COMversations at UNLV

Kevin Stoker 0:03

Welcome to COMversations, stories from the faculty of the Department of Communication Studies at UNLV. I'm Kevin Stoker, I'm the hosting this but also my my co host, Dave Nourse.

Dave Nourse 0:16

Great to be here, Kevin.

Kevin Stoker 0:17

And we are very fortunate today to have with us, Dr. Donovan Conley, longtime faculty member in the Department of Communication Studies. Donovan, welcome.

Donovan Conley 0:28

Hi. Thank you. Good to be here.

Kevin Stoker 0:30

Well, Donovan, I'm going to start right out with what I think is kind of the most fascinating thing that's happened to you recently. You know, Donovan, went and spent part of the summer in Vietnam doing research, kind of exploring and everything else. I want to hear about it. Donovan, tell us about this sojourn a walkabout in Vietnam.

Donovan Conley 0:52

Yeah. Well, there were many aspects to that trip and why I went, but you know, research is the best reason and explanation. I spent two months in Vietnam this summer, I would have stayed longer. But they were only doing visas one month at a time. And I and I had to go into the Laos in a vehicle across the border to renew my my month. So I didn't want to do that again. Right. But I was there for two months. I started in the south in hajiman. City, and I ended off in Hanoi in the north two months later. And I spent about three weeks in this in the middle part and Danang and Oisin, as well. And the whole idea was learn as much as I can about Vietnam food, the culture of cuisine in Vietnam, as much about the kind of the history and the collision of cultures and how that's, you know, created the cuisine as we know it, the different kind of regional variations of different dishes and as much about just Vietnam as possible in any kind of non touristy like, on the ground as much of a kind of local experience as possible. And just to have a really cool experience for myself to go away and kind of refresh, right. And so to spend a couple of months in a different place that I love. And just like immersing myself in the food culture was, was pretty great.

Kevin Stoker 2:06

So what was the best food discovery you had?

Donovan Conley 2:15

The best food discovery I had, oh, gosh, there were so many, right, but like, there's a dish called button fit. And long. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right. But it's on a lot of menus here in the West. And it's over there. It's just called barbecue noodles, basically. And it's like grilled pork grill, whatever, but it's usually pork. And it served a top like kind of cold vermicelli noodles with with fresh herbs and with these incredible spicy sauce and garlic in there. And it's sort of like hits every possible note. It's like a symphony of flavors and textures and colors. And I just found it to be the most perfect single dish of food. And again, I've had it here, but it made so much sense when I had it in Saigon. And it cost you know, a buck 50 You go across the street to the little place and you get this perfect, like just perfect bowl of food for like $1. And so I went back and back. I didn't do that with a lot of dishes. But I really, really loved this one. And I've been trying to replicate it ever since and not terribly successfully but

Kevin Stoker 3:16

And I know you're quite the cook. So tell us where that came from. You know what it was as a kid that got you interested in food?

Donovan Conley 3:26

I have to get that ask that question, right because I do spend a lot of time cooking and thinking about it and reading about it and writing about it. And I just have memories of when I was pretty young boy is sitting in the kitchen with my mom. My mom is a great cook. And we spent a lot of time together in the kitchen I just remember like sitting on the counter like stirring bowls and like dipping my finger in the cookie batter, cookie dough and whatever. And so I think I just associate kitchen with love, you know, kitchen with like, all the best possible feelings and experiences that you can have. And I do really believe that like I have a blog, my social media handles 1000 tableaus. And the idea is like portraits of tables. And and here we are at a table right? tables where we, where we come together, it's where life happens, I think in its richest possible expression. And food is just the kind of the medium of that. And so I'm really excited about people coming together. And what happens when we come together around tables, and I think it all starts from that. I was in grad school when I started to like deliberately try different things. Try out different kinds of ethnic styles and techniques and whatever but but in terms of like, the emotional kind of connection to it, it all goes back to you know, childhood.

Dave Nourse 4:46

So you spent, obviously the summer in Vietnam. But as you think about how that is impacting your trajectory at this point in your career, kind of how you taking what you have been doing for many years at UNLV kind of taking that experience that you had and kind of where's that leading us in the next few months, next few years where we're taking us?

