Professor Jonathan Gray Delivers Keynote Speech at Beijing Conference

Communication Arts Professor Jonathan Gray will be the keynote speaker at the 2nd International Conference on Communication and the Public, which will be held June 18-19 in Beijing. Professor Gray’s talk is titled, “Swipe for More: Satire, Play, and Citizenship on the Move.” He will be introduced by fellow Communication Arts Professor Zhongdang Pan.

When asked to elaborate on the conference’s mission, Professor Pan explained, “This year’s conference follows the very successful one held at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China last year. It is dedicated to digging deeper into the broad theme of the journal, Communication and the Public. Together with the journal, the conference is to function as a venue to facilitate collaborations among communication scholars at UW-Madison, University of Pennsylvania, and Zhejiang University and to promote global communication research and media studies.”

“It’s both an honor and somewhat terrifying,” Professor Gray said of giving the keynote speech. “I love that before and after the talk, I’ll get the chance to hear from and talk with a wide variety of smart scholars from the region, in ways that I’m sure will challenge how I think about my work with examples and cultural specifics that are new to me.”

He continued, “I’m honored to have the chance to share some of my own thoughts with the conference attendees through the keynote, but just as excited, if not more, to get the chance to hear from the other attendees, to meet smart people working on similar issues over here, and to expand my network and horizons.”

For more information about the conference, visit the Wisconsin China Initiative and the conference’s event page.