Spring symposium: communicating cross culturally

NEW PALTZ — The State University of New York will hold a spring symposium entitled Communication Across Borders from 7:30-9 p.m., on Thursday May 1 in Lecture Center 102. The event will feature noted journalists Ann Cooper and Mary Beth Pfeiffer along with the Director of Composition at Wayne State University, Richard Marback. The lecturers will examine how we cross cultural, linguistic, political and social boundaries when communicating with others. They also will consider how language is used as a means to maintain positions of power.

Cooper, who has been a journalist for more than 25 years, is visiting SUNY New Paltz as the James H. Ottaway Sr. Professor of Journalism. Cooper has researched and written on topics ranging from the political upheaval in Somalia to the cholera epidemic in Zaire. Since 1997, she has been the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, the foremost advocacy group that seeks to monitor abuses against the press and promote press freedom around the world.

Pfeiffer, a journalist for 25 years, is projects editor at the Poughkeepsie Journal, where she writes and edits in-depth investigative reports. She has written on juvenile crime, highway safety, municipal corruption, and use of behavior-altering drugs in children, special education, and the roots of the Mexican community in Poughkeepsie. For the past two years, Pfeiffer has written extensively on prison issues.

Marback is Associate Professor of English and the Director of Composition at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. His current research and publications focus on interactions between race, rhetoric, civic space, and language rights. During the past two years, Marback has received grants to conduct research in South Africa, where he investigated language rights and the rhetoric of public space.

This event is free and open to the public. The University Writing Board and the New Paltz Foundation are the sponsors of this symposium.

For more information contact Patricia Sullivan in the Department of Communication & Media, (845) 257-3456 or sullivap@newpaltz.edu.