Donovan Conley 5:07

Well, the cool thing about being at this kind of point in my career, maybe you have the same experience as there's no real distinction between research and life, right? It's like at this point, pretty much what I do in my day to day life is research focused. So everything I'm reading everything I'm watching everything I'm sort of tasting, traveling, it all kind of is relevant and becomes useful and potential kind of source of like ideas for papers, conferences. So you know, right now working on a conference that we're going to sponsor in the college, in the spring in March with my colleagues, Ben burrows and David Groover. And the focus of that conference is media and as infrastructure. So thinking about infrastructure, and sure enough, when I was walking around the streets of Saigon, I have some pictures that I took, and you know, the little alleyways right as the tiny little quarters and whatnot. And there's all these scooters and bikes, mopeds flying around. And then you look up and there's all these cables, right? And it's just like, Internet, and telecom and whatever. And I just remember thinking to myself, we got food, we got all this food in these alleyways. And we have all these drivers wearing these outfits. They're like Uber drivers in Vietnam, but they ride bikes motorbikes. Right. And so you have all these guys flying around on these bikes, delivering food. And above are the wires that are sending the signals, bring me my drink, bring me my noodles, bring me my whatever. And I remember just thinking to myself, this is kind of perfect in terms of like food, culture, media, mediation, infrastructure, right. So just, you know, walking around Saigon, I'm having ideas for potential papers that I could be writing, or, you know, conferences or whatever, right. And that's the fun part is like, when you're just doing the thing you love and ideas are popping in terms of possible essays. Who knows? Right? So I may end up talking about that kind of stuff in the spring. It's one of my ideas. So yeah, in terms of where where's this is going more, I don't know, just more right, like more my interests, my research interests, have been with food and taste for about a decade now. But I'm actually starting to move more out of food and more into like tech, right. And so that's that kind of turned into the the media infrastructure piece. And that's why I was really interested. When I was walking down those alleyways, I look up and I see the cables, I see the media, but I look down and I see people eating food sitting on stools. And for me, it was like, this is perfect. This is my whole world right here. But it's moving less away from the kind of what's happening on the ground, I think and a little bit more about like the tech and the media. And, you know, my research tends to gravitate toward like the problems are the big, the big challenges that confront us in terms of, you know, free thinking and association and community and whatnot. And there was a time not too long ago, where food the food system seemed to me like the challenge, food waste, obesity, conditions, labor conditions, treatment of animals, all the rest of it. Like that's major issue. But now as big of an issue as that is I feel like the tech issue is even become more more the issue, right? Because you can't even talk about food without first talking about tech, the creation of it, the delivery of it, the distribution of it. So now I'm kind of moving more to a primary kind of consideration of like this kind of stuff all this gadgetry and what it's doing, and there's obviously lots of good stuff. But we know that there's lots of like scary stuff, too. And it's so new, and it's happening so quickly. I feel like we need to like we need critical humanistic scholars to try to like ground our ideas about this stuff. So that's kind of where I'm pushing a little bit, but it's hard to let go the foodstuff because it's so personally wonderful to me. So I'll probably always dabble.

Dave Nourse 8:50

Let's back up a little bit. So you talked about sitting at the table, when your mom's cooking, sticking your fingers in the in the bowls of whatever it might be something delicious, I imagine. Talk to us a little bit about growing up kind of how did that lead you to the path that you're on? Because you could have gone a number of different ways if you'd love to eat food, but you went the academic path. And I'd love to hear a little bit about your journey in that regard.

