Education

• B.A. English Literature, Creighton University
• M.A. Mass Communication, University of Minnesota
• Ph.D. Mass Communication, University of Minnesota

Professional Background

Before coming to Concordia in 2004, I was a major-market television newscast and field producer for the ABC and NBC affiliates in Minneapolis-St.Paul. Before moving to the Twin Cities in 1992, I worked as a producer (and briefly a reporter) for the ABC affiliate in Omaha, Nebraska. Also in Omaha, I edited and wrote for a small, monthly newspaper The American Citizen Press.

Teaching (2011-2012 Academic Year)

Dr. Gabrial on sabbatical for the 2011-12 academic year.

Areas of Research or Journalism Production Interest

Two important questions guide my research in journalism history: 1) How are discourses, contextualized as they are in the past, identified in newspaper coverage?  Once identified and analyzed, how are these discourses connected theoretically, for example, to culture, to power, to political identity?  Specifically, the major thrusts of my newspaper research have focused on issues of nationalism, race, and gender in 19th-century U.S. and Canada.

Apart from that research, my research assistants and I are examining Canada’s press councils and their future in the evolving news media landscape.  As well, another individual project involves a comparative study of Canadian and American newspaper coverage of the Chicago’s Gay Games and Montreal’s Outgames, examining discourses about sexuality, sports, and spectacle.

Recent Publications

Journal Articles

• "A Crisis of Americanism: Newspaper Coverage of John Brown's 1859 Raid at Harper's Ferry and a Question of Loyalty." Journalism History (July, 2008).

• "The American Revolution": Expressions of Canadian Nationalism at the Outbreak of the U.S. Civil War, Canadian Journal of Communication (January 2008).

• "A Woman's Place: Defiance and Obedience -- Newspaper Stories about Women during the Trial of John Brown." American Journalism (Winter, 2008).

Book Chapters

• "The Haystack Excitement": Moral Panic Discourse and the Hysterical Style of the Press after John Brown's Harper's Ferry Raid." in Words at War: The Civil War and American Journalism, David Sachsman, s. Kittrell Rushing, Roy Morris, Jr. (eds.), (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2008).

• "Damning voices:  the press, the politicians, and the Mankato Indian Trials of 1862." in Words at War: The Civil War and American Journalism. David Sachsman, s. Kittrell Rushing, Roy Morris, Jr. (eds.), (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2008).

• "History of Writing Technologies." in Handbook of Research on Writing*. Charles Bazerman (ed.).  (New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2008.) 

  *Selected as a winner of the Conference on College Composition and Communication’s Outstanding Book Award for 2009

Conference Presentations

June 2010

““Existential crisis!” Canada’s press councils’ struggle for relevance in a new media world,” Canadian Communication Association Annual Conference, Montreal, Quebec.

May 2010

“War, Revolution, and Ryszard Kapuscinski’s Journalistic Quest for a New Literature,” International Association for Literary Journalism Studies Annual Conference, London, United Kingdom.

November 2009

““With the Most Determined Bravery”: The Canadian Press, John Brown and Harper’s Ferry,” Press Coverage of Antebellum Resistance Efforts, Symposium on the 19th-century Press, the Civil War, and Free Expression, University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, Tennessee.

July 2009

“The Discourse of Panic and Race:  Newspaper coverage of 19th-century American Slave rebellions and Conspiracies 1800 to 1831.” Presented at The International Association for Media and History Conference:  “Social Fears and Moral Panics” Aberystwyth, Wales.

April 2009

"The Enemy Is Everywhere: Striking Similarities and Moral Panics – Newspaper Coverage of the Raids at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, and St. Albans, Vermont."  Presented at the Popular Culture Association/American Culture National Conference, New Orleans, Louisiana.

Manuscript (unpublished)

• "The Melancholy Effect of Popular Excitement": Discourses about slavery in the 19th-century Press.  (Reviewed by the University of South Carolina Press)

Documentary (unsold)

• “Sutherland: Murder in a Small Town": The True Story of Charles Erwin Simants