- Department of Communication
227 Winston Hall
Campus Box 8104
North Carolina State University
Raleigh, NC 27695-8104 - (919) 515-9736 (department)
Roy Schwartzman
North Carolina State University, Communication, Faculty Member
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The University of Georgia, Communication Studies, Graduate StudentNewberry College, English, Faculty Member, and 5 more add
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Rhetorical Criticism, Speech Communication, Holocaust Studies, Propaganda, Figurative language, Metaphor, and 14 moreOnline Learning, Distance Learning, Philosophy of Education, Persuasion, Argumentation, Digital Literacy, E-learning, Distance Education, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Risk communication, Communication Studies, Rhetoric, Daniel Kahneman, and Importance of Daniel Kahneman's Works edit
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THIS is my official Academia.edu page. As of 1 August 2023, Dr. Roy Schwartzman is a full professor in the Department... moreTHIS is my official Academia.edu page. As of 1 August 2023, Dr. Roy Schwartzman is a full professor in the Department of Communication and Co-Director of the Campus Writing and Speaking Program (CWSP) at North Carolina State University. He is also a Shoah Foundation Institute International Teaching Fellow and a Holocaust Educational Foundation Fellow. He was a full professor (2006-2023) and the Department Head (2019-2023) in the Department of Communication Studies, University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG). At UNCG his service includes: Lloyd International Honors College Fellow; Chancellor's Resident Fellow in Lloyd International Honors College; Director, Communication Across the Curriculum; UNC statewide Faculty Assembly Executive Committee (2 terms); UNC General Administration eLearning Task Force; UNC System General Education Council. At UNCG, Roy held faculty affiliate status with the Jewish Studies Program; the Department of Peace and Conflict Studies; the Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering; and the Women's Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program. edit
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Dissertation committee: John Lyne (Chair), Bruce Gronbeck, Michael Calvin McGee, Donovan Ochs, Deirdre McCloskeyedit
Research-based, comprehensive textbook covering public speaking, interpersonal communication, small group communication, interviewing, digital literacy (communicating with technology), & much more.
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At colleges and universities throughout the United States, academic advisors play a central role in stemming the tide of declining student enrollment and academic underachievement—especially in the wake of academic, physical, emotional,... more
At colleges and universities throughout the United States, academic advisors play a central role in stemming the tide of declining student enrollment and academic underachievement—especially in the wake of academic, physical, emotional, and interpersonal setbacks incurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. For many undergraduates, the mentoring relationship with their academic advisor provides the longest lasting and deepest connection with a faculty or staff member throughout their college experience. Increasingly, the expectations that institutions and students place on academic advisors have escalated far beyond simply guiding course selection and checking fulfillment of graduation requirements. While this more holistic approach to advising can cultivate a greater sense of belonging, it also places the advisors in a precarious position as the parameters of their responsibilities and the extent of caregiving continue to broaden. The ever-expanding expectations of caregiving placed on college academic advisors exemplify how pandemic-informed labor practices across many workplaces inadequately acknowledge caregivers while the care recipients may become overly dependent.
This study investigates how advising evolves to become an extrapolation of the caregiving demands socially placed upon women in traditional, patriarchally structured families and workplaces. Using methods derived from critical incident theory that identify systemic crisis points and opportunities for intervention, the authors examine narratives of two women who serve as the lead advisors for their departments in southeastern United States universities. Their narratives delineate two double binds. First, the presumably bottomless reservoir of care demanded from women places nurturance of students in tension with career advancement and other care responsibilities (e.g., self and family). Second, setting boundaries to caregiving may generate accusations of insensitivity, but boundless care can accommodate and encourage learned helplessness among students. The investigation concludes with suggestions to reform institutional policies and build student resilience that equips them to learn independently.
This study investigates how advising evolves to become an extrapolation of the caregiving demands socially placed upon women in traditional, patriarchally structured families and workplaces. Using methods derived from critical incident theory that identify systemic crisis points and opportunities for intervention, the authors examine narratives of two women who serve as the lead advisors for their departments in southeastern United States universities. Their narratives delineate two double binds. First, the presumably bottomless reservoir of care demanded from women places nurturance of students in tension with career advancement and other care responsibilities (e.g., self and family). Second, setting boundaries to caregiving may generate accusations of insensitivity, but boundless care can accommodate and encourage learned helplessness among students. The investigation concludes with suggestions to reform institutional policies and build student resilience that equips them to learn independently.
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Abstract of Issue Theme: The nature of education has transformed to become more holistic in several ways — explicitly highlighting the importance of empathy, customizing instruction to the learner, foregrounding equity and inclusion, and... more
Abstract of Issue Theme:
The nature of education has transformed to become more holistic in several ways — explicitly highlighting the importance of empathy, customizing instruction to the learner, foregrounding equity and inclusion, and providing emotional support as foundational to instruction. Therefore, studying the relationships between the modality of practice (online, hybrid, face-to-face, and the quality of education has become critically important.
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This article details ways that educational leaders can exhibit, practice, and build resilience on the personal, relational, and community level.
The nature of education has transformed to become more holistic in several ways — explicitly highlighting the importance of empathy, customizing instruction to the learner, foregrounding equity and inclusion, and providing emotional support as foundational to instruction. Therefore, studying the relationships between the modality of practice (online, hybrid, face-to-face, and the quality of education has become critically important.
Abstract of Article:
This article details ways that educational leaders can exhibit, practice, and build resilience on the personal, relational, and community level.
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As a response to ongoing student attrition and declining academic performance, a midsize (enrollment = 17,743), minority-serving southeastern research (Carnegie R2) university initiated a “reboot” of high-enrollment general education... more
As a response to ongoing student attrition and declining academic performance, a midsize (enrollment = 17,743), minority-serving southeastern research (Carnegie R2) university initiated a “reboot” of high-enrollment general education courses. A key component of the reboot involved embedding undergraduate staff from the university’s oral communication center as peer guides to energize improvements in three areas: performance and retention, engagement, and student satisfaction.
This study examines the empirical evidence of how embedding undergraduate peer guides from a communication center can affect student success in the introductory, performance-based communication course. Measures related to each area targeted for improvement were applied to students (n = 406) in 16 rebooted sections of the introductory course with peer guides and control groups of students (n = 319) in sections without peer guides. Qualitative feedback on the peer guide experience was obtained from focus groups with peer guides and instructors who participated in the reboot.
No significant difference was found between students in the peer guide sections versus the control group in overall midterm or final grades, perceived quality of instruction, or student activity on the Canvas learning management system. Students in the reboot sections lagged behind their control group cohorts in reducing their communication apprehension. The decidedly mixed outcomes suggest the need for different types of involvement than the traditional consultative role that communication center tutors usually play.
This study examines the empirical evidence of how embedding undergraduate peer guides from a communication center can affect student success in the introductory, performance-based communication course. Measures related to each area targeted for improvement were applied to students (n = 406) in 16 rebooted sections of the introductory course with peer guides and control groups of students (n = 319) in sections without peer guides. Qualitative feedback on the peer guide experience was obtained from focus groups with peer guides and instructors who participated in the reboot.
No significant difference was found between students in the peer guide sections versus the control group in overall midterm or final grades, perceived quality of instruction, or student activity on the Canvas learning management system. Students in the reboot sections lagged behind their control group cohorts in reducing their communication apprehension. The decidedly mixed outcomes suggest the need for different types of involvement than the traditional consultative role that communication center tutors usually play.
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Communication, Student Engagement, Persistence/Retention, Speech Communication, Communication Studies, and 9 moreTutoring, General Education, Student retention, Retention and Strategies for Student Success, Peer Tutoring, Student Success, Communication Apprehension, Peer Mentoring, and Communication Centers
This study foregrounds the conflicting social pressures that women educators in the United States face in dealing with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in higher education. Narratives from three standpoints interweave to provide three... more
This study foregrounds the conflicting social pressures that women educators in the United States face in dealing with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in higher education. Narratives from three standpoints interweave to provide three perspectives on pandemicinformed practices that can build resilience as an inclusive rather than simply an individual process. The three points of view are: a mother in a non-tenure track teaching position who juggles caregiving duties; a male department head navigating how to energize allyship within a neoliberal educational system that suppresses acknowledgment and support of caretaking; and interactions among members of the Facebook group Pandemic Pedagogy, a global social media hub for educators adjusting to the pandemic's impact. Collectively, these standpoints constitute a critical autoethnographic multilogue to deconstruct and remediate the systemic gender inequities exposed and exacerbated by the pandemic. The three perspectives converge on implementing feminist ethics of care as both a philosophical and practical foundation for constructively cultivating resilience at the personal, community, and institutional levels.
