Martha Bayles writes and lectures frequently about the arts, music, media, and public diplomacy. Her latest book, Through a Screen Darkly: Popular Culture, Public Diplomacy, and America's Image Abroad (Yale 2014), was described by American Diplomacy as "the freshest and most original treatment of U.S. Public Diplomacy in many years." Currently, she is finishing a project about the global decline in media freedom. Her next book will be a critique of the contemporary American definition of free speech. Martha is currently a visiting fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, and since 2003, has taught humanities at Boston College. She is accompanied by her husband Peter Skerry. She is a Fellow of SSASA14: Images of America: Reality and Stereotypes, in 2016.