Stuart Ewen is Distinguished Professor in the Department of Film & Media Studies at Hunter College, and in the Ph.D. Programs in History, Sociology and American Studies at The CUNY Graduate Center (City University of New York). He is generally considered one of the originators of the field of Media Studies, and his writings have continued to shape debates in the field for nearly 40 years.
He is the author of a number of influential books, including PR! A Social History of Spin (1996) and All Consuming images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture (1987; 1999). The latter provided the foundation for Bill Moyers’ 4-part, Peabody, Emmy, and National Education Association Awards winning PBS series, “The Public Mind.” PR! provided the basis for the BBC Television Series, ” Century of the Self.”
Ewen’s other books include Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture (1976) and Channels of Desire: Mass /images and the Shaping of American Consciousness (also with Elizabeth Ewen. 1982; 1992; 2001). His writings appear in French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Finnish, German, Norwegian, Russian, Swedish, Korean and Japanese translation.
His most recent book is Typecasting: On the Arts and Sciences of Human Inequality, co-authored with Elizabeth Ewen (2006). Through a series of illustrative, historically situated vignettes, Typecastingpresents an incremental interpretation of modern stereotyping through the interwoven fabrics of art, science, religion and popular culture. The book has recently appeared (March 2009) in a German translation by Parthas Verlag, in Berlin.
In 2011, Ewen wrote the introduction for a new edition of Edward Bernays’s 1923 classic, Crystallizing Public Opinion, published by iG publishing.