Communication Department

When a TV actor becomes pregnant, viewers often consider how the pregnancy will affect the series’ narrative: Will the pregnancy be written into the series? If so, who is the father? How will having a baby change the character?

But what about the style–the way the character looks on the screen? Dr. Kornfield’s  research focuses on how television–as an medium–stylizes onscreen pregnancies: how they costume the actors, position the actors in the stage, and how the camerawork and editing portrays the actors.

Dr. Kornfield’s article “Televisual Pregnancy Beauty” helps us understand the ways in which the entertainment industry commodifies pregnancy and reinforces the idea that women (especially on TV) ought to be beautiful all the time–even while pregnant.

The Communication Department congratulates Dr. Jim Herrick on the publication of his new book, Visions of Technological Transcendence: Human Enhancement and the Rhetoric of the Future.

Dr. Herrick’s research on transhumanism studies the discourse of human enhancement–how people talk about immortality, the merger of humans and machines, human-level artificial intelligence, and space colonization. Dr. Herrick identifies how the rhetoric of human enhancement functions as a system of mythic narratives. These myths don’t just describe current technology; instead society uses these myths to guide the types of technologies we produce. This means that by studying each myth, we can predict technology’s trajectory.

Hope’s Communication Department is delighted for Dr. Jim Herrick and his exciting research!