CNU student to present paper at Romanian conference

News Release - March 21, 2007
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media contact:
Carolyn Cuthrell
Office of Communications and Public Relations
carolyn.cuthrell@cnu.edu
(757) 594-7331

(NEWPORT NEWS, Va.) — Christopher Newport University junior Marc Howard Rich will present his paper, “Investigating Coffeehouses as the New Public Sphere,” at the first Conference on Communication and Argumentation in the Public Sphere. The conference will be held April 12-14, 2007 at Dunărea de Jos University in Galaţi, Romania. Rich is the only American attending.

“Democracy is based on people from all areas of society coming together to solve their common problems,” Rich says.  “That interaction is public sphere.”  At the conference, he plans to argue that this dialogue is active in coffeehouses, and that it was through the public sphere that people made sense of the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Marc Rich is majoring in Communications and was on the Dean’s List for the fall 2006 semester. After graduating from Christopher Newport, he plans to attend graduate school to study public sphere theory. He is currently putting together a research grant in order to further his study of public sphere over the summer.

The first Conference on Communication and Argumentation in the Public Sphere is organized by professors and post-doctoral researchers. The theme of the conference is public versus private space, and its purpose is to provide a forum for discussion and peer evaluation for members of the Humanities and Social Sciences discipline.