Bio
Professor of Communication and Cultural Studies
Department of Humanities
1400 Townsend Drive
304 Walker Arts & Humanities
Houghton, Michigan 49931-1295
906.487-3228
jdslack @ mtu.edu
Jennifer Daryl Slack leads a rich and varied life, balancing the pleasures and responsibilities of scholar, teacher, artist, and country dweller.
Jennifer received her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, Institute of Communications Research, in 1981, where, most notably, she worked with Lawrence Grossberg, James W. Carey, and Thomas Guback. She was Assistant Professor both in The Department of Humanities at The University of Michigan, College of Engineering, and in the Department of Communication at Purdue University, before taking a position in 1988 in the Department of Humanities at Michigan Technological University.
As Full Professor of Communication and Cultural Studies at Michigan Technological University, Jennifer has been instrumental in developing an undergraduate degree in Communication and Culture Studies. She has also contributed significantly to the graduate program in Rhetoric and Technical Communication by incorporating cultural studies and technology studies into the degree.
Jennifer is an accomplished pastel artist. Her pastel technique is uniquely more like painting than drawing and she typically works in many layers of intense colors to create images that occupy the boundary between the representational and the abstract. She has exhibited her work in Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, and sells her work at several galleries.
Jennifer and her partner, Kenny Svenson, live on a farm in the Copper Country in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Record snowfall is 400 inches (that is not a typo) for one winter and the growing season is very short.