Dr. Peter Wollheim
 Dr. Peter Wollheim Associate Professor |
Contact Information
Office: C-213 Phone: 426-3532 Office Hours: Tuesday, Thursday 4:45 – 5:45 Email: pwollhe@boisestate.edu Courses – Spring 2012 |
Teaching Specialties:
Mass Media, Mass Media/Social Change, Photography, Philosophical Perspectives of Inquiry and Communication, News Reporting and Writing, Feature Writing
Research Interests/Activities:
Photojournalism, History and Aesthetics of Mass Media, Modernism and Modernity, Psychoanalysis, European Post-Structuralism, Suicide Prevention, Metacommunication, Philosophy of the Social Sciences
Biography:
Beginning his career as a photojournalist and art writer, Peter Wollheim received his M.A. from Simon Fraser University (1978) and Ph.D. in Communication from McGill University (1991). Previous projects include published photoessays on childbirth, the treatment of geriatric patients in a psychiatric hospital, the aftermath of gold mining on the landscape in British Columbia, and the history of Idaho’s historic State Penitentiary.
Current academic research projects include the role of money in family communication (with special emphasis on disinheritance), the role of alcohol as a proximate factor in completed suicides, and adolescent suicide prevention. Recent investigative reporting interests center around patient abuses in private nursing homes and psychiatric hospitals, exposure of U.S. combat troops to depleted uranium munitions, and interlocking directorships in the Treasure Valley. Long-term ambitions include writing a mystery series set in Boise (tentatively titled “The Potatoe Skin Murders”) and explorations of lenseless digital photography.
Dr. Wollheim serves as the Co-chair of the Idaho Commission on Suicide Prevention. He has presented papers and posters regarding suicide at several national and international conferences. He is a founding board member of the Idaho Suicide Prevention Action Network, and established the nation’s first Certified Crisis Worker preparation program on the BSU campus. His efforts have earned him a Jefferson Award for Public Service, a BSU Foundation Scholar Award for Service, and commendations from the Idaho State Planning Council on Mental Health and the Idaho Chapter of the National Association for Mental Illness. He has also won three First Place Investigative Reporting Awards from the Idaho Press Club.
Dr. Wollheim often prefers to spend his spare time with what others dismiss as “the lower forms of life.” An avid organic gardener, he practices apiculture (bee-keeping) and vermiculture (worm raising), as well as culturing yeast for purposes of homebrewing wine and beer. On the stream or lake, he studies insects and other forms of aquatic organisms appropriate to fly tying and fishing.