CEMI

Casey Walker is a Media Studies PhD student in the Department of the Radio-Television-Film at The University of Texas at Austin. Walker primarily focuses on industry, technology, and labor scholarship regarding the classical Hollywood studio system.His M.A. thesis explored Karl Freund’s Hollywood career, detailing his collaborative (and sometimes combative) authorship, stylistic trends, and technological contributions.

Alex is a PhD student in the Radio-Television-Film department at the University of Texas at Austin. Working within U.S. film and television histories, Alex is interested in fringe media objects and the limits of media studies. These objects range from horror to the fashion/design industries, and questions about the politics of excess, regulation, and material/visual cultures are of particular interest. He received his MA in Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication from the University of Texas at Dallas and his BA in Art History from the University of Southern California. He is published in FLOW, The Velvet Light Trap, and Media Industries Journal.

Hyun-jung Stephany Noh is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Radio-Television-Film at Moody College of Communication, the University of Texas at Austin. Her interdisciplinary research spans global media, media industries, and public diplomacy with a special focus on the Korean Wave or hallyu. 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 writing her dissertation “Streaming K-drama” that investigates the cultural implications of the transnational phenomenon by researching the context of television programs and the shifts of industry practices formed in the streaming environment.

Brad Limov (MA, Nagoya University) is a doctoral candidate in the School of Journalism and Media at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is currently a graduate research assistant with the Center for Media Engagement's Solidarity Journalism Initiative. His research examines the media industries and social movements at the level of digital production. He is particularly interested in the role of events, community, and identity in shaping this production and its political engagements.

Rusty Hatchell is a doctoral candidate in media studies at the University of Texas at Austin. 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 current 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. His scholarly work has appeared in Middle West Review, the Australasian Journal of Popular Culture, Flow: A Critical Forum on Media and Culture, In Media Res, and the edited collection After Midnight: Watchmen after Watchmen. He is currently working on his doctoral dissertation, “Mapping the Multiverse: Narrative Continuity and Industrial Logics in the Shared Television Universes of DC’s Superheroes, 1992-2022,” which uses a longitudinal study of DC Comics’ expansion into television from 1992 to 2022 to examine how shared universes are emerging as a guiding principle of the media industries, influencing television production and distribution strategies.

Laura C. Brown is a Media Studies PhD candidate in the Department of Radio-Television-Film. Her research interests include American broadcast media history, audiences, taste cultures, critical industry studies, music on television, and media failures. She is currently a co-lead editor of The Velvet Light Trap journal, and she holds a position on the graduate student council of the Library of Congress’ Radio Preservation Task Force. Laura received a bachelor’s degree in History and a master’s degree in Film and Television Studies, both from Boston University.

Cindy McCreery was a Walt Disney/ABC Feature Writing Fellow and has since sold feature projects to New Line Cinema, Walt Disney Studios, Paramount Pictures, Nickelodeon, National Geographic Films, Warner Brothers, MGM, Branded Entertainment and Lionsgate. She also writes for television and has sold projects to SyFy Channel, Disney Channel, NBC, TNT, Televisa USA, Universal Television and AMC’s Shudder. Cindy has been teaching screenwriting and television writing since 2004 at UCLA, UC Santa Barbara and is currently an Associate Professor at The University of Texas at Austin in The Department of Radio-TV-Film.

Dr. Willard was a lecturer in the Department of Radio-TV-Film at the University of Texas at Austin. She was also the RTF Internship Director. Her research and teaching interests include fan studies, platform studies, and media industry studies; in all of these arenas, she focuses on labor and professionalization. She completed her Ph.D. in media studies here at UT Austin, where she served as a teaching assistant and assistant instructor for RTF courses. In 2017, she was recognized as UT Austin’s top teaching assistant, receiving the William S. Livingstone Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Assistant award. She has also taught at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) and Salt Lake Community College (SLCC). She is an external affiliate with and the Assistant Director of Moody College’s Center for Entertainment and Media Industries (CEMI). She is also a co-founder of the annual Fan Studies Network-North America (FSN-NA) conference. Previously, she has coordinated the Flow Conference and UT’s Women & Gender Studies Emerging Scholarship Conference. She has served in an editorial capacity with Big Data & Society, The Velvet Light Trap, and Flow: A Critical Forum on Television and Media Culture. She has also served as the Director of UT’s Queer Graduate Student Alliance (QGSA) and the Graduate Student Representative for the Fan and Audience Studies Scholarly Interest Group for the Society of Cinema and Media Studies (SCMS).