Elizabeth Patton

Profile

Elizabeth Patton has a BA in psychology from New York University and a PhD from the Department of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. Elizabeth is interested in the ways in which visual culture, media technology, and the arrangement of space embody larger social and cultural meanings (like discourses on class, gender, and race). 

She conducts research and writes about historical representations of gender and race in television and film, representations of urbanism in popular culture, and the impact of communication technologies on space and place (both the public and private spheres).

Elizabeth is co-editor and contributor to Home Sweat Home: Perspectives on Housework and Modern Domestic Relationships (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014). The book focuses on housework as a key aspect of domestic life through discourse and media representations in popular culture by examining changes in rhetoric and imagery from TV, film, and magazines from the postwar period to the present.

She has also contributed to the Encyclopedia of Identity (Sage Publications, 2010), writing about the significance of children’s art in shaping identity and the historical exploration of identity through artists’ self-portraits. In addition to teaching at VCFA, she is an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She has previously taught at Johns Hopkins University, New York University, and Hood College.

She has also worked as an assistant for artists such as Lesley Dill, advised young people in at-risk neighborhoods in Philly through the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program, and conducted volunteer media literacy training with public middle school students in Washington, DC.