Associate Professor, Communication and Media
I am a critical media studies scholar who analyzes the influences, overlaps and connections between media texts, media industries, communication policies, technologies, audiences and culture. I also analyze “fake news” and other forms of digital (mis)information.
Zimdars, Melissa and Kembrew McLeod, Fake News: Understanding Media and Misinformation in the Digital Age, MIT Press, Forthcoming February 2020.
Zimdars, Melissa, Watching Our Weights: The Consequences and Contradictions of Televising Fatness in the “Obesity Epidemic, Rutgers University Press, February 2019.
Zimdars, Melissa, “American Housewife and Super Fun Night: Fat Ambiguity and Televised Bodily Comedy,” Fat Studies, July, 19, 2019 (online first).
Zimdars, Melissa, “TLC: Food, Fatness and Spectacular Relatability,” in The New Television Industries: A Guide to Changing Channels, edited by Derek Johnson. New York: Routledge, 2018.
Zimdars, Melissa, “Having It Both Ways: ‘Two and a Half Men,’ ‘Entourage’ and the Televising of Juvenile Postfeminist Masculinity,” Feminist Media Studies, April 4, 2017 (online first).
Zimdars, Melissa, “Inactive Duty: Weight-Loss Television, Military Fatness and Disciplinary Discrepancy,” Television and New Media 18, no. 3 (2017): 218-234.
Zimdars, Melissa, “Fat Acceptance TV? Rethinking Reality Television with TLC’s ‘Big Sexy’ and the ‘Carnivalesque,’” Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media and Culture 13, no. 3 (2015): 232-246.
Wide receiver and kick return specialist Donovan Wadley ’26 was named to the preseason watch list for the 2024 Walter Payton Award. He becomes the first player in Merrimack College history to be named to the preseason list for the award presented annually to the national offensive player of the year in the Division I Football Championship Subdivision.
