Hamilton

Dr. Jay Hamilton

Department Head; Professor; Jim Kennedy New Media Professor, Entertainment and Media Studies
A headshot of Jay Hamilton.
Office: Journalism Bldg, Room 104-B

About: Dr. Hamilton teaches cultural, critical, and historical approaches to media studies. His research addresses alternative media and democratic communication.

View Curriculum Vitae

Education

Ph.D., Mass Communication, University of Iowa
M.A., Communication, University of Washington
B.A., English/Communication, University of Washington

Research Interests and Activities

Dr. Hamilton studies the history, theory and practice of alternative media and democratic communication. A central goal is to develop a historicizing critique not only of specific practices of democratic communications but also of their conceptualizations and forms. His work also seeks to recontextualize, retheorize, and thus reconstitute the possibilities of democratic communications in the current era of digital media, globalization, and perpetual political, economic, and climate crises. Books include Democratic Communications: Formations, Projects, Possibilities(Lexington Books, 2008; paperback edition 2009); Alternative Journalism (Sage, 2009), which is co-written with Chris Atton (Napier University, Edinburgh, Scotland); and Explorations in Critical Studies of Advertising (Routledge, 2017), co-edited with Robert Bodle, and Ezequiel Korin.

Teaching Specialties

Dr. Hamilton teaches cultural, critical and historical approaches to media studies. He holds an appointment to the Graduate Faculty. Dr. Hamilton has taught First-Year Seminars and in the Grady@Oxford study abroad program. Doctoral advisees have won major external and internal scholarly awards and distinctions. In 2014 he was appointed a Josiah Meigs Distinguished Professor, the University’s most prestigious teaching honor to recognize superior teaching at the graduate and undergraduate levels. Hamilton is also the recipient in 2003, 2009 and 2013 of the Grady College Roland Page Outstanding Faculty Award, which honors excellence in teaching at the graduate level.

Experience

Prior to joining the Grady College, Dr. Hamilton taught at the State University of New York College at Geneseo, the College of Notre Dame of Maryland and at the University of Iowa. In addition, he has worked as a copywriter for Corporate Communications at Microsoft Corp., and as a training coordinator at the law firm of Piper & Marbury L.L.P.