings of the Language and Social Interaction Division as Chair of that division. She also presented a paper titled “Enacting Power and Authority in Interaction” at the ICA preconference “How to Analyze Authority and Power in Interaction."

Graduate student Wendy Pringle has been competitively chosen to participate in the 2016 Princeton-Weimar Summer School for Media Studies. She will be studying with a small group of scholars at Princeton University this summer.

Prof. Lisa Henderson was in residence at the Literary Arts Program, Banff Center, Banff, Alberta, May 22-28, and presented a paper titled “Critical Karaoke" at the Canadian Communication Association Meetings, Calgary, Alberta on May 29.

Prof. Marty Norden gave a presentation on teaching with digitized historical documents at the 3rd Annual Five College Digital Humanities Symposium, held at Amherst College on April 30.

Prof. Lisa Henderson was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Gender, Feminist, and Sexuality Studies at McGill University in Montreal during the spring.

Prof. Alena Vasilyeva traveled to Washington, DC to participate in the mid-year board meeting of the International Communication Association from January 15-17.

2015

Prof. Marty Norden presented a paper titled "'We're Not All Dead Yet': Humor Amid the Horror in James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein" at the Northeast Popular Culture Association (NEPCA) conference, held in New London, NH, on October 30-31.

Graduate student Mike Alvarez presented a paper titled "The Travesti in Brazilian Fiction and Film" at the NEPCA conference in New London, NH, on Oct. 31. He also teamed up with fellow grad students Gyuri Kepes and Mario Valdebenito to present “Embodying Fantastical Identities in Carnivalesque Communities Online: A Virtual Ethnography of Second Life.”

Graduate student Liz Nielsen presented a paper titled "Evil That Devours: Modern Re-imaginings of the Wendigo" at NEPCA in New London, NH, on Oct. 31.

Prof. Sut Jhally received an honorary doctor of fine arts degree from Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, on Oct. 8.

Prof. Marty Norden traveled to Pittsburgh to present a plenary paper titled "The International Marketing and Reception of Where Are My Children?" at the Women & the Silent Screen VIII conference, held on September 17-19.

Prof. Alena Vasilyeva presented a paper titled "Confrontation and Collaboration in the Course of the Elections Debate" at the International Conference of the International Association of Dialogue Analysis, held in Nancy, France, August 27-29.

Prof. Gonen Dori-Hacohen presented a paper titled "The Use of Footing in Adjacency Pairs to Achieve Negative Stance: Evidence from Hebrew" at the 14th International Pragmatics Conference, held in Antwerp, Belgium, July 26-31.

Prof. Alena Vasilyeva presented a paper titled “The Construction of Conflict in the Course of the Elections Debate” at the 14th International Pragmatics Conference, held in Antwerp, July 26-31.

Graduate student Woori Han participated in the USC Annenberg School Summer Institute on Diversity in Media and Culture, June 15-19.

Prof. Donal Carbaugh presented papers on environmental communication at the Conference on Communication and the Environment, University of Boulder, Colorado, June 12-15.

Prof. Leda Cooks delivered the keynote, "Understanding the Educational Ecosystem through Community-Based Learning: What's at Stake in University-Community Partnerships for Social Change?," at the 2015 New England Regional Campus Compact Retreat & Symposium held in Amherst on June 9-10.

Prof. Lisa Henderson participated on a Popular Communication panel on Critical Karaoke at the International Communication Association conference, San Juan, Puerto Rico, May 22-26.

Prof. Donal Carbaugh traveled to the ICA convention in San Juan, May 22-26, to present a paper titled "'OK, Talk to You Later!': Practices of Ending and Switching Tasks in Interactions With an In-Car Voice Enabled Interface" (co-authored with grad alums Elizabeth Molina-Markham, Brion van Over, and Sunny Lie) and take part in a BlueSky Workshop titled "Ethnographers of Communication Joining Theoretical Conversations Outside Their Subfield."

Prof. Gonen Dori-Hacohen presented a co-authored paper, "Sugar Talk: Presenting Blood Glucose Levels in Routine Medical Visits," at the International Communication Association conference in San Juan, May 22-26.

