Andrea Lee Press

Andrea Press is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Media Studies and Sociology at the University of Virginia. She was Founding Chair of the Department of Media Studies at the University of Virginia, and has taught at the University of Michigan and the University of Illinois, where she won the Arnold O. Beckman award for the top-rated research proposal. She is internationally known for her interdisciplinary scholarship on the media audience, on feminist media issues, and on media and social class in the U.S. She is the editor of The Handbook of Contemporary Feminism (with Tasha Oren, Routledge) and Media and Class: TV, Film, and Digital Culture (with June Deery), and author of U.S. Media-Ready Feminism and Everyday Sexism (with Francesca Tripodi, SUNY Press), Women Watching Television: Gender, Class and Generation In The American Television Experience (University of Pennsylvania Press), Speaking Of Abortion: Television And Authority In The Lives Of Women (with Elizabeth R. Cole, University of Chicago Press), and The New Media Environment (with Bruce A. Williams, Basil Blackwell Press). She co-edits the journal The Communication Review with Bruce A. Williams, and has edited book series in Feminist Media Studies for the University of Pennsylvania Press and the University of Illinois Press. She has published numerous essays, articles, and chapters on feminist media theory, social class and the media, and media audiences. She has served as Executive Director of the Virginia Film Festival, and Producer of the Roger Ebert Festival of Overlooked Films. She has held visiting appointments at Oxford University, Hebrew University, the Center for Advanced Study at the University of Illinois, the London School of Economics, and the Stanhope Center for Communications Policy Research in London. She has received fellowship and research funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health, the Danforth Foundation, and the Soroptimist International Foundation. Her book Women Watching Television was nominated for the Jessie Bernard Award of the American Sociological Association, and her work has been translated into Arabic and Chinese. Professor Press is Vice-Chair of the Feminist Scholarship Division of the International Communication Association, and co-directs the Political Culture "node" of the Sociology of Culture section of the American Sociological Association. Currently Professor Press is helping to develop a Center for Media Policy and Ethics at the University of Virginia. Her new project examines the reception and interpretation of political information amongst low income activists of diverse racial groups.