Faculty and students in the Department of Radio-Television -Film make significant contributions to scholarship in the field of film and media. Through journals and books, and in their research and teaching, they dive deep into critical and contextual approaches to the study of media objects, industries, and culture in a broad array of subfields. Doctoral students go on to fulfilling careers throughout academia and in industry.
Journals

Flow
Flow is a critical forum on television and media culture published by the Department of Radio, Television, and Film at the University of Texas at Austin. Flow’s mission is to provide a space where the public can discuss the changing landscape of contemporary media.

Media Industries
Media Industries is a peer-reviewed, multi-media, open-access online journal that supports critical studies of media industries and institutions worldwide. We invite contributions that range across the full spectrum of media industries, including film, television, internet, radio, music, publishing, electronic games, advertising, and mobile communications.

The Velvet Light Trap
The scholarly journal VLT is collectively edited by graduate students at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and The University of Texas at Austin, with the support of media scholars at those institutions and throughout the country.
Recent Faculty Books

Jack Benny’s Lost Radio Broadcasts - Volume Three: October 30, 1932 – January 26, 1933
Kathryn Fuller-Seeley, Editor, 2024


Latino TV: A History
Mary Beltrán, 2022

The American Comic Book Industry and Hollywood
Alisa Perren, co-authored with Gregory Steirer, 2021

Billy Wilder on Assignment: Dispatches from Weimar Berlin and Interwar Vienna
Noah Isenberg, edited with intro, 2021

Cinemas Dark and Slow in Digital India
Lalitha Gopalan, 2021

Fake Geek Girls—Fandom, Gender, and the Convergence Culture Industry
Suzanne Scott, 2019
Media Studies Research and Teaching Areas
Digital Media
Analyze interactive and emergent media texts and platforms, participatory digital cultures, social media, and algorithmic culture.
Global Media
Study media texts, audiences, industries, and cultures from transnational, national, regional and diasporic perspectives.
History and Criticism
Examine the sociohistorical contexts of film and media and engage in aesthetic and critical analysis.
Identity and Representation
Explore media's impact on culture and identity through interdisciplinary courses that examine the politics of representation through gender, race, sexuality, citizenship, and more.
Media Industries
Engage in topics relating to creative labor, production, distribution, infrastructures, regulation, and exhibition.
Doctoral Graduates
UT Radio-Television-Film doctoral alumni are producing valuable research, publishing innovative work, contributing to academic and policy debates on key communication and media issues, and inspiring better media practices. The professional placement for scholars from the Department of Radio-Television-Film graduate programs is highly successful. Below is a list of recent doctoral graduates, their dissertation titles, and when available, where they are presently teaching and researching.
Recent Doctoral Graduates
2025
Pete Johnson
Position: Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Journalism and Media Management, School of Communication, University of Miami
2024
Ash d’Harcourt
Dissertation: "Reimagining Masculinity: Media Reception and Subcultural Practices in Drag King Performance"
Position: Visiting Assistant Professor of Communication, Southwestern University
Rusty Hatchell
Dissertation: "Mapping the Multiverse: Narrative Continuity and Industrial Logics in the Shared Television Universes of DC’s Superheroes, 1992-2022"
Position: Visiting Lecturer of Film and Media Studies, Texas A&M University
Lily Kunda
Dissertation: "Target Practice: The Rise of Race-Based Corporate Social Responsibility in 2010s Woke America"
Position: Assistant Teaching Professor of Africana Studies and American Studies, College of William & Mary
Stephany Noh
Dissertation: "Streaming K-dramas: The Evolution of a National Industry and Cultural Form, 2016-2023"
Position: Assistant Professor of Media Studies, Department of Communication & Media, Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi
2023
Eric Forthun
Position: Assistant Teaching Professor, Film and Media Studies, Arizona State University
Melissa Santillana
Dissertation: "Destrúyelo todo: The Women behind the Mexican Feminist Spring"
Position: Assistant Professor, Texas Tech University
Daelena Tinnin-Gadson
Position: Assistant Professor, English and Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina
2022
Kathy Cacace
Position: News Writer and Editor, World News Digest for Facts on File
Jaewon Choi
Dissertation: “Exploring the Surveillance Culture in the Context of Smart Health: A Cross-Cultural Comparison Between South Korea and the U.S.”
Position: Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Medill Spiegel Research Center, Medill School of Journalism, Media, and Integrated Marketing Communications, Northwestern University
Selena Dickey
Dissertation: “Fringe Access: Mapping Local Television Distribution, 1952-1978”
Position: Assistant Professor, Communication Studies, Furman University
Nathan Rossi
Dissertation: “The Mediated Identities of Central American Adoptees: Community Building and Resistance in Digital Spaces”
Position: Assistant Professor of Instruction, Screen Cultures, Northwestern University
Brett Siegel
Dissertation: “Protecting the Shield: How the NFL Navigated Institutional and Ideological Crisis in the Trump Era”
Position: Assistant Professor, Communication, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs
Maria Skouras
Dissertation: “Soft Power and Strategic Communication: @america in Jakarta, Indonesia”
Jing Wang
Position: Assistant Professor, Film and Media, Emory University
2021
Briana Barner
Position: Assistant Professor, Department of Communication, University of Maryland
Kate Cronin
Dissertation: “’News, In Pictures if Possible!”: The Material Flow of Early Television Newsfilm”
Position: Data & Strategy Analyst, Crown Family Philanthropies
Richelle Crotty
Dissertation: “Mobile Networks of Power”
Position: Broadband Program Specialist, US Department of Commerce
Soyoung Park
Position: Research Professor, Humanities Research Institute at Chung-Ang University (Seoul, Korea)
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"
Position: Quality Assurance Tester, Aspyr Media and Instructor, Central Texas College
Tim Piper
Dissertation: "Transition Game: Television and the National Basketball Association During the Multichannel Shift, 1970-1984"
Position: Assistant Professor, Communication Studies, Furman University
Alexis Schrubbe
Dissertation: "Homework Gaps and Connectivity Canyons: Education, Broadband, and the Shattered Myth of the Network Society"
Position: Director, Internet Equity Initiative at the University of Chicago Data Science Institute
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: Assistant Professor, Visual and Media Arts, Emerson College