Kathryn Cramer Brownell

Kathryn Cramer Brownell serves as a Full Professor in the Department of History at Purdue University, where her research bridges American political history with media studies. She co-edits TIME's 'Made by History' publication through a collaboration between Purdue University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Virginia.

Education:

• Ph.D. from Boston University
• Bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan

Brownell's scholarship fundamentally reinterprets American political development through the lens of media evolution, examining how entertainment industries and communication technologies reshape presidential power, party dynamics, and policy formation. Her work reveals the deep institutional connections between cultural production and political processes across the 20th and 21st centuries.

Her publications demonstrate a consistent trajectory tracing media's political impact from Hollywood's golden age through cable television's fragmentation of the public sphere. Both monographs critically analyze how corporate media structures become embedded in governance, with the 2023 work particularly highlighting cable television's role in amplifying political polarization and commercializing political discourse.

Awards:

• John C. Teaford Faculty Teaching Award (2014)
• Lu Ann Aday Award for excellence in humanities and social science research (2023)

Brownell has significantly shaped academic programming as faculty adviser to Phi Alpha Theta, founder of the 'New Directions in American Political History' colloquium series, and developer of Purdue's history communication certificate program. Her faculty fellowships at Purdue's Center for Instructional Excellence and Institute for Civic Communications reflect institutional recognition of her pedagogical innovation.

She leads the 'Made by History' consortium connecting historians across three major universities to provide evidence-based historical analysis for contemporary media, while her public-facing scholarship includes the C-SPAN-based YouTube series 'The History of Media in Presidential Elections'.