Armory 106B
Assistant Professor Josh Shepperd is a media historian who researches the parallels between media theory and critical intervention in media practice. His book Shadow of the New Deal: The Victory of Public Broadcasting (University of Illinois Press, 2023) traces how the media reform movement developed the early scaffolding for public media to increase equal access to education through technology. Shadow details how New Deal media practitioners, trade groups, government agencies, and early communications researchers strategically structured an alternative media system under dominant commercial and legislative discourses. He is currently working on an update to the "official" History of U.S. Public Broadcasting with Dr. Allison Perlman (University of California-Irvine) for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and Current.
Josh designs applied policy and public humanities initiatives for the Library of Congress. Among national projects that he has organized, the Library of Congress Radio Preservation Task Force (RPTF) has become one of the largest and longest-running academic/federal collaborative projects in film and media studies. More recently Josh developed the “Sound Submissions Project" (SSP), a curation and preservation program of the LOC Recorded Sound Section. In addition to his publication and policy work, Josh is founding Associate Editor of Resonance: The Journal of Sound and Culture (University of California Press).