Ross CV
STEVEN JOSEPH ROSS 7/2018
History Department
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, Ca. 90089-0034
Curriculum Vitae
ACADEMIC BACKGROUND:
Ph.D. Princeton University June 1980
M.A. Princeton University June 1975
B. Phil. Oxford University June 1973
B.A. Columbia University June 1971
EMPLOYMENT EXPERIENCE:
Full Professor Univ. of Southern Ca. 9/94 - present
Director Casden Institute…Jewish Life8/15 - present
Co-Director Casden Institute…Jewish Life8/14 – 8/15
Co-Director L.A. Institute for the Humanities, 7/98 - 8/14
Associate Professor Univ. of Southern Ca. 9/84 - 8/94
Assistant Professor Univ. of Southern Ca. 9/78 - 8/84
Instructor Princeton University 9/77 - 6/78
Preceptor Princeton University 1/77 - 6/77
ACADEMIC AWARDS AND HONORS:
Winner of Disabled American Veterans’ BUGLE Award for 2018, DAV National Convention,
July 14, 2018, Reno, NV
Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America named a
Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History for 2018;on the Los Angeles TimesBestseller List for
14 weeks; named a “Buzz Book for Fall/Winter 2017” by PublishersLunch, May 16, 2017;
named by New York Post, as one of “The Most Thrilling and Fascinating Books of 2017,” Dec.
23, 2017; Financial Times Recommended Summer Reading, June 29, 2018; nominated for a
National Book Award
NEH Faculty Fellowship for Hitler in Los Angeles, January-December 2015
Editor, The Jewish Role in American Life: An Annual, Fall 2015-present
Myron and Marion Casden Director, Casden Institute for the Study of American Jewish Life,
Fall 2015-present
Finalist, Film Scholars Award, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Jan. 2014
Distinguished Visiting Professor, University of Paris 8, June 2013
Regular Interlocutor for “Academy Conversations,” a series of post-screening interviews with
personnel from films screened at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly
Hills, Ca., June 2012—2015
Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics, nominated for Pulitzer
Prize, Sept. 2011;Los Angeles Times Holiday Gift Guide Non-Fiction Selection for 2011;
New York Times, Recommended Summer Reading, June 3, 2012; Choice “Outstanding
Academic Title” for 2012
Distinguished Faculty Fellow, USC Dornsife College, Aug. 2011-May 2013
Faculty Fellow, Center for Excellence in Teaching, USC, Aug. 2011-Aug. 2014
Visiting Professor and Distinguished Lecturer, U.S. Studies Centre, University of Sydney, April
2011.
Juror, Pen/West Literary Award in Research Nonfiction, 2011 (for book of 2010)
Contributing Editor, Los Angeles Review of Books, Fall 2010-present
Co-Founder and Co-Director, Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, 7/98—8/15
Chair, History Department, 2003-2006, 2007-2010
USC Faculty Innovative Teaching Award, March 2010
Faculty Appreciation Award, Alpha Lamba Delta (USC), Oct. 19, 2006
Provost’s Arts and Humanities Award for “Visions and Voices Series” for 2009-10, March 2009
Provost’s Arts and Humanities Award for “Visions and Voices Series” for 2008-09, March 2008
Provost’s Arts and Humanities Award for “Visions and Voices Series” for 2007-08, March 2007
Provost’s Arts and Humanities Award for “Visions and Voices Series” for 2006-07, March 2006
USC General Education Teaching Award, Oct. 2005
Casden Institute Faculty Research Grant, “Hollywood, Jews, and Politics,” USC, 7/1/04-6/30/05
Nominated for Wayward Press Award for “21st Century Book-Burning,” Op-Ed piece, 10/04
Courtesy Appointment in the Division of Critical Studies, USC Cinema School, Fall 2002
Academy Film Scholars Award, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills,
November 2001
PI, Ahmanson Foundation Grant and Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation Grant to
hold conference, “Los Angeles At the Millennium: Identity and Community in the 21st Century
City,” USC, April 5-6, 2002
Judge, History Prize, Los Angles Times Annual Book Prize, two-year appointment, 2001-2002
USC Fund for Innovative Undergraduate Teaching Award for 2001-2002, 5/2001
Strickland Distinguished Visiting Scholar, Middle Tennessee State University, 10-11/2000
Theater Library Association Book Award for Working-Class Hollywood, May 1999
Working-Class Hollywood selected by Los Angeles Times as one the “Best Non-Fiction Books
