Robert Sklar, a film scholar known for bringing the insights of the social historian to understanding the history of American film, has died. He was 74.

Sklar, who also was one of the original Rotisserie League fantasy baseball “owners” in the 1980s, died July 2 in Barcelona, Spain, after suffering head injuries in a bicycling accident, said Richard Allen, professor and chair of cinema studies at New York University.

A professor in the department of cinema studies at New York University from 1977 until his retirement in 2009, Sklar was the author of books that included “City Boys: Cagney, Bogart, Garfield” (1992) and “Film: An International History of the Medium” (1993).

“He’s among the most important and innovative historians of American film, especially in terms of his approach to understanding film history,” said William Simon, a professor of cinema studies at NYU.

Sklar’s 1975 book “Movie-Made America: A Cultural History of American Movies,” is considered his seminal work.

“It set a standard for historical scholarship in the field that inspires each generation of film scholars anew,” Allen wrote in a tribute to Sklar on NYU’s Cinema Studies website.

“It brings a wealth of archival and historical research to bear on its subject,” Allen told the Los Angeles Times last week, “and it understands and explains the relationship between American movies and the forces of social change.”

Noting that Sklar earned a doctorate in the history of American civilization from Harvard University and taught history at the University of Michigan before joining NYU’s department of cinema studies, Allen said that “Bob brought that historian’s skill to bear upon the understanding and appreciation of how movies came about, and this was never done before with such rigor.

“That makes him sound like an ivory tower academic, but his style is accessible to everyone. He was a very good writer.”

Sklar, whose books also included “Prime-Time America: Life on and Behind the Television Screen” (1980) and “A World History of Film” (2001), continued to write for film journals throughout his life, particularly the journal Cineaste.