11 10 162 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Celebration Description An account of the resource Speeches from the Celebration of Roy's Life, December 9, 2007, George Mason University, Arlington campus, Arlington, VA. Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. I am Betsy Blackmar, and I am one of the many people in this room who arrived in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the early 1970s very uncertain as to what exactly we were doing. Roy helped us figure that out. What do you do when you don’t know what you are doing? You organize a reading group; you form a collective to produce a journal, you make sure that all of your friends know each other—whether in person or as legends. You give other people drafts of your work to read and read theirs and talk to them. Roy helped us all collectively to gain the confidence to do our creative work, and he helped many of us find jobs, housing, roommates, and life-long friends. Given Roy’s faith in mutuality and reciprocity, it matters to me to think that I may have given him back one thing: he met Deborah at a party at my Cambridge apartment. (of course, given the principles of six degrees of separation on which he operated, they were destined to meet one way or another). And Deborah gave Roy back to us all a hundred fold by sharing his hospitality and wit, and, over the years,—I think it took a long time-- helping him see that he could do even more if he didn’t stay up all night or live on chocolate donuts and Tab or drive himself to exhaustion; she even taught Roy to take vacations, which just seems like a miracle. Roy recruited me to help write a short screen play for a short documentary by Richard Broadman on Boston’s parks. Then, he suggested that we write a short book on Central Park. The thing is, the story was more complicated, there were more layers, we really needed to bring it up to the present, so more than six years and 600 pages later, we finished the Park and the People. But we would not have been able to do this had Roy not figured out the magic key to grant writing: all of our proposals started with a Johnny Carson joke from the mid-1960s—“It was so quiet last night in Central Park, that you could have heard a knife drop.” It was followed somewhere in the proposal by another one, “Did you hear the Soviet ambassador was mugged in Central Park last night? The park commissioner said it was an exceptional case: ‘it’s the first time they got a Russian’.” I never knew where Roy found these Johnny Carson jokes, but who else but Roy would recognize that someone sitting reading fifty pleas for money would be desperate for some comic relief? Of course, being Roy, he also compiled and analyzed all the crime statistics of the 1960s to prove that it was safer to be in the park than on the streets of New York. It was not always easy to collaborate with Roy. It was not just the damn to-do lists and the feeling that you could never keep up with him. It was Roy’s honesty: you just couldn’t tell Roy white lies about why you hadn’t done something you said you would do. I don’t think Roy hated a lot of things, but I do think he really really disliked cowardly self-serving white lies and excuses. He also didn’t have much use for pomposity, grandiosity, arrogance, or abuses of power. There is only one time when I think Roy was actually relieved that I didn’t follow through on something: for his 40th birthday, just after we finished the park book, I gave him a trowel and the promise of 100 daffodil bulbs. I had arranged to have the bulbs shipped to my house in Carmel, but, as it turned out, I didn’t travel to Washington that Fall, so I ended up planting them in my yard: he never asked me what happed to his opportunity to become a gardener. When I think of Roy now, I think of that little crinkle and light in his eyes when he was telling or hearing a good story. I think of the pleasure of sharing Roy’s and Deborah’s stories of the Human Comedy. It is probably because he recognized and so readily forgave the foibles of his friends, his colleagues, his students, that Roy was able to help so many of us muddle through and collectively hold each other up through so many bad things, political and personal, of which surely one of the hardest is losing Roy himself. Okay: no tears, no hugging, but here’s a lesson Roy would have allowed: start your grant proposals with a joke. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 155 Language A language of the resource eng Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Betsy Blackmar Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Betsy Blackmar Type The nature or genre of the resource Document central park friends roy think time Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Formal Notices Description An account of the resource Obituaries and paid death notices. Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. Digital Historian Roy A. Rosenzweig By Adam Bernstein Washington Post Staff Writer Saturday, October 13, 2007; Page B06 Roy A. Rosenzweig, 57, a social and cultural historian at George Mason University who became a prominent advocate for digital history, a field combining historical scholarship with digital media's broad reach and interactive possibilities, died Oct. 11 at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington County. He had lung cancer. Dr. Rosenzweig, who taught history at GMU for the past 26 years, founded the university's Center for History and New Media in 1994. As its director, he oversaw the creation of online history projects aimed mostly at high school and college students, including Web sites about U.S. history, the French Revolution and the history of science and technology. At GMU's Center for History and New Media, Roy A. Rosenzweig oversaw the creation of online history projects. At GMU's Center for History and New Media, Roy