People

Dr. Iris Chyi

Dr. Chyi is an Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. She specializes in media economics and her work focuses on user demand for multiplatform newspapers. She examined the viability of digital subscriptions and revealed a strong attachment to the print product among newspaper readers. Her “Ramen Noodles Theory” suggests that online news, like ramen noodles, is an inferior good. Her book, Trial and Error: U.S. Newspapers’ Digital Struggles toward Inferiority, challenges U.S. newspapers’ technology-driven strategy, calling for a critical reassessment of the future of the industry.

Her research receives substantial attention from the news industry. She has addressed major industry conferences in the U.S., Europe (WAN-IFRA), and Latin America (Inter American Press Association), and offered advice to news organizations including The New York Times. Her work has been covered by media outlets worldwide, such as The Washington Post, USA Today, The Guardian, Columbia Journalism Review, Politico Magazine, Bloomberg, Fortune, Nieman Journalism Lab, Poynter, Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute, WAN-IFRA (Germany), The Sunday Independent (Ireland), El Mundo (Spain), Excelsior (Mexico), La Nacion (Argentina), The Korea Times, CBC Radio One (Canada), among others.

Chyi has published more than 50 journal articles and book chapters and received many research awards, including the News Audience Research Paper Award from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, two Faculty Research Awards from the College of Communication at UT Austin, the Top Research Paper Award from the International Symposium on Online Journalism, two Top Paper Awards from the Newspaper Division of AEJMC, and an award for industry relevance from the International Newspaper Marketing Association. She serves on the editorial board of these research journals: Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Journalism Studies, Digital Journalism, International Journal on Media Management, Communication and Society, and Journal of Information Society.

Chyi teaches Economics of New Media, Audience Research, Introduction to Research Methods, and Advanced Social Science Methods at the graduate level, as well as Domestic Issues and Global Perspectives and Digital Production and Analytics at the undergraduate level. She received the Barry Sherman Teaching Award from the Media Management & Economics Division of AEJMC, which recognizes excellence and innovation in the teaching of media management and economics.

Chyi received her Ph.D. degree from the University of Texas at Austin, a master’s degree from Stanford University, and a bachelor’s degree from National Taiwan University. She taught at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the University of Arizona prior to joining the UT faculty in 2007. She worked for several media organizations in the U.S. and in Asia.

Kathryn Fuller-Seeley

Dr. Fuller-Seeley’s research specialization focuses on American film, radio and television history and audience reception studies. Before joining UT in 2013, Fuller-Seeley taught at Georgia State University in Atlanta and Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. She received a BA in History from Agnes Scott College in 1982 and an MA and PhD in American History from the Johns Hopkins University in 1993.

Fuller-Seeley’s latest book, Jack Benny and the Golden Age of American Radio Comedy, published by University of California Press in 2017, is an examination of the career of entertainer Jack Benny in the context of rapidly changing media industry and cultural norms in the 1930s, 1940s and early 1950s. She received a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for University Teachers in 2013 to support the project.

She is also the author of At the Picture Show: Small Town Audiences and the Creation of Movie Fan Culture (Smithsonian 1996/University Press of Virginia 2001), an examination of how film exhibition and moviegoing culture spread across the U.S. in the early silent film era. She is co-author (with Garth Jowett and Ian Jarvie) of Children and the Movies: Media Influence and the Payne Fund Controversy (Cambridge, 1996), a study of the first large-scale academic study of media influence on children in the 1930s. She edited Hollywood in the Neighborhood: Historical Case Studies of Local Moviegoing (University of California 2008). She has written Celebrate Richmond Theater (Dietz Press, 2001), a history of 200 years of stage presentation and film exhibition in Virginia’s capital city. One Thousand Nights at the Movies: An Illustrated History of Motion Pictures 1895-1915 (co-authored with Q. David Bowers) (Whitman, 2013), is a richly-illustrated history of the origins of film production and exhibition in the U.S. 

