Dr. Melissa A. Click earned her Ph.D. from the Department of Communication at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her research interests center on popular culture texts and audiences, particularly texts and audiences disdained in mainstream culture. Her work in this area is guided by audience studies, theories of gender and sexuality, and media literacy. Current research projects involve 50 Shades of Grey readers, the impact of social media in fans’ relationship with Lady Gaga, masculinity and male fans, messages about class and food in reality television programming, and messages about work in children’s television programs. Melissa is Vice-Chair of ICA’s Popular Communication Division and is Chair of the committee hosting the Console-ing Passions conference at the University of Missouri in April 2014.

Did I ever mention that a superfluity of punctuation in the service of bad puns is the secret handshake of postmodern academics?

Melissa’s excellence in the classroom has been recognized by the MU Chancellor’s Committee on the Status of Women (Tribute to Women, 2004), the Intercollegiate Communication Association/iCom (Outstanding Professor, 2007), MU’s College of Arts & Sciences (Purple Chalk Award, 2007), Lamda Pi Eta (Honorary membership, 2008). In 2010, she received the Provost’s Outstanding Junior Faculty Teaching Award. MU’s Association of Communication Graduate Students have recognized her as an “Outstanding Mentor” (2011) and as “Graduate Advisor of the Year” (2013).

Frequently Taught Courses:

Comm 4618/7618 – Television Program Analysis and Criticism

Comm 4638 – New Technologies and Communication

Comm 4975 – Visual Literacy

Comm 8110 – Intro to Graduate Studies

Comm 8150 – Seminar in Television Criticism

Comm 9530 – Topics in Mass Communication: Cultural Studies, Audiences, & Fans

Research Interests:

Media audiences and fans; Gender, race, class and sexuality in popular culture; Television analysis and criticism; Media literacy

Selected Publications:

Click, M. A., Lee, H., & Holladay, H. (2013). Making monsters: Lady Gaga, fan identification, and social media. Popular Music & Society, 6(3), 360-379.

Click, M. A., Aubrey, J. S., and Behm-Morawitz, E. (Eds.). (2010). Bitten by Twilight: Youth culture, media, and the vampire franchise. New York: Peter Lang.

Behm-Morawitz, E., Click, M. A., and Aubrey, J. S. (2010). “Relating to Twilight: Fans’ Responses to Love and Romance in the Vampire Franchise.” 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.

Aubrey, J. S., Walus, S., and Click, M. A. (2010). “Twilight and the Production of the 21 st Century Teen Idol.” In M. A. Click, J. S. Aubrey & E. Behm-Morawitz (Eds). Bitten by Twilight: Youth culture, media, and vampire franchise. New York: Peter Lang.

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 and Cultures, 5. doi:10.3983/twc.2010.0216.http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/216/184

Click, M. & Ridberg, R. (September 2010). Saving food: Finding the politics of the everyday in food preservation. Environmental Communication, 4 .

Aubrey, J.S., Click, M.A., Dougherty, D.S., Fine, M.A., Kramer, M.W., Meisenbach, R.J., Olson, L.N., & Smythe, M.J. (2008). “We do babies!”: The trials, tribulations, and triumphs of pregnancy and parenting in the academy. Women’s Studies in Communication, 31, 186-195.

Click, M. & Kramer, M. W. (2007, December). Reflections on a century of living: Gendered differences in popular songs. Popular Communication, 5, 241-262.

Click, M. (2007). Untidy: Fan response to the soiling of Martha Stewart’s spotless image. In J. Gray, C. Sandvoss, & C. L. Harrington (Eds.), Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World, pp. 301-315. New York: New York University Press.

Melissa A. Click also writes for the University of Wisconsin, Madison’s Antenna and the University of Texas at Austin’s Flow .