Katherine Rye Jewell

Katherine Rye Jewell is Professor of History at Fitchburg State University, where she teaches modern U.S. history. She is a historian of the business and politics of culture in the twentieth-century United States. Her book, Dollars for Dixie: Business and the Transformation of Conservatism in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge Studies on the American South) (Cambridge University Press, 2017), explored the intersection of southern culture and politics through industrialists’ responses to the New Deal

She turns attention to another kind of business in her next book, Live from the Underground: A History of College Radio, forthcoming from University of North Carolina Press December 2023. Taking aim at the informal spaces that shaped the music industry since the 1970s, Jewell uncovers how college DJs confronted the politics of culture, higher education, and identity.

Jewell grew up in New England and now lives outside of Boston with her family — which includes her husband, three children, and two cats (Timony and Tweed).

Tweed is an internet star and a very poor research assistant.