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.

Articles

Link

Blood, lust and love:Interrogating gender violence in the Twilight phenomenon, Journal of Children and Media (2011)

This paper interrogates the construction of gender relations in the Twilight books and films, vis-à-vis...

 

OpenURL

Body Matters, Feminist Media Studies (2011)

An essay is presented on genderscapes, the physical conditions of women's lives that challenge the...

 

OpenURL

Body Matters, Feminist Media Studies (2011)

An essay is presented on genderscapes, the physical conditions of women's lives that challenge the...

 

OpenURL

X-Rated America, Chronicle of Higher Education (2009)
 

OpenURL

Lolita and the sexualization of childhood, Pajamas Media (2008)

Pajamas Media, an online magazine, at http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/lolita-and-the-sexualization-of-childhood/

 

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Books

Media and cultural studies - keyworks (with Douglas M. Kellner) (2011)

MA.: Blackwell Inc. [First edition published in 2001.] A revised edition was published in 2006....

 

The Lolita effect : why the media sexualize young girls and what you can do about it/ (2008)
 

Media and cultural studies : keyworks (with Douglas Kellner) (2001)
 

Contributions to Books

Cultural studies, Routledge companion to race and ethnicity (2010)
 

Ethnic chic and the displacement of South Asian female sexuality in the U.S. media, Media/Cultural Studies: Critical Approaches (2009)
 

Myths of race and beauty in teen magazines: A semiological analysis., Women in mass communication (2007)
 

Sex in the transnational city: Discourses of gender, body and nation in the ‘New Bollywood, Cinema, law, and the state in Asia (2007)
 

The sexualization of children, Encyclopedia of children, adolescents, and the media (2007)
 

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Popular Press

Storm surge, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (2008)
 

The drum, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (2004)
 

Presentations

The Lolita Effect: The media sexualization of young girls and what we can do about it, Hawkeye Community College (2012)
 

Girls, sexuality and the media: Confronting The Lolita Effect., Race and Gender Conference, Mt. Mercy University (2012)
 

Fantastic bodies: Girls, cosmetic surgeries, and Cartesian, International Communication Association (2011)
 

Vicious assault shakes Texas town”: The New York Times’, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (2011)
 

Gender violence in the Twilight phenomenon: A feminist, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Commission on the Status of Women (2010)
 

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