Communication

In this article I try to outline a hermeneutics of communication, in which the articulation of the discourse lies in the environmental component of media. Overcoming the conception of media understood only as technologies or tools at the service of communication, one understands their worth as expressive forms of the social and cultural environment. And, following this approach, one discovers that communication is not the transmission of messages, but rather an interactive, environmental, ecological system; it is an event, a self-referential process strengthened by the interweaving of connections that form a system of global, participatory, and plural communication, created through proximity and through contact. In this way, there emerges a hermeneutics of communication which reveals its interlocutory and pragmatic aspects.

In 2012, we both decided to participate in Collegium: A Colloquy on Faith and Intellectual Life at St. John’s University, and it was there that we discovered our shared interest in serv- ice learning, social justice, and metacogni- tive reflection. We realized that we were both using our respective cities, Baltimore and Denver, as canvases to find, tell, docu- ment, and archive compelling stories. We designed our courses to be a lens through which our students can “see” both the city and themselves in a different and perhaps more interesting way. Dr. Kaye Whitehead’s course, “Baltimore Stories,” is an upper- level service-learning production course that is offered in the spring semester. In addition to the normal course offerings, the students volunteer for two hours per week at a women’s shelter in downtown Baltimore. Dr. Jason Taylor’s two-semester sequence includes “Writing for Social Justice” and “Philosophical Explorations” as parts of the first-year experience. In addi- tion, students enroll both semesters in a one-credit course which houses a three-to- four hour weekly commitment at a service- learning placement and a weekly discussion section devoted to reflection on service-learning.

This Award was received for the work that I did with my students in my "Baltimore Stories" course. My students collected and archived stories from women who were based in Baltimore (at My Sister's Place Women's Shelter) and were temporarily experiencing homelessness.

"Critique of Sarcastic Reason is a philosophical dissertation that combines several different fields in order to pave the way for those studying sarcasm at the neurobiological, communicative and socio-political levels of analysis where sarcasm appears, respectively, through associated brain activity, between two or more individuals with higher level metabeliefs, and as a method by which political, religious and other social ideologies are attacked (i.e., one form of "biting sarcasm").

The academic disciplines involved in Critique of Sarcastic Reason include social cognitive and developmental psychology, neuroscience, critical theory, modern and contemporary philosophy of mind, evolutionary biology, logic, metaphysics and epistemology. Sarcasm is argued to only function at the highest levels of metacognition, and sarcasm occurs within social situations during which there are tendencies for two or more people to form desires and disgusts directly related to beliefs about beliefs. Sarcasm is compared to deception and is argued to be best analyzed as either spontaneous or rehearsed."