"Reframing the Rhetorics of Race Through Classroom Discourse" is the subject of the University of Iowa Department of Communication Studies 2013 Hitchcock Lecture, which will be presented by Tina M. Harris. The lecture will take place in Room 101 of the Becker Communication Studies Building at 4 p.m. Tuesday, March 12.

Harris is a professor in the Department of Speech Communication at the University of Georgia. Her research expertise spans the following areas: interracial communication, interracial dating, race relations, racial representations and the media, race and ethnic disparities in health, genetics and religious frameworks; and Christian identity and communication.

She is a recent recipient of the University of Georgia’s esteemed Josiah Meigs Distinguished Teaching Professorship (2010), which is the institution’s highest teaching honor, and the Georgia Board of Regents’ Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Award (2006) for her teaching and scholarship on race and pedagogy in the college classroom.

During this lecture, Harris will discuss her research on racial micro-aggressions, or racially charged verbal messages, that serve as barriers to effective or positive interracial communication in the classroom. The aim of this research is to encourage people to think about ways to facilitate positive race relations at the individual and institutional level, one relationship at a time.

The lecture is part of the Department of Communication Studies' Seminar Lecture Series and is free and open to the public. A reception will immediately follow the lecture.

For more information, visit www.uiowa.edu/commstud/, call 319-335-0575, or email commstudies-inquiry@uiowa.edu.

The Department of Communication Studies is part of the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.