Deborah Clark Vance, Ph.D., is associate professor in and former chair of the Dept. of Communication and Cinema at McDaniel College where she teaches courses in intercultural communication, gender in communication and qualitative research procedures as well as courses on media and popular culture. She earned her Ph. D. in Intercultural Communication at Howard University and her undergraduate degree in Communication with an emphasis on media at Northwestern University. Her research interests include how individuals create and circulate cultural meaning, whether face-to-face or mediated, particularly within their perceived group boundaries. Before entering academia she lived for several years in Italy and is fluent in Italian, earned her keep as a freelance writer and editor, an artist, a garden designer, teacher of adults with emotional illnesses, and as part of a team at Maryland Public Television researching, designing and producing a television series to teach science to children. She has presented competitive papers and participated on panels since 1989 at one or more of the prestigious ICA, ECA, and NCA conferences. She has hosted and been interviewed on radio programs and has been quoted nationally in newspapers on media and cultural issues, has published peer-reviewed journal articles on free speech, identity and intercultural communication topics, and has authored chapters which appear in various academic books. She is the mother of 4 and grandmother of 7.