A. Rosenzweig oversaw the creation of online history projects. Perhaps its most visible project was the September 11 Digital Archive, a collection of 150,000 items -- including e-mails, digital voice mails, BlackBerry communications and video clips -- made by average citizens at the time of the 2001 terrorist attacks. The center gave the materials to the Library of Congress in September 2003. The center, part of GMU's Department of History and Art History, has more than 40 full- and part-time staff members. Dr. Rosenzweig was an author, filmmaker and documenter of oral histories. His books, including a social history of New York's Central Park and the labor movement's struggle in the 19th century for a shorter workday, underscored his interest in presenting what he called perspectives of ordinary men and women over the wealthy and powerful. In the early 1990s, he helped create an award-winning U.S. history survey presented on CD-ROM. He then started the Center for History and New Media, which stemmed from his wish to democratize the study of the past -- both by incorporating forgotten voices and by presenting the fullest possible story of the past to diverse audiences. Edward L. Ayers, president of the University of Richmond, who conducted early digital history projects as a University of Virginia history professor, said Dr. Rosenzweig was the real pioneer in this. Ayers said that Dr. Rosenzweig's CD-ROM Who Built America? (1994), created with the help of two other historians, first showed the possibilities of digital history and that he remained important as an advocate by writing articles and reviews of Web sites for professional journals, through which he was a facilitator and translator of digital history. Roy Alan Rosenzweig was born Aug. 6, 1950, in New York and was raised in the Bayside neighborhood of Queens. He graduated magna cum laude from Columbia University in 1971. He received a fellowship to study history at St. John's College at Cambridge University and received a doctorate in history from Harvard University in 1978. He joined GMU's history faculty in 1981 and became a full professor in 1992. His best-known early book, Eight Hours for What We Will (1983), was about the labor movement's demand for an eight-hour workday and the subsequent rise in more urban leisure spaces such as public parks and movie theaters. Dr. Rosenzweig wrote often in journals for historians about what he once called the fragility of evidence in the digital era because of e-mail documentation that is too easily deleted. He was a former vice president for research at the American Historical Association and formerly chaired the Organization of American Historians technology committee. Among his honors was the 2003 Lyman Award presented by the National Humanities Center for innovative use of information technology in the humanities. It carried a purse of $25,000. His marriage to Beth Bernick Rosenzweig ended in divorce. Survivors include his wife of 26 years, Deborah Kaplan of Arlington; his mother, Mae Rosenzweig of Coconut Creek, Fla.; and a sister. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 73 Title A name given to the resource Washington Post Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource You must be 13 years of age or older to submit material to us. Your submission of material constitutes your permission for, and consent to, its dissemination and use in connection with Thanks, Roy in all media in perpetuity. If you have so indicated on the form, your material will be published on Thanks, Roy (with or without your name, depending on what you have indicated). Otherwise, your response will only be available to approved researchers using Thanks, Roy. The material you submit must have been created by you, wholly original, and shall not be copied from or based, in whole or in part, upon any other photographic, literary, or other material, except to the extent that such material is in the public domain. Further, submitted material must not violate any confidentiality, privacy, security or other laws. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource washington post Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource mike o'malley Type The nature or genre of the resource Document formal notices obituary WashingtonPost Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. A few weeks after Roy died, I went back and read Eight Hours For What We Will. It begins with the description of how Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, and Modiste Aronstamm opened an ice-cream parlor and lunchroom in Worcester, hoping that the profits would provide financial support for the return to their native Russia. But then, in the summer of 1892, the Carnegie Steel Company locked out the workers at its Homestead plant, and evicted strikers from company houses. Goldman and Berkman, hoping that the class struggle in the United States would finally take off, thought the day had come and the “native toiler had risen.” They left Worcester and the ice-cream parlor, went to Homestead, and Berkman went on with his unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Henry Clay Frick, the chairman of the Carnegie Steel company. Roy noted that, however, despite their dedication to the Homestead workers, Berkman’s and Goldman’s “understanding of the American proletariat remained limited.” Berkman remained preoccupied with the situation in Russia, and Goldman, at least in her reminiscences, largely seemed to have ignored the situation of the workers in Worcester. In a way, as a historian, Roy picked up where Emma Goldman and Sasha Berkman had left off, and he went back to the ice cream parlor and back to the workers in Worcester, and showed that that they mattered, the ice-cream-parlor, the workers, and their eight hours for what we will, even though Worcester wasn’t exactly the revolutionary hot-spot