Donovan Conley 9:13

Yeah, cool. So I was actually quite an athlete when I was a young young guy. And I'll say this now, but it was a source of kind of embarrassment for many years as a as an academic because I was not interested in academics as a, as a, as a young guy. It was basketball, it was golf, it was football, soccer, all of it. I played every sport and loved it. And then I remember I went to undergrad University. And I actually had plans to play for the university basketball team. And the coach even told me I was pretty much locked to make the team. But some personal things happened and I ended up leaving home prematurely and there may or may not have been a woman involved. Things were a little bit messy. And I remember realize I have to work full time and I'm no longer living at home, I have to take care of myself, I have to work full time I have to go to school full time, oh, shoot, I can't play basketball, I have to, like take care of myself. So my dreams of becoming a university level basketball player died quickly. And but that was actually a good thing. Because then I found that I had to start taking classes because I went to university just because basically like, because why not? So I started taking classes. And it was an English class that I took where I was reading some book, I can't remember of work of fiction, and I just sort of exploded with excitement. I was like, This is what reading is all about. Like, this is what like literature. Oh my goodness, if you guys ever heard of literature, this is incredible. So I caught the kind of literary bug as a first first year undergraduate and I just went like headlong in the direction of English. So for four straight years, I took every class in English that I possibly could theater, short stories, poems, I loved it couldn't get enough. And I thought I might want to be a fiction writer. I used to worship Hemingway as all young guys do, I think and I wanted to be this kind of like minimalist sort of, you know, mysterious writer guy. But I didn't really know what I wanted to write about. So I ended up in my last year of undergraduate classes taking a class in rhetoric, because of course, in English departments, they sometimes do have rhetoric classes, right. It's a slightly different focus. But I took a couple of rhetoric classes in my final year, and I just, like, lost it. I was like, I think I've been handed the keys to the kingdom of knowledge here like this is it? In the first class I took, we learned about Aristotle like within the first week, and I still remember, like learning about Aristotle on rhetoric and just being like, holy cow, has anyone ever heard about this before? It's so important persuasion, oh, my goodness. And then I took a rhetoric of popular culture class the following semester. And that was it. I was, I was hooked, I was sold rhetoric to popular culture. So we were looking at like fashion and music and like, reading John Fisk, and how we use fashion as like to resist the man and all that kind of stuff. I was just giddy. So that was kind of it. Um, you know, the basketball dreams were in the past. Now, it was just like this thing. This really explains so so much to me. And it really just resonated. And so I just kind of wanted to keep doing it. And after that, I remember I had a kind of faculty mentor at the time. And we talked a little bit about grad school. And she was like, Hey, by the way, if you were thinking about grad school, like it's getting a little late in the process, you might want to apply and I was like, Oh my goodness. So I had to study for the GRE, like, at the same time as I was taking finals, because it was like the end of the semester. going okay, GRE score, good enough, right. So then I got into some good schools and ended up going to University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, which is a great comp program, historically speaking, and I just just dove into rhetoric, you know, for my most of my time, the food stuff didn't come on till later. But for a long time, there, I was just kind of a guy who was interested in space and materiality and style, those were kind of my major coordinates. So it kind of makes sense that I ended up in food but for a while I didn't have a single thing that I was like known for, you know, like, you're, oh, you're the like Ben's, the social media guy, or like the food guy or the whatever person right, I was just the guy who was interested in space and materiality and style and aesthetics, and it all kind of gelled around this idea of food and taste.

Kevin Stoker 13:18

So when you got out of grad school and finished your PhD, did you come first to UNLV?

Donovan Conley 13:24

Yeah, this is my only job. This is where a job right out a PhD school.

Kevin Stoker 13:28

So now how long have you been here so far? Since 2004. Thanks. 2004. Wow, wow, that's

Dave Nourse 13:34

great. Yeah, coming up on a big milestone. Years.

Donovan Conley 13:37

Exactly. I know. It's crazy.

Kevin Stoker 13:39

Let's go to lunch for that are some

Donovan Conley 13:41

I think the university has little pin they give you

Kevin Stoker 13:44

There you go. Well, I you know, you've had while you're here though, you met your wife and and that is quite a fascinating experience. Will you share that with us? Tell us about that? how that all happened?

