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Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences

Robert A. Rosenstone

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Robert A. Rosenstone

Professor of History, Emeritus
B.A., University of California, Los Angeles, 1957; Ph.D., 1965. Visiting Assistant Professor, Caltech, 1966-68; Assistant Professor, 1968-69; Associate Professor, 1969-75; Professor, 1975-2012; Professor, Emeritus, 2012-; Executive Officer, 1983-86.

Profile

Robert Rosenstone's research interests run along two intersecting lines, continuing the investigation of issues that have concerned him for the last three decades. One involves the intensely contemporary issue: what it means to construct works of history in a culture where the visual and electronic media are not only supplementing but, to some extent, replacing the written word as the chief means of communication. The other has to do with creating alternative ways of presenting history (on the page, on the screen, on the internet, in video games); this involves complex questions of the relationship between historical data and argument, as well as that between fact and fiction.

Research Summary
History in the Visual Media; Forms of Narrative; Biography; the Modern Age
Selected Awards
  • Silver Medal 1975 Commonwealth Club of California – Best Biography by a California Writer
  • Book of the Year, 1975, Film Historia (Barcelona)
Caltech Affiliations
  • Interim Director, 1976–77, and Chairman, Governing Board of Baxter Art Gallery, 1976–81
  • Curator, "In Search of Four Women/Four Cultures," Baxter Art Gallery, Oct–Nov. 1976
  • Director of Fine Arts, curricular and extra‑curricular, 1978–81
  • Executive Officer, Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, 1983–1986
  • Chair, President's Committee on Institute Art, 1988–2004
External Affiliations
  • Founding Editor, Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice
  • Associate Editor, Film Historia
  • Board Member, Current Research Journal in Social Science and Humanities (online)
  • Board Member, New Academia Publishing
  • (Former) Contributing editor, American Historical Review
  • (Former) Editorial Board, Reviews in American History
  • (Former) Editorial Board, California Quarterly

Selected Publications

Books: AUTHOR

  • Crusade of the Left: The Lincoln Battalion and the Spanish Civil War - 1969
  • Romantic Revolutionary: A Biography of John Reed - 1975
  • Mirror in the Shrine: American Encounters in Meiji Japan - 1988
  • Visions of the Past: The Challenge of Film to Our Idea of History - 1995
  • King of Odessa - 2003
  • The Man Who Swam Into History - 2005
  • History on Film / Film on History - 2006 (2nd ed. 2010, 3rd ed, 2018)
  • Red Star, Crescent Moon - 2010
  • Cine y visualidad: Historizacion de la imagen contemporaneo - 2013
  • Adventures of a Postmodern Historian: Living and Writing the Past - 2016

Books: EDITOR AND CO-AUTHOR

  • Protest from the Right - 1968
  • Seasons of Rebellion: Protest and Radicalism in Recent America - 1972
  • Los cantos de la conmocion: Veinte años de rock - 1974
  • Revisioning History: Filmmakers and the Construction of the Past - 1995
  • Experiments in Rethinking History - 2004
  • A Blackwell Companion to Historical Film - 2013

Most Important Essays

  • "Learning From Those ‘Imitative' Japanese: Another Side of the American Experience in the Mikado's Empire," American Historical Review. 85 (June, 1980) 572‑595.
  • "History in Images / History in Words: Reflections on the Possibility of Really Putting History on Film," American Historical Review 93 (Dec. 1988), 1173‑1185.
  • "Revisioning History: Contemporary Filmmakers and the Construction of the Past," Comparative Studies in Society and History, 32 (Oct. 1990), 822‑837.
  • "JFK: Historical Fact/Historical Film," American Historical Review, 97 (April, 1992), 506‑11.
  • "The Future of the Past: Film and the Beginnings of Postmodern History," in Vivian Sobchack, ed., The Persistence of History: Cinema, Television, and the Modern Event (New York and London: Routledge, 1996), 201-218.
  • "Does a Filmic Writing of History Exist?" History and Theory, 41 (No. 4, Dec. 2002), 134-44.
  • "Space for the Bird to Fly," in Sue Morgan et al eds., Manifestos for History (New York: Routledge, 2007), 11-18.
  • "The History Film as a Mode of Historical Thought," in Robert A Rosenstone and Constantin Parvulescu, eds, A Blackwell Companion to Historical Film (Oxford: Wiley - Blackwell, 2013), 71-87.