Directory
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Michele Hilmes |
Expertise and Activities
I specialize in the history of broadcasting, with a strong emphasis on issues of historiographical theory and method. One of my primary areas of research is on radio, particularly the period before television, and in the developing field of sound studies. My latest publication is NBC: America's Network, a collection of original articles by leading scholars on the history of the NBC network -- see the link below. Recently I've been working on a comparative study of British and American broadcasting, looking at how each country influenced the other and how the two nations counterposed their own systems - commercial vs. public service - in a way that affected broadcasting structures and concepts around the world. I'm also very interested in issues of race, ethnicity, and gender in the media, and have written on radio as a medium of national identity and definition.
My publications include Hollywood and Broadcasting: From Radio to Cable, an early work that looked at the economic and textual intersections between the film and broadcasting industries from the 1920s to the 1980s. Radio Voices: American Broadcasting 1922 to 1952 went back to the period of network radio to show how its structures and program forms evolved in the context of national identity and its negotiations of gender, race and ethnicity. Only Connect: A Cultural History of Broadcasting in the United States is a textbook designed to fill the need for a concise and lively history of radio and television as a cultural form -- involving not only policy and economics but programs, critical theories, popular reception, and resonance with US culture over the 20th century and into the 21st. Edited volumes include The Radio Reader: Essays in the Cultural History of Radio (with Jason Loviglio), The Television History Book (with Jason Jacobs), and Connections, an anthology of published literature in the history of broadcasting designed to complement Only Connect.
Education
- Ph.D. New York University, 1986
- M.A. New York University, 1981
- B.A. Indiana University - Bloomington, 1975
Honors and Awards
- Macquarie University (Sydney, Austrailia), Honorary Associate, Center for Media History, 2009
- University of Central England (Birmingham, UK), Visiting International Fellow, 2009
- Rockefeller Archive Center, Grant-in-Aid, 2009
- Faculty Development Seminar, Participant in The Digital Humanities, 2009
- Mellon Humanities Workshop, Audio Culture in the Visual Era, 2008
- University of Wisconsin - Madison Graduate School Research Committee, WARF Grant, Summer Salary Support, 2007
- Center for European Studies, Travel Grant, 2003
- University of Wisconsin - Madison Graduate School, Vilas Fellowship, 2001
- Communication Arts Department, Sabbatical Leave, 2000
- University of Wisconsin - Madison Graduate School, Steenbock Fellowship, 1997
Selected Works
Books
- 2007. NBC: America's Network. University of California Press.
- 2006. Only Connect: A Cultural History of Broadcasting in the United States. Wadsworth Press.
- 2003. The Television History Book. British Film Institute.
- 2002. Connections: A Broadcast History Reader. Wadsworth.
- 2001. Radio Reader: Essays on the Cultural History of American Radio. Routledge.
- 1997. Radio Voices: American Broadcasting 1922 to 1952. University of Minnesota Press.
- 1990. Hollywood and Broadcasting: From Radio to Cable. University of Illinois Press.
Courses
- CA 450 - History of Broadcasting
- CA 452 - Media and Cultural Policy
- CA 613 - Media and the Public Sphere
- CA 613 - Television Industry Today
- CA 950 - Transnational Media Histories: Beyond "Americanization"
- CA 950 - Media, Nation, and Public
- CA 951 - Media History and Historiography: Sound Histories
- CA 951 - Media History and Historiography
