Katherine Contess is the Stephen and Evelyn Milman Postdoctoral Fellow in Sports Studies in the American Studies Program at Cornell University.  She was previously a Deans' Faculty Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University, where she completed her Ph.D. in December of 2025.  Her first book project, “Moving Images and Moving Bodies: Mediating Fitness in America from Postwar to Present,” examines a variety of media objects, from the 1950s exercise television program The Jack LaLanne Show, to the 1980s VHS tapes of Jane Fonda, to the live-streamed content of the Peloton platform, to ask what exercise tells us about bodies, gender, health, and our relationship to technology.  Katherine is a former New York City middle school teacher, and she holds an M.A. from CUNY Brooklyn College and a B.A. from Duke University.