Student Activities

The development of energized conversation about the intersection of culture and communication depends on the active involvement of students. To that effect, the Scholars Program sees student engagement with issues of culture and communication as integral to the Program's broader aim of developing a forum dedicated to thinking about critical scholarly and public issues that lie at the intersection of culture and communication.

AUSTRALIA 2009

The last SummerCulture program took place in Brisbane, Australia from July 5 – July 18, 2009. The title was “Transformations and Relocations Down Under: dynamism and change in media, communication, politics and culture on the ‘other’ side of Asia” hosted by the Queensland University of Technology. Co-directing the program with Barbie Zelizer was John Hartley from the Queensland University of Technology and Michael Bromley from Queensland University, Australia. Six students participated this year including: Alison Perelman, Elizabeth Roodhouse, Le Han, Brett Bumgarner, Khadijah White, and Joel Penney.

Its thematic statement was as follows: Australia is a big continent with a small population; it has a pristine environment but per-capita carbon emissions second only to the USA; a white settler community with Western roots but the most diverse population (by country of origin) on earth; it is located in the Asia-Pacific but retains an Anglo-American public life. Australia has an advanced economy but it is over-dependent on resources shipped to China; its three biggest exports are coal, iron-ore and education. It has free trade but protected values (‘wowserism’); a history of pioneering democratic innovation (secret ballot, votes for women) but a long-lasting White Australia policy; egalitarianism and mateship but "Fourth World" Indigenous deprivation; openness to globalised culture and media but community intolerance.

In short, Australia is what America is becoming – more diverse, more ‘provincial,’ more open, more dependent on the world. As the world faces epochal change – from the ‘American Century’ to the ‘Chinese Century’ – SummerCulture 2009 explores the transformations that follow from relocating familiar content to exotic contexts.

The students who participated in the program and their topics are as follows:

• Alison Perelman – Interplay between sports and group identity, the role of the Reconciliation Cup in Aboriginal/non-indigenous relations
• Brett Bumgarner – How climate change and its impacts are communicated to the public and the role of journalism in interpreting climate change
• Joel Penney – Mass Media fandom, participatory viral advertising, and social and political expression through the graphic t-shirt form
• Le Han – How the changing political/economic/cultural situations in Brisbane have shaped the identity of the Chinese immigrant community
• Elizabeth Roodhouse – Role of technology to mobilize Australian grassroots political movements by activists and technological pioneers
• Khadijah White – How the identity of ‘Blackness’ by indigenous people shaped the discourse surrounding Aboriginal activism and progress

SummerCulture 2009 coincided with a number of other events also being hosted in Australia. They included:

• Summer Doctoral Program of Oxford University’s Oxford Internet Institute (http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/)
• The annual conference of the Australia & New Zealand Communication Association (http://www.anzca09.org/)
• ICA Regional Conference in Melbourne on Journalism in the 21st Century (http://www.culture-communication.unimelb.edu.au/journalism21st/index.html).

FINLAND 2008

"Communicating a Culture In-Between" The broad theme of the summer school is to discuss the state of in-betweenness as it takes shape in the Finnish context. The cultural, social and political implications and consequences of being wedged between East and West, High and Late Modernity, National and Post-National Identities and Mass Mediated/Networked Communication environment make Finland a fertile case study for examining contemporary cultural contexts. The site of the course, Finland (and the city of Tampere) serves as a cofuc through which serveral key tendencies of contemporary developments are articulated, incluuding the transnationalism/globalization of a Northern European nation state, its politics and culture. The course situates the nation state and to its new political realities as part of the global developments and Europe (or European Union). It also looks at media and communication in the context of the development of the Nordic welfare state and its current challenges. The programme also surveys the cultural history of Finland as a borderland between East and West as well as the current challenges of multiculturalism. Technology and (industrial) design are additional points of departure. All these broad cultural themes (of which modernity and its later phases are made of) and the tensions embedded in them are studied and discussed with a special focus on communication, media and journalism. In addition to crossing borders conceptually, the summer school course will spend two days of its time on a study trip to St. Petersburg, Russia, to a city founded by Peter the Great in order to highlight the modernization of Russia.

LISBON 2007

"(In)Visible Culture: Cultural Conflict and Portuguese Society" A program of inter-cultural academic exchange between the Annenberg School for Communication and the Universidade Catolica Portuguesa, Lisbon, Portugal.  Five Annenberg students joined graduate-level students from Universidade Catolica Portuguesa to examine several issues pertaining to the history and culture of Portugal, to better understand contexts in which culture undergoes challenges from economic, social, politcal, religious or other forces.  Topics of study included Portugal's experience with religious and authoritarian politics, the colonial war, national identity and its linkages with race and gender, the 1974 revolution, the ascendance of sports as a national marker, territorial expansions, and the exclusion of migrant workers, gypsies and others from national culture, particularly at at time when Portugal's entry in the EU has taken over public discussion.

Pictured below are the SummerCulture participants on the day of their visit to the Palacio de Belem, where they met the First Lady of the Republic.  Third from left: Michael Serazio; front row middle: Barbie Zelizer and Brittany Griebling, behind them Jason Tocci; Caralyn Green, third from right; far right at end of row: Deborah Lubken.

Below: Jason Tocci, left, and Michael Serazio, right, converse with Maria Cavaco Silva, First Lady of the Republic of Portugal, center.

BUENOS AIRES 2005

An international encounter in Argentina, August 2005

STUDENT PAPERS

Students have been funded to present papers at conferences on the topic of culture.  Some titles include:

Brittany Griebling
Conference: IAMCR Conference – Paris, France
Paper: “What Kind of Citizens are the Dixie Chicks?: Controversy over Celebrities’ Political Speech and the Implications for an Understanding of Cultural Citizenship”

Weiyu Zhang
Conference: 5th China Internet Research Conference at Texas A&M University – Texas
Paper: Subaltern Public Spheres and the Internet in China

Deborah Wainwright & Rebekah Nagler
Conference: IAMCR Conference – Paris, France
Paper: “Buy Me, Be Me”

Susan Haas
Conference: IAMCR Conference – Paris, France
Paper: “On Justification: A Manual for Cold War Journalists”

Riley Snorton
Conference: Race, Sex, Power: New Movements in Black and Latinos Sexualities Conference
Paper: “The Psychic Life of Passing”

Jasmine Cobb
Conference: Cultural Studies Association Annual Convention – New York University
"They Hate Me: Spike Lee, Documentary Filmmaking, and Hollywood's Savage Slot"