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](/sites/default/files/styles/utexas_image_style_176w_112h/public/promo-images/Flow.jpg?itok=d-IBNhf3)
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](/sites/default/files/styles/utexas_image_style_176w_112h/public/promo-images/MediaIndustries.jpg?itok=Pw-sb_Ky)
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.
![VLT](/sites/default/files/styles/utexas_image_style_176w_112h/public/promo-images/VLT.jpg?itok=15bTUG4e)
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
![Cover page of Jack Benny's Lost Radio Broadcasts Vol 3](/sites/default/files/styles/utexas_image_style_64w_64h/public/2024-02/smalsquarebenny-vol-3-cover.png?itok=uUd2mKDI)
Jack Benny’s Lost Radio Broadcasts - Volume Three: October 30, 1932 – January 26, 1933
Kathryn Fuller-Seeley, Editor, 2024
![Scratchin' and Survivin' Hustle Economics and the Black Sitcoms of Tandem Productions](/sites/default/files/styles/utexas_image_style_64w_64h/public/2023-11/sebro_cover_website.png?itok=E7CR5w8o)
![bookcover_latino tv: a history.](/sites/default/files/styles/utexas_image_style_64w_64h/public/2022-01/websquare_bookcover_latinotvahistory.jpg?itok=YEGrSJFn)
Latino TV: A History
Mary Beltrán, 2022
![The American Comic Book Industry and Hollywood_Book Cover](/sites/default/files/styles/utexas_image_style_64w_64h/public/promo-lists/promo_sm_Book%20Cover-Perren%20and%20Steirer.jpg?itok=eGyGrNxt)
The American Comic Book Industry and Hollywood
Alisa Perren, co-authored with Gregory Steirer, 2021
![BookCover_BillWilderOnAssignment.](/sites/default/files/styles/utexas_image_style_64w_64h/public/promo-lists/BookCoverSquare_BillWilderOnAssignment.png?itok=jTfW1uTF)
Billy Wilder on Assignment: Dispatches from Weimar Berlin and Interwar Vienna
Noah Isenberg, edited with intro, 2021
![bookcover_lalitha_gopalan's CinemasD ark And Slow](/sites/default/files/styles/utexas_image_style_64w_64h/public/promo-lists/bookcoversquare_lalitha_gopalansCinemasDarkAndSlow.jpg?itok=BvxTS9PT)
Cinemas Dark and Slow in Digital India
Lalitha Gopalan, 2021
![Book cover Suzanne Scott Fake Geek Girls](/sites/default/files/styles/utexas_image_style_64w_64h/public/promo-lists/FGG_Coverjpg%20Square.jpg?itok=LOviKRiu)
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
2024
Ash d’Harcourt
Dissertation: "Reimagining Masculinity: Media Reception and Subcultural Practices in Drag King Performance"
Position: Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Stan Richards School of Advertising and Public Relations, The University of Texas at Austin
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
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
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: Assistant Professor, Film and Media, Emory University
Annie Major
Dissertation: "Not Streaming Near You: Specialty Film Distribution and Marketing in the Digital Age"
Position: Assistant Professor, Film, Television, and Digital Media, TCU
Paul Monticone
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
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
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
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
Dissertation: "Unboxing Television: The Rise of Korean Web Dramas and Expansion of Independent Production Companies in the 2010s"
Position: Lecturer, Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology
Peter Kunze
Dissertation: "Staging a Comeback: Film and Theater Convergence at Disney, 1982-1998"
Position: 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
Arizona State University
Bahcesehir University
Bellarmine University
Boston University
CEGEP (Canada)
Callifornia State - Fullerton
Chung Ang University (Korea)
Columbia College - Chicaco
Columbia University
De Paul University
Elon University
Emerson College
Ewha Woman's University (Korea)
Federal University de Bahia (Brazil)
Ft. Lewis College in Colorado
Georgia State University
Hankuk University (Korea)
Hannam University (Korea)
Hanyang University (Korea)
Howard University
Illinois State University
Indiana University – Bloomington
Indiana University - Purdue
Kookmin University (Korea)
Lehigh University
Lewis & Clark College
Mardin Artuklu University (Turkey)
McGill University
Miami University
Middlebury College
Old Dominion University
New York University
Oakland University
Queens University of Charlotte
Queensland University of Technology
Salisbury University (Maryland)
Sejong University (Korea)
Seoul National University of Science & Technology (Korea)
Stockholm University
Texas A&M University
Texas Christian University
Texas Tech Univeristy
University College Dublin
University of Alabama
University of Arizona
University of California - Irvine
University of Chicago
University of Colorado – Denver
University of Florida
University of Georgia – Athens
University of Leeds
University of Massachusetts – Amherst
University of Miami
University of Michigan – Ann Arbor
University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill
University of North Texas
University fo Notre Dame
University of Singapore
University of South Florida – St. Petersburg
University of Sydney
University of Texas at Austin
University of Toronto
University of Virginia
University of Washington – Tacoma
University of Wisconsin – Madison
Whitman College – Washington