advances the idea that built environments function as media of communication. Using practice theory in conjunction with the concept of style, this book is anchored in three historical determinants: the quest for perfect proportion in buildings, the belief in architectural determinism, and the ongoing efforts within other media to influence how those who experience built environments understand them. Ross Eaman explores how houses, schools, places of worship, factories, office buildings, stores, malls, opera houses, plazas, and parks have meaning for people as subjective life-worlds. Architecture as Communication proposes media theory that articulates the social construction of meaning as a unique way of understanding the built environment – one in which the users and observers of structures and spaces participate along with architects and designers. Architecture, according to Eaman, encompasses the multiplicity of communication as human interaction, preparing people for what they are about to encounter, signalling how they should act, and selectively enabling them to perform their expected role.

Using examples across many historical periods and cultures, Architecture as Communication argues that we judge our built environments by the values they communicate.

Published by McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2025

Mother Trouble, the latest book from Prof. Miranda J. Brady (Associate Professor, Communication and Media Studies) delves into the intricacies of motherhood through the lens of media and cultural studies, highlighting how systemic inequalities shape the experience of mothers over decades. Brady draws on media and motherhood studies to explore how care work—both paid and unpaid—has been depicted in media and the exclusions inherent in these portrayals.

COMS Prof. Miranda J. Brady

“Mother Trouble sits at the intersections of media and motherhood studies,” Brady explained. The book traces struggles faced by mothers since the second wave of feminism and how these issues are mediated in popular culture. Her research explores popular narratives around the burdens faced by mothers, from economic impoverishment to a systemic lack of support, while also challenging readers to consider who is left out of those narratives. “Media often hyper-focuses on white maternal angst while ignoring the systemic exploitation of migrant care workers and mothers of color,” she said.

A Personal Connection to a Much Broader Issue

The inspiration for the book arose from Dr. Brady’s own experiences as a mother balancing care work with her career. “I was inspired to write this book when I became a mother myself and found myself struggling to balance paid work with the unpaid labour of care work,” Dr. Brady said. She explained that even as a mother in a privileged position – a white mother with full-time paid labour – finding appropriate supports for her disabled child remains difficult.

During her research, Brady drew connections between popular media portrayals of motherhood and broader societal expectations. From classic feminist horror films like Rosemary’s Baby and The Stepford Wives to contemporary depictions of “momfluencers” on social media, Mother Trouble critiques how these narratives focus disproportionately on white mothers while excluding people of colour and migrant workers doing care work and the work of mothering.

Media and Cultural Critiques

Brady’s book explores varied cultural phenomena, including HGTV’s “mompreneurs” and anti-vaccine memes on Reddit, tying them to broader themes of care labor and societal expectations. For instance, her analysis of HGTV personalities highlights how media glorifies mothers’ entrepreneurial efforts as a solution to systemic inequities. “Mothers are expected to blur the lines between paid and unpaid work,” Brady explained, critiquing how these portrayals often fail to address the instability and inequities such efforts entail.

What’s Coming Next: Research on Selfish Motherhood and Author Meets Readers

Brady’s interest in issues around motherhood and how it is depicted in popular culture did not end with the publication of Mother Trouble. She is already working on a follow-up project exploring society’s fascination with “selfish motherhood,” which includes analyzing social constructs of apparently self-centered motherhood.

Mother Trouble is also the focus of an Author Meets Readers event on January 30, 2025 at Irene’s Pub in Ottawa. This series invites the community to discuss new books published by members of ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´â€™s Faculty of Public and Global Affairs in an informal setting.

For more information or to purchase Mother Trouble, visit the .

Dr. Siobhan Angus (Assistant Professor – Communication & Media Studies) discusses her book , the joys of working at the intersection of different disciplines, and the links between her work as curator, organizer, and academic.

By Jaime Sadgrove

Siobhan Angus is an Assistant Professor of Communication and Media Studies in ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´â€™s School of Journalism and Communication, having joined the faculty in 2022. In talking to her about her work, which brings together art history, media studies, and environmental humanities, it quickly becomes clear that for her, what is unseen and unsaid is more interesting than what’s on the surface.

