Ken Hillis (Assistant Chair)

Associate Professor
Media Studies

Current Research: I am Associate Professor of Media Studies in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  My first book, Digital Sensations: Space, Identity and Embodiment in Virtual Reality (1999) is published by University of Minnesota Press and in 2004 was translated in Portuguese (Sensações Digitais: Espaço, Identidade e Corporificações. Unisinos, Brazil).  In 2003 Digital Sensations won UNC's Hettleman Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Achievement by a Young Faculty member.

My current book project, Rituals of Transmission, under contract with Duke University Press, examines relationships among on-line technologies, digital celebrity, ritual and fetishism.  I am also principal editor of the anthology, Everyday eBay: Culture, Collecting, and Desire (Routledge, 2006), and working on a monograph linking theories of Enlightenment, the built form of urban Los Angeles, and the role of films set in Los Angeles in broadcasting news of this form to receptive audiences.  I am also focused on Google and am assembling an anthology on topics related to online search and the cultures and political economies it supports.

Grant Funding: UNC Spray-Randleigh Research Fellowship, 2006 ($15,000); UNC Institute for the Arts and Humanities Fellowship (Fall 2006 teaching release);

Recent Publications: Everyday eBay: Culture, Collecting and Desire (Routledge, 2006) Principal Editor;

“Auctioning the Authentic: eBay and the Superfluity of Memory,” Everyday eBay: Culture, Collecting, and Desire, Ken Hillis et al (ed.), New York (Routledge 2006)

“Modes of Digital Identification: Virtual Technologies, Webcam Cultures,” New Media, Old Media: Interrogating the Digital Revolution, Wendy Chun and Tom Keenan, ed. New York (Routledge 2006);

“A Space for the Trace: Memorable eBay and Narrative Effect,” Space and Culture Vol 9, no. 2, 2006;

“Film Noir and the American Dream: The Dark Side of Enlightenment.” Velvet Light Trap 55, Spring 2005 (Reprinted in Multicultural Film: Essays, Pearson Publishing, 2006).

Courses Regularly Taught: Comm 450--Media and Popular Culture, Comm 452--Film Noir, Comm 856--Seminar in Media Studies, Comm 852--Seminar in Communication Technologies.

Future/Projected Courses: 400-level Undergraduate course on the 1950s American Science Fiction Film, 400-level Undergraduate course focused on Visual Cultures.

Areas of Specialization: New Media; Virtual Reality Technology and Practices; Web-Based Identity Practices; Space, Place and Landscape; Geographic Thought; Relationships among Conception, Perception and Sensation; Relationships between Images and Text and between Ideology and Built Form;The Limits of Representation 

Honors: UNC Spray-Randleigh Research Fellowship, 2006; UNC Distinguished Teaching Award for Post-Baccalaureate Instruction, 2003; Philip and Ruth Hettleman Prize for Outstanding Artistic and Scholarly Achievement by Young UNC Faculty, 2001. 

Professional Service: Assistant Deparatment Chair (2005-date), Chair of Media Studies Hiring Committee, 2006;

Current/Recent Work with Graduate Students: In 2006 I am directing two Ph.D. candidates: Nathan Epley and Shelley McGinnis (Communication Studies) and one Ph.D. Student: Brian Graves (Communication Studies).  Committee Member for three Ph.D. Candidates: Younghan Cho (Communication Studies), Tara Kachgal (Journalism and Mass Communication), Joseph Palis (Geography).  Committee Member for one M.A. Student: Scott Selberg (Communication Studies). I have previously directed one Ph.D. student (Kelly Rowett 2003), served on five additional Ph.D. Committees, directed nine Masters Theses and served as a Reader on three additional M.A. Committees.

Community Service: Martha Stewart Living Radio, Living With Technology, “Online Auctions,” May 2, 2006;
   
CBC-Radio 1, Ideas, “By Design: The Politics of Everyday Objects,” June 5, 2006.