Andrea Benoit

PhD, Media Studies, Faculty of Information and Media Studies, University of Western Ontario
MA, Communication and Culture, York University
MA, BA, English, University of Toronto

I have taught in the areas of media and communication at Western University and McMaster University,with a focus on advertising, branding, and promotional culture, the commodification of social causes, and representations of gender in the media.

My new book, Viva MˑAˑC: AIDS, Fashion, and the Philanthropic Practices of MˑAˑC Cosmetics, published by the University of Toronto Press (2019), examines the originally Canadian brand MˑAˑC Cosmetics and its unusal style of corporate philanthropy around HIV/AIDS through the 1980s and 1990s. It situates MˑAˑC's advocacy and fundraising activities within the revitalization of the fashion industry, the trajectory of the AIDS epidemic and activism in Toronto, and the emergence of the commodification of social causes, culminating in its unique advertisements featuring RuPaul and k. d. lang in the mid-1990s. A chapter on MˑAˑC also appears in Advertising, Consumer Culture, and Canadian Society: A Reader, edited by Kyle Asquith and published by Oxford University Press (2018).

Since 2017 I have also overseen the provincial quality assurance process in the Faculty of Arts & Science at the University of Toronto.