- Ten NAU students and four faculty members from NAU’s School of Communication participated at the recent meeting of the Arizona Communication Association. Graduate students included Melanie Birck, who presented a paper: “Email, Privacy, and the Workplace: Rights and Responsiblities;” Sara Cobb, who presented a paper, “A System Analysis of the Music Industry;” Carly Long, who presented a paper, “Patagonia: Committed to Re-Conceptualizing Corporate Communication;” Kevin Mitchell, who moderated a program on rhetorical studies; and Hilary Nemchik, who presented a paper, “Bloomers in the Breeze: Rhetoric in the Rational Dress Movement.”Undergraduate students included Rachel David, who presented a paper, “The Rhetoric of Abolition and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin;” Melanie Dodson, who presented a paper, “Puzzle Piece Ideology: A Rhetorical Critique of Jim Paxon’s Role in the Rodeo-Chedeski Fire of 2002;” Jake Leon-Guerrero, who presented a paper, “Elizabeth Glaser and the Rhetoric of AIDS Awareness in the United States;” Natasha Kypfer, who presented a paper, “Protest Songs of the Vietnam Antiwar Movement: The Songs of Bob Dylan and Country Joe McDonald;” and Brian Rogers, who presented a paper, “Alice Walker: An Analysis of the Conception, Rhetoric and Impact of the Womanist Movement.”
Faculty members included speech communication professor Dayle Hardy-Short and lecturerMarie Baker-Ohler, who were part of a roundtable discussion on the pros and cons of teaching communication courses online. Mark Neumann, director of the School of Communication, and communication professor Brant Short also attended panels and participated in planning sessions for next year’s ACA meeting, which the school will host in October 2007.
Hardy-Short received the association’s Arizona Communication Educator of the Year award. The annual award honors dedication to students and instruction.
- Bruce Sullivan, professor of Humanities, Arts and Religion, published an essay, “The Ideology of Self-Willed Death in the Epic Mahabharata,” in the Journal of Vaishnava Studies.Sullivan also has had two other essays accepted for publication: “Dying on the Stage in the Natyashastra and Kutiyattam: Perspectives from the Sanskrit Theatre Tradition,” in the Asian Theatre Journal, and “Tantroid Phenomena in Early Indic Literature,” in a special edition ofPacific World: Journal of the Institute of Buddhist Studies in honor of James Sanford.