Kkaren Giles-smith
Student
Student
Heaven is under our feet
…
Marvin Colburn
Student
Student
A Quiet Job
I once enjoyed being a janitor. Not that I was excited about cleaning dirty toilets but it was a job where I was my own boss. I had the freedom to daydream while carrying out…
Marvin Colburn
Student
Student
A Slow Walker
I began attending Adult Education not knowing how it would impact my life. Bad memories of why I quit school at 16 were still haunting me. I had few friends and was often taunted by…
Marvin Colburn
Student
Student
Gram’s Ride Home
Long before Gram (my Grandmother) ended up in a rest home, I asked her if she remembered seeing Halley’s comet in 1910. She was 11 years old at the time but had no problem remembering…
Jennifer Rich
Student
Student
traveling the backroads
Traveling The Back Roads
Riding the back roads of Georgia is one of my favorite childhood memories. I remember warm, lazy summer afternoons with the hum of katydids…
Kkaren Giles-smith
Student
Student
Empyrean
Empyrean
There is a place — deep in the old-growth woodlands of hemlocks, sugar maples, and white pines — where reverence and awe bless the passers-by. In this place, a river rolls along moss-covered rocks and…
Gretchen Huntley
Student
Student
The past Revisited
Last night while working on homework for school, an old boyfriend started messaging me on my computer. It was not only shocking to hear from him; it caught…
Sandra Johnson
Student
Student
Tiny
Hot tears burned my eyes as I leaned down to pick up another stack of J.C. Penney winter catalogs. I dropped the stack on the rumbling conveyor belt and brushed away the tears with…
Kkaren Giles-smith
Student
Student
No Place Else to Go: A Glimpse of Natalie Goldberg's Writing Life
No Place Else to Go: A Glimpse of Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Life Karen L. Giles-Smith Spring Arbor University
Natalie Goldberg discovered she loved literature in college. Although she was passionate about poetry — especially the poems of…
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Holly Mace
Student
Student
Road Trip
The weather forecast was dismal – blizzard conditions throughout the state – but Carah and I were in high spirits driving south in her Geo Metro. It was New Year’s Eve 1998 and we were…
Darlene Mokrycki
Student
Student
Maya Angelou: A Remarkable Lady
From her beginnings as a cabaret artist in her 20s to the recitation of her original poem “On the Pulse of Morning” at President Clinton’s inauguration five decades later, the multifaceted talent of …
Robert
Student
Student
Culture and Faith: A Brief Introduction to Islam
Arab culture, language, and politics are closely tied to their dominant religion, Islam. Islam reinforces these other cultural structures through its emphasis on Arabic as the only legitimate language for the Qur’an; and the Qur’an,…
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Gretchen Huntley
Student
Student
Media Equation of Real Life
The Media Equation by Reeves and Nass regards computers, television, and other software as inanimate objects. Their theory suggests that although inanimate objects, people tend to react to them as if they were living. In the introduction of their book The Media Equation, Reeves and Nass take a glimpse into how people of all ages and educational backgrounds treat technology. They show that the confusion of real life and mediated life is not rare or unreasonable, yet very common (Reeves & Nass, 1996 p. 4-5). Reeves and Nass have identified in study after study that people equate media with real life. They expect that media will follow social and natural rules which have already been predetermined (Reeves & Nass, 1996). Watching television and movies is my favorite thing to do. I will compare experiences I have had with this visual media to the media equation and see how they match up. I will also compare the Media Equation to three other theories; those of technological determinism, expectancy violations, and cognitive dissonance.
Holly Mace
Student
Student
Interpreting Silence
This summer I was invited by my friend, Larry, to drive down to Tennessee and stay with him for a few days during my vacation. He is one of my best friends, and I wanted…
Robert
Student
Student
Life is Beautiful
This paper describes interpersonal communication in the movie “Life is Beautiful” from the perspective of three theoretical models of interpersonal communication: symbolic interactionism, interpersonal deception theory, and social judgment theory….
Paul Patton
Faculty
Faculty
“A Sacred Use of the Profane?”
I received a call from a colleague at a Christian university. As a professor in the university’s theater department, there had been a complaint about the language in a production of Arthur Miller’s All My…
Paul Patton
Faculty
Faculty
The Pharisaic Process: An Unholy Headlock
Most Christians even remotely familiar with the gospels would recognize the Pharisees as the sect prominently noted for being recipients of Jesus’ scathing denunciations. In Matthew 23 He labels them as “blind guides”, “white-washed…
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Paul Patton
Faculty
Faculty
A New Bird-Watcher's Notion of Hail to the Victors
Deeply entrenched in middle age, I have become a bird-watcher. This autumn, bird-watching had become almost as significant to me as the early Saturday evening overview of college gridiron scores. Confirmation on whether…
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Paul Patton
Faculty
Faculty
D.L. Moody Stumbles into the Local YMCA
There was a commotion down at the local “YMCA” yesterday afternoon. It didn’t rank up there with the more flamboyant commotions— like the fights one occasionally sees between hockey parents at Pee-wee league games…
Talking like a grown up
Ethical persuasion involves learning to talk like a grown-up. Or, put in another way, unethical persuasion involves acting childish, putting our self-interests first….
Christianity and the Mass Media in America (Book Review)
Quentin J. Schultze. Christianity and the Mass Media in America: Toward a Democratic Accommodation. East Lansing, Mich.: Michigan State University Press, 2003. viii+430 pp. (hardbound) $84.95, ISBN 0-87013-696-8.…
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Communication and the Concept
In the beginning was the Word. (John 1:1).
For communication scholars, that seems like a good place to begin, in the beginning with the Word. This is the logos, the expression of an idea. According to the Apostle John, the logos was worked out through the incarnation and is the root and life of our faith. God is expressing himself, communicating his character and his plan, revealing his glory. He does this effectively and relentlessly, as the God who speaks to us, listens to us, and even argues with us.