18th Biennial Communication Ethics Conference: May 28-30, 2025 

For this in-person conference, we invite participants to submit completed papers or extended abstracts of 200–500 words. We also invite panel proposals of three speakers per panel.

Please include a panel title with 250-word rationale, titles and 200-word abstracts for each presentation, and contributor contact information (institutional affiliation and email).

Submissions are due via%20email by April 30, 2025. 

Wednesday May 28
 
9:00-9:15: Coffee and registration (Shepperson Suite)

9:15-9:25 (Ballroom A): Remarks from Associate Dean John Kern, Duquesne University McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts

9:30–10:45: Panel 1 (Ballroom A): Reflecting Images: Personhood, Sign, Memory

Chair: Briankle G. Chang, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

“Image, Perception, and Signs of Personhood: Phenomenological Reflections on Flesh, Experience, and the Signature of the Self”
Frank J. Macke, Mercer University

“Analogs of Huxley and Orwell in the TikTok Controversy
Thaddeus D. Martin, Modesto College

“Memory as Dialogical Attention: A Communicology Model”
Richard L. Lanigan, International Communicology Institute

11:00–12:15: Concurrent Sessions

Panel 2a (Ballroom A): Just Looking: Others, Selves, and Brands

Chair: Garnet Butchart, Duquesne University

“Oneself as Another: What Constitutes a Just Distance for Selfhood?”
Fadoua Loudiy, Slippery Rock University

“The Other of Programmatic Technologies: Bernard Stiegler and Mark Fisher on ‘What Makes Life Worth Living’ for PR Professionals” 
Robert Foschia, Kutztown University

“Personal Brands, Corporate Gains: The Role of Influencers and Celebrities in Corporate Brand Extension”
Andrea DiBernardo, Duquesne University

Panel 2b (Ballroom BC): Simulation, Technologization, and the Erosion of Sensus Communis

Chair: Erik Garrett, Duquesne University

“Postmodern Journalism and a Call from Baudrillard to Go Back to Modernity” 
Andrew Connolly, Duquesne University

“The Role of Social Media: An Ethical Perspective”
Yaroub Al Obaidi, Duquesne University

“Exploring the Ethical Contradictions in Media and Film Concerning the Communication Practices They Afford”
Gary Hughes, Duquesne University

12:30-1:30: Boxed lunches and conversation (Shepperson Suite)

1:45–3:00: Concurrent Sessions

Panel 3a (Ballroom A): Imagining Ethical Leadership Praxis

Chair: Andrew Connolly, Duquesne University

"Seeing the Servant: Visualizing Trust and Ethical Authority in Leadership Praxis" 
Tricia Giannone McFadden, St. Francis University

“Ethics in the Frame: Transformational Narratives and the Construction of Leadership Culture”
Mary Elizabeth Yancosek Gamble, Saint Francis University

“Leadership Responses to Shifting Terrain of Diversity Concerns”
Linda Coleman, Duquesne University/University of Pittsburgh

Panel 3b (Ballroom BC): Undergraduate Scholars Panel

Chair: Alexander Fagin, Pennsylvania State University

“The Kiss of Betrayal: The Illusion and Misunderstanding of Communication in the Digital Image”
Isabela Briggs, Ave Maria University

“A Catholic Understanding of Copied Sacred Images” 
Anna Marie Austin, Ave Maria University

“Flora and Fauna: Imaging Beyond” 
Noah Perez, Ave Maria University

“Healthy Parasocial Relationships in the 21st Century”
James W. Kavanagh, Geneva College

3:15–4:45 Keynote (Ballroom A): Carlos Vidales, University of Guadalajara, "Communication and Meaning from Cybersemiotics"

5:00–5:30  (Ballroom A): International Communicology Institute Awards Ceremony

6:00–8:00 (Ballroom BC): All-conference Dinner

Thursday May 29

8:30-9:00: Coffee/Breakfast Snacks (Shepperson Suite)

9:00-10:15: Concurrent Sessions

Panel 4a (Ballroom A): Contexts of Dialogic Ethics: Friendship, Leadership, and Inter/Intrafaith Engagement

Chair: Ryan McCullough, West Liberty University

“AI Friendship as a Dialogic Unity of Contraries: Extension and Disruption”
Tiffany Petricini, Penn State Erie, The Behrend College.

