Eric Hoyt

Current and Future Projects

• Book project about the history of the TV movie THE DAY AFTER
• Data mining Hollywood pressbooks and early TV GUIDE
• Enhancing, diversifying, and extending the collections of the Media History Digital Library and Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research.

Expertise and Activities

I am the Kahl Family Professor of Media Production and a Professor of Film, Media and Cultural Studies in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

My teaching and research concentrate on digital media production, the digital humanities, media industries, and the histories of American film and broadcasting.

I am the Director of the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research and Media History Digital Library, which has digitized over 3 million pages of historic books and magazines for broad public access. I also served as the lead developer of Lantern, the MHDL’s search platform, and Arclight, a data analytics and visualization app for the MHDL’s collection.

My first book Hollywood Vault: Film Libraries before Home Video (University of California Press, 2014) explores the history of how old movies became valuable. I also co-edited the books Hollywood and the Law (BFI/Palgrave, 2015), The Arclight Guidebook to Media History and the Digital Humanities (REFRAME, 2016), and Saving New Sounds: Podcast Preservation and Historiography (University of Michigan Press, 2021).

My most recent book, Ink-Stained Hollywood: The Triumph of American Cinema’s Trade Press, was published in March 2022 by the University of California Press as part of its open access Luminos program. The book is a history of the trade papers that chronicled the early years of Hollywood and spoke to competing factions within the industry.

My new book project is a history of the landmark 1983 TV movie, The Day After(1983).

Education

• Ph.D. Division of Critical Studies, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, 2012
• M.F.A. Peter Stark Producing Program, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California, 2008
• B.S. Radio-TV-Film, School of Communication, Northwestern University, 2005.

Books

2022. Eric Hoyt, Ink-Stained Hollywood: The Triumph of American Cinema’s Trade Press (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2022).

2021. Jeremy Wade Morris and Eric Hoyt, eds., Saving New Sounds: Dispatches from the PodcastRE Project (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2021).

2016. Charles R. Acland and Eric Hoyt, eds., The Arclight Guidebook to Media History and the Digital Humanities (Falmer: REFRAME/Project Arclight, 2016). Open access PDF and EPUB downloadable at http://projectarclight.org/book.

2015. Paul McDonald, Emily Carman, Eric Hoyt, and Philip Drake, eds., Hollywood and the Law (London: BFI/Palgrave, 2015).

2014. Eric Hoyt, Hollywood Vault: Film Libraries before Home Video (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014).

Honors/Awards

• Digital Humanities Advancement Grant. Amount: $294,265. Role: Co-PI. Partner: Stephanie Sapienza (PI) at the Maryland Institute of Technology. Duration: 2021—2023. Awarded for “Broadcasting Audiovisual Data: Using Linked Data and Local Authority Aggregators to Enhance Discoverability for Broadcasting.”
• ACLS Digital Extension Grant. Amount: $150,0000. Role: PI. Partner: Kelley Conway (Co-PI). Duration: 2019—2021. Awarded for “Enhancing and Globalizing the Media History Digital Library.”
• NEH Humanities Collections and Reference Resources Grant. Amount: $217,000. Role: Co-PI. Partner: Stephanie Sapienza (PI) at the Maryland Institute of Technology. Duration: 2018—2020. Awarded for Unlocking the Airwaves: Revitalizing an Early Public and Educational Radio Collection.
• NEH Digital Humanities Advancement Grant. Amount: $74,972. Role: Co-PI. Partner: Jeremy Morris (PI) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Duration: 2017—2019. Awarded for PodcastRE Analytics: Investigating the Golden Age of Podcasting through Metadata and Sound.
• Mary Pickford Foundation Grant. Amount: $5,000. Role: PI. Duration: 2019—2020. Awarded for Media History Digital Library open access scanning of press books.
• University of California – California Digital Library Grant. Amount: $10,000. Role: PI. Duration: 2019—2020. Awarded for the Media History Digital Library’s open access scanning of TV Guide from the collection of the Prelinger Library.
• University of Toronto Digitization Grant. Amount: $5,000. Role: PI. Duration: 2018—2019. Awarded for the Media History Digital Library’s open access scanning of Hollywood Studio Magazine.
• Best Use of DH for Fun, Digital Humanities Awards, 2018. Awarded for PodcastRE.
• Mary Pickford Foundation Grant. Amount: $10,000. Role: PI. Duration: 2017—2018. Awarded for Media History Digital Library Website Redesign.
• Digging into Data Grant. Amount: $200,000. Role: PI of US Research Team. Sponsors: IMLS, and SSHRC. Partner: Charles Acland (PI of Canadian Research Team), Concordia University. Duration: 2014—2016. Awarded for Project Arclight: Analytics for the Study of 20^th Century Media.
• Finalist for the Richard Wall Memorial Award (given for an exemplary work in the field of recorded performance), Theatre Library Association, 2015. Awarded for Hollywood Vault: Film Libraries before Home Video.
• Anne Friedberg Innovative Scholarship Award, Society for Cinema and Media Studies, 2014. Awarded for Lantern. The first time ever the award went to a digital project instead of a book.
• Best Website for Teaching & Learning, American Association of School Librarians, 2014. Awarded for the Media History Digital Library.
• Best Electronic Reference Site, Popular Culture Association and American Culture Association, 2014. Awarded for Lantern.
• Michael Nelson Prize for a Work in Media and History, International Association for Media and History, 2013. Awarded for the Media History Digital Library.
• Best Electronic Reference Site, Popular Culture Association and American Culture Association, 2012. Awarded for the Media History Digital Library.
• Student Writing Award, Society for Cinema and Media Studies, 2009. Awarded for the essay “Writer in the Hole: Desny v. Wilder, Copyright Law, and the Battle Over Ideas.”

