Katherine Prior is a PhD student in the Radio-Television-Film department at The University of Texas at Austin. Her current research explores how national traumas are processed on television. Her first book, focused on Covid-19 in American television narratives, is under contract with McFarland. In addition to her academic work, Katherine has served on the programming committees of several film festivals, including the Boston Film Festival (2024) and the Key West Film Festival (2023–present). She also sat on the Student Jury for the 2024 iteration of Film at Lincoln Center’s Rendez-Vous with French Cinema film festival, hosted jointly with Unifrance. In 2023, Katherine was the winner of the New York Film Critics Circle’s Graduate Student Prize. Katherine holds a BA in English from Thomas Edison State University, an AAS in Illustration and a BS in Art History and Museum Professions from the Fashion Institute of Technology, and an MA in Screen Studies from the Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema at Brooklyn College.
Area of Focus: Contemporary television, 9/11, Covid-19, depictions of women in media & film genres