Emily West’s research interests are in the areas of promotional culture, media and cultural studies of health, qualitative research methods, and gender and performance. She is the co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Advertising and Promotional Culture (Routledge, 2013). With close to thirty original chapter contributions from both established and emerging scholars, the volume provides historical and scholarly context for understanding transformations in advertising, marketing, and branding, with attention to audiences, texts, technologies, and institutions. Her publications about consumer culture appear in Popular Communication, Feminist Media Studies, Journal of Consumer Culture, and International Journal of Cultural Studies. A collaborative project on American cheerleading has been published in Social Problems and Text & Performance Quarterly. West’s current research considers how health care is framed in the United States, and involves analysis of health care policy discourse as well as health care user perspectives and subjectivities. Her article “Consumer Subjectivity and U.S. Health Care Reform” appeared in Health Communication, and in fall 2014 she tested hypotheses about the impact of consumer framing on health policy opinion in the Cooperative Congressional Election Study. Supported by the ISSR Scholars Program, Emily West submitted an NSF proposal to the Political Science division entitled “The Impact of Health Care Consumerism and the Consumer Frame on Health Care Policy Attitudes,” in collaboration with co-PIs Dr. Tatishe Nteta (Political Science) and Dr. Michael Begay (Public Health).
Recent Publications:
- West, E. (2014) “Consumer Subjectivity and US Health Care Reform.” Health Communication 29(3) 209-308.
- Grindstaff, L. & West, E. (2011). Hegemonic Masculinity on the Sidelines of Sport. Sociology Compass 5(10): 859–881.
- West, E. (2010). Expressing the Self through Sentiment: Working Theories of Authentic Communication in a Commercial Form. International Journal of Cultural Studies. 13(5): 451-469.
