She examines cultural and political formations of gender, sexuality, race, class, and nation, considering how identities and communities are defined and contested through media and culture. Her focus is on television and new media, both as significant forms of visual culture and as sites of ongoing economic, cultural, and technological transformations. She earned her Ph.D. in Communication and a Graduate Certificate in Advanced Feminist Studies from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and also has a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the State University of New York at Buffalo.