Theodore Roszak (scholar)

Roszak was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1933 to Anton and Blanche Roszak.{{cite book |author1=Patrick S. Smith |editor1-last=O'Neill |editor1-first=William L. |editor2-last=Jackson |editor2-first=Kenneth T. |title=The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives, Thematic Series: The 1960s |date=January 1, 2003 |publisher=Charles Scribner's Sons |url=https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/K3436600512/BIC?u=wikipedia&sid=bookmark-BIC&xid=2b192183 |access-date=4 April 2022 |chapter=Theodore Roszak}} The name Roszak is of Polish origin. His parents were Roman Catholic; his father was a cabinet maker and his mother was a homemaker. Roszak attended Chicago public schools.

Roszak completed his B.A. from University of California, Los Angeles in 1955.{{cite web |last1=Ball |first1=Terence |title=Theodore Roszak |url=https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/EJ3018100100/BIC?u=wikipedia&sid=bookmark-BIC&xid=e7adbcc5 |website=Environmental Encyclopedia |publisher=Gale |access-date=4 April 2022 |date=2003}} He then received his Ph.D. in history from Princeton University in 1958 after completing a doctoral dissertation titled "Thomas Cromwell and the Henrican reformation."{{Cite book|last=Roszak|first=Theodore Matthew|url=https://catalog.princeton.edu/catalog/2845994|title=Thomas Cromwell and the Henrican reformation|date=1959|language=English}}

His academic career began by teaching at Stanford University from 1958 to 1963 before joining Cal State Hayward. During the 1960s, he lived in London, where he edited the newspaper Peace News from 1964 to 1965.Fountain, Nigel (1988). Underground: the London Alternative Press, 1966–74. Taylor & Francis. p. 12. {{ISBN|0-415-00728-3}} He also taught as a visiting professor at San Francisco State University in 1981 and Schumacher College in 1991.{{cite web |title=Theodore Roszak |url=https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/H1000085161/BIC?u=wikipedia&sid=bookmark-BIC&xid=aa043734 |website=Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors |publisher=Gale |access-date=4 April 2022 |date=August 12, 2011}}{{cite web|url=http://shl.stanford.edu/about/events/fuller_conversations_2003.html |title=Stanford Humanities Lab |access-date=2008-05-11 |publisher=Stanford University |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070904020308/http://shl.stanford.edu/about/events/fuller_conversations_2003.html |archive-date=September 4, 2007 }} He was featured prominently in the "Alternative Lifestyles in California" episode of the 1977 BBC television series, The Long Search.

His writing career began in 1966 when he started contributing to The Nation and The Atlantic.

Theodore Roszak died at age 77 at his home in Berkeley, California, on July 5, 2011.{{cite news | url=http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/tgladysz/detail?entry_id=92855 | title = Theodore Roszak (1933–2011) | access-date = 2011-07-11 | publisher=San Francisco Chronicle | date=July 1, 2009}}

Roszak first came to public prominence in 1969, with the publication of his The Making of a Counter Culture{{cite web|url=http://library.stanford.edu/mac/counter.html|title=Computing and Counterculture|access-date=2008-05-11|publisher=Stanford University|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100322205441/http://library.stanford.edu/mac/counter.html|archive-date=March 22, 2010|df=mdy-all}} 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".{{cite news| url=https://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/13/books/theodore-roszak-60s-scholar-dies-at-77.html | work=The New York Times | first=Douglas | last=Martin | title=Theodore Roszak, '60s Expert, Dies at 77 | date=July 12, 2011}}{{cite news |last1=Woo |first1=Elaine |title=Theodore Roszak dies at 77; scholar coined the term 'counterculture' |url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/obituaries/la-me-theodore-roszak-20110713-story.html |access-date=4 April 2022 |work=Chicago Tribune |agency=Los Angeles Times |date=July 14, 2011}}{{cite news |last1=Homberger |first1=Eric |title=Obituary: Theodore Roszak: US observer of social change, he coined the term 'counterculture' |url=https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A262703154/STND?u=wikipedia&sid=ebsco&xid=fa6bfd50 |access-date=4 April 2022 |work=The Guardian |date=July 28, 2011|via=Gale}}{{cite news |title=Theodore Roszak; Historian who coined 'counterculture' to describe the flower power movement and became a tireless champion of environmentalism |url=https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A262580179/AONE?u=wikipedia&sid=ebsco&xid=a9ce8e92 |access-date=4 April 2022 |work=The Times |agency=NI Syndication Limited |date=July 27, 2011|via=Gale}} According to historian Todd Gitlin, "People were trying to figure out, 'What is this thing that has come upon us?' He named it".{{cite news |title=Theodore Roszak coined counterculture label |url=https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A261356089/STND?u=wikipedia&sid=ebsco&xid=1bd2100b |access-date=4 April 2022 |work=Guelph Mercury |agency=Associated Press |date=July 15, 2011|via=Gale}}