Donovan Conley 13:58

Yeah, this is a story that I've told many times because it's a good one. I just told Kevin at lunch a week or so ago. This is my second marriage after I got out of my first one. I did the like, that ended around 2010 And so I did the like online dating there for a while and no one's experience that but it's a very specific kind of experience. And it wasn't good. I just you know, I just did it for a while and I was pretty miserable and never really you know, had any real connections and so I got to that point of like, I'm done trying to like find someone I'm this is miserable. Forget it. I just want to focus on it's like every rom com. It's like when you give up and you focus on your career and you focus on what matters to you. That's when it all happens. Right? So I'm like, I'm done with the online dating. I'm gonna focus on me my research like and so I started going down to the garden, the community garden they used to have one downtown and if anyone's familiar with it, it's called Vegas routes. It was called Vegas routes it since closed unfortunately, but it's like it was on this five acre plot you just north west of the spaghetti bowl, you know that like crazy. All the highways come together there by the Smith Center. And I was really curious about the community garden because as a kind of research question like, you know, what do community gardens do? Who uses them? Right? Are they valuable? Do they have an impact? I had all these questions. So I started showing up and I met the the kind of founder, Roz Rene was is, and we started a little friendship. And we did some things together. We even did like a little cooking show kind of idea. And I started bringing some students out there and it was great. And there was this woman who was who was there a lot. And I met her name is Amy. And it turned out that she was actually living in the building that was the kind of the office for the garden. There was another side to it. And her and her three kids were living, I didn't really know that at the time. I just knew that she was a little frosty. So every time someone would introduce me to Amy, she would just be like, Yeah, hi. Like, oh, so I started referring to her in my mind as like cold, Amy. Very nice. Amy, right. Turns out that because she was a single mom of three, and she just gotten out of you know, some stuff that she was a same thing, just focusing on her work. She's an architect. She's very serious. She was doing like community projects, and so on. So she was not in that zone. And I wasn't really in the zone either, right? But Roz, our mutual friend thought that like maybe we would be good together. So now pause, back on campus, this is going back to like 2012 I think it was and this was right when food trucks started coming to campus. I don't remember this, but it was a big deal to me, and to my colleague Jake Thompson at the time. We're both foodies. And so we're very excited about the food trucks. And one day there was a food, a lobster roll food truck on campus. And I saw this as I was done teaching one day. So I was like, Hey, Jake, I come into the office. I said, Jake, there's a food truck, the lobster roll food truck on campus. Let's go get lunch. Now. Jake is married. He has kids. Neither of us are gay. We're both married or previously married. But we have this long running kind of gag about us like our bromance, right? Because we love to cook together. We love to like go shopping together. And I can't tell you how many times the two of us have had his kids alongside us at a grocery store while we're like bickering over the price of produce, or whatever. So this kind of long running joke about our bromance. So we go out for lunch together, and we sit down at a table outside and we've got our different things that we've ordered. And I take a picture and Jake's doing the look thumbs up, right? And I post my picture on Facebook said something like romantic lunch date with my my eyebrow or something like this. And it's a ha ha like, of course, you know, it's the running joke about Donovan Jake, right. Well, apparently, Roz saw this picture of us and thought that we were a couple. And that we were actually going out for a lunch date. Right. And so rod says to Amy, like, oh, you know, I always thought you and Donovan might get together because you know, route around the same age both nice and whatever. The two bad he's gay.

And Amy, my now wife, Amy was like, Oh, he's a gay. Oh, interesting. And Roz shows Amy, this picture on social media of the of the lunch date. And so Amy's like, Okay, well, now, shucks, okay, well, that's fine. And so next thing I know, I get a text from Amy randomly out of the blue one day saying, Hey, I'm going for a hike. Would you be interested in coming? I was now safe to her because I was gay. Right. So I have since referred to this as the gay loophole, because she didn't know that I wasn't gay. She assumed that I was she invited me on this outing at Red Rock. We went for this lovely walk. But we were both in the mode of like, we're not looking for anyone. I thought it was a friendly thing. She thought it was a friendly thing. We went out, we got to know each other. It was lovely. We decided to do it again a few weeks later, so we went up to Mount Charleston. And that time because we were gonna go for a walk, but it was snowing at that time. So we ended up just sitting in the lodge. Rest in peace lodge that wonderful lodge with the fire pit in the middle. We sat right next to the fire for about four hours. And at some point in that that second outing. It occurred to us Oh, no, he's not gay. She thought she realized because I was telling her about my ex wife and all the rest of it. And I realized like, oh, there's something happening here. And about four hours later, we realized we look back at it now and realize that we were already falling in love after you know that second date. So it's the gay loophole that my buddy Jake now proudly, you know, mentions to anyone who will listen that he's responsible for us getting getting hooked up. That's exciting.

Dave Nourse 19:40

So what point did you stop referring to her as cold Amy?

Donovan Conley 19:44

Yeah, she warmed up pretty quickly. I think it was that first date frankly. Yeah, she she she was very serious about her work. And so it's like no cute boys, right? No cute boys go away. I have no time for you but she warmed up.

