Newswise — "Sexual harassment in Hollywood has a history as long as that of the industry itself: the industry was built, in part, on female harassment behind the scenes, female objectification in front of the cameras, with the use of celebrity gossip to both titillate and forewarn about the so-called 'casting couch,'" says University of Redlands Professor of History Kathleen Feeley
 
"Some performers and journalists—both male and female—have long tried to talk about the problem of sexual harassment in both explicit and coded terms over the last century.  The Harvey Weinstein scandal marks a sharp break with the past in its exposure and high-profile censure of an active (if flagging) film industry mogul. But the exposure and punishment of Harvey Weinstein (like that of Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly) won’t effect lasting change unless it helps to diversify the industry power structure, workplaces, and narratives.  And condemnation of Weinstein that includes statements about the personal ignorance of rampant, industry-wide practices and rumors is a claiming of privilege that only reinforces the status quo that supported and protected Weinstein for decades."
 
Feeley has written widely on celebrity gossip and the Hollywood film industry and its key figures including Mary Pickford, Irving Thalberg, Louella Parsons, and Hedda Hopper.  Most recently, a forthcoming chapter “‘The Great and Important Thing in Her Life’: Depicting Female Labor and Ambition in the 1920s and 1930s U.S. Movie Magazines,” in Mapping Movie Magazines, ed. Daniel Biltereyst and Liesbeth Van deVijver (forthcoming in 2018 from Palgrave/MacMillan) examines the professional and personal relationships amongst Joan Crawford and the female writers and editors of an emerging Hollywood press corps and the complex and contested discourse they produced in the pages of movie magazines around issues of work, harassment, ambition, and likeability in the 1920s and 1930s America.
 
She earned her Ph.D., U.S. History and Women's Studies Certificate, Department of History, The Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York (GSUC/CUNY), February 2004. and her B.A., magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, History and Women's Studies, Colgate University, Hamilton, N.Y., May 1990