Robert A. Rosenstone

Robert A. Rosenstone, Professor Emeritus of History at the California Institute of Technology, is a leading figure in the field devoted to studying the relationship between film and history. He has written two books on the topic, Visions of the Past: the Challenge of Film to Our Idea of History (Harvard, 1995), and History on Film / Film on History (Pearson, 2006, 2nd edition 2011), and has edited a breakthrough collection of essays, Revisioning History: Film and the Construction of a New Past (Princeton, 1995). More recently he has served as chief editor for The Blackwell Companion to Historical Film (Blackwell, 2013) , an anthology of original essays by scholars from around the world. Rosenstone has participated in the production of several films, both dramatic features and documentaries. His award winning biography of John Reed, Romantic Revolutionary (Knopf, 1975) was used in part as the basis for the Academy Award winning Reds, on which he worked as consultant. Other film involvements include his writing of the narration for a documentary on the Spanish Civil War entitled The Good Fight (1983), and time spent as consultant and / or Talking Head for several films, including Darrow; Tango of Slaves; Screening Histories: The Filmmaker Strikes Back; Rebels; and Emma Goldman: A Troublesome Presence. Rosenstone is also the author of two novels, King of Odessa: A Novel of Isaac Babel (Northwestern, 2004) and Red Star, Crescent Moon: A Muslim - Jewish Love Story (Scarith, 2010), and one book of poetry, Do People Look Up at the Moon Anymore? (Sharq Press, 2015)/ His innovative memoir, Adventures of a Postmodern Historian, was [published in 2016 by Bloomsbury. Rosenstone's works of narrative history include Crusade of the Left: The Lincoln Battalion in the Spanish Civil War (Pegasus, 1969), Romantic Revolutionary: A Biography of John Reed (Knopf, 1975), and Mirror in the Shrine: American Encounters with Meiji Japan (Harvard, 1988). He has published two works of imaginative writing, a book of stories entitled, The Man Who Swam Into History (Texas, 2005), and a historical novel, King of Odessa (Northwestern, 2003). His second novel, Red Star, Crescent Moon, was published in September, 2010. Rosenstone is the Founding Editor of Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice, and in 1989 created the first film section for the American Historical Review. He has been a visiting professor at Oxford University, the University of Manchester, the University of Barcelona, the European University Institute (Florence), Kyushu University (Japan), the University of La Laguna (Canary Islands), and Tolima University (Colombia). His fellowships include four from the National Endowment for the Humanities, three from the Fulbright program, and he has been a research fellow at both the East-West Center (Honolulu) and the Getty Research Institute. May 2010