"The battlefield for this cultural conflict was no longer the foreign theater of the Pacific or the Atlantic, but rather the domestic theatre of primetime television itself as narrated by Lear and his fellow Hollywood subversives."
- L. B. Rolsky
About
L. Benjamin Rolsky received his PhD from Drew University in American Religious Studies. He has also received degrees from Yale University and Clairemont University. His work has appeared in a variety of academic and popular venues including Method and Theory in the Study of Religion and the Journal of the American Academy of Religion as well as The Christian Century, The Los Angeles Review of Books, CNN Opinion, and the Religion and Culture Forum at the University of Chicago. His research and teaching interests include religion and politics, the study of popular culture, and critical theory.
Rolsky’s first monograph, The Rise and Fall of the Religious Left: Politics, Television, and Popular Culture in the 1970s and Beyond, is forthcoming this Fall from Columbia University Press. Once complete, he plans to begin research on a second book project that examines the history of the New Christian Right across the 20th century.
Rolsky was born in Santa Monica, California, yet he spent most of his formative years in Whitefish, Montana. He attended Arizona State University as an undergraduate, and eventually finished his education with a PhD from Drew University in Madison, NJ.
Credit to @CarolineDeFelice for the above image
““L. Benjamin Rolsky intends to prod and provoke, and he does so through his sophisticated analysis of the effect of Lear’s work. This is a strong, important, and innovative work. The framing of Lear within the ‘politics of religious liberalism,’ the explanation of the creation and workings of a mainstream Protestantism that saw itself as a sort of caretaker of the nation, and the challenging and intellectually complex thesis pursued here all highly recommend this as an important work that should draw attention, discussion, and debate. ””
Some of What I've Achieved
2017 Columbia Seminars Warner Fund Recepient
2016 Became a Father to the most beautiful little girl: Audrey.
2015 Got married to my soulmate: Lindsey.
2014 Best Graduate Student Paper Prize, California Studies Association, Symposium on Religion in California, University of California, Berkeley
2014 Edwards-Mercer Prize for Dissertation Research, Drew University
2011 Goizueta Foundation Award for Academic Excellence, Hispanic Summer Program
2010 Dwight-Hooker Fellowship Recipient, Yale Divinity School
2006 Best Concurrent Major, Religious Studies and History, Arizona State University