Rachel E. Dubrofsky
Assistant Professor (and Affiliated Asst. Professor, Departments of Humanities & Cultural Studies and Women's & Gender Studies)
critical/cultural studies, media studies, gender, race, digital media, reality TV, surveillance
Office: CIS 3040
Email:
Dr. Dubrofsky was a visiting assistant professor in the department for 2006-2007 and joined the department full time in August 2007. Her research focuses on critical/cultural studies of communication and feminist media studies with a specialization in TV studies and surveillance. Her new book, The Surveillance of Women on Reality Television: Watching The Bachelor and The Bachelorette, is part of the Critical Studies in Television series edited by Mark Andrejevic at Lexington Press. Her current projects look at the reality TV phenomena and at online social networking sites. Some of her current work includes a forthcoming piece in the journal Communication, Culture & Critique on postracism on the television series Glee, and she is working on a co-edited collection, with Dr. Shoshana A. Magnet (University of Ottawa), entitled Feminist Surveillance Studies, under contract with Duke University Press.
Dr. Dubrofsky is often interviewed for her expertise on reality television and culture:
Audio interview with Dr. Dubrofsky (Fembot collective as part of the Books Aren't Dead (BAD) series )
Audio interview with Dr. Dubrofsky (The Critical Lede)
On Facebook and reality TV (for the Montreal Gazette)
On Polk County Sheriff being offered reality show (for The Ledger)
On The Bachelor (for The Daily Beast)
On Reality TV (for USA Today)
On Madonna (for Montreal Gazette)
Undergraduate Course Offerings
- Race and Gender in Popular Film and TV
- Special Topics in Media Analysis: Reality TV
- Analyzing Culture & Media
Graduate Course Offerings
- Critical Studies of Media
- Critical Methods
- Surveillance Studies
Representative Publications
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Dubrofsky, Rachel E. (2013). “Singing to the Tune of Postracism: Jewishness, Blackness, and Whiteness on Glee,” Communication, Culture & Critique,, 6(1), pp. 82-102.
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Dubrofsky, Rachel E. (2011). “Surveillance on Reality TV and Facebook: From Authenticity to Flowing Data,” Communication Theory, 21(2)
- Dubrofsky, Rachel E. (2009). “Fallen Women on Reality TV: A Pornography of
Emotion.” Feminist Media Studies, 9(3).
- Dubrofsky, Rachel E. & Antoine Hardy. (2008). “Performing Race in Flavor of Love and The Bachelor.” Critical Studies in Media Communication, 25(4).
- Dubrofsky, Rachel E. (2007). "'Therapeutics of the Self’: Surveillance in the Service of the Therapeutic.” Television and New Media , 8(4).
- Dubrofsky, Rachel E. (2006). "The Bachelor: Whiteness in the Harem.” Critical Studies in Media Communication, 23(1).
- Dubrofsky, Rachel E. (2002). "Ally McBeal as Postfeminist Icon: the Aestheticizing and Fetishizing of the Independent Working Woman." Communication Review, 5(4).
Books
Education
Ph.D., Institute of Communications Research, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 2005
M.A., Interdisciplinary Studies, York University (Toronto), 1998
B.A., English Literature (Honors), Western Civilization and Culture (Major), Concordia University (Montreal), 1993.
Current Courses
Graduate Students
Alisha Menzies, Megan Wood