About

Katie Kapurch specializes in the study of icons and the iconic, especially popular phenomena at the intersections of literature, visual media, and music. These include the Beatles and Taylor Swift, Disney and Twilight, as well as mermaids and other cultural touchstones.

As Associate Professor of English at Texas State University, Katie teaches courses on youth culture, fairy tales and myth, and British literature. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in Communication Studies with a Portfolio in Women’s and Gender Studies.

Katie is currently working on two books: The Disneyfication of Pop with The Beatles, Taylor Swift, and Beyoncé, followed by The Mermaid as Pop Icon:. Both are contracted with Bloomsbury.

Katie’s books include Blackbird: How Black Musicians Sang the Beatles into Being–and Sang Back to Them Ever After (Penn State University Press, 2023). Co-authored with Jon Marc Smith, Blackbird is supported by an award from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Katie is also the co-editor of The Beatles and Humour: Mockers, Funny Papers, and other Play (Bloomsbury, 2023), the first academic collection to focus on the band’s humor.

Previous books include Victorian Melodrama in the Twenty-First Century: Jane Eye, Twilight, and the Mode of Excess in Popular Girl Culture, the first monograph to theorize the appeal of melodrama in girl culture. Katie is also co-editor of New Critical Perspectives on the Beatles: Things We Said Today (with Kenneth Womack), and other scholarly and public-facing writing linked on this website.