Amy R. May - Böcker

Women Educators’ Experiences During COVID-19: On the Front Lines examines the gendered experiences, challenges, and rapid changes faced by women in higher education during COVID-19. The book’s chapters cover lived experiences ranging from graduate students navigating the pandemic to those grappling with balancing motherhood and the academy. Through these diverse perspectives, this edited collection explores the impact of the diversity and nuances of the feminine identity on navigating higher education during an international health crisis. Ultimately, contributors provide recommendations for best practices and suggestions for change for administrators, faculty, and policymakers to dismantle the academy as a male-dominated institution. Scholars of communication, gender studies, and higher education will find this book of particular interest.

Contributors explore how true crime media creators and audiences can disrupt traditional approaches to storytelling in the creation, promotion, and consumption of the genre, raising critical questions about power structures including ethics, representation, and voice.Traditional approaches to true crime narratives follow a formulaic story arc that is often exploitative in nature, typically foregrounding the lived experiences of the perpetrator and the rationalizations for their crimes and told through the lens of law enforcement. Contributors qualitatively analyze a variety of digitally mediated true crime content including news discourses, podcasts like Last Podcast on the Left, and television series like The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story to illuminate the significant limitations of this approach.Rather than taking a negative stance, however, this volume instead emphasizes the possibilities that this genre has to offer by challenging scholars, practitioners, and educators to rethink their own place in the current landscape. How can we as creators, consumers, and critics harness true crime narratives in ways that honor victims and communities, uphold accurate and respectful representations, challenge dominant narratives within criminal justice, and ultimately transform the true crime genre through innovation?

Supporting the Military-Affiliated Learner: Communication Approaches to Military Pedagogy and Education challenges the academic community to 1) reevaluate how they support military-affiliated learners (MALs) and address how the military-civilian-academic divide causes disparities and barriers to MAL academic achievement and retention and 2) implement programs and develop strategies to facilitate equitable academic integration from application to graduation. With contributions from veterans, military spouses, and communication educators, this book explicate barriers that MALs face when trying to transition to, navigate, and succeed in higher education. This edited volume explores the impact of the diversity and nuances of MAL identities on their experiences in higher education; promotes military competence by providing opportunities for educators and support staff to learn about potential barriers and promote best practices for connecting with MALs and validating their lived experiences; examines how technology/computer-mediated communication may be used to facilitate community building and promote connectedness for MALs within face-to-face and digital spheres.