Kelly Kessler

Kelly Kessler is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and associate professor of media and cinema studies at Chicago’s DePaul University. Kessler’s research engages with issues of gender, sexuality and genre in American television and flm. She is the author of Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical: Music, Masculinity, and Mayhem (Palgrave, 2010) and Broadway in the Box: Television’s Lasting Love Affair with the Musical (Oxford, 2020). Kessler is currently editing and curating a forthcoming anthology for Intellect exploring gender, sex and sexuality in musical theatre. She also served as the editor and contributor of a special issue of Studies in Musical Theatre unpacking the iconic image of the musical diva. Her work on the mediated mainstreaming of lesbianism can be found in such publications as Cinema Journal, Television and New Media, Feminism at the Movies and Televising Queer Women. As an OpEd Project Fellow, her public scholarship on topics ranging from Hamilton’s TV premiere to missing queer and liberal voices in the politicization of religion have recently appeared on sites such as Primetimer, The Advocate and Wired.

Contact: DePaul University, College of Communication, 14 E. Jackson, Chicago, IL, 60604, USA.