Academic Conference At

Quinnipiac In October

HAMDEN — The School of Communications at Quinnipiac University will host a one-day conference, “Media, Children and Culture,” from 9 am to 6 pm, on Saturday, October 21, in the Grand Courtroom of the School of Law Center.

The conference, which is being organized by School of Communications Professor Rebecca Abbott, will include six presentations and two panel discussions on a variety of issues, including the harmful impact of media violence, gender, racial and ethnic representations, the impact of media exposure on children’s health and psychology, and the positive, creative, and educational uses of media.

Among the featured speakers will be Dr George Gerbner, a Bell Atlantic professor of communication at Temple University, dean emeritus at Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, head of the Cultural Environment Movement, and a long-time observer and television critic, who will discuss television as a shaper of cultural values in his address, “Telling All the Stories.”

Marjorie Hogan, MD, a pediatrician at Hennepin County Medical Center and assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Minnesota, and the lead author in 1999 of a report by American Academy of Pediatrics on Media and Children’s Health/Media Education, will discuss “Children, Adolescents, Media and Health.”

Herman Gray, PhD, professor of sociology at UC/Santa Cruz and the author of Watching Race: Television and the Struggle for “Blackness,” will discuss representations of race in media and their impact.

Jean Kilbourne, PhD, visiting scholar at Wellesley College and the author of Deadly Persuasion: Why Women and Girls Must Fight the Addictive Power of Advertising and the creator of the award-winning video Killing Us Softly: Advertising’s Image of Women, will discuss “Effect of Advertising on Children and Adolescents.”

John Wright, PhD, a member of the faculty of human ecology and radio, television, film at the University of Texas at Austin and co-founder, with his wife Aletha Huston, of the Center for Research on the Influence of Television on Children, will discuss the psychological impact of media on young children and adolescents.

And Rosemarie Truglio, PhD, the vice president for research for Sesame Street for the Children’s Television Workshop, and Susan Snyder, PhD, a teacher, and author of HOT Schools and the curriculum facilitator for the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, will co-present “New Prospects for Educational Programming and Creative Uses of Media.”

The conference fee is $40, which includes breakfast, lunch, and buffet reception at the end of the proceedings. Continuing education units are available for teachers. For more information, call Professor Rebecca Abbott at 203/582-8313 or send e-mail to Rebecca.Abbott@quinnipiac.edu.