Lexie Little recently graduated with a Ph.D. in Mass Communication from the University of Georgia. She will join the faculty at Murray State University as an assistant professor this fall.
Your paper from last year’s conference won the Top Student Paper Award — tell us a bit about that project and where it’s headed.
That study examines letters to the editor surrounding the 1977 National Women’s Conference in Houston. I first developed that work as a master’s class project interrogating feminist debates in public spheres shortly after Hulu released its 2021 drama series Mrs. America, which depicted the push to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. I picked up the study again in 2024, this time redoing the analysis from a more critical discursive perspective. I interrogated how women (and some men) struggled to elaborate notions of “womanhood,” political agency, and “rights.” The study ultimately argued that letters to the editor reflected non-monolithic descriptions of womanhood that challenged essentialized definitions of feminism. Multiple feminisms and anti-feminist positions taken up by women shaped discourse at Houston, which anti-E.R.A. proponent Phyllis Schlafly described as the “Midway” to determine the winning side. I hit pause to write my dissertation, but I plan to ready the article for journal submission. That said, there are a few internal Ms. papers and letters previously embargoed that I’d like to analyze first, if possible. The project may turn into a monograph depending on what I find!
What drew you to historical research, and how did you get started?
Even as a kid, I preferred to watch reruns of ‘60s and ‘70s sitcoms and variety shows in syndication and classic films on TCM. Those stars of the 1930s to 1970s and their lives fascinated me. In college, I started to question how some of them became so durable in American memory while others seem all but lost to time. The question kind of smacked me in the face while in my dorm room watching the finale of Feud: Bette and Joan (2017), which detailed the rivalry between Warner Bros. actresses Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. It premiered forty years after Crawford’s death; that’s some staying power. Yet, Crawford challenged an equal rival at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Norma Shearer, who almost no one save for ardent fans might recognize. I wanted to know what role media play in negotiating cultural discourses that preserve or neglect such figures. That initial question, with some refining, eventually became my dissertation research.
Is there anything you’ve uncovered that you think journalism and media history has overlooked, or that you’d like to see more scholarship on?
I noticed early on in my studies that journalism and media historians outside of film and television departments largely neglect the Hollywood press, which played a driving factor in my research agenda. Part of that, I believe, stems from delineations between “hard” and “soft” news in practice and education, which limits the ways in which we consider the latter, including entertainment presses and forms. However, entertainment and entertainment news observably hold social, political, cultural, legal, and economic ramifications and logics worth interrogating.
Do you see any connections between the history you study and the present day?
Absolutely! So many. One phenomenon that immediately comes to mind is how we speculate about star pregnancies and relationships. Early Hollywood reporters and columnists leveraged the growing fascination with the “self” for stories, likewise capitalizing on their access to what was an enclave of “glamorous” people. (The studios also manufactured relationships for sustained interest in their stocks of stars). For example, less than a year after Joan Crawford married fellow star and Hollywood royalty Douglas Fairbanks Jr., pregnancy rumors circulated in film magazines. She constantly fought against those rumors in quotes and private comment to friends such as writer Katherine Albert. Printed gossip became especially painful during her second marriage to actor Franchot Tone after a series of miscarriages (only revealed decades after in her autobiography). Jennifer Aniston later received similar treatment from a different tabloid class. Now, I can get on almost any social platform and see gossip about stars like Timothée Chalamet and Kylie Jenner. Did they break up? Is she pregnant? Both pieces of gossip circulate. Decades of press practice and gossip, individualism, and senses of “self” maintain those stories, even if technological and cultural contexts shift. Especially for working women, including those in the public eye, attentions to the private life come into tension with the myriad other ways they might be known or covered.
What advice would you give to fellow historians?
Read broadly. Histories exist in nearly every field, across every paradigm, and we can benefit from insights gleaned from different fields, ontologies, and epistemologies.