The Waterhouse Family Institute for the Study of Communication and Society 2024 Transit Talks Welcomes University of Pennsylvania’s Sarah Benet-Weiser, PhD
Villanova, Pa. – Since 2018, The Waterhouse Family Institute for the Study of Communication and Society (WFI) has hosted a marquee collaborative lecture series with Temple University’s Klein College of Media and Communications, bringing visiting scholars and industry innovators to campus each year. These lectures aim to cultivate new conversations around the importance of communication, social change and social justice.
On Thursday, April 11, Sarah Banet-Weiser, PhD, Walter H. Annenberg Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication and Lauren Berlant Professor of Communication, University of Pennsylvania, will deliver her lecture “Believability: Sexual Violence, Media and the Digitization of Doubt.” Dr. Banet-Weiser will evaluate the contemporary context of the post #MeToo movement that has created a new public appetite for stories about sexual violence-based harms, a growing market for anti-sexual violence products and services, and a renewed investment in digital media as a space where women are believed.
Dr. Banet-Weiser is a professor of Media, Gender and Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. Her teaching and research interests include gender in the media, citizenship, consumer culture, popular media, and race and the media. She is the author of The Most Beautiful Girl in the World: Beauty Pageants and National Identity (1999), Kids Rule! Nickelodeon and Consumer Citizenship (2007), Authentic™: The Politics of Ambivalence in a Brand Culture (2012) and Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny (2018). She has a new book, co-authored with Kathryn Higgins, PhD, Believability: Sexual Violence, Media and the Politics of Doubt (forthcoming, Polity Press, 2023).
The WFI Transit Talks will take place in the Communication Department Blackbox Studio in Garey Hall 29A from 4 to 5 p.m. This event ACS approved and free and open to the public.
About Villanova University’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences: Since its founding in 1842, Villanova University’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences has been the heart of the Villanova learning experience, offering foundational courses for undergraduate students in every college of the University. Serving more than 4,500 undergraduate and graduate students, the College is committed to fortifying them with intellectual rigor, multidisciplinary knowledge, moral courage and a global perspective. The College has more than 40 academic departments and programs across the humanities, social sciences, and natural and physical sciences.