Emma Frances Bloomfield (Communication Studies) has been awarded the Early Career Award by the Rhetoric and Community Theory Division of the National Communication Association. The award honors a current member of the division who has established an innovative and robust research project within eight years of having earned the Ph.D. degree…

David R. Gruber (Communication Studies) recently published an article titled, "Toward a Rhetorical Theory of the Face: Algorithmic Inequalities and Biometric Masks as Material Protest." The article draws on rhetorical concepts and new materialist theory to think ecologically about the face and its role in communication. Despite the development of…

Emma Frances Bloomfield (Communication Studies) and Sheila Bock (Interdisciplinary, Gender, and Ethnic Studies) co-authored the lead chapter in the edited volume, Wait Five Minutes: Weatherlore in the Twenty-First Century (University Press of Mississippi, 2023). Combining rhetorical analysis with folklore studies, their chapter, "…

David R. Gruber (Communication Studies) has published a book chapter titled, "Sniff the Air and Settle In: Bullshit, Rhetorical Listening, and the Copenhagen School's Approach to Despicable Nonsense." The chapter reviews existing work on the rhetoric of "bullshitting" and argues that we do yet not have a very good answer regarding what to do about…

Emma Frances Bloomfield (Communication Studies) and Curtis Chamblee (UNLV Communication Studies MA) have published an article titled, "Rhetorical fractals: An Afrocentric analysis of #JusticeForGeorgeFloyd," in Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies. The article develops the concept of "rhetorical fractals" to trace public responses to…

Tara McManus (Communication Studies) published the article, "The moderating effects of goals and plans on received support during emerging adults’ conversations with friends," in Communication Quarterly. The study found that when seeking tangible support (such as asking for money or help with chores or other tasks) from friends, identifying…

Emma Frances Bloomfield and Stephanie S. Willes (both Communication Studies) have published an article titled, "Religious Masking and the Rhetorical Strategies of Digital Anti-Vaccination Churches," in the Western Journal of Communication. The article traces the digital rhetoric of "anti-vaccination churches," which are groups that adopt the…

Emma Frances Bloomfield (Communication Studies) and Nick Paliewicz (University of Louisville) published a paper, "Of Markets, Masks, and (White) Men: Mimetic Performances of Parasitic Publicity During the COVID-19 Pandemic," in Women's Studies in Communication. The paper argues that the anti-masking and anti-vaccination subreddit community known…

Laura V. Martinez (Communication Studies) and her co-authors Alaina C. Zanin and Sarah J. Tracy from Arizona State University have been named recipients of the Top Paper Award for their work: "Occupational Socialization and Identification in Pain Work: (Re)Conceptualizing the Experience of Pain as an Interactional, Co-constructed Process." The…

Natalie Pennington (Communication Studies) was acknowledged as one of the top 25 researchers within the Communication Studies discipline over the past five years in a recent publication in the journal, Communication Education titled, "Scholarly productivity in communication studies: A five-year review (2017-2021)." In the study, the authors…

David R. Gruber (Communication Studies) has published an interview with Christof Koch in the Journal of Consciousness Studies. The interview examines recent developments in and challenges to the Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness (IIT).

Natalie Pennington (Communication Studies) published an article alongside Jeffrey A. Hall (Kansas) and Andy J. Merolla (UC, Santa Barbara) titled, "Which mediated social interactions satisfy the need to belong?" in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. This study looked at whether face-to-face communication compared to mediated…