Michael Krysko

My research and teaching specialties focus on the histories of science and technology, communications and mass media, and U.S. foreign relations. Much of my work explores how communication technologies have been used to bolster claims to scientific and technical authority across varied global, political, and cultural contexts. I am especially interested in examining international conflict in cross-cultural and imperial contexts, where contestations over radio can illuminate issues of race, power, and inequality in both international and US domestic settings. Such concerns underpin my first two books, American Radio in China: International Encounters with Technology and Communications, 1919-41 (2011; Chinese translation, 2022) and Contested Airwaves: American Radio at Home and Abroad, 1914-1946 (2025). Collectively, they examine the international and domestic dynamics of American radio in the first half of the twentieth century. American Radio in China investigates interwar era government policies, commercial enterprises, missionary broadcasting, and the broader mass media to show how radio initiatives, often promoted as tools of cultural exchange and economic prosperity, instead frequently intensified tensions among Americans, Chinese nationalists, and Japanese imperialists. Contested Airwaves expands the lens by exploring a wider array of case studies in the Western Hemisphere. They encompass foreign-language broadcasting, border radio in the American southwest, radio-based educational initiatives targeting both American and non-American audiences, and regulatory disputes with several Latin American nations. Collectively, the chapters highlight how claims to scientific and technical expertise structured policy formation, knowledge transmission, and assumptions about audiences. My ongoing research expands the focus beyond radio and considers how the changing dynamics and capabilities of global communications during the 20th and 21st centuries affected the interconnections between distant war zones and the American home front. In addition to my two books, my work has also appeared in the Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television, the Journal of Contemporary History, Pacific Historical Review, and Technology and Culture.

I earned my Ph.D. at Stony Brook University in 2001 and spent five years on the history faculty at Dowling College in New York before joining the Department of History at Kansas State University in 2006. Beyond my teaching and writing, my responsibilities since coming to Kansas State have included serving as the History department chairperson, a faculty senator, a member of the City of Manhattan’s Historic Resource Board, a member of the Executive Board of the Mid America American Studies Association (including a term as that organization’s president), and as participant in collaborations with the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library.