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Welcome to the Media Writing Lab at DePauw University. This site features commentary and criticism written by students enrolled in Professor Kevin Howley's Media, Culture & Society course.

Throughout the semester, students organize and publish a weeklong series of thematic essays (500-600 words each) that address some aspect of media and popular culture. Modeled after the Media Commons project, In Media Res, this site promotes collaborative research, interactive learning, multi-modal writing.

The views and opinions expressed in the Media Writing Lab are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the instructor, the Department of Communication & Theater, or DePauw University.

 Instructor: Kevin Howley
Teaching Assistant: David Petrushka
Technical Assistance: Jin Kim

For more information regarding the Media Writing Lab write to us at: khowley@depauw.edu.

Popular posts from this blog

Bisexuality in Popular Television

By Sydney Secuskie Popular culture plays a strong role in the way teens develop and respond to their sexuality. It helps young adults develop a way to interact with their counterparts and helps them get a sense of sexuality and sexual experiences that they may experience in their young lives. However, what happens to this development when the sexuality an individual identifies with is rarely portrayed in popular films and television series? Heterosexuality is normalized within numerous popular television series, making young teens of the LGBTQ+ community struggle to find a character to resonate with. Callie Torres, a bisexual character in the TV hit show Grey’s Anatomy , exemplifies the struggles that many individuals in the LGBTQ+ community face when trying to identify their sexuality. Callie begins the first season as a straight, married female; however, she eventually falls in love with a female doctor after her divorce with her husband. Callie constantly denied her bisexual...
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THE HOLLYWOOD LATINA

By: DaBreonna Doss I ran across Jane the Virgin one day in hopes of finding a new series on Netflix. It is about this Latina girl who grows up on strict religious views. She lives with her grandmother and mother, whom was in the country illegally, and she falls in love with a white cop that one night crashed her party. Later, she goes into the doctor for a checkup but instead received an artificial insemination in place of a wife who could not get pregnant. The storyline exaggerates from there, however, there are a few themes that I specifically want to point out. These themes include Jane’s love story, her childhood background, and circumstances her Latina body is placed in. The chapter Mobilizing the Latina Myth by author Priscilla Peña Ovalle in the book In Dance and the Hollywood Latina: Race, Sex, and Stardom exposes the myth of the Latina body and the ways in which Hollywood media and popular culture further these themes. Ovalle begins her analysis by exploring th...
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Disney Princesses: A system of commodities?

Disney Princesses: A System of Commodities?  By Katharine McLean Growing up I loved all Disney Princesses, but Cinderella was my favorite by far. I envied her long blonde hair, admired her gorgeous gown, and wished for the day that my Prince Charming would show up on my doorstep with the glass slipper that would turn me into a princess. Now, at the age of nineteen, I cannot help but look back and wonder. . . have the Disney Princesses I’ve grown up with caused me harm? I argue that the stereotypical gender norms found in Disney Princess media and the capitalist nature of popular culture leads to a narrow-minded view of femininity. In Dustin Kidd’s book, Pop Culture Freaks: Identity, Mass Media and Society , he defines popular culture in a myriad of ways, but one that stuck out to me was the idea of popular culture as a system of commodities. Kidd (2014) states, “popular culture is art, transformed into commodity, working double time as advertisement” (p. 69). This d...
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