Alumni Profiles
Matthew Powers (PhD, 2013) has accepted a tenure-track position as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Washington-Seattle. His dissertation, "Humanity's Publics: NGOs, Journalism and the International Public Sphere," examines reporting roles assumed by international NGOs as legacy media outlets cut their foreign news budgets. Powers' research asks what the information work of NGOs is, what types of news coverage they support, and whether NGOs expand or reinforce established patterns of international news attention.
Michael Zimmer graduated with his PhD in 2007, and after spending a year as a postdoctoral fellow at Yale's Information Society Project, he joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. In addition to being an Assistant Professor in its School of Information Studies, he serves as Director of the University's Center for Information Policy Research. Zimmer credits Helen Nissenbaum's research for shaping his early interest in privacy. His dissertation explored the concept of the ideal search engine—the promise of navigating physical and intellectual space and the perils associated with this boundless flow of information. Zimmer continues his work in privacy (theory & applied); one angle being the ethical implications of digital services made available by Library 2.0, such as large-scale digitization projects.
Alice Marwick (PhD, 2010), joins the department of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham in Fall 2012 as an Assistant Professor. Marwick recently completed a two-year postdoc at Microsoft Research, where she collaborated with danah boyd, among others, on ethnographic research involving youth populations and social media. Marwick's dissertation examined ideas of identity, status, and techniques for self-promotion that grew up around the birth of web 2.0, or social media technologies. Marwick is finishing a book on this subject for Yale Press, and says her next big project will consider conspicuous consumption in the digital realm. Part of this will include the study of visual-based online communities such as Tumblr and fashion blogs.
May Farah received her PhD from MCC in 2011 and recently accepted a position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Media Studies at the American University of Beirut. Her research interests include mediated nationalism and representations, transnationalism and spatiality, and new media. Her dissertation, entitled “Home versus Shelter: Place, Media, and Identity among Lebanon’s Palestinian Refugees,” focused on the relationship between diasporic populations and national identity in a globalized media age. Her work is situated at the intersections of Media Studies, Cultural Studies, and Middle Eastern Studies.
What is the PROGRAM Series? Guiding Principles
Several guiding principles shape the creative and critical intellectual projects of our Department, whether expressed in research, teaching, or mentoring:
- A commitment to interdisciplinarity in the study of media and culture. Scholars and doctoral students in the department engage with theoretical concepts and perspectives from a range of academic disciplines and fields of study, including media studies, cultural studies, communication, media history, visual culture, sound studies, anthropology, sociology, political science, and so on, in order to deploy interdisciplinary strategies of analysis. Our approach is based on the principle that the most challenging questions of our times, in relation to the study of media, technology, and culture, cannot be examined from the perspective of any single academic discipline.
- A multi-methodological approach that draws on a diverse array of research methods in media and cultural analysis, including audience studies, semiotics, ethnography, discourse analysis, political/cultural economy, content analysis, and other interpretive and critical approaches.
- A historical perspective that situates the study of media, technology, and culture within historical contexts, comparative historical research, media archaeology, genealogy, and media history.
- A global, comparative approach in relation to cultural differences, media forms, historical frameworks, and theoretical paradigms.
Program Objectives
- Display fluency in core texts and scholarly literature, contemporary theory, and key debates in media, culture, and communication.
- Demonstrate knowledge of the range of research and methodological approaches relevant to the study of media and communication. In addition, students will demonstrate mastery of one specific methodology through original research.
- Acquire advanced specialist knowledge in several specific areas of study: Global and Transcultural Studies, Technology and Society, Visual Culture and Sound Studies, Media Institutions and Politics, Critical Theories of Media and Communication.
- Analyze and synthesize scholarship in a range of disciplines related to media, culture, and communication and understand the ways in which these disciplinary perspectives are integrated and transformed through interdisciplinary study.
- Produce original research on topics of media, culture, and communication.
Research Areas
The doctoral program offers five research areas, which operate as guiding frameworks for intellectual inquiry and interdisciplinary collaborative work across the department. These areas of research are overlapping and interrelated, and we encourage you to take advantage of course offerings in all five areas.
Global and Transcultural Studies
While all of our doctoral research areas integrate the study of media, technology, and culture in the context of an increasingly globalized world, this research area specifically centers on inflections of the global mediascape as cross-national, transnational, or transcultural. Specific areas include: critical theories of globalization, transcultural flows, international development and postcolonial studies, comparative media systems, cross-national comparative research design, global social movements, international and intra-national media and culture treaties and policymaking, critical cultural geography, alternative modernities, and global ethnography. Faculty areas of regional expertise include: the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia, South and North America, Africa, and Eastern and Western Europe.
Technology and Society
The study of technology as a political, cultural, economic, and aesthetic force is a crucial area of analysis for contemporary media scholarship. Our Department emphasizes the philosophy and politics of technology within cultural and social frameworks. Specific areas of focus include ethnographies of technological communities; philosophical, ethical, social and political dimensions of information and communications technology; information and communications policy; history of technological devices and forms of mediation; the history of science and technology; media archaeology and the study of "dead media"; the legal implications of technological regulation and change; copyright and intellectual property; information technologies, media, and privacy; the effects of digital and/or social media on society; visual technologies; and technologies of the built environment.
Visual Culture and Sound Studies
Scholarship on visual culture and sound studies is an important emerging field across our disciplines. The study of visual culture recognizes the primary role of visual media in the enactment of power relations, the circulation of information and ideas, and the cultural practices that make meaning. Visual culture is about the study of images across a range of social arenas, from the news to art, advertising, science, fashion, television, film, digital images, architecture, and amateur media, acknowledging the experience of cross-mediation as a key factor in the contemporary visual realm. The study of visual culture is global, political, and engaged with interdisciplinary inquiries. Sound studies incorporates cultural, technological, philosophical, institutional, and interpretive approaches to practices of consuming and producing mediated sound. As an interdisciplinary field of study, it draws on media history, aesthetics, cultural analysis, formalist methods, ethnography, technological mediation, and an understanding of social and global activity determined by its auditory, sonic, and communicative materiality.
Media Institutions and Politics
Mediated communication in all its forms is critically examined by exploring the relationships of power involved in its creation, distribution, and consumption. Specific areas of inquiry include: the political economy of media systems; legal and regulatory regimes of mediated communication; the professional practices and organizational routines of workers in the culture industries, including journalism, public relations, advertising, and the entertainment industry; critical discourse and content analyses of news; state-manufactured propaganda; media ecology; legislative debate and shaping of public policy; historical and contemporary social movements; processes of protest, public dissent and censorship; political campaign communication; media activism and advocacy; and other political uses of media and communication technologies.
Critical Theories of Media and Communication
The study of media and communication requires engagement with a variety of theoretical traditions, including historical materialism, psychoanalysis, phenomenology, pragmatism, the Frankfurt School of critical theory, gender and queer theory, critical race theory, critical legal theory, actor-network theory, speculative realism, speech-act theory, and the various strands of structuralism and post-structuralism. The Department approaches critical theory from the perspective of critique, that is to say, from an ongoing self-examination of how knowledge and culture are created, acquired, maintained, and transmitted. In its core courses and elective seminars the graduate program seeks to train doctoral students to be subtle yet rigorous practitioners of critique in its many forms.
Academic Career Opportunities
Doctoral program alumni typically work in higher education, research, public policy and consulting. View our class notes for a selection of institutions of higher education employing graduates of our PhD program.
Frequently Asked Questions
We receive an enormous number of inquiries about our program. Our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page will provide you with basic information and the steps you should take in order to become familiar with our faculty and program.