Department of Communication and Media Studies

Professor Sarram coedited (with Professor Della Ratta, Teresa Numerico, and Geert Lovink) The Aesthetics and Politics of the Online Self: A Savage Journey into The Heart of Digital Cultures (In press, Palgrave). Professor Sarram collaborated in the organization of various events as part of the Communications and Media Studies Speaker Series as well as the Digital Delights and Disturbances Series that brought many renowned speakers to JCU.

He is developing two writing projects: Music Videos: History, Form and Culture and Nature, People of the World, and the Rhythm of Industries: Visualizing the Anthropocene Through Sound. 

Professor Lopez completed his latest book for Routledge, Ecomedia Literacy: Integrating Ecology into Media Education, published in November 2020. In addition, he published two book chapters: “Integrating information literacy in a communication writing course” (co-written with JCU librarian Livia Piotto and JCU lecturer in Communications Elizabeth Macias-Gutierrez), Faculty-librarian collaborations: International case studies of integrating the information literacy framework into disciplinary courses (Association of College and Research Libraries) and “Expanding Community and Ethics to the Environment with Ecomedia Literacy,” The Handbook on Media Education Research (IAMCR/Wiley Blackwell).

Professor Lopez co-edited a special issue on Ecomedia literacy co-published by Journal of Education for Sustainability and Journal of Media Literacy, which included several articles that he authored: “Ecomedia: The Metaphor that Makes a Difference,” “Bella Gaia and the Pedagogical Power of the Overview Effect: Interview with Kenji Williams,” and “Fake Climate News: How Denying Climate Change is the Ultimate in Fake News” (with Jeff Share). He also published “Ecomedia Literacy: Educating with Ecomedia Objects and the Ecomediasphere,” in Digital Culture and Education (Vol. 12, #2).

He was a peer reviewer for Journal of Environmental Communication, ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, and Journal of Media Literacy Education. He continues to be an editorial board member of the Journal of Environmental Media and Media Education Research Journal. In 2019 he presented two talks at the National Association of Media Literacy Education in Washington, DC: “Ecomedia Literacy: Green Design for Media Literacy Education” and “Media Literacy for a Sustainable World” (with Jeff Share, UCLA).

Professor Della Ratta published a peer-reviewed article, “Digital Socialism Beyond the Digital Social: Confronting Communicative Capitalism with Ethics of Care,” Triple C: Communication, Capitalism & Critique 18(1). She also co-edited, in collaboration with Kay Dickinson (Concordia University) and Sune Haugbolle (Roskilde University), the book, The Arab Archive: Mediated Memories and Digital Flows (Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2020) where she authored the chapter, “Why Syria is No Longer (Only) About Syria.”

Together with Professor Peter Sarram, Teresa Numerico, and Geert Lovink, she has edited the book, The Aesthetics and Politics of the Online Self (Palgrave MacMillan), which received positive peer reviews and is now in press. In the book, she has a chapter, “Through the Looking-Glass: Researching the Online Self, from Autoethnography to empathic criticism,” which draws upon her experience of teaching the class Selfies and Beyond at John Cabot University. During the lockdown in Spring 2020, she authored a series of blog posts in collaboration with her students, “Selfies under quarantine,” published in five episodes by the Institute of Network Cultures. The series built upon the auto-ethnographies produced by the students during class. It has been translated into Italian by one of the students, Elena Santoro, and published by Italian online magazine, NERO NOT.

In Summer 2020, in collaboration with John Cabot alumnus Raymond Sandro Turchioe (Class of 2020), she produced a theory video essay, Give it a Shot. VVV: On Violence, Visibility, Viruses, which premiered at the fifth international symposium on Affect and Social Media, organized by the University of East London, 25-26 June (moved online due to Covid-19). In February 2020, she was a keynote speaker for the Cosmos Talks organized by the Department of Political and Social Sciences, at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence.