Fuller-Seeley has published book chapters in numerous anthologies on topics such as film stars Shirley Temple, and Rin Tin Tin, Dish Night giveaways in Depression-era movie theaters, early TV audiences, film exhibition and moviegoing history. She is featured in the 2017 motion picture history documentary “Saving Brinton” (Northland Films). She has been a consultant on PBS documentaries on actress Mary Pickford, and comedian Bob Hope, and for other moviegoing history documentaries and museum exhibits. She is currently working on scholarly projects about silent film directors/actors Francis Ford and Grace Cunard, Jack Benny’s television program, and early traveling film exhibition in the Midwest and Northeast.

Shanti Kumar

Dr. Kumar is an Associate Professor in the Department of Radio-Television-Film and a faculty affiliate in the Department of Asian Studies, the Center for Asian-American Studies and the South Asia Institute at the University of Texas-Austin.

Before joining UT in 2006, Prof. Kumar taught at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and the University of North Texas in Denton. He received his B.Sc. degree in Math, Physics and Chemistry from Osmania University, Hyderabad in India in 1987. He received a B.A. in Communication and Journalism in 1988, and an M.A. in Communication and Journalism in 1989, also from Osmania University. He received an M.A. in Media Studies from Texas Christian University in 1994, and Ph.D. in Telecommunications from Indiana University-Bloomington in 1998.

Prof. Kumar is the author of Gandhi Meets Primetime: Globalization and Nationalism in Indian Television (University of Illinois Press, 2006), and co-editor of Planet TV: A Global Television Reader (NYU Press, 2003), Television at Large in South Asia (Routledge, 2012) and Global Communication: New Agendas in Communication (Routledge, 2013). He has published book chapters in several edited anthologies and articles in journals such as BioScope, Jump Cut, Popular Communication, South Asian Journal, South Asian Popular Culture, Television and New Media and Quarterly Review of Film and Video. 

Prof. Kumar has professional experience in journalism, advertising and multimedia industries in India. He worked as a sub-editor and a reporter for Deccan Chronicle which is the largest-selling English-language newspaper in the state of Andhra Pradesh in India. He also worked as a multimedia designer and scriptwriter in the Education and Training Division at CMC Limited; one of the leading information technology firms in India.

Madhavi Mallapragada

Dr. Mallapragada is associate professor in the Department of Radio-Television-Film, the College of Communication, at the University of Texas at Austin. She is also a faculty affiliate of UT's Center for Asian American Studies (CAAS), South Asia Institute (SAI) and the Department of Asian Studies.

Dr. Mallapragada's research and teaching interests lie at the intersections of new media studies, Asian American studies and transnational cultural studies. In particular, she is interested in the online articulations of racialized, brown, and transnational cultural identities within a South Asian American context. She recently published the book Virtual Homelands: Indian Immigrants and Online Cultures in the United States which examines the role and politics of the Web in recasting notions of Indian-American identity and cultural citizenship since the late 1990s. Her work has been published in the journals New Media and Society, South Asian Popular Culture, Popular Communication and edited anthologies Web.studies: Rewiring New Media for the Digital Age (2000), Critical Cyberculture Studies: Current Terrains, Future Directions (2006) and Re-Orienting Global Communication: Indian and Chinese Media Beyond Borders (2010).

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Jennifer McClearen

Jennifer McClearen is a feminist media scholar whose work examines the cultural production of difference in contemporary society with an emphasis on the mediation of gender, race, and sexuality in sports media. In the classroom, she blends theory and practice to train students to critically analyze and produce media culture.

Dr. McClearen’s first book, Fighting Visibility: Sports Media and Female Athletes in the UFC, will be published with the Studies in Sports Media Series with the University of Illinois Press in April 2021. Her research can also be found in Communication and Sport, the International Journal of Communication, Continuum, New Formations, Feminist Media Studies, and The Velvet Light Trap, among others.

She is an affiliated faculty member in the Center for Sports Communication and Media at UT and a diversity scholar with the National Center for Institutional Diversity at the University of Michigan.

