Ph.D., Indiana University

 

Areas of Interest & Expertise

• American Studies

• Cultural Studies

• TV and Media Studies

• Popular Culture

• Contemporary American Literature and Culture  

Recent Courses Taught

• Graduate Seminar in Screen Studies: Theories of Popular Culture

• Graduate Seminar in TV and New Media: TV History and Historiography

• Graduate Seminar in TV and New Media: TV Studies

• Graduate Seminar in Screen Studies: Convergence and Control

• Graduate Seminar in Screen Studies: Examining the Screen

• Theories and Methods of American Studies

• Television and American Society

• American Popular Culture

• Race, Gender & Ethnicity in American Film

• Introduction to Digital Humanities

Selected Publications

Books

• The American Forces Network: US Militarism and Empire After World War II -- (Manuscript in process; under contract at U of Illinois Press, History of Communication Series)

• Interrogating Popular Culture: Key Questions. New York: Routledge, 2014.

• Terrorism TV: Popular Entertainment in Post-9/11 America. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas (CultureAmerica series), 2012.

Editorial Work

• War on Screen series. Co-Editor with Tony Shaw. University Press of Kansas.

• American Militarism on the Small Screen, Co-Editor with Anna Froula. Routledge (Advances in Television Studies series), 2016.

Book Chapters

• “Afterword.” Mediated Terror in the 21st Century, Eds. Elena Caoduro, Karen Randell, and Karen A. Ritzenhoff. Palgrave MacMillan, 2021.

• “Foreword.” The Big Picture by John Lemza. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas (War on Screen series), 2021.

• “The Banality of Militarism in the Late War on Terror.“ In Medial Reflections: Threat Communication and the US American Order after 9/11. Eds. Lukas R.A. Wilde, Vanessa Ossa, David Sheu. Routledge, 2020: 80-101.

• “Exceptional Soldiers: Imagining the Privatized Military on US TV.” In Imperial Benevolence: US Foreign Policy in American Popular Culture Since 9/11. Eds. Scott Laderman and Tim Gruenewald. University of California Press, 2018: 97-116.

• “Radio, TV & the Military.” In A Companion to the History of American Broadcasting. Ed. Aniko Bodroghkozy. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2018: 257-278. 

• "Introduction: Living Room Wars." (w/ Anna Froula). American Militarism on the Small Screen. Eds. Stacy Takacs and Anna Froula. (NY: Routledge, 2016): 1-16.

• "JAG, Melodrama and Militarism." In American Militarism on the Small Screen. Eds. Stacy Takacs and Anna Froula. (NY: Routledge, 2016): 211-227.

• "The Contemporary Politics of the Western Form: Bush, Saving Jessica Lynch, and Deadwood." In Reframing 9/11: Popular Culture and the War On Terror. Eds. Jeff Birkenstein, Anna Froula, and Karen Randell. (NY: Continuum Press, 2010): 153-166.

Refereed Journal Articles

• "The US Military as Cold War Programmer."Journal of Popular Culture. Special Issue: The State as Cultural Producer. 50.3 (June 2017): 540-560. 

• "Entertaining Uncertainty: The Role of the 9/11 Shout-Out on US TV." Quarterly Review of Film and Video. 31.2 (Jan. 2014): 161-179.

• "Burning Bush: Sitcom Representations of the Bush Presidency."Journal of Popular Culture. 44.2 (April 2011): 417-435.

• "The Body of War and the Management of Imperial Anxiety on US TV." International Journal Of Contemporary Iraqi Studies. Special Issue: The Iraq War in Film and Media. 3.1 (2009): 85-105.

• "Monsters, Monsters Everywhere: Spooky TV and the Politics of Fear in Post-9/11 America." Science Fiction Studies. 36.1 (March 2009): 1-20.

• "Jessica Lynch and the Regeneration of American Power and Identity Post-9/11."

  Feminist Media Studies 5.3 (Nov. 2005): 297-310.

  Reprinted in Why We Fought: America's Wars in Film and History. Eds. Peter C. Rollins and John E. O'Connor. University Press of Kentucky, Nov. 2008. 488-510.

• "Speculations on a New Economy: La Femme Nikita, the Series."  Cultural Critique 61 (Fall 2005): 148-185.

Selected Conference Presentations

• Featured Speaker, Broadcasting History at 100 Conference, Sponsored by the Radio Preservation Task Force, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, TBD. [COVID-19 delay]

• “Commercial Parasite: American Forces TV and the Contradictions of International Broadcasting.” Media Industries Conference. King’s College, London. April 16-18, 2020. [Canceled due to COVID-19]

• “Limestone Air Force Television Station and the Politics of the Cold War TV Industry.” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference. Denver, Co. April 1-5, 2020. [Canceled due to COVID-19]

• “‘We Bring You Home’: American Forces Network and the Imagination of Empire Post-9/11.” American Studies Assoc. Conference. Honolulu, HI. Nov 6-10, 2019.

• “Fortress Americana, or TV on the Frontiers of the GWOT.” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference. Seattle, WA. March 13-17, 2019.

• “The Banality of Militarism in the Late War on Terror.” Medial Reflections: Threat Communication in the US-American Order after 9/11. Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany, September 20-21, 2018.

• “Is This What You Mean By Global Village? Satellites, Public Diplomacy and AFN.” Post-War Faculty Colloquium, University of North Texas. Denton, TX, April 6, 2018.

• “'We are Being Suppressed’: Battling Military Censorship at the Armed Forces Network .” American Studies Assoc. Conference. Chicago, IL. November 9-12, 2017. 

• “Delivering the Goodies: Armed Forces Television Network Constructs Its Audience.” Console-ing Passions: International Conference on Television, Video, Audio, New Media, and Feminism. East Carolina University. Greenville, NC. July 27-29, 2017.

• “Window or Wall? Satellites and Globalization Revisited.” Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference. Chicago, IL. March 22-March 26, 2017.

Recent Honors

• 2019  Regents Distinguished Research Award, OSU

Recent Grants or Research Trips

• 2020  Oklahoma Humanities, Research Grant

• 2020  OSU, Arts & Sciences Travel Grant

• 2018  OSU, Humanities, Arts and Design Grant 

• 2018  OSU Arts & Sciences Travel Award

• 2017  OSU Arts & Sciences Travel Award     

• 2015  Oklahoma Humanities Council Research Grant     

Current Research

I am interested in the relationship between US television and US imperial politics in the contemporary era. I consider TV to be a key site within which an "American" imaginary is constructed for US citizens and others in the world. It was this idea of "America" that was attacked on 9/11 and this idea of "America" that was reinvigorated in the wake of the attacks, so it is this idea that must be interrogated if we are to understand and improve global relations for the 21st century. My first book, Terrorism TV, examined the role of entertainment television in the manufacture of consent for the so-called War on Terror. I have also written an introductory popular culture textbook for Routledge(Interrogating Popular Culture: Key Questions)and edited an anthology on American militarism as represented on the small screen from 1950 to the present(American Militarism on the Small Screen, with Anna Froula). I am currently writing a manuscript examining the American Forces Network (aka American Forces Radio and Television Service). It is a cultural history of the service, its transmission networks, and its effects on U.S. service personnel, their families, and civilian "eavesdroppers" in places like Panama, Vietnam, Korea, Germany, and Japan. In addition to these works, I have published numerous  articles on the televisual mediation of contemporary political and social issues (the War on Terror, the War on Drugs, immigration politics, and the New Economy, to name a few) in both scholarly journals and edited volumes.