University of Wisconsin–Madison

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Ben Reiser receives Bartell Award in the Arts

The Department of Communication Arts congratulates Ben Reiser for receiving the 2021 Joyce J. and Gerald A. Bartell Award in the Arts. Reiser has been a key part of the Wisconsin Film Festival since 2012, advancing through several positions until he was named Director of Operations in 2020. Reiser has been instrumental in expanding the Festival’s …

Professor Eric Hoyt wins Vilas Associates award

The Department of Communication Arts is delighted to announce that Professor Eric Hoyt was awarded a prestigious Vilas Associates Award. The award recognizes new and on-going research of the highest quality and significance, and offers the awardee summer salary support and research funding. Professor Hoyt won for a proposed project entitled “The Day After: Network …

Eric Hoyt to Broadcast AV Data as part of collaborative NEH grant

Professor Eric Hoyt is thrilled and honored to be among the most recent winners of a prestigious grant from National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Hoyt and his frequent collaborator, Stephanie Sapienza (University of Maryland), have received a $294,265 Digital Humanities Advancement Grant for their project, “Broadcasting Audiovisual Data: Using Linked Data and Local Authority …

Catalina Toma appointed Associate Editor at Human Communication Research

Congratulations to Catalina Toma on her appointment as Associate Editor of Human Communication Research. The flagship journal of the International Communication Association concentrates on presenting the best empirical work in the area of human communication. The journal has a broad social-science focus and important applications to scholars in psychology, sociology, linguistics, and anthropology, as well as areas of …

Erin Lee Carr wins TV Academy Award

Congratulations to Erin Lee Carr (BA’10) for winning a TV Academy Award for her documentary At the Heart of Gold: Inside the USA Gymnastics Scandal. While at UW-Madison, Carr majored in Communication Arts and studied screenwriting and independent cinema with Prof. J.J. Murphy. She worked as a media assistant in the Instructional Media Center and as a Resident …

Olivia Babler part of team which discovers lost silent film

Communication Arts alum Olivia Babler (BA‘13) was recently part of a team that uncovered a silent film from 1923 that was presumed to be ‘lost’, The First Degree (dir. Edward Sedgwick, Universal Pictures). The discovery is significant because a 2013 study by the Library of Congress concluded that 75% of American feature films produced between …

New faculty member Aaron Greer has podcast selected for Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP) Forum

Aaron Greer, new Associate Professor in Communication Arts, met author Marsha Walker at Temple University while earning his MFA. Greer was drawn to Walker’s semi-autobiographical short stories about a girl growing up in Appalachia, Eastern Kentucky, and plotting her escape. Big Sandy is a fish-out-of-water tale, going beyond the often stereotypical portrayals of the white …

Graduate student Paul Ahn wins best paper award in Communication Science and Biology division at #ICA20

Paul’s study explores how requiring different types of reasoning (abduction, deduction, or induction) during creative problem-solving and brainstorming affects creative performance and brain activity. It has long been assumed that abductive reasoning best serves creative purposes (Dunne & Martin, 2006; Martin, 2009). Yet, there has been no reported study that manipulated reasoning type during idea-generation …

Kahl Family announces sponsorship of Media Production Professorship

Thanks to the generosity of Kim and Kelly Kahl (BA ’89), we are celebrating the creation of the Kahl Family Media Production Professorship. Kim Kahl, a publicist, and Kelly Kahl, president of CBS entertainment, have long supported UW-Madison through their participation in alumni events and an internship program for Communication Arts majors at CBS. Kelly …