Kamalipour, Yahya R. 1947-

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Kamalipour, Yahya R. 1947-

PERSONAL:

Born November 29, 1947, in Kerman, Iran; immigrated to the United States, 1972; naturalized U.S. citizen; son of Golam-Reza (in business) and Robabeh Kamalipour; married Margaret Tighe (divorced); married Mah Zarei, August 12, 1988; children: (first marriage) Daria; (second marriage) Shirin and Niki. Education: Marshalltown Community College, A.A., 1975; Minnesota State University, Mankato, B.A., 1977; University of Wisconsin—Superior, M.A., 1978; University of Missouri at Columbia, Ph.D., 1986.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Munster, IN. Office—Department of Communication and Creative Arts, Purdue University Calumet, 200 169th St., Hammond, IN 46323-2094; fax: 219-989-2008. E-mail—[email protected]; [email protected].

CAREER:

Franciscan University, Steubenille, OH, instructor in mass communication, 1979-82; Quincy University, Quincy, IL, assistant professor of mass communication, 1982-84, 1985-86; Purdue University Calumet, Hammond, IN, assistant professor, 1986-91, associate professor and director of graduate studies, 1991-96, professor of communication and creative arts, 1996—, department head, 1999—, director of Center for Global Studies, 2006—. Global Media Journal, founder and managing editor; member of editorial boards of other periodicals; speaker at universities and meetings around the world.

MEMBER:

International Communication Association, International Association for Mass Communication and Research, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Broadcast Education Association, Center for Iranian Research and Analysis, Danesh Institute, Middle East Studies Association, National Association of College Broadcasters, National Communication Association.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Distinguished Scholarship Award in International and Intercultural Communication, National Communication Association, 1996; Edgar Mills Award for Outstanding Service in Communication, Communicators of Northwest Indiana, 1996; certificate of recognition, Tsinghua University, Public Relations Society of Iran, and Public Relations Society of Kerman.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with Hamid Mowlana) Mass Media in the Middle East: A Comprehensive Handbook, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1994.

(Editor) The U.S. Media and the Middle East: Image and Perception, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1995.

(Editor, with Joel Thierstein) Religion, Law and Freedom: A Global Perspective, Greenwood Press (Westport, CT), 1995, published with a new foreword, Praeger (Westport, CT), 2000.

(Editor, with Theresa Carilli) Cultural Diversity and the U.S. Media, State University of New York Press (Albany, NY), 1998.

(Editor) Images of the U.S. around the World: A Multicultural Perspective, State University of New York Press (Albany, NY), 1999.

(Editor, with Kuldip R. Rampal) Media, Sex, Violence, and Drugs in the Global Village, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (Lanham, MD), 2001.

(Editor) Global Communication, Wadsworth (Belmont, CA), 2002, revised edition with new foreword, 2007.

(Editor, with Lee Artz) The Globalization of Corporate Media Hegemony, State University of New York Press (Albany, NY), 2003.

(Editor, with Lee Artz) Bring 'em On: Media and Politics in the U.S. War on Iraq, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers (Lanham, MD), 2004.

(With Nancy Snow) War, Media, and Propaganda: A Global Perspective, Rowman & Littlefield (Lanham, MD), 2004.

(Editor, with Lee Artz) The Media Globe: Trends in International Communication, Rowman & Littlefield (Lanham, MD), 2007.

Contributor to books, including Civic Discourse and Digital Age Communications in the Middle East, edited by Leo Gher and Hussein Amin, Ablex Publishing (Stamford, CT), 2000; Global Media Go to War, edited by Ralph D. Berenger, Marquette Books (Spokane, WA), 2004; Real Feature Writing, 2nd edition, edited by Abraham Aamidor, Lawrence Erlbaum (Mahwah, NJ), 2006; and foreword to Global Media Reactions to 9/11, edited by Tomasz Pludowski, Marquette Books, 2006. Coeditor of the "Global Media Studies Book Series," State University of New York Press. Contributor of hundreds of articles to newspapers and professional journals on communications and public relations. Coeditor, Journal of Globalization for the Common Good.

