Caputi Awarded Eminent Scholar Award

Caputi Named 2016 Eminent Scholar by Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association

Dr. Jane Caputi, Professor of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies and Communication & Multimedia, received the 2016 Eminent Scholar Award from the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association (PCA/ACA). Caputi accepted the award and gave the keynote address at the association's annual conference in Seattle, Washington, on March 23, 2016.

The PCA/ACA selected Caputi for her significant contributions to and achievements in the field of popular culture studies, nationally and internationally, throughout her career. Said Caputi, "When I started in popular culture studies, it was still considered somewhat on the margins of the academy, it was outside the canon, but now, it's completely integrated into the academy. So [the award] really feels like the completion of a long journey of seeing popular culture studies come around to a point now where it's a major field of study."

Caputi has written three books: Goddesses and Monsters: Women, Myth, Power and Popular Culture ; Gossips, Gorgons and Crones: The Fates of the Earth ; and The Age of Sex Crime . She collaborated with Mary Daly on Websters' First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language. She also has conceptualized and scripted two educational documentaries, The Pornography of Everyday Life (2006) and Feed the Green: Feminist Voices for the Earth (2015).

The ecofeminist/environmental justice documentary, Feed the Green , was accepted by Women Make Movies, the highly selective distributor of independent films by and about women. In the film, Caputi juxtaposes her interviews with 15 green feminists with popular culture artifacts, including consumerist images, art, and myth, to illustrate how a worldview of ecological destruction is embedded in popular discourses. Equally important to the project, said Caputi, are images from social justice activism that "propose other ways of being, other ways of living, alternative worldviews."

Caputi's current book project is "Mother Earth Meets the Anthropocene." She is also planning an exhibit in conjunction with the FAU Galleries and a coalition of faculty members and students for fall 2016 based on the keynote she gave at the PCA/ACA Conference in Seattle. The exhibit, From "Bitch" to "(Big) Nuts" and Beyond: Political Sideshow 2016, will examine the presidential election season through art and popular culture.

Photo Courtesy of Dennis Johnston Photography