Associate Professor | Interim Director of Graduate Studies

About

  • Role:

    Faculty

  • Position:

    • Associate Professor | Interim Director of Graduate Studies

  • Concentration:

    • Media Industries, Digital Media, Globalization, Streaming Entertainment

  • Department:

    • Communication Studies

  • Education:

    • Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, Madison

  • Curriculum Vitae:

Biography

I research and teach about the cultural politics of digital platforms, media industries, streaming media, and globalization. In 2019, I published my first book, Locked Out: Regional Restrictions in Digital Entertainment Culture (NYU Press, 2019), which examines the practice of geoblocking in the history of digital entertainment. Other writing on these and related subjects has appeared in Critical Studies in Media Communication, American Quarterly, Media, Culture & Society, the International Journal of Cultural Studies, and several anthologies. I have additional research and teaching interests in popular music and identity, post-network television, and media history, and I am currently working on a book about how streaming entertainment services Spotify and Netflix have become globally successful in part by selling their international expansion efforts as cosmopolitan engagements with cultural difference.

In my personal time, I hang out with my wife and cat, watch movies (the pic you see above is me dressed on-theme for a screening of Barbie at Fort Collins' wonderful Holiday Twin Drive-In), and continue the project of transforming my yard from a patch of weeds into a thriving garden.

Publications

Books
Locked Out: Regional Restrictions in Digital Entertainment Culture. New York: NYU Press. 2019.

Articles

“The Obama Coalition as a Model for Mass Audience: Higher Ground Productions, Consensus Taste, and Streaming Media’s Centrism.” The Velvet Light Trap. Forthcoming 2024.

“Silicon Valley’s Team: The Golden State Warriors, Datafied Managerialism, and Basketball’s Racialized Geography.” (co-authored with Kit Hughes) American Quarterly 75.3: 471-99. 2023.

“Algorithmic Cosmopolitanism: On the Global Claims of Digital Entertainment Platforms.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 36.4: 376-389. 2019.

“Powered by Netflix: Speed-Test Services and Video-on-Demand’s Global Development Projects.” Media, Culture & Society 40.6: 838-855. 2018.

“Live Piracy: New/Old Directions in TV Flow.” Flow, October 2. 2017.

“The DVD Region Code System: Standardizing Home Video’s Disjunctive Global Flows.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 19.2: 225-240. 2016. 

Book Chapters

“Hulu: Negotiating National and International Streaming” in From Networks to Netflix: A Guide to Changing Channels, 2nd ed. Derek Johnson, ed. Routledge. 2022.

“‘Sorry About That’: Hopes and Promises of Geoblocking's End.” In Digital Media Distribution Portals, Platforms, Pipelines. Courtney Brannon Donoghue, Timothy Havens, Paul McDonald, eds. NYU Press. 2021.

“Streaming Diplomacy: Netflix’s Domestic Politics and Foreign Policy” in The Routledge Handbook of Media and Globalization. Dal Yong Jin, ed. Routledge. 2021.

“The Changing Scales of Diasporic Media Retail” in Point of Sale: Analyzing Media Retail. Derek Johnson and Daniel Herbert, eds. Rutgers University Press. 2019.

"The New Logic of the Absurd: The Eric André Show” in The Comedy Studies Reader. Nick Marx and Matt Sienkiewicz, eds. University of Texas Press: 57-70. 2018.

“The United States of America: Geoblocking in a Privileged Market” in Geoblocking and Global Video Culture. Ramon Lobato and James Meese, eds. Institute of Networked Cultures: 190-199. 2016.

Courses

  • 300 Level – SPCM 346: Digital Media Cultures; SPCM 342: Critical Media Studies

  • 400 Level – SPCM 453: Global Media Cultures; SPCM 479: Popular music, Culture and Power (Capstone)

  • 600 Level – SPCM 646: Media Theory

  • 700 Level – SPCM 792C: Media Globalization; SPCM 792C: New Media Theory and Criticism; SPCM 792C: Technology, Geography, Environment