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Becoming head of a profoundly collegial department with essentially zero turnover offered a logical extension of my 14 years as a full professor at a thriving mid-size, minority-serving, research-intensive (Carnegie R2) university.... more
Becoming head of a profoundly collegial department with essentially zero turnover offered a logical extension of my 14 years as a full professor at a thriving mid-size, minority-serving, research-intensive (Carnegie R2) university. Instead, I quickly found myself swirling in the vortex of severe, chronic crises: ongoing budget cuts, systemic inequities concentrated on the most vulnerable populations, and uncertainties associated with the pandemic. This critical autoethnography addresses how a department head can adopt the role of a critical advocate who addresses problematic institutional practices while fostering a care-based departmental culture of mutual support. My reflections foreground three themes: using critical advocacy to counteract professional vulnerability, building resilience in the neoliberal academy, and harnessing care to develop trauma-informed leadership.
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The NCA-CCCC seeks to facilitate partnerships with community-based organizations that create sustainable change for underrepresented and/or vulnerable communities through the production and application of communication-related... more
The NCA-CCCC seeks to facilitate partnerships with community-based organizations that create sustainable change for underrepresented and/or vulnerable communities through the production and application of communication-related scholarship. Learn more about the NCA-CCCC's work through its inaugural host institution, UNC Greensboro, and find project videos, interviews with principal investigators, student stories, and more at cccc.uncg.edu.
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The COVID-19 pandemic presents opportunities to foster resilience as an ongoing process of productively adapting to crises and change. The fundamental communication course can serve a key role in building resilience on several levels:... more
The COVID-19 pandemic presents opportunities to foster resilience as an ongoing process of productively adapting to crises and change. The fundamental communication course can serve a key role in building resilience on several levels: personal (for students and teachers), across courses and communication programs, and community-wide. Lessons learned from the pandemic include judiciously adopting new technological tools, counteracting regressive institutional resilience that resists change, and maximizing inclusivity in course design and delivery.
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As one of the world’s major social media hubs dedicated to online education during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Facebook mega-group Pandemic Pedagogy provides a panoramic perspective of the key concerns educators and students face amid a... more
As one of the world’s major social media hubs dedicated to online education during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Facebook mega-group Pandemic Pedagogy provides a panoramic perspective of the key concerns educators and students face amid a public health crisis that forces redefinition of what constitutes effective education. After several months of instruction under pandemic conditions, two central themes emerged as the most extensively discussed and the most intensively contested:
(1) rigor versus accommodation in calibrating standards for students, and
(2) ways to improve engagement during classes conducted through videoconferencing, especially via Zoom. Both themes reveal deeply embedded systems of privilege and marginalization in the structures and methods of online education. The pandemic starkly exposes disparities in access, equity, and inclusivity. Addressing these challenges will require explicit measures to acknowledge these power imbalances by rethinking what counts as effective teaching and learning rather than relying on institutions to revert to business as usual after this pandemic abates.
(1) rigor versus accommodation in calibrating standards for students, and
(2) ways to improve engagement during classes conducted through videoconferencing, especially via Zoom. Both themes reveal deeply embedded systems of privilege and marginalization in the structures and methods of online education. The pandemic starkly exposes disparities in access, equity, and inclusivity. Addressing these challenges will require explicit measures to acknowledge these power imbalances by rethinking what counts as effective teaching and learning rather than relying on institutions to revert to business as usual after this pandemic abates.
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Why does support for Donald Trump remain resilient despite the preponderance of arguments and evidence that should refute so many of his claims? The answer lies in how Trump’s rhetoric fully embraces intuitively based rationales for... more
Why does support for Donald Trump remain resilient despite the preponderance of arguments and evidence that should refute so many of his claims? The answer lies in how Trump’s rhetoric fully embraces intuitively based rationales for allegiance. This chapter analyzes Donald Trump’s rhetoric throughout his campaign and presidency through the lens of moral foundations theory, which identifies clusters of value commitments that correlate with political allegiance. Trump activates connections with foundational values of his constituents through specific heuristic devices, especially loss aversion, availability, and representativeness. Synthesizing behavioral economics with the dramatistic rhetorical theories of Kenneth Burke reveals how Trump’s claims resist counterargument and what rhetorical resources offer potential avenues for alternative positions to gain traction.
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Focusing on many previously untranslated articles in popular national magazines and newspapers, as well as works by prominent racial theorists, this chapter traces how outrage was systematically fomented against Jews in Nazi-era Germany,... more
Focusing on many previously untranslated articles in popular national magazines and newspapers, as well as works by prominent racial theorists, this chapter traces how outrage was systematically fomented against Jews in Nazi-era Germany, creating perceived imperatives for drastic discriminatory measures. Rather than locate the core of Nazi antisemitism in historical or psychological factors, this study approaches antisemitism using the theoretical framework of risk communication. The heuristics of risk perception reveal an array of rhetorical tactics that fomented visceral aversion impervious to logical refutation. Portrayals of Jews as embodying maximal and uncontrollable risk, political, academic, and mass media discourse converged on the theme of Jews as posing unacceptable dangers that required progressively more drastic measures to control. The principles of risk communication, especially the means of inflaming outrage, could furnish useful interpretive frames for analyzing current antisemitism and other types of repressive discourse.
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The COVID-19 pandemic in the United States spawns a perplexing polemic. Intransigent coronavirus skeptics who defy public health recommendations often get cast as ideological zealots or as perniciously ignorant. Both characterizations... more
The COVID-19 pandemic in the United States spawns a perplexing polemic. Intransigent coronavirus skeptics who defy public health recommendations often get cast as ideological zealots or as perniciously ignorant. Both characterizations overlook a more fundamental epistemic opposition. The authors recast the conflict between COVID-19 skeptics and public health advocates as the rhetorical incompatibility between the deliberative, scientifically grounded public health experts and the intuitive, emotion-driven mental heuristics of the non-compliant. This study examines the discourse of COVID-19 misinformation purveyors on broadcast media and online. Their main contentions rely on heuristics and biases that collectively not only undermine trust in particular medical experts, but also undercut trust in the institutions and reasoning processes of science itself. The findings suggest ways that public health campaigns can become more effective by leveraging some of the intuitive drivers of attitudes and behaviors that scientists and argumentation theorists routinely dismiss as fallacious.
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Strategic use of first-hand testimony by immigrants can challenge prevalent xenophobic narratives of foreign immigrants as innate threats. Using United States President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric as a point of departure, these... more
Strategic use of first-hand testimony by immigrants can challenge prevalent xenophobic narratives of foreign immigrants as innate threats. Using United States President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric as a point of departure, these negative stereotypes can be critiqued and remediated on three levels: more nuanced individual immigrant testimonies (micronarrative); connections and diversity across stories told by immigrants (mesonarrative); and more explicit linkages between narratives and the contexts and agendas that generate them (metanarrative). The first-person testimonies of Holocaust survivors furnish the foundational exemplars of how testimony can rehumanize immigrants by enabling them to reclaim their narratives and thereby counteract collective demonization as villains or dismissal as victims.
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As the number of Holocaust survivors declines, their live eyewitness testimony will be preserved and communicated via other media. This transformation prompts a key question. What value can personal testimony have when disembodied and... more
As the number of Holocaust survivors declines, their live eyewitness testimony will be preserved and communicated via other media. This transformation prompts a key question. What value can personal testimony have when disembodied and presented in a medium more manipulable by the audience? The response addresses three types of mediated testimony: the first televised broadcast of a Holocaust survivor's story, on the 1953 U.S. television series This Is Your Life; archival video testimonies; and "unsettled testimony" consisting of less structured, first-person testimonies gathered by the author that reveal the challenges of discursive representation. Each type of testimony offers distinct advantages and limitations in reducing prejudice and fostering understanding.
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With an estimated 11 percent of all undergraduate students (at least two million) having a disability and the numbers of such students increasing (National Council on Disability, 2015), oral communication tutoring centers face an... more
With an estimated 11 percent of all undergraduate students (at least two million) having a disability and the numbers of such students increasing (National Council on Disability, 2015), oral communication tutoring centers face an escalating imperative to account for this population in their instructional practices. The Multidimensional Attitudes Scale (MAS) Toward Persons With Disabilities was administered to a demographically diverse sample (n = 149) of communication center student tutors and a control group of undergraduates. Results reveal positive emotions toward PWDs, with proclivity toward avoidance due to shyness and nervousness around PWDs. In the behavioral dimension,
prevalent reactions to PWDs clustered around non-acknowledgment (preferring to read or use their phones, or not initiating any interaction). These findings may reflect the need to more actively stimulate direct personal interactions with people who are unfamiliar or
different, which the current generation of digitally saturated college students often finds challenging.
prevalent reactions to PWDs clustered around non-acknowledgment (preferring to read or use their phones, or not initiating any interaction). These findings may reflect the need to more actively stimulate direct personal interactions with people who are unfamiliar or
different, which the current generation of digitally saturated college students often finds challenging.
