Melissa Click is the harridan seen calling for “muscle” to get rid of reporters and camera men covering left-wing festivities at the University of Missouri:

So who is Melissa Click? She is an Assistant Professor at Missouri and has a PhD in communication from the University of Massachusetts. What was the subject of her dissertation? “It’s ‘a good thing’: The commodification of femininity, affluence and whiteness in the Martha Stewart phenomenon.” Obviously a work of serious scholarship. Prof. Click has a “Graduate Certificate in Advanced Feminist Studies,” too. So she is well qualified to teach your children. Something.

Here is her resume. The whole thing is a howler. Some quotes are below:

Click CV

These are some of her “refereed journal articles.”

Click, M. A., Lee, H., & Holladay, H. (2013). Making monsters: Lady Gaga, fan identification, and social media. Popular Music & Society, 6(3), 360-379. Aubrey, J. S., Behm-Morawitz, E., & Click, M. A. (2010). The romanticization of abstinence: Fan response to sexual restraint in the Twilight series. Transformative Works & Culture, 5. Available at: http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/216/184

These are among the book chapters that Ms. Glick has authored:

Click, M. A. (accepted). Fifty Shades of postfeminism: Contextualizing readers’ reflections on the erotic romance series. In E. Levine (ed.) Feeling Feminine: Popular Culture for Women in the Early 21st Century. Click, M. A. , Aubrey, J.S., & Behm-Morawitz, E. (2010). Introduction. In M. A. Click, J. S. Aubrey & E. Behm-Morawitz (Eds). Bitten by Twilight: Youth culture, media, and the vampire franchise. New York: Peter Lang. 1-17.

There are several more about vampires, in which Ms. Click seems to take an interest. This is a manuscript under review, which I guess means the referees are reading it. It would be interesting to see the referees:

Click, M. A., Holladay, H. W., Lee, H., & Kristiansen, L. J. (revised and resubmitted). “Let’s Hug It Out, Bitch”: Audience response to hegemonic masculinity in Entourage. Television & New Media

I guess “Let’s Hug It Out, Bitch” is one option if you can’t do calculus and aren’t interested in a serious subject like history. The astonishing thing is that Professor Click collects money from various sources to support her “research.” E.g.:

Women’s and Gender Studies Faculty Research and Creative Activities Grant, University of Missouri. Awarded to support research on readers’ reactions to the messages in the Fifty Shades of Grey book series. April 2013. Richard Wallace Faculty Incentive Grant, University of Missouri. Awarded to support research on readers’ reactions to the messages in the Fifty Shades of Grey book series. April 2013.

From Fifty Shades of Grey to Thomas the Tank:

A&S Alumni Organization Faculty Incentive Grant, University of Missouri. Awarded to support initial research on the PBS children’s series Thomas the Tank Engine. February 2010.

If you put a gun to my head and made me read one or the other–Fifty Shades of Grey or Thomas the Tank Engine–I would go with Thomas. I do wonder, however, what the feminist angle on Thomas the Tank could possibly be.

Ms. Click gets around. I have no idea what this conference presentation was about, but she delivered it in Minneapolis, my home town:

Click, M. A. (1999, October). Who dunnit?: The utility of theorizing (in)visible identities in feminist action. Paper presented at the Second Biennial Feminism(s) and Rhetoric(s) Conference, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

There is much more, but you get the drift. This is a large part of what “higher” education is all about these days. No wonder students don’t seem to know anything. One possible benefit of the scandals that have emerged in recent days at Yale and the University of Missouri is that they might lift the lid on the real scandal: the stupidity of much of what passes for a college education.