Matthew Lasar

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 (now University)

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.

Courses Taught