CHMP welcomes Steven M. Gorelick, Ph.D., Professor of Media Studies in the Department of Film and Media Studies at Hunter College, as a Senior Fellow. His current research topics include: representation of disease and disaster in media and culture; the social construction of expertise in mass media; how media experts are identified, represented, and depicted in accounts of catastrophic events; crisis and digital communication during catastrophic incidents.
We look forward to working with Steve. He blogs regularly on his site, Media, Culture and Health (MCH): Sources, Stories and Selections from a Digital World where you can also read his latest post, HPV Virus Connection to Skin Cancer? Problems in Media Reports of Medical Findings.
Steve Gorelick / July 16, 2010
I am thrilled to be associated with a center and group of extraordinary colleagues who — almost mystically — seem to share almost all of my interests and concerns about how health, wellness, disease, and illness are constructed in media and culture.
And as much the substantive interests we share, I am not sure I have ever met scholars and activists with such a healthy respect for the complexity and nuance of human behavior and compassion for the fragility and vulnerability of those who struggle against the neglect and apathy of powerful institutions.
My current long-term book project is a study of the evolution of the concept of expertise in media and culture. What are the forces and power relationships that explain the ascendance of some popular experts and the invisibility of others? What about the role of lay experts? Why, since antiquity, have we asked the expert, the shaman, or the sage to bring predictability to randomness (justified or not) and to ease some of our most painful fears and anxieties about our health and safety? This work is informed by my training as a sociologist, but also influenced by philosophy, psychology, media and cultural studies, and anthropology.
My earliest work dealt with how the social issue of child abuse has been covered and constructed in media and culture and how that coverage has reinforced a slew of problematic “taken for granted” assumptions about causes and remedies. Most recently, my writing and research has — with some equally extraordinary colleagues at John Jay College’s Academy for Critical Incident Analysis — dealt with the impact of sudden catastrophic events ( floods, sudden violence, pandemic influenza) on individuals, social institutions, and the mass media.
I look forward to meeting you and sharing common interests. For now, let me simply say hello and thank you for the welcome.
And I really would love to hear from you.
Best,
Steve Gorelick
Steven M. Gorelick, Ph.D.
Professor of Media Studies
Department of Film and Media Studies
Hunter College
City University of New York
New York, New York 10065
Office Phone: 212.650.3089
Email: Steven.Gorelick@hunter.cuny.edu
Blog: http://mediaculturehealth.wordpress.com
Bio: http://brie.hunter.cuny.edu/?page_id=897
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