Dr. McClearen teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on gender, race, and sexuality in film and television as well as courses focused specifically on sports media.

Thomas Schatz

Dr. Schatz is the Mary Gibbs Jones Centennial Chair of the Department of Radio-Television-Film at The University of Texas at Austin, where he has been on the faculty since 1976, and was the Executive Director of the University of Texas Film Institute. He has written four books about Hollywood films and filmmaking, including Hollywood Genres: Formulas, Filmmaking, and the Studio System; The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio Era; and Boom and Bust: American Cinema in the 1940s. Schatz edited the four-volume collection, Hollywood: Critical Concepts, and he also serves as series editor of the Film and Media Studies Series for the University of Texas Press. Schatz's writing on film has appeared in numerous magazines, newspapers, and academic journals, including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Premiere, The Nation, Film Comment, Film Quarterly, and Cineaste.

Schatz lectures widely on American film and television in the U.S. and abroad, and he has delivered talks and conducted seminars for the Motion Picture Academy, the Directors Guild of America, the American Film Institute and the Los Angeles Film School. Schatz also is engaged in media production, has consulted and provided on-screen commentary for a number of film and television documentaries, and is co-producer of "The Territory," a long-running regional PBS series that showcases independent film and video work.

Schatz's recent publications include an essay on "Band of Brothers" in The Essential HBO Reader (2008) and "The Studio System and Conglomerate Hollywood," the lead essay in The Contemporary Hollywood Film Industry (2008). Current publishing projects include a study of contemporary Hollywood and a revised edition of Hollywood Genres.

As Executive Director of the UT Film Institute, which he founded and launched in 2003, Schatz oversaw a program devoted to training students in narrative and digital filmmaking, and the actual production of feature-length independent films.

Suzanne Scott

Dr. Scott is an associate professor in the Department of Radio-TV-Film at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research and teaching interests include fan studies, media convergence, digital and participatory culture, social media, transmedia storytelling, comic book culture, and gender studies. She comes to Austin after previously teaching Film and Media Studies in the Department of English at Arizona State University, and serving as a Mellon Digital Scholarship Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center of Digital Learning + Research at Occidental College. She has taught undergraduate and graduate courses at UC Santa Cruz, UCLA, and the University of Southern California. 

Dr. Scott’s scholarly monograph, Fake Geek Girls: Fandom, Gender, and the Convergence Culture Industry (NYU Press, 2019), considers the gendered tensions underpinning the media industry’s embrace of fans as demographic tastemakers, professionals, and promotional partners within convergence culture. Surveying the politics of participation within digitally mediated fan cultures, this project addresses the "mainstreaming" of fan and geek culture over the past decade, how media industries have privileged an androcentric conception of the fan, and the marginalizing effect this has had on female fans. 

She is also the co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Media Fandom (2018), an anthology that brings together an international and interdisciplinary collection of nearly 60 established scholars to reflect on the state of the field and to point to new directions in fan studies research.

Her scholarly work has appeared in the journals Transformative Works and Cultures, Cinema Journal, New Media & Society, Participations, Feminist Media Histories, and Critical Studies in Media Communication as well as numerous anthologies, including Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World (2nd Edition), How to Watch Television, The Participatory Culture Handbook, and Cylons in America: Critical Studies in Battlestar Galactica. In 2012, she was selected to represent the current generation of fan scholars to interview Henry Jenkins for the 20th Anniversary edition of Textual Poachers. She has guest blogged for the Cinema Journal Teaching Dossier and in media res, among others.

Joe Straubhaar

Dr. Straubhaar is the Amon G. Carter Centennial Professor of Communications in the School of Journalism at The University of Texas at Austin. He is the current Director of the Moody College of Communications’ Latino and Latin American Studies Program and was the Director of the Center for Brazilian Studies within the Lozano Long Institute for Latin American Studies, 2003-2006.

