Carolyn Bronstein

Carolyn Bronstein is an award-winning teacher and scholar who teaches in our Public Relations and Advertising, Media Studies and Sports Communication programs. She holds affiliate appointments in the Department of History and the American Studies program at DePaul. Her research investigates questions of media representation and gender, and has been published in a range of academic journals such as Feminist Media Studies, Feminist Media Histories, Violence Against Women, Advertising & Society Quarterly, Camera Obscura, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly and Journalism & Communication Monographs. She is the 2018-2020 series editor for the AEJMC Scholarsourcing project with Peter Lang, and she serves on the editorial board of Journalism & Mass Communication Monographs. As a member of the AEJMC Standing Committee on Professional Freedom and Responsibility, Bronstein works on issues involving diversity and inclusion and chairs the Association’s 2019 Equity and Diversity Award.

Her most recent book, Porno Chic and the Sex Wars: American Sexual Representation in the 1970s, was published by the University of Massachusetts Press in December 2016. Bronstein explored the topic of women’s activism against pornography in Battling Pornography: The American Feminist Anti-Pornography Movement, 1976-1986, which was published in 2011 by Cambridge University Press. Battling Pornography received the 2012 Emily Toth Award for the Best Single Work in Women's Studies from the PCA/ACA. It was also named a finalist for the Frank Luther Mott - Kappa Tau Alpha Journalism & Mass Communication Research Award. Bronstein is currently researching and writing about gender representation in advertising, and reform efforts within the advertising industry to address sexual harassment and gender inequality.

As associate dean of enrollment and strategic initiatives since fall 2015, Bronstein oversees college-wide scheduling and teaching assignments; works with faculty to create new programs like the 2018 BA program in Sports Communication and the innovative 2018 2+2 BA program in Communication and Media with Harper College, Palatine; and helps to raise awareness of the College of Communication both on and off campus. She is the executive producer of the college’s humorous Meditations on an Orange film, which illustrates the diversity of approaches to the study of communication in the College of Communication. Bronstein has received a DePaul Innovation grant in the amount of $60,000 for 2018-2020 to produce additional promotional films.

Bronstein earned her BA and MA degrees in communication from Stanford University in 1989 and 1990. She completed her PhD in mass communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2001. She was the recipient of the 2002 Nafziger-White Dissertation Award from the Association for Education in Journalism and Communication for the Outstanding Dissertation in Journalism and Mass Communication. DePaul University honored Bronstein with a prestigious Excellence in Teaching Award in 2010. In 2012, DePaul University honored Bronstein with its highest award in recognition of distinguished research, the Spirit of Inquiry Award. She was named a fellow with AEJMC's Institute for Diverse Leadership in 2015. Bronstein is an affiliated faculty member of the Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver Center for the Advancement of Women in Communication. She received the 2017 Donna Allen Award for Feminist Advocacy from the Commission on the Status of Women of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

Area(s) of specialization and interest: American women's media history, feminism and pornography, advertising and gender representation, feminism and news, advertising criticism.

Professional organizations: AEJMC, ICA, Berkshire Conference of Women Historians