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As schools began the frantic switch to fully remote education while the COVID-19 pandemic escalated in the United States, the Facebook group Pandemic Pedagogy rapidly became a worldwide interdisciplinary hub for navigating online... more
As schools began the frantic switch to fully remote education while the COVID-19 pandemic escalated in the United States, the Facebook group Pandemic Pedagogy rapidly became a worldwide interdisciplinary hub for navigating online instruction. Autoethnographic reflection on the development of that group leads to analysis of key issues emerging from discourse among the members. Critical examination of the home as a learning environment and concerns about synchronous online learning suggest broader systemic inequities that affect online education. Two areas of crisis rise to prominence: digital divides based on disparities in access, skill, and technological features; and the reassertion of neoliberal approaches to education. Original poems within this essay immerse readers in the tensions and disruptions that infuse education during the pandemic. The traumas inflicted by the pandemic can stimulate more vigorous practice of communal, care-based, collaborative resilience through reimagining the nature and purpose of communication instruction.
FULL TEXT: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03634523.2020.1804602?src=
FULL TEXT: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03634523.2020.1804602?src=
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The COVID-19 pandemic forced rapid transformation of educational practices on an unprecedented scale. Most notably, online course delivery became the default and persists as a key component of education throughout the course of the... more
The COVID-19 pandemic forced rapid transformation of educational practices on an unprecedented scale. Most notably, online course delivery became the default and persists as a key component of education throughout the course of the pandemic. This reflective
analysis provides insights regarding effective design and implementation of online courses. Beyond the courses themselves, communication scholars and practitioners must consider systemic barriers to fully realizing the potential of online education. These concerns generate potential research and activist agendas that can encompass all the manifold dimensions of communication studies.
analysis provides insights regarding effective design and implementation of online courses. Beyond the courses themselves, communication scholars and practitioners must consider systemic barriers to fully realizing the potential of online education. These concerns generate potential research and activist agendas that can encompass all the manifold dimensions of communication studies.
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At many colleges and universities, communication centers provide student peer tutoring to improve competencies in public speaking, interviewing, and other oral communication. By extending such consultations beyond helping students with... more
At many colleges and universities, communication centers provide student peer tutoring to improve competencies in public speaking, interviewing, and other oral communication. By extending such consultations beyond helping students with class assignments, communication centers can offer intensive applied learning experiences. First, the essay examines a communication center’s community engagement through mentoring people with developmental disabilities at a residential center. Ethnographic reflections of students combine with theories of critical and developmental pedagogy to reveal how this learning experience fosters teaching, learning, and social justice. Second, the authors provide a model for how communication centers can initiate and sustain undergraduate research.
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The oral testimonies of Jewish women who survived the Holocaust reveal how they withstood threats to their very existence and reconcile with those experiences through their narratives. Resilience—defined as the capacity to withstand and... more
The oral testimonies of Jewish women who survived the Holocaust reveal how they withstood threats to their very existence and reconcile with those experiences through their narratives. Resilience—defined as the capacity to withstand and cope with adversity—too readily becomes reducible to direct, aggressive opposition. This paper problematizes the linkages between resistance and resilience by asking: How do characterizations of resilience in first-person Holocaust survivor testimonies reflect or challenge a gendered conception of resilience? How does a more masculinized or more feminized characterization of resilience contribute to or constrain the possibilities for coping with trauma? Testimonies within the USC Shoah Foundation Institute’s Visual History Archive were searched using the archive index phrase “survival explanations.” From the 5,289 resultant testimonies, the 40 highest ranked (20 male, 20 female survivors)—i.e., containing the most content tagged with the search phrase—were selected for thematic content analysis. Several noteworthy themes in the women’s testimonies challenge conventional understandings of how resilience gets discursively constructed. The women’s testimonies reveal complex strategic interplays between seizing control (internal locus of control) and ceding it to others (external locus of control). Their testimonies also describe survival rationales associated with empathy and intuition, providing a detailed characterization of the ethic of care. Finally, analysis of the role luck plays in resilience traces its construction as divine providence, secular fate, or randomness. Feminized resilience expands the array of ways to mitigate trauma, activating strategic and emotional resources that previous approaches to resilience may overlook or marginalize.
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Research Interests:
Science Communication, Public Understanding Of Science, Storytelling, Public Speaking, Speech Communication, and 7 moreNanotechnology, Public Understanding of Science (Education), Meta-heuristics, Communication Studies, Public Communication of Science and Technology, Nanoscience, and Communication Centers
This study documents how students learning English as a second language exhibit various levels of internal and external locus of control in their learning process. Focus group interviews were conducted with 21 non-native English speakers... more
This study documents how students learning English as a second language exhibit various levels of internal and external locus of control in their learning process. Focus group interviews were conducted with 21 non-native English speakers from seven nations enrolled in an intensive English language learning program at a mid-size research university in the southeastern United States. All participants engaged regularly in conversational practice at the university's oral communication center. Participants were asked about the processes they used for learning English and what their sources of motivation were. Thematic content analysis revealed that internal and external locus of control tended to operate synergistically in the process of learning a new language and adapting to a new culture. Motivation to initiate and persist in new language acquisition emerged from a blend of personal agency, inspiration from family and teachers, and social exigencies. The dynamic interplay between internal and external locus of control challenges common portrayals of these dimensions as antagonistic. Learners often range across levels of internal and external orientations, suggesting need to reconsider characterizations of internality primarily as an enhancer and externality primarily as an inhibitor of learning.
Keywords: Locus of control; communication centers; English as a second language; intercultural communication.
Keywords: Locus of control; communication centers; English as a second language; intercultural communication.
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Student-friendly guidelines on how to give several types of special occasion speeches.
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This paper examines how appeals to history augment authority and pre-empt refutation in public address. Noting how history has been employed as an uncontested term, caveats are offered regarding invocations of history per se to support... more
This paper examines how appeals to history augment authority and pre-empt refutation in public address. Noting how history has been employed as an uncontested term, caveats are offered regarding invocations of history per se to support claims.
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Hamilton, Cheryl, and Roy Schwartzman. “Team Presentations.” In Cheryl Hamilton, Successful Public Speaking. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1996. A18-A31.
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Olson, L. N., & Schwartzman, R. (2019). Child sexual predators’ luring communication goes online: Reflections and future directions. In E. P. Downs (Ed.), The dark side of media & technology: A 21st century guide to media and... more
Olson, L. N., & Schwartzman, R. (2019). Child sexual predators’ luring communication goes online: Reflections and future directions. In E. P. Downs (Ed.), The dark side of media & technology: A 21st century guide to media and technological literacy (pp. 154-166). New York: Peter Lang.
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During the Holocaust and the subsequent process of what has become known as liberation, women constantly confronted convergent oppressive forces. Under the Nazi regime and its cohorts as well as during the liberation process, Jews faced... more
During the Holocaust and the subsequent process of what has become known as liberation, women constantly confronted convergent oppressive forces. Under the Nazi regime and its cohorts as well as during the liberation process, Jews faced torture and genocide. Jewish women constantly lived with an additional layer of oppression: threatened or actual sexual violence. Positioned at the vortex of intersecting oppressions, how can the identities of these women transcend their stature as victims? How do women creatively reposition themselves vis-à-vis the perpetrators and the traumatic events so they can maintain or reclaim their agency and dignity?
Centering on narrative analysis of first-person testimony gleaned from memoirs and from the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive (VHA), this investigation covers four narratively sustained modes of comportment toward sexual violence. First, mutual aid demonstrates an ethic of care. Second, degrading or minimizing the perpetrator or the sexual act retains the narrator’s dignity. The final two angles offer complementary ways to avoid or repel assault: distracting an assailant by directing him toward more attractive targets, and rendering oneself repellant.
Departing from the prevailing approach of treating Holocaust survivor testimonies primarily as responses to trauma, this project reveals how the narrators actively craft their identities through the storytelling process. This creative molding of identity through narrative, a process called autopoeisis, recasts survivors of these and other traumas as dynamically (re)negotiating their understanding of self and their relationship to lived experiences. Trauma stories thereby further tikkun olam—repair of a fractured world.