of the time. And, working at George Mason University in Fairfax County, Virginia, which, as Mike O’Malley had pointed out at the OAH, started as a branch college of the University of Virginia and which, to this day, is not exactly known as a radical hot-spot, Roy approached his students as a teacher with a similar interest, respect and consideration of circumstances as he approached the workers in Worcester as a historian. When dealing with the students at Mason, both the masters and the doctoral students, most of whom work part or full-time outside campus while getting their degrees, and many of whom don’t plan on pursuing traditional careers in university teaching, Roy was not only supportive, but always considerate of economy and circumstances. He picked people up where they stood, and practical questions greatly mattered to him. He wasn’t only concerned about how can you write a really good research paper or a dissertation, but how you can do it if you work x-hours during the week and the archives with your research materials are only open 9-5 during the week. Indeed, he sometimes indicated that such practical considerations were among the reasons why he was so interested in the possibilities of the internet in making research materials available online. Roy sometimes mentioned that he had never really gotten that much out of his formal university education himself, and that the most important thing during his time as a graduate student had been the access to the library, and the chance to meet and study with numerous of his fellow students and friends, many of whom have shared stories and memories on this website or at the memorials in Arlington, at the AHA, or at the OAH. Whether it was driven by his experiences at Harvard, by his New Left radicalism, by his anti-authoritarian attitude toward professorial authority, by the belief that higher education should be accessible to everyone, or by something else, I got the sense that he thought (and I think I remember that he even said it at one point) that studying history, when it comes down to it, doesn’t really require that much and not necessarily a university and a professor, that, instead, all it really takes is your interest, a library card, nowadays a computer with internet access, and some people with whom you can talk or correspond, whether or not they have a formal degree. And he brought this moment of reflection about his role, about authority, and about the sense of formal education, into the classroom and into his interactions with his students, and served as a facilitator rather than as the instructing authority. He was particularly good at facilitating discussions, which he moderated with a keen sense of fairness -- if someone didn’t get the chance to say anything or needed a little support, he often sensed that, said something supportive, or just gave people a little more time and opportunity to speak up. Roy managed to open up the classroom, with its often alienating rules and regulations, and to turn it into a pleasant opportunity to get together -- he provided space, structure, and ideas, and everybody could meet, discuss, build websites, watch movies, have guests, and, of course, eat and drink. Clio Wired, the course on history and new media that Roy developed and taught, and which I took in the fall of 2001, perfectly reflected his spirit that everyone should help each other: ”Unlike a conventional class where almost all the advice and assistance comes from the instructor, in a seminar everyone will take a hand in shaping our discussions and helping fellow class members,” he had written in the online syllabus, http://chnm.gmu.edu/courses/rr/f01/cw/, a work in progress that he frequently updated. The course was, “experimental,” and he advised that, “we need to be open to changes in schedule, format, and requirements.” There was always a moment of curiosity and excitement in his assignments – do the scavenger hunt, explore this site, check out that online community, spend a significant amount of time at a website of your choice. In his assignments, in the questions he posed, he often offered options, as if he didn’t want to constrain his students to his suggestions -- if you don’t want to do this, try that, if not that, try something else. Including your own ideas for assignments was usually an option, too. I didn’t get the impression he ever came up with any assignments that he didn’t like to do as well. In more than one way, he also didn’t want to constrain the students to the classroom, and I remember one night when he must have thought that we all seemed knocked out by the computer lab, and when, in the middle of the class, he said let’s get up and go next door, and we all walked out of the classroom and sat down in the adjacent room, just to continue our discussion in a different environment. Roy, as busy as he always was, regularly attended the PhD colloquium, which was entirely voluntary for faculty members, and, I think, he always attended when students presented their dissertation proposals and offered suggestions, whether he was the dissertation advisor of the students who presented or not. Last fall, he served as the coordinating instructor of the colloquium until he died. Before taking over as the instructor in the fall semester, he had sent out a survey to all of us PhD students to collect feedback on the colloquium, making sure that he planned the sessions together with us, and not for us. I think as one of the results of the feedback he received, he set up a blog for the colloquium (together with Jeremy Boggs of the CHNM), so that we could have and extend our discussions online. Very much Roy, he put technology to its best use and served as facilitator and host, online as well as offline. When he was too ill to come to the colloquium, he continued to post questions on the blog, once again always offering options, thinking of what we and he might enjoy to do. And I remember the last colloquium he was able to attend, with filmmaker (and Mason professor) Carma Hinton, as the guest, and we were talking about historical documentaries, and he was really interested in the discussion and then said that he feels like going out and seeing all those movies...So, in his spirit, I fill up my Thanks, Roy mug with coffee, drink it in his memory, go see a movie, and look forward to the next refill. