Meet Comm Professor Emily West 

By Nusrah Azeez and Christine Souaiden

Please tell us who you are and your journey to UMass 

I am Emily West, I have been here since 2004 so I have been teaching here for about 18 years.  My journey to UMass started in my undergrad. I am from southern Ontario, I went to McMaster University which is in Hamilton, and at the time, I didn’t know what I wanted to study in college. Luckily, there was an interdisciplinary degree there called the Bachelor’s of Arts and Science so I took different courses in different disciplines and I still never found a major and in my last year, I did an honor project about how environmental issues are portrayed in pop culture and through humor. I discovered that there was a field called Communication and Media Studies. I didn’t know there was such a field because there wasn’t such a department at McMaster University at the time. Once I found out about the field, I thought about going to graduate school because I had just found the thing that interested me in my last semester of college. I discovered that you can often do a Communication grad program without having an undergrad degree in it because Communication itself is an interdisciplinary field. We draw from humanities, social sciences, political science, literary criticism, and sociology. So, I applied to graduate schools and ended up going to the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Moving to the United States was unanticipated because I had never considered it, however, it seemed like the right program for me. I went there for my Masters degree and decided to stay for my Ph.D. I came to UMass when I was an undergrad for a conference organized by the grad students in the department. I met so many cool students here and I thought that the culture and the vibe were so amazing. Because of this previous experience, I applied to do my Ph.D. here and I got in but it was a difficult decision for me to choose between coming to UMass and staying at Penn. I decided to stay at Penn for a variety of reasons. I feel like it was fortunate that I didn’t come here for a Ph.D. because if I did, I probably would have never gotten a job here. I was finishing up my dissertation and looking for jobs and they were looking to hire in the area of audience research and cultural studies. I had done interviews with media users as part of my dissertation so I applied and I got the job so I came back to Western Mass. It was nice to come in the summer and fall because I had only been here in March, which is not nice.

What are some of the classes you have taught here at UMass? 

The two classes I have been teaching the longest are classes I developed in my first year here, a 300 level undergraduate class on media audiences and another 300 level class on consumer culture which lately I have only been able to teach in the summer. Both of those classes are related to my dissertation and the department was interested in having them. I wrote my dissertation about greeting cards as a commercial form of sentiment and how authenticity is understood in greeting cards. I looked at it from a perspective of consumer culture and the perspective of audiences and users. Since then, I developed a research methods class at a certain point that has been taught a number of times and is an IE (Integrative Experience). I am also in a rotation of teaching COMM 121 (Introduction to Media and Culture)

Which course is your favorite to teach and why?

I don’t think I have a favorite, I think they are all different. There is something fun about the big class like COMM 121 because it is a little bit of a show and you never know what students are going to say because there are so many different students in the class and there’s that bond between covering core concepts and reflecting new things that are happening. Also, smaller classes are nice because you get to know the students better and the work that they submit is more in-depth. I learn a lot about what students are experiencing with media or learn about corners of our media environment that I don’t have access to or necessarily spend time with.

Would you say there is a difference in students between teaching on Zoom and in in-person classes.

To some extent, yes. I think we’ve just been through such a turbulent time and now we are in this return time after we have normalized learning on Zoom, we are figuring out what it means to be back in class again. I think I am still figuring that out. I feel like I had more energy endurance for Zoom than students did during the pandemic. I noticed that by last spring on Zoom, the majority of students in my classes seemed over it, there were a lot of black squares on the screen. It was a shame because I would see the work people are doing which was very good work and I would go into the breakout room to tell them that because they are so burnt out on it. I think maybe there would be a happy medium of Zoom and in-person classes that we would find in the future where we could do some Zoom when it is much more convenient or have some discussion sessions on Zoom because sometimes it is hard to schedule those. Also, if people do not have to use Zoom too much, they can show up and be present. I think we are all just figuring out what it means to go back to a world where both are an option and commit to how each works and do the things we need to do to make each space work.

How would you describe the Comm Department?

I think it is a very exciting place. There’s a good range of types of work that faculty are doing and classes that students can take from news to public opinion and persuasion to media production and the more critical media type of classes and there’s performance and film. Also, even though there is a range, I do not think it is chaotic, there is a consistency around being interested in questions of culture and there are a lot of classes and faculty focused on democracy and social justice and equality and understanding how culture works either in person or through media. I appreciate the diversity and the sense of a somewhat shared mission. We have a lot of exciting research happening here, there’s more focus on global issues on the part of the faculty that trickles down to what comes up in our classes. I think it speaks  to the fact that our faculty come from different parts of the world but regardless of where people are from, people do work that is focused on other countries. I think this is a good place for the communication department to be.

Can you tell us about your new book?

My book is called “Buy now: How Amazon branded convenience and normalized monopoly.” It is about the tech giant Amazon and it is trying to understand how Amazon got so big and so ubiquitous in our lives so quickly. And trying to understand how people are noticing what that means and why it matters. It is also about Amazon’s brand logic, a lot of our thoughts about branding are influenced by prominent 21st-century brands like Coca Cola, Nike, Disney that have a recognizable slogan or a mascot, and a lot of advertising and storytelling that is very inspirational. But Amazon works very differently, its brand logic is very different and yet people are actually connected and so attached to Amazon. It is one of the most loved and trusted brands. My book tries to understand this by looking at a lot of Amazon’s different marketing and its different services and how it’s built that relationship with customers and how it’s normalized its market dominance and its size and made it harder for consumers and the public, in general, to notice or question it.

What is your favorite meal at UMass?

I am not as well versed in campus dining as students because I don’t go to the dining halls and I understand that’s where the good food is on campus. My kids attend the summer camp here and they go to the Worcester dining commons. I have heard stories about how good the food is. I do not eat here as much but I have a soft spot for Pete’s. I like the breakfast croissant sandwich.

What do you like to do in your free time?

I like to go hiking and enjoy the local hiking trails, there are a lot of options around here. In the winter, I ski about once a week with my kids at Berkshire east which is not too far, maybe next year we’ll go somewhere bigger like Vermont. There has been a lot of taking kids to soccer games. My husband, Kevin Anderson, who also teaches in the department, and I are into films. We just saw the Oscars and we like to see as many Oscar-nominated films as we can. We are a little behind this year but we hope to catch up.

What advice do you have for Communication students?

My advice for Communication students is to be an active participant in figuring out what your goals are and seeking out new experiences, opportunities, and perspectives, whether through your classes, extracurricular, jobs, or internships to test out what excites you and where your true interest and passions and talents lie because it might not fall in your lap, you might have to seek it out by making thoughtful and well-informed choices about what course you are going to take and what you are going to do with the precious time that you have here in college. It is never just the classes that you take, it is also the other experiences that you seek out whether they are paid or unpaid. Do some experimenting with your courses, especially in Comm, you have a lot more flexibility than many other majors, we don’t put you in a really strict class progression  so there’s an opportunity to explore. There are also many resources available like the Peer Advisors or your academic advisors to help guide you. In addition, the Communication department does the study abroad program more than a lot of the other majors, and a big reason for that is we have that flexibility built-in, we don’t keep you here every year to fulfill certain requirements for specific times so take advantage of that flexibility and use it mindfully.