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Shrikant, Natasha

Associate Professor

Positions

Research Areas research areas

Research

research overview

  • I am a communication scholar with expertise in how everyday conversation is consequential for identity negotiation, community building, and empowerment of minority groups. I use discourse analytic and ethnographic methods to draw connections between ways that people negotiate racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual identities in conversation and larger scale processes, such as identity politics, cross-cultural adaptation, and racism. My research sheds light on ways that everyday conversation provides agency for participants to negotiate the larger scale processes and that shape their lived experiences. Current projects include (a) examining how recently resettled refugees in Colorado narrate their experiences, (b) analyzing communicative challenges and successes in a refugee-serving non-profit organization, and (c) analyzing the communicative constitution of misinformation via social media in Asian American communities and designing communication strategies to pre-empt misinformation.

keywords

  • Discourse analysis, identity, culture, race, ethnicity, ethnography

Publications

selected publications

Teaching

courses taught

  • COMM 2400 - Discourse, Culture and Identities
    Primary Instructor - Fall 2018 / Spring 2019 / Fall 2019 / Spring 2020 / Fall 2020 / Fall 2021 / Spring 2022 / Fall 2022 / Fall 2023
    Considers how communication is central to constructing who people are and examines social controversies related to talk and identities. Students learn to analyze and understand discourse, defined as everyday talk and conversation, through the practice of discourse analysis.
  • COMM 3740 - Qualitative Communication Research Methods
    Primary Instructor - Spring 2022
    Learn to collect and analyze qualitative data (interviews, observations, focus groups) in order to answer research questions about communication and society. Focuses on research that investigates meaning, understanding, process, and interpretation in order to enhance our knowledge of human interaction. Recommended prerequisites: COMM 1210 and COMM 1600.
  • COMM 4220 - Senior Seminar: Functions of Communication
    Primary Instructor - Spring 2019
    Topical seminar on the functions of communication across interpersonal, group, organizational, and public contexts. Reviews current theory and research on topics such as communication and conflict, persuasion, and ethical dimensions of communication practices.
  • COMM 4950 - Senior Thesis: Honors
    Primary Instructor - Spring 2018
    For exceptional communication majors who wish to graduate with department honors and receive credit for writing an honors thesis. Recommended prerequisite: COMM 4100 and overall GPA of 3.35 or higher and a COMM or COMN GPA of 3.50 or higher.
  • COMM 5435 - Readings in Community and Social Interaction
    Primary Instructor - Fall 2019 / Fall 2021 / Fall 2023
    Focuses on how everyday communication practices shape and are shaped by community contexts. Contains theoretical and empirical readings that illustrate how interactions among group members negotiate and maintain distinct communities and how group communication practices reflect shared norms among community members. Also reviews methods to study everyday interactions among community members (e.g., discourse analysis, qualitative coding, surveys and applied approaches/methods).
  • COMM 6410 - Discourse Analysis
    Primary Instructor - Fall 2018 / Fall 2020 / Fall 2022
    Acquaints students with the main types of discourse analysis: conversation analysis, critical discourse analysis, and rhetorically informed discourse approaches. Teaches how to conduct discourse analysis, including transcribing, selecting excerpts, documenting inferences, and linking findings to scholarly controversies.
  • COMM 6445 - Language, Ideology and Identity
    Primary Instructor - Spring 2021
    Focuses on cultural foundations of social interaction, with a special emphasis on ideology (including potentially contested cultural norms, values and premises) as a basic condition of meaningful interaction. Identities are discussed as culturally variable, historically embedded interactional accomplishments, constructed from communicative resources such as language and other types of signs, that serve the purpose of participation in communal life.

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