Person Holding iPhone Showing Social Networks Folder
Media Studies
Art on the wall of The Loeb from Louise Bourgeois: Ode to Forgetting
Media Studies
Exterior image of a Cinema
Media Studies

The Media Studies Program encourages the understanding and critical evaluation of new and old media technologies, the centrality of media in global and local culture, social life, politics and economics, and the contemporary and historical impact of media on individuals and societies.

Stories

As defined by the Media Studies Program, “media” includes all forms of representational media (oral/aural, written, visual), mass media (print, television, radio, film), new media (digital multimedia, the Internet, networked media), their associated technologies, and the social and cultural institutions that enable them and are defined by them.

The program emphasizes several interrelated approaches to the study of media: multidisciplinary perspectives derived from the arts, humanities, social and natural sciences; the historical study of various forms of communication and the representation of knowledge; theoretical and critical investigation of how media shape our understandings of reality, and the dynamic interrelationship of media industries, cultural texts, communications technologies, policies, and publics; examination of global, as well as non-Western, indigenous, and oppositional media forms and practices; and practical work in media production and the use of media technologies.

(Mission Statement, adopted by Steering Committee, 2004)

Group photo of Justin Patch, Dara Greenwood, Ron Patkus, Paulina Bren, Hiromi Dollase, Sole Anatrone standing in front of steps of a building.
From left to right, Justin Patch, Dara Greenwood, Ron Patkus, Paulina Bren, Hiromi Dollase, Sole Anatrone
Photo: Jill Wong

Lynne Marie Rosenberg

Alum Lynne Marie Rosenberg standing with six students in front of black theater seating.
Screening and Q&A of Famous Cast Words hosted by VC alum Lynne Marie Rosenberg ’03 (center).

Vassar London Program

Interns

Announcements

In The Media

Dara Greenwood, Associate Professor of Psychological Science and Director of Media Studies, wrote a Psychology Today article about The Problem With the Glow Up: Attempts to critique beauty culture can’t seem to shake the power of…beauty culture. Read more.

Dara Greenwood, Associate Professor of Psychological Science and Director of Media Studies, wrote a MSNBC Opinion article titled Chappell Roan doesn't like being famous. She's not alone. Why this is all so much bigger than a canceled festival appearance. Read more.

Paulina Bren, Adjunct Professor of Multidisciplinary Studies and Director of Women, Feminist, and Queer Studies on the Pittsburgh Chair in the Humanities, was featured on Marketplace discussing her new book She-Wolves: The Untold History of Women on Wall Street. Read more.

Justin Patch, Associate Professor and Chair of Music, is the Author of the New Book The Art of Populism in US Politics. Read more.

Dara Greenwood, Associate Professor of Psychological Science and Director of Media Studies, wrote a Psychology Today article about how positive emotions and social bonds nourish us in times of stress. Read more.

Glamour interviews Dara Greenwood, Associate Professor of Psychological Science and Director of Media Studies, about how people respond to celebrity deaths. Read more.