Kathryn Montalbano
Kathryn Montalbano is an Assistant Professor of Journalism in the Department of Communication at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. She earned her M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in communications from Columbia University in 2016, and her B.A. in English with a minor in sociology from Haverford College in 2009. Kathryn specializes in communication history, media law and policy, religion and media, surveillance studies, and journalism studies.
Biography
In addition to her first book, "Government Surveillance of Religious Expression: Mormons, Quakers, and Muslims in the United States," Kathryn's related research on mid-twentieth-century FBI surveillance of the Quaker organization, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), will appear as a chapter in a forthcoming volume, "Making Surveillance States: Transnational Histories" (University of Toronto Press). She has also published on the historical continuity between the opposition of the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) to the 1949 Fairness Doctrine and the contemporary Open Internet principle, net neutrality, as well as on intercultural communication in three thirteenth-century Franciscan friars’ narratives documenting their travels through the Mongol Empire. She is currently researching the roots of global populism in media and religion by analyzing discourses about and representations of Christianity and Islam in alternative and social media.Kathryn often presents her work at the annual International Communication Association (ICA) conference in panels centered on communication history or religion and media. She teaches courses on communication theory, research methods, media history, protest and social activism, media and politics, and religion and media.
Education
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Ph.D., Columbia University, New York, NY, 2016
M.Phil., Columbia University, New York, NY, 2014
M.A., Columbia University, New York, NY, 2011
B.A., Haverford College, Haverford, PA, 2009
Books
Articles
"Net neutrality, the Fairness Doctrine, and the NRB: The tension between United States religious expression and media regulation"
Published: Feb 09, 2018 by Media and Communication
Authors: Kathryn Montalbano
Subjects:
Media and Cultural Studies, Mass Communications, Religion, Communication Studies, Media Communication
This article analyzes the historical continuity between the opposition of the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) to the Fairness Doctrine (1949) and to the contemporary Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Open Internet principle, net neutrality. These debates demonstrate how media policy discourse has shaped democratic ideals, including by designating whose voices are or are not included in broadcast and digital communication spaces.
"Misunderstanding the Mongols: Intercultural communication in three thirteenth-century Franciscan travel accounts"
Published: Oct 22, 2015 by Information & Culture: A Journal of History
Authors: Montalbano, Kathryn
Subjects:
History, Religion, Communication Studies
This article shows how the travel accounts of three thirteenth-century Franciscan friars in the Mongol Empire provide a window into intercultural communications of the medieval world. The article has two themes: first, how the friars’ encounters with new lands, peoples, and cultures prompted them to reconsider, but ultimately not recast, their vocational identities; second, how their participation in long-distance networks reinforced their assumptions about Christianity and human nature.