His primary teaching, research and writing interests are in global media, digital media and the digital divide in the U. S. and other countries, Brazilian and Latin American television, media and migration, and global television production and flow. His graduate teaching includes media theory, global media, media and migration, Latin American media, and ethnographic/qualitative research methods. His undergraduate teaching covers the same range plus introduction to media studies. He does research in Brazil, other Latin America countries, Europe, Asia and Africa, and has taken student groups to Latin America and Asia. He has done seminars abroad on media research, television programming strategies, and telecommunications privatization. He is on the editorial board for Communication Theory, International Journal of Communication, Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, Studies in Latin American Popular Culture, Comunicación y Sociedad, Chinese Journal of Communication, and Revista INTERCOM.

His edited book, Passarelli, B., Straubhaar, J., & A. Cuevas-Cerveró. (Eds.). (2015). Handbook of Research on Comparative Approaches to the Digital Age Revolution in Europe and the Americas. Hershey PA, USA: Information Science Reference-IGI Global. His book, Television In Latin America, co-authored with John Sinclair, was published by BFI/Routledge in 2013. His edited book, The Persistence of Inequity in the Technopolis: Race, Class and the Digital Divide in Austin, Texas, was published in 2011 by University of Texas Press. His book, World Television from Global to Local, was published by Sage in 2007. A revised 9th edition of his textbook with Bob LaRose, Media Now, was published by Wadsworth. He had an edited book with Othon Jambeiro, Políticas de informação e comunicação, jornalismo e inclusão digital: O Local e o Global em Austin e Salvador (Information and communication policy, journalism and digital inclusion: The local and global in Austin and Salvador); Federal University of Bahia Press: 2005.

He has published numerous articles and essays on global media, digital inclusion, Brazilian television, Latin American media, comparative analyses of new television technologies, media flow and culture, and other topics appearing in a number of journals, edited books, and elsewhere.

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Kate Cronin

kate.cronin@austin.utexas.edu

Kate Cronin is a PhD Candidate in the RTF Department at UT Austin. She has a Master's degree in Film and Media Preservation from the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation and the University of Rochester, and her current research focuses on television news, the role of audiovisual archives within the broader media industries, and media in translation. Her dissertation project is a history of early US television news research libraries and newsfilm archives, and her work can be seen in the forthcoming Routledge Companion to Television News (2021). 

Selena Dickey

selena.dickey@utmail.utexas.edu 

Selena Dickey’s research looks at early television distribution infrastructures and policies, particularly as they operated in remote, underserved locales and regions, to understand how space and place shape and are shaped by these sociotechnical and industrial media systems. She has served as a coordinating editor of The Velvet Light Trap and the Flow Journal, was a coordinator for the FLOW 2016 and 2018 conferences, and currently serves as managing editor of Information & Culture.

Katie Hartzell

kathryn.hartzell@utexas.edu

Kathryn is a PhD student in the Radio-Television-Film department at the University of Texas at Austin. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on cultural hybridization in transnational media texts and on the acquisition and production of non-U.S. television by global streaming platforms. She earned her master's degree in Communication, Culture, and Technology at Georgetown University. Prior to Georgetown, Kathryn worked as a Senior Associate in PwC's Capital Markets Advisory group and as a Program Associate at a foreign policy think-tank. She graduated from George Washington University with a bachelor's degree in International Affairs.

Hyun Jung Stephany Noh

hjstephanynoh@utexas.edu

Stephany was born and raised in Seoul, South Korea. She received her B.A. in English Language and Literature from Korea University and M.A. in Journalism and Mass Communication from Yonsei University. Her interest in media studies originates from 10 years of work experience in Korean television networks as a programming producer, ratings analyst, acquisition specialist, and production budget manager. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. degree at the Department of Radio-Television-Film at Moody College of Communication, University of Texas at Austin. Having witnessed the expansion of the 'Korean Wave' first hand, she intends to investigate the cultural implications of the transnational phenomenon by researching the context of television programs, their global audiences, and the industry practices that are forming the global media of today. Her research areas can be categorized as global media, media industries, and public diplomacy.

