Eleanor Patterson

Education

PhD, University of Wisconsin–Madison

MA, University Of Maine

BA, California State University, Monterey Bay

About Me

Awards:

• 2025 Michael Nelson Book Prize, The International Association for Media and History
• 2025 Broadcast Education Association Book Award

Research Interests

broadcast history, media and cultural studies, audience and fan studies, media industries and labor, gender and sexuality

Publications

Books:

• Bootlegging the Airwaves: Alternative Histories of Radio & Television Distribution,  University of Illinois Press.
• “The Golden Girls Drag Show is Coming to Your Hometown: Queering Television History for a Multicast Audience,” in The Golden Girls: Essays from the Lanai, edited by Taylor Cole Miller & Alfred L. Martin, Jr., Rutgers University Press.
• “Roku: Vertically Integrated Television Hub,” co-written with Ramon Labato, in From Networks to Netflix: A Guide to Changing Channels, 2^nd Edition, edited by Derek Johnson, Routledge.

Articles:

• “Retailing Radio: The Industrial Afterlife of Classic Radio Recordings,” Resonance: The Journal of Sound and Culture, 6(1), 64 – 79.
• “Maintaining Transmission: DirecTV’s Work-at-Home Technical Support, Virtual Surveillance, and the Gendered Domestication of Distributive Labor,” Television & New Media, 22(6), 633 – 653.
• “Capturing Flow: The Growth of the Old-Time-Radio Collecting Culture in the United States during the 1970s,” The Journal of Cinema & Media Studies, 59(3), 46 – 68.
• “Must Tweet TV: ABC’s #TGIT and the Cultural Work of Programming Social Television,” Transformative Works & Cultures, 26.
• “The Golden Girls Live: Residual Television Texts, Participatory Culture and Queering TV Heritage Through Drag,” Feminist Media Studies, 16(5), 838-851.
• “Reconfiguring Radio Drama After Television: The Historical Significance of Theater 5, Earplay and CBS Radio Mystery Theater as Post-Network Radio Drama,” The Historical Journal Of Film, Radio And Television, 36(4), 649-667.
• “This American Franchise: This American Life, Public Media Franchising and the Cultural Work Of Legitimating Economic Hybridity,” Media, Culture And Society, 38(3), 450 – 461.
• “Podcasting And Its Apps: Software, Sound And The Interfaces Of Digital Audio.” The Journal of Radio & Audio Media, 22(2). Co-authored with Jeremy Morris.
• “Fracturing Tina Fey: A Critical Analysis Of Postfeminist Television Comedy Stardom.” Communication Review, 15(3), 232-251.

Courses Taught

• MDIA 2350 Introduction to Film
• MDIA 3300 Foundations in Media Studies
• MDIA 3370 Global Media
• MDIA 3650 Media Industries
• MDIA 3700 Audiences & Fan Cultures
• MDIA 4200 TV History
• MDIA 4350 Television Criticism