Popular Culture in the White House Symposium Contributors

Kathryn Cramer Brownell

Kathryn Cramer Brownell is associate professor of history at Purdue University and a Senior Editor at Made By History at the Washington Post.   Her research and teaching focus on the intersections between media, politics, and popular culture, with a particular emphasis on the American presidency.  Her first book, Showbiz Politics: Hollywood in American Political Life (University of North Carolina Press, 2014), examines the institutionalization of entertainment styles and structures in American politics and the rise of the celebrity presidency.  Her second book, 24/7 Politics: Cable Television and the Fragmenting of America from Watergate to Fox News, which will published this August by Princeton University Press, excavates how the growth of cable television transformed American political life by tethering politics to profits and catering to narrow audiences rather than finding common ground.

Kevin Butterfield

Kevin Butterfield is Director of the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress. He is the author of The Making of Tocqueville’s America: Law and Association in the Early United States (Chicago, 2015) and a historian of post-Revolutionary United States. He most recently served as Executive Director of the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon. He previously held a tenured appointment as Associate Professor of Classics and Letters at the University of Oklahoma, where he taught early American history and directed a program for the study of the U.S. Constitution.

Matthew Costello

Matthew R. Costello is Vice President of the David M. Rubenstein National Center for White House History and Senior Historian for the White House Historical Association. He received his Ph.D. and M.A. in American history at Marquette University, and B.A. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His first book, The Property of the Nation: George Washington’s Tomb, Mount Vernon, and the Memory of the First President, was published by University Press of Kansas in 2019 and was a finalist for the George Washington Book Prize. He has also co-edited and contributed to a scholarly volume entitled Mourning the Presidents: Loss and Legacy in American Culture, published by the University of Virginia Press in 2023. He is currently working on a book project for the Association that explores how Theodore and Edith Roosevelt, as well as their children and staff, shaped the presidency and White House. 

Sara Duke

Sara Duke is the Curator of Popular & Applied Graphic Arts, has worked in the Prints & Photographs Division of the Library of Congress for over 30 years. She is in charge of reportage drawings, cartoon art, illustration, historical prints, and ephemera from baseball cards to postcards. She has been in charge of the Herblock Gallery, dedicated to the late Washington Post cartoonist, since 2011, and has curated or co-curated several exhibitions of cartoon art and one of courtroom drawings.

Lilly Goren

Lilly J. Goren is professor of political science and global studies at Carroll University in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Her research often integrates popular culture and literature as means to understanding politics. She is co-editor, with Nicholas Carnes, of the forthcoming book, The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (University Press of Kansas, 2022). Her other published books include Mad Men and Politics: Nostalgia and the Remaking of Modern America; Women and the White House: Gender, Popular Culture, and Presidential Politics; You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby: Women, Politics, and Popular Culture and Not in My District: The Politics of Military Base Closures. Goren was a Fulbright Fellow to the University of Bonn in the summer term, 2018. Professor Goren earned her A.B. in political science and English from Kenyon College and has an M.A. and a Ph.D. in political science from Boston College.

Tammy Haddad

Tammy Haddad is the President and CEO of Haddad Media and a media innovator whose Washington, DC company devises winning strategies for clients including some of the world’s top media companies, technology disruptors, innovative startups, and nonprofit organizations. She is the veteran television executive and executive producer behind MSNBC’s political coverage, Hardball with Chris Matthews, Larry King Live, Today Show, and The Late Late Show.Haddad has more than 25 years of experience as an executive producer of landmark web, cable and network programs. Her first success was as the creator and executive producer of CNN’s Larry King Live. She helmed the creation of the now-famous outdoor studio of NBC’s Today Show while serving as senior broadcast producer. As a longtime Washington partner for HBO, she is a consultant on the HBO hit comedy series Veep starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and on HBO films including Confirmation starring Kerry Washington as Anita Hill, and All The Way, which stars Bryan Cranston as President Lyndon B. Johnson. She is a member of the International Neighbors Club, the International Women’s Forum, and sits on the Board of Trustees for The University of Pittsburgh and Dog Tag Bakery, where she chairs the development committee.