Centering on narrative analysis of first-person testimony gleaned from memoirs and from the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive (VHA), this investigation covers four narratively sustained modes of comportment toward sexual violence. First, mutual aid demonstrates an ethic of care. Second, degrading or minimizing the perpetrator or the sexual act retains the narrator’s dignity. The final two angles offer complementary ways to avoid or repel assault: distracting an assailant by directing him toward more attractive targets, and rendering oneself repellant.
Departing from the prevailing approach of treating Holocaust survivor testimonies primarily as responses to trauma, this project reveals how the narrators actively craft their identities through the storytelling process. This creative molding of identity through narrative, a process called autopoeisis, recasts survivors of these and other traumas as dynamically (re)negotiating their understanding of self and their relationship to lived experiences. Trauma stories thereby further tikkun olam—repair of a fractured world.
Research Interests:
Long before the 2016 campaign, wild speculations about Hillary Clinton’s supposedly dire ailments abounded. These dubious rumors suddenly gained new traction when Hillary collapsed during the 9/11 commemorative ceremonies in New York. Her... more
Long before the 2016 campaign, wild speculations about Hillary Clinton’s supposedly dire ailments abounded. These dubious rumors suddenly gained new traction when Hillary collapsed during the 9/11 commemorative ceremonies in New York. Her campaign later disclosed that she had pneumonia—a fact hidden from the public. She then took three days off to recuperate. During her convalescence, Donald Trump pressed his advantage by re-energizing a narrative of his own health—despite refusing to release his own complete medical records—and immediately raised doubts about Hillary’s “stamina.” This narrative crystallized when Donald, accompanied by his daughter Ivanka, was the sole guest for an entire episode of The Dr. Oz Show that aired on September 15th.
By moving the discussion of candidate health from the arcane archives of medical files to the medical info-tainment forum of The Dr. Oz Show, Donald capitalized on his opportunity to shape a narrative that positioned silent, ailing Hillary at the nexus of three longstanding, interwoven cultural narratives: women as physically fragile; women as incompetent, incapable, or malicious; and women’s value as defined by a heterosexist male aesthetic.
This chapter interweaves the narrative analysis with original poetry. As bodies of evidence, the poems embody the voices of the protagonists’ somatic narratives that solidified during the program: Donald’s ongoing proof of virility through reinforcing female fragility; Ivanka’s embodiment of voluptuousness that springs from Donald’s loins; Hillary’s attempt to establish a non-androcentric (but not emasculating) aura of competence and vigor. Melania Trump’s body augmented the narrative of the female body as (sexually) desirable because desired, yet unproductive (as a vessel for delivering plagiarized words). Each poem speaks as the body of each protagonist, articulating how their bodies play a central role in constituting candidates.
Collectively, the poems and the narrative analysis track the evolution of a larger cultural narrative of women that links malfunctioning bodies with professional malfeasance and moral misbehavior. The cultural force of this narrative helps explain why Donald’s physical attributes augmented his stature as a locker room legend, relegating Hillary to the sick bed.
By moving the discussion of candidate health from the arcane archives of medical files to the medical info-tainment forum of The Dr. Oz Show, Donald capitalized on his opportunity to shape a narrative that positioned silent, ailing Hillary at the nexus of three longstanding, interwoven cultural narratives: women as physically fragile; women as incompetent, incapable, or malicious; and women’s value as defined by a heterosexist male aesthetic.
This chapter interweaves the narrative analysis with original poetry. As bodies of evidence, the poems embody the voices of the protagonists’ somatic narratives that solidified during the program: Donald’s ongoing proof of virility through reinforcing female fragility; Ivanka’s embodiment of voluptuousness that springs from Donald’s loins; Hillary’s attempt to establish a non-androcentric (but not emasculating) aura of competence and vigor. Melania Trump’s body augmented the narrative of the female body as (sexually) desirable because desired, yet unproductive (as a vessel for delivering plagiarized words). Each poem speaks as the body of each protagonist, articulating how their bodies play a central role in constituting candidates.
Collectively, the poems and the narrative analysis track the evolution of a larger cultural narrative of women that links malfunctioning bodies with professional malfeasance and moral misbehavior. The cultural force of this narrative helps explain why Donald’s physical attributes augmented his stature as a locker room legend, relegating Hillary to the sick bed.
Research Interests:
Long before the 2016 campaign, wild speculations about Hillary Clinton’s supposedly dire ailments abounded. These dubious rumors suddenly gained new traction when Hillary collapsed during the 9/11 commemorative ceremonies in New York.... more
Long before the 2016 campaign, wild speculations about Hillary Clinton’s supposedly dire ailments abounded. These dubious rumors suddenly gained new traction when Hillary collapsed during the 9/11 commemorative ceremonies in New York. Diagnosed with pneumonia, she then took three days off to recuperate. During her convalescence, Donald Trump pressed his advantage by re-energizing a narrative of his own health—despite refusing to release his own medical records—and immediately raised doubts about Clinton’s “stamina.” This narrative crystallized when Donald Trump, accompanied by his daughter Ivanka, appeared as the sole guest for an entire episode of popular The Dr. Oz Show that aired on 15 September. In this essay, the authors approach this episode of the program interpretively, using critical narrative analysis informed by feminist theory focusing on the female body’s sociocultural position in the political realm. The analysis employs a unique interpretive approach of interweaving the critical analysis with original poetry. As “bodies” of evidence themselves, the poems embody the voices of the protagonists’ somatic narratives that solidified during the program: Donald Trump’s ongoing proof of virility through reinforcing female fragility; Ivanka Trump’s embodiment of voluptuousness that springs from her father’s loins; Hillary Clinton’s attempt to establish a non-androcentric (but not emasculating) aura of competence and vigor.
Each poem speaks as the body of each protagonist, articulating how representations of the body play a central role in constituting candidates. Collectively, the poems and the narrative analysis track the evolution of a larger cultural narrative linking malfunctioning female bodies with professional malfeasance and moral decrepitude.
Each poem speaks as the body of each protagonist, articulating how representations of the body play a central role in constituting candidates. Collectively, the poems and the narrative analysis track the evolution of a larger cultural narrative linking malfunctioning female bodies with professional malfeasance and moral decrepitude.
Research Interests:
Although some scholarship has discussed the argumentative tactics of Holocaust deniers and how they persuade some audiences to reject seemingly obvious factual events, no research has addressed how Holocaust survivors themselves confront... more
Although some scholarship has discussed the argumentative tactics of Holocaust deniers and how they persuade some audiences to reject seemingly obvious factual events, no research has addressed how Holocaust survivors themselves confront this direct challenge to their lived experience. Using videotaped oral testimonies in the Shoah Foundation Institute’s Visual History Archive (the world’s largest such collection), this study examines how survivors meet the challenge of Holocaust denial in Germany and in the United States.
Close analysis of the argumentative tactics embedded in survivor testimony reveals that survivors craft narratives with richer dimensions than acknowledged in the twisted historiography of Holocaust denial. Survivors attest not only to the facticity of external events but also to affective memory, chronicling how they process and adapt to trauma. This affective dimension of testimony suggests that survivors’ narratives employ more complex layers of argumentation than simply claiming correspondence to particular historical incidents. [In press--upload coming soon!]
Close analysis of the argumentative tactics embedded in survivor testimony reveals that survivors craft narratives with richer dimensions than acknowledged in the twisted historiography of Holocaust denial. Survivors attest not only to the facticity of external events but also to affective memory, chronicling how they process and adapt to trauma. This affective dimension of testimony suggests that survivors’ narratives employ more complex layers of argumentation than simply claiming correspondence to particular historical incidents. [In press--upload coming soon!]
Research Interests:
Teaching the basic communication course online can present many challenges due to restricted personal interaction and lack of information about the pedagogical needs of students. More rigorous gathering of data about student knowledge and... more
Teaching the basic communication course online can present many challenges due to restricted personal interaction and lack of information about the pedagogical needs of students. More rigorous gathering of data about student knowledge and skill levels at the outset of courses can target where additional skill development may be needed. Student-to-student peer tutoring offered in communication centers intensifies instruction in needed areas, more thoroughly preparing students without overburdening the instructor.
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This essay examines how music can challenge prevailing power structures and ideologies lyrically and stylistically. Focusing on the Beatles, the authors propose the concept of the enthymode, which combines enthymematic persuasion with... more
This essay examines how music can challenge prevailing power structures and ideologies lyrically and stylistically. Focusing on the Beatles, the authors propose the concept of the enthymode, which combines enthymematic persuasion with embodying alternatives to social norms through verbal and auditory techniques.
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Recognizing these legacies not only as highlights from the past but as exemplars of what
the association cultivates can inspire future scholars, leaders, and activists.
the association cultivates can inspire future scholars, leaders, and activists.
