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Mass Communications and Media Arts Faculty
The close relationships students form with our internationally renowned faculty lead to successes and paves the way for you to find your own path. Our people, working with students in small classroom settings, collaborating on numerous public service projects, or simply chatting in the hallway while going to a class, matter most.
Lisa Brooten, Professor
Radio, Television, and Digital Media
Lisa Brooten, PhD, is a Professor in the College of Arts and Media at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, USA. Her research and publications focus on authoritarianism and media, human rights and media, media reform and democratization, social movement media, community and indigenous media, and the interplay of journalism, media reform advocacy and affect and trauma. Her regional expertise is in Southeast Asia, especially Myanmar, the Philippines and Thailand, where she has travelled and conducted fieldwork for many years, including a Fulbright Research Fellowship in 2007-2008, and an ASEAN Fulbright Research Fellowship in 2021-2022. She has consulted for Freedom House, Radio Free Asia Burmese Service and PEN American Center. She is an associate editor of Media Asia and lead editor of Myanmar Media in Transition: Legacies, Challenges and Change (ISEAS, 2019).View Full Bio
Office: COMM 1050G
lbrooten@siu.edu
David R. Burns, Associate Professor
Radio, Television, and Digital Media
David R. Burns is a digital media artist and publishing scholar who explores the relationships between humans, technology, and nature in his creative-research. More specifically, he focuses on the tensions between technology, culture, and nature in the public and private spheres; mediating memory and postmemory; and participatory self-expression through visual music. Burns takes an interdisciplinary approach to creating digital media art by combining computer animation, 3D modeling, 3D printing, sound design, interactive media, and physical computing to push the boundaries of artistic expression. In addition to creating hybrid projects that are both artistic exhibitions and scholarly publications, Burns publishes scholarly essays where he contextualizes his artistic projects and critically analyzes contemporary issues in media arts.
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Office: COMM 2224
drburns@siu.edu
Website: www.davidrburns.com
Cade Bursell, Professor
Cinema
Cade Bursell’s creative work engages both experimental processes and a socially engaged media arts practice with a focus on human rights and environmental issues, and grounded in an understanding of the relationship between medium and meaning. Her interests include queer studies, women’s studies, environmental and animal studies and Buddhist philosophy. Her creative practice is guided by a set of ethical principles that involves a deep regard, concern and recognition of the complex interdependence of all forms of life.
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Office: Northwest Annex B212
cbursell@siu.edu
William Freivogel, Professor
School of Journalism and Advertising
Professor Bill Freivogel served as Director of the School of Journalism from 2006-14. He came to SIU after 34 years at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. He was a member of the newspaper's Washington bureau for 12 years, where he served as assistant bureau chief, focused on the Supreme Court and reported on such historic events as the assassination attempt on President Reagan and the confirmation fight over Clarence Thomas. He returned to St. Louis and became the deputy editorial page editor in 1997.
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Office: COMM 1202C
wfreivog@siu.edu
Published Articles
Dong Han, Associate Professor
School of Journalism and Advertising
Dong Han’s education shifted from English language and literature to law and finally to media and communications research. From 1999 to 2004, he was a lawyer at the Legal Office of China Central Television, China’s national TV network. As a researcher, he is interested in how market relations expand and deepen in a wide array of media and cultural sectors. His papers appeared in journals including Media, Culture & Society, International Journal of Communication, and Television & New Media.
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Office: COMM 1226
donghan@siu.edu
Jyotsna Kapur, Professor, Director Honors Program
Cinema
Dr. Jyotsna Kapur is a Professor of Cinema and Media Studies and cross-appointed with Sociology. Her research and teaching interests include: Marxist-feminist theory of media arts and culture; the cultural politics of labor, class, race, and sexuality in neoliberalism; History and theory of the documentary idea; Third Cinema; and Global children's media culture and its relation to time consciousness. She is the author of The Politics of Time and Youth in Brand India: Bargaining with Capital (2013), Coining for Capital: Movies, Marketing, and the Transformation of Childhood (2005); and with Keith Wagner, Neoliberalism and Global Cinema: Capital, Culture, and Marxist Critique (2012). She is currently working on 19th century rethinking of the relationship between art, technology, and mass production relating it to the emerging thinking, including Marx's, of the concept of species-being and its relationship to the aesthetic impulse.View Full Bio
Office: COMM 1121G
jkapur@siu.edu
CV
Kavita Karan, Professor
School of Journalism and Advertising
Dr. Kavita Karan is a Professor in the School of Journalism and Advertising. Dr. Karan received her PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science, United Kingdom and the Master of Philosophy (M.Phil), Master of Communication and Journalism (MCJ) and Bachelor of Communication and Journalism (BCJ) from Osmania University, Hyderabad, India. Dr. Karan teaches a variety of courses that include; Communication research methods, several Advertising courses, politics and media, and health communication. Her research interests include, political communication, strategic marketing and advertising, new media technologies and development, health communication, women’s studies and Bollywood cinema.
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Office: COMM 1226
kavitak@siu.edu
Wago Kreider, Associate Professor
Radio, Television, and Digital Media
Wago Kreider, Associate Professor, is a media artist and experimental filmmaker. His creative work engages with contemporary strategies of artistic reenactment, the reconstruction of cinematic history, and the impact of film history on our perceptions of landscape and the environment. His films have screened at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Rotterdam International Film Festival, the London Film Festival, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., the Hong Kong Film Festival, Views from the Avant-Garde at the New York Film Festival, the European Media Art Festival in Osnabrück, Germany, the Paris Festival of Different & Experimental Cinema, and at the International Film Festival of Vienna. He has participated in artist residencies at the Experimental Television Center in Owego, Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center in New York City, Basement Films/Experiments in Cinema in Albuquerque, and at Berlinale Talents as part of the Berlin International Film Festival.
