Click on the name of a faculty member below to read their bio.
Phyllis Scott Carlin is a professor of communication studies at the University of Northern Iowa. She teaches courses in qualitative research (ethnography and oral history), conversation and discourse analysis, cultural performance, community and communication, and performance as social action. An active member of the National Communication Association, she has served as the secretary and as an executive board member of the Performance Studies division. Dr. Carlin is currently on the editorial board of Text and Performance Quarterly. Her creative work includes a touring production of James Hearst’s poetry, which was sponsored by a grant from the Iowa Humanities Board. She completed ethnographic photography/video for the American Folklife Center (Washington, D.C.), and qualitative research on rural women for the Smithsonian Institution. Her research publications include, for examples, an article on farm women’s narrative in The Future of Performance Studies: Visions and Revisions, an article on farm crisis narratives in Culture, Performance and Identity, and an essay on evolving changes in performance studies in Renewal and Revision: The Future of Interpretation. She has also conducted research with hospice volunteers, published in Texts and Identities. In 2002, she was guest editor of an Iowa Communication Journal special issue on the topic of performance, communication, and ethnography. Her current research focuses on disaster narrative, crisis, and community. She has presented her research at conferences, including the International Qualitative Research (Canada), National Communication Association, and the National Women’s Studies Association Dr. Carlin was the creator and director of the Interpreters Theatre program at UNI for 17 years (1976-1993), and as one of the national leaders in the changing discipline during that time, began to involve UNI students in scripts, productions, and curricula based upon oral history and ethnographic research, advocacy, and social action. These instructional themes continue in her current teaching and curriculum development projects.
Karen Mitchell is a professor of communication studies at the University of Northern Iowa where she teaches courses in performance of literature, performance and social change, scripting and directing, and the performance and rhetoric of social movements. She is the director of the graduate program in Communication Studies, the Artistic Director of UNI Interpreters Theatre, and the founding director of SAVE (Students Against a Violent Environment) Forum Actors. Her work with SAVE was originally part of a major grant to combat gender violence on campus, awarded to the UNI Women’s Studies program by the Department of Justice. In addition to SAVE, Dr. Mitchell also directs productions for UNI Interpreters Theatre. Her directorial work includes stage adaptations of novels (Extra-Curricular: A Novel of Rape on Campus by Anne Hasselbrack), investigations of popular cultural phenomenon (Barbie Undone), and hybrid works such as her ethnography of romance readers (The Rainbow Season: Romancing the Romance). In her thirty of teaching, eleven of which were devoted to teaching high school students, Dr. Mitchell has honed a pedagogical style that emphasizes experiential learning, creative performance work, collaborative problem solving, community building, and social justice action. She is an executive board member of the organization Pedagogy and Theatre of the Oppressed and is an active member in the Performance Studies division of the National Communication Association.
Dr. Paul Siddens (Ph.D. Southern Illinois
University 1989) is an
associate professor of communication studies at the University of Northern Iowa where he teaches courses in the analysis and performance
of literature, scripting and directing literature for the stage, interpersonal and nonverbal communication and the basic communication course.
He is a Producer and Faculty Designer and Technical Director for the UNI Interpreters Theatre and Performance Studies program, and has been active in professional, educational and community theatre throughout the Midwest for over thirty years. He has owned and operated his own theatre and multi-media production company, and also has professional experience in film and video production, including cinematography, film editing and audio production.
Dr. Siddens is professionally trained and experienced in virtually all aspects of technical theatre including technical direction; scenic, lighting, audio and makeup design; scenic and properties construction; setting and focusing lights; and audio and multi-media engineering. Some of the productions he has worked on in these areas include: A Streetcar Named Desire, A View from the Bridge, The Chinese Nightingale, The Vagina Monologues, Extra-Curricular: A Novel of Rape on Campus, Grand Isle Stories, Barbie Undone and Beat: A Play on Words.
Dr. Siddens is also professionally trained and experienced as an arts administrator, producer, director, writer and adapter, and actor. Some of the productions he has worked on in these areas include: Fahrenheit 451, Frankenstein, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Rhinocerous, A Day No Pigs Would Die, Tuck Everlasting, The Mad Dog Blues and Writing Against Your Text: Exploring the Self Through Original Texts.
Dr. Siddens’ pedagogical style in all
his classes centers round relating course theories and concepts to the everyday lives and experiences of his students, providing them with ways to interpret and
understand the world round them. The influence of performance and drama in our everyday lives plays a large part in this process.
