Aidan Smith, PhD
Director of Newcomb Scholars Program, Senior Professor of Practice
Biography
Aidan Smith is the director of Tulane University’s Newcomb Scholars Program, an interdisciplinary undergraduate feminist research program. She earned her Bachelor's degree at Barnard College and holds a Master's degree in Mass Communication from the University of Florida. She completed her doctorate in American Studies at the University of Hawai’i. Her first book, Gender, Heteronormativity, and the American Presidency (Routledge, 2017) provides a discourse analysis of campaign communications from the arrival of television to today. She has contributed public scholarship on gender and politics to a variety of outlets including the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage Blog and The Hill. Her latest project investigates representations of presidential candidates’ physical health and stamina in campaign communications, both as supports for claims on the executive office as well as markers of unsuitability.
Key Responsibilities:
- Directs the Newcomb Scholars program.
- Teaches the Newcomb Scholars first-year seminar.
- Coordinates Newcomb Institute’s feminist film initiatives.
