'COMM Plishments: December 2019
News about Communication faculty, graduate and undergrad students and staff doings.
John Ackerman,Associate Professor, published the lead article in a special edition ofPOROIdevoted to rhetoric and resilience, “Wild Cosmopolitanism, Wily Oscillations in Artificial Neighborhoods” (2019, 15.1, 1-21). He was invited to study the master planning process in Reno Nevada, and then to present the Plenary address at the Rhetoric Society of American Project in Power, Place, and Publics, May 20, 2019. Ackerman, workshop leaders and attendees, and campus faculty worked with city and campus officials to assess regional planning processes, resulting in a dedicated issue of the journal,Review of Communication, in press for Spring 2020.
Carolin Aronis,Visiting Postdoctoral Scholar, gave an Invited Talk, “Anti-Semitism in the U.S.: New Media, New Semantics, New Problems,” at the Institute of General Semantics Symposium, Princeton Club, New York City. Her paper,received a Top Paper Award in Philosophy of Communication at the Annual Convention of the NCA, where she also presented two other papers: “ԻԻ organized the panelShe presented with Natasha Shrikant, “” at the NCA Pre-Conference on African American Public Address. Carolin’s article “The ‘Tweeting’ Discourse of Balconies and Porches in the City: Identity and Public Speaking,” got accepted to the edited volume,The Urban Communication Reader IV(New York: Peter Lang).
Karen Lee Ashcraft, Professor, published a chapter in Consuelo Vasquez & Tim Kuhn’s award-winning 2019 volume on Communication as Dis/Organization, entitled, “Feeling things, making waste: Hoarding and the dis/organization of affect.” She was also a featured speaker at a sub-plenary session on “Grand Challenges: Social Inclusion” at the 2019 meeting of the European Group for Organization Studies in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Audra Barber,MA student, presented a paper at the National Communication Association Conference in the Public Dialogue and Deliberative Division titled “Average is not Inclusive: Deliberative Democracy’s Environmental Conundrum.”
Kellie Brownlee,PhD student, won the Top Paper award in the Ethnography division at NCA, along with her co-author Emily Loker, for their paper “Surviving PhDepression as Women and Graduate Students: A Collaborative Feminist Autoethnography on Mental Health in Academia.” She also presented on a panel called “Surviving the God Problem: Methodological Issues in Religious Communication Research.”
Monica Carroll,Office Manager, is exhibiting work in the current exhibit,, a juried show presented by the Women's Caucus for Art at Niza Knoll Gallery in Denver. The Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA) is a national organization founded in 1972 to create community through art, education, and social activism by supporting women artists, creating leadership opportunities, and offering exhibition opportunities. Passage, a national juried exhibit features 50 artists from 22 states, selected from over 500 submissions. Juror Gwen Chanzit, Ph.D. & Curator Emerita at the Denver Art Museum selected quality artworks that reflect passage both real and metaphorical such as physical journeys, emotional change, rites of passage, personal growth and transition.
Joelle Cruz, Assistant Professor, received the inaugural Orlando L. Taylor Distinguished Scholarship Award in Africana Communication at the NCA convention. She also published a co-authored article,Management Communication Quarterly.
Malinda (Mally) Dietrich, PhD student, published a book review of Colin Koopman’sHow We Became Our DataCritical Studies in Media Communication.
JLisa Flores,Associate Professor, presented the Carroll C. Arnold Distinguished Lecture at the National Communication Association conference, where she also received the NCA Douglas W. Ehninger Distinguished Rhetorical Scholar Award and the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Rhetorical and Communication Theory Division. Her essay, “Stoppage and the Racialized Rhetorics of Mobility,” was published online in theWestern Journal of CommunicationԻ will be in print in 2020. She also delivered the Gravlee lecture for the Department of Communication Studies at Colorado State University.
Larry Frey,Professor, was inducted as a Distinguished Scholar of the National Communication Association at its annual convention in Baltimore.
Jeanette German, PhD student, presented the paper, “‘Health and Safety First’: Constructing a Collective Identity Through Talk at Local Political Meetings” at the National Communication Association Convention in the Language and Social Interaction Division, for which she received the Top Student Paper Award. She also presented at NCA on a positive communication pedagogy panel discussing “The Socratic Seminar Activity” and participated in the panel, “Surviving Graduate Programs While Navigating Family Dynamics.” Jeanette developed and facilitated the CMCI One College Seminar and Pedagogy Workshop, “Teaching in Interdisciplinary Spaces,” with Anthony Pinter and Kevin Sweet.
Logan Rae Gomez, PhD student, presented two papers at the National Communication Association Conference in the Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies Division and the Feminist and Women Studies Division: “(Re)Mapping Gendered Violence: Placing Shame as Colonial Dehumanization” and “Taking the Time to #SayHerName: Lived Experience, State-Sanctioned Violence and Lives that MatterinTime”. At the conclusion of NCA 2019, Logan became the immediate past chair of the Student Section and was elected as the 3rd Vice Chair of the Women’s Caucus.
Laurie Gries,Assistant Professor, was an invited speaker on a spotlight panel on visual communication at the2019 National Communication Association Conference. Upon invitation, she also participated in the 2019 Conference on Rhetorical Theory held in October at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, SC. Her co-authored article “The Racial Politics of Circulation: Trumpicons and White Supremacist Doxai” was published inRhetoric Review38:4, 417-431.
Sean Kenney,MA student, presented one paper at the NCA conference in the Organizational Communication Division entitled,“Mobilizing non-normative approaches to queer diversity & inclusion initiatives” with co-author Kathryn Joan Leslie.
