Heather Hendershot
In an MIT video in 2015
Occupation	Historian
Awards	Guggenheim Fellowship (2009)
Academic background
Alma mater	Yale University University of Rochester
Thesis	Endangering the dangerous: the regulation and censorship of children's television programming, 1968-1990 (1995)
Academic work
Discipline	History
Sub-discipline	Television studies American film
Institutions	Queens College Massachusetts Institute of Technology Northwestern University

Heather Hendershot is an American historian. A 2009Guggenheim Fellow, she has written several book ontelevision studies –Shaking the World for Jesus (2004),What's Fair on the Air? (2011),Open to Debate (2016), andWhen the News Broke (2022) – and edited one volume:Nickelodeon Nation (2004). She is Cardiss Collins Professor of Communication Studies and Journalism at theNorthwestern University School of Communication,^[1] and she has previously served as the editor ofJournal of Cinema and Media Studies.

Hendershot attendedYale University, where she obtained her BA in French and Film Studies,^[1] and was part ofBerkeley College.^[2] She later did her graduate studies at theUniversity of Rochester, where she obtained an MA and PhD, both in English and part of the film program.^[1] Her doctoral dissertation was titledEndangering the dangerous: the regulation and censorship of children's television programming, 1968-1990.^[3]

Hendershot originally worked atQueens College as an associate professor within the Department of Media Studies, as well as atCUNY Graduate Center's Film Studies Certificate Program, where she was coordinator.^[4] She was Wolf Visiting Professor of Television Studies atUniversity of Pennsylvania in late-2009.^[4] Following her time at Queens College, she became a professor of film and media at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology.^[5] She later moved to theNorthwestern University School of Communication, where she held a full professorship.^[6] In 2025, she was appointedCardiss Collins Professor of Communication Studies and Journalism.^[6]

Hendershot specializes intelevision studies, as well as mid-20th-century Hollywood cinema.^[1] She released two books in 2004: an edited volume about the cable channelNickelodeon titledNickelodeon Nation^[7] and a monograph aboutevangelical Christianity product marketing calledShaking the World for Jesus.^[8] In 2009, Hendershot was awarded aGuggenheim Fellowship.^[9] She later published two more monographs:What’s Fair on the Air? (2011), centered on the era of Cold War right-wing broadcastersBilly James Hargis,H. L. Hunt,Carl McIntire, andDan Smoot;^[10] andOpen to Debate (2016), centered on the conservative talk showFiring Line.^[11] She served as the editor ofJournal of Cinema and Media Studies for five years.^[1]

In 2022, Hendershot releasedWhen the News Broke, a book on the impact of the1968 Democratic National Convention on accusations ofmedia bias in the United States,^[12] it was shortlisted for theNewberry Library's 2023 Pattis Family Foundation Chicago Book Award.^[13]

• (ed.)Nickelodeon Nation (2004)^[14][15]
• Shaking the World for Jesus (2004)^{[16][17][18][19]}
• What's Fair on the Air? (2011)^[20][21]
• Open to Debate (2016)^[22][23][24]
• When the News Broke (2022)^[25][26][27]

• Living people
• Media historians
• American women historians
• Television studies
• 21st-century American historians
• 21st-century American women academics
• 21st-century American academics
• Yale University alumni
• University of Rochester alumni
• Queens College, City University of New York faculty
• CUNY Graduate Center faculty
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty
• Northwestern University faculty

• Articles with short description
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• Use American English from August 2025
• All Wikipedia articles written in American English
• Use mdy dates from August 2025
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• Year of birth missing (living people)