Megan Halsband

Megan Halsband is a Reference Specialist in the Serial & Government Publications Division, where she has worked with the Library’s comic book collection for over twelve years. She has worked to ensure the Library collects underrepresented formats, subjects, and creators via the Small Press Expo Collection as well as comics related web archiving collections and other digital collections. She has worked frequently with other divisions across the Library to curate exhibits, develop collections, and expand knowledge of the Library’s comic collections.

Jesse Holland

Jesse J. Holland is an American journalist, author, television personality and educator. He was one of the first African American journalists assigned to cover the Supreme Court full-time, and only the second African American editor of The Daily Mississippian, the college newspaper of the University of Mississippi. He was the former Visiting Distinguished Professor of Ethics in Journalism at the University of Arkansas, and now serves as a guest host on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal. He worked as a Race & Ethnicity reporter for the Associated Press in Washington, D.C., where he has been stationed since 2000. Holland is one of the few Washington, D.C. reporters who has been credentialed to cover all three major branches of government: he worked as a Congressional reporter in 2000 and 2001-05, a White House reporter from 2000 to 2001, and a Supreme Court reporter from 2009 to 2014. He also served as National Labor Writer for the Associated Press from 2007 to 2009. Holland left the Associated Press in September 2019 to take a position as Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Residence at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress. He was named as Visiting Distinguished Professor of Ethics in Journalism at the University of Arkansas in 2016. He now teaches creative nonfiction and multimedia narrative at Goucher College, and has taught journalism ethics at Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies and at New York University’s Washington D.C. campus.

Eric P. Lesser

Eric Lesser is a senior counsel at WilmerHale, a leading global law firm. Previously, Lesser was a four-term member of the Massachusetts State Senate, and an Obama White House aide. At the White House, Lesser was special assistant to Senior Advisor David Axelrod. Lesser assisted in developing and executing strategy around the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the Dodd/Frank Wall Street Reform Act, and the federal response to the Great Recession. He also served as director of strategic planning for the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. Mr. Lesser began his career as one of the original members of Obama’s presidential campaign, traveling extensively with then-Senator Obama through both the primary and general elections. Mr. Lesser is the founder of a workshop series on running for office, hosted by Harvard’s Institute of Politics and Center for Public Leadership, and a lecturer in Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He also worked for seven seasons as a consultant to the hit HBO series VEEP. Mr. Lesser is a term member at the Council on Foreign Relations and a Research Fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Lesser lives in Longmeadow, MA with his wife, three young children, and family dog Charlie.

Stewart McLaurin

Stewart McLaurin is the president of the White House Historical Association, founded by First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy more than 60 years ago to share and preserve the rich history of the White House. In his nine years as leader of the private nonprofit, nonpartisan organization, Stewart has expanded the Association’s cultural and educational programming through award-winning books, popular video series, and virtual and in-person events. Stewart is the host of The White House 1600 Sessions, the Association’s official audio and video podcast devoted to exploring the history, cultural impact, and untold stories of America's most iconic residence and highest office. He is a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors and writes a monthly column about the history of the White House and our nation’s presidents and first ladies. Stewart is the author of the 2023 children’s book, The White House, Designed by James Hoban Built by Many Hands!, as well as the 2021 anthology James Hoban: Designer and Builder of the White House, which presents the life and work of the little known Irish-American architect who was handpicked by George Washington to design the President’s House. His first book, White House Miscellany, features interesting anecdotes about life in the White House, as well as facts and figures about the building itself. For more than 35 years, McLaurin has held leadership roles with national nonprofit and higher education organizations and serves on the board of a number of institutions including the Elizabeth Dole Foundation and the Metropolitan Club Preservation Foundation. He is a senior advisor for the nonprofit organization Concordia; and is affiliated with a number of organizations including the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art and the Society of Architectural Historians.

Trevor Parry-Giles

Trevor Parry-Giles is a professor in the Department of Communication and the Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs & Research in the College of Arts & Humanities at the University of Maryland. Dr. Parry-Giles’s research and teaching focus on the historical and contemporary relationships between rhetoric, politics, law, and popular culture. He is the award-winning author or editor of four books (including The Prime-Time Presidency: The West Wing and U.S. Nationalism) and his research has appeared in the Quarterly Journal of Speech, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Presidential Studies Quarterly, the Journal of Popular Film and Television, Celebrity Studies, the Journal of Communication, and elsewhere. Dr. Parry-Giles is a frequent commentator about contemporary and historical political communication and has appeared on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, the NBC Nightly News, Maryland Public Television, CCTV, and all the network affiliates in Washington, DC. He is quoted often in political news coverage, including in the Washington Post, the New York Times, Politico, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. In addition, Parry-Giles has been interviewed by the BBC, Minnesota Public Radio, New Hampshire Public Radio, Utah Public Radio, Wisconsin Public Radio, WAMU (NPR—Washington, DC), and WYPR (NPR—Baltimore, MD), among others.