of 1998’; nominated for Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award; chosen as Daily Variety,
"Lit[erary] Pick of the Week," Dec. 8, 1997; designated as "Book of Unusual Interest and
Merit” by Publisher's Weekly, Dec 8, 1997 (starred review)
Phi Kappa Phi Faculty Recognition Award for Working-Class Hollywood, March 1999
Elected to Membership in Phi Kappa Phi National Honor Society, May 1999
Named Distinguished Labor Lecturer for 1999, San Francisco State University Labor Research
and Archives Center, San Francisco (Keynote lecture, Feb. 26, 1999)
Albert S. Raubenheimer Award for Distinguished Research, Teaching, & Service, USC, 4/98
James Zumberge Research and Innovation Fund Grant, 9/98-1/99
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Research Grant, 6/97-6/99
President, Faculty Council of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, 5/97-5/98
Jumpstart Grant, Leavey Library, USC to develop a multimedia publication, 9/96-6/97
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation Research Grant, 6/96-6/98
Nominee, "Struggles For the Screen: Workers, Radicals, and the Political Uses of Silent Film,"
for ABC-CLIO Award, Organization of American Historians, for the best article in any field
of American History published in 1991-1992.
Covert Award in Mass Communication History (for best article of the year, “Struggles For the
Screen"), Assn for Eductn in Journalism & Mass Communication, Aug. 1992
Finalist, Kovacs Award (best article of 1991), Society of Cinema Studies, 6/92
USC Associates Award for Teaching Excellence, March 1992
USC Fund for Projects in Innovative Teaching Award, 6/91-8/91
Arnold and Lois Graves Award for Outstanding Accomplishment in Teaching in the
Humanities, awarded Dec. 1989 (for 1/91-6/91)
John R. and Dora Haynes Foundation Research Fellowship, 7/88-8/89
U.S.C. Faculty Research and Innovation Fund Award, 7/87-8/87
Burlington Northern Foundation Faculty Achievement Award for Outstanding Scholarship, 3/87
Phi Kappa Phi Faculty Recognition Award for Workers On the Edge, March 1987
Finalist, Frederick Jackson Turner Award (for best 1st book in American History),
Organization of American Historians, April 1986
Honored by City of Cincinnati with Proclamation Declaring October 28, 1985 “Dr. Steven Ross
Day" in Cincinnati
Huntington Library Research Fellowship, 6/85-9/85
Divisional Representative chosen to teach in special Irvine Foundation-USC graduate program
for High School History Teachers, Fall 1985
U.S.C. Social Science Division Distinguished Teaching Award, 9/83-6/84
U.S.C. Nominee, Howard Foundation Fellowship 11/83
U.S.C. University Scholar 1/83 - 1/84
Haynes Foundation Summer Research Fellowship 6/82 - 9/82
Shelby Cullom Davis Postdoctoral Fellowship (Princeton University) 9/81-6/82
N.E.H. Summer Research Fellowship 6/81 -9/81
Finalist, Allan Nevins Award (for best Ph.D. in American History for 1980)
Fletcher M. Green Award, Journal of Southern History (best article by graduate student) 11/80
Josephine de Karman Fellowship, 9/77 - 6/78
Elizabeth Procter Fellowship (for distinguished work in history) 9/76-6/78
Rockefeller Fellowship to attend the Family and Community Summer Training Institute in
Quantitative Methodology, Newberry Library, 6/76 - 7/76
Princeton University Fellowships 9/73 - 6/76
University of Oxford Research Fellowship 6/72 - 9/72
Sir Arthur Goodheart Fellowship 6/71
Columbia College Alumni Association Achievement Award 6/71
Runner Up, Eisenhower Award (Varsity athlete with highest GPA), Columbia University, 5/1971
PUBLICATIONS:
BOOKS:
Book in Progress: City of Hate, City of Myth: A Mother and Daughter Spy Team, Rising Anti-Semitism, and the Myth of the Good War
Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi and Fascist Plots Against Hollywood and America (Bloomsbury Press, 2017); currently in 4th printing; published in Chinese by Shanghai Insight Media; audio book version produced by Blackstone Audio.Website:
Series Editor, The Jewish Role in American Life: An Annual(Purdue University Press), Fall 2015-present
Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). Paperback edition April 2013. Being translated into Hungarian and published by Holnap Kiado, 2015. Documentary version of Hollywood Left and Right is being developed by Pacific Street Films.
