Heather Hendershot studies TV news, conservative media, political movements, and American film and television history. She has held fellowships at Vassar College, New York University, Princeton, Harvard, Radcliffe, and Stanford, and she has also been a Guggenheim fellow. Her courses emphasize the interplay between creative, political, and regulatory concerns and how those concerns affect what we see on the screen (big or little). Students are encouraged to consider the ways that TV and film writers, directors, and producers have attempted innovation while working within an industry that demands novelty but also often fears new approaches to character and narrative. Hendershot is the editor of
Nickelodeon Nation: The History Politics and Economics of America’s Only TV Channel for Kids (2004) and the author of
Saturday Morning Censors: Television Regulation before the V-Chip (1998),
Shaking the World for Jesus: Media and Conservative Evangelical Culture (2004),
What's Fair on the Air? Cold War Right-Wing Broadcasting and the Public Interest (2011), and
Open to Debate: How William F. Buckley Put Liberal America on the Firing Line (2016). For five years she was the editor of
Cinema Journal, the official publication of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. Her most recent book is
When the News Broke: Chicago 1968 and the Polarizing of America (2022).
