Professor Terry Lindvall (USC, PhD 1981) of Virginia Wesleyan University produced the feature documentary film, "Hollywood Teach Us to Pray (2023)," chronicling the nature of prayer from silent films of Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford through Martin Scorsese's "Silence" and Adam McKay's "Talladega Nights," based on his book, "God on the Big Screen" (NYU Press). Lindvall also authored "Animated Parables: A Pedagogy of the Seven Deadly Sins and a Few Virtues" (Lexington Press, 2023), exploring how international animated cartoons follow the tradition of literary and visual parables.
In her new book, “Inscrutable Eating: Asian Appetites and the Rhetorics of Racial Consumption” (The Ohio State University Press), 2023), Jennifer Lin LeMesurier considers how everyday assumptions about Asian food influence the perception of Asian and Asian American identity within the U.S. racial landscape, demonstrating that beliefs about how certain people eat are inseparable from attitudes that support hierarchies around race, gender, and sexuality. ISBN: 978-0-8142-1537-1.
Eric Freedman, dean of the School of Media Arts at Columbia College Chicago, has been appointed Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost at Truman State University. His appointment begins May 22.
Amy Aldridge Sanford, a longtime scholar-activist, will receive the 2023 Jack Kay Award for Community Engagement and Applied Communication Scholarship from the Central States Communication Association during its annual conference in March in St. Louis, Mo. Sanford is the vice provost for Academic Programs in the Provost’s Office and a professor of Communications Studies at Middle Tennessee State University.
William (Bill) John Seiler, an award-winning Communication scholar, passed away peacefully February 19, 2023, surrounded by his loving family. He taught at Purdue University from 1970-71 and transferred to the University of Nebraska - Lincoln. He was a professor in the Department of Communication Studies for 48 years and served as Department chair for 21 years. He retired in 2020. Many of Prof. Seiler’s NCA friends and colleagues have paid tribute to him and shared memories. You can read some of them here.
Toniesha L. Taylor has been promoted to full professor and is chair of the Department of Communication Studies at Texas Southern University (TSU). Taylor is working with colleagues on two major grant-funded projects, one with the National Institutes of Health, focused on increasing the equitable inclusion of people of color in medical trials. The second is a Mellon Foundation-funded project titled DEFCon to increase collaboration and inclusion of Black and Brown scholars in digital humanities. She is also the founding faculty director of the Center for Africana Futures at TSU. Prof. Taylor is also an affiliate of the Center for Critical Race and Digital Studies at New York University.