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This study documents how students learning English as a second language exhibit various levels of internal and external locus of control in their learning process. Focus group interviews were conducted with 21 non-native English speakers... more
This study documents how students learning English as a second language exhibit various levels of internal and external locus of control in their learning process. Focus group interviews were conducted with 21 non-native English speakers from seven nations enrolled in an intensive English language learning program at a mid-size research university in the southeastern United States. All participants engaged regularly in conversational practice at the university's oral communication center. Participants were asked about the processes they used for learning English and what their sources of motivation were. Thematic content analysis revealed that internal and external locus of control tended to operate synergistically in the process of learning a new language and adapting to a new culture. Motivation to initiate and persist in new language acquisition emerged from a blend of personal agency, inspiration from family and teachers, and social exigencies. The dynamic interplay between internal and external locus of control challenges common portrayals of these dimensions as antagonistic. Learners often range across levels of internal and external orientations, suggesting need to reconsider characterizations of internality primarily as an enhancer and externality primarily as an inhibitor of learning.
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Communication, Intercultural Communication, Teaching English as a Second Language, Self-Efficacy, Pedagogy, and 7 moreTeaching English As A Foreign Language, English language teaching, Communication Studies, Locus of Control, Cross-cultural Adaptation, Communication Centers, and Oral Communication Skills
Longstanding research correlates locus of control (LOC)— the sense of self-empowerment (internal orientation) versus feeling influenced by events others control (external orientation)—with self-motivation, persistence, high academic... more
Longstanding research correlates locus of control (LOC)— the sense of self-empowerment (internal orientation) versus feeling influenced by events others control (external orientation)—with self-motivation, persistence, high academic achievement, and workplace success. In study1, undergraduate peer tutors (n = 31) at a midsize, doctoral-granting, minority-serving university completed a variant of the teacher locus of control (TLOC) survey, which measures the degree of internal/external LOC orientation in educational settings. In study 2, communication center supervisors (n = 12) and undergraduate peer tutors (n = 13) from 14 institutions nationwide completed a qualitative survey describing how they approach consultations with student clientele.
The studies found: (1) Supervisors exhibited slightly higher external LOC than peer tutors, indicating a keener sense of restrictions on their personal agency and deferring more to specific procedures as solutions to challenging situations. (2) Small but statistically significant correlations were found between a tutor’s self-identified race and LOC orientation. White tutors more readily attributed levels of achievement to the nature of the student (external LOC); non-white tutors treated achievement levels more as products of the consultation techniques (internal LOC). (3) Qualitative data show that communication center personnel must balance the tensions between different LOC orientations, perhaps by ranging across the continuum from highly internal to highly external.
The studies found: (1) Supervisors exhibited slightly higher external LOC than peer tutors, indicating a keener sense of restrictions on their personal agency and deferring more to specific procedures as solutions to challenging situations. (2) Small but statistically significant correlations were found between a tutor’s self-identified race and LOC orientation. White tutors more readily attributed levels of achievement to the nature of the student (external LOC); non-white tutors treated achievement levels more as products of the consultation techniques (internal LOC). (3) Qualitative data show that communication center personnel must balance the tensions between different LOC orientations, perhaps by ranging across the continuum from highly internal to highly external.
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This chapter offers ways that millennials can use specific technological tools to reduce communication anxiety and thoroughly prepare to speak in public.
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A concise guide to preparing and presenting a public speech, geared to college students who are assigned to deliver their first speech.
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Configuring students as consumers and higher education as a commodity have been widely suggested as ways to empower students and improve efficiency. This critical autoethnography challenges the assumptions and implications of modeling... more
Configuring students as consumers and higher education as a commodity have been widely suggested as ways to empower students and improve efficiency. This critical autoethnography challenges the assumptions and implications of modeling education after free-market economic principles. Personal perspectives on the promotion and tenure process, students confronting the marketplace, and exemplary mentoring accompany poetic reflections on market-infused university life.
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Ongoing concerns about student debt, operational transparency, and public accountability have accelerated tendencies to model education after the values prized by free-market economics. This model prioritizes efficiency and customer... more
Ongoing concerns about student debt, operational transparency, and public accountability have accelerated tendencies to model education after the values prized by free-market economics. This model prioritizes efficiency and customer satisfaction while treating education as a commodity instrumental for personal gain. Questionable equivalences between marketplace commerce and education render consumerism insufficient as a description or as an ideal. Adopting this framework frays the moral fabric of education and shortchanges students by configuring them as consumers to placate rather than characters to build.
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This paper examines how appeals to history augment authority and pre-empt refutation in public address. Nothing how history has been employed as an uncontested term, caveats are offered regarding invocations of history per se to support... more
This paper examines how appeals to history augment authority and pre-empt refutation in public address. Nothing how history has been employed as an uncontested term, caveats are offered regarding invocations of history per se to support claims.
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A marketplace mentality featuring the student as consumer reaches deeply into educational practice today. This essay examines the roots and implications of framing public speaking in economic terms. The amorality of the marketplace could... more
A marketplace mentality featuring the student as consumer reaches deeply into educational practice today. This essay examines the roots and implications of framing public speaking in economic terms. The amorality of the marketplace could be supplemented by closer attention to how values infuse the communication process. A value-laden communication environment, or ethosystem, may contribute to greater student awareness of their obligations to others and yield a fuller description of communication education.
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NOTE: The actual size of this poster is 33.109 inches (width) x 23.391 inches (length). For optimal viewing, adjust your screen magnification accordingly.
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Democracy Tables reach into different parts of the city to invite residents--especially those from traditionally underrepresented communities--to share experiences and concerns through creative dialogue. They support cultivating resilient... more
Democracy Tables reach into different parts of the city to invite residents--especially those from traditionally underrepresented communities--to share experiences and concerns through creative dialogue. They support cultivating resilient communities through enhanced community engagement and strengthening community leadership development by exploring approaches that collect those community concerns and questions and connect participants to information resources for understanding issues and influencing change:
*Inviting community dialogue from residents across the city.
*Collecting questions about areas of concern.
*Sharing resources and expertise for answering those questions.
*Connecting participants with tools to influence decision-making and policy.
*Making both the community concerns and the resources available online and interpreted in a community display at the museum.
*Developing a program model for Greensboro that can be adapted and expanded.
*Inviting community dialogue from residents across the city.
*Collecting questions about areas of concern.
*Sharing resources and expertise for answering those questions.
*Connecting participants with tools to influence decision-making and policy.
*Making both the community concerns and the resources available online and interpreted in a community display at the museum.
*Developing a program model for Greensboro that can be adapted and expanded.
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As a response to ongoing student attrition and declining academic performance, a midsize (enrollment = 19,000), minority-serving southeastern research (Carnegie R2) university initiated a “reboot” of high-enrollment general education... more
As a response to ongoing student attrition and declining academic performance, a midsize (enrollment = 19,000), minority-serving southeastern research (Carnegie R2) university initiated a “reboot” of high-enrollment general education courses. A key component of the reboot involved embedding undergraduate staff from the university’s communication center as peer guides to energize improvements in three areas: performance and retention, engagement, and satisfaction.
This study examines the empirical evidence of how embedding undergraduate peer guides from a communication center can affect student success in the introductory, performance-based communication course. Measures related to each area targeted for improvement were applied to students (n = 406) in 16 rebooted sections of the introductory course with peer guides and control groups of students (n = 319) in sections without peer guides. Qualitative feedback on the peer guide experience was obtained from focus groups with peer guides and instructors who participated in the reboot.
No significant difference was found between students in the peer guide sections versus the control group in overall midterm or final grades, perceived quality of instruction, or student activity on the Canvas learning management system. Students in the reboot sections lagged behind their control group cohorts in reducing their communication apprehension. The decidedly mixed outcomes raise questions about optimal usage of peer guides. Studies documenting positive effects of peer mentors on student performance suggest the need for deeper, more regular, and more structured involvement than the traditional consultative role that communication center tutors usually play. Results point to the need for more clearly targeting peer guide roles toward cultivating dispositions and behaviors already known to affect student performance, engagement, and satisfaction.
This study examines the empirical evidence of how embedding undergraduate peer guides from a communication center can affect student success in the introductory, performance-based communication course. Measures related to each area targeted for improvement were applied to students (n = 406) in 16 rebooted sections of the introductory course with peer guides and control groups of students (n = 319) in sections without peer guides. Qualitative feedback on the peer guide experience was obtained from focus groups with peer guides and instructors who participated in the reboot.
