Roszak was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1933 to Anton and Blanche Roszak.[2] His parents were Roman Catholic; his father was a cabinet maker and his mother was a homemaker.[2] Roszak attended Chicago public schools.[2]
Theodore Roszak died at age 77 at his home in Berkeley, California, on July 5, 2011.[8]
Scholarshipedit
Roszak first came to public prominence in 1969, with the publication of his The Making of a Counter Culture[9] 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".[10][11][12][13] According to historian Todd Gitlin, "People were trying to figure out, 'What is this thing that has come upon us?' He named it".[14]
Other books include Where the Wasteland Ends,[15][16][17]The Voice of the Earth (in which he coined the term for the budding field of Ecopsychology),[18][19]Person/Planet,[20]The Cult of Information,[21][22][23]The Gendered Atom: Reflections on the Sexual Psychology of Science,[24] and Longevity Revolution: As Boomers Become Elders.[25] He also co-edited (with Mary Gomes and Allen Kanner) the anthology Ecopsychology: Healing the Mind, Restoring the Earth,[26] and (with his wife Betty) the anthology Masculine/Feminine: Essays on Sexual Mythology and the Liberation of Women.
Fictionedit
His fiction includes a cult novel on the "secret history" of the cinema titled Flicker (Simon and Schuster, Bantam Books and Chicago Review Press) and the award-winning Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein (Random House and Bantam Books).[27][28][29] In a 1995 interview with Publishers Weekly, Roszak said, "For me, nonfiction was a detour I took on the way to fiction," and "But writing fiction is like working without a net, and it took me a long time to write something that was good enough to be published. When opportunities to write nonfiction came along, I took them. [...] But if things had turned out the way I wanted, I would always have been a novelist."[30] His final novel, published in 2003, is The Devil and Daniel Silverman.[31]
Awards and honorsedit
New York Open Center in 1999 for his "Prescient and Influential Analysis of American Culture"
The Voice of the Earth (1992); 2nd edition (2001), Phanes Press, ISBN 978-1890482800
The Cult of Information: A Neo-Luddite Treatise on High Tech, Artificial Intelligence, and the True Art of Thinking (1994) 2nd edition
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
Essaysedit
"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.
^ abcdefgPatrick S. Smith (January 1, 2003). "Theodore Roszak". In O'Neill, William L.; Jackson, Kenneth T. (eds.). The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives, Thematic Series: The 1960s. Charles Scribner's Sons. Retrieved April 4, 2022.
^Roszak, Theodore Matthew (1959). Thomas Cromwell and the Henrican reformation.
^Fountain, Nigel (1988). Underground: the London Alternative Press, 1966–74. Taylor & Francis. p. 12. ISBN 0-415-00728-3
^"Theodore Roszak". Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors. Gale. August 12, 2011. Retrieved April 4, 2022.
^ ab"Stanford Humanities Lab". Stanford University. Archived from the original on September 4, 2007. Retrieved May 11, 2008.
^"Computing and Counterculture". Stanford University. Archived from the original on March 22, 2010. Retrieved May 11, 2008.
^Martin, Douglas (July 12, 2011). "Theodore Roszak, '60s Expert, Dies at 77". The New York Times.
^Woo, Elaine (July 14, 2011). "Theodore Roszak dies at 77; scholar coined the term 'counterculture'". Chicago Tribune. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved April 4, 2022.
^Homberger, Eric (July 28, 2011). "Obituary: Theodore Roszak: US observer of social change, he coined the term 'counterculture'". The Guardian. Retrieved April 4, 2022 – via Gale.
^"Theodore Roszak; Historian who coined 'counterculture' to describe the flower power movement and became a tireless champion of environmentalism". The Times. NI Syndication Limited. July 27, 2011. Retrieved April 4, 2022 – via Gale.
^"Theodore Roszak coined counterculture label". Guelph Mercury. Associated Press. July 15, 2011. Retrieved April 4, 2022 – via Gale.
^Wade, Nicholas (December 1, 1972). "Theodore Roszak: Visionary Critic of Science". Science. 178 (4064). American Association for the Advancement of Science: 960–962. Bibcode:1972Sci...178..960W. doi:10.1126/science.178.4064.960. JSTOR 1735702. PMID 17774504. Retrieved April 4, 2022.