Other books include Where the Wasteland Ends,{{cite journal |last1=Wade |first1=Nicholas |title=Theodore Roszak: Visionary Critic of Science |journal=Science |date=December 1, 1972 |volume=178 |issue=4064 |pages=960–962 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1735702 |access-date=4 April 2022 |publisher=American Association for the Advancement of Science|doi=10.1126/science.178.4064.960 |jstor=1735702 |pmid=17774504 |bibcode=1972Sci...178..960W |url-access=subscription }}{{cite journal |last1=Blumberg |first1=Paul |title=Where the Wasteland Ends: Politics and Transcendence in Postindustrial Society. Theodore Roszak |journal=Contemporary Sociology |date=1973 |volume=2 |issue=6 |pages=591–595 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2062444 |access-date=4 April 2022 |publisher=American Sociological Association|doi=10.2307/2062444 |jstor=2062444 |url-access=subscription }}{{cite journal |last1=Erlich |first1=John L. |title=Where the Wasteland Ends Theodore Roszak |journal=Social Work |date=1973 |volume=18 |issue=3 |page=123 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/23710896 |access-date=4 April 2022 |publisher=Oxford University Press |jstor=23710896 }} The Voice of the Earth (in which he coined the term for the budding field of Ecopsychology),{{cite news |last1=Schwarz |first1=Walter |title=Books: Mind over matter in a mad world - Theodore Roszak, historian of counterculture, has identified the ultimate Green discipline, says Walter Schwarz / Eco psychology |url=https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A170932266/STND?u=wikipedia&sid=ebsco&xid=f7c60421 |access-date=4 April 2022 |work=The Guardian |date=March 20, 1993|via=Gale}}{{cite journal |last1=Hannon |first1=Jamie |title=Reviewed Work: The Voice of the Earth: An Exploration of Ecopsychology (2nd Edition) by Theodore Roszak |journal=Natural Areas Journal |date=October 2003 |volume=23 |issue=4 |pages=373–374 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/43912269 |access-date=4 April 2022 |publisher=Natural Areas Association|jstor=43912269 }} Person/Planet,{{cite journal |last1=Johnson |first1=Gregory |title=Reviewed Work: Person/Planet: The Creative Disintegration of Industrial Society by Theodore Roszak |journal=Contemporary Sociology |date=March 1981 |volume=10 |issue=2 |pages=327–328 |doi=10.2307/2066984 |jstor=2066984 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2066984 |access-date=4 April 2022|url-access=subscription }} The Cult of Information,{{cite journal |title=Reviewed Work: The Cult of Information: The Folklore of Computers and the True Art of Thinking by Theodore Roszak |journal=The Wilson Quarterly |date=Autumn 1986 |volume=10 |issue=4 |page=155 |jstor=40257076 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40257076 |access-date=4 April 2022}}{{cite journal |last1=Lovell |first1=Bernard |title=Reviewed Work: THE CULT OF INFORMATION: The Folklore of Computers and the True Art of Thinking by Theodore Roszak |journal=Journal of the Royal Society of Arts |date=July 1987 |volume=135 |issue=5372 |pages=612–613 |jstor=41374362 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41374362 |access-date=4 April 2022}}{{cite journal |last1=Robins |first1=Kevin |title=The Cult of Information: The Folklore of Computers and the True Art of Thinking Theodore Roszak |journal=Sociology |date=1987 |volume=21 |issue=3 |pages=495–496 |doi=10.1177/0038038587021003030 |jstor=42854023 |s2cid=220676418 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/42854023 |access-date=4 April 2022|url-access=subscription }} The Gendered Atom: Reflections on the Sexual Psychology of Science,{{cite journal |title=THE GENDERED ATOM: Reflections on the Sexual Psychology of Science |journal=Publishers Weekly |date=October 11, 1999 |volume=246 |issue=41 |url=https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A56479349/BIC?u=wikipedia&sid=bookmark-BIC&xid=4e5ef1af |access-date=4 April 2022|via=Gale}} and Longevity Revolution: As Boomers Become Elders.{{cite news |last1=Losos |first1=Joseph |title=Boomers Glide into their Golden Years Theodore Roszak Presents a Largely Rosy Vision of the Future as the Counter-Culture Generation Grows Gray |url=https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A56370146/STND?u=wikipedia&sid=ebsco&xid=f6634c0e |access-date=4 April 2022 |work=St. Louis Post-Dispatch |date=September 13, 1998|via=Gale}} He also co-edited (with Mary Gomes and Allen Kanner) the anthology Ecopsychology: Healing the Mind, Restoring the Earth,{{cite journal |last1=Blakemore |first1=Peter |title=Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind by Theodore Roszak, Mary E. Gomes, Allen D. Kanner |journal=Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment |date=Winter 1998 |volume=5 |issue=1 |pages=138–139 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/44085560 |access-date=4 April 2022 |publisher=Oxford University Press|doi=10.1093/isle/5.1.138 |jstor=44085560 |url-access=subscription }} and (with his wife Betty) the anthology Masculine/Feminine: Essays on Sexual Mythology and the Liberation of Women.

