M. Gigi Durham

Meenakshi Gigi Durham's work centers on media and the politics of the body, with an emphasis on gender, sexuality, race, and youth cultures. Her work has appeared in leading academic journals, including Critical Studies in Media Communication, Communication Theory, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, and Women's Studies in Communication. She is the author of The Lolita Effect (Overlook, 2008), and the co-editor, with Douglas M. Kellner, of Media and Cultural Studies: KeyWorks (Blackwell, 2001, rev. 2006). She serves on the editorial boards of a number of scholarly journals, including Feminist Media Studies and the Journal of Communication. She also served on the advisory board for the Encyclopedia of Children, Adolescents and the Media. She teaches classes in gender and media, critical theories of the media, and magazine writing. Her professional journalism experience includes reporting, editing, and design for various newspapers and magazines including The Pensacola News-Journal, The Times of India, and Science Today. She coordinated a statewide public information campaign on family involvement in education for the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. She served as publications editor for the University of Wisconsin System from 1992-94. Before coming to Iowa in the Fall of 2000, she taught magazine journalism at the University of Texas at Austin for six years, where she was the recipient of an honorable mention for the campus-wide Gilbert Teaching Excellence Award in Women's and Gender Studies.