^Blumberg, Paul (1973). "Where the Wasteland Ends: Politics and Transcendence in Postindustrial Society. Theodore Roszak". Contemporary Sociology. 2 (6). American Sociological Association: 591–595. doi:10.2307/2062444. JSTOR 2062444. Retrieved April 4, 2022.
^Schwarz, Walter (March 20, 1993). "Books: Mind over matter in a mad world - Theodore Roszak, historian of counterculture, has identified the ultimate Green discipline, says Walter Schwarz / Eco psychology". The Guardian. Retrieved April 4, 2022 – via Gale.
^Hannon, Jamie (October 2003). "Reviewed Work: The Voice of the Earth: An Exploration of Ecopsychology (2nd Edition) by Theodore Roszak". Natural Areas Journal. 23 (4). Natural Areas Association: 373–374. JSTOR 43912269. Retrieved April 4, 2022.
^Johnson, Gregory (March 1981). "Reviewed Work: Person/Planet: The Creative Disintegration of Industrial Society by Theodore Roszak". Contemporary Sociology. 10 (2): 327–328. doi:10.2307/2066984. JSTOR 2066984. Retrieved April 4, 2022.
^"Reviewed Work: The Cult of Information: The Folklore of Computers and the True Art of Thinking by Theodore Roszak". The Wilson Quarterly. 10 (4): 155. Autumn 1986. JSTOR 40257076. Retrieved April 4, 2022.
^Lovell, Bernard (July 1987). "Reviewed Work: THE CULT OF INFORMATION: The Folklore of Computers and the True Art of Thinking by Theodore Roszak". Journal of the Royal Society of Arts. 135 (5372): 612–613. JSTOR 41374362. Retrieved April 4, 2022.
^Robins, Kevin (1987). "The Cult of Information: The Folklore of Computers and the True Art of Thinking Theodore Roszak". Sociology. 21 (3): 495–496. doi:10.1177/0038038587021003030. JSTOR 42854023. S2CID 220676418. Retrieved April 4, 2022.
^"THE GENDERED ATOM: Reflections on the Sexual Psychology of Science". Publishers Weekly. 246 (41). October 11, 1999. Retrieved April 4, 2022 – via Gale.
^Losos, Joseph (September 13, 1998). "Boomers Glide into their Golden Years Theodore Roszak Presents a Largely Rosy Vision of the Future as the Counter-Culture Generation Grows Gray". St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Retrieved April 4, 2022 – via Gale.
^Blakemore, Peter (Winter 1998). "Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind by Theodore Roszak, Mary E. Gomes, Allen D. Kanner". Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. 5 (1). Oxford University Press: 138–139. doi:10.1093/isle/5.1.138. JSTOR 44085560. Retrieved April 4, 2022.
^Van Leeuwen, Jan (July 2010). "Theodore Roszak's the Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein: A Countercultural Perspective on Alchemy, Gender and the Scientific Revolution". DQR Studies in Literature. 47 (1): 449–466 – via EBSCOhost.
^Thomas, Joan (June 3, 1995). "The Thomas Review Frankenstein benefits from facelift Female characters spring to life in Roszak's modern version of Shelley classic". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved April 4, 2022 – via Gale.
^"The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein". Publishers Weekly. 242 (11). March 13, 1995. Retrieved April 4, 2022 – via Gale.
^Maclay, Catherine (April 24, 1995). "Theodore Roszak: the monster in the laboratory". Publishers Weekly. 242 (17). Retrieved April 4, 2022.
^Salvadori, T.R. (January 1, 2003). "The Devil and Daniel Silverman (Book)". Library Journal. 128 (1) – via EBSCOhost.
^Cebik, L. B. (Fall 1970). "Reviewed Work: The Dissenting Academy by Theodore Roszak". The Georgia Review. 24 (3): 376–379. JSTOR 41396748. Retrieved April 4, 2022.
^Moore, W. G. (1973). "The Dissenting Academy Theodore Roszak". The Modern Language Review. 68 (1): 134–136. doi:10.2307/3726213. JSTOR 3726213. Retrieved April 4, 2022.