Ithaca College

The Park School would like to congratulate Steve Tropiano and Steve Seidman, winners of the Park School Writing Award for faculty.

The Park Faculty Writing Award is given to a full-time Park faculty member for work published or similarly peer reviewed that demonstrates creativity, impact, originality, and mastery. The award may be given for a published book, a peer reviewed scholarly essay, a journalistic article, or a script that has been produced and screened. This year, the judges for the Faculty Writing Award recommended to give the award to two nominees. 

Steve Tropiano is the founding and current director of the James B. Pendleton Center in Los Angeles. In addition to his considerable administrative duties, Professor Tropiano is an associate faculty member in the Television-Radio Department, and an active scholar in the area of media analysis. He has written numerous essays and articles that have appeared in professional journals and anthologies. His books include A History of the Hollywood Teen Movie, The Prime Time Closet: A History of Gays and Lesbians on TV, and most recently, in 2009, Obscene, Indecent, Immoral, and Offensive: 100+ Years of Censored, Banned, and Controversial Films. It is for the latter book that Dr. Tropiano is receiving a Park Faculty Writing Award.

Obscene, Indecent, Immoral, and Offensive analyzes films that have been branded as controversial due to explicit language, nudity, graphic sex, violence, and treatment of adult topics. In particular, the book explores the manner in which our culture has attempted to restrict, censor, control or ban outright subjects and themes that are regarded as threatening or objectionable. The book has been widely praised by peers as incisive, rigorously researched, and engagingly written. While only recently published, the work has already begun to garner attention in the form of reviews, citations, and other references by peer audiences.

Also receiving the Park Faculty Writing Award this year is Professor Steve Seidman, of the Strategic Communication Department for his book Posters, Propaganda, and Persuasion in Election Campaigns Around the World and Through History. In Professor Seidman’s words, Posters, Propaganda, and Persuasion explores the political history of the democratic world, with the focus on communication media, particularly posters. In a wide ranging manner, the book investigates how ideology, education, literacy, suffrage, economics, legislation, social change, artistic movements, and advertising have affective the style and use of election posters and other printed material.

Professor Seidman’s book has garnered significant attention in the interval since its publication, including mention in the influential Politics magazine. The book is used in several college courses at other campuses around the U.S., and has been described by peers as an “important and beautifully illustrated book that is quite simply the best study of the modern political poster.” Posters, Propaganda, and Persuasion, has led to two interviews on National Public Radio, and ongoing discussion by peers in numerous print and on-line publications.