Charles Ponce de Leon

Charles L. Ponce de Leon, Ph.D.

Bio and Research Interests

Born and raised in Palo Alto, California, I received my BA from UC Santa Barbara, where I was a college journalist and worked in community radio. I went to graduate school at Rutgers University and received a Ph.D. in United States History. I have taught at Princeton University and Purchase College, a branch of the State University of New York. In 2008, I moved to CSULB, where I am now Professor of History and American Studies.

I am a specialist in U.S. cultural and intellectual history. My fields of expertise include mass media and the commercial culture industries, American intellectual life, and modern U.S. political culture. I have written books on the origins of celebrity in the U.S. and Elvis Presley and articles and review-essays on a variety of subjects. My most recent book, a history of television news in the US, was published in 2015. I am currently working on a history of Rolling Stone magazine, emphasizing its role as a forum for cultural and political debate and its evolution as a species of “hip capitalism.”

Education

Ph.D. Rutgers University
B.A. University of California, Santa Barbara

Selected Publications

That’s the Way It Is: A History of Television News in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015.

Fortunate Son: The Life of Elvis Presley. New York: Hill and Wang, 2006.

Self-Exposure: Human-Interest Journalism and the Emergence of Celebrity in America, 1890-1940. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.

“Can Cultural History Ever Be Cool?,” Reviews in American History 46 (June 2018): 307-313.

“How Pivotal Were the Seventies?,” Reviews in American History 40 (March 2012): 128-138.

“Press and Politics,” in The Princeton Encyclopedia of American Political History. Michael Kazin, ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.

Courses

• History 173: Recent U.S. History
• History 379: The Twenties, Depression, and World War Two
• History 380A: The United State in the Liberal Era, 1945-1968
• History 380B: The United States Since 1968
• History 477B: American Cultural History Since 1877
• History 499: Senior Seminar in United States History