Gautham Rao

Gautham Rao is Associate Professor of History at American University, where he teaches courses on historiography, historical methodology, legal and political history, and critical theory, with a focus on 17th through 20th century colonial North American and United States history.  He is an affiliate member of the Anti-Racist Research and Policy Center and a past Faculty Fellow in the Center for Teaching and Learning.  He is Editor-in-Chief of Law and History Review, a leading journal of legal history published by Cambridge University Press for the American Society for Legal History.  He is the author of National Duties: Custom Houses and the Making of the American State (University of Chicago Press, 2016), and his work has appeared in The Washington Post, The William and Mary Quarterly, and The Journal of the Early Republic, among other venues.

Gloria Reuben

Gloria Reuben is an actress, singer and author whose credits span television, film, theater and music. Gloria’s acting credits on television include portraying Jeanie Boulet on the hit television series ER (a role that garnered her two Emmy nominations and a Golden Globe nomination), Falling Skies, Mr. Robot, The First Lady and many others. Film credits include Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln (with Daniel Day- Lewis), Admission (with Tina Fey), Reasonable Doubt (with Samuel L. Jackson), and the recently released remake of Stephen King’s Firestarter. On stage, Gloria’s portrayal of Condoleezza Rice in David Hare’s play Stuff Happens at the Public Theater in New York City garnered her a Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Play. Gloria was a backup singer for Tina Turner in Ms. Turner’s tour “24/7”, and has recorded three albums: Just For You, Perchance To Dream and For All We Know. Gloria’s non-fiction book My Brothers’ Keeper: Two Brothers. Loved. And Lost. (an intimate tribute to her two brothers who passed away) was published by Post Hill Press in November 2019.

Colleen Shogan

Colleen Shogan joined the Association in the winter of 2020 after almost fifteen years of federal government service. She previously worked in the United States Senate and as a senior executive at the Library of Congress. Colleen was the Vice Chair of the Women’s Suffrage Centennial Commission and now serves as the Chair of the Board of Directors at the Women’s Suffrage National Monument Foundation, designated by Congress to build the first Washington, D.C. memorial dedicated to the early movement for women’s equality. Colleen teaches at Georgetown University in the Government Department. She is the previous President of the National Capital Area Political Science Association and served on the American Political Science Association (APSA) Council, the governing body of the organization. Her research focuses on the American presidency, presidential rhetoric, women in politics, and Congress. A native of Pittsburgh, she holds a BA in Political Science from Boston College and a Ph.D. in American Politics from Yale University, where she was a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow. She is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the Order of the Cross and Crown, and the United States Capitol Historical Society’s Council of Scholars.

Tevi Troy

Tevi Troy is a Senior Fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a former Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services and a best-selling presidential historian. His latest book is Fight House: Rivalries in the White House from Truman to Trump, named as one of 2020’s top political books by the Wall Street Journal. On August 3, 2007, Dr. Troy was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Dr. Troy has extensive White House experience, having served in several high-level positions over a five-year period, culminating in his service as Deputy Assistant and then Acting Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy. From 2014 to 2018, Dr. Troy was the founder and CEO of the American Health Policy Institute. In addition to his senior level government work and health care expertise, Dr. Troy is also a presidential historian, making him one of only a handful of historians who has both studied the White House as a historian and worked there at the highest levels. He is the author of the best-selling book, What Jefferson Read, Ike Watched, and Obama Tweeted: 200 Years of Popular Culture in the White House; Intellectuals and the American Presidency: Philosophers, Jesters, or Technicians?; and Shall We Wake the President? Two Centuries of Disaster Management in the Oval Office. Dr. Troy has a B.S. in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University and an M.A and Ph.D. in American Civilization from the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Troy lives in Maryland with his wife, Kami, and four children.