Elayne Rapping

Elayne Antler Rapping (December 24, 1938 – June 7, 2016) was an American critic and analyst of popular culture and social issues. She authored several books covering topics such as media theory, popular culture, women's issues, and the portrayal of the legal system on television. As a regular contributor to such publications as The Nation, The Progressive, and The New York Times, she wrote on a wide variety of cultural issues including film and movie reviews.

Born in Chicago, she began studying at the University of Chicago, where she met and married a professor, Leonard A. Rapping. She earned a bachelor's degree at the University of California, Los Angeles, then moved to Pittsburgh when her husband took a position at Carnegie Mellon University.She insisted on taking courses at the University of Pittsburgh and earned her masters and doctoral degrees in English In 1967, she received the Andrew Mellon Fellowship. Rapping had two children, Jonathan and Alison. As an educator, Rapping was a Professor of English and Director of Women's Studies at Robert Morris College from 1970-90, Professor of Communications at Adelphi University from 1991-98, and Professor of American Studies at State University of New York at Buffalo until 2009. Rapping was the author of several books which address a range of topics from popular culture, television and society, gender issues, to media theory. Her first book, The Looking Glass World of Nonfiction TV, was published in 1987. A collection of her essays and articles, Media-tions: Forays into the Culture and Gender Wars, was published in 1994, in which she took up such pop culture artifacts as soap operas, Madonna and Amy Fisher to set forth a new paradigm of feminism's interface with the media.

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