Peter C. Rollins

author of America Reflected: Language, Satire, Film, and the National Mind

November 4, 2015

Peter C. Rollins, until his retirement in 2007, was Regents Professor of English at Oklahoma State University and Editor of Film & History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies. He is the author and editor of 15 books and over 100 published articles. Nearly 20 travel awards are given in his name to junior faculty who wish to attend the annual, national PCA/ACA meetings; also, under the umbrella of popular culture, two book awards–one in New England and one in the Southwest–carry his name. In 2001 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award for the American Culture Association and his book Television Histories was selected as "the best book in American culture studies" by the American Culture Association. In 2004, he received the Governors' Award from the Popular Culture Association and a second "best book in American culture studies" for Hollywood's White House. That same year, the PCA created an annual film award in his name. In 2010, the Center for the Study of Film and History created a service award in his name.

His Columbia Companion to American History on Film, product of a decade of scholarly effort, was published with great éclat in the spring of 2004. His Hollywood's West was released in October of 2005. Both received national awards. In April, 2007, he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the University Film and Screen Studies Society and an Angie Debo Award from the Edmon Low Library, Oklahoma State University; shortly thereafter, he received his Emeritus parking permit. In the Spring of 2008, the UP of Kentucky released his Why We Fought: America's Wars in Film and History. This volume became a History Book Club option shortly thereafter. In 2009, he edited a collection of original manuscripts and interpretive studies entitled The Benjamin Lee Whorf Legacy CD-ROM.

A capstone collection of his 'best' essays entitled America Remembered: Language, Satire, Film, and the American Mind was published in 2010 and is now available in print and electronic formats from New Academia Publishers, Amazon.com, and GoogleBooks.com.

America Reflected offers eclectic considerations of distinctive American voices from the ante-bellum era to the present.

The much-loved Will Rogers reassured Americans that 19th century pioneer values would survive in an age of machines, media, and political bunk. Deprecating changes of the post WWI era, he proved (by his own example) that ordinary people could still practice neighborliness in an increasingly impersonal world. Benjamin Lee Whorf believed fervently that conflicts between science and religion could be resolved. First in an unpublished novel entitled The Ruler of the Universe and then through a reappreciation of insights from the Amerindian languages, Whorf found a basis for faith. His use of the 'new physics' of Heisenberg, Schrödinger, and Einstein added an entirely new dimension to a discussion distorted by news alerts from the trial of John T. Scopes.

All war films, even documentaries, are presented as interpretations that require additional interpretation by scholars–as well as media literacy on the part of audiences. Especially in the Vietnam chapters, Rollins taps his experiences as scholar, combat officer, and filmmaker–as well as his fervent commitment to America's fighting men and women.

Other essays address questions of national vision: How do Harriet Beecher Stowe, Amy Lowell, John James Audubon, and Frederick Henry Hedge contribute to our understanding of the American spirit?

Environmental issues are engaged in discussions of John James Audubon and the oil field films. America Reflected closes with a discussion of how New Deal documentaries about the environment, an issue of (justifiable) perennial concern. As Perry Miller, one of Rollins' teachers, often proclaimed, we are 'Nature's Nation' and our treatment of the land reflects back on our worthiness to live in the America we prize.

URL: https://library.okstate.edu/news/celebratingbooks/2011-honorees/peter-rollins

Last Updated: 14 January 2022