Prof. Alena Vasilyeva traveled to the International Communication Association convention in San Juan, May 22-26, to participate in the meetings of the Language and Social Interaction Division as Vice Chair of that Division and the ICA 2016 Planning Meeting as a Program Planner.

Prof. Lisa Henderson spoke as a plenary roundtable participant on the work of Canadian filmmaker and activist John Greyson at the Sexuality Summer School, University of Manchester, May 18-20.

Prof. Donal Carbaugh spoke about Finns and Americans in Conversation at the Finn Forum in Plainfield, Connecticut on May 16.

Prof. Alena Vasilyeva participated on an alumni panel and in judging PhD students’ posters at the School of Communication and Information, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, on May 6.

Prof. Donal Carbaugh was appointed a Research Fellow at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia. In conjunction with his visit, Griffith's School of Linguistics organized a conference on Australian and American uses of English. The conference took place on April 27.

Prof. Mari Castañeda spoke at the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies conference on April 16-17 in San Francisco and gave an invited presentation at the UCLA conference on Sports, Entertainment and Labor on April 18-19 in Los Angeles.

Prof. Donal Carbaugh presented two public lectures -- one on Intercultural Dialogue, the other on Reporting Cultures -- at Syracuse University on April 16-17.

Prof. Seth Goldman presented a paper, "The 2012 Obama Effect, Racial Context, and Intergroup Contact," at the 2015 annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association held in Chicago on April 16-19.

Prof. Donal Carbaugh spoke on “Three Dimensions for Enhancing Intercultural and Interfaith Dialogue” at the Martin Luther King Jr. Chapel at Morehouse College on April 10 for the Conference of Fostering Dialogues in Education, Ethics, and Nonviolent Peacebuilding: Global, Social, and Religious Movements Today.

Prof. Erica Scharrer spoke about her research with PhD alum Chyng Sun and other co-authors on gender and aggression content patterns in wide-circulating adult films March 26-27 on the campuses of the University of Notre Dame and Saint Mary's College in Indiana.

Graduate student Kavita Nayar presented a paper, "Working It: Adult Webcam Modeling and the Cultural Production of Postfeminist Sexual Subjectivities," at the 2015 Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference held in Montreal from March 25-29.

Prof. Marty Norden gave a presentation titled "The Interdisciplinary Faculty Supervisor: An Insider's Perspective" at the 7th National Conference on Individualized Major Programs, held in Amherst on March 5-6.

Prof. Mari Castañeda gave an invited lecture titled "Bearing Witness to Mothers in Academia" at Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina, on March 5 as part of the campus's Third Annual International Women's Month lecture and film series.

Prof. Leda Cooks received the Thomas Ehrlich award and spoke on a panel dedicated to her work in community based learning at the annual convention of the Association of American Colleges & Universities. The convention took place January 21-24 in Washington, DC.

Prof. Erica Scharrer traveled to Washington, DC to participate in the annual board meeting of the International Communication Association from January 16-18 and returned to the DC area to engage as a panel reviewer at the National Science Foundation February 4-6.

Prof. Jarice Hanson attended the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, in January.

2014

Prof. Marty Norden presented a paper, "Conceiving an Identity on Film: Margaret Sanger's Self-Representation in Birth Control (1917)," at a conference titled Researching New York: Perspectives on Empire State History. The conference took place on November 20-21 at SUNY Albany.

Prof. Lisa Henderson gave a paper titled "The Cultural and Economic Dimensions of Class in Queerness" in early November at the meetings of the Social Science History Association in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Prof. Mari Castañeda gave an invited talk at the University of Wisconsin, Madison on October 14. The title of her presentation was "Global Examples of Telenovelas for Social Change: Tensions between Entertainment and Empowerment in the Transmedia Landscape."

Prof. Jarice Hanson was an invited speaker at the "Mob-ility Symposium" sponsored by Wake Forest University and held at the Casa Artom in Venice.  Her presentation on October 10 was titled "The Past, Present, and Future of Mobility Facilitated by Mobile Phones."  The symposium focused on the sense of place one has in the globalized world.

Prof. Allison Butler facilitated an all-school assembly, "Digital Media: Friend, Foe, or Something in Between?" at Arlington High School in Arlington, Massachusetts, in October. The interactive assembly, co-facilitated by Communication students enrolled in COMM 397AR: Media and Education, reached 1000 students, grades 9-12, and covered the complexities of the digital media environment.

