Social media users are more likely to watch TV programs that are endorsed by members of their political party, a recent study suggests. However, individuals’ racial identity and their perceptions of racial and political ingroup norms and the demographics of a program’s intended audience also...
From Ghostbusters to Charmed, reboots, remakes, and revivals of TV shows and movies have flooded Hollywood over the last decade. A new collection of essays examines how the contemporary reboot craze perpetuates systemic biases around race, gender, and sexuality. Rebooting...
Doctoral students Emily Mendelson and Megan Jacobs Farnworth were awarded the Donald P. Cushman Memorial Award by the National Communication Association for their essay titled “Disclosure-Related Social Support and Reappraisals as a Result of Sharing Abortion Experiences with Close Others.” The...
Brilliant characters often play key roles in movies and TV shows. However, when these characters are played by women and people of color, some audience members dismiss them as unrealistic, even if they portray real people and events, a recent study found.University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign...
For most academics, sabbatical is a crucial time to focus on your research and a break from teaching duties. For administrators it’s especially essential, because their duties often leave little time to devote to their scholarship. For Isabel Molina-Guzmán, associate dean for student academic...
Fewer than 120,000 U.S. World War II veterans are still alive in 2023. People who lived through the war are relatively few. Why then, in an age of shortening attention spans and character limits, would a three-hour-long biopic about J. Robert Oppenheimer interest the modern audience? Although...
Compared to J. Robert Oppenheimer, the head of a scientific revolution that ended the Second World War and caused hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths, a toy might seem to be an inconsequential figure in history. However, such is Barbie’s influence that professor Grace Giorgio uses the...
Barbenheimer, the portmanteau for Barbie: The Movie and Oppenheimer, captured headlines this summer. But how did two films that were seemingly polar opposites get grouped into a suggested double-header and become so inextricably linked? At face value, the only thing they share is a premiere date:...