While spending two years at Yale University as the Banting Postdoctoral Fellow in the History of Art, Siobhan turned her attention to the history of photography. With a focus on materiality and the resource extraction necessary for photography as an art form, this analysis feels different to how photography as an art form is typically discussed and critiqued. Siobhan says, however, that this is not a new path of inquiry – simply one that has not been mainstream for several decades.

“When you read photography journals from the 19^th century, they talk about raw materials and mining,” Siobhan said. “This history is sort of painfully obvious […] but we tend to skip over it.” She explained that this connection is as deep as the language we use to talk about photography, and, by extension, cinema: the term silver screen, used commonly as a figure of speech for the movie industry, refers to the use of silver in the manufacture of early projection screens.

Camera Geologica by Siobhan Angus (2024)

This path of inquiry became , which was published at the beginning of April by Duke University Press. Camera Geologica charts the history of photography through six different material resources (bitumen, silver, platinum, iron, uranium, and rare earth elements) across the 19^th and 21^st centuries and makes the case that although the creation of photography would be impossible without mining, the way we think and talk about that art form intentionally erases the necessity of those materials.

Siobhan’s work in Camera Geologica is designed to challenge the notion of photography as weightless and effortless. “Light is important to photography, but it’s only part of the story,” Siobhan said. “Photography is literally light written in metal”, she says, so issues of resource extraction are, necessarily, issues of artistic critique.

While Siobhan’s research focuses on bringing materials into the conversation, that’s not her only priority. Discourses about art often erase labour, and so Siobhan wants to centre the importance of human effort to photographic creation – but not just the labour of the photography. “Rob Nixon says capitalism extracts in order to extract – that we separate workers by their discipline to say their labour has nothing in common with each other.”  Siobhan went on to say that process of extraction mirror each other, whether extracting resources from the earth or labour from workers. Asked how photographers should think about the extraction their work requires, Siobhan says “I don’t think anyone should stop making photos [….] but that thinking is an invitation to solidarity and collectivity”.

Siobhan also said photographers are not the only ones who should be thinking more about the role of extraction. As a Canadian researcher, she said she feels a responsibility to reckon with extraction as an aspect of our national identity and economy. “Seventy-five percent of all the mining companies in the world are headquartered in Canada. The Toronto Stock Exchange is the primary funder of extractive projects.” Siobhan said. “We can’t just say ‘oh, that’s Alberta’ because the funding comes from across the country. Canada has a long history of resource extraction and it shapes our culture and politics in profound ways.” The entry into discussion of resource extraction in Camera Geologica is an examination of the tar sands, and how we have a culture of ignoring them that needs to be undone.

When asked about the identities she describes herself with – art historian, curator, and organizer – Siobhan says political activism grounds the other two, as well as the rest of her work. “I grew up in a family of activists,” Siobhan said, “and environmental justice and organizing are something I’ve been around since childhood.” While these values were instilled early, at a certain point Siobhan wanted to know more, and make sense of the questions that activism tries to address: if we know polluting is bad for us and the planet, why do we keep doing it? A PhD felt like a way to dig deeper into those questions.

As to moving from art history, where she pursued graduate studies, to teaching and researching in a communications and media studies context, Siobhan said “the department has a rich history of interdisciplinary and cross disciplinary work, and an investment in questions of materiality and media. There is also fantastic work being done by the Climate Commons which is a nurturing home for these kinds of conversations”. She also noted that compared to the specificity of art history, the diversity of research within communications has made Siobhan’s own work stronger.

Chris Russill, MĂŠl Hogan, and Siobhan discussing Camera Geologica at a launch event at Perfect Books.

These connections were evident at a launch event for Camera Geologica on April 2^nd at Perfect Books, an independent bookseller in downtown Ottawa. She discussed the book in depth with ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ COMS colleagues Chris Russill whose research focuses on disinformation and climate change, and Liam Cole Young, who works within what is sometimes called the “civilizational” stream of media theory. Chris, Siobhan, and Liam were joined by (Associate Professor, Film and Media, Queens University).

