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Faculty Directory

Matthew Lasar
  • Title
    • Retired Lecturer on Teaching Recall
  • Division Humanities Division
  • Department
    • History Department
  • Phone
    831-459-5593
  • Email
  • Office Location
    • Stevenson College Academic Building, 280 Stevenson
    • 280 Stevenson College
  • Office Hours Spring 2024: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 10 am to noon on Zoom. Students welcome! 😎
  • Mail Stop Stevenson Academic Services
  • Mailing Address
    • 1156 High Street
    • Santa Cruz CA 95064
  • Faculty Areas of Expertise History, Politics, World History, United States Politics and Government
  • Courses History 15: The United States of America

Summary of Expertise

The United States of America; the Cold War; conspiracies and conspiracy theories.

Research Interests

United States history; world history; history of the Cold War; radio and telecommunications history.

Biography, Education and Training

Ph.D, Claremont Graduate School

Honors, Awards and Grants

UCSC Excellence in Teaching Award, 2016

Selected Publications

  • Radio 2.0: Uploading the First Broadcast Medium, ABC-CLIO Praeger, 2016
  • Uneasy Listening: Pacifica Radio's Civil War, London: Black Apollo Press, 2005.
  • Pacifica Radio: The Rise of an Alternative Network Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999; Robert Dawidoff, series editor; updated edition in paperback, 2000
  • "The Triumph of the Visual: Stages and Cycles in the Pornography Controversy from the McCarthy Era to the Present," The Journal of Policy History, Volume 7, No. 2, 1995.
  • "Pacifica Radio's Crisis of Containment," in McCauley, Artz, Halleck, and Peterson, eds., Public Broadcasting and the Public Interest, New York: M.E. Sharpe, December, 2002.
  • "Right out in public": Pacifica Radio, the Cold War, and the Political Origins of Alternative Media", Pacific Historical Review, Volume 67, Number 4, November 1998.
  • "Hybrid Highbrow: KPFA's Reconstruction of Elite Culture, 1942-1960," The Journal of Radio Studies, Volume 5, Number 1, Winter, 1998.

Teaching Interests

The United States of America; the Cold War; conspiracies and conspiracy theories.