Currently, she is looking into industry changes in digital distribution and its relation to the global flow of Korean programming. As a CEMI fellow, she will continue to investigate the development of Hallyu in connection to online video platforms. She has presented at Korean Screen Culture Conference, Global Fusion, and ICA.

Maria Skouras

maria.skouras@utexas.edu

Maria Skouras is a doctoral candidate in media studies conducting research at the intersection of media, culture, and society. Her dissertation examines the traditional and digital public diplomacy measures implemented by @america, the American Space hosted by the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia and its role as a site of cultural exchange. As a research assistant, Maria has collected data and contributed to academic articles and reports for the City of Austin on the digital divide and has conducted interviews on media entrepreneurship in rural towns for the IC2Institute. Maria has been the Assistant Instructor for Introduction to Media and Entertainment Industries, a large-lecture class, in both online and in-person formats. She is also the lead planner for the Global Media Industries Speakers Series, a column editor for Flow, and was a co-organizer of the Global Fusion Conference (’19) at UT Austin. Maria’s undergraduate and graduate studies were completed at New York University. 

Margaret Steinhaeur

maggie.steinhauer@utexas.edu 

Maggie Steinhauer is a PhD student in Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas at Austin. Her primary research interests include US television industry history, nonlinear programming, and television scheduling practices. She is also a Fellow of the Center for Entertainment and Media Industries and Co-Managing Editor (2020-2021) of Flow: A Critical Forum on Media and Culture, in which her work appears. 

Wei-Jie Xiao

wjxiao@utexas.edu

Josh (Wei-Jie) Xiao is a doctoral student in the School of Journalism and Media at the University of Texas-Austin. He is currently a fellow at the Aspen Institute’s Emerging Technology projects.

His research is solution-driven and interdisciplinary: he aims to map the crisis facing journalism and seeks to assess potential solutions to the growing threat of (dis)misinformation to democratic societies. Particularly, he investigates developing blockchain-based solutions (e.g., decentralized identity, trusted data trading, and token-based governance) to communication problems while dissecting the socio-economic dynamics between humans (e.g., technologists, journalists, and business people) and blockchain artifacts.

Prior to his doctoral studies at UT, Josh worked as a digital journalist in non-profit sectors and focused on how technological forces are shaping the business of news and audience engagement. Josh is a recipient of the most prestigious scholarship from the Ministry of Education, Taiwan, for pursuing his Ph.D. program.

Ryan Briggs

ryanbriggs@utexas.edu

Ryan Briggs is a second year Masters student in Radio-Television-Film at the University of Texas at Austin. His scholarship currently focuses on the American Independent Film sector in the 2010s. He is interested in understanding how evolving digital technologies and macro-industrial consolidation has resulted in shifting discourses on the nature of "indie" within Conglomerate Hollywood. He is also interested in how, when, and where the always interconnected television and film industries overlap and converge. Overall, his focus on the media industries is in the service of better charting the landscape of global cultural production and reception. He hopes that his work can illuminate pathways toward the more equitable distribution of resources for creative laborers throughout the global cultural industries.

Laura Brown

lauracbrown@utexas.edu

Laura Brown grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia and central New Jersey, before moving to Boston to pursue a BA in History from Boston University. She earned an MFA in Film & Television Studies, also from Boston University. Her thesis explored the function of music in the first decade of commercial American television, using the DuMont network as a case study. Laura's current research interests include the history of American broadcast media industries, network era television, critical media industry studies, music on television, and failure. 

Rusty Hatchell

rustyhatchell@utexas.edu

Rusty Hatchell is a doctoral student in media studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where he also serves as an assistant instructor. He earned his M.A. in media studies from the University of Texas at Austin and his B.A. in English from Georgia Gwinnett College. His research focuses on contemporary superhero television universes, particularly on the efforts to cultivate narrative continuity as well as the industrial production logics that help shape superhero television into its own distinct genre.

