curriculum vitae

Available in PDF format.

Selected Publications

Refiguring Mass Communication: A History
Due out Spring, 2010
University of Illinois Press, History of Communication series

A rhetorical history and rethinking of ideas about mass communication, as worked out through individual lives and places. Essays consider normative visions of mass communication found in David Sarnoff’s public relations efforts, Paul of Tarsus’ letters, Walt Whitman’s poetry, Charles Horton Cooley’s journals, Robert K. Merton’s sociology articles, and the popular gathering of an American county fair.

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Mass Communication and American Social Thought: Key Texts
John Durham Peters and Peter Simonson, eds.; Rowman and Littlefield Press
ISBN 978-0742528390

A collection of classic and forgotten-but-noteworthy primary texts, biographical sketches of the authors, and four original interpretive essays by the editors. Writes new figures into the history of the field and re-interprets old ones. Also includes a list of historical films from the era related to the subject, and a bibliography. A useful volume for upper-level undergraduate and graduate classes, valuable scholarly aid, and good addition to the bookshelves of anyone interested in the history of thinking about media and communication.

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Politics, Social Networks, and the History of Mass Communications Research: Re-Reading Personal Influence
The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 608 (November, 2006), available as an individual volume through Sage, or Amazon.com.
ISBN 9781412950930

Since its publication in 1955, Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld's Personal Influence: The Part Played by People in the Flow of Mass Communications has been one of the most influential and widely cited works in media and communications research. In this volume, leading scholars from three generations revisit this classic and controversial text. They reveal its repressed contexts; its unintentional consequences; and its continued relevance for understanding media, consumption, citizenship, and networks of interpersonal influence today. As a whole, the volume brings contemporary thinking and state-of-the-art research into new conversation with the problematics and personalities that dominated the field during a key period in its development. In a masterful Afterword, Katz responds to his critics, contextualizers, and those who find things praiseworthy in his classic work.

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Mass Persuasion: The Social Psychology of a War Bond Drive
Robert K. Merton, with Marjorie Fiske and Alberta Curtis, Mass Persuasion: The Social Psychology of a War Bond Drive (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1946). Republished with a new Introduction by Peter Simonson (New York: Howard Fertig Publishers, 2003).
ISBN 978-0865274402

Mass Persuasion is a classic study of the popular entertainer Kate Smith and her 18-hour radio marathon to sell war bonds during World War II. It is at once a pioneering and unique effort in the cultural study of media, and a snapshot into the social history of an era. Merton and his research team interview women fans of Smith, unpack ideological dimensions of her appeal, and offer a probing analysis of patriotism and propaganda in times of war.

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