Media Conversations VI 2009 : An International Conference of Youth, Media, and Education

Media Conversations VI 2009 : An International Conference of Youth, Media, and Education

June 4 - 6 2009, NYC

Stop by and PARTICIPATE.
Media Literacy and Information Literacy - It's not just for breakfast anymore...

With consideration to Neil Postman's observation that 'children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see,' and Marshall McLuhan's reflection that 'the future isn't what it used to be,' we invite you to a FREE conference on media and information literacy taking place around NYC during the first week(end) of June, 2009. Space is limited.

Pratt Institute, Manhattan Campus : google maps
The Players Club: google maps
Fordham University, Lincoln Center Campus, McMahon Hall : google maps

For printing, posting, and further distribution, below you will find the conference poster in JPG format in a variety of sizes. Please distribute widely! :
Postercard : mediaconv_postcard
Flyer (2-up) : mediacon_flyer
8x11 : mediaconv_8x11
11x14 : mediaconv_11x14

Thursday, June 4th (5:30 PM - 9:30 PM)

Thus Spoke the Spectacle
Thursday evening, Pratt Institute, 144 West 14th St., 2nd. floor, 5.30-6.30pm

+ Eric Goodman
+ Mike Stevens

Thus Spoke The Spectacle is a music video media critique exploring the corporate-controlled, media-saturated, technological environment that has become our world. Producers Eric Goodman and Mike Stevens will present their concept of “radical media literacy” as embodied in their practice of deconstructing and reconfiguring the surface elements of the spectacle—news, politics, war, celebrity, advertising, etc.—in order to expose the deep-rooted ideologies embedded within our daily audio-visual barrage. The presentation will feature videos from the show accompanied by commentary from the producers.

Screening : Consuming Kids
Thursday evening, Pratt Institute, 144 West 14th St., 2nd. floor, 6.30-8.00pm

Conference welcome...
Prereq : the necessity of psychological sustainability
David Walczyk, Pratt Institute

Followed by...
The Manhattan Premiere of the film 'Consuming Kids' (67 minutes)

From the film's website : 'Consuming Kids throws desperately needed light on the practices of a relentless multi-billion dollar marketing machine that now sells kids and their parents everything from junk food and violent video games to bogus educational products and the family car. Drawing on the insights of health care professionals, children's advocates, and industry insiders, the film focuses on the explosive growth of child marketing in the wake of deregulation, showing how youth marketers have used the latest advances in psychology, anthropology, and neuroscience to transform American children into one of the most powerful and profitable consumer demographics in the world. Consuming Kids pushes back against the wholesale commercialization of childhood, raising urgent questions about the ethics of children's marketing and its impact on the health and well-being of kids.'

Conference Keynote : Tom de Zengotita
Thursday evening, Pratt Institute, 144 West 14th St., 2nd. floor, 8.00-9.30pm

Introduced by...
Tula Gianini, Dean, Pratt Institute School of Information and Library Science

'Teaching media literacy in our schools: why it is so easy to do badly and so hard to do well'

Tom DeZengotita is a contributing editor at Harper's Magazine. He teaches at The Dalton School and the Draper Graduate Program at New York University. His book Mediated, won the 2006 Marshall McLuhan Award from the Media Ecology Association.

Friday, June 5th (10:00 AM - 5:30 PM and 7:30 - 9:30 PM)

Panel : Media Education and the Future of Journalism
Friday morning, Pratt Institute, 144 West 14th St., 2th. floor, 10:00am-12:00pm

+ Cynthia Walker, Saint Peter's College (moderator)
+ Donna Halper, Lesley University
+ Alan Hayakawa, Patriot News
+ Neil Hickey, Columbia Journalism Review
+ Beth Knobel, Fordham University
+ Alex Wright, New York Times

Topics will include :
+ From Gutenberg to the Internet and Beyond
+ The Way Forward in Journalism Education: Going Back to Basics

Panel : Childhood
Friday afternoon, Pratt Institute, 144 West 14th St., 2nd. floor, 1.00-3:00pm

