Kathy Feeley Ph.D.
she/her/hersProfessor
History
About
Kathy Feeley is a historian whose interdisciplinary teaching and research focus on media, gender, and popular and political culture in modern America. She is the author of Mary Pickford: Hollywood and the New Woman (2016), which uses the life and times of early Hollywood’s most important female celebrity, entrepreneur, and philanthropist to explore the possibilities and problems of life in an emerging American empire.
Professor Feeley is co-editor, with Jennifer Frost, of When Private Talk Goes Public: Gossip in American History (2014), an anthology that traces the meanings and functions of gossip across four centuries of American life, culture, and politics, from the New England witchcraft crisis to the antebellum Black press to the post–World War II Cold War blacklist to the twenty-first-century vlogosphere.
Her work has also appeared in American Studies, Jewish Culture and History, History Compass, and Reviews in American History. She serves on the board of trustees of the Watchorn Lincoln Memorial Shrine, a Civil War–era library, museum, and archive, at A.K. Smiley Library in Redlands and as a co-coordinator of the Los Angeles History and Metro Studies Group of the Huntington–USC Institute on California and the West.
Education
- B.A., Colgate University
- Ph.D., history, CUNY Graduate Center
Professional Background
- Chair, Department of History, University of Redlands, 2013–2016, 2026-2029
- Secretary, Western Association of Women Historians, 2025–2027
- Co-coordinator, LA History and Metro Studies Group, Huntington–USC Institute on California and the West, 2016–present
- Lincoln Memorial Shrine (Civil War–era library, museum, and research center), Redlands, California
- Board of trustees, 2013–present
- President, 2019–2021
- Vice president, 2015–2018, 2022–present
- Associate dean, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Redlands, January 2021–September 2022; July 2023–June 2024
- Interim dean, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Redlands, October 2022–June 2023
- Director, Vahe Proudian Interdisciplinary Honors Program, University of Redlands, 2016–2022
Publications
Books
- Mary Pickford: Hollywood and the New Woman (Routledge, 2016).
- When Private Talk Goes Public: Gossip in American History, co-edited with Jennifer Frost (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2014).
Articles and Chapters
- “‘I Could Not Take It . . . From Such a Pretty Girl’: Charlie Chaplin and the Problem of Female Peers,” Journal of American Studies, forthcoming in 2027.
- "Televising the Gossip Column: The Ed Sullivan Show in Mid-Twentieth-Century America," Groniek: Historical Journal 243:60 (2026): 73-81.
- Co-authored with Jennifer Frost, "'Of Inestimable Value to All of Us': Olivia de Havilland, the Studio Contract, and the Screen Actors Guild, 1943-1945", LABOR: Studies in Working Class History 23:1 (March 2026).
- “Listening Her Way to an Historic Victory: On Hillary Clinton’s 1999-2000 Senate Campaign,” in The Hillary Effect: Perspectives on Clinton's Legacy, ed. Ivy Cargile, Denise Davis, Jennifer Merolla, and Rachel VanSickle-Ward (I.B. Tauris, 2020).
- "'The Great and Important Thing in Her Life'": Depicting Female Labor and Ambition in 1920s and 1930s U.S. Movie Magazines,” in Mapping Movie Magazines: Digitization, Periodicals, and Cinema History, ed. Daniel Biltereyst and Liesbeth Van de Vijver (Palgrave/MacMillan, 2020).
- "'The Antithesis of the Film Magnate'": Irving Thalberg and the Politics of Ethno-Religious Identity in Early Hollywood,” Jewish Culture and History 17 (April 2016): 45-58.
- “Classical Hollywood as Public Sphere: The Case of Citizen Kane,” in Imagination and the Public Sphere, ed. Susan Cumings (Cambridge Scholars Publications, 2012).
Review Essays
- “Spectacular Manhood and Girlhood: Celebrity Studies and Girlhood Studies Come of Age.” American Studies 55 (2) (2016): 5–16.
- “Gossip as News: On Modern U.S. Celebrity Culture and Journalism.” History Compass 10 (6) (June 2012): 467–482.
Awards and Service
- Town and Gown Community Service Learning Support Grant, University of Redlands, 2017–2018
- Outstanding Research Award, University of Redlands, 2015
- Outstanding Teaching Award, University of Redlands, 2009
- Historical Society of Southern California/Haynes Research Stipend, summer 2010 and summer 2006