Kevin Stoker 19:59

Well, what What excites you right now? What is what seems to be the thing that really captures your interest right now?

Donovan Conley 20:09

There's, it's weird as an academic, you get excited about things that aren't terribly exciting socially, politically speaking. So the stuff that I'm what you said second, like that I'm interested in or that's got me riled up or whatever is, again, the technology kind of question and how it's affecting kind of public life. So my, my food work is on this phenomenon of taste. And I'm really interested in taste and what taste does, historically speaking, what our choices, values, preferences, desires, how these things kind of shaped the world that we live in, right. And so now we're moving now that my work is moving more into like the tech stuff, the digital stuff I'm become quite interested in how it is that things like decision making and judgment and evaluation and value are in taste itself are being reworked by all of this algorithmic stuff, right? Because it's shifting everything about culture and sociality, I think. And again, it's happening so quickly, that we're just trying to catch up as it's changing. And I feel like there's a lot of stuff that just in the last 10 years or so, a huge amount of stuff has happened that we're still trying to understand, and how the new technologies and the business models behind them, not just the technology itself, but the kind of incentives to which they've been put and the kind of the question of value as it drives the tech and the innovations. Right. And so these are some of the big questions that I'm trying to chew on. Thinking about how all this loops back around to public life, democracy, citizenship, and you know, some of the scary stuff that's going on there. So you said, Excite, it doesn't excite me, it terrifies me. It frustrates me it Madden's me, It sickens me. As an academic, I get excited quotes to finger quotes that are about the kind of the questions and the possibilities for the questions, because for me, my research is very question driven. And so there's a lot of questions to be asked. There's a lot of room to explore there, but not terribly excited as a person living in this state of this. This world right now.

Dave Nourse 22:12

Yeah, but it's undeniable, the importance of it. Yeah, I mean, I think that's, that's it from from a research perspective, it is exciting in the sense that we know the impact that all this is having. And so being able to look at it critically, is very valuable,

Donovan Conley 22:26

right, and figuring out the good from the bad, right, sort of finding those distinctions between it's not all good. It's not all bad, right. But there's definitely some stuff. That's great. The general powers that we now have, I just think about all the things I can do. And I have this thing in my hand. And I think it makes sense that we get a sense of panic when they're when we where's my phone, right? Because it enhances our agency in so many ways. We can do so many things with it. They're incredible, but they're also some real downsides. And I think we need to be honest about, you know, the kind of unintended consequences and you know, where we are with these things and how we use them and how they use us. So, yeah, it's a rich source of, of inquiry, for sure. Because it's where the action is.

Kevin Stoker 23:08

Well, so in your youth, it was sports. Yeah. Then it became food. Yeah. What's your passion away from the office now?

Donovan Conley 23:18

It's still cooking. It's getting out. So fall is my favorite time of the year. Right. So the passion right now is to just be outside as much as possible. You're a Utah guy. I got married in Utah, a few years back. And so and I specifically wanted to get married in Utah in October, because I loved the season so much. So for me, it's about being outside it's about the colors even though in Vegas, it's basically just brown but you notice the little nuances when you've been here for a long time you notice the days light getting different you know the chill. So I love all that. So in terms of new passions, it's I just love to cook I love to explore Chinatown's my favorite place in Las Vegas. I love to explore Chinatown, the restaurants, the grocery stores, there's a million things I can always try to make and, you know, try out and always travel. So we travel as much as we can. We have a wedding in Cabo San Lucas in November for one of Amy's friends. And then up to Canada for Christmas. Because I'm Canadian. We didn't talk about that. I don't know we didn't. I'm from Canada. It's been a long time. I went to grad school in 97. So I've been I think in the States for longer than I was in Canada, which is a weird thing. But anyway, we're going going back up to British Columbia for for Christmas, which is like, right here. That's where mom is. That's where my sister is and, and my family my my now family has like fallen in love with Kelowna, which is which is where we all meet up. Kelowna British Columbia. It's gorgeous. So yeah, those are some of the things that are occupying me when I'm not doing all the rest of it.

Dave Nourse 24:54

Tell us a little bit about teaching. So if you had to, you know sum up your philosophy As an instructor, as a professor, as a teacher, how would you do that?

