Welcome to the homepage of William D. Romanowski, Professor of Communication Arts & Sciences at Calvin College..

With a background in American culture studies, a field of inquiry marked by interdisciplinary methodologies, I've set out to chart the territory existing at the intersection of American Christianity, popular art and culture. More specifically, my research interests are centered on what was known for a long time in conservative Protestant circles as the "worldly amusements." Although I continue to write about popular art and culture, over the years my teaching, speaking engagements and research agenda has increasingly focused on the cinema.  

Currently I am working on a book tentatively entitled, Reforming Hollywood: American Protestants and the Movies, which is under contract with Oxford University Press. Although Protestantism was close to America’s cultural center well into the twentieth century, it is conspicuously absent in the scholarly literature on American film. My book corrects this oversight by exploring the historical interaction of these two dynamic American institutions—Protestantism and the film industry—engaged in a struggle over cultural power and the function of entertainment. Drawing on personal interviews and previously unexamined primary sources in film industry and church collections, this study will not just deepen our understanding of Hollywood-Protestant relations, but will shed new light on perennial issues in cinema history: the entanglement of free speech, censorship and media access; tensions between the industry’s drive to maximize profits and concerns about artistic quality and social responsibility; the status of film as an uncensored art and fears that the influence of the cinema has exceeded reasonable limits. Reforming Hollywood is an original historical exploration of events that go to the heart of the role of film and religion in a democratic, pluralistic society.

From the links above, you can link to material on my research and writing and find a biographical sketch and full curriculum vita as well as contact information.

Sometimes life is stranger than fiction. On The Tonight Show (May 6, 2009) host Jay Leno used my Eyes Wide Open book in a funny segment on "Amazon Worst Sellers." Leno called it "a fantastic book" and then held up another that "didn't do quite as well"--a book by Nancy Pelosi, Eyes Really Wide Open, with a cover photo of the "wide-eyed" Speaker of the House. Click on the image below to view the segment.

Communication Arts & Sciences, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, MI 49546 | 616.526.8527 | romw@calvin.edu

  [last updated 4.29.2009]