About Me

I am a graduate student in the Department of Communication at the University of California, San Diego studying immigration, cultural memory and nationalism in Switzerland. My methodological approach is rooted in critical discourse analysis (CDA) and rhetorical analysis. I employ both ethnography and auto-ethnography in obtaining my artifacts of analysis and gathering data. My work follows up on the neo-Marxist tradition of taking into account relationships of power when thinking about political and social structures, as well as incorporating Foucault’s approach through embodiment. Some of my work includes: analysis of warplane nose art as folk art and resistance, analysis of Inez Milholland’s image as necessary symbolism in the in the progression of the first wave women’s rights movement, rhetorical analysis of the “pre-genocide” rhetoric in Rwanda and critical analysis of the deployment of Volk artifacts through the fetishization of “Volk” in Switzerland, to name a few. Along with academic work on immigration and nationalism, I am interested in identity politics, nomadic communities, memory and affect. I also maintain a blog on teaching at teachinginsideout@blogspot.com. You can contact me at babush @ucsd.edu.