+ Jessica Hochman, Pratt Institute (moderator)
+ Gretchen Hams-Caserotti, Darien Public Library
+ Twila Liggett, Marymount Manhattan College
+ Ed Miller, Alliance for Childhood
+ Mary Rothschild, Healthy Media Choices
+ Rosemarie Truglio, Sesame Workshop

Topics will include :
+ Take, Take, Take Your Test": The Death of Kindergarten Play
+ Healthy Media Choices: a focus on the parents and teachers of young children

Panel : New Media Literacies
Friday afternoon, Pratt Institute, 144 West 14th St., 2nd. floor, 3:30-5:30pm

+ Paul Guzzardo, Urban Designer and Media Activist (moderator)
+ Thomas Gillespie, Quinnipiac University
+ Peter Gutierrez, Curriculum Developer; NCTE Commission on Media
+ Alex Quinn, Games for Change
+ David Walczyk, Pratt Institute

Topics will include :
+ Leveraging the Leviathan: a post-situationist trek
+ New Media Literacies at K-12: New for Students or New for Teachers?
+ Media Literacy for Phenomenological Culture
+ Media Literacy or Visual Thinking?

The Players Club Presents : Heroes and Role Models in Movies and Other Media
Friday evening, The Players Club, 16 Gramercy Park S, 7:30-9:30pm

+ Meir Ribalow, Fordham University (moderator)
+ Maria Cooper Janis
+ Susan McGregor, Friend's Way
+ Lee Pfeiffer, Cinema Retro
+ Victor Slezak, Actor
+ Lance Strate, Fordham University

back to top

Saturday, June 6th (10:00 AM - 5:30 PM)

Panel : Media Education in the Global Village
Saturday morning, Fordham University, Lincoln Center Campus, McMahon Hall, 155 West 60th St. between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues, 10.00-12.00am

+ Ron L. Jacobson, Fordham University (moderator)
+ Mary Bosco Amakwe, Seton Hall University
+ Paul Mihailidis, Hofstra University
+ Holly Morganelli, Pratt Institute
+ Jordi Torrent, Media Literacy Education Project, United Nations-Alliance of Civilizations & Duende Pictures

Topics will include:
+ In Transition: Voices of Zambian Street Youth Culture

Screening and Discussion : The LAMP
Saturday afternoon, Fordham University, Lincoln Center Campus, McMahon Hall, 155 West 60th St. between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues, 1.00-3.00pm

+ Katherine Fry, Brooklyn College/The LAMP
+ D.C. Vito, The LAMP

Panel : Mapping the Media
Saturday afternoon, Fordham University, Lincoln Center Campus, McMahon Hall, 155 West 60th St. between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues, 3:30-5:30pm

+ Thom Gencarelli, Manhattan College (moderator)
+ Renee Hobbs, Temple UNiversity
+ Dan Latorre, Consultant
+ Martin Levinson, Institute of General Semantics
+ Bill Petkanas, Western Connecticut State University

Topics will include:
+ Mapping the Media? But they Keep Changing the Borders!
+ Clashing Maps: News Media Producers and Consumers

Participants & Organizations

Bios

Mary Bosco Amakwe
Sister Dr. Bosco Amakwe, HFSN was born in Nigeria. She holds a Ph.D in Social Communication from the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome. Her specialty is in gender and women studies. Sister Amakwe is the author of The Factors Influencing the Mobility of Women to Leadership and Management Positions in Media Industries in Nigeria, and has published many articles on women in Africa, especially in the media. She is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Communication at Seton Hall University, New Jersey.

Katherine Fry
Associate Professor of media studies and Deputy Chair for Graduate Studies in the Department of Television and Radio at Brooklyn College of CUNY. Publications include Constructing the Heartland: Television News and Natural Disaster (2003, Hampton Press); Identities in Context: Media, Myth, Religion in Space and Time (2008, Hampton Press). Fry has also published articles about communication technology and psychological well-being, television news, advertising and popular culture, and radio. Current research is the history of news, and the future of news from the audience perspective.

Thom Gencarelli
Thom Gencarelli is the Chair of the Communication Dept. at Manhattan College in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, New York. He is the Vice President of the Media Ecology Association and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Institute for General Semantics, and is currently working on a book about language and cognitive development.

