FIMS welcomes new full-time faculty member

Selma PuracThe Faculty of Information & Media Studies is pleased to announce that Professor Selma Purac has been appointed as a full-time faculty member as of July 1, 2020. Professor Purac has taught courses for FIMS for a number of years as a limited duties instructor, and now joins the faculty with a full-time course load and research program.

Professor Purac holds a PhD in English from Western University, specializing in word-image relations in twentieth-century literature and popular media. Her scholarship centers on an interdisciplinary approach to visual culture, focusing on the ways in which alternative representational modes, such as text and sound, complicate and compete with our understanding of the visual, particularly in a promotional context. Purac’s publications examine these issues in such varied mediums as television and film to literature and comics. She is currently working on two projects: revising common assumptions regarding the promotional strategies of music videos by early black female hip-hop artists and exploring the role that visual representations of Japan in popular media play in the nation’s post-war identity. Selma’s interdisciplinary background informs the courses she has been teaching for FIMS, where her teaching has been recognized through various nominations and awards every year since 2009.

"I'm excited to continue contributing to FIMS's vision for the future and to the success of its students in this new capacity." - Selma Purac