Theodore Roszak (scholar)

For the sculptor and painter, see Theodore Roszak (artist).

Theodore Roszak
File:Theodore Roszak late 1960s.jpg Roszak, late 1960s
Born	November 15, 1933 Chicago, Illinois
Died	Berkeley, California
Occupation	Author, historian, professor
Nationality	United States
Subject	History Counterculture of the 1960s
Notable works	The Making of a Counter Culture
Spouse	Betty Roszak

Theodore Roszak (November 15, 1933 – July 5, 2011) was a United States academic who ended his career as Professor Emeritus of history at California State University, East Bay. He is best known for his 1969 text, The Making of a Counter Culture.

Background

Roszak received his B.A. from UCLA and PhD in History from Princeton University. He taught at Stanford University, the University of British Columbia, and San Francisco State University before joining Cal State Hayward. During the 1960s, he lived in London, where he edited the newspaper Peace News. He was featured prominently in the "Alternative Lifestyles in California" episode of the 1977 BBC television series, The Long Search.

Theodore Roszak died at age 77 at his home in Berkeley, California on July 5, 2011.

Scholarship

Roszak first came to public prominence in 1969, with the publication of his The Making of a Counter Culture which chronicled and gave explanation to the European and North American counterculture of the 1960s. He is generally credited with the first use of the term "counterculture".

Other books include Longevity Revolution: As Boomers Become Elders, The Voice of the Earth (Touchstone Books), Person/Planet, The Cult of Information, The Gendered Atom: Reflections on the Sexual Psychology of Science and the anthology Ecopsychology: Healing the Mind, Restoring the Earth, co-edited with Mary Gomes and Allen Kanner. With his wife Betty, he was co-editor of the anthology Masculine/Feminine: Essays on Sexual Mythology and the Liberation of Women.

His fiction includes a cult novel on the "secret history" of the cinema Flicker (Simon and Schuster, Bantam Books and Chicago Review Press) and the award-winning Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein (Random House and Bantam Books). His most recent novel, published in 2003, is The Devil and Daniel Silverman.

Awards and honors

• New York Open Center in 1999 for his "Prescient and Influential Analysis of American Culture"
• Guggenheim Fellow and was twice nominated for the National Book Award.
• Tiptree Award for The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein

Scholarship

Non-fiction

• The Dissenting Academy (1968)
• The Making of a Counter Culture (1969)
• Masculine/Feminine: Readings in Sexual Mythology and the Liberation of Women (1969)
• Where the Wasteland Ends (1972)
• Sources (1972)
• Unfinished Animal: The Aquarian Frontier and the Evolution of Consciousness (1975)
• Person/Planet: The Creative Disintegration of Industrial Society (1979)
• From Satori to Silicon Valley (1986)
• The Cult of Information (1986)
• Fool's Cycle/Full Cycle (1988) ISBN 0-931191-07-6
• The Voice of the Earth (1992); 2nd edition (2001), Phanes Press, ISBN 978-1890482800
• The Gendered Atom (1999)
• Kanner, Roszak, & Gomes. Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind. Sierra Club Books (1995) ISBN 0-87156-406-8
• World Beware! American Triumphalism in an Age of Terror (2006, ISBN 1-897071-02-7)
• The Making of an Elder Culture: Reflections on the Future of America's Most Audacious Generation. (2009) New Society Publishers. ISBN 978-0-86571-661-2

Essays

• "Birth of an Old Generation"
• "When the Counterculture Counted
• "Raging Against the Machine: In its '1984' Commercial, Apple Suggested that its Computers Would Smash Big Brother. But Technology Gave Him More Control." Los Angeles Times, January 28, 2004.

Fiction

• Pontifex (1974)
• Bugs (1981)
• Dreamwatcher (1985)
• Flicker (1991)
• The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein (1995)
• The Devil and Daniel Silverman (2003)

Sources

• Fantastic Fiction

External links

• ""Social critic and professor Theodore Roszak wrote The Making of a Counter Culture in 1968" – PBS
• "Flashing back to Woodstock" – CNN
• Interview on Forum (KQED)
• Interview
• Maclean's Interview: Theodore Roszak: The Making of an Elder Culture by Anne Kingston. August 20, 2009