Feminist Scholarship

FSD has had a busy and productive year. We had 88 submissions to the division (77 papers and 11 panels). Of these, 32 papers and 4 panels were accepted, bringing us to a 41% overall acceptance rate.

Rebecca Jurisz (U. of Minnesota) wrote the top student paper "Domesticating Diversity, Negotiating Feminism: The Liberal Capitalistic Public Sphere of The View." She is presenting at 3pm, Sunday, May 24th and will receive an award at our business meeting and money towards her travel to Chicago.

Dafna Lemish (Tel Aviv U.) will be the first recipient of the Teresa Award for the Advancement of Feminist Scholarship. Lemish was chosen for her important contributions to the advancement of feminist scholarship, her ability to open new theoretical and methodological territory in feminist research, and her activism within academia to advance feminist scholarship. Lemish's work recognizes the myriad and subtle ways that childhood is gendered. Currently a visiting scholar at Harvard University's Center on Media and Child Health, her research, can be found in 8 books, 37 refereed journal articles, and more than 40 book chapters. She is the founding editor of the Journal of Children and Media and has been an active member of ICA as well as a chair of our Division (1997-2001).

The Teresa Award was established in 2007 through an endowed fund created by Dr. Yoo Jae Song of Ewha Women's University in Korea to honor her mother, Dr. Teresa Kyuguen Cho, a Korean American and a pediatrician, who passed away in Philadelphia in 2006 at the age of 83. FSD will present the award at a special reception to be held at 7 p.m. on Saturday, May 23rd in the Kane Room. All are invited to attend.

Congratulations to Rebecca and Dafna! Special thanks to Diana Rios (U. Connecticut) for organizing the conference program and Marian Meyers (U. of Georgia) for chairing the awards committee.

Vicki Mayer, Chair
vmayer@tulane.edu

-----

Intercultural Communication

We welcome Steve T. Mortenson, University of Delaware, as the Vice-Chair Elect, who will assume office at the Chicago Conference after the Division Business Meeting and be the program planner for the Singapore conference.

This year the Division organized nine paper sessions, one cross-unit "Keyword" session, one panel, and one poster session for presentation at the Chicago conference. We also cosponsored four paper and panel sessions. True to the spirit of intercultural communication, we are glad to note that one-fourth of the competitive paper submissions this year were by an author (or a first author) from outside of the USA.

Intercultural Communication Division business meeting is scheduled on Fri, May 22, 4:30pm - 5:45pm (Chicago Marriott, Great America II). The business meeting follows the ICD Top Papers Session (3:00 – 4:15pm) and precedes the division reception (6:00pm - 7:15pm) at the same venue. We hope to see many of you and your friends at these events.

Ling Chen, Vice-Chair
chling@hkbu.edu.hk

-----

Language & Social Interaction

The business meeting for the Language and Social Interaction Division will be held Sun, May 24 from 4:30-5:45 and followed by an off-site reception. Location to be announced at the business meeting.

The top student paper was awarded to Brion van Over (U of Massachusetts) for: The "Self" as a Culturally Constituted Discursive Resource in Interventions.

The top papers were awarded to:

Mats Erik Ekstrom (Orebro U): Announced Refusal to Answer: A Study of Norms and Accountability in Broadcast Political Interviews

Stephen Michael Croucher (Bowling Green State U): How Limiting Linguistic Freedoms Influences the Cultural Adaptation Process: An Analysis of the French-Muslim Population

Yael Maschler (U of Haifa): Keywords in Interaction: Grammatical and Interactional Projections of Discourse Markers

Paul M. Denvir (U at Albany): Patients’ Enactment of Normative Stances Toward Reported Substance Use Conduct: Managing Identity During Routine History Taking

The papers will be presented and discussed on Sunday, May 24 from 3:00pm - 4:15pm in the Wisconsin room at the Chicago Marriott.

Mark Aakhus, Chair
aakhus@rutgers.edu

-----

Mass Communication

The business of the Division continues to move forward. Our illustrious vice-chair, Dave Roskos-Ewoldsen, has put together a terrific program for the conference in May, highlighted by the presentation of the Top Faculty and Top Student papers listed below:

Top 4 Faculty Papers

• "The Great FCC Blue Book Debate: Determining the Role of Broadcast Media in a Democratic Society, 1945-1949" - Victor W. Pickard (U of Illinois)
• "The Evolution of Media Effects Theory: Fifty Years of Cumulative Research" -  W. Russell Neuman (U of Michigan), Lauren Guggenheim (U of Michigan)
• "Testing Causal Direction in the Influence of Presumed Media Influence" - Nurit Talor (U of Haifa), Jonathan Cohen (U of Haifa), Yariv Tsfati (U of Haifa), Albert C. Gunther (U of Wisconsin - Madison)
• "The Influence of Morality Subcultures on the Acceptance and Appeal of Violence" - Ron Tamborini (Michigan State U), Allison L. Eden (Michigan State U), Nicholas David Bowman (Michigan State U), Matthew Grizzard (Michigan State U), Kenneth Alan Lachlan (Boston College)

Top 4 Student Papers

• "Howdunit?: Some Narrative Considerations for a Cross-Medial Understanding of the Mystery Genre" - Deborah Leiter (Purdue U)
• "Media Usage and Perceived Opinion Diversity: Chinese Public's Perceptions of Public Opinion Toward Beijing Olympics" - Mena Ning Wang (Hong Kong Baptist U)
• "Mediating Mechanisms in Narrative Persuasion: The Importance of Identification" - Anneke de Graaf (Radboud U - Nijmegen), Hans Hoeken (Radboud U - Nijmegen), Jose Sanders (Vrije U Amsterdam), Johannes W. J. Beentjes (Radboud U Nijmegen)
• "Mobilizing Disaster Relief: U.S. Media Coverage of the 2004-2005 Tsunami and Pakistan Earthquake" - Brooke Weberling (U of North Carolina-Chapel Hill)

Congratulations to these authors on their excellent work and to all other authors who have had their research accepted for presentation in May!

Another highlight of the Mass Communication Division line-up is the Joint Reception of the Mass Communication Division and the Children, Adolescents, and the Media Interest Group, which will be held Sunday May 24 from 6:00pm - 7:00pm. We look forward to this opportunity to mingle with scholars with related interests, and I hope you'll work the reception, and the preceding Mass Communication Business meeting, into your schedule!

Robin Nabi, Chair
nabi@comm.ucsb.edu