George Rodman

Biography

George Rodman teaches Film and Television writing and criticism courses at Brooklyn College of CUNY as well as here at Montclair. He has been a scriptwriter and script doctor for several feature films and network productions, none of which have made him rich or famous, but all of which have made him a keen-eyed influencer of student projects.

Rodman was genetically hard-wired for career in Communications. His grandmother was first cousin to, and grew up with, the legendary filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille (The Ten Commandments, Sunset Boulevard, etc.). His grandfather started out as a lab assistant for Thomas Edison and wound up as the first president of the Radio Manufacturers of America.

Rodman's Great-Grandfather, Isaac Peace Rodman, was a pacifist Quaker who became a Union General during the Civil War before he was killed at the Battle of Antietam. That doesn’t have much to do with Communications, but it will make a hell of screenplay some day.

Rodman is best known as the author, co-author and editor of several college textbooks in the field of communication. He has been teaching on the college level since he was 21, which is now more than 50 years ago. He’s seen it all. Twice.

Rodman began teaching at Illinois State University and the University of Southern California as a teaching assistant, where he was thrilled to attend both faculty and student parties when time permitted. He went on to teach as an adjunct at the University of Maryland Far East Division in Korea and California State University, San Luis Obispo before settling in as an Assistant Professor at the University of New Hampshire, where he created new courses in Media Studies and Television Production. In 1978 he moved to Brooklyn College as an Associate Professor, where he continues to teach as a fully-tenured full professor who is practically impossible to fire.

Rodman is currently Professor and Emeritus Chair of the Department of Television, Radio and Emerging Media at BC. During his 45 years (and counting) at the college, he founded the undergraduate program in Television Writing and the graduate program in Media Studies. He was also the Bernard H. Stern Professor of Humor, an honor he earned by being both a theorist who wrote about the role of humor in human communication and a practitioner who wrote TV sitcoms.

Rodman has co-authored 15 editions of Understanding Human Communication (Oxford University Press, 2023), which is the long-standing best-selling textbook in the field. For more than 40 years UHC has shaped and developed the basic curriculum in Communication departments across the United States and Canada, and has influenced the development of several departments globally.

Among his other projects Rodman has coauthored four editions of Essential Communication for Oxford University Press and a chapter for Cambridge University’s Technology and Psychological Well-Being, which made him one of the few members of his field to have written for both Oxford and Cambridge. He prefers Oxford, however, because of their superior crew team.

Rodman is the author of four editions of Mass Media in a Changing World (McGraw Hill, 2012) and Making Sense of Media (Allyn & Bacon, 2000), as well as the editor of four editions of Mass Media Issues (McGraw Hill, 1995), and several editions of Public Speaking (Holt, Reinhart and Winston, 1997).

Rodman’s books have helped set the curricular standards for the burgeoning field of Communication Studies, which provides the well-rounded liberal arts perspective that creates ethical and intelligent film and television professionals. As an educator Rodman has mentored an army of these professionals, including Don Lemon (formerly of CNN), Skeery Jones of iHeart Radio, and Scott Herman, the former COO of CBS Radio.

Rodman grew up in Netcong and West Caldwell, NJ. He graduated from Glassboro State College (now Rowan University) in 1970, earned his MS from Illinois State University in 1971, and his PhD from the University of Southern California in 1975. At Glassboro, he served on the exploratory committee for their proposed School of Communication. While at USC, he served on a similar committee that was planning the Annenberg School of Communication, West.

Today, Rodman splits his time between Brooklyn and Lloyd Harbor, NY, where he and his wife of 44 years have built a home and refurbished a classic sloop named the All Wet. They have three children. Jennifer (Keluskar) is a psychologist in private practice and an Assistant Professor of Biobehavioral Health at Pennsylvania State University. Alexandra (Reens) is Director of the Pediatric Emergency Department at NYU Winthrop University Hospital in Mineola. Dean teaches at the International School in Ha Long, Vietnam. George and Linda have four grandchildren, but don’t get either of them started on that. We’ll be here all day.

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Research

Television and Film Writing and Criticism