No significant difference was found between students in the peer guide sections versus the control group in overall midterm or final grades, perceived quality of instruction, or student activity on the Canvas learning management system. Students in the reboot sections lagged behind their control group cohorts in reducing their communication apprehension. The decidedly mixed outcomes raise questions about optimal usage of peer guides. Studies documenting positive effects of peer mentors on student performance suggest the need for deeper, more regular, and more structured involvement than the traditional consultative role that communication center tutors usually play. Results point to the need for more clearly targeting peer guide roles toward cultivating dispositions and behaviors already known to affect student performance, engagement, and satisfaction.
Research Interests:
After the 2021-2021 school year, 25% of the first year students at UNCG were on academic probation. Even more surprising, we found the Basic Communication Course (CST 105) on the DWF list (high percentage of students earning a grade or D... more
After the 2021-2021 school year, 25% of the first year students at UNCG were on academic probation. Even more surprising, we found the Basic Communication Course (CST 105) on the DWF list (high percentage of students earning a grade or D or F or withdrawing) for the first time. Many of us have experienced similar student challenges and are seeking ways to take control of the new reins of the Basic Course. In this panel, we explore the circumstances that have changed our student population and have called us to consider how to redesign and develop “new” reins for the Basic Course. We will use Dr. Roy Schwartzman’s recent article featured in the Basic Communication Course Annual ("Beyond Basic: Transformational Potential of Pandemic Pedagogy" < https://ecommons.udayton.edu/bcca/vol34/iss1/13/ >) as a foundation for considering our recent experiences. Additionally, we will discuss our university summer “reboot” process and the new strategies and tools we have implemented to meet our students where they are. Perspectives from the Department Head, Basic Course Director, instructors, and GTAs will be considered. We consider the process and assignments implemented to enhance student resilience, maximize inclusivity, and encourage student success without sacrificing course quality and integrity.
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The faculty leads of the inaugural National Communication Association Center for Communication, Community Collaboration, and Change discuss their "Cultivate Resilient Communities" initiative. This work is funded by a major grant from the... more
The faculty leads of the inaugural National Communication Association Center for Communication, Community Collaboration, and Change discuss their "Cultivate Resilient Communities" initiative. This work is funded by a major grant from the National Communication Association.
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The oral testimonies of Jewish women who survived the Holocaust reveal how they withstood threats to their very existence and reconcile with those experiences through their narratives. Resilience—defined as the capacity to withstand and... more
The oral testimonies of Jewish women who survived the Holocaust reveal how they withstood threats to their very existence and reconcile with those experiences through their narratives. Resilience—defined as the capacity to withstand and cope with adversity—too readily becomes reducible to direct, aggressive opposition. This paper problematizes the linkages between resistance and resilience by asking: How do characterizations of resilience in first-person Holocaust survivor testimonies reflect or challenge a gendered conception of resilience? How does a more masculinized or more feminized characterization of resilience contribute to or constrain the possibilities for coping with trauma? Testimonies within the USC Shoah Foundation Institute’s Visual History Archive were searched using the archive index phrase “survival explanations.” From the 5,289 resultant testimonies, the 40 highest ranked (20 male, 20 female survivors)—i.e., containing the most content tagged with the search phrase—were selected for thematic content analysis. Several noteworthy themes in the women’s testimonies challenge conventional understandings of how resilience gets discursively constructed. The women’s testimonies reveal complex strategic interplays between seizing control (internal locus of control) and ceding it to others (external locus of control). Their testimonies also describe survival rationales associated with empathy and intuition, providing a detailed characterization of the ethic of care. Finally, analysis of the role luck plays in resilience traces its construction as divine providence, secular fate, or randomness. Feminized resilience expands the array of ways to mitigate trauma, activating strategic and emotional resources that previous approaches to resilience may overlook or marginalize.
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Personal testimony by survivors of genocide or persecution has long constituted the gold standard for learning about human-inflicted tragedy. The physical presence of a survivor captivates audiences and lends immediacy to catastrophes... more
Personal testimony by survivors of genocide or persecution has long constituted the gold standard for learning about human-inflicted tragedy. The physical presence of a survivor captivates audiences and lends immediacy to catastrophes that seem both unfathomable but also eminently repeatable. The Holocaust looms large as an example. The most aggressive efforts at preserving live testimony have centered on assembling archives of video testimonies. This transformation of live testimony into a different medium generates two key questions:
1. What value can personal testimony have when disembodied and presented in a medium more manipulable by the audience (via editing, selective viewing, etc.)?
2. How can mediated survivor testimonies serve as tools for preventing and counteracting prejudice?
As survivors of genocides pass away, their firsthand testimonies increasingly will be accessible primarily through video archives. The preservation of memory through video archives also exacts a price. Once a survivor’s testimony enters the archive, it risks becoming ossified as a static monument. The video preserves the definitive record not only of that survivor’s life, but it also endures as an instantiation of archetypal narrative templates that channel perceptions into familiar storylines. As these narrative patterns become embedded as expectations, they risk obscuring or marginalizing the complex panoply of ways the survivors dealt with their situations.
This project takes Holocaust survivor testimonies as its point of departure in assessing the pedagogical challenges and opportunities of video testimonies. Discussions focus on three types of mediated testimony: early non-fiction televised chronicles of Holocaust survivors (particularly the first appearance of a survivor, on the 1953 U.S. television series This Is Your Life); archival video testimonies; and “unsettled testimony” consisting of less structured, first-person testimonies that reveal the challenges of discursive representation. The final category includes testimonies of Holocaust survivors independently recorded by the author. Each type of testimony offers distinct advantages and limitations in reducing prejudice and increasing productive engagement with the global immigration crises that many politicians continue to foment into nativism and xenophobia.
Critical examination of each medium of testimony leads to recommendations regarding how to provide more thorough, nuanced understanding of refugees and immigrants in the present. Testimony from immigrants could put into practice several key lessons gleaned from Holocaust survivor testimony. At the micronarrative level, individual testimonies can provide counterexamples to categorical generalizations about immigrants. Attention at this level focuses on providing detailed context and background to demonstrate how immigrants do not necessarily align with how they are categorized by media and politicians. At the mesonarrative level, the diversity of narratives can activate themes and characterizations absent or suppressed in collective portrayals of immigrants. Metanarrative testimony reframes immigrants by offering new narratives that can reframe the role of immigrants in society, suggesting storylines that treat immigrants as contributors rather than invaders.
1. What value can personal testimony have when disembodied and presented in a medium more manipulable by the audience (via editing, selective viewing, etc.)?
2. How can mediated survivor testimonies serve as tools for preventing and counteracting prejudice?
As survivors of genocides pass away, their firsthand testimonies increasingly will be accessible primarily through video archives. The preservation of memory through video archives also exacts a price. Once a survivor’s testimony enters the archive, it risks becoming ossified as a static monument. The video preserves the definitive record not only of that survivor’s life, but it also endures as an instantiation of archetypal narrative templates that channel perceptions into familiar storylines. As these narrative patterns become embedded as expectations, they risk obscuring or marginalizing the complex panoply of ways the survivors dealt with their situations.
This project takes Holocaust survivor testimonies as its point of departure in assessing the pedagogical challenges and opportunities of video testimonies. Discussions focus on three types of mediated testimony: early non-fiction televised chronicles of Holocaust survivors (particularly the first appearance of a survivor, on the 1953 U.S. television series This Is Your Life); archival video testimonies; and “unsettled testimony” consisting of less structured, first-person testimonies that reveal the challenges of discursive representation. The final category includes testimonies of Holocaust survivors independently recorded by the author. Each type of testimony offers distinct advantages and limitations in reducing prejudice and increasing productive engagement with the global immigration crises that many politicians continue to foment into nativism and xenophobia.
Critical examination of each medium of testimony leads to recommendations regarding how to provide more thorough, nuanced understanding of refugees and immigrants in the present. Testimony from immigrants could put into practice several key lessons gleaned from Holocaust survivor testimony. At the micronarrative level, individual testimonies can provide counterexamples to categorical generalizations about immigrants. Attention at this level focuses on providing detailed context and background to demonstrate how immigrants do not necessarily align with how they are categorized by media and politicians. At the mesonarrative level, the diversity of narratives can activate themes and characterizations absent or suppressed in collective portrayals of immigrants. Metanarrative testimony reframes immigrants by offering new narratives that can reframe the role of immigrants in society, suggesting storylines that treat immigrants as contributors rather than invaders.
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Analysis of rhetorical dynamics surrounding public promotion of eugenic sterilization programs in North Carolina and in Nazi Germany.
