大象传媒

Cheryl is an Associate Professor of Communication Arts & Sciences and Global Studies at Penn State Berks. She is an ethnographer who enjoys doing research in her homeland, Malaysia. Her research is based on how symbolic activity constitutes and is constituted by cultural worldviews. Theoretically, her work is grounded in language and social interaction, and critical perspectives.

She is the recipient of the 2011 Penn State Berks Outstanding Full-Time Teacher Award and the 2014-15 Penn State University Commission on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Equity (CLGBTE) Award for Outstanding Service. In 2017 she was honored in the 'Teachers on Teaching' series by the National Communication Association, at their annual conference, and in 2019 she was named an Alumni Teaching Fellow at Penn State.

She teaches classes in intercultural communication, message evaluation, nonverbal communication, storytelling, and communication theory. She has also developed research-based classes on focused topics such as LGBTQ identity, comic-book communities, and food culture.

In this interview she shares her research about Hantu in Malaysia, and how people of different faiths and cultures have adopted ghosts into everyday life, and how those ghosts can be used to explore fears and taboos in society.