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).{{cite journal |last1=Van Leeuwen |first1=Jan |title=Theodore Roszak's the Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein: A Countercultural Perspective on Alchemy, Gender and the Scientific Revolution |journal=DQR Studies in Literature |date=July 2010 |volume=47 |issue=1 |pages=449–466|via=EBSCOhost}}{{cite news |last1=Thomas |first1=Joan |title=The Thomas Review Frankenstein benefits from facelift Female characters spring to life in Roszak's modern version of Shelley classic |url=https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A163507461/BIC?u=wikipedia&sid=bookmark-BIC&xid=793d59aa |access-date=4 April 2022 |work=The Globe and Mail |date=June 3, 1995|via=Gale}}{{cite journal |title=The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein |journal=Publishers Weekly |date=March 13, 1995 |volume=242 |issue=11 |url=https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A16656417/BIC?u=wikipedia&sid=bookmark-BIC&xid=c9384ada |access-date=4 April 2022|via=Gale}} 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."{{cite journal |last1=Maclay |first1=Catherine |title=Theodore Roszak: the monster in the laboratory |journal=Publishers Weekly |date=April 24, 1995 |volume=242 |issue=17 |url=https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A16860140/BIC?u=wikipedia&sid=bookmark-BIC&xid=e7b8434d |access-date=4 April 2022}} His final novel, published in 2003, is The Devil and Daniel Silverman.{{cite journal |last1=Salvadori |first1=T.R. |title=The Devil and Daniel Silverman (Book) |journal=Library Journal |date=January 1, 2003 |volume=128 |issue=1|via=EBSCOhost}}

• New York Open Center in 1999 for his "Prescient and Influential Analysis of American Culture"
• Guggenheim Fellow and was twice nominated for the National Book Award.
• 1995 Tiptree Award for The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein
• 2009 Grand prix de l'Imaginaire for Foreign Language Novel, The Crystal Child: A Story of the Buried Life

