RTF Doctoral Graduates

The professional placement for scholars from the Department of Radio-Television-Film graduate programs is second to none. Below is a list of recent doctoral graduates, their dissertation titles, and when available, where they are presently teaching and researching.

2021

Briana Barner
Position: Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Communication, University of Maryland

Selena Dickey
Position: Assistant Professor, Communication Studies, Furman University

2020

Gejun Huang
Dissertation: New Frontier of Digital Media and Entertainment: Exploring Entrepreneurship in Chinese Digital Game Industry
Position: Assistant Professor, School of Communication at Soochow University

Daniel Mauro
Dissertation: Locating the Politics of Amateur Media
Position: Curatorial Assistant, Glenstone Museum

Morgan O'Brien
Dissertation: Rejecting Nostalgia: Retro Jamming in Devolver Digital’s Independent Video Games

Tim Piper
Dissertation: Transition Game: Television and the National Basketball Association During the Multichannel Shift, 1970-1984
Position: Assistant Professor, Communication Studies, Oglethorpe University

Alexis Schrubbe
Dissertation: Homework Gaps and Connectivity Canyons: Education, Broadband, and the Shattered Myth of the Network Society
Position: Postdoctoral Researcher, Technology and Information Policy Institute, UT Austin

Ramna Walia
Dissertation: Intertwined Networks of Travel: The Located Mobility of Malegaon Media Culture
Position: Assistant Professor, School of Modern Media, UPES

Lesley Willard
Dissertation: From Hobby to Side Hustle: Fan Artist Professionalization in the Post-Network Era
Position: Lecturer and Internship Director, Department of Radio-Television-Film; Program Director, Center for Entertainment & Media Industries

2019

Nick Bestor
Dissertation: Playing in Licensed Storyworlds: Games, Franchises, and Fans
Position: Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of English, University of Nevada, Reno

Jinsook Kim
Dissertation: Contesting Hate: Online Misogyny and Anti-Hate Feminist Activism in South Korea
Position: Postdoctoral Fellow, Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication, University of Pennsylvania

Annie Major
Dissertation: Not Streaming Near You: Specialty Film Distribution and Marketing in the Digital Age
Position: Assistant Professor, Communication Studies, Young Harris College

Paul Monticone, Ph.D.                                                                         
Dissertation: For the maintenance of the system: institutional and cultural change within the motion picture producers and distributors of America, 1922-1945
Position: Assistant Professor, Rowan University

Michael O'Brien
Dissertation: Third Cinema in the United States, 1960-67 

Jacqueline Pinkowitz, Ph.D.
Dissertation: Reel South: Race, Region, and the American Film Industry in the Era of Black Civil Rights, 1954-1976
Position: Assistant Professor, Journalism and Media Studies, Mercer University

Hogeun Seo, Ph.D.
Dissertation: Platform rules: a case study of Samsung’s failure in the smartphone platform industry
Position: Assistant Professor, Mike Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business, Belmont University, Nashville, TN

2018

Laura Felschow, Ph.D.
Dissertation: Wonder Women: Gender and Production in the Superhero Genre
Position: Assistant Professor at SUNY (State University of New York) at Oneonta

Jennifer Minsoo Kang, Ph.D.
Dissertation: Unboxing Television: The Rise of Korean Web Dramas and Expansion of Independent Production Companies in the 2010s
Position: Visiting Assistant Professor & Postdoctoral Scholar, DePauw University
https://www.depauw.edu/arts-and-culture/arts/theatre/communication-and-theatre-faculty/

Peter Kunze, Ph.D.
Dissertation: Staging a Comeback: Film and Theater Convergence at Disney, 1982-1998
Position: Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Communication, Tulane University

Xiaoqian Li
Dissertation: Social network site use, social capital, and acculturation: a comparative study of Facebook and Renren.com use by Chinese international students in the United States
Position: Assistant Professor of Communication, Illinois Institute of Technology
https://humansciences.iit.edu/faculty/xiaoqian-li

Lucia Palmer
Position: Assistant Professor, Media Studies, Middle Georgia State University
https://www.heidelberg.edu/directory/lucia-palmer

2017

Elizabeth Bolton, Ph.D.
Dissertation: Personalizing Politics: Producing Accountability on Pakistan's News Television

Tupur Chatterjee, Ph.D.
Position: Assistant Professor, School of English, Drama & Film, University College Dublin

Peter Kovacs, Ph.D.
Dissertation: Big Tobacco and Broadcasting, 1923-1960: An Interdisciplinary History

Amanda Landa, Ph.D.
Dissertation: Contemporary Japanese Seishun Eiga Cinema 

Xueting Liao, Ph.D.
Dissertation: Fashioning China: Precarious Creativity of Women Designers in Shanzhai Culture
Position: Assistant Professor, Chinese University of Hong Kong