During Spring 2020, a number of accepted papers were canceled or postponed due to Covid-19. Among them: Keynote speaker, international conference of the European Sociological Association (ESA), Sociology of Communications and Media Research, Turin (postponed);  ‘VVV: on Violence, Visibility and Viruses’, 5th Affect and Social Media Conference and Art Show, University of East London, 25-26 June (moved online); (Reverse) Shot: on Bodies, Media and War in the Anthropocene, The Italian Society of Science and Technology Studies, 8th conference, University of Trieste (postponed); All that we leave behind and vanishes: on the enforced disappearance of the networked image and other tales of invisibility, international conference of the Italian Association of Sociology, Italian Association of Semiotic Studies, ESARN20 Qualitative Methods and ESARN21 Quantitative Methods, University La Sapienza (postponed); The shot: On Violence and Visibility, international conference of the War and Media Network, Accademia Europea di Firenze. Finally, in 2020 she was selected as one of the co-curators of the international literary festival, ReadMyWorld, in Amsterdam.  

Professor Barreau is a TV creative producer, in charge of on-air promotion for TV channels History and Crime Investigation (A&E Networks). In January 2020, her four-episode podcast "Stardust Memories, Souvenir della notte trasteverina," was broadcast on Rai Radio 3 and will run for Prix Italia. She also produced a new podcast, ‘Malafemmina,’ for Storytel.

As a filmmaker, she directed a short video about the COVID lockdown for Il Corriere Della Sera: “Primo Maggio dalla finestra” with Ilaria Graziano & Francesco Forni. She received numerous press reviews about Stardust Memories in Il Manifesto, Il Corriere Della Sera, Repubblica, The Cinema Show, Podcastmania, Femministerie, Scene Contemporanee, Birdmen magazine, and a review about her short film Acqua Passata (2002).  

In 2021 Professor Diamanti is working on two main research areas: media and the night and everyday digital practices in Cuba. Together with Professor Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier (University of Victoria), she is co-editing a special issue of the peer-reviewed journal Ethnologies titled “Nocturnal Ethnographies: aesthetics and imaginary of the night” on the aesthetic, sensory, and imaginative dimensions of the night from an ethnographic perspective. She is also a member of the scientific committee of the International Night Studies Conference that will be held in October 2021, and together with Professor Will Straw (McGill University), she co-leads the research group Media and the Night of the International Night Studies Network.

In 2020 she worked on a project funded by the Research Foundations – Flanders at the Department of Communications of the University of Antwerp with Professor Paolo Favero on everyday digital practices in Cuba. Particularly she is writing about digital culture in the Global South from a feminist perspective. Some of the papers she has been working on have been delayed by the global pandemic and have been submitted to several international peer-reviewed journals. Her papers appeared in journals like Visual Anthropology, Antropologia Pubblica, and Intermédialités among others. She co-directed the ethnographic film Guardians of the Night (Cuba, 2018) on nocturnal practices in Guantánamo, and with the research group Emidio di Treviri she produced the feature-length documentary, Le terre di tutti (Italy, 2019), on rural commons and collective ways of living on the mountains in central Italy.

In April 2020 she was invited to give a talk at the Master in Environmental Humanities, RomaTre University, titled “Nocturnal Ethnographies.” Professor Diamanti presented her recent audio-visual works and papers at the following academic conferences: Royal Anthropological Institute Film Festival at USC; Besides the Screen Conference (Portugal); European Association of Social Anthropology (online); Society for Applied Anthropology (Ferrara, Italy); and Finnish Anthropology Society (Helsinki, Finland). In 2021 she will present at the Canadian Anthropology Society conference and NECS - European Network for Cinema and Media Studies.

In relation to his film project Porta Maggiore, Professor Ferrari collaborated with Stalker/NoWorking (A Rome-based architect collective) with the support of the City of Rome to organize a series of outdoor projections in Roma Est (Fall 2020). The projections took place at the Acquedotto Felice, Via Mandrione; Complesso IACP di Tor Sapienza with the assistance of the Centro Culturale Municipale Giorgio Morandi; and at the Reale Accademia di Spagna a Roma.