“Ronald C. Arnett and Dialogic Leadership: An Authentic Encounter with the Midas Touch”
Michael R. Kearney, Dordt University
Victor Grigsby, Duquesne University

“The Icon, Ethics, and Interfaith Dialogue: Mediating Communion between East and West”
Natalia Tapsak, Duquesne University

“Lamenting Hope Within African American Hymnody” 
Richard W. Wingfield, Duquesne University

Panel 4b (Ballroom BC): Theorizing Identity, Ecological Thought, Visual Rhetoric, and Pan-Africanism

Chair: Georgia Bedford, Duquesne University

“How Race Matters in Communicating Social Identity”
Henry Anyabuoke, Duquesne University

“Theorizing an Ecological Communicative Ethics of the Trail: Working the Trails VI”
Janie Harden Fritz, Duquesne University

“A Triad Heritage: A Rhetorical Analysis of Pan-Africanism”
Samuel Edogbanya, Duquesne University

10:30-11:45: Concurrent Sessions

Panel 5a (Ballroom A): Ethics, Politics, and Education Today

Chair: Janie Harden Fritz, Duquesne University

“Liberty and Liberalism: American Politics and Ethics at the Point of Exhaustion”
David Impellizzeri, Regent University

“Imagining the Concrete Universal: Cosmopolitan Borders in Benhabib’s Democratic Theory”
Basak M. Guven, Duquesne University

“Crisis Rhetoric of ‘Efficiency’ in Education: A Merger—Technocrats, Oligarchs, ‘Captains of Industry,’ and the State in Late Capitalism" Georgie Bedford, Duquesne University

Panel 5b (Ballroom BC): Reflections on Power, Media, and Image(s)

Chair: Andrew R. Smith, Edinboro University of Pennsylvania

“The Digital Übermensch: The Will to Power, Master-Slave Mentality, and Living a Life”
Andri Kosasih, Duquesne University

“McLuhan, the Narcissus Myth, and AI”
Jennifer Spiegel, Duquesne University

“The Image of the Inevitable”
Justin Bonanno, Ave Maria University

“Dissecting the Impact of YouTube 20 Years Later”
Fr. Lazarus Langbiir, Duquesne University

12:00–1:30: Luncheon Keynote (Ballroom A): David Gunkel, Northern Illinois University, "Person, Thing, Robot: A Moral and Legal Ontology for the 21st Century and Beyond"

1:45–3:00: Panel 6 (Ballroom A): Phenomenology and Dialogue: Application and Reconstruction

Chair: Briankle G. Chang, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

“Application of Merleau-Ponty’s Philosophy in a Phenomenological Nursing Study of Patients, Family Members, and Nurses During Critical Illness in the Intensive Care Unit”
Brigitte S. Cypress, Rutgers University

“Dialogue, Dissemination, and Semiosis: Toward a Pragmatic Reconstruction”
Vincent Colapietro, Liberal Arts Professor Emeritus, Penn State University, Center for the Humanities, University of Rhode Island

3:15-4:45: Panel 7 (Ballroom A): Ethics of the Real

Chair: Fr. Lazarus Langbiir, Duquesne University

“Ethics of Asserting the Real: Production Artifacts and the Uncanny Valley in Artificial Images
Michael Grabowski, Manhattan University

“Reality, Imagination, Research, and Communication: An Epistemological Synthesis of 
Karl Popper’s Three Worlds and the Methodological Issues in Research”
Quinjiang Yao, Lamar University

“Re-imagining Money: Bitcoin and the 21st Century”
Rachel Kaplan, Seton Hill University

5:00–6:15: Panel 8 (Ballroom A): Contributions of Thomas Pace to Research and Pedagogy in Communicology

Chair: Richard L. Lanigan, International Communicology Institute

“Thomas Pace and the Recovery of the Human in Communication”
Isaac E. Catt, Visiting Scholar, Duquesne University

“Seeding the Existential Soil of Scholarship”
Jacqueline M. Martinez, Arizona State University

“The Flesh of Speech and the Experience of Communication in the Life and Voice of  Tom Pace”
Frank J. Macke, Mercer University

"Speech as Human Science and Rhetorical Art"
Andrew R. Smith, Edinboro University of Pennsylvania

“Cyphers of Existenz in the Legacy of Thomas J. Pace”
Thaddeus D. Martin, Modesto College

“Tom Pace as an Event of Speaking: Discovering with Tom that the Map is Not the Territory”
Deborah Eicher-Catt, Professor Emerita of Communication Arts and Sciences, Liberal Arts Teaching Fellow, The Pennsylvania State University

Dinner on your own

Friday May 30

8:30-9:15: Coffee, snacks, and conversation (Shepperson Suite)

