Center for Media, Religion and Culture

The Center for Media, Religion, and Culture is an entity under Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Colorado at Boulder that aims at cultivating knowledge and promoting research on the representation and interpretation of religion in popular media, both inside and outside the U.S. The center was founded in 2006 by Professor Stewart M. Hoover, a Journalism and Mass Communication faculty known for his work on popular media and religions. In addition to hosting several international conferences that address current issues in media, religion and culture, the center offers fellowship programs for domestic and international scholars interested in conducting research on related subjects.

History

The idea to establish a center for media, religion and culture was introduced by Paul S. Voakes in 2003 when the dean saw Hoover’s success in attracting support from the Lilly Endowment, Inc to conduct research on media and religion. What started as a research collaboration between Hoover, his graduate students and his colleagues in Europe began to develop into something bigger. In November 2004 Hoover with the assistance of Lynn Schofield Clark wrote a proposal for the establishment of the center. They identified project areas that later became the center's foci. Research works remained to be the foundational activity for the center. In addition, the center seeks support for Senior, Faculty and Post-Doctoral Fellowship Program that help shape ongoing research and scholarly projects in the field of media, religion and culture. The center also hold lectures, seminars and formal conferences both independently and in cooperation with other institutions such as New York University and the University of Southern California in an effort to bridge the academy with religious communities, industries and the wider public. Furthermore, it acts as the global secretariat for the International Conferences on Media, Religion and Culture that started in Uppsala, Sweden, in 1994 and it has become the prominent conference in the field. The Center was officially inaugurated in 2006. During the same year, Clark left University of Colorado at Boulder and subsequently the Center to become Assistant Professor at the School of Communication at University of Denver. She remains a close collaborator of the Center and maintains a good relationship with Hoover. In 2007 Journalism and Mass Communication hired a new Assistant Professor, Nabil Echchaibi, who specializes in identity politics among young Muslim in the Arab world and in diaspora. He is now the associate director of the Center.

Activities

Research Projects

Some of the projects mentioned below took place prior to the establishment of the Center, but closely associated with its development and continuation.

Symbolism, Media, and the Lifecourse, 1996-2001 Principal Investigator (P.I.): Stewart Hoover; Associate P.I: Lynn Schofield Clark; Research Associates: Diane F. Alters, Joseph G. Champ, Lee Hood, and Henrik Boes. The project resulted in the book Media, Home, and Family (Routledge, 2004) written in collaboration by Hoover, Clark and Alters. The book argued that how families discuss the rules and practices surrounding media use are an important part of how they lay claim to a family identity in the age of reflexive parenting. The Symbolism project also provided the initial research for Hoover's, Religion in the Media Age (Routledge, 2006), Clark's From Angels to Aliens: Teenagers, the Media, and the Supernatural (Oxford U Press, 2003), and supported the development of the edited volume Practicing Religion in the Age of the Media, edited by Hoover and Clark (Columbia U Press, 2002).

Symbolism, Meaning, & the New Media @ Home, 2001-2006 P.I: Stewart Hoover; Associate P.I and Director for Teens and the New Media @ Home: Lynn Schofield Clark; Research Associates: Scott Webber, Christof Demont-Heinrich, Joe Champ, Michele Miles, AnnaMaria Russo, Denice Walker, Monica Emerich, Yuri Obata, Jin Park, and Kati Lustyik. This project provided the funding that supported the completion of Clark's book, From Angels to Aliens: Teenagers, the Media, and the Supernatural (Oxford U Press, 2003/2005 paperback). It also supported the conclusion of Hoover's Religion in the Media Age (Routledge, 2006) and the early research stage of Clark's Parenting in a Digital Age (forthcoming). Moreover it provided support for the collaborative effort Hoover and Clark engaged in with the Pew Internet & American Life Project to produce the 2004 report, Faith Online.

Dissertation Fellowship Program in Media, Religion and Culture, 2002-2007 Co-Directors: Stewart Hoover and Lynn Schofield Clark; Fellowship Coordinators: Diane Alters, Scott Webber, Monica Emerich. This fellowship program has resulted in two edited volumes: Religion, Media, and the Marketplace (Rutgers University Press, 2007)

Media, Meaning and Work, 2006-2010 This research project covers two topics: Men, Masculinity, & Civic Engagement with Stewart Hoover as the P.I., and Youth and Civic Engagement with Lynn Schofield Clark as the P.I. The second project is sub-contracted to the University of Denver. This project provided the funding for the book Hoover is currently writing with his former graduate student at SJMC, Curtis Coats. It also provide funding for Clark's newest book that she is co-authoring with Regina Marchi of Rutgers University and Rachel Monserrate of the University of Denver, which is tentatively titled, Young People and the Future of News (forthcoming).

Conferences

Islam and The Media (January 2010) Co-Directors: Nabil Echchaibi and Stewart Hoover The conference engaged a range of questions on the place of Islam within global, regional, national and local media. It was attended by scholars on Islam and contemporary media, media professionals, activists, and members of NGOs. Featured speakers and presenters included Charles Hirschkind, Professor of Social Cultural Anthropology at University of California at Berkeley, Zarqa Nawaz, Creator of Little Mosque on the Prairie, a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation sitcom that chronicles the life of a small Muslim community in a prairie town in Saskatchewan, and Mona Eltahawy, an award-winning syndicated columnist and an international public speaker on Arab and Muslim issues who is based in New York.

See also

Center for Media, Religion, and Culture Stewart Hoover's Blog Nabil Echchaibi's Blog Lynn Schofield Clark's Blog