Tom Gillespie
Tom created and was the director of the MIME program at Indiana University. Currently he is the graduate director of Interactive Communications program at Quinnipiac University . Thom teaches classes in interactive storytelling, computer game design, 3D modeling, computer animation, citizen media for social change, memory projects and web design.

Peter Gutierrez
An NCTE spokesperson on new media, Peter developed a media literacy curriculum for Scholastic’s Expert 21. He’s blogged for MIT’s Project New Media Literacies and written on pop culture/media for School Library Journal, The Financial Times, and Screen Education. His book on teaching scriptwriting is due from Scholastic in 2010.

For two decades Peter has been a curriculum developer and instructional designer for a variety of major K-12 publishers. As a consultant to Scholastic, he developed a media literacy curriculum for the forthcoming Expert 21 program. Peter is also a spokesperson on new media and media literacy for the U.S. National Council of Teachers of English. As a member of its Commission on Media, he helps organize the New Media Gallery at NCTE’s annual convention by working with leading organizations such as Temple University’s Media Education Lab. He himself is also a speaker on media literacy at venues as diverse as Fordham University and New York Comic-Con.

Paul Guzzardo
My projects interject information networks---and the archives that move through networks---into a highly mediated public sphere. This requires collaborations and assembling flexible hardware and software systems, systems that work in a variety of different venues: nightclub, media lab, gallery, and the street.

Gretchen Hams-Caserotti
is the Head of Children’s Services at Darien Library (CT) where she is redefining library service to kids & families in the 21st century. Prior to coming to Darien, she was a Children’s Librarian at New York Public Library where her background in theatre, music and the arts put her in great demand for storytimes.

Alan Hayakawa
Alan is co-author, with S.I. Hayakawa, of the fifth edition of Language in Thought and Action and, with Toby Fulwiler, of The Blair Handbook and The College Writer's Reference. His career in journalism included reporting on local, state and national politics and writing about art, architecture and urban design for The Oregonian, Newhouse News Service in Washington, D.C., and The Patriot-News of Harrisburg, Pa., where as online editor he helped transition the newsroom into electronic publication.

Neil Hickey
Neil Hickey is a lifelong journalist who has reported from Vietnam, the Persian Gulf War, the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe (in the Soviet period), Cuba, Northern Ireland, and elsewhere. He was New York bureau chief of (the former) TV Guide, and later editor-at-large of the Columbia Journalism Review. He's currently adjunct associate professor at the Columbia Graduate Journalism School, and has taught recently in the media studies department at Fordham Lincoln Center.

Renee Hobbs
Renee Hobbs is a Professor of Communication at Temple University, where she founded the Media Education Lab. This summer, she hosts the Powerful Voices for Kids Summer Institute, a professional development program in media literacy and technology integration for elementary educators.

Jessica Hochman
Jessica Hochman is an assistant professor at Pratt Institute and the Library Media Specialist (LMS) program coordinator. Her background is in educational philosophy and cultural studies. She is interested in visual culture, critical theory, and gender studies. Her work focuses on the ways in which young people use technology to shape their identities in informal learning spaces and during their out of school time.

Ron Jacobson
is associate professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University where, after focusing his research and writing on media literacy, for the past 13 years has held various administrative positions, including associate dean of Fordham College, dean of the summer session, executive director of the new Westchester branch campus, and associate vice president for academic affairs. He is the author of Media Nutrition, Television Research, Television-Related Cartoons in The New Yorker, and co-editor with Lance Strate and Stephanie Gibson of Communication and Cyberspace.

Maria Cooper Janis
Maria Cooper Janis, daughter of the actor Gary Cooper and his wife Veronica Cooper, is a painter of note and is married to world renowned concert pianist Byron Janis. She has collaborated on three television specials: Gary Cooper, American Life, American Legend and The Life and Times of Gary Cooper, both for TNT, and with A&E’s Gary Cooper: The Face of a Hero. She has also collaborated with the PBS/French production Frederick Chopin: A Voyage with Byron Janis. Mrs. Janis frequently speaks around the country on such topics as “Growing Up in Hollywood”, often with her longtime friend Joan Benny.

