Dr. Bindig Yousman joined Sacred Heart University in 2011. She is a Professor in the School of Communication, Media & the Arts and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs for the College of Arts & Sciences.
Dr. Bindig Yousman’s research interests are grounded in critical television studies and media literacy. In particular, she writes about the construction and commodification of young femininity in popular culture.
She is the author of Dawson’s Creek: A Critical Understanding (2008), The O.C.: A Critical Understanding with Andrea Bergstrom (2013), and Gossip Girl: A Critical Understanding (2015). These books examine the teen genre and reveals media industry strategies that exploit young viewers by treating them as passive consumers; the regressive representations of gender, race, class, and sexuality normalized in youth media; and the ways young audiences understand and use popular media as a way to navigate the world.
Dr. Bindig Yousman is also a co-editor (along with her SCMA colleague Dr. Bill Yousman) of one of the best-selling and most widely adopted anthologies in media studies: Gender, Race and Class in Media, a collection that curates cutting-edge theory and research on issues of power, identity, and ideology in popular culture.