jefair

Information

First Name

Jo Ellen

Last name

Fair

Title

Professor

Awards and honors

  Vilas Associate Award for research, Graduate School, University of Wisconsin, 2009-2011.

Courses taught

• International Communication (J830), thematically taught: international media ethnography, survey of   global communication, and media, performance, and identity in world perspective, representations of non-Western societies
• Literary Aspects of Journalism (J669), taught as "War Stories"
• Creative Nonfiction (J405)
• International Communication (J620), thematically taught: the work of foreign correspondence, globalization and media, comparative media systems, celebrity culture, news media and international humanitarian interventions
• Mass Communication in Developing Nations (J621)

 

 

 

Biography

Jo Ellen Fair is professor of Journalism & Mass Communication. She also serves as the faculty director of the International Studies Major, one of the largest majors in the College of Letters and Science. Fair joined the UW faculty in 1989 after earning her Ph.D. in mass communications from Indiana University in 1988.

Much of Fair’s research has examined U.S. media images of conflicts in Africa. This work is concerned with how American notions of race have shaped the telling -- around the world -- of African conflicts and catastrophes. In addition, over the past several years she has begun exploring the ways that African media influence popular culture to create new social realities for Africans. This latter work has yielded a variety of publications: about African media accounts of conflict and post-conflict transformations; about 21st century changes in the profession of journalism in West Africa, about the history of television in Senegal; about the African embrace of new media, and especially about the way young urban Ghanaians are combining local values with ideas circulating in global media in order to craft lifestyles (particularly new versions of love and domesticity) that accord with their aspirations to be simultaneously Ghanaians and cosmopolitan citizens of the world. She is currently conducting research on the media and human rights discourses in Liberia.

By invitation, Fair has organized and facilitated journalism workshops, training programs, and media curriculum development exercises in several African countries, including Ghana, Zambia, and Namibia. At the moment she is working mainly in Ghana and Liberia.

Fair has edited the journal, African Issues and serves on the editorial boards of several African Studies and communications journals.She is one of editors of Duke University's series "The Culture and Practices of Violence." She has been the research chair and president of the International Communication division for the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication and is an active member of the African Studies Association, the West Africa Research Association, and the International Communication Association.

On the Wisconsin campus, Fair has held a succession of leadership positions that link the School of Journalism and Mass Communication to broader campus communities of faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates: director of the African Studies Program (1998-2001), director of the Global Studies Program (2002-2004), faculty director of Chadbourne Residential College (2004-2006), and director of the International Studies Major (2007-present).  

 

 

 

Office hours

Varies by semester.

Office

5018 Vilas

Education

Purdue University
BA, Mass Communication with French minor, 1982

Indiana University, Bloomington
MA, Journalism, 1984
Ph.D., Mass Communication, 1988

Telephone

608-263-2199

Email

jefair@wisc.edu

Areas of research

Popular culture and globalization; journalistic practices in non-Western contexts; media ethnography; media and human rights discourses; regional area of specialization Africa, with work in Latin America and India.

Recent publications

  Geraldine O’Mahony and Jo Ellen Fair (forthcoming, 2011). “From lords of war to leaders in society: How former Liberian warlords have used the media to reframe themselves,” Media, War, and Conflict.

Jo Ellen Fair (2010). Reconciling a nation: Ghanaian journalists and the reporting of human rights. In B. Musa and J. Domatob (eds.), Communication, Culture, and Human Rights in Africa (pp. 51-68). Lanham. Md.: Rowman and Littlefield.

  Jo Ellen Fair, Melissa Tully, Brian Ekdale, and Rabiu K.B. Asante (2009). “Crafting lifestyles in urban Africa: Young Ghanaians in the world of online friendship.” Africa Today, 55(4), 29-49.

  Jo Ellen Fair (2008, spring). "Soft control of the press: Dubious normalcy in Ghana." Dissent, 39-42.

   Bilbija, Ksenija, Fair, Jo Ellen, Milton, Cynthia, and Payne, Leigh (eds.) (2005). The Art of Truth-telling About Authoritarian Rule. Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press.

Jo Ellen Fair (2004). “Me do wu,” my Val: The creation of Valentine’s Day in Accra, Ghana. African Studies Review, 47(3), 23-49.

In progress: “’How do I know it’s for real?’ Love and its performance in Ghanaian advice columns.” 

 In progress: “On-line non-place: Liberian war mash-ups as YouTube dystopia.” Presented at the annual conference of the Association for American Geographers, Media Geographies section, April 2011.

   

  

 

  

  

  

 

  

 

History

Member for

2 years 24 weeks