Associate Professor Janice Peck

Associate Professor Janice Peck taught Media and Public Culture, Critical Theories of Media and Culture, and the doctoral Proseminar in Communication Theory II.

In spring semester 2002, she was on sabbatical leave to work on her book, a political analysis of Oprah Winfrey's extensive media enterprise over the last two decades.

Since July 2002, she served as associate dean and interim director of graduate studies at the School, replacing Professor Stewart Hoover while he was interim dean. She also shared duties with Associate Professor Jan Whitt as head of the Media Studies undergraduate sequence.

Her published works included "The Oprah Effect: Texts, Readers and the Dialectic of Signification," a study of online discussions of selections from Winfrey's book club on her Web site, Oprah.com, which appeared in Communication Review.

Also, one of Peck's earlier studies of daytime TV talk shows, titled "The Mediated Talking Cure: Therapeutic Framing of Autobiography in TV Talk Shows," was reprinted in the second edition of Gender, Race and Class in Media.

"This is the most widely used reader on these issues in our field," she said.