Faculty and Student Scholarship

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

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

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

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.

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

Andy Wright
Dissertation: Duly Noted: How Cell Phone Notifications are Constructed Strategically and How Generation Z Undergraduates Resist Them
Position: Assistant Executive Director of Los Alamos Arts Council

Kristina Brüning
Dissertation: Acting Professional: Navigating Hollywood in the Digital Age

Luis Rivera-Figueroa
Dissertation: Reggaetón on the Global Stage: Place, Race, and Mainstream Latinidad
Position: Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of English, Arizona State University

Paxton Haven
Dissertation: IRL+URL: Platformization of Underground Dance Music Culture
Position: Visiting Assistant Professor, Communication Arts Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Pete Johnson
Dissertation: The Risk Myth: Reassessing the Financial Cultures, Practices, and Structures of U.S. Television, 1945–2013
Position: Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Journalism and Media ManagementSchool 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

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

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

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

Daelena Tinnin-Gadson
Dissertation: Emotion Pictures, Affect, Return and Futurity in the Visual Life of Black Feminisms
Position: Assistant Professor, English and Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina

Eric Forthun 
Dissertation: Tonight and the Construction, Formation, & Decline of U.S. Late-Night Television
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

 

2022

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

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: Assistant Professor, Louisiana State University

Jing Wang
Dissertation: Globalizing Independent Cinema: Transnational Circulation of the Independent Chinese Documentary (1991-2017)
Position: Assistant Professor, Film and Media, Emory University

Kathy Cacace
Dissertation: Getting in the Way:  New Approaches to Rape Joke Discourse and Women’s Comedy about Sexual Violence
Position: Acquisitions Manger, Infobase 

Maria Skouras
Dissertation: “Soft Power and Strategic Communication: @america in Jakarta, Indonesia”
Position: Staff member, Communication & Engagement Lab, Office of Innovation, State of New Jersey

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

Selena Dickey
Dissertation: “Fringe Access: Mapping Local Television Distribution, 1952-1978”
Position: Assistant Professor, Communication Studies, Furman University


2021

Briana Barner
Dissertation: The Last Place They Thought Of: Black Podcasts and the Performance of Marginalization 
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: Deputy Director, Technical Assistance, National Telecommunications and Information Administration 

Soyoung Park
Dissertation: Data Rights in the 21st Century: Exploring the Boundaries of Empowerment in Blockchain Social Media Settings  
Position: Research Professor, Humanities Research Institute at Chung-Ang University (Seoul, Korea)


2020

Alexis Schrubbe
Dissertation: "Homework Gaps and Connectivity Canyons: Education, Broadband, and the Shattered Myth of the Network Society"
Position: Project Manager, ready.net 

Daniel Mauro
Dissertation: "Locating the Politics of Amateur Media"
Position: National Audio-Visual Conservation Center Curator at the Library of Congress

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

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

Morgan O'Brien
Dissertation: "Rejecting Nostalgia: Retro Jamming in Devolver Digital’s Independent Video Games"
Position: UX Researcher, Dev Launchers

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

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


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


 

 

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