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Office: COMM 1050F
wkreider@siu.edu
Website: Studio 27
Bridget Lescelius, Associate Lecturer
School of Journalism and Advertising
Bridget Lescelius’ career spans over 30 years in advertising and marketing, including vice president and partner of Spark in Phoenix, Arizona; senior associate of marketing at the Institute for Supply Management in Tempe, Arizona; co-founder and principal at The Big Idea, Inc. in Alexandria, Virginia; senior account executive at The Washington Agency in Washington, D.C.
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Phone: 618-536-3361
Office: COMM 1221
blescelius@siu.edu
Sarah Lewison, Professor
Radio, Television, and Digital Media
Associate Professor Sarah Lewison is a media producer, artist, and writer whose work examines power, economics and political subjectivity. Her teaching and research areas include media and social change, ecological pedagogy and experimental performance. Her video work includes the documentary Fat of the Land which screened on PBS and in museums, festivals and community spaces worldwide, and is nationally noted for stimulating the do-it-yourself waste-grease bio-diesel movement. Prof. Lewison's writing about media aesthetics, social history, sustainability and culture has been published in Tema (Denmark), Journal of Northeast Studies (Hamburg, Germany), Area (Chicago), and "Failure! Experiments in Aesthetics and Social Practices" (Aesthetics and Protest Pub., LA). She holds a Master of Fine Arts degree from University of California San Diego.
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Office: Comm 1050E
slewison@siu.edu
Website: sarahlewison.com
Walter Metz, Professor
Cinema
Walter Metz is a Full Professor in the School of Media Arts at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. He earned a Ph.D. in Radio/Television/Film at the University of Texas at Austin in 1996, and holds an S.B. degree in Materials Science and Engineering from MIT (1989). He is the author of three books: Engaging Film Criticism: Film History and Contemporary American Cinema (2004), Bewitched (2007), and Gilligan’s Island (2012). He is also the author of sixty refereed journal articles and book chapters about the intertextual relationships between film, television, novels, and theatre. His work roves across disciplines, grappling with the importance of audio-visual productions for understanding such disparate subjects as gender, comedy, poetry, opera, the Cold War, the Holocaust, science, and animals.
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H.D. Motyl, Associate Professor, Director School of Theater and Dance
Radio, Television, and Digital Media
H.D. Motyl is an Associate Professor at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where he teaches media production and writing for TV. His feature-length documentary about professional rodeo cowboys called Cowboy Christmas was honored as Best Feature Documentary at the Madrid International Film Festival and as Best of the Fest for Faculty Documentary at the Broadcast Education Association’s Festival of Media Arts.
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Phone: 618-453-6992
hdmotyl@siu.edu
Jay Needham, Professor
Radio, Television, and Digital Media
Jay Needham is a sound artist, musician, image maker, writer-editor and cultural producer who utilizes multiple creative platforms to produce his works, many of which have a focus on sound and site-specific field research. As a hearing-divergent person, Needham makes work that often involves sensing and experiencing sound across many modalities. His sound art, works for radio, visual art, performances and installations have appeared at museums, festivals and on the airwaves, worldwide. His most recent sound installation is on permanent display in the BioMuseo, designed by Frank Gehry in The Republic of Panama.
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Office: COMM 1050D
jayn@siu.edu
Heather M. O'Brien-Takahashi, Assistant Professor
Cinema
Heather M. O’Brien-Takahashi is an artist, filmmaker, and writer. She works in film/video, photography, and installation to build encounters with familial archives, constructs of nationhood, and the illusion of accurate memory.
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Office: COMM 1050B
heather.obrien@siu.edu
Website: heathermobrien.com
Cinzia Padovani, Associate Professor
Radio, Television, and Digital Media
Cinzia Padovani is Associate Professor with Tenure in the Department of Radio Television and Digital Media, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, U.S.A. She holds an MA in Education (1989, University of L’Aquila Italy) and a PhD in Media Studies (1999, University of Colorado Boulder).
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Office: COMM 2223
padovani@siu.edu
Published Articles
Robert Spahr, Director of the School of Media Arts, Associate Professor
Robert Spahr is an Associate Professor and Director of the School of Media Arts at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. He is a visual artist who produces code-based automated art, live art performance, drawing, painting and sculpture all of which explores the nature of the Internet, it's strengths and failures, producing what has been called a post-Internet art that reflects the networks effect on our society and culture.
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Office: Northwest Annex 213B
rspahr@siu.edu
CV (pdf)
Jan Thompson, Director - Professor
School of Journalism and Advertising
Professor Thompson is a 3-time Emmy award winning filmmaker and composer.
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Office: COMM 1050J
janione@siu.edu
James Wall, Senior Lecturer
Radio, Television, and Digital Media, Journalism
James A. Wall teaches within the Electronic Media Marketing and Management sequence. Prior to becoming a full-time educator, Jim worked in the commercial broadcast industry for over twenty years in sales and marketing. He earned both a B.S. in Radio-Television and an M.A. in Media Management from SIUC.
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Office: COMM 1050C
jwall@siu.edu
Hong Zhou, Associate Professor
Cinema
Hong is interested in fictional narrative filmmaking. His recent work includes "Night Train", a story about two strangers' encounters in a subway, "She Wears Yellow", a study of fictional characters, and "Sarah and Liz", a story about two sisters' adventures into the wildness. Initially influenced by surrealist painting and early experimental films, Hong's work explores the conflict and interplay between conscious and subconscious as narrative force in storytelling. Having recently worked as cinematographer on a new HD feature film, Hong is excited about the new creative possibilities of HD as a compelling narrative medium, and is planning on shooting his next project using the latest digital cinema technology.
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Office: COMM 1121H
hzhou@siu.edu