Research Interests

 

Dr. David J. Schaefer (Ph.D., The Ohio State University, 2001) is a Professor and chair in the Department of Communication Arts at Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio. In the 1980s and 1990s, he worked as a children's program producer in public television and as an announcer and newscaster for several commercial radio stations in the midwest. Beginning in 1995, he produced an international radio program, Franciscan University Connections, for the EWTN/WEWN global network.  He currently is the advisor for the campus radio stations WFRScc and WFENcc.

 

He has taught undergraduate courses in digital audio/video production, media literacy, film history and theory, Indian cinema, international communications, web design, and media theory, and graduate courses in critical-cultural theory and Indian cinema. He specializes in research on popular Indian (Hindi) cinema, digital media competency/literacy, and global/intercultural communication. He has presented numerous conference papers and published journal articles and book chapters on several of these topics.

 

He is a member of the Phi Kappa Phi National Honor Society, the International Communication Association, the Communication Institute for Online Scholarship, the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre, and serves on the Board of Directors for Urban Mission Ministries. In addition, he is a Fulbright scholar and was awarded a lecturing-research grant in 2004-2005.  While on sabbatical in 2008-2009, he was co-director of the Indian Film Research Project with Dr. Kavita Karan.