Communication Professor Awarded Grant to Study Transgender Suicide History

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Joe Hatfield

September is Suicide Prevention Month and Joe Hatfield, assistant professor in the Department of Communication, has received a grant to support ongoing research on the rhetorical history of transgender suicide in United States' popular culture.

Hatfield was competitively selected by the Waterhouse Family Institute for the Study of Communication and Society in the amount of $6,631. This funding will support Hatfield's research at four of the largest repositories containing archival data documenting the history of transgender people in North America, including the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana; ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California; the Transgender Archives at the University of Victoria in Victoria, British Columbia; and the National Transgender Library & Archives at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The Waterhouse Family Institute for the Study of Communication and Society — housed within Villanova University's Department of Communication in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences — emphasizes the vital role of communication in the creation of a more just world.

In this way, it reflects Villanova University's mission, and its invitation to "Ignite Change. Go Nova." By viewing communication in these terms, the Waterhouse Family Institute challenges students, scholars, and professionals to reflect upon the kind of social worlds worth having — and the role of communication, as a discipline and practice, in giving them life.

Each year, the institute funds research projects demonstrating the important and complex interconnections between communication and social change.

Hatfield joined the Department of Communication this fall and is one of only a few scholars of communication who were selected to receive this funding for the 2020-21 academic year.