Jennifer Petersen
Jennifer Petersen is Assistant Professor of Media Studies. She join the faculty in 2008, after a teaching appointment in the Communication Studies Department at Tulane University. She is a graduate of the Radio-Television-Film Department of the University of Texas at Austin, where she worked under the guidance of Dr. Laura Stein and Dr. John Downing. She also received an MA in Journalism from UT-Austin, and a Bachelors degree in Literature from University of California at Santa Cruz.
Petersen's research interests include feminism and the public sphere, media and affective culture, critical cultural studies of journalism, and cultural studies of law. Her current research explores the way mediated discourses on sexuality, race, and geography determine legal practices and the shape and character of the public sphere. In her book manuscript, titled Murder, Media, and the Politics of Public Feeling (under contract with Indiana University Press), she investigates the mediated responses to the murders of Matthew Shepard (Laramie, WY, 1998) and James Byrd Jr. (Jasper, TX, 1998), placing particular emphasis on the way emotion shaped the public discourse, political mobilization, and legislative actions that followed each murder. Her work on the popular interpretation and politics of free speech has been published in the journal Media, Culture, and Society.