9:15-10:30: Panel 9 (Ballroom BC): Ethical Praxis in Educational Contexts

Chair: Basak Guven, Duquesne University

“Who Knows? Teaching Response-Ability as Epistemological Discernment in GenAI-Assisted Business Communication”
Beth Walter, Carnegie Mellon University

“Artificial Intelligence and Higher Education: Destabilized Images, Roles, and Ethics”
Ryan McCullough, West Liberty University

“The Improvisational Classroom: Embodied Pedagogical Praxis”
Anthony Luchini, Duquesne University

10:45-12:00 Panel 10 (Ballroom BC): The Human Image in Helmuth Plessner, Pierre Bourdieu, and Psychocentric Culture

Chair: Richard L. Lanigan, International Communicology Institute

“The Human Image Reimagined”
Igor Klyukanov, Eastern Washington University

“Toward a ‘New Logic of Embodied Mind:’ A Commentary on Isaac Catt’s The Human Image in Helmuth Plessner, Pierre Bourdieu, and Psychocentric Culture”
Jacqueline M. Martinez, Arizona State University

“Communicability and Faith in The Human Image in Helmuth Plessner, Pierre Bourdieu, and Psychocentric Culture “
Thaddeus D. Martin, Modesto College

“Reflections on the Human Imago and How We Semiotically Invent Our Reflections in and Through It”
Frank J. Macke, Mercer University

Respondent: Isaac E. Catt, Visiting Scholar, Duquesne University

12:15-1:45: Luncheon Keynote (Ballroom BC): Leswin Laubscher, Duquesne University, "Some Stories about Soulful Seeing. Or Not."

2:00-4:45: Panel 11 (Ballroom BC): The Ethics of Diaspora Imagined and Lived: Film and Discussion

Part 1 (2:00-3:15): Screening of Round Eyes in the Middle Kingdom

Introduction: Richard L. Lanigan, Program Chair, International Communicology Institute

Film Précis: “Ronald Levaco, Growing Up in China”

Film Screening (1995; 53 minutes)

Part 2 (3:30-4:45): Diaspora Images and Imagination

Round Table Discussion: Living Through Multi-Lingual Diasporas-in-Contact

Chair: Richard L. Lanigan, International Communicology Institute

Richard L. Lanigan, International Communicology Institute: Growing Up in New Mexico

Michael Shapiro, Brown University: Growing Up in Japan

Igor Klyukanov, Eastern Washington University: Growing Up in Russia

Briankle G. Chang, University of Massachusetts, Amherst: Growing up in Taiwan

Conference Closing Remarks

Registration fee includes coffee all day, reception (hors d'oeuvre and wine), lunches, Friday breakfast buffet.

Faculty: $200
Graduate student: $65
Duquesne undergraduate: $0

Register Now

Pittsburgh International Airport has direct international flights from London, UK and easy connecting flights via major US cities. The airport is 18 miles, approximately 20 minutes, to Duquesne University. 

A ride sharing service such as Uber is the fastest way to get from the airport to Duquesne University. Hail a ride with your smartphone app and meet your driver outside Baggage Claim Door #4 at the Arrivals Curb.

If you plan to use public transportation, the Port Authority bus 28X Airport Flyer stops downtown at Liberty Avenue at Wood Street. It will take approximately 15 minutes to walk to campus from there.

Please review our Duquesne University Campus Map to find your way to the Power Center Ballroom, where the conference will take place.

Parking is available at Duquesne's Forbes Garage, 1180 Forbes Avenue, for $20/day. After you have parked, walk to the Skywalk from the 8th floor of the elevator to the Power Center, crossing over Forbes Avenue below. Off campus parking is also available.

Nearest walkable (10-15 minutes)

Marriott City Center
112 Washington Pl, Pittsburgh, PA 15219
(412) 471-4000
View reduced rate rooms

Cambria Hotel
1320 Centre Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15219
(412) 381-6687

Double Tree by Hilton
One Bigelow Sq, Pittsburgh, PA 15219
(412) 281-5800

Also walkable

Omni William Penn
530 William Penn Pl, Pittsburgh, PA 15219
(412) 281-7100

Embassy Suites
535 Smithfield St, Pittsburgh, PA 15222
(412) 338-2200

Hilton Garden Inn
250 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15222.
(412) 683-2040  

Kimpton Hotel Monaco
620 William Penn Pl, Pittsburgh, PA 15219
(412) 471-1170

Located in the heart of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, Duquesne University is a vibrant, private institution known for its commitment to academic excellence and social justice. Duquesne University is home to the Simon Silverman Phenomenology Center, a hub for phenomenological research and scholarship, with extensive collections including the archives of prominent phenomenologists.