Professor Wins Award for Book on Hollywood

Calvin College Communication Arts and Sciences professor Bill Romanowski is the recipient of the Religious Communication Association’s 2013 Book of the Year award for his work Reforming Hollywood.

Romanowski was presented with the award on Nov. 22, 2013 at the National Communication Association Meeting in Washington D.C.

“I am deeply honored to receive this respected award from an interfaith academic society that values interdisciplinary study of religion and communication,” said Romanowski.

Published in 2012 by Oxford University Press, Romanowski’s book examines the relationship between Protestant church organizations and the film industry and “shows how a broad spectrum of religious forces have played a role in Hollywood.”

“Drawing on personal interviews and previously untouched sources, he describes how mainline church leaders lobbied filmmakers to promote the nation’s moral health and, perhaps surprisingly, how they have by and large opposed government censorship, preferring instead self-regulation by both industry and individual sources,” reads part of the book summary on Amazon.com

“My writing this book was motivated by a quest to sort out the role Protestants played in the history of the American cinema and, as I suspected, to offer a corrective to the mistaken impression that Protestants were censorial as film histories typically cast them,” said Romanowski.

“I offered a more nuanced picture, showing instead that Protestant reform strategies centered on the tension between the film industry’s concern with profit making and the church’s concern to protect civil liberties and the public welfare.”

Romanowski took on this project thanks in part to the research fellowships and grants he received from the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship and the Calvin Alumni Association.

The initial funding helped him get started and to put together a proposal, which led to him being awarded the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Fellowship and Faculty Research Award in 2009-2010.

Numerous film historians and Christian scholars endorse the book.

“In this authoritative account, Romanowski reveals how Hollywood’s relationship with the Protestant establishment was crucial to debates around film regulation, and charts the erosion of its influence in post-war years. This is a well-told story, with perspectives and information in every chapter,” wrote Richard Maltby, a prominent film scholar.