• The Dissenting Academy (1968){{cite journal |last1=Cebik |first1=L. B. |title=Reviewed Work: The Dissenting Academy by Theodore Roszak |journal=The Georgia Review |date=Fall 1970 |volume=24 |issue=3 |pages=376–379 |jstor=41396748 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41396748 |access-date=4 April 2022}}{{cite journal |last1=Hymes |first1=Dell |title=Responsibilities of Dissent |journal=Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists |date=November 1968 |volume=24 |issue=9 |pages=29–34|doi=10.1080/00963402.1968.11457734 }}{{cite journal |last1=Moore |first1=W. G. |title=The Dissenting Academy Theodore Roszak |journal=The Modern Language Review |date=1973 |volume=68 |issue=1 |pages=134–136 |doi=10.2307/3726213 |jstor=3726213 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3726213 |access-date=4 April 2022|url-access=subscription }}
• The Making of a Counter Culture (1969)
• Masculine/Feminine: Readings in Sexual Mythology and the Liberation of Women (1969)
• Where the Wasteland Ends (1972)
• Sources (1972)
• Unfinished Animal: The Aquarian Frontier and the Evolution of Consciousness (1975){{cite journal |last1=Graham |first1=Ronnie |title=Unfinished Animal Theodore Roszak |journal=Fortnight |date=1977 |volume=155 |page=17 |jstor=25546421 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25546421}}
• Person/Planet: The Creative Disintegration of Industrial Society (1979)
• From Satori to Silicon Valley (1986)
• {{cite book|title=The Cult of Information: The Folklore of Computers and the True Art of Thinking|year=1986|isbn=9780520085848|url=https://archive.org/details/cultofinformatio00rosz|last1=Roszak|first1=Theodore|publisher=University of California Press }}
• Fool's Cycle/Full Cycle (1988) {{ISBN|0-931191-07-6}}
• 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}}

• "[https://web.archive.org/web/20080514151905/http://usinfo.state.gov/journals/itsv/0699/ijse/roszak.htm Birth of an Old Generation]"
• "[http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2001/12/23/RV150757.DTL&type=printable When the Counterculture Counted]
• "[https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-jan-28-oe-roszak28-story.html 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.

• Pontifex (1974)
• Bugs (1981)
• Dreamwatcher (1985)
• Flicker (1991)
• The Memoirs of Elizabeth Frankenstein (1995)
• The Devil and Daniel Silverman (2003) Leapfrog. {{ISBN|0-9679520-7-7}}
• The Crystal Child: A Story of the Buried Life (2013). {{Abbr|Posth.|Published posthumously}}

{{reflist}}

• [http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/r/theodore-roszak/ Fantastic Fiction]

{{wikiquote}}

• "[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/love/sfeature/back_03.html "Social critic and professor Theodore Roszak wrote The Making of a Counter Culture in 1968]" – PBS
• [http://edition.cnn.com/2004/US/08/13/twih.woodstock/index.html "Flashing back to Woodstock]" – CNN
• [http://www.kqed.org/epArchive/R602231000 Interview] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081010145601/http://www.kqed.org/epArchive/R602231000 |date=October 10, 2008 }} on Forum (KQED)
• [http://www.williamjames.com/transcripts/roszak.htm Interview]
• Maclean's [http://www.macleans.ca/tag/the-making-of-an-elder-culture/ Interview: Theodore Roszak]: The Making of an Elder Culture by Anne Kingston. August 20, 2009
• [https://apocalypse-confidential.com/2022/11/15/the-exegesis-of-theodore-roszak/ "The Exegesis of Theodore Roszak"] - Apocalypse Confidential

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Category:1933 births

Category:2011 deaths

Category:20th-century American novelists

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Category:American male novelists

Category:American pacifists

Category:American sociologists

Category:Neo-Luddites

Category:San Francisco State University faculty

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Category:20th-century American male writers

Category:21st-century American male writers