Arts & Humanities

Christen Mandracchia earned her doctorate in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Maryland and her Master’s degree in Theatre from Villanova University. She has taught production and design at Penn State Abington and Delaware County Community College where she served as production manager and technical director, respectively. She has worked as a theatre professional locally, regionally, Off-Broadway and internationally. She directed the award-winning Off-Broadway premiere of Dorian Gray the Musical and her sound design for Triumph of Isabella: An Immersive Experience was exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum and Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London. Additionally, she has taught at University of the Arts, Arcadia University, and the University of Maryland. During the pandemic, she founded the Golden Saga LLC Workshop Program which uses theatre techniques to teach storytelling for public relations.

Jordin Clark joined the faculty at West Chester University in 2023, after previously teaching at Wabash College in Indiana. After receiving her B.A. in History from Elmhurst University, she completed both her M.A and Ph.D. in Communication Studies with an emphasis on Rhetoric and Civic Engagement at Colorado State University. Her research focuses both on rhetoric of everyday life and the rhetoric of social movements. Her recent publication in Social and Cultural Geography analyzes how people, through their day-to-day practices, change urban landscapes in times of crisis to bolster community and social support.

Dr. Miller holds a Ph.D. in Communication from Texas A&M University and an M.A. and B.A. in Communication from the University of Arkansas. She teaches courses on public speaking, rhetoric, and public communication.  

Dr. Miller’s research focuses on discourses of power and identity in the contexts of marginalization in media and the public sphere from a critical rhetoric perspective. Systems of power impact all aspects of our lives, from how transgender people are treated in public spaces to how patriarchal oppression of women persists in our genderblind society. Her research connects the disparagements, constraints, and empowerments experienced in our everyday lives to larger systems of power in order to explore the co-constructed nature of identity. 

She is the author of two recent books in the areas of gender, rhetoric, and media. Genderblindness in American Society: The Rhetoric of a System of Social Control of Women (Lexington, 2019) analyzes how gender is diminished in public life by a system of genderblindness that removes gender from public persuasive appeals. Distancing Representations in Transgender Film: Identification, Affect, and the Audience (SUNY Press, 2023) analyzes how transgender representations in film are constructed narratively and visually to elicit the affective responses of ridicule, fear, disgust, and sympathy from a cisgender audience in line with a cisnormative ideology. 

Dr. Miller’s research also appears in Journal of Communication Inquiry, QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, Transformative Works and Cultures, Departures in Critical Qualitative Research, Women & Language, the film journal Spectator, Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies, and multiple book chapters. She is co-editor of Gender in a Transitional Era: Changes and Challenges (Lexington, 2015) with Dr. Amanda Martinez.  

Laura Brown is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and Media. Her research interests include instructional communication, intercultural communication and the impact of loneliness on Gen Z. She teaches Relational Communication, Communication Literacy & Inquiry, and Public Speaking.

I am originally from the UK but I now live in Pennsylvania with my wife, kids and pets. I received my bachelors with honors in philosophy from the university of hertfordshire and my Ma in Continental philosophy for the university of Essex. My current research is focused on the philosophy of religion and the philosophy of comedy.