Carolyn Stewart Dyer
Professor
Ph.D., 1978, University of Wisconsin at Madison
W311 Adler Journalism & Mass Comm. Bldg. (AJB)
319-335-3415
carolyn-dyer@uiowa.edu
Carolyn Dyer's current research interests are the reporting of sex crimes, feminist perspectives on media law, and fostering reading among girls and women. She teaches gender and mass communication, legal research methods, law and the media, and advanced reporting and writing courses (freelance, depth, and specialized).
After receiving a B.A. degree in government, Dyer worked as a journalist for six years. She also has an M.A. degree in journalism with a concentration in higher education and a Ph.D. degree in mass communications with concentrations in history and law.
Before joining the Iowa faculty in 1978, she worked as teaching assistant, lecturer, and visiting assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and as assistant professor at Colorado State University's Department of Technical Journalism. She did postgraduate work at the Family and Community History Center at the Newberry Library in Chicago in 1979.
Dyer worked as a newswoman for WJPG-AM in Green Bay, Wis., reporter for the Green Bay Press-Gazette, and capitol correspondent at the Madison news bureau of the Green Bay Press-Gazette and Appleton Post-Crescent. Her articles have appeared in Journalism and Communication Monographs, Journalism Quarterly, Georgetown Law Journal, Communications and the Law, Sexual Coercion and Assault, and Journalism History. In 1987, she developed The Iowa Guide: Scholarly Journals in Mass Communication and Related Fields, which currently is in preparation for a new online version scheduled for debut in 2002. She coordinated the 1993 Nancy Drew Conference at The University of Iowa and co-edited the book Rediscovering Nancy Drew, which is based on the proceedings. She also has published articles on 19th-century newspaper history. Her current research focuses on news coverage of rape and of mental illness.
In 1999 Dyer received a first place award in the Third Annual Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) Web Site Design Competition for the web site created for her Information Gathering course. She has also won research awards for her work on newspaper history, gender and media law, and Nancy Drew.
Current courses: 19:125, Freelance Reporting and Writing; 19:169, News Coverage of Social Issues.