Two students will present original research at the 2018 Western States Communication Association convention February 16-19 in Santa Clara. Kelsey Rij and Clint Harris both submitted papers based on their fall 2017 communication projects. Rij will present “Lives that (Don’t) Matter: The Construction of Abjection in the Public Consciousness” and Clint will present “Egoistic Philanthropy: Social Exchange Theory in the Context of Disaster.”
A native of Fort Polk, LA, Rij is majoring in philosophy and communication with emphases in ethics and critical theory, respectively. She chose her subject due to her interest in “the ethical implications of a publicly identifiable abject subject and the visuality that results from their construction,” she said.
Harris is from Fresno and is majoring in communication, emphasis in communication studies, and philosophy with a minor in business. His subject choice came from a desire to tie together all three of his areas of study. “Perhaps the most interesting point of my research was the realization of the ease in which communication can be viewed as an economic model and how people often unknowingly do so,” he said.