Participant Info

First Name
Tona
Last Name
Hangen
Country
(Country)
State
MA Massachusetts
Affiliation
Worcester State University
Website URL
tonahangen.com
Keywords
religion, media, radio history, Mormon studies, desegregation, civil rights, women's history, social history, pedagogy, digital humanities
Availability
Media Contact
Additional Contact Information
Happy to comment on background or respond to written questions
PhD
PhD

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

I am a social and cultural historian, centered on the United States in the twentieth century, but extending my work forward to the present and backward well into the nineteenth century. My research interests have focused on the rich and complex intersection between religion, media and culture, and the cultural implications of media and other socially constructed technologies. In my first book, Redeeming the Dial: Radio, Religion, and Popular Culture in America (UNC Chapel Hill, 2002), I told the story of radio evangelism during radio’s Golden Age, exploring some of the medium’s early innovators as well as the devotional culture of their listeners.

Book in progress: Squarely on the Wrong Side of History: Massive Resistance and the Struggle for Southern Schools [working title]

My current research project probes the widespread conception of the “wrong side of history” through focused attention to several case studies of Southern communities that closed their schools rather than integrate them in the wake of the 1954 Brown v. Board decision, and the subsequent rise of white private academies including those that self-identified as Christian schools. The book will explore the religious, cultural and ethical dimensions of massive resistance as a window onto the moral economy of historical memory, taking the story from the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s. I have published in the Journal of American History and frequently serve as a peer reviewer, and book and film reviewer. I have also blogged at Teaching U.S. History and for the Mormon studies blog Juvenile Instructor.

Recent Publications

Syllabus for Honors First Year Seminar, “American Carnival” (Fall 2014) in Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: Concepts, Models and Experiments, ed. Rebecca Frost Davis, Matthew K. Gold, Katherine D. Harris, and Jentery Sayers (Modern Language Association of America, forthcoming).

“Historical Roundtable: Studying Media and Religion,” with John P. Ferré, Peter G. Horsfield, and Mark R. Silk, Historiography in Mass Communication 2017, 3 (5): 35-47.

“Historical Digital Literacy, One Classroom at a Time,” Journal of American History 2015, 101 (4): 1192-1203.

“Lived Religion Among Mormons,” in Phil Barlow and Terryl Givens, The Oxford Handbook to Mormonism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 209-223.

“Radio in Religion and Popular Culture,” in John Lyden and Eric Mazur, Companion Volume to Religion and Popular Culture (NY: Routledge, 2015), 100-114.

“When Radio Ruled: The Social Life of Sound,” American Quarterly 2014, 66 (2): 465-476.

“Mormonism,” 2300-word entry in Patrick L. Mason, ed., Encyclopedia of Race and Racism, 2nd ed. (New York: Gale/ Macmillan, 2013), page #s.

“Religion and Media, 1790-1945,” in Stephen J. Stein, ed., The Cambridge History of Religions in America: Volume II, 1790-1945 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 812-831.

Media Coverage
radio interviews for SiriusXM / Classical 89 Utah, BackStory Radio, WORD-FM, and the Todd Mundt show
Country Focus
US
Expertise by Geography
United States
Expertise by Chronology
19th century, 20th century
Expertise by Topic
Public History, Race, Women