C&IS Bookshelf

Andrew C. Billings

Department of Journalism & Creative Media

American Sport in the Shadow of a Pandemic focuses on how communication practices, structures and principles change when a key locus—sport—has much of its cultural and political-economic power disrupted. Out of crisis, comes opportunity. In this instance, this volume provides an opportunity for leading scholars of communication and sport to consider which principles should be rethought or reconceptualized based on the effects of the pandemic on our culture, politics and economy.

Jeff Weddle

School of Library & Information Studies

Advice for Cannibals is a collection of poems written by award-winning poet Jeff Weddle that showcases his observation of the rapidly deteriorating human condition. Weddle’s poems connect to the condition of humans, showing how we are like animals desperately chasing the things we desire. His poems challenge worldviews through image-driven language.

In How It Went to Pieces, Jeff Weddle casts his gaze at old age, love, children, dogs and cats, cannibals and death. Weddle poems showcase themes from poverty to abundance with wry sketches and more. His poetry creates clear and unfiltered scenes that feel tangible to the reader, allowing the collection to challenge perception and call out bitter injustices and triumphs in the strength of the human heart.

Chris Roberts

Department of Journalism & Creative Media

Doing Ethics in Media: Theories and Practical Applications is an accessible, comprehensive introduction to media ethics. Its theoretical framework and grounded discussions engage students to think clearly and systematically about dilemmas in the rapidly changing media environment, and is organized around six decision-making questions that encourage students to articulate the issues; apply codes, policies or laws; consider the needs of stakeholders; sift and sort through conflicting values; integrate philosophical principles; and pose a "test of publicity." The book is aimed at college students studying media ethics in mass media, journalism, and media studies and serves students in rhetoric, popular culture, and communication studies.

Karla Gower

Department of Advertising & Public Relations

The Role of Leadership in Building Inclusive Diversity in Public Relations focuses on the relationship between leadership and diversity, inclusion and equity within the US public relations industry. In this text, the authors build a conceptual framework and model for inclusive leadership in public relations that addresses industry dynamics that demonstrates how diversity and inclusion efforts cannot succeed without leadership support that commits to and assumes responsibility and accountability for the structural and cultural changes required. The book is timely as a resource for public relations scholars and as a supplementary text for advanced courses and provides practitioners theoretical guidance on how to improve diversity, inclusion and equity in their organizations.

Jessica Maddox

Department of Journalism & Creative Media

The Internet is for Cats examines how animal images are employed to create a lighter, more playful mood, uniting users within online spaces that can otherwise easily become fractious and toxic. Placing today’s pet videos, photos, and memes within a longer history of mediated animal images, Jessica Maddox explores the roles that animals play within online economies of cuteness and attention. Throughout the text, Maddox combines observations and textual analysis with extensive interviews of the people who create, post and share animal media, leaving readers with a new appreciation for the human social practices behind the animal images you encounter online.

Karla Gower

Department of Advertising & Public Relations

Betsy Ann Plank The Making of a Public Relations Icon details the life of the first woman to chair the Public Relations Society of America in its twenty-five-year history. From the start and throughout the span of her sixty-three-year career in public relations, she managed to overcome the very real barriers she faced due to gender-based discrimination in what was a male-dominated industry, serving in many executive roles for top-ranked companies. In the biography, Karla Gower explores Plank’s personal life and career, tracing her evolution from a low-level job in advertising through her contributions to the rise of the rapidly changing PR industry in the 1960s and the evolution of her personal devotion to the enhancement of public relations education.

Kenon A. Brown

Department of Advertising & Public Relations

Whether it's the Roosevelt administration's impact on the formation of the NCAA, the protest of the Vietnam War by Muhammad Ali, or the rise of rap and hip-hop in the 90s and its penetration of the NBA's image, the impact of American politics and culture on the sports industry, and vice versa, is evident throughout the halls of history. The 20th and 21st centuries mark an interesting period of time to explore this relationship. The United States of Sport uncovers how media outlets portrayed several of these intersections in politics, culture and sports, with each chapter highlighting a moment or phenomenon in American history and its direct or indirect impact on some aspect of the sports industry through the eyes of newspapers, magazines, television, radio and online news outlets.

Laurie Bonnici

School of Library & Information Studies

Proximity and Epidata: Attributes and Meaning Modification provides a new model to explore discoverability and enhance the meaning of information. Coining the term epidata, the authors sketch a constellation of proximities, present examples of attempts to accomplish proximity, and provoke a discussion of the role of proximity in the field. In addition, the authors suggest that proximity is a thread between retrieval constructs based on known topics, predictable relations, and types of information seeking that lie outside constructs such as browsing, stumbling, encountering, detective work, art making and translation.