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Master of Arts

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The notion of advocacy is explored within the MA program in Communication Studies by examining advocacy across traditional classifications within a variety of contexts. This approach allows faculty to journey with students to discover and attend to advocacy in new, unusual ways to theorize and practice advocacy collectively. We contend that advocacy occurs at the intersection of public and private lives, in the space where the two overlap and mutually inform one another, often in complex, challenging ways.

It is here that we seek to uncover how symbols, messages and meaning are constructed and arranged to establish, facilitate, enhance or detract from the social status, social support and/or social identity of particular, often marginalized groups. Although the faculty recognizes that one can advocate on one's own behalf, the faculty believes that the true work of advocacy involves attending to the other.

Advocacy, though, is not limited simply to speaking directly on another's behalf. Rather, advocacy involves working diligently and ethically to create a space, whether it is public or private, in which the other can speak for oneself. The advocate uses communication theory and practice to reclaim space for and to provide voice to the other. Advocacy is a calling to the responsibility we have for others in the global age. The MA in Communication Studies seeks to provide those interested in advocacy the opportunity to develop the intellectual and conceptual skills necessary to follow that calling.

Alumni Profile

Armida Duran

'97 BS, '04 MA

President

Osuna Duran Communications

As part of her master's thesis, Armida Duran helped preserve the history of Centro Adelante Campesino, which supports farming families in El Mirage and Surprise with educational, career and legal services.

"I spent three years writing their history and working with them to gift their documents to the Chicano Research Collection at Hayden Library."