Timothy Kuhn, Professor, won an award for the year’s best-edited book from the National Communication Association’s Organizational Communication division. The book, co-edited with Consuelo Vásquez of the University of Quebec at Montreal, is entitledDis/Organization as communication: Exploring the disordering, disruptive, and chaotic properties of communication,and includes several chapters by present and former CU faculty, colleagues, and visiting scholars.
Kathryn Joan Leslie,PhD student, presented two papers at the NCA conference in the Organizational Communication Division: “Confessing discrimination as organizational practice: A communicative relationality approach to gender discrimination at work”, and “Mobilizing non-normative approaches to queer diversity & inclusion initiatives” with co-author Sean C. Kenney.
Emily Loker,PhD student,presented a paper co-authored with Kellie Brownlee at the National Communication Association conference, “Surviving PhDepression as Women and Graduate Students: A Collaborative Feminist Autoethnography on Mental Health in Academia.” Emily also presented “Narratives in Action: Setting the Agenda for future Occupational Narrative Research.”
Jo Marras Tate,PhD student, presented a paper at NCA alongside Urooj Raja titled “Protecting our Oceans with Virtual Reality: An Empirical Examination of how VR content Could Affect Level of Concern” in the Environmental Communication Division’s poster session. Jo is publishing alongside colleagues Vincent Russell, Rachel Larsen and Ellie Busch, a book chapter in #TalkingPoints: Twitter, the public sphere, and the nature of online deliberationtitled “Going “Rogue”: National Parks, discourses of American identity and resistance on Twitter.”
Myles Mason,PhD student, presented two papers at NCA— “‘I’m Calling the Police’: Affective Encounters of #LivingWhileBlack” and “The Race of Publicity, or, the Publicity of Race”—and participated in the “Surviving the University in a Neoliberal Context” panel. Before NCA, Myles also passed his comprehensive exams with revisions.
Tiara Na’puti,Assistant Professor, won the 2019 New Investigator Award from NCA’s Critical/Cultural Studies Division and the Early Career Award from the Asian Pacific American Caucus/Asian Pacific American Studies Division of NCA—where she also earned the Top Article Award from the American Studies Division for her essay “Archipelagic Rhetoric: Remapping the Marianas and Challenging Militarization from ‘A Stirring Place.”
Phaedra C. Pezzullo, Associate Professor, received the 2019 National Communication Association Environmental Communication Division Robert Cox Award in Environmental Communication & Civic Engagement. Her former CUB advisee,Constance Gordon(now an Assistant Professor at San Francisco State University), received the 2019 National Communication Association Environmental Communication Division Top Dissertation Award for her work titled, “Troubling ‘Access’: Rhetorical Cartographies of Food (In)Justice and Gentrification.”
Vincent Russell,PhD student, published an article, co-authored with Dr. Spoma Jovanovic, “” in theCarolinas Communication Annual. He also published aPartnerships: A Journal of Service-Learning and Civic Engagement.Vincent received the inaugural Top Student Paper Award from the National Communication Association’s (NCA) Public Dialogue and Deliberation Division for “Publicity and Transparency for Social Justice and Equity in Denver Participatory Budgeting,” co-authored with Therese Gardner. Also at NCA, he gave a panel presentation on positive communication pedagogy titled “Using Standup Comedy to Discuss Blackface and Critical Race Theory.” Vincent and Therese Gardner presented “Graduate–Undergraduate Partnerships: A New Model for Community-Based Research” at the Engaged Scholarship Consortium in Denver, and they presented “Money, Speech, and Power: Participatory Budgeting as a Path to Free Expression in Public Spending” at Finding Expression in Contested Spaces: Free Speech Conference in Greensboro, NC. Lastly, Vincent passed his comprehensive exams.
Jayne Simpson,PhD Student, presented “Take a Knee" and Resistance Scholarship: Protest and Sports in Organizational Communication” at the 2019 National Communication Conference in Baltimore, Maryland. She also completed the requirements for the CU ǸԹ Certificate in College Teaching (CCT) through the Center for Teaching and Learning.
Peter Simonson, Professor and Department Chair, published an article in theJournal of Communication(with Junya Morooka, ǸԹ alum Bing Xiong, and PhD candidate Nathan Bedsole) entitled “”
Leah Sprain,Associate Professor, published an article in theJournal of Applied Communicationwith ǸԹ alum Lydia Reinig entitled. They also published “Cultural discourses of public engagement in energy system transformation” in the edited book.
Ted Striphas,Associate Professor, delivered the keynote address at the “Automating Culture” symposium, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, in November. Additional information about the event and the talk is.
Hunter Thompson,PhD Student, presented four papers at NCA: “Whither Counterpublic Theory In Rhetoric’s Examination of Social Movement Studies?”; “Keep Austin Queer'd: An Ethnographic Exploration of Rhetoric within Queerbomb's Public Modalities”; “Fictions of the Queer Past, Frictions in the Queer Present, Flourishing Queer Memory: Tensions Around Queer Counterpublic Memory in the Specter of Stonewall”; and “(Homo)-normative Investments: Temporality, Embodiment, and Utopia in "Its Time."
Karen Tracy, Professor Emeritus, received the Julia T. Wood Teacher/Scholar Award from thePennsylvania Communication Association in October, 2019.
Bernardita M. Yunis Varas,PhD student, received the Top Student Paper Award from NCA’s Latina/o Communication Studies Division/La Raza Caucus for her paper “Performing My Latina Body in White Academia: White Supremacy, the Wolf in Ally’s Clothing.” She also presented two other papers at the convention: “Where Are You From?" Racial Ambiguities and Shape Shifting as Performances of Survival,” and “When ‘Allies’ are Enemies: Latinxs Surviving the White Savior.”