Tema O. Milstein, Ph.D.
Ph.D., University of Washington, 2007  Office: Room 226	Assistant Professor Communication

Research: My work focuses on the nature of culture and the culture of nature. My research generally fits in the categories of cultural, intercultural, and environmental communication. My methodology is largely critical, cultural, and interpretive. Questions I am interested in include:

• How are cultural and ecological perceptions and practices reproduced or transformed through communication?
• How is the self altered through culture, environment, and communication?
• How does nature mediate communication and culture?

I’m working on several smaller projects and two large research projects. The two larger projects are:

• Connected Community Voices: I’m principle investigator for a collaborative participatory action research project with Conservation Voters of New Mexico, The Wilderness Society, UNM Resource Center for Raza Planning, and Arts de Aztlan, for which I’ve organized a team of C&J graduate students. This is a restorative endeavor, in which we are working with rural and urban Hispanic communities to help them identify their environmental meaning systems, to rewrite themselves into the land, and -- through connecting communities and identifying a new environmental vernacular -- to help empower them to influence environmental politics and policy.
• Nature Tourism Discourses: I am doing a long-term ethnographic study focused on the interplay of communication, tourism, and endangered wildlife at the Canada-U.S. Pacific border. My study is centrally concerned with the ways communication in this controversial international tourism setting constructs views of and actions toward endangered whales and their ecosystems.

Sample Publications:

• Milstein, Tema. (2009). "Environmental communication theories." In Stephen Littlejohn and Karen Foss (eds.). Encyclopedia of Communication Theory (pp. 344-349). Thousand Oaks: Sage.

• Milstein, Tema. (2009). "Somethin' tells me it's all happening at the zoo: Discourse, power and conservationism." 3 (1), 25-48. Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture.

• Milstein, Tema. (2009). "Framing the message: Ways to communicate ecologically, emotionally, sensorially, and culturally connected nature." Salish Sea Association of Marine Naturalists Handbook. Friday Harbor, WA: The Whale Museum.

• Milstein, Tema. (2008). " When whales 'speak for themselves': Communication as a mediating force in wildlife tourism." Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture, 2 (2), 173-192.

• Milstein, Tema. (2008). "The nature inside our heads: Exploring possibilities for widespread cultural paradigm shifts about nature." Drain: Journal of Contemporary Art and Culture, 10.

• Milstein, Tema. (2007). "Watching endangered orcas: The role of communication in balancing marine tourism and sustainability." International Coastal and Marine Tourism Congress Proceedings. Auckland: School of Hospitality & Tourism and the New Zealand Tourism Research Institute. 104-113.

• Milstein, T. (2007). "Human Communication’s Effects on Relationships with Animals." In M. Bekoff (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Human-Animal Relationships: A Global Exploration of Our Connections with Animals (Vol. 3, pp. 1044-1054). Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group.

• Milstein, Tema. (2007). "Learning in the field: Engaging students via experience and application." Ecologue, Fall, 2-4.

• Manusov, Valerie, and Milstein, Tema.  (2005). "Interpreting nonverbal behavior: Representation and transformation frames in Israeli and Palestinian media coverage of the 1993 Rabin-Arafat handshake." Western Journal of Communication, 69 (3), 183-201.

• Milstein, Tema (2005). "Transformation abroad: Sojourning and the perceived enhancement of self-efficacy." International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 29 (2), 217-238.

Authors: Donna Haraway, Donal Carbaugh, Val Plumwood, Arturo Escobar, Stuart Hall, Norman Fairclough, bell hooks, Michel Foucault, etc.

Teaching Style: I strive for a highly interactive and experiential pedagogy that engages students in transformative learning. I am interested in helping students discover ways to critically apply their learning to their work and their lives.

Awards: First Place Top Paper, Environmental Communication Division. National Communication Association. 2006.

Recent/Current Service:
Department: Graduate Faculty Committee; Faculty Merit Committee; Health Communication Search Committee

     University: Affiliated Faculty. Sustainability Studies Program & Water Resources Program; Executive Board member. Women Studies.

     Disciplinary: Immediate-Past Chair. Environmental Communication Interest Group. Western States Communication Association; Founder and Director. University of Washington Nature, Culture, and Public Scholarship Research Collaborative; Board of Directors, International Communication Association, 2004-2006; Textbook Reviewer, Human Communication in Society, 2nd, Alberts, Nakayama, & Martin. August 2008; Editorial Board: Green Theory and Praxis: The Journal of Ecopedagogy; Language & Ecology; Reviewer: Western Journal of Communication; Communication, Culture and Critique; Journal of International and Intercultural Communication; Language and Intercultural Communication; Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture.

Why UNM?: I have strong personal and academic ties to New Mexico. I went to high school here, earned my B.A. in the pre-merger Journalism Department, worked as a reporter and editor in print media in Albuquerque (and as a volunteer public radio talk show host at KUNM), taught in the C&J Department as a professional journalist, and later earned my M.A. here with an emphasis in intercultural communication. Plus, I'm a chile addict.

Spare Time: Gardening, yoga, being outdoors, snowboarding, travel, being with friends and family.