Published: Oct. 8, 2002

The University of Colorado at Boulder department of communication's 2002 Josephine Jones Lecture will feature Professor John Durham Peters of the University of Iowa on Tuesday, Oct. 22, from 3:30 p.m. to 4:45 p.m.

Professor Peters will discuss "The Problem of Conversation and Media" in room 150 of the Eaton Humanities Building, adjacent to Norlin Library on campus.

Peters is an F.W. Miller Professor in the department of communication studies at the University of Iowa and is considered one of the world's premier philosophers of communication. His pioneering work has incorporated political and social philosophy in the study of communication theory and practice.

Several of his articles are considered classics in the discipline, and he has received research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Foundation and the Leverhulme Trust. His internationally acclaimed intellectual history of communication, "Speaking Into the Air," University of Chicago Press, 1999, received the National Communication Association's prestigious Winans-Wichelns Award in 2000.

Peters' lecture on "The Problem of Conversation and Media" will focus on the use in scholarly discourse of "conversation" as a metaphor that idealizes the operations of media in a democracy. The lecture will examine how "media" and "conversation" are each used to view and practice the other, with mixed results.

Following the lecture, a reception will be held in the Koenig Alumni Center, 1202 University Ave., from 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.