• Communications law
• Editing and publishing
• Media history
• Political economy of media

Selected Publications:

“Restoring Labor to the Public Sphere,” Journalism & Communication Monographs 22:1 (2020), pages 92-96.

“Spanish Firemen and Maritime Syndicalism, 1902-1940.” Christopher J. Castañeda and Montse Feu, editors, Writing Revolution: Hispanic Anarchism in the United States. University of Illinois Press, 2019.

“Unions of Newsworkers.” Tim Vos and Folker Hanusch, editors, International Encyclopedia of Journalism Studies. Wiley Blackwell Publishing, 2019.

“Toward a Democratic Journalism,” The American Historian 17 (2018), pages 34-38.

“No Rights for the Working Man: Laboring in an Era before the First Amendment had Force.” Mary M. Cronin, editor, An Indispensable Liberty: The Fight for Freedom of Expression in the Nineteenth Century. Southern Illinois University Press, 2016.

“Alternative Journalism.” Patricia Moy, editor, Oxford Bibliographies in Communication. Oxford University Press, 2015.

with Frederic S. Lee, co-editor, Radical Economics and Labor: Essays Inspired by the IWW Centennial. Routledge, 2009. Includes my chapter, “Peter Kropotkin and Economics for a New Society.”

“Books and Commerce in an Age of Virtual Capital: The Changing Political Economy of Bookselling.” Manjunath Pendakur and Roma Harris, editors, Citizenship and Participation in the Information Age. Garamond Press, 2002.  Also published in French translation as Citoyenneté et participation à l’ére de l’information. Èditions Saint-Martin, 2002.

“Newsboys: The Exploitation of ‘Little Merchants’ by the Newspaper Industry.” Bonnie Brennen and Hanno Hardt, editors, Newsworkers: Towards A History of the Rank and File. University of Minnesota Press, 1995.

“The Chicago Newspaper Scene: An Ecological Perspective.”  Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 74:3 (Autumn 1997), pages 490-500.

“The Working-Class Press at the Turn of the Century.” Robert McChesney and William Solomon, editors, Ruthless Criticism: New Perspectives in U.S. Communication History. University of Minnesota Press, 1993.

Student Research Collaborations

2015-2016: Angela Walters, Testing the effectiveness of different media in promoting effective dental hygiene awareness
2012-2013: Kayleigh Coggins, The Grateful Dead: Pioneers of social media-like communities
2012: Alanna Duncan, Media Ecology and Information Needs of Reading (ACRE project co-directed with Margaret Rakus)
2010-2011: Amanda Reed, Buying into Disney World: Shifts in Advertisement Content Due to the Economy
2010-2011: Nora Hassan, Study & Analysis of UNICEF Creative Advertisement Campaigns
2005-2006: Jordan Mauger, Supernatural Sexuality: The Sexual Behaviors of Powerful Female Characters in Buffy the Vampire Slayer
2001-2002: Karolina Stefanski, The Roaring ’20s in Chicago’s Foreign Language Press. (presented at Northeast Journalism History Conference)

COM 222 – Writing for the Mass Media

COM 316 – Editing and Publishing

COM 320 – System of Free Expression

COM 321 – Media History

COM 480 – Senior Seminar in Mass Communication Research