Steven J. Ross—Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics The Provost’s Writers Series
Visions and Voices
Summary:
Steven J. Ross, a professor of history at USC, will talk about his most recent book, Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics, which received the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Film Scholars Award and a Pulitzer Prize nomination.
Description:
Steven J. Ross is a professor of history at USC and co-director of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities. He is the author of several books, including Working-Class Hollywood: Silent Film and the Shaping of Class in America (named by the Los Angeles Times as one of the Best Books of 1998) and Movies and American Society. He will talk about his most recent book, Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics, which received the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Film Scholars Award (the academic equivalent of an Oscar) and a Pulitzer Prize nomination. USC Provost Elizabeth Garrett will introduce the evening, followed by a conversation with Ross moderated by Marty Kaplan, the Norman Lear Chair in Entertainment, Media and Society and Director of the Norman Lear Center.
In Hollywood Left and Right, Ross tells a story about the emergence of Hollywood as a vital center of political life and the important role that movie stars have played in shaping the course of American politics. Ever since the film industry relocated to Hollywood early in the twentieth century, it has had an outsize influence on American politics. Through a discussion of compelling larger-than-life figures in American cinema, like Charlie Chaplin, Louis B. Mayer, Edward G. Robinson, George Murphy, Ronald Reagan, Harry Belafonte, Jane Fonda, Charlton Heston, Warren Beatty and Arnold Schwarzenegger, Hollywood Left and Right reveals how the film industry’s engagement in politics has been longer, deeper and more varied than most people would imagine.
“Hollywood Left and Right is nonfiction at its best: entertaining and engaging, probing and provocative, detailed and comprehensive in coverage, multifaceted and far-ranging in its treatment, objective and balanced, appropriately paced in covering a complex, big story.”—Stephen Roulac, New York Journal of Books.
The Provost’s Writers Series highlights the extraordinary talents of USC authors. The series provides opportunities for students and the community to engage with USC authors, learn about the incredible diversity of their work and celebrate the written word.
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Photo: Phil Channing