UCSD Communication

The Communication Department at UCSD is a unique academic community bringing together scholars and media artists from many disciplines across the Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts to do cutting edge work in communication scholarship and practice.

The department is known worldwide for its innovative research, and its graduate program has been ranked #2 in the country by the National Communication Association in the area of Critical Cultural/Media Studies.

Among the distinctive features of the department are its synthesis of perspectives drawn from diverse disciplines, an emphasis on integrating communication theory with practice, a global focus and historical perspective, and a concern with issues of democracy, social change, power and inequality, and the role of media and communication processes in shaping these social realities.

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Transcalifornia Conference

12-13 February 2010

“TransCalifornia” is intended to bring together UC-affiliated scholars, artists, and activists working on California’s many geo-political and conceptual borders. In collaboration with the California Cultures in Comparative Perspective program at UC-San Diego, the MutliCampus Research Group in International Performance and Culture has organized “TransCalifornia” to include UC scholars and artists not currently affiliated with either group, but whose work critically explores California’s “borders,” in both the material and metaphoric sense of that word. We imagine such borders to include the spatial demarcations between California and Mexico; between California and Arizona, Nevada, and Oregon; between California and “international waters”; and between California and other geo-political members of the “Pacific Rim.” But we also intend to query “the border” as an allegorical model for other demarcations that constitute California’'s body politic, including the ideological borders of racial, ethnic, and sexual identification; and the very real boundaries of “citizenship” that define and delimit participation by individual subjects in California’s social and political processes. The “Trans-” of “TransCalifornia” thus represents the central nexus of inter-disciplinarity for the workshop.

Schedule

NEWS

Students in Prof. Nitin Govil's Communication 20 -Introduction to Communication have been producing projects on the crisis in higher education. One of their productions can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OQtp1UjpOo.

Zara Mirmalek has recently accepted a position as Postdoctoral Associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Program in Science, Technology, and Society. Zara defended her dissertation, “Solar Discrepancies: Mars Exploration and the Curious Problem of Inter-Planetary Time,” and obtained her PhD in Fall 2008.

La Clase Mágica, an after school program developed by Prof. Olga Vásquez, celebrated its 20th anniversary in October 2009. La Clase Mágica involves learners from low income communities and undergraduate students from UCSD in collaboration around computer and telecommunication activities in a variety of communities around the San Diego area. La Clase Mágica was highly praised by community leaders on the occasion of its 20th anniversary.

Professor Emeritus Michael Schudson's recently-released report, "The Reconstruction of American Journalism," co-authored with former Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie has been widely discussed around the country. Schudson and Downie's report raises the question how the vitral role of journalism in democracy can be sustained in the wake of the econonomic crisis that has undermined the traditional newspaper and television newsroom.