Tanya Melendez

As a rhetorical critic, my research investigates the ways television constructs collective meanings about modern cultural issues surrounding race and gender. My work is based in the tradition of scholars like rhetorical scholar Bonnie Dow who argued “television works rhetorically to negotiate social issues: to define them, to represent them, and ultimately, to offer vision of their meanings and implications.” Television is both meaning-making and meaning-sharing, giving it outsized impact in how representations are accepted by audiences and integrated into policies, laws, and cultural attitudes. In other words, our culture becomes what stories we consume. The expansion of television into the digitized sphere has increased this impact in both size and scope, making critical examinations of the medium vital to answering questions about the role of television in our everyday life.