She has written Gary Cooper Off Camera: A Daughter Remembers ). She has recently been working on a feature film documentary, The True Gen about the special 20-year friendship between Gary Cooper and Ernest Hemingway, the score of which is composed by Byron Janis. She is currently completing production on a documentary by Peter Rosen about the life of Byron Janis which is scheduled to be aired by WQED Pittsburgh in late 2009. In addition to film projects, she continues her work as a painter and also has commenced working with American Indian interests, something that was very close to her father’s heart.

Beth Knobel
Beth is an Assistant Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University. She also works as a freelance correspondent and producer for CBS News. Dr. Knobel served as Moscow Bureau Chief for CBS before joining the Fordham faculty in 2007. She is currently co-writing a guidebook for young journalists along with the legendary CBS News correspondent Mike Wallace.

Dan Latorre
For the past 11 years Daniel has been leading the launch of interactive experiences across Web, iTV, Games, and Social Media for design consultancies and brands including Warner Music Group, IFC, Fox, Clinique, Citibank, Razorfish, Funny Garbage, Rockstar Games, and recently as Executive Producer, Social Media Products for the Scholastic.com Teacher group. He is currently starting up a consulting practice specializing in social media strategy and online community organizing for nonprofit media, civics, and arts clients.

Martin H. Levinson
is the president of the Institute of General Semantics and the vice president of the New York Society for General Semantics. He is the author of three books on general semantics, The Drug Problem: A New View Using the General Semantics Approach (2002), Sensible Thinking for Turbulent Times (2006), and Practical Fairy Tales for Everyday Living (2007). He holds a PhD in Organizational and Administrative Studies from NYU.

Twila Liggett
Dr. Liggett, Founder and Executive Producer (through 2006) of PBS’ Reading Rainbow (1983 premier), won numerous awards including: the Prix Juenesse, the Peabody, and 26 national Emmys – ten for Outstanding Children's Series. Since 2006, Dr. Liggett has held the position of assistant professor in the education department at Marymount Manhattan College.

Susan McGregor
Susan McGregor’s professional career includes many years in the film and television industry in the United Kingdom as a creative development executive and script analyst for, among others, Columbia Pictures, BBC Television, Channel 4 and David Puttnam’s Enigma Productions. She also
judged the Lloyd’s Bank/Sunday Times screenwriting competitions and was a consultant and instructor for the Oxford Film Foundation’s summer script writing seminars. Subsequently she spent three years creating, administering and promoting several of Britain’s most prestigious literary
awards including the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize for Fiction. Since her return to the US she has been an Editorial and Public Relations Director, free-lance Creative and Media Consultant and after obtaining her MA, a Holistic Counselor with a specialty in the Expressive Arts. She is currently the Program Coordinator for FRIENDS WAY, RI’s only Children’s Bereavement Center and is also a consultant for New River, an organization which inspires, supports and develops excellence in playwriting, scriptwriting, fiction, poetry and music, based in North Carolina.

Paul Mihailidis
'New Frameworks for Global Media Education: The Salzburg Academy on Media & Global Change'
Paul Mihailidis is an assistant professor of Media Studies at Hofstra University in New York, and Director of the Salzburg Academy on Media & Global Change. Mihailidis's current research concerns the effectiveness of media education in teaching about media's roles and responsibilities in civil society. Mihailidis serves on the Board of Directors of the National Association for Media Literacy Education, and is the director of Media Education Initiatives for the International Center for Media & the Public Agenda at the University of Maryland.

Ed Miller
Ed is a founder of the U.S. Alliance for Childhood, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization, and of the New York Coalition for Play. He is co-author of Crisis in the Kindergarten: Why Children Need to Play in School (2009). A former editor of the Harvard Education Letter, Ed has taught at Harvard University and at Sarah Lawrence College, where he is a member of the Professional Advisory Board of the Child Development Institute.

Holly Morganelli
Holly Morganelli holds a M.I.L.S. from Pratt Institute. For two years, she as employed by Brooklyn Public Library as a P.U.L.S.E. Librarian Trainee. She recently returned from ten months in Southern Africa, beginning in Zambia and ending in Cape Town, South Africa. In Zambia, she volunteered at
a library initiative serving vulnerable children as the Nasser Sharify International Librarianship Fellow for Pratt Institute.

