Josh Shepperd

Associate Professor Josh Shepperd is chair of undergraduate studies for the Department of Media Studies, and the faculty advisor of KVCU Student Radio. Pulling from political economic, Birmingham, and Foucauldian traditions, Josh researches institutional genealogies of 20^th century U.S. media culture.

He is author of Shadow of the New Deal: The Victory of Public Broadcasting (University of Illinois Press), which received the 2024 BEA Book Award and placed as a runner-up or finalist for the AJHA, AEJMC History, TLA, and New Deal book awards. Josh is currently co-writing the History of Public Media for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and Current, and is working on two new books. The first looks at the origins of research and development techniques in U.S. radio, television, and digital industries, and the second examines public and popular reception to the introduction of automated labor between 1890 and 1930. He is additionally founding Associate Editor of Resonance: The Journal of Sound and Culture (University of California Press).

Josh designs and directs national public-facing research and applied policy projects for the Library of Congress National Recording Preservation Board and Recorded Sound Section, and works widely with the Washington DC cultural history sector. He’s currently director of the LOC’s Radio Preservation Task Force, Sound Submissions Project, and serves as senior faculty advisor of the National Recording Preservation Foundation.