Macalester College

Faculty Member, Media & Cultural Studies

Thesis Title: Amateur Photography and Pictorial Aesthetics: Influences of Organization and Industry on Cultural Production

About

    Michael Griffin earned his Ph.D. in media and communication research from the Annenberg School for Communication, the University of Pennsylvania, where he was awarded a CBS Dissertation Fellowship. In 1995 he was awarded a Post-doctoral Fellowship in the Annenberg Scholars Program at the University of Pennsylvania for his studies of the use of visual images in television news. 
    He currently teaches Media and Cultural Studies at Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA., is Chair of the Visual Communication Studies Division of the International Communication Association (ICA). He is also the Visual Communication Area Editor for the International Encyclopedia of Communication, and lead author of Visual Communication for Oxford Bibliographies Online. He was recently a visiting professor of Cinema & Media Studies at Carleton College and for 17 years was on the faculty of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota. He has also taught at the University of Amsterdam and the University of Pennsylvania. 
    Recent publications include: "Writing Histories of Visual Communication" in The Handbook of Communication History; "Media Images of War," in the journal Media, War & Conflict; "Spectre and Spectacle: The Shifting Public Life of the Abu Ghraib Photographs," ("Ereignis und Phantom: Das wechselhafte öffenlichte Leben der Fotografien von Abu Ghraib"), AugenBlick: the Marburg Journal of Media Studies; "Visual Comparison: Comparative Approaches in Visual Communication Research" (with Marion Müller) in The Handbook of Comparative Communication Research; "Images from Nowhere: Visuality and News in 21st Century Media" in Visual Cultures: A Transatlantic Perspective; "The Uneasy Institutional Position of Communication and Media Studies and Its Impact on Academic Labor in Large Universities Versus Small Colleges," International Journal of Communication; "Visual Competence and Media Literacy: Can One Exist Without the Other?" Visual Studies; "Picturing America’s ‘War on Terrorism’ in Afghanistan and Iraq: Photographic Motifs as News Frames," Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism; "Visual Communication," "Art as Communication," and "Television News, Visual Components of" (with Peter Dahlgren) for the International Encyclopedia of Communication.

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