Kate Fortmueller
Associate Professor School of Film, Media & Theatre- Education
Ph.D, University of Southern California, 2014
M.A., University of Southern California, 2008
B.A., Smith College, 2005
- Biography
Dr. Kate Fortmueller is the author of Below the Stars: How the Labor of Working Actors and Extras Shapes Media Production (long-listed for the Kraszna-Krausz Moving Image Book Award), Hollywood Shutdown: Production, Distribution, and Exhibition in the Time of COVID (both University of Texas Press, 2021), and co-editor of Hollywood Unions (Rutgers University Press, 2025). Her research on film and television labor has appeared in journals including Film History, the Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television, Media Industries, and a variety of edited collections.
In addition to her scholarly work, she has published in the Los Angeles Review of Books and The Washington Post and has served as an expert commentator on Hollywood labor for publications including The Atlantic, The Hollywood Reporter, NPR, and Variety.
She is currently co-authoring a book with Dr. Miranda Banks (forthcoming 2026) and researching a monograph on the histories of insurance and risk management in the media industries.
- Publications
Books:
Fortmueller, Kate and Luci Marzola. Hollywood Unions. Rutgers University Press, 2025.
Hollywood Shutdown: Production, Distribution, and Exhibition in the Time of COVID. University of Texas Press, 2021.
Below the Stars: How the Labor of Working Actors and Extras Shapes Media Production. University of Texas Press, 2021.
Recent Articles
Fortmueller, Kate. “‘Picture it, U.S. 2020…’: The Golden Girls and sitcom nostalgia during the pandemic.” In The Golden Age of Television: The Golden Girls Reader, edited by Taylor Cole Miller and Alfred Martin. Rutgers University Press, 2025.
Fortmueller, Kate and Suzanne Scott. “So Strike We All: Intersections of Union Action and Fan Performances.” In The Routledge Companion to Fan Studies, 2nd Edition, edited by Melissa Click and Suzanne Scott. Routledge, 2025.
Fortmueller, Kate. “Heroes, Villains, or Collaborators: The Place of Hollywood Unions in American Film Industry History.” In The Routledge Companion to American Film History, edited by Paula Massood and Pamela Wojcik. Routledge, 2025.
Fortmueller, Kate. “Opportunity in Risk – How Georgia Challenged Hollywood During COVID.” In Media Industries in Crisis: What COVID Unmasked, edited by Vicki Mayer, Noa Lavie, and Miranda Banks. Routledge, 2024.