Bill Petkanas
Bill Petkanas is the Editor of ETC: A Review of General Semantics and the Chair of the Department of Communication at Western Connecticut State University. He received a PhD from New York University in Media Ecology and his area of teaching and research is language and media environments.

Lee Pfeiffer
is the Editor-in-Chief of Cinema Retro magazine and author/co-author of numerous books about the cinema, including The Complete Idiot's Guide to Classic Movies 1915-1969, The Great Fox War Movies, The Essential James Bond, The Films of Clint Eastwood, The Films of Harrison Ford, The John Wayne Scrapbook, The Ultimate Clint Eastwood Trivia Book, and The Incredible World of OO7. He co-produced the acclaimed documentaries The Making of Goldfinger, The Making of Thunderball and the Inside Dr. Strangelove for DVD release, as well as the audio commentary track with director Sidney Lumet for The Verdict. His web site at www.cinemaretro.com draws hundreds of thousands of readers each month.

Alex Quinn
Alex Quinn is the Executive Director for Games for Change. Before joining Games for Change, Alex was Executive Director of the Adult Literacy Media Alliance (ALMA), a project of Education Development Center. Alex has a background in instructional design, video production, and telecommunications policy, and was the executive director for community media centers in Oregon and New York City.

Meir Ribalow
has had 24 of his plays receive some 180 productions worldwide, including at Dublin ’s Abbey Theatre and numerous times in London and NY. They have won awards in London , New York , and regionally. His work is published and anthologized, and his play Sundance opens this weekend in NYC at Ensemble Studio Theatre. Several of his screenplays have been optioned; he was film columnist for The Sciences magazine, and has appeared as a film historian on The Discovery Channel and on special feature documentaries of several DVD releases of classic films. He is Artistic Director of New River, which over the past decade has developed 345 new plays and screenplays by 70 writers, more than 140 of which have already been produced or optioned; and he has directed plays in London and New York with Blythe Danner, Brian Dennehy, Holly Hunter, Allison Janney, Eli Wallach, Zero Mostel, Christopher Walken, Ruby Dee and many others.

Mary Rothschild
Mary Rothschild is founder and director of Healthy Media Choices, a 501c3 organization dedicated to the education of parents and teachers of young children about the use of media in the home and school, working out of Brooklyn, NY and Brattleboro, VT. She hosts a weekly radio program "The Healthy Media Choices Hour" on Brattleboro Community Radio.

Victor Slezak
Victor Slezak has been featured in many films including Salt, Bride Wars, Veronika Decides to Die, Happy Tears, The International and Taking Chance, as well as The Notorious Bettie Paige, The Siege, and The Bridges of Madison County. He has also appeared on Broadway in Salome (with Al Pacino); The Graduate; Jackie: an American Life; Suddenly Last Summer (opposite Elizabeth Ashley) and Any Given Day. Off Broadway, he has been seen in Willie Holtzman’s Something you Did and Sabina for Primary Stages; Neil LaBute’s Things We Said Today (with Dana Delaney); Beauty on the Vine;
Alan Ball’s All That I Will Ever Be; Paul Rudnick’s The Naked Truth; Horton Foote’s The Widow Claire, Ghosts (opposite Geraldine Page); The Hasty Heart; Talk Radio, and Christopher Shinn’s Other People, among others.

Lance Strate
Lance Strate is Professor Communication and Media Studies at Fordham University, Executive Director of the Institute of General Semantics, and Past President of the Media Ecology Association. The author of Echoes and Reflections: On Media Ecology as a Field of Study, and co-editor of
several anthologies, including The Legacy of McLuhan, and Communication and Cyberspace: Social Interaction in an Electronic Environment. He writes a blog on media, communication, and related subjects at <http://lancestrate.blogspot.com> and a poetry blog on MySpace, and is a partner in NeoPoiesis Press.

Jordi Torrent
After obtaining a degree in Philosophy at the University of Barcelona, Jordi followed graduate studies in Paris at the Sorbonne University (Film Esthetics) and at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Anthropology Filmmaking).

