Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Roland Betancourt

Roland Betancourt

Roland Betancourt is an art historian at the University of California, Irvine, and a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow. His books include the prize-winning Byzantine Intersectionality: Sexuality, Gender and Race in the Middle Ages (Princeton) and Performing the Gospels in Byzantium: Sight, Sound and Space in the Divine Liturgy.

An aerial view of the Ford Motor Company's River Rouge plant, circa 1945

Walt Disney Visited a Ford Factory in 1948. What He Witnessed There Laid the Groundwork for What Would Become Disneyland

A new book argues that the film producer’s trip to the River Rouge plant in Michigan inspired him to embrace the power of automation when designing the first Disney theme park