Media, Ideology and the Coverage of Sexual Assault

Recently, sexual assault has emerged as a pressing problem in the U.S. The President has assembled task forces to address rape on campuses and in the military, universities work to reshape policies in light of investigations, and whether on The Dr. Phil Show or in The New York Times, the media are abuzz with high-profile cases, many involving male athletes or fraternities. Yet despite the volume of attention, there remains considerable public confusion about the causes and impacts of rape. Dr. Barca leverages her background in linguistics and rhetoric to illuminate how the problem of sexual assault is arbitrated and reproduced in the media discourses through which most of us learn about it.

Lisa Barca, PhD.,  is a Lecturer and Honors Faculty Fellow at Arizona State University, where she teaches courses in humanities, writing,  literature. and media and culture studies. She is currently working on a book examining representations of gender-based violence in contemporary news reports, fashion-advertising images, and other segments of popular and commercial culture. Her work integrates linguistics, social science, and cultural critique in order to examine social inequality as expressed and perpetuated in everyday language and media. She has received awards such as a Whiting Fellowship in the Humanities and the University of Chicago Franke Institute for the Humanities fellowship.