Kathryn Cramer Brownell

Promoted to Full Professor
Department of History
brownell@purdue.edu

Kathryn Cramer Brownell received a Ph.D. from Boston University and a bachelor’s from the University of Michigan. She uses the social and cultural turn in American political history to generate new discussions of the American presidency, political parties, and the policy-making process.

Brownell’s first book – Showbiz Politics: Hollywood in American Political Life (University of North Carolina, 2014) examines the institutionalization of Hollywood styles and structures in American politics from the 1920s through the 1970s. Her second book, 24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News (Princeton University Press, 2023), explores the political battle over cable television from the 1960s through today, excavating how the American political process became tethered to the business interests of a corporate cable television industry. 

Brownell co-edits “Made by History,” a publication of TIME. A collaboration between historians at Purdue, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Virginia, “Made by History” publishes articles that add historical context and insights to the world of current events.

Brownell has been a Faculty Fellow with the Purdue Center for Instructional Excellence and with the university’s Institute for Civic Communications. She also won the history department’s John C. Teaford Faculty Teaching Award in 2014. She was awarded the 2023 Lu Ann Aday Award for excellence in the humanities and social science research at Purdue.

She has served as faculty adviser to Phi Alpha Theta, started a “New Directions in American Political History" colloquium series, and developed a certificate program in history communication. As part of the program, she published a YouTube video series on “The History of Media in Presidential Elections” utilizing the C-SPAN video library.