Purdue University Northwest campus professor Lee Artz recently completed a newly developing educational program with PNW and Musashino University in Japan and spoke at a conference in Turkey and the U.K.
Artz, who has his doctorate in media studies, teaches courses in communication theory, global entertainment and media news. While the courses are interconnected, his goal is to help students understand how the public can expand communication from smaller audiences to larger audiences. Artz also relates communication to democracy and justice.
“My main topic of research is not just entertainment because I do not believe there is just entertainment. I look at the biggest areas where it affects society the most, which is entertainment media, and look at their structures and how they can be made more democratic,” Artz said.
This past June, Artz travelled to Musashino University in Japan, where he taught a class on global entertainment and media and studied Japanese animation with his class.
“Purdue Northwest has recently developed an educational relationship with Musashino to provide student-faculty exchanges from each university. I believe that we will have students in the distant future, this fall or next spring, to study at our university,” Artz said.
PNW faculty, students and graduates accompanied Artz to Japan. Raquel Williams, a recent graduate from PNW, was a PNW ambassador at Musashino and assisted Artz as his teaching assistant during his global media class.
Williams said, “I’ve taken many classes with him. It was a lesson in itself to see his authenticity and his passion come though with his class. It was amazing for me to see that Artz was as influential to students overseas as he is here in the U.S.”
Early June, Artz was a keynote speaker at Atilim University in Ankara, Turkey discussed the culture of fear. The audience consisted of students, faculty, and the public.
“We have this fear that exists in most of the world. Pollution, food with bad chemicals, global warming...we generally live in fear of something everyday. I related my presentation to entertainment, like action movies and video games,” Artz said.
Artz presented several papers at the International Association for Media and Communication Research Conference in Leicester, U.K. late June. The presentation topics included questions on public access to media and democracy and the inability of average students to produce their own media.
Artz plans to speak in Portugal in September on communication as a human right and as an essential part of democracy. In November, Artz will visit Prague for the sixth European Communication Research and Education Association Conference to speak about community media and democracy in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua.
Artz will continue teaching his regular courses this fall at Purdue Northwest Calumet campus and finish his book “Pink Tide: Media and Power in Latin America,” which will be his second book.