Welsh Earns Peter C. Rollins Annual Book Award

SALISBURY, MD---Dr. James M. Welsh, co-founding editor of the scholarly journal Literature/Film Quarterly at Salisbury University, recently earned the Peter C. Rollins Annual Book Award from the Southwest Texas Popular Culture and American Culture Associations at the PCA conference in Albuquerque, NM.

Welsh received the award for his career in writing and editing film books and journals. In 1973, he founded Literature/Film Quarterly with Dr. Thomas Erskine, fellow English professor. Though both Welsh and Erskine have retired from SU, Literature/Film Quarterly continues as one of the most respected film journals in the world, read in more than 30 countries. The journal is still published by the English Department at SU.

“Peter Rollins is the current editor of Film + History and the founder of the Film and History League,” Welsh said. “In a way, Peter is generously paying tribute to SU’s journal, Literature/Film Quarterly, through this award.”

During his 34-year career at SU, Welsh became a pillar of the scholarly film world, writing, editing and co-authoring more than a dozen books on the medium including Abel Gance with Steven Philip Kramer; The Cinema of Tony Richardson and The Encyclopedia of Filmmakers with John Tibbetts; Shakespeare Into Film with Richard Vela; and The Encyclopedia of Orson Welles with Thomas Erskine and Charles Berg. The second edition of his Encyclopedia of Novels into Film, co-written with Tibbetts, was released in 2005.

The Rollins Award is given annually to the author of the best book in popular or American cultural studies by a member of the associations. This year, author Wheeler Winston Dixon also is honored with the award for his 2005 book Lost in the Fifties: Recovering Phantom Hollywood. For more information call 410-543-6030 or visit the SU Web site at www.salisbury.edu.