Now that her book is published, Siobhan’s sights are set on two projects – developing a new course and building out a SSHRC-funded research project. Next year, she’ll be teaching COMS 4800 as a course on the history of photography, with a focus on object-based teaching. “Ottawa has one of the best photography collections in the world, and so I want to bring students out of the classroom and into those collections,” Siobhan said.

Her other major project, titled “Beyond the Toxic Sublime”, will turn its attention to a time period Camera Geologica largely skips over – the development of plastic and other synthetics in the 20^th century, and the way these new technologies overlap with geographies of environmental racism. Siobhan explains that when petrochemical production emerged in the United States, it was centred around former plantation sites in the American South. A preliminary article tied to this research will be out in  later this year.

“Even as they’re butting heads, they’re constantly overlapping”: Two years after releasing his first book, Dr. Armond R. Towns (Associate Professor – Communication & Media Studies) reflects on teaching at the intersection of Black Studies and Media Philosophy.

By Jaime Sadgrove

When , the first new journal from the National Communication Association (U.S.) in over two decades, launches later this year, it will have been thanks in large part to the work of Dr. Armond R. Towns, who serves as its cofounder and inaugural editor.

Professor Armond R. Towns

Dr. Towns came to ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´ as an Associate Professor in Communication and Media Studies in 2021. In the intervening years, he has published his first book, , co-founded the journal Communication and Race, and begun work on a new SHHRC-funded research project. Over the last three years, Dr. Towns’s interests have increasingly shifted towards the history of communication and media studies as a discipline, a focus which started to appear while he was working on his first book.

On Black Media Philosophy by Dr. Armond R. Towns (University of California Press, 2022).

Published in March 2022, On Black Media Philosophy critiques the concept of the human in media philosophy. Dr. Towns argues that in dominant media philosophy scholarship, the human is conceptualized as a white, western, capitalist, male figure. Dr. Towns then goes on to formulate a different idea of humanity for media philosophy to draw upon – one rooted in Black studies, that is multifaceted rather than singular, and that is not based on Western European anthropological traditions.

This exclusionary idea of who counts as “human” can be traced back to the very beginnings of media philosophy as a discipline and, specifically, the work of Marshall McLuhan. A Canadian scholar most famous for his expression “the medium is the message,” McLuhan is often seen as a foundational thinker in media theory. Dr. Towns said that the issues addressed in On Black Media Philosophy arise in McLuhan’s earliest work, and, more broadly, the disciplines which communication and media studies grew out of.

“McLuhan was an English professor and a trained rhetorician, and in the 19^th and 20^th centuries the English department was really at the heart of academic life,” Dr. Towns said. He went on to explain that through building a connection between English and the social sciences, scholars began to explore what we now call communication and media studies – but through a frame that saw European society as the epitome of culture and thought.

While McLuhan’s ideas are discussed in On Black Media Philosophy, Dr. Towns said the book isn’t actually about him – “McLuhan is more a vehicle through which I can discuss media philosophy.” Dr. Towns first discovered McLuhan’s work in graduate school, where he already had a background in Black studies. He found that the two disciplines – Black Studies and Media Philosophy – were both asking questions about what it means to be human, but the answers they arrived at didn’t align. “They’re constantly bumping heads, even as they’re overlapping,” Dr. Towns said. This friction became the basis of On Black Media Philosophy. Dr. Towns’s recent project, co-founding an editing a new journal, is also the product of friction – though a friction that is more institutional than theoretical.

The National Communication Association is one of the major organizations for communication scholars in the United States, and Communication and Race marks its first new journal since 2004. Dr. Towns said that the idea for the journal grew out of racism within the organization. “There were some pretty tense issues [of racism within the organization] about five or six years ago, and from those issues, there were a lot of institutional apologies.” These apologies felt inadequate, and Dr. Towns began to think that what was needed was not an apology, but an institutional space to write about issues of race within a communication context.

