California State University San Bernardino: Research, Writing And Mentoring Define Focus Of Political Science Professor

Press release from California State University San Bernardino:

March 10, 2022

Meredith Conroy, CSUSB associate professor of political science, is a contributing writer at FiveThirtyEight, an author of three books and a researcher who often secures funding for students working with her on projects.

Meredith Conroy, CSUSB associate professor of political science, can trace her interest in gender and politics —a key focus of her prolific research — to a college internship in 2004. As an undergraduate student at Whittier College, “I thought I wanted to be a journalist, so I took a study abroad internship at the Associated Press (AP) in London – AP Television News.”

Assigned to the entertainment division, “I really wanted to cover politics, so I used to spend a lot of time upstairs with the politics people and reading the wires. I was there in the fall semester and I was consuming a lot of presidential news,” she recalls. “John Kerry and George W. Bush were running, and having just taken a course on gender and media, it was obvious to me that everything Bush and Kerry were doing and how the media covered it had everything to do with their manhood and how masculine they were – it was performance.

“I’d see images of Bush chopping wood and throwing footballs and John Kerry skiing and doing his version of masculinity, and thought, ‘This is fascinating.’” She began saving newspaper clippings about which candidate was a more effective leader and sent her undergraduate advisor an email. “She said, ‘You know you can study that. That’s what academics do. They study how candidates are covered in the media.’” 

Meredith Conroy, CSUSB associate professor of political science, can trace her interest in gender and politics —a key focus of her prolific research — to a college internship in 2004. As an undergraduate student at Whittier College, “I thought I wanted to be a journalist, so I took a study abroad internship at the Associated Press (AP) in London – AP Television News.”

Assigned to the entertainment division, “I really wanted to cover politics, so I used to spend a lot of time upstairs with the politics people and reading the wires. I was there in the fall semester and I was consuming a lot of presidential news,” she recalls. “John Kerry and George W. Bush were running, and having just taken a course on gender and media, it was obvious to me that everything Bush and Kerry were doing and how the media covered it had everything to do with their manhood and how masculine they were – it was performance.

“I’d see images of Bush chopping wood and throwing footballs and John Kerry skiing and doing his version of masculinity, and thought, ‘This is fascinating.’” She began saving newspaper clippings about which candidate was a more effective leader and sent her undergraduate advisor an email. “She said, ‘You know you can study that. That’s what academics do. They study how candidates are covered in the media.’” 

This press release was produced by California State University San Bernardino. The views expressed here are the author’s own.