Rate My Professor Derek Johnson

Derek Johnson is Professor and Department Chair in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with a focus on Media and Cultural Studies and Film. He earned his Ph.D. in 2009 and M.A. in 2006 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his B.A. in 2001 from the University of Southern California.

Johnson's research examines media industries as sites of cultural and creative struggle, particularly regarding the reproduction of content, markets, and authority over time. His work spans television, contemporary film, digital games, comics, and merchandising, employing critical media industry studies and production culture approaches. He explores transgenerational strategies that negotiate boundaries between childhood and adulthood, constructing idealized professional and amateur subjects amid shifting markets, technologies, and consumer practices. Johnson analyzes media franchising through licensing, spin-offs, and global formatting, highlighting power negotiations among producers across contexts. His scholarship addresses post-feminist and post-racial ideologies in industry identity work, retail dynamics, and franchising's intersections with social justice activism, including strategies for managing labor and consumer mortality.

Key publications include his authored books Media Franchising: Creative License and Collaboration in the Culture Industries (2013) and Transgenerational Media Industries: Adults, Children, and the Reproduction of Culture (2019); he edited From Networks to Netflix: A Guide to Changing Channels (2018, second edition 2022) and co-edited Making Media Work: Cultures of Management in the Entertainment Industries (2014) and Point of Sale: Analyzing Media Retail (2019). Selected articles are “From the Ruins: Neomasculinity, Media Franchising, and Struggles Over Industrial Reproduction of Culture” (Communication, Culture & Critique, 2018), “Cinematic Destiny: Marvel Studios and the Trade Stories of Industrial Convergence” (Cinema Journal, 2012), and “Figuring Identity: Media Licensing and the Racialization of LEGO Bodies” (International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2014).

Johnson has received the H.I. Romnes Faculty Fellowship (2019), Outstanding Young Scholar Award from the International Communication Association (2015), Chancellor's Distinguished Teaching Award, and Faculty Fellow from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (2011). His work advances understandings of agency, identities, and values in media production.