Faculty Affiliates

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).

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.

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.

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.

Dr. Chen is an associate professor of media sociology, the founding co-director of Center for Entertainment and Media Industries, and a Distinguished Scholar in the Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Chen has more than 90 publications, including articles in top-ranked journals in the fields of communication and media studies, sociology, and management. Dr. Chen’s research has received awards from the Academy of Management, International Association of Chinese Management Research, American Sociological Association and International Communication Association. She  served as the chair of the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology Section of American Sociological Association in 2017-2018. Dr. Chen’s work has been reported by the media in the U.S., China, and Canada. Dr. Chen’s current project examines how U.S. and Chinese AI policies affect tech and media entrepreneurship.