BEACH RESIDENT WINS PUBLISHING AWARD

Gary Edgerton of Virginia Beach, professor and chair of the Department of Communication and Theatre Arts at Old Dominion University, recently received the 2004 Scholarly Award from the governing board of the American Culture Association for outstanding contribution to American cultural studies at the group's annual conference in San Antonio, Texas.

The award states, "Your impressive body of work as an author and editor has illuminated the connections between communication and culture, enabling scholars to better understand the broader meaning of media in contemporary society."

Edgerton has published five books and more than 55 essays on a variety of film, television and culture topics in a wide assortment of books and scholarly journals. His "Ken Burns's America" (2001, Palgrave for St. Martin's) was awarded honorable mention (second place) in the 2001 John G. Cawelti Book Award from the American Culture Association and his "Television Histories: Shaping Collective Memory in the Media Age" (2001, University Press of Kentucky) won first place in the 2001 Ray B. Browne National Book Award in the Popular Culture Association's textbook category.

Edgerton is co-editor of The Journal of Popular Film and Television and an editorial board member of seven other scholarly journals. Edgerton received the 2003 Charles O. and Elizabeth C. Burgess Award for research and creativity from the College of Arts and Letters at ODU.

Edgerton teaches courses in media history, theory, criticism and production and he has been recognized with awards for his classroom performance at three different institutions. He is the founder and artistic director of the annual ODU Film and Video Festival. He regularly serves on national boards of scholarly organizations, most notably as president of the American Culture Association (1995-1997), and has provided more than two dozen commentaries per year since 1990 across a wide range of print and electronic media outlets, including Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report, The Christian Science Monitor, The New York Times, The Washington Post, C-SPAN and NPR's "Morning Edition."