Kern Conference explores identities

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RIT’s sixth Kern Conference on Visual Communication will be held April 24–26 at the Strathallan Hotel in Rochester.

Rochester Institute of Technology’s sixth Kern Conference on Visual Communication will be held April 24–26 at the Strathallan Hotel, 550 East Ave., Rochester. The theme for this year’s conference is Communicating Identity/Consuming Difference.

“Communicating identity—hero, villain, native, immigrant, minority, celebrity, terrorist—often leads to controversy and conflict,” said Jonathan Schroeder, the William A. Kern Professor of Communications at RIT and conference chair. “These identities are frequently represented with implicit comparative differences, such as friend versus foe, or familiar versus strange. This conference seeks to explore how identities are presented and performed in consumer culture, and why it matters.”

Conference presenters include:

• Robin Means Coleman, associate professor of communication studies and Afroamerican and African studies, University of Michigan
• David Crockett, associate professor of marketing, University of South Carolina
• Ammina Kothari, assistant professor of journalism, RIT
• Alexander Brier Marr, Ph.D. candidate in visual and cultural studies, University of Rochester
• Derek Conrad Murray, assistant professor of art history and visual culture, University of California, Santa Cruz
• Radhika Parameswaran, professor of journalism, Indiana University
• Katherine Sredl, assistant professor of marketing, University of Notre Dame
• Kevin Thomas, assistant professor of advertising and public relations, University of Texas, Austin
• Tracy Worrell, associate professor of communication, RIT

Invited panelists from RIT include Andrea Hickerson, assistant professor of communication; Mike Johansson, lecturer in communication; and Jenn Poggi, visiting assistant professor, College of Imaging Arts and Sciences.

The conference is sponsored by the William A. Kern Endowment in Communication, RIT’s College of Liberal Arts and Department of Communication, and the Associate on Consumer Research. For more information, contact Schroeder at jesgla@rit.edu or Cassandra Shellman at cls3740@rit.edu or 585-475-2057.