Professor of Communication
Department Chair
Office: NC 41
Phone: (574) 535-7745
Email: dstoltzfus@goshen.edu
Education
BA, Goshen College, 1981
MA, New York University, 1988
PHD, Rutgers University, 2001
Current Projects
- Preparing a book manuscript on Hutterite conscientious objectors during World War I. The narrative follows the experiences of three brothers (Joseph, Michael, and David Hofer) and a brother-in-law (Jacob Wipf), who were sentenced to 20 years of hard labor and served time both at Alcatraz and at Fort Leavenworth. Two of the brothers died at Leavenworth.
- Preparing a research article on the increasing use of profanities and obscenities in articles published in The New Yorker.
Courses
- Communication and Society
- A study of the field of mass communication and its role in contemporary society. The course might also be called “Perils and Promises of the Digital Age.” It includes an overview of the history and development of the mass media.
- Media Law and Ethics
- The course provides an introduction to the U.S. legal system and issues like access to information, conflicts of interest, deception, fairness, libel, obscenity, plagiarism and privacy. The course is also devoted to models of ethical decision-making as they are applied to mass media issues, with special attention given to Christian perspectives.
- Communication Research
- This course serves as an introduction to theory building and research methodology of mass communication. In providing an overview of communication research, attention will be paid to both quantitative and qualitative research methods.
- Reporting for the Public Good
- This course envisions the broader Goshen community as an extended classroom, replete with interesting and important stories to tell. In reporting off campus, students will produce stories that can be shared with a diverse audience through multiple channels.
- Writing for Media
- We focus on the time-honored journalistic enterprise: gathering the facts and telling the story. Assignments include breaking news, sports, blog posts, personal radio essay, political reports, features.
Selected Publications
“Armed With Prayer in an Alcatraz Dungeon: The Wartime Experiences of Four Hutterite C.O.’s in Their Own Words,” The Mennonite Quarterly Review, April 2011.
“Collaboration and Conscience,” Media Ethics, Spring 2011.
“Partial Pre-Publication Review Gaining Favor at Newspapers,” Newspaper Research Journal, Fall 2006.
Freedom from Advertising: E.W. Scripps’s Chicago Experiment (A volume in The History of Communication series, edited by Robert W. McChesney and John C. Nerone, University of Illinois Press, 2007).
Honors & Awards
2011-12 C. Henry Smith Peace Lectureship, “Armed Only with Prayer During the Great War: A Story of Hutterite Brothers in the Dungeons of Alcatraz”
2005 Top Three Faculty Paper, Newspaper Division, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication
2002 Dissertation Prize, American Journalism Historians Association, Honorable Mention
1993 Livingston Awards finalist (for top journalists in the nation under age 34)
Employment
- 2000-present
- Professor of Communication
Goshen College - 2004-present
- Copy Editor
The Mennonite Quarterly Review - 2000-present
- Faculty Adviser
The Goshen College Record, weekly newspaper
- 1997-2000
- Staff Editor
The New York Times
- 1989-1997
- Reporter and copy editor
The Record of Hackensack, N.J.
