About the Book
Concerning Communication: Epic Quests and Lyrical Excursions Within the Human Lifeworld is a collection of essays that range across a variety of topics, including models of communication, language and symbolic communication, sense perception, the self, disability and autism, listening, reading, science, media literacy, ethics, innovation, systems theory, information, communication history, isolation, solipsism, technology, education, media ecology, and general semantics. Lance Strate's unifying theme throughout this volume is the centrality of communication, as a phenomenon, to human life, and the importance of communication, as a field of study, to understanding ourselves and our place in the universe.
About the Author :
Lance Strate is Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Ford-ham University, where he has previously served as department chair, graduate director, director of the undergraduate program, and designed and directed an interdisciplinary major in Professional Studies in New Media. He held the 2015 Harron Family Chair in Communication at Villanova University, and received an honorary appointment as Chair Professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at Henan University in Kaifeng, China, in 2016. He earned his PhD in the Media Ecology Program at New York University, his MA from the Communication Arts and Sciences Department at Queens College of the City University of New York, and a BS degree from Cornell University. Dr. Strate is a Trustee and President of the Institute of General Semantics, and Secretary and Past President of the New York Society for General Semantics. He is the Co-Chair of the Global Listening Centre's Academic Board, as well as a Past President of the New York State Communication Association. He is also one of the founders of the Media Ecology Association, served as the MEA President for over a decade, and is presently a member of the MEA's Board of Directors. He is also a Trustee and Past President of Congregation Adas Emuno of Leonia, New Jersey.Lance Strate is the author of nine books, including Media Ecology: An Approach to Understanding the Human Condition (2017), Amazing Ourselves to Death: Neil Postman's Brave New World Revisited (2014), On the Binding Biases of Time and Other Essays on General Semantics and Media Ecology (2011), Echoes and Reflections: On Media Ecology as a Field of Study (2006), and the poetry collections Diatribal Writes of Passage in a World of Wintertextuality (2020) and Thunder at Darwin Station (2015). He is also the co-editor of 7 anthologies, including Taking Up McLuhan's Cause: Perspectives on Media and Formal Causality (2017), The Medium is the Muse: Channeling Marshall McLuhan (2015), Korzybski and... (2012), The Legacy of McLuhan (2005), and two editions of Communication and Cyberspace: Social Interaction in an Electronic Environment (1996, 2003). Additionally, he has served as editor of the Speech Communication Annual, the General Semantics Bulletin, and Explorations in Media Ecology, a journal he founded and edited for 9 years (2002-2007, 2017-2019). Among his many major addresses, Dr. Strate delivered the 10th Annual Cardinal Newman Lecture at Manhattan College, the 10th Annual Bernard B. Gilligan Memorial Lecture at Fordham University, the 66th Annual Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture for the Institute of General Semantics, and the Fifth Annual Harron Family Endowed Chair Public Lecture at Villanova University.Lance Strate is the recipient of the Global Listening Centre's 2020 Outstanding Research Award, the Eastern Communication Association's 2019 Distinguished Research Fellow Award, the Media Ecology Association's 2018 Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book and its 2013 Walter Ong Award for Scholarship, the Institute of General Semantics' 2022 J. Talbot Winchell Award for Service, the New York State Communication Association's 2019 Neil Postman Mentor Award and its 1998 John F. Wilson Fellow Award for exceptional scholarship, leadership, and dedication to the field of communication, and the Proclamation by Mayor Wellington E. Webb, in honor of his keynote address to the Rocky Mountain Communication Association, "that February 15, 2002 be known as Dr. Lance Strate Day in the City and County of Denver."
Review :
"Expansive and engagingly written, Lance Strate's Concerning Communication: Epic Quests and Lyric Excursions Within the Human Lifeworld is a nuanced and profound collection of essays that gets to the heart of what it means to communicate and why it matters. Whether a student or scholar of education, this multi-faceted book is a must-have for anyone wishing to know more about the many ways communication permeates and shapes our lived experience."
-Allison Peiritsch, Associate Professor, Slippery Rock University
"Concerning Communication contains a swath of knowledge as big as the Serengeti. This huge and potentially confusing topic has a nonpareil guide to show you the hidden thickets of fact and the swamps of fiction and error in your search to understand communication. Your author and guide, Lance Strate, is an internationally acknowledged scholar of human communication and a philosophy of communication mensch. Chapter by chapter, essay by essay, you will be congenially accompanying Strate in his continuing effort to clarify the facts and fancies, the underlying assumptions, and the presumptions of that which provides all of us the ability to know, make and sustain contact with others. Winter is coming so get a bowl of good warm soup, a comfortable chair, and start reading."
-Frank E.X. Dance, Distinguished University Professor Emeritus, University of Denver
"A wide-ranging set of essays with wide-ranging implications. Thought provoking on multiple levels."
-Dale Cyphert, Head, Department of Marketing and Entrepreneurship, University of Northern Iowa
"As we struggle to respond to the rapid changes in our world, it is imperative that we find ways to create meaning out of the overwhelming amounts of information that inundate our lives. Concerning Communication provides both form and substance to engage the reader in spirit and mind. Through the weaving of theory, history and narrative, Dr. Strate elucidates how communication is artifact and process, listening and language, both-and rather than either-or. In doing so, readers understand how they can be the authors of their stories and bring meaning to our world."
-Paaige Turner, Dean, College of Communication, Information, and Media, Ball State University
