My blogs

Political T-Shirt Studies

About me

Gender	Male
Introduction	I'm Joel Penney, PhD, and I'm an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Montclair State University. During my time as a grad student at Penn's Annenberg School for Communication, I wrote a dissertation called "Body Screen/Body Politic" which explores the uses of political T-shirts in the digital age. This blog serves as my ongoing visual ethnographic archive of photos I've taken at political rallies and other public events. I am interested in how these clothing items link the wearers to broader mediated discourses surrounding politics, providing a cheap and easily-accessible media tool to build collective identity and advocate within the public sphere.My current research focus on "citizen-advertisers" draws closely from this project on T-shirts, and explores their interrelation with other participatory communication platforms--in particular social media. Click any photo to enlarge the image.

Gender

Male

Introduction

I'm Joel Penney, PhD, and I'm an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Montclair State University. During my time as a grad student at Penn's Annenberg School for Communication, I wrote a dissertation called "Body Screen/Body Politic" which explores the uses of political T-shirts in the digital age. This blog serves as my ongoing visual ethnographic archive of photos I've taken at political rallies and other public events. I am interested in how these clothing items link the wearers to broader mediated discourses surrounding politics, providing a cheap and easily-accessible media tool to build collective identity and advocate within the public sphere.My current research focus on "citizen-advertisers" draws closely from this project on T-shirts, and explores their interrelation with other participatory communication platforms--in particular social media. Click any photo to enlarge the image.