Caitlin McClune, Ph.D.
Dissertation: 'Digital Unhu' in Zimbabwe: Critical Digital Studies from the Global South
Position: Academic Program Coordinator, American Studies, UT Austin

Colleen Montgomery, Ph.D.
Dissertation: Animating the Voice: An Industrial Analysis of Vocal Performance in Disney and Pixar Feature Animation
Position: Assistant Professor, Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ

Adolfo Mora, Ph.D.
Dissertation: Seeing Color and Television: What Do Millennials' Television Practices Tell Us About Post-Raciality?
Position: Assistant Professor of Communication Studies, Schreiner University

Vijay Parthasarathy, Ph.D.
Dissertation: Birth of the Cool: Global Flows and the Growth of English Language Stand-Up Comedy in Mumbai

Swapnil Rai, Ph.D.
Dissertation: Networked Bollywood: Star Switching Power and the Global Trajectories of Indian Cinema
Position: Assistant Professor, University of Michigan in Film, TV, and Digital Media  https://lsa.umich.edu/ftvm

Michael Rennett, Ph.D.
Dissertation: How Grown-Ups Are Born: The Emerging-Adult Genre and American Film and Television

Adam Clark Williams III, Ph.D.
Dissertation: Creating While Black: Digital Participation, Digital Expressions, and Cultural Capital Among Black Teens in Austin, Texas

2016

Joao Beira, Ph.D.
Dissertation: 3D Embodied Projection Mapping and Sensing Bodies: A Study in Interactive Dance Performance

Bahaa Gameel, Ph.D.
Dissertation: ICTS Readiness among MOOC Learners: A Cross-National Analysis
Position: Assistant Professor, University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, FL

Paul Gansky, Ph.D.
Dissertation: Ill Communication: Designing Media, Preventing Risks, and Defining Responsibility

Katherine Haenschen, Ph.D.
Dissertation: Get @ The Vote: Using Facebook and Email to Increase Voter Turnout
Position: Assistant Professor, Virginia Tech University

Charlotte Howell, Ph.D.
Dissertation: Divine Programming: Religion and Prime-Time American Television Production in the Post-Network Era
Position: Assistant Professor, Boston University, Boston, MA

Jean Lauer, Ph.D.
Dissertation: Mexican Film Festivals and Industry Development: Guanajuato, Guadalajara, and Morelia, and the Reemergence of a National Film Industry
Position: Associate Professor, Austin Community College, Austin, TX; Executive Director, Cine Las Americas

William Moner, Ph.D.
Dissertation: Toward a Storytelling Systems Analysis Model:  A Situational Analysis of Three Global Crowdsourced Documentary Media Projects
Position: Assistant Professor, Elon University, Elon, NC

Yago Parra Moutinho, Ph.D.
Dissertation: The Development and Experience of Gesture and Brainwave Interaction in Audiovisual Performances

Ikram Toumi, Ph.D.
Dissertation: Information and Computer Technology and the Digital Divide in the Post-Revolution Tunisia

2015

Alexander Cho, Ph.D.
Dissertation: Sensuous Participation: Queer Youth of Color, Affect, and Social Media
Position: Assistant Professor, Department of Asian American Studies, UC Santa Barbara

Stuart Davis, Ph.D.
Dissertation: Networking the Favelas: Leveraging International Outreach to Support Digital Journalism in Rio de Janeiro's Urban Peripheries
Position: Assistant Professor, Baruch College

Laura Dixon, Ph.D.
Dissertation: The Influence of the World Wide Web on Documentary Form, Distribution, and Audience Relations: The Cases of Sin by Silence and This Is Not a Conspiracy Theory
Position: Media Dissemination Manager, Texas Policy Evaluation Project, The University of Texas at Austin

Keara Goin, Ph.D.
Dissertation: Dominican Identity in Flux: Media Consumption, Negotiation, and Afro-Caribbean Subjectivity in the U.S.
Position: Assistant Professor, Department of Media Studies at University of Virginia

Andres Lombana, Ph.D.
Dissertation: Networked and Disconnected: Latino/Hispanic Immigrant Youths, Digital Media, and Assimilation into the U.S.
Position: Research Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University

Alfred Martin, Ph.D.
Dissertation: Trapped in a Generic Closet: The Black-Cast Sitcom and the Black Gay Man
Position: Assistant Professor, University of Iowa https://clas.uiowa.edu/commstudies/people/alfred-martin

Yoonmo Sang, Ph.D.
Dissertation: Copyright and the Future of Digital Culture: Application of the First Sale Doctrine to Digital Copyrighted Works
Position: Assistant Professor, Department of Communication at the University of Canberra

Jeremiah Spence, Ph.D.
Dissertation: Exploring Trends in Brazilian Television Consumption: A Quantitative Study of Major Urban Centers from 2002 to 2014 and a Case Study of Two Rural Communities in Amazonian Region
Position: Assistant Professor, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, Amsterdam