Biography

Press received a PhD in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley

University of California, Berkeley

The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...

 in 1987. She has held faculty positions at the University of California, Davis

University of California, Davis

The University of California, Davis is a public teaching and research university established in 1905 and located in Davis, California, USA. Spanning over , the campus is the largest within the University of California system and third largest by enrollment...

, the University of Michigan

University of Michigan

The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...

, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign is a large public research-intensive university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system...

, and the London School of Economics

London School of Economics

The London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...

 in a variety of departments such as communications, sociology, writing studies, social psychology, and women’s studies. Presently, she is the chair of the media studies department and professor of sociology at the University of Virginia

University of Virginia

The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...

 in Charlottesville, Virginia

Charlottesville, Virginia

Charlottesville is an independent city geographically surrounded by but separate from Albemarle County in the Commonwealth of Virginia, United States, and named after Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the queen consort of King George III of the United Kingdom.The official population estimate for...

. She has been a co-editor of the academic journal The Communication Review

The Communication Review

The Communication Review is a peer-reviewed academic journal covering all aspects of media studies published by Taylor & Francis. Since 1999 its co-editors have been Andrea L. Press and Bruce A. Williams...

since 1999.

Research

Professor Press is best known for her research addressing feminist media issues and the use of innovative methodology. Her first book, Women Watching Television: Gender, Class, and Generation in the American Television Experience, uses qualitative research methodologies to examine the cultural impact of television among women from working and middle-class backgrounds. As E. Ann Kaplan wrote in the academic journal Signs, “Andrea L. Press's book Women Watching Television is a sophisticated sociological study of class and generational differences in women's responses to television . . . Press builds on prior research through empirical investigation. She combines approaches often hitherto used separately, linking the class emphasis and the hegemony theory in much British cultural studies work with British and American feminist methods” (p. 551).

Professor Press' second book coauthored with Elizabeth R. Cole, Speaking of Abortion: Television and Authority in the Lives of Women, examines women's reactions to a television about abortion using “ethnographic focus groups.” As Nina Eliasoph noted in a review in the American Journal of Sociology, this research has broad interdisciplinary appeal, “For scholars of morality, gender, class, and media reception, the book’s intensive and clever use of interview material offers many provocative and thoughtful challenges” (p. 234).

In addition to several recent articles, in 2010, Professor Press and coauthor Professor Bruce Williams published The New Media Environment: What’s New, What’s Not?

Selected Publications

Women Watching Television: Gender, Class, and Generation in the American Television Experience (1991)

Speaking of Abortion: Television and Authority in the Lives of Women (1999)

The New Media Environment: An Introduction (2010)

External links

• http://www.virginia.edu/sociology/peopleofsociology/apress.htm
• http://www.virginia.edu/mediastudies/faculty/press.html