Research

 

Dr. Lind's primary research areas include the intersection of the entertainment industry and religion, communication pedagogy (including business communication and digital media), and of course the nuanced history of the Peanuts franchise. His Peanuts scholarship formally began with the publication of his 2008 article, Reading Peanuts: The Secular and the Sacred in the scholarly journal ImageTexT. That article has since been reprinted twice in other publications and paved the way for him to eventually work closely with the Schulz family and Peanuts franchise executives.

 

In addition to spending time with Charles Schulz's friends and family, watching all 75 animated Peanuts specials, reading all 17,897 newspaper strips, and sifting through antique stores for unexpected merchandizing, Stephen Lind's research agenda has a significant breadth and depth.  In 2014, the Journal of Communication and Religion published his theory-based article, "Studying Religion/Spirituality in a Mediated Religio-Secular Age of Publicity: the Need for Transdisciplinarity" (an NCA division top-paper).  In 2014, his industry history article, "Christmas in the 1960s: A Charlie Brown Christmas, Religion, and the Conventions of the Television Genre" was published in the Journal of Religion and Popular Culture. 

 

Lind's research has included grappling with the potential in "digital oratory," a term he introduced in a Communication Teacher article and a practice he has employed in the classroom for years.  He has also explored issues of animal communication.  His chapter, "Un-defining Man: The Case for Symbolic Animal Communication" was published in Emily Plec's award-winning Perspectives on Human-Animal Communication: Internatural Communication in 2012.

 

You can also find current media analysis by Lind on his blog, www.ReligiMedia.com.