Prof. Allison Butler gave an invited talk, titled "Courtroom and classroom considerations: Legislation for and development of comprehensive media literacy," at the New York Bar Association's Annual Law, Youth, and Citizenship Conference (October.

Prof. Allison Butler facilitated a workshop titled "Media Literacy: Girls and Body Image" as part of the Eureka! program that partnered UMass Amherst with Girls, Inc. in a multi-day summer workshop in July.

Prof. Gonen Dori-Hacohen traveled to the International Conference on Conversation Analysis at UCLA, June 26-30, to present "'Hebrew lo yode'a / lo yoda'at ('(I) don't know' MASC/FEM) on Israeli Political Radio Phone-ins," a paper jointly authored with Yael Maschler.

Prof. Allison Butler facilitated a day-long movie-making workshop for the 4H Summer of Science Youth Program, hosted at UMass Amherst in June.

Prof. Seth Goldman participated in a plenary session at the 2014 Social Equity Leadership Conference in Pittsburgh, May 28-30.  The session focused on the implications of the Obama presidency for American society.

Prof. Lisa Henderson delivered the keynote address at the Ethnicity and Race in Communication (ERIC) preconference held in conjunction with the International Communication Association (ICA) conference in Seattle, May 22-26.  She spoke on "The Cultural Politics of Protest: Confronting Social Justice and Inequality in Communication Studies."

Graduate student Bohyeong Kim won the ICA Communication History Division's Top Student Paper Award for her paper, "Radio Melodrama and the Cultural Cold War in Post-Korean War South Korea, 1956-1960."  She presented her paper at the ICA conference in Seattle in May.

Graduate student Anilyn Diaz-Hernandez participated in an International Communication Association roundtable discussion on Research-Creation, organized and chaired by Prof. Lisa Henderson.  Graduate program alumnus Chris Boulton also presented at this roundtable, which took place at the ICA conference in Seattle in May.

Prof. Gonen Dori-Hacohen traveled to ICA in Seattle in May to present two papers in the Language and Social Interaction division: "'More-Than-Three-Part Lists and Their Interactional Achievements in Radio Phone-in Shows," and, with Dalit Assouline, "Yiddish Across Borders: Interviews in the Yiddish Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Audio Mass Medium."  He and graduate student Xima Avalos also presented "How Do Fans Criticize Their Own Team?  Demonstrated Practices from a Facebook Fan Page" in ICA's Mass Communication division.

Graduate student Greg Blackburn presented two papers at ICA in Seattle.  One was "The Perception of the Effects of Military-Themed Video Games" in the Game Studies division, and the other was "Television Viewing and the Cultivation of Terrorism Preparedness" in the Mass Communication division.

Prof. Seth Goldman presented a paper titled "Victims, Heroes, and Changing Times: How Media Portrayals Affect Attitudes about Gay People and Gay Rights" at the ICA meeting in Seattle.

Prof. Donal Carbaugh delivered a public lecture on "American Discourses of Pain and Happiness: A Case Study in the Death of bin Laden" at the Maple Leaf and Eagle Conference, University of Helsinki, Finland, May 8.

Prof. Donal Carbaugh delivered public lectures and met with faculty and graduate students as a Visiting Scholar at the University of New Mexico's Department of Communication, April 21-25.

Graduate student Kavita Nayar received the William E. Brigham Outstanding Graduate Student Paper in Popular Culture award from the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association for her article, "You Did(n't) Build That: Audience Reception of a Reality Television Star's Transformation from a 'Real Housewife' to a Real Brand."  Kavita delivered the paper at the PCA/ACA conference in Chicago on April 19, and it will later appear in the Journal of Popular Culture.

Prof. Marty Norden presented a paper titled "Listening for Lois: Reconstructing the Public Utterances of Lois Weber" at the Doing Women's Film and Television History conference held at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK, on April 11.

Prof. Seth Goldman presented a paper at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association in Chicago on April 4.  His presentation was titled "Painting the White House Black: The Measurement and Effects of White Fear of Racial Favoritism."  In addition, he served as discussant for a panel titled "The Effects of Informational Contexts" at the MPSA conference on April 5.

