Profile
Rebecca Hains is a professor at Salem State University, where she researches children’s media culture from a critical/cultural studies perspective. Hains authored the books Growing Up With Girl Power: Girlhood on Screen and in Everyday Life (Peter Lang, 2012) and The Princess Problem: Guiding Our Girls Through the Princess-Obsessed Years (Sourcebooks, 2014) and has contributed to anthologies such as 20 Questions About Youth and Media (Peter Lang, 2018) and Deconstructing Dolls: Girlhoods and the Meanings of Play (Berghahn Books, 2022). She has collaboratively edited several collections, including Cultural Studies of LEGO (Palgrave, 2019) and The Marketing of Children’s Toys (Palgrave, 2021), and has published in various journals, including Women’s Studies in Communication and Girlhood Studies. She serves on the editorial board of The Journal of Children and Media and was a 2023-2024 Fulbright Scholar to the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. Two new books, Barbie in the Media and #Barbie and Social Media, are slated for release this year (Palgrave, 2025).
Research
Publications
Growing Up With Girl Power: Girlhood on Screen and in Everyday Life (Peter Lang, 2012)
The Princess Problem: Guiding Our Girls Through the Princess-Obsessed Years (Sourcebooks, 2014)
Cultural Studies of LEGO: More Than Just Bricks (Palgrave, 2019)
The Marketing of Children’s Toys (Palgrave, 2021).