Chris Williams, Ph.D.

Title: Buchtelite Adviser
Office: Student Union 51C
Phone: 330-972-5475
Email: cnw@uakron.edu
Curriculum Vitae: Download in PDF format

Research Accomplishments

My research interest is race and the media, in particular how the U.S. media cover undocumented immigration into the United States.

Dissertation. This study, “Caught in the Web of Scapegoating: National Press Coverage of California’s Proposition 187,” is a textual analysis of how the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times covered Prop. 187 to better understand media “framing” of the issue. The study concludes that this coverage framed undocumented immigrants as deviant and helped divert public attention from other issues facing the state, such as the fact that California was enduring its most significant recession since the Great Depression. Completed December 2007.

Visiting Scholar, Instituto Tecnologico de Monterrey Center of Communication Research, Monterrey, Mexico, spring 2005.

Researched and wrote article, “Invisible Cycle of Scapegoating: U.S. Media Coverage of 20th Century Immigration Panics 1929-1994.”

Presented to the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, San Antonio, Aug. 12, 2005.

Visiting Professor, Instituto Tecnologico de Monterrey Communication Department, Monterrey, Mexico, summer/fall 2004.

Contemporary Journalism Theory (Mi00851)

Systems of Disseminating Information (Mi99872.1)

Interpretative Journalism (Mi00871; co-taught with Lic. Claudia Lerma)

Developed curriculum for two of these courses, “Contemporary Journalism Theory” and “Systems of Disseminating Information,” summer/fall 2004.

Publications

More than 1,000 articles for U.S. daily newspapers, including the Boston Globe, the Dallas Morning News, the Houston Chronicle and the Fort Worth (TX) Star-Telegram.

Education

Ph.D., Journalism, University of Texas at Austin, 2008
M.S., Journalism, Columbia University, New York, NY, 1982
B.A., English, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 1975