Richard Koszarski attended graduate school at New York University, receiving his Ph.D. in
Cinema Studies in 1977. He began working on the publication Film
History: An International Journal in 1985 while teaching adjunct classes at
Columbia University and working as curator at the American Museum of the Moving Image, a
position he held from 1977 to 1997.
The first issue of Film History was published in 1987 under
Taylor & Francis, and it was modeled on the publisher's journal History of Photography. Film
History was started with the goal of looking beyond individual texts and
theory-based analysis. The “Aims and Scope” note published in the first issue
describes the subject as “the historical development of the motion picture, and the
social, technological, and economic context in which this has occurred.” The first
four volumes through 1990 were published at Taylor & Francis. When the journal
returned in 1993 with Volume 5, John Libbey & Company Ltd. took over as publisher.
Starting with this volume, the journal organized its issues around single themes with
associate editors who supervised each topic.
In 2004, Indiana University Press became the co-publisher of Film
History with John Libbey & Company Ltd. and starting in 2011 Indiana
University Press became the sole publisher. Koszarski stepped down from editing the journal
with the end of Volume 24 in 2012.
In addition to his work as the editor of Film History,
Richard Koszarski has written many books on film, including An
Evening's Entertainment: The Rise of the Silent Feature Picture (1990), Fort Lee: The Film Town (2001), Hollywood
on the Hudson: Film and Television in New York from Griffith to Sarnoff (2008),
and Keep 'em in the East: Kazan, Kubrick, and the Post-War New York
Film Renaissance (2021). He is professor emeritus of English and Cinema Studies at
Rutgers University.
