Seminars

Relationships in Communication: (Re)engaging Interpersonal Communication - Dawn O. Braithwaite
It is not unusual to see courses on interpersonal relationships, and sometimes even interpersonal communication, pop up in multiple departments on campus. Our challenge is to understand and be able to articulate on our campuses and to our students what is unique and important about a communication focus on interpersonal relationships. In this seminar we’ll first explore the vibrancy of studying and teaching interpersonal communication from a communication perspective and will engage a case study approach to teaching interpersonal communication. Second, we will work with several different contemporary theories of interpersonal communication that are often misrepresented in our textbooks and sometimes our journals and explore recent developments that will advance our own research and teaching.

Communicating “Work-Life”: A Constitutive Approach - Erika Kirby
“Work-life communication” has emerged as a subdiscipline of organizational communication over the past 15 years. In this seminar, Kirby and Buzzanell’s (forthcoming) Handbook of Organizational Communication chapter (3rd Edition) functions to frame the field and a course in work-life communication. Participants will read and discuss this body of literature as related to five different constitutive processes operating at macrosocietal, organizational, relational and intrapersonal levels: (1) “policy-ing” work-life in organizations, (2) “norm-ing” (or not) issues of work-life in organizations, (3) (re)producing “ideal” workers and the primacy of work, (4) constructing (gendered) (working) identities, and (5) acting practically and routinizing work and (family) life. As a teaching outcome, participants will be able to construct an entire course on work-life communication using/modifying the structure of the seminar or expand this topic as a unit within an organizational communication or business communication course. [As an optional scholarly outcome, a team of interested participants will form to analyze the films One Fine Day and I Don’t Know How She Does It before and after the actual seminar with the goal of a co-constructed publication (not a requirement of participation but a scholarly invitation).]

Health Communication - Gary Kreps
Health Communication is an exciting applied area of communication scholarship that examines the powerful applications of communication research and theory for enhancing the delivery of care and promotion of health. This seminar takes a systemic approach to reviewing the breadth and depth of health communication scholarship at multiple hierarchical levels: intrapersonal, interpersonal, group, organizational, and societal communication. We examine important health communication channels, such as face to face communication, mass mediated communication, and the use of new information technologies (e-health) for enhancing individual and global health. We focus on the importance of relevant, sensitive, and usable health information in guiding complex health decisions, delivering care, providing social support, adapting to unique cultural beliefs, influencing health behaviors, developing strategic health campaigns, communicating health risks, reducing health disparities, enhancing quality of care, and leveraging new health information technologies to promote heath.

The Rhetoric of Religion: Form, Genre, and Function - Martin Medhurst
This seminar will examine the ways in which religious rhetoric has influenced American culture from the time of the Puritans until the present day. Our focus will be on the various rhetorical and literary forms by which religious content has been communicated, the standard genres into which those forms have been organized, and the types of audiences that have responded to those forms and genres. In all instances, we will be asking how the religious rhetoric is functioning, both for the speaker and for the audience. What is it doing? Why is it doing that? And what rhetorical (or political or sociological or religious) ends are being met by the adoption of such rhetoric? Religious rhetoric, like all rhetoric, is a response to situation and context. We will explore the various contexts that have called forth religious discourse in America and examine significant rhetors who have utilized religious topics, arguments, and genres to achieve their purposes.

Just Selling Eyeballs?: Media, Meaning, Money - Eileen R. Meehan
For media companies like Disney and Google, “selling eyeballs” to advertisers is a core part of business along with controlling costs, expanding market share, synergizing products, and making profits. From a socio-cultural perspective, media are also about artistic achievement, cultural expression, social identities, real and imagined communities, and the clutter of everyday life. This class explores the connections between meaning and money as they play out in the media. We will do this through a combination of readings, discussions, and in-class exercises.

Learning the Three C’s of Instructional Communication: Competent Classroom Communication - Scott Myers
Instructional communication centers on the study of the communicative factors in the teaching-learning process that occur across grade levels, instructional settings, and subject matter. This seminar will focus on the ways in which instructors can become more effective and affective communicators in the learning environment, with a particular focus on those instructor communicative images and behaviors that influence student learning. Participants also will become aware of how their day-to-day teaching behaviors influence how students react and respond to both them and each other, which ultimately impacts the classroom climate and the development of peer relationships. This seminar will include readings, discussion, and activities designed to help participants become more effective instructors and upon completion, participants will be encouraged to develop either an assessment plan of their own instructional communicative behaviors or a research proposal that examines instructor-student communication in the learning environment.