Professor Sharon R. Mazzarella (Ph.D., University of Illinois) teaches primarily in the areas of media/cultural studies and research methods.  Her research focuses on youth culture and mass media, specifically in the field of Girls’ Studies.

She is editor of the new book 20 Questions about Youth and the Media (2007, Peter Lang) and Girl Wide Web: Girls, the Internet, and the Negotiation of Identity (2005, Peter Lang), as well as co-editor of Growing up Girls: Popular Culture and the Construction of Identity (1999, Peter Lang).  In addition, she is editor of the new book series “Mediated Youth” (Peter Lang)—a series dedicated to publishing cutting-edge books on cultural studies of youth.  Dr. Mazzarella is founding and lead co-editor of the journal Popular Communication (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates), the “official” journal of the Popular Communication Division of the International Communication Association.  Her published and forthcoming articles appear in Popular Music and Society, the Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, Communication Research, the Journal of Children and Media, the Journal of Communication Inquiry, Popular Communication: International Journal of Media & Culture and Girlhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal.

Dr. Mazzarella’s research also has been published in a variety of anthologies including the prestigious Companion to Media Studies (Valdivia, 2003, Blackwell).  Her work has been presented at a range of academic conferences including the International Communication Association, the Broadcast Education Association, the American Studies Association, the National Women’s Studies Association, the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, and the National Communication Association.  She has served on the Board of Directors of the International Communication Association as well as Chair of the Popular Communication Division of that organization, and currently the Vice Chair of the Research Committee of the Mass Communication Division of the National Communication Association.  Presently, she is at work on a book about marketing to youth in the new media marketplace.

Dr. Mazzarella's Sample Syllabus.