Interests
Here you’ll find some (currently brief) descriptions of my personal academic and non-academic interests. I’d like to keep this page more updated than I will, so be mindful of that.
Copyright (c) 2006 Daniel Sutko
contact: dan {underscore} my last name {at} n c s u {dot} e d u
 
The lights in the picture are striplights, commonly used in theatres to add color to the cyc or to light faces from below.
Theatre
I spent nine years working in technical theatre, from high school until after college. I wore lots of different hats, from running scene shops to TDing shows and literally everything in-between. I spent the year after college as Assistant Technical Director of Davidson’s Duke Family Performance Hall. I also performed with Davidson College’s improv. group and spent quite a bit of time in undergrad filming sketch comedy projects and performing art in public places.
VOLS Football
I try to make it to at least one game a year. I have some of my good Tennessee friends to thank for teaching me about the wonders of SEC football. One of my friends took the picture below at the home opener against Cal this fall. Isn’t it glorious? It’s the view we had all game.
Bluegrass
I’m a big fan of bluegrass. I like most live music, actually. Here’s a picture from the Robert Earl Keen show I went to in November. I’m listening to WUNC’s Backporch music right now.
ICTs and Society
One of my main research interests is how new information and communication technologies (ICTs) affect our social networks. Right now, I’m participating in a class focusing on the effects of mobile technology and society. I think it’s important for us as researchers to theorize how new ICTs affect society so we can be ensure that technology is used for the betterment of society.
Rhetoric
I’m a news and politics junkie, so the rhetoric of politics is frequently on my mind. I also enjoy advertisements (probably more than I actually enjoy most TV shows), so you could probably throw persuasion in there as well. This opens up a rather large can of worms, however, because I also enjoy semiotics. I’ve studied semiotics in film classes primarily from a visual perspective (Barthes, Berger, etc.), and it’s an area I’d like to further explore.