Articles

• Eric Hoyt, Mary Huelsbeck, Amanda Smith, Lesley Stevenson, and Lauren Wilks, “Love, Links, Archives: Saving and Sharing the Wendy Clarke Tape Collection,” The Moving Image, accepted and forthcoming in 2022.
• Stephanie Sapienza, Eric Hoyt, Edward Summers, Matt St John, and JJ Bersch, “Healing the Gap: Digital Humanities Methods for the Virtual Reunification of Split Media and Paper Collections,” Digital Humanities Quarterly 15, no. 1 (2021): http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/15/1/000509/000509.html.
• Eric Hoyt, JJ Bersch, Susan Noh, Samuel Hansen, Jacob Mertens, and Jeremy Wade Morris, “PodcastRE Analytics: Using RSS to Study the Cultures and Norms of Podcasting,” Digital Humanities Quarterly 15, no. 1 (2021): http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/15/1/000519/000519.html.
• Jeremy Wade Morris, Samuel Hansen, and Eric Hoyt, “The PodcastRE Project: Curating and Preserving Podcasts (and Their Data),” Journal of Radio and Audio Media 26, no. 1 (2019): 8—20. DOI: 10.1080/19376529.2019.1559550.
• Derek Long, Eric Hoyt, Anthony Tran, Kevin Ponto, and Kit Hughes, “Who’s Trending in 1910s American Cinema?: Exploring ECHO and MHDL at Scale with Arclight,” The Moving Image 16, no. 1 (2016): 57—81.
• Eric Hoyt, Derek Long, Anthony Tran, and Kit Hughes, “Variety’s Transformations: Digitizing and Analyzing a Canonical Trade Paper,” Film History 27, no. 4 (2015): 76—105.
• Kit Hughes, Eric Hoyt, Derek Long, Kevin Ponto, and Anthony Tran, “Hacking Radio History’s Data: Station Call Letter, Digitized Magazines, and Scaled Entity Search,” Media Industries Journal 2, no. 2 (2015): n.p. http://www.mediaindustriesjournal.org/index.php/mij/article/view/128/182.
• 2015. “Distribution’s Return Trip: Two Hollywood Studios, Money, and Japan, 1921—1941.” Velvet Light Trap, 75 (Spring 2015): 5—20, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/the_velvet_light_trap/v075/75.hoyt.html.
• 2014. “Lenses for Lantern: Data Mining, Visualization, and Excavating Film History’s Neglected Sources.” Film History, 26, no. 2 (Summer 2014): 146—168, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/filmhistory.26.2.146.
• 2014. “The Thieves of Bombay: Douglas Fairbanks, Colonial Copyright, and Film Piracy in India, 1927-1935 (Co-authored with Nitin Govil).” Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies, 5, no. 1 (2014): 5—27, http://bio.sagepub.com/content/5/1/5.full.pdf.
• 2014. “Visualizing and Analyzing the Hollywood Screenplay with ScripThreads (Co-authored with Kevin Ponto and Carrie Roy).” Digital Humanities Quarterly, 8, no. 4, http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/8/4/000190/000190.html.
• 2014. “Scaled Entity Search: A Method for Media Historiography and Response to Critiques of Big Humanities Data Research (Co-authored with Kit Hughes, Derek Long, Kevin Ponto, and Anthony Tran).” Proceedings of IEEE Big Humanities Data, https://bighumanities.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/hoyt.pdf.
• 2013. “Bootstrapping a Digital Archive? 5 Things to Consider.” The Spectator, 33, no. 2, 31-37.
• 2013. “Media + History + Digital + Library: An Experiment in Synthesis (Co-authored with Carl Hagenmaier and Wendy Hagenmaier).” Journal of E-Media Studies, 3, no. 1, https://commarts.wisc.edu/10.1349/PS1.1938-6060.A.430.
• 2011. “Writer in the Hole: Desny v. Wilder, Copyright Law, and the Battle Over Ideas.” Cinema Journal, 50, no. 2, 21-40.
• 2011. “Engaging the Public Domain.” International Journal of Learning and Media, 3, no. 1, 47-55.
• 2010. “Hollywood and the Income Tax, 1929—1955.” Film History, 22, no. 1, 5-20.
• 2010. “The Future of Selling the Past: Studio Libraries in the 21st Century.” Jump Cut, 50, http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/jc52.2010/hoytStudioLibraries/.

Courses

CA 155 – Introduction to Digital Media Production

CA 450: Cultural History of American Broadcasting

CA 468: Producing for Internet TV and Video

CA 556: American Film Industry in the Era of the Studio System

CA 557: Contemporary Media Industries

CA 609: Digital Media Production for Graduate Students