- Students on the Job Market

COMS Graduate Students on the Job Market

The following Communication Studies graduate students are currently on the job market. Please see below for a detailed description of research interests and vitae.

Elizabeth Rattine-Flaherty er192099@ohio.edu My research is largely informed by postmodern feminism philosophies as well as an intense interest in societal power dynamics and the interplay of agency and structure in the ongoing process of social change. While broadly interested in the field of health communication, I view my research agenda as intricately connected to three specific questions: (1) How do members of marginalized communities make use of limited resources and engage in interpersonal networking and community-building activities in order to promote social change? (2) How do health disparities arise from existing power structures and how are these power dynamics linked to issues of gender, culture, and class? (3) What is the role of the researcher within the context of health promotion and social change initiatives?   My interest in international health communication and education stems from a childhood desire to change the world but was further reinforced by my participation in several unique public health research contexts. Two of these projects involve analyzing the impact of entertainment-education upon the attitudes and behaviors of regular listeners. (1) As part of the first project in Lima and Iquitos, Peru, I had the privilege of interacting with both staff and listeners of Minga Peru. This non-governmental organization melds the use of radio entertainment-education and interpersonal strategies in order to address issues of health and gender in the Peruvian Amazon. (2) The second project required me to lead a research team analyzing the success of Sa Pagsikat Ng Araw, an entertainment-education program operating in the Philippines and aimed at addressing key issues such as HIV/AIDS, domestic violence, and alcohol abuse.   For my dissertation research, I have chosen to work alongside Muntada (literally, forum), a non-governmental organization in Israel which strives to address issues of sexuality and sexual health within the Palestinian ethnic minority. My interests in Muntada are multiple, but I am particularly drawn to their focus upon community discussion and deliberation as a springboard for social change. I am also impressed with their sensitivity to the issues of power and culture that are deeply imbedded in the reification of patriarchy. I hope that this project will further a communicative understanding of the role of community-building in social change initiatives and provide a body of knowledge that addresses agency, improvisation, and resiliency within the Palestinian context. Several examples of research areas I anticipate this project might address include organizing for change with limited resources, health education organizations as improvisation, and the restructuring of patriarchy through community dialogue.   Pursuing an admittedly broad, although theoretically connected research agenda allows me to embrace the fluidity and flexibility of scholarly experiences. In the same vein, I believe it is my responsibility as an instructor to help my students bridge the gap between their individual experiences and the larger narratives of the communication discipline.  I have taught and/or assisted in Communication between Cultures, Small Group Communication, Introduction to Public Speaking, and Fundamentals of Human Communication and believe that my student and faculty evaluations reflect both my passion for teaching and my success within the classroom.   My vitae is available here.

Alane Smith-Sanders as225302@ohio.edu My scholarly interests lie at the intersections of organizational, interpersonal, and instructional realms. The majority of my research coalesces around a common theme of education. Since beginning my graduate studies, I have been drawn to examine discourses of teaching and learning, socialization processes in schools, forms of democratic organizing, and the co-creation of learning environments in a variety of settings. These interests are demonstrated in two recent articles. One piece explored how participants in a junior high conflict resolution and peer mediation program enacted democratic and dialogic learning (Southern Communication Journal).  This article examined how social issues and ideologies are negotiated through education programs, and how students and teachers enacted particular subjectivities as they participated in the program. In another article, my co-authors and I wrestled with the inherent tensions involved in socialization processes into college arguing for an expanded understanding of socialization as an ongoing, co-negotiated process (Journal of First-Year Experience & Students in Transition).   I am currently focused on my dissertation which is an ethnographic exploration of the interplay between communication, emotion, and education at a public high school. The purpose of this study is to understand the complexity of high school students’ emotional experiences and how these experiences impact their ability to thrive at school. I seek to understand how emotions are discursively triggered and managed (i.e. how emotions are evoked through teachers talk to students, students talk to teachers/each other, etc.; and how students handle emotional experiences through expression, masking, or channeling). I position schools as emotional arenas, embedded within powerful societal and educational discourses about emotion. For this reason, the interplay between emotion and rationality is being examined to uncover how students think about and use emotions in their schooling and how students are socialized in relation to emotional experience and expression. This project, like most of my work, spans disciplinary and sub-disciplinary boundaries.     Research and teaching are deeply intertwined in my scholarly pursuits. The scholarship of teaching first captured my academic passion and continues to drive the focus of my research and everyday goals as a teacher-scholar. My commitment to teaching and pedagogical innovation is evidenced in my course evaluations, receipt of both university-wide and departmental awards recognizing outstanding performance in the classroom, work as Assistant Basic Course Director, involvement in course re-design and assessment, and publications in course textbooks and Communication Teacher. I have taught at both Ohio University and Washington State Community College, and have experience teaching and/or assisting with the following courses: Interpersonal Communication, Organizational Communication, Advanced Organizational Communication, Small Group Communication, Introduction to Fundamentals of Human Communication, Public Speaking (traditional and distance learning formats), and Children’s Conflict and Communication.    My vitae is available here.