Marita Sturken

Marita Sturken is Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. Her research spans the fields of visual culture, cultural memory, consumerism, and American studies.

It has been primarily concerned with how memorials and museums have been key sites for contestations of national identity, and the shaping role of visual culture and consumerism in the circulation of cultural meaning. Her current project examines personal photography in American culture, from the early dominance of Kodak to the post-war emergence of Polaroid, to the dramatic changes in how we now take pictures with smart phones and digital media.

She is the author of Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering (1997), Thelma & Louise (2000, 2020), Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture (with Lisa Cartwright, Third Edition 2018), Tourists of History: Memory, Kitsch, and Consumerism From Oklahoma City to Ground Zero (2007), and Terrorism in American Memory: Memorials, Museums, and Architecture in the Post-9/11 Era (2022). Her work has been translated into seven languages. Prior to NYU she taught at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication. She has a Ph.D. in History of Consciousness from the University of California, Santa Cruz.