Photo of Alison Trope

Alison
Trope

Clinical Professor of Communication
Founder and Director of Critical Media Project, Alison Trope centers her work and teaching on popular media and culture industries with a specific interest in diverse voices and social change.
Academic Program Affiliation: 
Photo of Alison Trope
Founder and Director of Critical Media Project, Alison Trope centers her work and teaching on popular media and culture industries with a specific interest in diverse voices and social change.
Expertise: 
Arts and Culture, Diversity and Inclusion, Entertainment, Gender and Sexuality, Media Literacy, Social Justice
Center Affiliation: 

Tabs

Alison Trope, PhD, is a clinical professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and director of undergraduate studies for the School of Communication. She is founder and director of Critical Media Project, a web based media literacy resource focused on representation and identity (gender, race, class, sexuality, disability, religion, age). Critical Media Project is used in Los Angeles Unified School District and other secondary and higher education institutions across the country. Trope serves on the Board of the National Association of Media Literacy Educators (NAMLE) and is faculty director of the Institute for Diversity and Empowerment at Annenberg (IDEA). Trope is the author of Stardust Monuments: The Saving and Selling of Hollywood (Dartmouth, 2012), which explores the enduring efforts to memorialize and canonize the history and meaning Hollywood takes on in our everyday lives. She has also written about the history and current state of Hollywood philanthropy and activism. Trope received her PhD in Critical Studies from the School of Cinema-Television at the University of Southern California in 1999, and has since taught a range of courses in the Annenberg School for Communication in media and digital literacy, popular culture, visual culture, fashion, gender and social change.

Alison Trope, Stardust Monuments: The Saving and Selling of Hollywood (Dartmouth College Press, 2012)

Critical Media Literacy in Diverse Communities (Field Guide, A Media Commons Project, 2018)

Girl in the Box (Communication, Culture & Critique special issue forum, Spring 2018)

HER-2: An Ongoing Series (Medium.com, 2016)

Cause-Celeb: Angelina Jolie as Celebrity Missionary in Commodity Activism: Social Action in Neoliberal Times, eds. Sarah Banet-Weiser and Roopali Mukherje (NYU Press, 2012) 

Little Mary/Great Philanthropist in Mary Pickford: Queen of the Movies, ed. Christel Schmidt (University of Kentucky Press, 2012)

The Visual Culture of the Occupy Movement: One Month and Counting with Lana Swartz (2011)

Footstool Film School: Home Education as Home Entertainment in Inventing Film Studies, eds., Lee Grievson and Haidee Wasson (Duke University Press, 2008)

Courses

COMM 206: Communication and Culture
COMM 367: Community Engagement and Service Learning
COMM 396g: Fashion, Media and Culture