During the spring 2020 COVID lockdown, Ferrari collaborated with colleague Professor Donatella Della Ratta to produce “Rigenera: Marco Asilo; home projections for the quarantined hearts,” which consisted of showcasing a weekly series of silent films, short videos, elements of Ferrari’s experimental works, and the final presentation of student work from his JCU Expanded Cinema course. The videos were projected from his balcony onto a nearby building wall, with the collaboration of the Comitato di Quartiere Pigneto-Prenestino and Csoa ExSnia, every Friday night and were live-streamed on Facebook for a total of 8 weeks.  

Professor Jenn Lindsay published a peer-reviewed article derived directly from her experience in the JCU classroom entitled, “Growing Interreligious and Intercultural Competence in the Classroom,” Teaching Theology & Religion. She also published two book chapters: “Confronti: A Case Study of Institutions Fostering Religious Pluralism in Rome,” Interfaith Networks and Development (Palgrave MacMillan) and “Meaningful Interpersonal Contact: Interreligious Dialogue as a Religious Response to the Cognitive and Social Dynamics of Bias,” Religious Perspectives on a Secular World (Palgrave).

Professor Lindsay's academic monograph Pluralismo Vivo: Lived Religious Pluralism and Interfaith Dialogue in Rome was published by LIT Verlag in 2020. In her public engagement work, Professor Lindsay produced and directed a documentary about the suspension of religious gatherings in Rome during the Covid-19 outbreak called "Quarantined Faith: Rome, Religion and Coronavirus," which has won a special jury award for a film on Migrations and Coexistence at the Religion Today Film Festival; Best Documentary at the Picasso Einstein Buddha International Film Festival; Best Documentary at the Christian Online Film Festival; Honorable Mention for Best Documentary at the Florence Film Awards and the Madras International Film Festival. The documentary is also an Official Selection for the Ostia International Film Festival; the Rome Prisma International Film Awards; The Vesuvius International Film Festival; The Varese International Film Festival, and an Award of Recognition from the Impact DOCS Awards.

Her videography project, "Quarantine alla Romana," was also featured in the local Roman press. Professor Lindsay also received a filmmaking grant from the KAICIID interfaith organization in Vienna, in addition to a JCU Faculty Development Committee grant, to support production of her new documentary, ShalOM, about Hindu-Jewish dialogue. Finally, Professor Lindsay was recently awarded the Jack Shand International Scholar Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion to support her work in media, diversity, and intercultural relations.  

Professor Micali published a book chapter in the edited collection Ecologie complesse: Pensare l’arte oltre l’umano (Meltemi); and another book chapter in the Selfies and Beyond collection. He presented a digital piece entitled, “Dining Out with Covid-19: (Biopolitical) Control and Lockdown Aesthetics, or Why Media Studies Neglect to Face the Crisis of Representation” as part of the Media Virality and the Lockdown Aesthetic, Affect & Social Media #4.5 academic conference and sensorium art show (University of East London, UK). 

Professor Tasini was invited to speak at the festival Cinema D’Autrice. She gave a public lecture on the Politics of Italian Cinema at the University of Oslo, Norway. She was also selected to present her documentary-in-progress, Lost and Found, at the Advocate Europe Conference (Brussels).

In March 2020, she was due to present at the Transnational Feminism(s) Institute in Paris, but the event was canceled due to Covid-19. For the same reason, she’s currently rescheduling production (originally planned for May 2020) on her fiction film, Vuoi Volare O No? (Fly Already), adapted from Israeli writer Etgar Keret’s short story.  

Anna Gorchakovskaya is an independent researcher, curator and cultural activist based in Rome. She holds a degree in Art History from the Università degli Studi di Bologna and a master’s degree in Gender Studies from the Università Roma Tre. Since 2014 Anna Gorchakovskaya has collaborated among others with such Italian and international projects and institutions as Adiacenze, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, La Galleria Nazionale, MAXXI, contributing mostly to the curatorial, editorial and educational projects.

In 2021 Anna has become one of the founders of the interdisciplinary platform On Site, a project aimed at bringing together the international realities of the city of Rome and the local Roman artistic and cultural scene. Since 2022 Anna has been teaching with American universities such as Cornell in Rome, Trinity College Rome Campus and JCU. Her research is dedicated to visual activism and to politically and socially engaged artistic and curatorial practices.