Elizabeth Losh is a media theorist and

digital rhetoric Digital rhetoric is communication that exists in the digital sphere. It can be expressed in many different forms, including text, images, videos, and software. Due to the increasingly mediated nature of contemporary society, distinctions betwee ...

scholar, who is a professor of

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Culture, language and peoples * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England * ''English'', an Amish ter ...

and

American Studies American studies or American civilization is an interdisciplinarity, interdisciplinary field of scholarship that examines American literature, History of the United States, history, Society of the United States, society, and Culture of the Unit ...

at the

College of William and Mary The College of William & Mary (abbreviated as W&M) is a public research university in Williamsburg, Virginia, United States. Founded in 1693 under a royal charter issued by King William III and Queen Mary II, it is the second-oldest instit ...

Education

Elizabeth Losh earned a

Bachelor of Arts A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts deg ...

(''magna cum laude'') from

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

, a

Master of Fine Arts A Master of Fine Arts (MFA or M.F.A.) is a terminal degree in fine arts, including visual arts, creative writing, graphic design, photography, filmmaking, dance, theatre, other performing arts and in some cases, theatre management or arts admi ...

in creative writing, and a

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

in English with an emphasis in critical theory from

University of California at Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a public land-grant research university in Irvine, California, United States. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, UCI offers 87 undergraduate degrees and 129 ...

. She was Director of Academic Programs, Sixth College at

University of California at San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego in communications material, formerly and colloquially UCSD) is a public land-grant research university in San Diego, California, United States. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Sc ...

, where she also taught in Communication, Visual Arts, and the Interdisciplinary Computing in the Arts major. She is a member of the editorial board of the journal '' Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience''.

Academic contributions

Losh is a founding member of FemTechNet, an international organization devoted to promoting collaborative research, pedagogy and online learning innovation in feminist art, media and science and technology studies. In 2007, Losh was awarded the John Lovas Memorial Webblog prize. Losh's main areas of contribution are in interrogating the assumptions embedded in the rhetorics of news, information and pedagogy in digital media platforms and projects, particularly within online cultures and where online cultures intersect with spaces like classrooms and institutions like journalism.

Publications

Losh is the author of books including ''The War on Learning: Gaining Ground in the Digital University'', a book that, as

Times Higher Education ''Times Higher Education'' (''THE''), formerly ''The Times Higher Education Supplement'' (''The THES''), is a British magazine reporting specifically on news and issues related to higher education. Ownership TPG Capital acquired TSL Education ...

reviewer

Tara Brabazon Tara Brabazon (born 3 January 1969) is the Professor of Cultural Studies and formerly Dean of Graduate Research at Flinders University, Australia. From 2023-24 she was a Dean at Charles Darwin University. She has worked in ten universities in the ...

writes, addresses "what happens when education is treated like a product and not a process" and asks "who speaks for the students?". The

London School of Economics The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), established in 1895, is a public research university in London, England, and a member institution of the University of London. The school specialises in the social sciences. Founded ...

Review of Books notes that Losh "effectively moves beyond the headlines and bestsellers that warn of literacy and attention crises among device-devoted youth, and those that dismiss the academy as a hopeless anachronism, to painstakingly deconstruct the 'rhetoric of crisis'". With

Jonathan Alexander Jonathan Alexander (born October 2, 1967) is an American rhetorician and memoirist. He is Chancellor's Professor of English, Informatics, Education, and Gender & Sexuality Studies at the University of California, Irvine. His scholarly and creat ...

, Losh is the author of a guide to writing that introduces graphics as a means of doing pedagogy: ''Understanding Rhetoric: A Graphic Guide to Writing''. Losh is also the author of the ''Virtualpolitik: An Electronic History of Government Media-Making in a Time of War, Scandal, Disaster, Miscommunication, and Mistakes'' (MIT Press, 2009), a work highly recommended by Immersive Journalism for being a book that "closely examines the government’s digital rhetoric in such cases and its dual role as media-maker and regulator"

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Losh, Elizabeth University of California, San Diego faculty Harvard University alumni University of California, Irvine alumni Living people College of William & Mary faculty Year of birth missing (living people)