Reinhardt College

Faculty Member, Communication

Associate Professor & Coordinator of Communication

School of Communication Arts & Music

About

I teach at Reinhardt College in Waleska, Georgia, where I coordinate the Department of Communication and teach mass media, intercultural communication, media theory, public speaking, professional writing, film and television studies, and occasional courses in cultural anthropology. I combine my dual backgrounds in anthropology and media studies in my teaching and research on various aspects of media and cultural representation, often from a historical perspective and with a special interest in the cultural politics of regional, minority, and indigenous media representations and practices.

My anthology co-edited with Michelle Stewart, Global Indigenous Media: Cultures, Poetics and Politics, has recently been released by Duke University Press (2008). Contributors and chapters include:

• Indigeneity and Indigenous Media on the Global Stage / Pamela Wilson & Michelle Stewart
• Imperfect Media and the Poetics of Indigenous Video in Latin America / Juan Francisco Salazar and Amalia Cordova
• "Lest Others Speak for Us": The Neglected Roots and Uncertain Future of Maori Cinema in New Zealand / Jennifer Gauthier
• Cache: Provisions and Productions in Contemporary Igloolik Video / Cache Collective;
• Indigenous Animation: Educational Programming, Narrative Interventions, and Children's Cultures / Joanna Hearne
• Media as Our Mirror: Indigenous Media of Burma (Myanmar) / Lisa Brooten
• Transistor Resistors: Native Women's Radio in Canada and the Social Organization of Political Space from Below / Kathleen Buddle
• Weaving a Communication Quilt in Colombia: Civil Conflict, Indigenous Resistance and Community Radio in Northern Cauca / Mario A. Murillo
• Outside the Indigenous Lens: Zapatistas and Autonomous Video Making / Alexandra Halkin
• The Search for Well Being: Placing Development with Indigenous Identity / Laurel Smith
• "To Breathe Two Airs": Empowering Indigenous Sami Media / Sari Pietikainen
• Indigenous Media as an Important Resource for Russia's Indigenous Peoples / Galina Diatchkova
• Indigenous Minority-Language Media: S4C, Cultural Identity, and the Welsh-Language Televisual Community / Ruth McElroy
• Recollecting Indigenous Thinking in a CD-ROM / Priscila Faulhaber and Louis Forline
• Digital Tools and the Management of Australian Aboriginal Desert Knowledge / Michael Christie
• Rethinking the Digital Age / Faye Ginsburg

I completed my Ph.D. from the Communication Arts department of the University of Wisconsin in 1996, in Media and Cultural Studies, working under the direction of John Fiske. My dissertation, Disputable Truths: "The American Stranger," Television Documentary and Native American Cultural Politics in the 1950s, involved extensive historical research reconstructing the intercultural and political controversy surrounding a 1958 NBC documentary from long-forgotten archival records in files across America. My doctoral coursework focused on critical and cultural theory of media, film history and theory, media analysis, film and television industry history, archival and ethnographic research methods, anthropology, cultural geography and journalism history.

My work on various topics, including several articles on Native American activism and mainstream media in the mid-twentieth century based on my dissertation research, as well as my work on television and popular culture--including audience activism on Big Brother and reality television; southern cooking shows and masculinity; the construction of Dolly Parton; and gender marketing on the Lifetime Network--has been published in numerous anthologies and journals, including Television and New Media; Quarterly Review of Film and Video; Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television; Camera Obscura; and South Atlantic Quarterly.

I have a forthcoming article,“Stalking the Wild Evidence: Capturing Media History Through Elusive and Ephemeral Archives,” in Convergence Media History (eds. Janet Staiger and Sabine Hake) to be published by Routledge Press.

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