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. My specific research interests are in film history, investigating the relation of religious communities and the movies, which were for a long time regarded by conservative Protestants as one of the "worldly amusements."

It's been a long journey, more than a decade in process involving research in over 15 archival collections, and now my book with Oxford University Press, Reforming Hollywood: How American Protestants Fought for Freedom at the Movies, is in production. Expected publication is July 2012. This study is the first sustatined historical treatment of Protestant engagement with the film industry. 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, 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.

Using the links above, you can access 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 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 9.1.2010]