William P. Hobby Centennial Professor of Communication
Professor Kathy Fuller-Seeley’s research specialization focuses on American film, radio and television history and audience reception studies.
Fuller-Seeley is co-producer of Francis Ford, The Craving, plus Three Shorts, Blu-ray/DVD of restored rare silent films 1911-1919 created by the mysterious older brother of director John Ford. The disk includes her documentary, Francis Ford, Film Pioneer, (Undercrank Productions, 2024)
Her current book research project, The Texas Westerns of the Gaston Melies Star film Company 1910-1911, co-authored by Frank Thompson, rediscovers the pioneering filmmakers who produced early cowboy comedies and dramas in San Antonio.
Fuller-Seeley’s book, Jack Benny and the Golden Age of American Radio Comedy, (University of California Press 2017), is an examination of the career of entertainer Jack Benny in the context of rapidly changing media industry and cultural norms in the 1930s, 1940s and early 1950s. It won the 2018 Theatre Library Association Richard Wall Memorial Special Jury Prize for “exemplary work in the field of recorded performance.”
She is also the author of several other books: At the Picture Show: Small Town Audiences and the Creation of Movie Fan Culture (Smithsonian 1996/University Press of Virginia 2001), a history of how film exhibition and moviegoing culture spread across the U.S. in the early silent film era. Children and the Movies: Media Influence and the Payne Fund Controversy (Cambridge, 1996), (co-authored with Garth Jowett and Ian Jarvie )a study of the first large-scale academic study of media influence on children in the 1930s. She edited Hollywood in the Neighborhood: Historical Case Studies of Local Moviegoing (University of California 2008). Celebrate Richmond Theater (Dietz Press, 2001), a history of 200 years of stage presentation and film exhibition in Virginia’s capital city. One Thousand Nights at the Movies: An Illustrated History of Motion Pictures 1895-1915 (co-authored with Q. David Bowers) (Whitman, 2013), is a richly-illustrated history of the origins of film production and exhibition in the U.S. Jack Benny’s Lost Broadcasts, volumes 1, 2 and 3 (Bear Manor 2020-2024) explore the comedian’s earliest live radio shows.
Fuller-Seeley has published book chapters in numerous anthologies on topics such as film stars Shirley Temple, and Rin-Tin-Tin, Dish Night giveaways in Depression-era movie theaters, early TV audiences, film exhibition and moviegoing history. She is featured in the motion picture history documentary Saving Brinton (Northland Films, 2017). She has been a consultant on PBS documentaries on actresses Mary Pickford and Mae West, comedian Bob Hope, and for other moviegoing history documentaries and museum exhibits.
Fuller-Seeley teaches undergraduate courses on the historical development of film and media industries; gender and media in the 1960s; the study of contemporary comedy; silent film; Classical Hollywood stars and fans; and graduate courses in media historiography and media reception studies. She’s delighted to have received a “Texas Ten” teaching award in 2024 from the Texas Exes and Alcalde Magazine.