In addition to his extensive career as writer, producer and director in the film and television industry, Jordi was a Media Consultant for the Department of Education of New York City from 1990 to 2006. There he created a Media Literacy Education program that was implemented in over twenty five NYC schools. He also conducted media education workshops for teachers and parents. Jordi was Media Curator of Exit Art (New York) from 1985 to 1990 where he developed and presented a wide range of film and video programs. From 1980 to 1983 Jordi was the Parisbased correspondent for the film magazine Casablanca and the video and technology magazine Video Actualidad. In addition, Jordi has also published in Liberation, El Pais, the CNTV magazine and at OETI’s journal. Jordi is codirector of Media: Overseas Conversations, a series of annual conferences on media, youth and education held in New York since 2004. Currently he is Project Manager for the Media Literacy Education program of the United Nations - Alliance of Civilizations.

Rosemarie Truglio
Rosemarie T. Truglio is the Vice President of Education and Research at Sesame Workshop (formerly Children’s Television Workshop). Dr. Truglio is responsible for the development of the interdisciplinary curriculum on which “Sesame Street” is based, and oversees all educational research pertaining to the development of Sesame Street content. The results of basic and applied research studies inform both the production and creative decisions for how to enhance both the entertaining and educational components of Sesame Street. Dr. Truglio also develops and reviews the content across all Sesame Street media platforms and products.

Before joining Sesame Workshop in 1997, she was an Assistant Professor of Communication and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. She has written numerous articles appearing in child and developmental psychology journals; presented her work at national and international conferences; conducted media literacy workshops, and has appeared on numerous broadcast, cable, and radio network news and talk programs, including “The Today Show”, “Good Morning America”, CNN Headline News’ “Showbiz Tonight”, and NPR’s “Morning Edition”.

Dr. Truglio currently serves on several Advisory Boards: National Advisory Child Health and Human Development Council (NICHD), Children’s Digital Media Center, National Association for Media Literacy Education, PBS KIDS Next Generation Media Advisory Board, and the Mind Body and Child Advisory Board. Dr. Truglio received her Ph.D. in Developmental and Child Psychology from the University of Kansas, and her B.A in Psychology from Douglass College, Rutgers University.

D.C. Vito
is Chair of the Youth Services and Education committee of Brooklyn’s 6th Community Board. He has been an active community organizer for over a decade, managing and working on over 20 political and issue-oriented campaigns ranging from the local city council to national presidential races. He also served on the 6th Neighborhood Advisory Board of New York City’s Department of Youth and Community Development.

David Walczyk
Completed his doctoral training in media ecology and interaction (usability) design at Columbia University and his undergraduate work in computational design (computer science). An Assistant Professor at Pratt Institute, School of Information and Library Science where he teaches and researches through his work in physical computing and digital interactivity with cultural information at the Cultural Informatics Lab. Prior to Pratt, Walczyk was a fellow at the Computer Science and Telecommunication Board of the United States National Academy of Science (Washington D.C.), a visiting scholar at the Library of Congress, Design Engineer at General Electric Research & Development, and interaction designer at General Electric Multimedia. As a Flaneur and Drifter of urban places and spaces, he poetically searches for Benjamin's illusive Dialectical Image.

Cynthia Walker
Dr. Cynthia W. Walker is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at St. Peter’s College in Jersey City, NJ and covers professional regional theater for The Home News Tribune. Long involved in media literacy efforts in New Jersey, she has designed and piloted curriculum for grades 5-8. She has also written entries for the Encyclopedia of Television and several teacher’s guides for Pocket Books. She delivers on- screen commentary for The Man from U.N.C.L.E. DVD set distributed by Time/Life, and her latest essay, "The Future Just Beyond the Coat Hook: Technology, Politics and the Postmodern Sensibility in the Man From U.N.C.L.E." appears in Channeling the Future: Essays in Science Fiction and Fantasy Television, edited by Lincoln Geraghty and published by Scarecrow Press.

Alex Wright
Alex Wright is the Director of User Experience and Product Research at the New York Times and the author of Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages. In addition to the Times, he has written for
Salon.com, The Believer, The Christian Science Monitor, Harvard Magazine, and other publications.

Thursday, June 4th

Friday, June 5th

Saturday, June 6th

Participants & Organizations