Although they may not like to admit it, most people are influenced by the media and popular culture on a daily basis, according to Andrea McClanahan, Ph.D., professor of communication studies at East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n
McClanahan\u2019s interest in popular culture sparked her participation in the Northeast Popular American Culture Association (NEPCA), a regional, interdisciplinary organization supporting research on all aspects of popular and American culture, where she recently was elected to the executive council.<\/p>\n
While serving on the NEPCA over the past four years, McClanahan participated in both the Graduate Student Paper Award committee and the Rollins Book Award committee, which she found highly rewarding.<\/p>\n
\u201cThrough these committees, I have had the opportunity to read some outstanding works from emerging scholars and books that I would not have been exposed to in my specific area of study,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
McClanahan was not just reading research in her time with NEPCA; she was conducting her own.<\/p>\n
While at the annual NEPCA conference last month, she presented her research, \u201cNo Need to Mother: Childfree Women by Choice on Television,\u201d exploring representations of female characters who choose to not have children. Additionally, McClanahan\u2019s research article, \u201cTeenage Fathers: The Disruption and Promotion of the Heterosexual Imaginary,\u201d was published in L. Guigliemo\u2019s edited collection, MTV and Teen Pregnancy: Critical Essays in 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom<\/em> (2013; Scarecrow Press). Her next article, \u201cDisciplining Heterosexuality: Interrogating the Ideal of Heterosexuality in The Big Bang Theory<\/em>,\u201d is scheduled to be published in N. Farghaly and E. Leone\u2019s edited volume, Gender in The Big Bang Theory <\/em>(working title) in 2015 by McFarland Press. McClanahan hopes her research will shed light on the way the media works to frame today\u2019s world. \u201cWe should be able to fully operate in this world as critical consumers of the media and not just unconscious consumers of messages,\u201d she said. For more information contact Dr. McClanahan at 570-422-3697 or amcclanhan@esu.edu<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ESU Professor Elected to NEPCA Executive Council<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10989,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[22,42,58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-facebook","category-news-release","category-slider"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10986"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10986"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10987,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10986\/revisions\/10987"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quantum.esu.edu\/insider\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}