Donovan Conley 25:04

um, my teaching philosophy is premised on curiosity, and a certain kind of excitement, right? So I base my relation to the classroom on my own kind of best experiences and my sense of what is most enriching in learning and academics. When I just think back to when I was an undergraduate, I loved classes that introduced me to, you know, big ideas, and let me kind of roam around. And you know, here's some concepts and here are some, some great readings and go explore them and ask big questions and try to come up with some solutions or answers or interpretations, right, I love the exercise in the critical faculty, that's sort of where I got my buzz as an undergrad. And so I try to replicate that, in my own classes, I think of my classes as a kind of like an intellectual playground, right, where I, I, I begin from the assumption that students are curious, I hope they are. Because the class is kind of does classes are designed for them, to try to make connections to try to maybe read a little deeper than they've read before to try to synthesize to try to, critically engaged ask hard questions, to not just be cynical, but maybe a little skeptical. And to generate ideas on their own right, by by bringing things together and breaking them apart, or whatever. So I like the idea of providing students with a lot of kind of space to explore and, and to roam around. And I'd like to create assignments that are like, here's some things that you can engage, please engage, give him a little bit more structure than that. But I do not like learning that is kind of mechanical inputs, outputs, right. So I'd like for students to be able to ultimately exercise their own critical agency, right. And I think of that as a basically creative activity, right? To be creative, to be critical, is to be creative, is to be curious and to sort of think, kind of Burke's idea of perspective by incongruent, you try to look around something or look at it from the side, generate multiple perspectives to kind of think things from many different angles. That's what I think of as being one of the most valuable products that a liberal arts education can offer students is that sense of independent critical agency, right? So you go out into the world, and you can sort of stand on your own two feet, and you can confront a message or you can confront a power structure, or you can confront an injustice, and you can see it for what it is, and you have a history and a knowledge base to back that up. And I believe that I've done my job when I've when I see students take concepts that they've learned in class, and make them their own when they wield them in a paper critically and creatively when they're, they're forging ideas and arguments with the resources that they've generated from the class. Boy, that's exciting. But again, it does begin from that premise that students are curious, and that they want to kind of lean into that model. And so you know, to the extent that you're willing to kind of maybe take a little bit of a leap and push into some uncomfortable waters, you're safe, as far as I'm concerned. That's, that's the kind of the vision that I that I still kind of hold on to when I think about my teaching and putting together assignments and so on.

Kevin Stoker 28:33

Well, Donovan, if there was something that we should have talked about today that we didn't talk about, what would have been?

Donovan Conley 28:41

Oh, I don't know, we could have talked about the exciting stuff going on in the college and in our departments. So I'm in comm studies. But I'm sitting at a table with two folks from JMS. And we're, you know, historically speaking, we used to be siblings and our cousins, I guess, in the same college. But we have a lot of, I think, love between the departments and the kind of collaborative work that we do. And I mentioned the conference with Ben. And we've had great hires and calm and we're going to continue to hire, we're doing a search for a chair right now. Not that anyone could replace Kevin, of course. But we do need something more of a more kind of permanent situation there. And so there's lots of really good positive changes in the department. We've hired really well, we've got great colleagues. And so you know, I've been in this department for almost 20 years now. And I shiver when I say this, but I think I am the most senior by yours in the department. I'm the most senior person in the department. And it's as good as it's ever been. We've been through a lot of turbulence and change in the last little while, but it's a really great spot I think we're in right now. And I love my colleagues and I love the work we're doing. So I know the university's been through a lot and academia as a whole has been through a lot in terms of the pandemic in terms of oh my goodness, uncertainty and all the rest of it right but we continue to do good work and I think that, you know, we're well suited and well situated at a time like this to really kind of be of value. So I don't know. I'm happy to talk forever, but whatever. But in terms of the messaging of this podcast, I think that's probably probably pretty good. Yeah.

Kevin Stoker 30:16

Yeah. i We appreciate your time, man. It was great.

Dave Nourse 30:20

It was thank you so much.

Kevin Stoker 30:22

Your true intellectual. We really enjoyed this. Thanks for joining.

Donovan Conley 30:26

Thanks for asking me. I enjoyed it.