SIDELIGHTS:

Yahya R. Kamalipour has been interested in the topic of communications and media from an early age. "Ever since he was a boy climbing on rooftops and talking to friends below using tin cans tied together on a string, [he] has been intrigued by communication," wrote Rebecca Fullen Wright in Purdue Calumet magazine. "In high school in his native Iran, Kamalipour's interest prompted him to organize a bi-weekly newspaper. By the time he was a senior, he wrote, as an educational reporter, for national newspapers and magazines." Since immigrating to the United States in 1972, Kamalipour has been involved in academia as a student and later as a professor of communications.

Kamalipour has been an active analyst and critic of mass communication, both in the United States and internationally, for more than twenty years. In the 1990s he helped found the Cultural Environment Movement, commented Wright, "a coalition of 200 organizations concerned about the mass media's influence and its cultural implications throughout the nation and elsewhere."

Kamalipour's books have focused on mass media in the Middle East and the United States, as well as on international perspectives on the United States. He edited his first book, Mass Media in the Middle East: A Comprehensive Handbook, to disseminate specific information about each of twenty-one countries' newspapers, news agencies, magazines, radio and television industries, and film industries, along with the role that each of these plays in developing or maintaining national identity. The text contains more than forty tables, a glossary, a bibliographical essay, and an index. J.A. Lent of Temple University, who reviewed the book for Choice, recommended it as an update of earlier works, but also noted repetitiveness and a lack of analytical insight in the effort to be comprehensive.

Kamalipour edited another volume, The U.S. Media and the Middle East: Image and Perception. The goal of its contributors is to demonstrate how little Americans know about the Middle East, and the role of the media in exacerbating this ignorance. "Many Americans view Arabs as either terrorists or convenience store clerks," wrote PC Chronicle contributor Kim Kintz, "and the Middle East region as a ‘big blob devoid of any variation or cultural diversity.’" Chapters titled "America Looks at the Turks," and "Coverage in Time and Newsweek" were singled out for praise by J.D. Stempel in his Choice review, but he saw weaknesses in the volume as well: "its … lack of an explicit wrap-up chapter weaken[s] its analytical insights." Fawaz A. Gerges responded in similar fashion in Journal of Palestinian Studies by observing that The U.S. Media and the Middle East "is rich empirically and has a broad sample of case studies that examine media coverage of Islam and Muslims. However it lacks a rigorous conceptual framework that specifies and delineates the complex relationship between the media, society, and politics."

Cultural Diversity and the U.S. Media treats the ways in which mass media portrays different American ethnic groups, including African Americans, Italian Americans, Native Americans, Arabs, Jews, Mexican Americans, and disabled people. Through editing this work, Kintz stated, Kamalipour discovered that "almost no cultural group is pleased at how they are portrayed by the media." It contains twenty-two essays; the book's reviewer in Choice, G.M. Bataille, especially noted an essay on news coverage and on how children's perceptions are affected by Disney films. Bataille recommended the volume for its wealth of information "about a subject that continues to need analysis and exploration."

Images of the U.S. around the World: A Multicultural Perspective features "the perspectives of 30 scholars and researchers from 20 nations to examine how America is perceived abroad," explained a contributor to the Purdue Calumet News. "His research found that, generally, people in other nations admire the U.S. while resenting them at the same time," said Kintz. "This contradiction is based on the resentment toward U.S. foreign policy and admiration for individual freedom and liberty."

Wright reported that Kamalipour believes that "his role as editor … is to develop a ‘blueprint’ for what he wants to accomplish with each book. He then invites scholars with national and international reputations to participate in the projects. Upon receiving all the chapters, Kamalipour's editing tasks range from minimal tweaking to rewriting entire chapters."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Choice, January, 1995, J.A. Lent, review of Mass Media in the Middle East: A Comprehensive Handbook, pp. 770-771; October, 1995, J.D. Stempel, review of The U.S. Media and the Middle East: Image and Perception, p. 368; March, 1999, G.M. Bataille, review of Cultural Diversity and the U.S. Media, p. 1258.

Journal of Palestine Studies, winter, 1999, Fawaz A. Gerges, review of The U.S. Media and the Middle East, pp. 104-106.

Purdue Calumet, summer-fall, 1997, article by Rebecca Fullen Wright.

Purdue Calumet Chronicle, January 25, 1999, article by Kim Kintz, pp. 1, 3.

Purdue Calumet News, January 21, 1999, review of Images of the U.S. around the World: A Multicultural Perspective.