Elyse Huang

elyse.huang@utexas.edu

Elyse Huang is a doctoral candidate in the School of Journalism and Media at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research interest lies at the intersection of global cultures, international politics and media, and is underpinned by the pursuit of a balanced yet diverse global public sphere. With six years of work experience in public diplomacy, media relations, and policy analysis, she is committed to deciphering and theorizing cross-cultural communication behaviors in the digital age. 

Abigail LaMarre

abigail.lamarre@utexas.edu

Abby LaMarre is a native Austinite whose heritage has bred an affinity for margaritas and live music. She earned her B.S. in Radio-Television-Film from The University of Texas at Austin where she is now pursuing an M.F.A. in Screenwriting as a James A. Michener Fellow. Her thesis script, "Chicago Overcoat", placed with the Austin Film Festival, the ScreenCraft Pilot Launch Competition, and the ScreenCraft Fellowship. In her scripts, she is known to write about women fighting supernatural forces against historical backdrops. Abby's research is informed by her knowledge of the Screenwriting Industry, focusing on the intersection of storytelling mechanics and their repercussions on audiences, especially as they relate to Women's Studies. 

Brad Limov

brad.limov@utexas.edu

Brad Limov is a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Journalism and Media. His research lies at the intersection of offline media events and online media platforms, with particular attention paid to the spaces and opportunities they do or do not create for communities, activism, and social change.

Emily McTiernan

emctiernan@utexas.edu

Emily McTiernan received a BSBA in Marketing from the University of Florida in 2016. She has spent the last 4 years working in the e-commerce industry in Florida and, most recently, Boston. Her research interests include the role of big data and market segmentation in the digital entertainment industry and how it incentivizes certain narratives and storytelling. As well, she is interested in audience choice and emergent media.

Alex Remington

alex.remington@utexas.edu 

Alex Remington is a PhD student in the Radio-Television-Film department. He received his BA in Art History from the University of Southern California and his MA in Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication from the University of Texas at Dallas. Alex also spent several years working in the fashion industry before starting graduate academic work. His research looks at the intersection of fashion and the media industries, and his interests in fashion media include aesthetic norms, construction of the "star" designer/fashion figure, and the industrial operations of design houses and luxury conglomerates. Other interests include genre studies, power, and histories of psychiatry. 

Nathan Rossi

ndrossi13@gmail.com

Nathan Rossi holds a BA from Boston College in Communication and a MA in Media Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. His thesis on the Latino Threat Narrative in Post-Network Era Television was given the department's award for Outstanding Masters Thesis. He has been published in Critical Studies in Television and Flow Online Journal. He is currently working on an upcoming SCMS presentation that explores how Central American comedians on cable television have complicated industry inscribed meanings of Latinidad. 

Casey Walker

caseyjoewalker@utexas.edu

Casey was born and raised in Austin and permanently resides here with his wife and three children. He attended the University of Texas at Austin as an undergraduate and graduated with a B.S. in Radio-Television-Film in 2000. He followed that up with an M.A. in Radio-Television-Film in 2019. He spent the last 19 years working in television and radio and is currently the Marketing Manager for the StarDate radio program, a daily radio program and podcast put out by the University of Texas. His research looks largely at industry, authorship, and style in the Classical Hollywood studio system and focuses heavily on directors of photography. Additional research projects look at how modern sci-fi films react to global anxieties over immigration and nationalism. 

Ryan Wallace

ryanwallace@utexas.edu

Ryan Wallace (MS, California State University, San Marcos) is a PhD candidate in the School of Journalism & Media at The University of Texas at Austin. With an interdisciplinary background spanning the life, physical, and social sciences, his research interests center around mediated science communications with a particular focus on key issues such as: the Anthropocene, scientific misinformation, new media, and development in Latin America. His research has been published in #ISOJ: The Journal of the International Symposium on Online Journalism, as well as other texts.