Movies and American Society (Malden, MA & Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002). Revised and expanded 2nd edition published 2014.
Working-Class Hollywood: Silent Film and the Shaping of Class in America (PrincetonUniversity Press, 1998). Two printings in 1998; paperback edition, December 1999. Translated into Turkish, fall 2014
Workers On the Edge: Work, Leisure, and Politics in Industrializing Cincinnati, 1788-1890 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985). Paperback edition, June 1987; second printing June 1989. Re-issued by Figueroa Press, fall 2003
DOCUMENTARIES
Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics, optioned for 2-3 part documentary by Pacific Street Film Projects
Workers On the Edgeadapted to the screen in a documentary entitledThey Build the City: The Working People of Cincinnati, produced by the Sylvis Society (Cincinnati) and funded by the Ohio Humanities Council.
ARTICLES, OP-EDS, and BOOK CHAPTERS:
Short piece: “American Nazis Meet in Los Angeles, (July 26, 1933),”Moments in American History that Matter Today, TIME magazine, July 2018
Commentary on “Fast between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur to Protest Munich and Vietnam,” in David Myers, ed., The Eternal Dissident: Rabbi Leonard I. Beerman and the Radical Imperative to Think and Act(Los Angeles and Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018), 92-93.
Article: “When Hitler’s Henchmen Called the Shots in Hollywood,” Daily Beast, Dec. 3, 2017
Op-Ed: “The Hollywood Nazi Who Spied for America,” Washington Post, Oct. 25, 2017
Op-Ed: “How a network of citizen-spies foiled Nazi plots to exterminate Jews in 1930s L.A.,” Los Angeles Times, Oct. 8, 2017
Article: “When the Nazis Tried to Exterminate Hollywood,” Hollywood Reporter, Sept. 21, 2017
Profiled in “The Nazi Sites of Los Angeles: A walking tour of where the Fascists and Hitlerites Gathered in California,” Talk of the Town column, The New Yorker, Sept. 25, 2017
Editor, Themed issue, “From Shtel to Stardom: Jews and Hollywood,” Casden Annual:The Jewish Role in American Life series, Volume 14, 2017.
“Movie-Star Politics On and Off the Screen: Harry Belafonte, Jane Fonda, and Warren Beatty,” in Violaine Roussel and Anurima Banerji, eds. How Art Does Politics (New York and London: Routledge, 2016), 140-66.
Editor, Themed issue, “Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews in America” Casden Annual:The Jewish Role in American Life series, Volume 13, 2016
Letter to the Editor regarding David Denby review of Ben Urwand, “The Collaboration: Hollywood’s Pact With Hitler,” The New Yorker, September 16, 2014
Op-Ed, “At Issue: Are Hollywood Celebrities Politically out of Touch with Mainstream America?” CQ Researcher, May 11, 2012, p. 441,
“Five Reasons Hollywood Is Not a Bastion of Liberalism,” PostPolitics Blog, Washington Post, Feb 24, 2012,
“The Five Best Books on Political Hollywood,” Wall Street Journal, Dec. 10, 2011, online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203802204577066230173706086.html?KEYWORDS=Steven+J+Ross#
Slide Show/Article, “Hollywood’s Surprising Political History,” Huffington Post, Dec. 1, 2011,
Op-Ed, “Obama, Take a Page From Reagan,” Los Angeles Times, Oct. 14, 2011
“Hollywood Left and Right,” The Page 99 Test,” Sept. 6, 2011
page99test.blogspot.com/2011/09/steven-j-rosss-hollywood-left-and-right.html
“Hollywood, Right-Wing Powerhouse” Salon.com, August 31, 2011,
“Film and Labor,” Melvyn Dubofsky, ed., Oxford Encyclopedia of American Business, Labor, and Economic History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012)
“Social History of American Film,” Lynn Dumenil, ed., Oxford Encyclopedia of American Social History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012)
“Politics in American Film,” in Michael Kazin, ed., The Princeton Encyclopedia of U.S. Political History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 569-74.
