Research Project Spotlight
Invisible Seasons
Project Team: Producer/Director: Maria Finitzo; Co-Producer: Kelly Belanger; Executive Producer: Gordon Quinn
Thirty-five years ago, a life-changing piece of legislation called Title IX was enacted into law. Title IX prohibits sex discrimination in federally funded education, including athletics. By mandating equal opportunity, Title IX set in motion far-reaching changes that would not only revolutionize America’s playing fields, but its political, social and cultural landscape as well. Under development with Kartemquin Films, this feature-length documentary that will look at how and why change takes place in a democracy by exploring how Title IX has altered the face of sports, and also by understanding the meaning of sports in the American experience. InVisible Seasons will raise questions of inclusion and exclusion, fairness and tradition, principle and compromise. In the film we will come to understand the power of mentors and role models to inspire the acts of courage, sacrifice, and principle upon which our democracy depends. This project is supported by funding from the Illinois Council for the Humanities, the Illinois Arts Council, and the Virginia Tech Institute for Society, Culture, and the Environment.
- Read more about other CSRS projects on our project page.
About Us
The Center for the Study of Rhetoric in Society (CSRS) was formed in the Fall semester of 2006. Through collaborative and individual scholarship, we engage a variety of methodologies to study issues of rhetoric and representation surrounding social problems and their solutions.
Our methods include discourse analysis, semiotics, ethnography, and historical investigation. We are currently working in the following topic areas: energy efficiency, risk, sex equity and the law, literacy, displacement, institutional history, race, poverty, and social entrepreneurship.
Our central research question: How do texts (digital, print, multimedia, visual, verbal) and related communication practices mediate knowledge and action in a variety of social and professional contexts?