Prof. Emily West gave a talk at the Jones Library in Amherst on April 3 as part of the Town/Gown Discussion Series. The title of her talk was "Buying the Affordable Care Act: Health Care Consumerism and Attitudes to Health Care Policy."

Prof. Bill Yousman gave a presentation at the Media Literacy Research Symposium at Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut, on March 21.  His talk was titled "Visual Literacy vs. Traditional Literacy: Pedagogical Challenges and Possibilities."

Prof. Martha Fuentes-Bautista gave a talk on "Media and Popular Power in Latin America: Promises and Contradictions" at Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut, on March 19.

Prof. Lisa Henderson participated on a panel titled "The Affective Economies of Cinema and the Labors of Reparative Criticism" at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference in Seattle on March 20.

Graduate student Matthew Ferrari presented his paper, "'Born Survivors' and Their Trickster Cousins: Masculine Primitive Ideals on Reality Television," at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference in Seattle on March 19.

Prof. Mari Castañeda gave a lecture titled "The Challenges and Opportunities for Mothers in Academia" at Westminster College in Salt Lake City on February 20.

Prof. Lynn Phillips gave a talk and then presented the film Flirting with Danger: Power and Choice in Heterosexual Relationships at Bowdoin College in Brunswick ME on February 7 as part of the NESCAC ConsentFest conference on sexual assault prevention.

2013

Prof. Donal Carbaugh keynoted a special NCA preconference event on November 20 in Washington DC that honored the 25th anniversary of the publication of his first book, Talking American, and to discuss his forthcoming book on the news as (inter) cultural communication, "That's Not Funny!": Reporting Cultures on 60 Minutes.  The event was titled "Talking Technology: New Directions in the Ethnography of Communication and Technology."

Graduate student Matthew Ferrari presented his paper, "Fighting Forms: The Convergence and Technological Refinement of Mediated Combat Aesthetics," at the Northeast Popular Culture Association's annual conference at St. Michael's College in Burlington, Vermont, October 25-26.

Prof. Lisa Henderson served as resident scholar and public lecturer from October 1 to 15 at the School of Journalism and Communication, Chinese University of Hong Kong, and at Hong Kong Baptist University.

Prof. Lisa Henderson presented a seminar on Queer Theory and Methodologies at the University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark on September 26.

Prof. Lynn Phillips was interviewed by New England Public Radio about sexual violence on college campuses. To listen to the interview, please click here.

Prof. Lynn Phillips screened and discussed the documentary film, Flirting with Danger: Power and Choice in Heterosexual Relationships, at the Console-ing Passion Conference, Leicester, UK, June 22.

Prof. Gonen Dori-Hacohen delivered presentations titled "The Israeli Term for Talk 'Tokbek' and Its Relevance to the Online Pubic Sphere" and "Overall structural Organization of Phone-Ins in Two Countries and Their Relations to Societal Norms" at the International Communication Association annual meeting, London, UK, June 19-21.

Prof. Lisa Henderson participated on a symposium panel, "Feminist Thought in Cold Neoliberal Times," Goldsmiths, University of London, UK, June 21.

Prof. Emily West delivered a conference presentation, "'Sexy-Fit Femininity': The New Cheerleader as Post-Feminist Icon" (co-authored with Laura Grindstaff), at the International Communication Association conference, London, UK, June 18.

Prof. Lynn Phillips screened and discussed the documentary film Flirting with Danger: Power and Choice in Heterosexual Relationships at the International Communication Association conference, London, UK, June 18.

Prof. Emily West delivered a preconference presentation, "The Crowdsourced Brand: The Blurring Between Consumer 'Empowerment' and Activism," at the Beyond the Brand Preconference, International Communication Association annual conference, London, UK, June 17.

Prof. Lisa Henderson participated in meetings of the International Communication Association, London, UK, June 17-21.

Prof. Donal Carbaugh delivered a presentation titled "Words and 'Wilderness'" at the Communication and the Environment conference, Uppsala, Sweden, June 8.

Prof. Emily West gave a conference presentation, "Going Public: Media Portrayals of the End of Life," at the Canadian Communication Association, University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, June 6.

Prof. Lisa Henderson participated in meetings of the Canadian Communication Association, University of Victoria, British Columbia, June 5-7.