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Suggestions on how scientific researchers and communication centers can form mutually beneficial partnerships. Offers the concept of the speaker-scientist to embed communication into training of scientists. The potential results include... more
Suggestions on how scientific researchers and communication centers can form mutually beneficial partnerships. Offers the concept of the speaker-scientist to embed communication into training of scientists. The potential results include greater scientific fluency among non-scientists
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Long before the 2016 campaign, wild speculations about Hillary Clinton’s supposedly dire ailments abounded. These dubious rumors suddenly gained new traction when Hillary collapsed during the 9/11 commemorative ceremonies in New York.... more
Long before the 2016 campaign, wild speculations about Hillary Clinton’s supposedly dire ailments abounded. These dubious rumors suddenly gained new traction when Hillary collapsed during the 9/11 commemorative ceremonies in New York. Diagnosed with pneumonia, she then took three days off to recuperate. During her convalescence, Donald Trump pressed his advantage by re-energizing a narrative of his own health—despite refusing to release his own medical records—and immediately raised doubts about Clinton’s “stamina.” This narrative crystallized when Donald Trump, accompanied by his daughter Ivanka, appeared as the sole guest for an entire episode of popular The Dr. Oz Show that aired on 15 September. In this essay, the authors approach this episode of the program interpretively, using critical narrative analysis informed by feminist theory focusing on the female body’s sociocultural position in the political realm. The analysis employs a unique interpretive approach of interweaving the critical analysis with original poetry. As “bodies” of evidence themselves, the poems embody the voices of the protagonists’ somatic narratives that solidified during the program: Donald Trump’s ongoing proof of virility through reinforcing female fragility; Ivanka Trump’s embodiment of voluptuousness that springs from her father’s loins; Hillary Clinton’s attempt to establish a non-androcentric (but not emasculating) aura of competence and vigor.
Each poem speaks as the body of each protagonist, articulating how representations of the body play a central role in constituting candidates. Collectively, the poems and the narrative analysis track the evolution of a larger cultural narrative linking malfunctioning female bodies with professional malfeasance and moral decrepitude.
Each poem speaks as the body of each protagonist, articulating how representations of the body play a central role in constituting candidates. Collectively, the poems and the narrative analysis track the evolution of a larger cultural narrative linking malfunctioning female bodies with professional malfeasance and moral decrepitude.
Research Interests:
Communication centers--be they writing, speaking, digital, or some combination thereof—offer students unique opportunities to learn by mentoring their peers. On this panel, students and faculty discuss how a university communication... more
Communication centers--be they writing, speaking, digital, or some combination thereof—offer students unique opportunities to learn by mentoring their peers. On this panel, students and faculty discuss how a university communication center can implement meaningful applied learning experiences through peer-to-peer oral communication instruction. Panelists share their analysis and experiences related to: how teaching beyond the classroom intensifies their own learning; extending communication skill development to communities of people facing developmental and emotional challenges; and generating student-faculty research collaborations that can improve instructional practice.
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To counteract strengthening currents of bigotry and to prepare for the imminent loss of the few remaining Holocaust survivors, students use archival research in the world’s largest collection of Holocaust survivor video testimonies to... more
To counteract strengthening currents of bigotry and to prepare for the imminent loss of the few remaining Holocaust survivors, students use archival research in the world’s largest collection of Holocaust survivor video testimonies to generate original creative projects that bring these
testimonies to wider, current audiences and issues. This presentation highlights several examples of these research-grounded creative works spanning various media.
testimonies to wider, current audiences and issues. This presentation highlights several examples of these research-grounded creative works spanning various media.
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Teaching the basic communication course online can present many challenges due to restricted personal interaction and lack of information about the pedagogical needs of students. More rigorous gathering of data about student knowledge and... more
Teaching the basic communication course online can present many challenges due to restricted personal interaction and lack of information about the pedagogical needs of students. More rigorous gathering of data about student knowledge and skill levels at the outset of courses can target where additional skill development may be needed. Student-to-student peer tutoring offered in communication centers intensifies instruction in needed areas, more thoroughly preparing students without overburdening the instructor.
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Service-learning places students and educational institutions in direct contact with surrounding communities, teaches them greater appreciation for persons of different social privileges, and helps them to recognize the necessity of... more
Service-learning places students and educational institutions in direct contact with surrounding communities, teaches them greater appreciation for persons of different social privileges, and helps them to recognize the necessity of social intervention in distributing the benefits of democracy. Service-learning is inherently democratizing by combating the separation of higher education from its beneficiaries, and by avoiding the social stratification that new technologies can bring. Including a service component in education can offset the individualistic focus of technologized learning and encourages students to take responsibility for how they and their classmates learn.
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In the Emmy Award-winning reality television series Undercover Boss, now in its sixth season in the United States, the heads of corporations don disguises to infiltrate their companies and observe how they operate. The plot structure and... more
In the Emmy Award-winning reality television series Undercover Boss, now in its sixth season in the United States, the heads of corporations don disguises to infiltrate their companies and observe how they operate. The plot structure and characterization recast the persona of the distant, greedy CEO as a vulnerable, caring dispenser of just rewards to deserving employees. This focus on fulfilling individual American Dreams simultaneously de-emphasizes systemic reforms that could broaden employees’ access to success.
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Preliminary findings from the Pilot Rollout of e-Portfolios (PREP) Project, funded by a grant from the University of North Carolina General administration
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Testimony, Digital Media, History and Memory, Trauma Studies, Oral history, and 9 morePoetics, Memory Studies, Holocaust Studies, Holocaust education, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Trauma and Witnessing, Witnessing, Memory and Trauma, Holocaust Shoah, and History of Holocaust Survivors In the Aftermath of World War II
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Several poems from Featured Poet in Manna magazine, Spring 1994:
*Folkston, Georgia
*Not a Moment to Lose
*What the Forest Teaches Us: Lesson 1
*The Solo Accompanist
*Aftermath
*A Winter Afternoon at Congaree Swamp
*Folkston, Georgia
*Not a Moment to Lose
*What the Forest Teaches Us: Lesson 1
*The Solo Accompanist
*Aftermath
*A Winter Afternoon at Congaree Swamp
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Schwartzman, Roy. "Pendulums." Iowa Journal of Literary Studies 10 (1989): 140.
Available at: http://ir.uiowa.edu/ijls/vol10/iss1/38
Available at: http://ir.uiowa.edu/ijls/vol10/iss1/38
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Here I'm the featured guest on Liquid Philosophy, Season 4, Episode 2: The special edition on Halloween and the US elections.
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From the interview on "Deceptive Political Advertising" I did with WFDD-FM radio. It aired on Oct. 19 as part of the NPR Fall Fund Drive.
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<Seeking Justice> radio program & video footage. Airing dates/venues: >YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYegfLhvXSdvdCfRSyUFRRA... >TV: Public Television Channel 23 in Greenville, Jacksonville & New Bern, NC:... more
<Seeking Justice> radio program & video footage. Airing dates/venues:
>YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYegfLhvXSdvdCfRSyUFRRA...
>TV: Public Television Channel 23 in Greenville, Jacksonville & New Bern, NC: https://www.gpattv23.org/about-us
Here's the raw footage: https://us02web.zoom.us/.../7_NAizhDnfv2Njq1KoQ7lNjGFWXjK...
RADIO:
>Friday, September 18th at 11am then the following Tuesday, September 22nd at 11am on WCOM 103.5FM. Anyone wishing to listen on the radio may do so at 11am (either day) at this link:
https://tunein.com/radio/WCOM-LP-1035-s39265/
So click that link on that day and at that time for the livestream. It also airs on radio stations throughout the east region of NC.
It also airs in Virginia on:
WMVA, WHEE in Martinsville, VA
WDVA in Danville, VA
WKBY in Chatham, VA
In North Carolina on:
WYNC in Yanceyville, NC
WCOM in Chapel Hill, NC
PBS East in NC
Curtis Media - WPFT in NC
NC Policy Watch
WNOS New Bern, NC
In South Carolina on:
WTDF-The Point
In Louisiana on:
WKSY - 8 Station Manager
In the Washington D.C. area on:
WERA - Arlington, VA
>YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYegfLhvXSdvdCfRSyUFRRA...
>TV: Public Television Channel 23 in Greenville, Jacksonville & New Bern, NC: https://www.gpattv23.org/about-us
Here's the raw footage: https://us02web.zoom.us/.../7_NAizhDnfv2Njq1KoQ7lNjGFWXjK...
RADIO:
>Friday, September 18th at 11am then the following Tuesday, September 22nd at 11am on WCOM 103.5FM. Anyone wishing to listen on the radio may do so at 11am (either day) at this link:
https://tunein.com/radio/WCOM-LP-1035-s39265/
So click that link on that day and at that time for the livestream. It also airs on radio stations throughout the east region of NC.
