Kathryn Cramer Brownell - 2023 Lu Ann Aday Award
2023 Lu Ann Aday Distinguished Lecture
Democracy and Technological Disruption: How the Past is Prologue
Biography
Kathryn Cramer Brownell has been selected to receive the 2023 Lu Ann Aday Award, which recognizes a Purdue University faculty member who has made a major impact in the field of the humanities and social sciences.
Brownell, associate professor of history and director of graduate education for the Department of History, is recognized internationally as a leader in the fields of political history as well as policy and media history. She is the author of two nationally acclaimed books, “Showbiz Politics: Hollywood in American Political Life,” and the recently published, “24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America.”
“Dr. Brownell’s record reflects important, field-expanding contributions to U.S. political history and modern American history more broadly,” said Margaret O’Mara, the Scott and Dorothy Bullitt Chair of American History at the University of Washington, in nominating Brownell for the award. “Her scholarship is of the highest quality, rigorous in its research and generative in its interventions; and her public engagement and professional leadership has been extraordinary.”
A Purdue faculty member since 2013, Brownell is cofounder and leader of high-impact projects that are bridging the gap between scholarly and public audiences including the “Made by History” opinion section (previously housed at The Washington Post and now at TIME magazine), which has received over 47 million page views and 36 million unique visitors online. She also leads the biennial American Political History Conference. Currently, she is working on a third book about the politics of scandal in modern America as well as a new textbook on the American presidency.
Among many accolades, Brownell received three professional awards in 2022 alone: Purdue’s Trailblazer Award, given to faculty within the Purdue libraries and the colleges of liberal arts and health and human sciences whose recent pioneering and innovative research has made a significant impact within their disciplines; the Friend of History Award from the Organization of American Historians for historical research and public presentation of American history; and the College of Liberal Arts’ Excellence in Discovery and Creative Endeavors Award, which recognizes the quality, impact, breadth and reach of discovery activities.
“I am thrilled and deeply honored to receive this award,” Brownell said of the Aday honor. “It would not be possible without support from my colleagues at Purdue, especially in the Department of History, the Brian Lamb School of Communication, and the Purdue Policy Research Institute. I am also very grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with so many historians across the country to bring rigorous and relevant history to millions of people and make public scholarship a professional priority.”
Brownell adds that she hopes her ongoing work will help the public better navigate modern political and media landscapes that often are designed to distract and divide them.
“At a time in which the study of the past is frequently weaponized to serve various partisan and ideological agendas, I firmly believe that public engagement by scholars is essential to bring insights of empirically grounded historical research to better understand a range of contemporary political challenges and forge enlightened solutions.”
Abstract
Abstract
Is technology a boon or a threat to American democracy? That question percolates as deepfakes and disinformation abound and political division and discord intensify. It is common to blame twenty-first century technology—from social media to AI—for ushering in political polarization and media excess. And yet, such developments are rooted in political debates over how to structure and use the dominant medium of the twentieth century: television. From the 1960s through the 1990s, federal regulators, elected officials, and entrepreneurs engaged in a political battle over the future of cable television, a medium with tremendous democratic potential during the age of network broadcast television oligopolies. But this civic promise faded as political biases, self-interest, public pressures, and economic incentives combined to turn cable television into a medium designed to disrupt and divide Americans by tethering politics to profits. Today, the values that cable television brought to the political and media landscape—disruption, branding, targeting, fracturing—have become pillars of our modern information age. Understanding how we got here is essential to navigating this world and illuminating how new technology can enhance, rather than undermine, the democratic process.
