David R. Croteau (Ph.D., Boston College, 1993)

Lafayette Hall, room 307
Tel.: (804) 828-6464
E-mail: dcroteau@saturn.vcu.edu
Personal Web: http://saturn.vcu.edu/~dcroteau

Specialty Areas

Mass media, social movements, class/inequality

Biographical Sketch

David Croteau received his undergraduate education at Brandeis University, where he double-majored in Sociology and English and American Literature. After graduation, he moved to New York City to join the staff of a national peace and justice organization where he worked for several years. He went on to receive his graduate training at Boston College where he took part in the sociology department's program on "Social Economy and Social Justice." He has worked at VCU since 1994. David's teaching and research interests include social movements, mass media, and class/inequality. Recently, he has regularly taught a mass media course (SOCY 370), a social movements class (SOCY 310), and a course on class and inequality (SOCY 321). At the graduate level he has recently taught social movements (SOCY 691), stratification (SOCY 613), and research methods (SOCY 601).

David taught the department's first service-learning course in 1998 and it's first graduate research practicum during the 1999-2000 academic year. David's writing has been aimed at scholarly, student, and popular audiences. In addition to articles and research reports, he is the author/co-author of five books or monographs: The Business of Media: Corporate Media and the Public Interest (2001); Media/Society: Industries, Images, and Audiences (2nd edition, 2000); "The Political Diversity of Public Television: Polysemy, the Public Sphere, and the Conservative Critique of PBS." (Journalism & Mass Communication Monographs, 157, June 1996); Politics and the Class Divide: Working People and the Middle Class Left (1995); By Invitation Only: How the Media Limit Political Debate (1994). His interest in engaged scholarship has led to several research efforts in collaboration with Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a New York-based media watchdog group. He also operates a listserv for labor researchers and union activists, and volunteers for the Richmond Coalition for a Living Wage. David grew up in a blue-collar family in a small New Hampshire paper mill town near the Canadian border. He loves a wide variety of music (especially the blues), enjoys good hockey, and is slowly teaching himself some woodworking.