Amy Aidman

aidman@illinois.edu

Education

Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Communications)
M.A., University of Michigan (Telecommunication Arts)
B.S., University of Florida at Gainesville (Journalism and Mass Communication)

Affiliations

Associate Dean for Research (currently on leave)
Research Associate Professor (currently on leave)
Senior Research Fellow, Emory University Center on Myth and Ritual in American Life

Course Specialties

Children and Media
Media Literacy and Youth
Media in Family Life

Background

Aidman has lectured and taught on the topics of children and media, media literacy and the social impacts of communication technologies in the U.S. and Israel and has studied abroad at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She was the associate director of the Institute of Communications Research Initiative on Communications, Culture and Policy, funded through a grant from the Ford Foundation. She is the former research director for the Center for Media Education, a Washington, D.C.-based research and policy organization. She has also worked with the ERIC Clearinghouse on Elementary and Early Childhood Education and the National Parent Information Network, where she coordinated the creation of a statewide electronic information service for parents and families in Illinois. She was a visiting lecturer in the University of Haifa's Department of Communication. She has been a featured speaker and panelist at scholarly conferences and lectured widely on children and media, children as consumers, media literacy and in-school advertising and has been frequently quoted in the popular and parenting press about these issues.

Research/Creative Endeavor

Aidman is currently working on a study of the role of media in the lives of families with teenagers. She is a co-author of "Media in the Make-Believe Worlds of Children: When Harry Potter Meets Pokemon in Disneyland," (with Maya Gotz, Dafna Lemish and Hye Sung Moon, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 2005), a book about an international study of children's fantasies and their relationship to media. She is a contributing author to two volumes of "Creating Competent Communicators: Activities for Teaching Speaking, Listening, and Media Literacy in the K-12 Classroom," which were written to complement National Communication Association standards. Her research on girls' understanding of the Disney movie, "Pocahontas," has been included as a chapter in the edited volume of "Growing Up Girls: Popular Culture and the Construction of Identity," (Peter Lang Publishing, Sharon R. Mazzarella and Norma Odom Pecora, eds.). Her areas of interest include children and media, media literacy and the social impacts of communication technologies.