Tom Schatz is the Mary Gibbs Jones Centennial Chair Emeritus of the Department of Radio-Television-Film at The University of Texas at Austin, where he served on the faculty from 1976 to 2021, and was the Executive Director of the University of Texas Film Institute. He has written five 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; Boom and Bust: American Cinema in the 1940s, and his recent book Power Surge: Conglomerate Hollywood and the Studio System’s Last Hurrah. Schatz is currently completing a book on the history of Universal Pictures for Routledge’s Hollywood Centenary Series.
Schatz also edited the four-volume collection, Hollywood: Critical Concepts, and he continues to serve 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.
Besides his 2026 book Power Surge, Schatz’s recent publications include:
“New from Netflix: Mank, Fincher, and a Hollywood Creation Tale.” Global Storytelling: Journal of Digital and Moving Images (2021)
“How 2 Companies Came to Dominate the Media Business.” The Nation (Dec 2023-Jan 2024).
“Shadow of a Doubt and Notorious: Two Hollywood—and Definitively American—Masterworks.” Re-Viewing Hitchcock: New Critical Perspectives, Robert Kapsis, ed. (Bloomsbury/BFI, 2026).
“The Barbenheimer Phenomenon and the Post-pandemic Streaming-era Movie Industry.” Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, Hilary Radner, ed. (Bloomsbury, 2026).
Schatz has lectured 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 has been engaged in media production, has consulted and provided on-screen commentary for a number of film and television documentaries, and was co-producer and co-host of "The Territory," a long-running regional PBS series showcasing independent film and video work.
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. He also served as executive producer on five feature films produced by UTFI and its commercial partner, Burnt Orange Productions.
Ph. D 1976 University of Iowa
Undergraduate Courses taught:
- American Film History (various topics, including the Hollywood Studio System, the New Hollywood, American Independent Film, et al.)
- American Film Genres (various topics, including Western, Screwball Comedy, Horror, Film Noir, Melodrama, Hardboiled Detective, et al.)
- Film Analysis and Criticism (various topics, including regularly recurring courses on the films of Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, and Clint Eastwood)
- American Independent Cinema
- Narrative Strategies and Digital Design
Graduate Courses taught:
- Topics in Film History: Classical Hollywood Studio System; Contemporary Hollywood Cinema; Post-1960 American Film History
- Historical Methods: Authorship, Industry Studies, and Archival Research
Current book project on “Conglomerate Hollywood” awarded a Film Scholars Grant by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2013.
Recent/forthcoming articles include:
"Cycling Through: Hitchcock and the Studio System," in The Cambridge Companion to Hitchcock. Jonathan Freedman, ed. Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.
"Spielberg as Director, Producer, and Mogul," in A Companion to Steven Spielberg, Nigel Morris, ed. Wiley-Blackwell, 2015.
"The Film Director in the New Hollywood: Three Case Studies,” in Directing, Virginia Wright Wexman, ed. Rutgers University Press, forthcoming.
"Ten Years After: The Indie Film Movement in 1999," in A Companion to American Indie Film, Geoff King, ed. Blackwell, forthcoming.
With Alisa Perren. "Theorizing Television's Writer-Producer: Re-viewing The Producer's Medium," in Television & New Media, winter 2014.
"Film Studies, Cultural Studies, and Media Industry Studies" in Media Industries (volume 1, number 1; 2014).
"HBO and Netflix - Getting Back to the Future" in Flow (volume 19, January 2014)
“Conglomerate Hollywood and American Independent Film,” in American Independent Cinema, Geoff King, Claire Molloy, Yannis Tzioumakis, eds. Routledge, 2013.
“2008: A Hollywood Too Big to Fail,” in American Cinema of the 2000s: Themes and Variations, Timothy Corrigan, ed. Rutgers University Press, 2012.
“Seismic Shifts in the American Film Industry,” in Wiley-Blackwell’s History of American Film, Roy Grundmann et al., eds; Chapter One (lead essay) in Volume IV. Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.
With Alisa Perren. "Theorizing Television's Writer-Producer: Re-viewing The Producer's Medium," in Television & New Media, winter 2014.
"Film Studies, Cultural Studies, and Media Industry Studies" in Media Industries (volume 1, number 1;2014).
"HBO and Netflix - Getting Back to the Future" in Flow (volume 19, January 2014)
“Conglomerate Hollywood and American Independent Film,” in American Independent Cinema, Geoff King, Claire Molloy, Yannis Tzioumakis, eds. Routledge, 2013.
“2008: A Hollywood Too Big to Fail,” in American Cinema of the 2000s: Themes and Variations, Timothy Corrigan, ed. Rutgers University Press, 2012.
“Seismic Shifts in the American Film Industry,” in Wiley-Blackwell’s History of American Film, Roy Grundmann et al., eds; Chapter One (lead essay) in Volume IV. Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.