Margaret Schwartz

Margaret Schwartz is Assistant Professor of Communication and Media Studies. Her work focuses on the problematic of the material and mediation—that is, between objects, bodies, and things, and the ways in which they are meaningfully articulated and circulated in media texts.

Most of all, Dr. Schwartz is fascinated with the corpse. A frequent character in fiction as well as world events, the corpse is no longer a person, yet not quite a thing. It appears everywhere, yet it also resists representation, appearing only in glimpses or under exceptional circumstances of trauma. This unique and highly emotional entity is thus the perfect site from which to question the stakes of media images of a very real world.

Currently, Dr. Schwartz is finishing a manuscript titled An Iconography of the Flesh: How Corpses Mean and Matter.