“Big Government? Learning from the Past,” Huffington Post, January 28, 2009,
“The Next Agnew,” Op-Ed in Washington Independent, Sept. 15, 2008
“A New Democratic Coalition,” Washington Independent, Aug. 22, 2008
“Charlton Heston and Image Politics,” Huffington Post, April 10, 2008
“The Politicization of Hollywood Before World War II: Anti-Fascism, Anti-Communism, and Anti-Semitism,” The Jewish Role in American Life: An Annual Review, 5 (2007), 1-28.
“Jargon and the Crisis of Readability: Methodology, Language, and the Future of Film History,” Cinema Journal, 44 (Fall 2004), 130-33; part of special Forum: “In Focus: Film History, or a Baedeker Guide to the Historical Turn”
“21st Century Book-Burning,” Los Angeles Times, Op-Ed page, Oct. 13, 2004
“Confessions of a Nazi Spy: Warner Brothers, Anti-Fascism, and the Politicization of Hollywood,” in Warners' War: Politics, Pop Culture & Propaganda in Wartime Hollywood, ed. by Martin Kaplan, Johanna Blakley (Los Angeles: Norman Lear Center Press, 2004), 48-59.
“The Visual Politics of Class: Silent Film and the Public Sphere,” Film International 2, (2003), 44-50
“Hollywood, Jews, and America,” Reviews in American History 30 (Dec. 2002), 622-630
"How Hollywood Became Hollywood: Money, Politics, and Movies,” in William Deverell and Tom Sitton, eds., Metropolis in the Making: Los Angeles in the 1920s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 255-76
“American Workers, American Movies: Historiography and Methodology,” International Labor and Working-Class History, 59 (Spring 2001), 81-105
“Single-Tax Movement,” in Paul Boyer, ed., The Oxford Companion to United States History (Oxford University Press, 2001)
“The Seen, The Unseen, and the Obscene: Pre-Code Hollywood,” Reviews in American History, 28 (June 2000) 270-77
“A Journey of Discovery: Researching and Writing Working-Class Hollywood," Stanford Humanities Review, 7 (Winter 1999), 50-71
"The Revolt of the Audiences: Reconsidering Audiences and Reception During the Silent Era,” in Melvyn Stokes and Richard Maltby, eds, American Movie Audiences: From the Turn of the Century to the Sound Era (British Film Institute, 1999), 88-107
"Get Me Rewrite: Class Warfare on 'Titanic'," Los Angeles Times, January 4, 1998
"Beyond the Screen: History, Class, and the Movies," in David James and Rick Berg, eds., The Hidden Foundation: Cinema and the Question of Class (University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 26-55.
"Labor Politics and Silent Film," in Arizona International Film Festival: Celebrating the Film Centennial 1995.
"America’s Labor Day: The Dilemma of a Workers’ Celebration,” (co-authored with Michael Kazin) Journal of American History, 78 (March 1992), 1294-1323
"Struggles For the Screen: Workers, Radicals, and the Political Uses of Silent Film," American Historical Review, 96 (April 1991), 333-67
"Living For the Weekend: The Shorter Hours Movement in International Perspective,"Labour/Le Travail, 27 (Spring 1991), 267-82
"Cinema and Class Conflict: Labor, Capital, the State, and the Movies," in John Milton Cooper, Jr. and Charles E. Neu, eds., The Wilson Era: Essays In Honor of Arthur S. Link (Arlington Heights: Harlan Davidson, 1990), 83-121
"Labor, Ideology, Class, and Gender in the Early Republic: Essays From a SHEAR Symposium" and "The Transformation of Republican Ideology,” in Journal of the Early Republic, 10 (1990), 311-313, 323-331.
"The Unknown Hollywood," History Today 40, (April 1990), 40-46.
"Labor Day," in Los Angeles Business Journal, Sept. 1989, pp. 1, 3.
"We Who Built the Queen City,” Queen City Heritage, 47 (Summer 1989), 13-28
“’Objects of Charity': Poverty, Poor Relief, and the Rise of the Almshouse in Early Eighteenth-Century New York City," in William Pencek and Conrad Wright, eds., Authority and Resistance in Early New York (New York: New York Historical Society, 1988), pp. 138-72.
