News Article

Marquette University Provost John J. Pauly, previously dean of the J. William and Mary Diederich College of Communication, will be the Gonzaga University Master's of Communication and Leadership Program Visiting Scholar Feb. 3-7 and will offer a public lecture while here, meet with senior undergraduate communication majors to discuss the future of communication in society, and teach a class that is already full.

Gonzaga University Visiting Scholar John J. Pauly, Ph.D.

The public lecture by Professor Pauly, Ph.D., will will focus on organizational life and is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 5 in the Jepson Center's Wolff Auditorium (Room 114). The title of the lecture, which is free, will be announced but will focus on some aspect of "The Ethics of Popular Culture," which is the theme of his visit to Gonzaga.

Professor Pauly will be the fifth visiting scholar the Master’s Program in Communication and Leadership Studies has hosted since its inception in 2004.

The course Pauly will teach offers an alternative way of thinking about popular media products and practices, focusing on their significance as a form of moral and ethical imagination. In particular, the course explores three key aspects of popular culture: the quest for authenticity, the debate about representation, and rituals of sacrifice and redemption.

Pauly specializes in the history and sociology of the mass media, the theory and practice of literary journalism, and cultural approaches to communication research. He served as chair of the communication department at Saint Louis University for nine years, and held a secondary appointment as professor of American studies for five years.

For more than three centuries, popular culture has been an object of social and political contention. Critics have condemned its preference for entertainment over information, its alleged effects on the audience’s behavior, and its encouragement of low tastes. But the very popularity of such works invites serious analysis.

Pauly has published more than 80 scholarly journal articles, book chapters, reviews and essays, and has made numerous presentations in his fields of interest to both academic and professional organizations. He is a member of the editorial board of Journalism: Theory, Practice and Criticism and was formerly a board member of Critical Studies in Mass Communication and Journalism Monographs.

For more information, contact Gonzaga communication Professor John Caputo at (509) 313-6656 or via e-mail.