It also airs in Virginia on:
WMVA, WHEE in Martinsville, VA
WDVA in Danville, VA
WKBY in Chatham, VA
In North Carolina on:
WYNC in Yanceyville, NC
WCOM in Chapel Hill, NC
PBS East in NC
Curtis Media - WPFT in NC
NC Policy Watch
WNOS New Bern, NC
In South Carolina on:
WTDF-The Point
In Louisiana on:
WKSY - 8 Station Manager
In the Washington D.C. area on:
WERA - Arlington, VA
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On Carolina Curious, WFDD Radio. 30 March 2020. [audio + text]
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On Carolina Curious, WFDD Radio. Insights on logical fallacies associated with the coronavirus pandemic. 23 March 2020. [audio + text]
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99 year-old World War II veteran Roscoe Joyner tells about entering Buchenwald concentration camp. This brief video contains annotations that can serve as teaching aids.
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Featured guest on 25 April 2018 edition of "Seeking Justice" radio program on 90.9 FM WQFS.
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Go to link: http://ure.uncg.edu/prod/cweekly/2017/09/11/roy-schwartzman-works-share-holocaust-survivor-testimonies/
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Special segment on "Capital Tonight," Spectrum News, 27 June 2017
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WQFS radio 90.9 FM
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On Wed., March 1st, Roy Schwartzman was the featured guest on the WQFS radio 90.9 FM program "Seeking Justice." Host Mary Kendall Hope describes this edition of the program as follows: Topic: What is the difference between "News" &... more
On Wed., March 1st, Roy Schwartzman was the featured guest on the WQFS radio 90.9 FM program "Seeking Justice." Host Mary Kendall Hope describes this edition of the program as follows:
Topic: What is the difference between "News" & "Journalism"? And do we in the U.S. need to separate the two to establish what is legitimate?
The objective of the show is to elevate the discussion to examine both sides of a topic equally - to seek understanding and why both sides "seek justice" in their perspective. For by elevating the relevant points of a topic, we may better, more holistically understand how to transcend the conflicts embedded within.
http://www.guilford.edu/student-…/student-media/…/index.aspx
Topic: What is the difference between "News" & "Journalism"? And do we in the U.S. need to separate the two to establish what is legitimate?
The objective of the show is to elevate the discussion to examine both sides of a topic equally - to seek understanding and why both sides "seek justice" in their perspective. For by elevating the relevant points of a topic, we may better, more holistically understand how to transcend the conflicts embedded within.
http://www.guilford.edu/student-…/student-media/…/index.aspx
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Undergraduate Honors course focusing on Holocaust survivor testimony. Offered in conjunction with the Shoah Foundation Institute Visual History Archive.
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Teaching and Learning, Learning and Teaching, Genocide Studies, Trauma Studies, Communication Of Memory In Archives, Libraries And Museums, and 8 moreHolocaust Studies, Digital Archives, Holocaust, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Witnessing, Memory and Trauma, Holocaust Shoah, Web Video Testimonials, and History of Holocaust Survivors In the Aftermath of World War II
Undergraduate Honors course focusing on Holocaust survivor testimony.
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Exercise connecting Primo Levi's concept of the "grey zone" (cf. <The Drowned and the Saved>) with video testimonies in the Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive. Can be applied to any video archive of survivor testimonies.
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Reaction paper guidelines for <This Is Your Life> TV program, May 1953 episode on Hannah Bloch Kohner.
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Undergraduate Honors course on Holocaust survivor testimony. Guidelines for final creative project.
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Undergraduate Honors course focusing on Holocaust survivor testimony.
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Course syllabus for undergraduate course in history of rhetorical theory
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Abstract: Rhetoricians since Plato's day have been concerned with how much knowledge speakers should possess in order to speak effectively as well as ethically. The expert, like anyone, can err, but the chance of factual error... more
Abstract: Rhetoricians since Plato's day have been concerned with how much knowledge speakers should possess in order to speak effectively as well as ethically. The expert, like anyone, can err, but the chance of factual error decreases when speakers have a thorough grasp of their subject matter. However, the expertise position can potentially become a means of repressing public expression and quelling challenges to authority. Classical scholars Antonius, Sulpicius, and Gorgias did not require orators to possess specialized ...
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There are two views of the rhetorical principle of "kairos," or timeliness: first, the deterministic notion of "kairos" as a preordained "right" time in which certain activities are appropriate, and second,... more
There are two views of the rhetorical principle of "kairos," or timeliness: first, the deterministic notion of "kairos" as a preordained "right" time in which certain activities are appropriate, and second, the relativistic notion of "kairos" as an exercise "in the nick of time." A satisfactory definition of "kairos" must acknowledge that some well-timed rhetorical effects (humor, for example) cannot be determined by strict rules, but rather are relative to context and situation. The relativistic dimension of "kairos" also explains how rhetorical truth relies not on the representation of objective ...
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Аннотация Focuses on the impact of student participation in service-learning on the overreliance on technology to improve education. Role of service-learning in raising consciousness about community obligations; Inculcation of the sense... more
Аннотация Focuses on the impact of student participation in service-learning on the overreliance on technology to improve education. Role of service-learning in raising consciousness about community obligations; Inculcation of the sense of caring for others; Equation of learning with individual efforts.
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Academia.edu helps academics follow the latest research.
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An educational environment characterized by shrinking fiscal and physical resources has spurred many institutions to undertake comprehensive academic program review. Such a process assesses the performance of programs and prioritizes them... more
An educational environment characterized by shrinking fiscal and physical resources has spurred many institutions to undertake comprehensive academic program review. Such a process assesses the performance of programs and prioritizes them for de-emphasis, maintenance, or enhancement. How can applied learning be properly acknowledged within program review? On the macro level, performance criteria can be re-envisioned to reward the pedagogical practices embodied in applied learning. On the micro level, an applied ...
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Abstract: Hypothesizing that metaphoric portrayals of students as consumers/customers should cause consternation, this paper constitutes a pragmatic examination of metaphor and focuses on how the choice of metaphors implicates policies... more
Abstract: Hypothesizing that metaphoric portrayals of students as consumers/customers should cause consternation, this paper constitutes a pragmatic examination of metaphor and focuses on how the choice of metaphors implicates policies and practices. It begins by tracing the philosophical development of the description of students as consumers/customers, and explains its antithetical nature with relation to the service-learning initiative. The paper suggests that several alternative metaphoric possibilities and ...
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The concept of postmodernism has gained so much popularity in competitive debate that it has been advocated as a decision-making paradigm (Kramer & Lang, 1993). Careful consideration of the suggested paradigm occasions reflection on the... more
The concept of postmodernism has gained so much popularity in competitive debate that it has been advocated as a decision-making paradigm (Kramer & Lang, 1993). Careful consideration of the suggested paradigm occasions reflection on the role postmodernism might play in academic debate. This essay explores the proposal that debate should be conducted according to a postmodern perspective. An examination of postmodernism reveals that postmodern tendencies, particularly advocacy of inconsistency, run counter to ...
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The concept of postmodernism has gained so much popularity in competitive debate that it has been advocated as a decision-making paradigm (Kramer & Lang, 1993). Careful consideration of the suggested paradigm occasions reflection on the... more
The concept of postmodernism has gained so much popularity in competitive debate that it has been advocated as a decision-making paradigm (Kramer & Lang, 1993). Careful consideration of the suggested paradigm occasions reflection on the role postmodernism might play in academic debate. This essay explores the proposal that debate should be conducted according to a postmodern perspective. An examination of postmodernism reveals that postmodern tendencies, particularly advocacy of inconsistency, run counter to ...
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Schwartzman, R. (1997). Review of A Teacher’s Introduction to Postmodernism, by Ray Linn. Communication Education, 46, 213-214.
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Schwartzman, R. (1999). Review of <Communication Criticism: Developing Your Critical Powers,> by Jodi R. Cohen. Southern Communication Journal, 64, 178-180.
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Nano-Hype occupies an unusual niche. Since the author is a communication researcher and not a scientist, the book avoids scientific technicalities. It surveys the state of nanotechnology as a political and economic force without passing... more
Nano-Hype occupies an unusual niche. Since the author is a communication researcher and not a scientist, the book avoids scientific technicalities. It surveys the state of nanotechnology as a political and economic force without passing judgment on specific research. With a target audience of the general public (the publisher classifies the book as popular science), readers do not get a critical study in the conventional sense. Instead, Nano-Hype provides a propadeutic for communication research about nanotechnology.
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Presentation for the panel Antisemitism: From Persecution to Genocide. Greensboro, NC: 30 March 2016. Panel featured 2 Holocaust survivors, Dr. Karl Schleunes (emeritus professor of History, UNCG), and me.