"The Politicization of the Working Class: Production, Ideology, Culture, and Politics in Late Nineteenth-Century Cincinnati," Social History, 11 (May 1986), 171-195
"Integrating Business History and Labor History," Business and Economic History, 15 (1986), 41-50 (with Edwin Perkins)
"Industrialization and the Changing Images of Progress in Nineteenth-Century Cincinnati,” Queen City Heritage, 42 (Summer 1985), 3-24.
"The Culture of Political Economy: Henry George and the American Working Class," Southern California Quarterly, 65 (Summer 1983), 145-166.
"Political Economy for the Masses: Henry George," democracy, 2 (July 1982), 125-134.
"Freed Soil, Freed Labor, Freed Men: John Eaton and the Davis Bend Experiment, Journal of Southern History, 44 (May 1978), 213-232.
ARTICLES REPRINTED IN OTHER COLLECTIONS
“21st Century Book-Burning,” reprinted [Australia] The Guardian, Dec. 15, 2004; Newark StarLedger, Oct 18, 2004; Tallahassee Democrat, Oct. 18, 2004; commondreams.org (as one of ten best Op-Ed pieces of the week); History News Network, Oct. 16, 2004; Albion Monitor People's Weekly World ( (12/11/04); and at least thirteen other blogs.
"Freed Soil, Freed Labor, Freed Men: John Eaton and the Davis Bend Experiment," in Donald G. Nieman, ed., African-American Life in the Post Emancipation South, 1861-1900 (Garland Publishing Inc., 1993-4)
"Cinema and Class Conflict" reprinted in Robert Sklar and Charles Musser, Resisting Images: Essays on Cinema and History (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990), 68-107
"The Unknown Hollywood," reprinted in Robert James Maddox, ed., American History: Vol. II Early Modern Through 20th Century (Dushkin Publishing Group, 1991), pp. 111-116
ELECTRONIC WORKS AND PUBLICATIONS
WEBSITE DESIGNS:
Visualizing Ideology: Labor vs Capital in the Age of Silent Film.
RECENT MEDIA COMMENTARY
Quoted in article,Joanna Piacenza,“Putting a Number on Hollywood’s Perceived Liberalism,” Morning Consult, March 1, 2018
Quoted in article, Judy Kurtz, “Is television heading for ‘dump on Trump’ overload?” The Hill, Jan. 31, 2018,
Quoted in article, Neil Gross, “Why Is Hollywood So Liberal?” New York Times, Jan. 28, 2018
Interview discussing Hitler in Los Angeles, “The Lawyer’s Guild With Jim Lafferty,” KPFK, Dec. 20, 2017
Taped Conversation, Steven J. Ross in Conversation with Jon Wiener about Hitler in Los Angeles, Book TV, C-SPAN2, Dec.9, 2017
Interview Segment, “American Nazis Hoped to Hit Hollywood By Blowing Up Homes,” Press Play, Madeleine Brand, KCRW, Nov. 28, 2017,
Interview Segment, “When Nazis Tried to Take Over Los Angeles,” A. Martinez, Take Two, KPCC, Los Angeles, Nov. 27, 2017
Interview Segment, “Nazis in Los Angeles,” The Lowdown, WOMR-FM, Provincetown, MA, Nov. 27, 2107
John Williams,“Tell Us 5 Things About Your Book: ‘Hitler in Los Angeles,’” New York Times, Oct. 29, 2017,
Featured article, Anna Diamond, “The Nazis’ Plan to Infiltrate Los Angeles And the Man Who Kept Them at Bay,” Smithsonian Magazine, Oct. 26, 2017
Cover Story, Review, Interview, and Book Excerpt, “The Jews Who Fought Against ‘Hitler in Los Angeles,’”Jewish Journal, Oct. 26, 2017,
Featured article, “When Hitler sent his minions to LA: The true-life Nazi plot against Hollywood, Times of Israel, Oct. 10, 2017,
Featured article about my book, Patt Morrison column, “How Hitler's fascism almost took hold in Los Angeles,”Los Angeles Times, Sept. 27, 2017
Quoted in New York Times story “Trump to skip Kennedy Center Honors awards program,” Aug.20, 2017