Sue Collins

Sue Collins

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Assistant Professor of Communication, Culture, & Media, Humanities

  • PhD, New York University

Biography

Dr. Sue Collins' research interests include media and cultural history, political economy of media industries and popular culture, and critical cultural policy studies. She is currently working on a book entitled, Calling All Stars: A Cultural History of Hollywood, World War I, and the Politics of Authority. The project is concerned with how celebrity/star authority has become cultural commonsense. It traces the conditions under which movie stars and Hollywood have become adjuncts to state power to the WWI Liberty Loan Bond Drives, when government officials recruited the commercial film industry and its film stars to participate in war mobilization. Her work has appeared in Television & New Media, and in book chapters on celebrity and activism, war and propaganda, and film history.

She teach such courses as Media Industries, Globalization & Media, Popular Culture, and Communication Theory.

Links of Interest

Recent Publications

  • “Send Your Soldier to the Show with Smileage: Film, Cultural Policy, and the World War I Training Camps,” article accepted with revisions, Film History.
  • “Politicotainment: Made for TV,” co-authored with Kristina Riegert, invited article under review, The International Encyclopedia of Political Communication, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
  • “I’m Not a Celebrity but I Play One on Late-Night TV: The Problem with Politicians and Celebrity.” In Venomous Speech and Other Problems in American Political Discourse, Vol. 2, edited by Clarke Rountree, Praeger, 2013.
  • “Propaganda Studies: The U.S. Interwar Years.” In Media History and the Foundations of Media Studies, Vol. 1, The International Encyclopedia of Media Studies, 578-609, edited by John Nerone and Angharad Valdivia. MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013.
  • “After 4 Years of a Celebrity President,” is Romney the Anti-Celebrity Candidate?” Contributing curator, In Media Res, “Political Polarization” theme week, August 13-17, 2012; online publication: http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/imr/2012/08/13/after-4-years-celebrity-president-romney-anti-celebrity-candidate
  • “Bonding with the Crowd: Silent Film Stars, Liveness, and the Public Sphere.” In Convergence Media History, edited by Janet Staiger and Sabine Hake, 117-126. New York: Routledge, 2009.
  • “Celebrity Activism and 9/11: ‘A Simple Show of Unity.’” In War Isn’t Hell, It’s Entertainment: War in Modern Culture and Visual Media, edited by Rikke Schubart and Fabian Virchow, Tanja Thomas and Debra White-Stanley, 77-93. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland Publishers, 2009.
  • “Making the Most Out of Fifteen Minutes: Reality TV’s Dispensable Celebrity,” Television & New Media, 9, 2 (March 2008), 87-110.
  • “Traversing Authenticities: President Bartlet and Activist Sheen?” In Politicotainment: Television’s Take on the Real, edited by Kristina Riegert, 181-211. New York: Peter Lang, 2007.

Presentations

  • “Performing the Ordinary: Politicians, Political Style, and the Celebrity Frame,” paper presented at the International Communication Association, London, June 2013.
  • “War Mobilization and Cultural Policy: A Challenge to Propaganda Theory,” paper presented at the New Histories of Communication Study Preconference, International Communication Association conference, London, June 2013.
  • “Send Your Soldier to the Show with Smileage: Film, Cultural Policy, and the Politics of Authority During World War I,” paper presented at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference, Chicago, March 2013.
  • “Performing Citizenship: Crisis and the Celebrity Media Event,” paper presented at Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference, New Orleans, March 2011.
  • “The Work of Watching: Immaterial Labor of Recombinant Cable News,” paper presented at the National Association of Communication conference, San Francisco, November, 2010.