The first issue of the new journal Communication and Race will be released some time in 2024.

While race had become an increasingly publishable topic within the discipline, Dr. Towns explained that there wasn’t a lot of thinking about a journal focused on it, and so he got to work on a proposal. Once the bones were completed, he began reaching out to other scholars, and the proposal was accepted by the National Communication Association in 2021. When asked about the tension of housing this journal within an institution with a history of racism, Dr. Towns said it feels par for the course: “I could sit around and just be upset about racism, or I could try to mobilize resources from an institution that might feel guilty about that racism.” A key priority for the new journal is building a space for emerging scholars with an interest in publishing about race.

Two years on from publishing his book and with the first issue of Communication and Race about to be released, Dr. Towns said that while there is a good amount of scholarship about communication and race being released, he has noticed a shift in the way it is produced. “I’m starting to see an increased acceptance of what I would call European logics inside of scholarship that views itself as progressive. Part of my interest in the journal is having conversations about that and trying to create […] new ways to approach topics such as race without accepting the logics of race.”

Photos by Christopher Risch

This book aims to help students address these and other questions, providing clarity and understanding about numerous themes, while also opening up possibilities for future exploration. It is also intended as a way to think about and transcend disciplinary boundaries, so that food itself might become a starting point for learning about and conducting research on food.

An open educational resource funded by , Food Studies is freely available to all users at .

Cover of Who is the human in media philosophy?

Armond R. Towns demonstrates that humanity in media philosophy has implicitly referred to a social Darwinian understanding of the human as a Western, white, male, capitalist figure. Building on concepts from Black studies and cultural studies, Towns develops an insightful critique of this dominant conception of the human in media philosophy and introduces a foundation for Black media philosophy.

Delving into the narratives of the Underground Railroad, the politics of the Black Panther Party, and the digitization of Michael Brown’s killing, On Black Media Philosophy deftly illustrates that media are not only important for Western Humanity but central to alternative Black epistemologies and other ways of being human.

The Comics World

Taking the concept of a “comics world”—that is, the collection of people, roles, and institutions that “produce” comics as they are—as its organizing principle, the book asks readers to attend to the contexts that shape how comics move through societies and cultures. Each chapter explores a specific comics world or particular site where comics meet one of their publics, such as artists and creators; adaptors; critics and journalists; convention-goers; scanners; fans; and comics scholars themselves. Through their research, contributors demonstrate some of the ways that people participate in comics worlds and how the relationships created in these spaces can provide different perspectives on comics and comics studies.

Moving beyond the page, The Comics World explores the complexity of the lived reality of the comics world: how comics and graphic novels matter to different people at different times, within a social space shared with others.

This book covers the history of journalism as an institutionalized form of discourse from the acta diurna in ancient Rome to the news aggregators of the 21st century. It traces how journalism gradually distinguished itself from chronicles, history, and the novel in conjunction with the evolution of news media from news pamphlets, newsletters, and newspapers through radio, film, and television to multimedia digital news platforms like Google News.

Historical Dictionary of Journalism, Second Edition covers 46 countries, it contains a chronology, an introduction, an extensive bibliography, the dictionary section has more than 300 cross-referenced entries on a wide array of topics such as African-American journalism, the historiography of the field, the New Journalism, and women in journalism. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about journalism.

Marshaling ten years of research, and one of the only interviews that Juana Barraza Samperio has given while in prison, Susana Vargas Cervantes deconstructs this uniquely provocative story. She focuses, in particular, on the complex, gendered aspects of the case, asking: Who is a killer? Barraza—with her “manly” features and strength, her career as a masked wrestler in lucha libre, and her violent crimes—is presented, here, as a study in gender deviance, a disruption of what scholars call mexicanidad, or the masculine notion of what it means to be Mexican. Cervantes also challenges our conception of victimhood—specifically, who “counts” as a victim.

The Little Old Lady Killer presents a fascinating analysis of what serial killing—often considered “killing for the pleasure of killing”—represents to us.