Kate Fortmueller

Ph.D, University of Southern California, 2014
M.A., University of Southern California, 2008
B.A., Smith College, 2005

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) and Hollywood Shutdown: Production, Distribution, and Exhibition in the Time of COVID (both University of Texas Press, 2021). 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 researching a monograph on the histories of insurance and risk management in the media industries and co-editing a collection on the history of the Hollywood Unions and Guilds with Luci Marzola.