Speaker's Roster
Location: 1804 - 77 St.Clair Avenue East, Toronto, Ontario M4T 1M5
Telephone: 416-920-3286
Fax: 416-920-8254
Email: pungente@sympatico.ca
Website: interact.uoregon.edu/MediaLit/JCP/Index.html
Profession: Priest
Organization: Jesuit Communications Project
Title: Executive Director
Affiliations: Education association; media advocacy group; media association; religious organization; teachers' association
Speaking topics:
Television (all aspects)
Values and the Media
Media Violence
Past speaking engagements:
Over 300 in the past ten years, across Canada, the U.S., Australia , England, France, Spain and Japan
Selection of titles of past speeches:
Resources produced (selected list):
Willing to speak: anywhere in Canada; internationally
Available for: workshop facilitation; speaking engagements; media interviews
Fee: negotiable
Languages: English
Biography:
John J. Pungente, SJ, has co-authored Media Literacy: A Resource Guide, for the Government of Ontario in 1989, and Meet The Media a text for 11 to 15 year olds in 1990. He has contributed to a number of international media literacy journals as well as written chapters for books on media literacy published by universities in Mexico, Spain and Canada. He is also the producer of the award-winning video A Heart to Understand, and in 1996 Scanning Television, a kit containing four hours or TV excerpts and teaching notes. Scanning Television won the Bronze Award at the 1996 Madison International Film Festival and the Gold Medal, Education Category, at the 1996 New York Festivals of International Non-Broadcast Media.
Pungente is creator and host of the award-winning Bravo! monthly television show Scanning the Movies, which premiered in September 1997. The series is designed to assist teachers of media literacy classes dealing with contemporary movies. In May, 1999, McLelland Stewart published "More Than Meets The Eye: Watching TV Watching Us," which Pungente co-authored with Martin O'Malley.
Since 1985 Pungente has given over 300 presentations, workshops and lectures on Media Literacy across Canada and Australia, and in Britain, Spain, France, the USA and Japan. He serves as a consultant to a number of media professional groups including CHUM Television, the Alliance for Children and Television, Cable in the Classroom, the National Film Board of Canada, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, YTV, TVOntario, and Warner Brothers.
In 1995, Pungente was elected president of the Canadian Association of Media Education Organizations (CAMEO) and was also named recipient of the Jessie McCanse award given by the National Telemedia Council, Madison, for excellence in the field of media literacy. Pungente is Vice Chair for the Board of the Media Awareness Network. He has organized two successful international media education conferences in 1990 and 1992.
Pungente is Director of the Jesuit Communication Project in Toronto where he continues his main work of promoting media education across Canada. In May 1999, Pungente was honoured for his work in media education with the conferral of a Doctorate by Lakehead University. He was co-chair of Summit 2000: Children, Youth and The Media - an international media education conference for some 1,400 delegates from 54 countries held in Toronto in May 2000.