"Dr. FUN's Stupid Cupid & Realistic Romance® Awards
for Mass Media Portrayals of Sex, Love, & Romance"
Dr. Mary-Lou Galician,
"Realistic Romance® Guru" & Media Literacy Advocate (The Original "Dr. FUN")Award-winning researcher, professor, performer, and media literacy advocate Dr. Mary-Lou Galician (The Original "Dr. FUN") will share insights and video clips from her annual Dr. FUN's Stupid Cupid & Realistic Romance® Awards for Mass Media Portrayals of Sex, Love, & Romance.
The 26 research-based awards, for which the public makes nominations via Dr. Galician’s web site (www.RealisticRomance.com), are conferred by her every Valentine's Day as part of her media literacy mission to help men and women of all ages "get real about romance." She is an expert on the influence of mass media portrayals on real-life relationships, and she has appeared on national television to administer her Dr. FUN’s Mass Media Love Quiz© and to offer her Dr. Galician’s Prescriptions© for healthy coupleship—which form the core of her books and serve as the basis for her annual media awards.
Known nationally as the “Realistic Romance Guru,” Dr. Galician is the Head of Media Analysis and Criticism at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, where she created and teaches a course entitled "Sex, Love, and Romance in the Mass Media" to 200 students each semester. (And, yes: There’s always a waiting list!) She and her husband, Dr. David Natharius, an expert on gender communication, also conduct Realistic Romance® seminars and workshops.
Dr. Galician is the author of Sex, Love, and Romance in the Mass Media: Analysis and Criticism of Unrealistic Portrayals and Their Influence, which has been honored as a “Recommended Resource” by the prestigious Center for Media Literacy and used in university classes around the country, and she’s the co-editor of Critical Thinking About Sex, Love, and Romance in the Mass Media: Media Literacy Applications. Her new book for the general public, Dr. Galician’s Prescriptions for Getting Real About Romance: How Mass Media Myths About Love Can Hurt You, will be available soon. She maintains a related website: www.RealisticRomance.com.
Her research and teaching of what she calls "The Romanticization of Love in the Mass Media" examine how mass media portrayals of sex, love, and romance affect nearly all of us — men and women, young children and seniors, singles and couples — even though we might not realize it.
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