Prof. Claudio Moreira was a participant in the 9th annual International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, May 15-18.

Prof. Lisa Henderson was a guest author at the Feminist and Queer Book Salon at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, April 30.

Prof. Lisa Henderson gave a reading and book signing for Love and Money: Queers, Class and Cultural Production at Giovanni's Room, 12th and Spruce St., Philadelphia, on April 22.

Prof. Lisa Henderson delivered the Eric Schocket Memorial Lecture on Class and Culture at Hampshire College, April 18.  Her lecture was titled "Queers and Class: Toward a Cultural Politics of Love and Solidarity."

Prof. Sut Jhally spoke at Concordia University in Chicago on April 17.

Prof. Lynn Phillips traveled to the University of San Francisco to screen her Media Education Foundation film, Flirting with Danger: Power and Choice in Heterosexual Relationships, at the Department of Media Studies and the Gender and Sexuality Center, April 15.

Prof. Mari Castañeda traveled to Minneapolis to present at the symposium, "Keeping our Faculty of Color: Transforming Our Institutions, Advancing Inclusive Excellence Among Faculty in Higher Education," April 14-17.

Prof. Sut Jhally spoke at a conference at Harvard Law School entitled "Deep Capture: Psychology, Public Relations, Democracy and Law" on April 13.

Graduate student Dijana Jelaca presented a paper titled "The Birth of /Queer/ Nations" at the Homonationalism and Pinkwashing Conference at CUNY, New York, April 10-11.

Prof. Sut Jhally gave a talk at Adams State University in Alamosa, Colorado, and then went on to the Media Reform Conference in Denver the week of April 8 to show the Media Education Foundation film, Race, Power, & American Sports, with Dave Zirin.

Profs. Anne Ciecko, Marty Norden, Leda Cooks, Mari Castañeda, Demetria Shabazz, and Martha Fuentes-Bautista, graduate students Emily Polk and Lily Herakova, and graduate program alumna Eve Ng presented work at the "Mediating Public Spheres: Genealogies of Feminist Knowledge in the Digital Age" symposium at the Five College Women’s Studies Research Center, April 4-6.

Graduate student Lily Herakova was featured on two teaching focused panels at the Central States Communication Association Convention: "Diverse (Im)Possibilities, Teaching Ideas, and Activities for Seemingly Homogenous Groups of Students: Applying Intercultural Communication Concepts in any Classroom" and "Disturbing the Self: Learning about Identity (Construction)," April 2-7, Kansas City, Missouri.

Prof. Mari Castañeda traveled to Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, to present at the inaugural Faculty Women of Color in the Academy (FWCA) National Conference, April 2-5.

Graduate student Anilyn Diaz-Hernandez received a travel grant from Ithaca College to attend that college’s Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival (FLEFF) as a Graduate Fellow, April 1-7.

Prof. Mari Castañeda traveled to San Antonio, Texas, to present at the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies annual Conference, March 20-24.

Graduate student Paige Mustain presented her paper, "Perpetuating Inequality: Youth and Digital Exclusion," at the "Voices of Resistance: Communication and Social Justice Communication Research and Discourse" conference at Penn State University, March 16.

Graduate student Rachel Thibault attended this year's Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference in Chicago, and presented her paper, "Women, Film Blogging, and the Cinephilia of Interruptions."

Prof. Anne Ciecko traveled to Chicago to present at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference, March 6-10.

Graduate student Xima Avalos presented her paper titled "Los Cuarons y Cocaine Tambien" at the UMass Graduate History Association Conference, "Completing Visions: Changing Landscapes in the Past, Present, and Future," March 9.

Prof. Mari Castañeda traveled to New York City to participate in the NYU screening of Latinos beyond Reel, a documentary from the Media Education Foundation, March 5.

Prof. Donal Carbaugh traveled to St. Louis University to deliver the keynote address, "Interculturality Gone Haywire: Intercultural Misunderstandings in the News," for Perspectives on Interculturality, February 28.

Graduate student Anilyn Diaz-Hernandez moderated and presented a paper in the panel "Perspectives for Assessing the State of Media in Puerto Rico" at the 4th International Conference Assessing the State of Spanish-language and Latino-oriented Media, held at the University of Texas-San Marcos, February 21-23.