Communication · Media · Culture
Assistant Professor of Instruction·Program Head, MAISUniversity of Texas at Dallas
My teaching and research explore how popular media — film, comics, podcasts, and fan communities — shape the way audiences make meaning. The work sits at the meeting point of communication, media studies, and philosophy.
Research
Communication research asks how messages move, how meaning is made, and what happens when a media text — a film, a song, a podcast episode — enters a community and is reworked. My work focuses on the active side of that process: how fan communities, audiences, and crowds turn shared stories into shared identity.
Some of it sits inside the classroom, where popular culture becomes a way to ask hard questions about politics and belief. Some of it sits in the archive, tracing how a single image or storyline moves through decades of discourse.
Film, comics, podcasts, and television studied as cultural objects — not just entertainment, but evidence of how a society talks to itself.
The philosophy of interpretation: how readers, viewers, and listeners build meaning from a text, and how communities argue about which readings count.
Fan communities as sites of identity, conflict, and political work. The dark side of fandom is as worth studying as the celebratory side.
How stories — the ones we tell about ourselves, our institutions, and our enemies — shape what we believe to be true and reasonable.
Featured work
Monograph · 2024
The Dark Side of Film Fandom
A book-length study of how the Joker film franchise has been received, reworked, and weaponized by online audiences — and what that reception says about the state of contemporary American culture.
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2024 · ISBN 978-1-66693-086-3
Recent journal articles
Hubbard, C. G., Meeks, L., & Hammonds, K. A.
Transformative Works and Cultures
Hammonds, K. A., & Kramer, M. W.
Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly
Hammonds, K. A.
The Popular Culture Studies Journal, 11(1)
By the numbers
Since 2010
Teaching at the secondary and university level
25+
Peer-reviewed publications across journals, handbooks, and book chapters
30+
Competitive conference papers and invited talks
2024
NCA Top Paper, Theatre/Film/New Multimedia Division
For students
My courses are reading-heavy, writing-heavy, and built around discussion. Expect to watch a lot of film and analyze a lot of media. The Teaching page lays out my approach to the classroom, my AI policy, and what each course will ask of you.
Get in touch
The fastest path is email. The contact page accepts the same message with a few more fields.
kyleahammonds@gmail.com