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 437 Title A name given to the resource “Everyone Takes a Hand in Shaping our Discussions and Helping Fellow Class Members:” More thoughts on Roy as a Teacher and Facilitator Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource You must be 13 years of age or older to submit material to us. Your submission of material constitutes your permission for, and consent to, its dissemination and use in connection with Thanks, Roy in all media in perpetuity. If you have so indicated on the form, your material will be published on Thanks, Roy (with or without your name, depending on what you have indicated). Otherwise, your response will only be available to approved researchers using Thanks, Roy. The material you submit must have been created by you, wholly original, and shall not be copied from or based, in whole or in part, upon any other photographic, literary, or other material, except to the extent that such material is in the public domain. Further, submitted material must not violate any confidentiality, privacy, security or other laws. By submitting material to Thanks, Roy you release, discharge, and agree to hold harmless Thanks, Roy and persons acting under its permission or authority, including a public library or archive to which the collection might be donated for purposes of long-term preservation, from any claims or liability arising out the Thanks, Roy's use of the material, including, without limitation, claims for violation of privacy, defamation, or misrepresentation. Thanks, Roy has no obligation to use your material. You will be sent via email a copy of your contribution to Thanks, Roy. We cannot return any material you submit to us so be sure to keep a copy. Thanks, Roy will not share your email address or any other information with commercial vendors. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Katja Hering Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Katja Hering Type The nature or genre of the resource Document Eight Hours graduate students History Department Mason Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. Transcription of remarks made at the OAH session, “Morning Coffee with Roy Rosenzweig: A Remembrance,” on March 29 by Barbara Ashbrook, National Endowment for the Humanities. Good morning. I was invited to talk about Roy and the National Endowment for the Humanities. I suppose most of you know what we do? (laughter) We give grants, and we give grants with your money, and so we use great care when we give those grants. Within this framework, Roy enjoyed legendary success as a seeker of grant funds, and I think what is even more important, his projects were always the kind that grant makers could point to with great pride. I consulted before I came here the old NEH database-- printed something out. I see that Roy first appears on the list (laughter) for a fellowship he won in 1982 to write a social history of Frederick Law Olmsted’s public parks. Then, in 1986, his knack for collaboration kicks in, I guess, and it gets a boost with a collaborative research grant for a project on the Central Park. Now, I’m not going to march you through the rest of this list of Roy’s way to seven figures and beyond, shall we say, (laughter) from the NEH. And of course this list that I have doesn’t count the numerous grants where Roy was a key partner but not a director, often working in collaboration with his friends at the American Social History Project and their wonderful New Media Classroom workshops and seminars which have reached hundreds of teachers and changed lives. However, that next project, the third one that shows up on my database list, means a lot to me because this was his first grant from the Education division – the first of a good many grants. And from this, I figure it must have been late 1994 or early in 1995 when two guys showed up in my office. Now, that would be Steve Brier and Roy Rosenzweig. And at the time I thought, “Oh boy, here comes trouble, (laughter) just the kind of trouble I love to have!” because what makes working at the Endowment so exciting is, of course, your scholarship, your energy, the experiences that you have as teachers that you share, and your sense of developments in the field. That’s what makes it wonderful. Well, these two guys were telling me something pretty interesting about what they were doing with technology, and it sounded like a good thing because some of what had been done before wasn’t really so great, but . . . I didn’t know it at the time, but Roy and Steve were opening the door to a whole new way of working in the humanities. We funded that CD-ROM – that Who Built America, question mark – and later, History Matters, and projects on the French Revolution, and projects in world history, all of these projects in which Roy’s leadership was so crucial to their success. I will also mention the Challenge Grant which Roy put together which would give the beginning of a permanent endowment for the Center for History and New Media, and I believe this is part of his lasting legacy, too. When Roy began his career as a professional historian, I doubt that he imagined he would end up making history himself, and that he would be one of those builders of America -- the best parts of America – but, in fact, that is just what he did. And so, on behalf of the National Endowment for the Humanities, I want to say “thanks, Roy” for giving us the opportunity and the privilege of playing a supporting role in your life’s work (applause). Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 259 Title A name given to the resource Coffee with Roy, Roy and the National Endowment for the Humanities"" Language A language of the resource eng Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Barbara Ashbrook, National Endowment for the Humanities Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2008-03-29 Type The nature or genre of the resource Document Coffee with Roy Grants NEH Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. “Radical historian” means different things to different people. There is certainly a generational divide in how most of us understand this label and its professional context. I am not of Roy’s generation, so I won’t pretend to understand what it meant to Roy to be a “radical historian” when, as a graduate student, he was among the founders of the MidAtlantic Radical Historians Organization, or MARHO. Intellectually, MARHO “sought to develop a critical history as a means of understanding capitalism as a mode of production and as a complex system of social relations.” Professionally, MARHO sponsored forums, conferences, a newsletter, and the Radical History Review, all designed to help put those politics into action by promoting teaching and public history to non-scholarly audiences at a time when the mainstream of the profession marginalized such activities. Unlike so many of the enthusiasms of youth, Roy never outgrew being a radical historian. He was at the founding MARHO meeting in 1973, a member of the Radical History Review Editorial Collective until 2000, and an Associate member of the journal until his death in October. He was the “Organizing Secretary” of the early MARHO Associates groups, charged with maintaining contact between far-flung outposts of radical historians and the mother-ship MARHO collectives in Boston, New Haven, and New York. Roy was one of the editors of the influential “public history” issue of RHR in 1981, the basis for the 1986 book Presenting the Past, which he edited with Susan Porter Benson and Steve Brier. Roy was heavily involved in the journal, but largely invisible when it came to bylines; beginning in the mid-1980s as half of the pseudonymous R. J. Lambrose, Roy was responsible for quite a bit of RHR’s wise-assery. If I don’t presume to understand Roy’s original embrace of the radical historian identity, I do know what being a radical historian meant to Roy in 2000, when the RHR organized a roundtable discussion on the occasion of the journal’s twenty-fifth anniversary. Roy and his original MARHO colleagues set out to establish an alternative to the OAH and the AHA, which in the early 1970s were resistant to change. But by the late 1990s, after the initial MARHO collectives had become a distant memory and a baffling acronym, the radical historians had also managed to influence, one might even say infiltrate, those existing organizations in significant ways. “To some degree, we’re running these things” Roy said, adding: “radical historians have had a profound impact on the shape of the historical profession in the United States. It’s easy to exaggerate this, but 2000 versus 1960—it’s an unbelievable change in the kinds of people who are in it, the kinds of issues that are being discussed, the whole set of things. Well, that’s a transformation we participated in.” Given that Roy was not inclined toward exaggeration or self-aggrandizement, we should take that assessment seriously. Since Roy tended not to toot his own horn, he did not talk on that day about his own institution building, which was an enduring part of his identity as a radical historian long after that intellectual designation had shifted its meaning. Roy understood that this was long haul, often tedious work, and he labored within universities and funding sources to nurture projects that were open and democratic, from putting archival resources on the Web for free to developing digital collecting projects and open source tools. Roy built “radical” institutions with people and funders who might be, at the least, nonplussed by that word. Roy’s scholarship, too, was collaborative and democratic in its outlook: he explored “who built America,” how New Yorkers used Central Park, and how Americans thought about history; he guided others in creating the kind of digital projects that he helped to pioneer. And his approach to the work mirrored its content: the only book that Roy authored by himself was his first. As a mentor and colleague, Roy was unparalleled in the history profession. The MARHO Associates were only the beginning: he nurtured a far-flung network of likeminded people throughout his career, and not for nothing did Dina Copelman dub him a “one man employment agency.” And so, “Roy as Radical Historian” encompasses virtually everything in Roy’s career: a lifelong commitment to connecting and collaborating, to working within the academy in order to expand historical scholarship beyond its borders, and to “writing” history in a myriad of ways that brought the experiences of ordinary Americans to the surface. Thanks, Roy. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 258 Title A name given to the resource Morning Coffee with Roy, Roy as Radical Historian"" Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource You must be 13 years of age or older to submit material to us. Your submission of material constitutes your permission for, and consent to, its dissemination and use in connection with Thanks, Roy in all media in perpetuity. If you have so indicated on the form, your material will be published on Thanks, Roy (with or without your name, depending on what you have indicated). Otherwise, your response will only be available to approved researchers using Thanks, Roy. The material you submit must have been created by you, wholly original, and shall not be copied from or based, in whole or in part, upon any other photographic, literary, or other material, except to the extent that such material is in the public domain. Further, submitted material must not violate any confidentiality, privacy, security or other laws. By submitting material to Thanks, Roy you release, discharge, and agree to hold harmless Thanks, Roy and persons acting under its permission or authority, including a public library or archive to which the collection might be donated for purposes of long-term preservation, from any claims or liability arising out the Thanks, Roy's use of the material, including, without limitation, claims for violation of privacy, defamation, or misrepresentation. Thanks, Roy has no obligation to use your material. You will be sent via email a copy of your contribution to Thanks, Roy. We cannot return any material you submit to us so be sure to keep a copy. Thanks, Roy will not share your email address or any other information with commercial vendors. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ellen Noonan Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Ellen Noonan Type The nature or genre of the resource Document collaboration MARHO OAH radical Radical History Review Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. I played comic second fiddle to Roy at George Mason for years. It was really obvious from the first time I met Roy that he was a really smart. You could see that right away. But a lot of academics are really smart—smart is sort of cheap in the way a beauty queen is beautiful—it’s look at me, and primping. And Roy wasn’t smart in that way; he was smart in a very unusual way. He was smart in the way he approached building community. George Mason was a wonderful place to work. Our Department was terrifically collegial and pleasant, and most of that was due to Roy. It was the way Roy worked. He had enormous respect for people in that department. When I got there--George Mason is kind of a preposterous place in some ways. Well, all Universities are a little preposterous. But it reflected its origins as kind of a branch campus of UVA, and a lot of the faculty in that department had no pretensions to doing any research at all. They didn’t think of themselves as researchers, they were teachers primarily, and my training of course—I thought I was a hotshot academic—was to be contemptuous of that kind of thing. You now—that’s not what it’s about, it’s about the research. And Roy never reflected that attitude: although he himself was prodigious in his work he always treated all his colleagues at George Mason with enormous courtesy and respect he built a culture of mutual respect that was really striking. It wasn’t one of those two-tiered systems where one person gets all the influence…well actually it was: Roy got all the influence, but other than that it was pretty good! But the way he got it is what’s interesting. I had come from a department where Jr. faculty were forced to enlist themselves in feuds that dated back to the Taft administration; their origins were lost in the mists of time: there was none of that at George Mason. None of that was enabled. And I think how did he do it? We had department meetings about three times a semester and they were remarkably pleasant. They were usually funny they were usually short, but whenever things did get a little heated or a little tense, or there’d be a problem that’d be particularly knotty, everybody would start to look at Roy, who usually wasn’t saying much. My job was to make smart-ass comments; his job was to sit quietly, and then you’d see people start to look at Roy. “What’s Roy going to say?” “What’s Roy gonna say?” And then he would invariably say something that was extremely useful. Unlike most of us he didn’t take the opportunity to speak as a chance to lay waste to his opponents or settle old scores or denounce: he didn’t do any of that stuff; he would come up with some effective solution But he would never say the solution: he would always say “well, you know, we could do this.” And people would say “hey, we could! That would be really good!” And pretty soon, that’s what we would be doing. Now, I don’t want to make him sound like some kind of saint—he wasn’t some kind of some kind of namby pamby goody goody guy either: he had a scathing wit, as you all know. He was happy to settle grudges and lay waste to his opponents after the meeting was over, he was happy to do that sort of thing, and it was a lot of fun, actually, I loved those moments. But the thing that was most—as you now, he was a noodge, he never quit when he wanted to make something happen. He had no concept this thing you call the “weekend” or this thing you call “the holiday.” I once got a request from him to have a meeting—on Christmas day. And I said “Roy I’m gonna be in Philadelphia visiting my family on Christmas day” and he said, “well, could we do a phone conference?” No, we can’t do a phone conference. The thing that was most annoying about Roy, which was, I think was the key to how he worked was he would never tell you what he wanted. I was happy—I realized early n that Roy was usually right. I had extravagant schemes, and elaborate interpretations that were beautiful castle sin the air, Roy had practical solutions, and he was almost always right and I figured that out fairly early and I’d want to say “Roy, look, just tell me what you want to do, and I‘ll go along; I’m happy to go along with you; just tell me what you want to do. And he never would, because he loved the idea of consensus, and he would move mountains to create the illusion that everybody agreed happily and spontaneously. This is sort of what he did; he would do everything to make that happen, He really believed in it. It must have been very difficult in some way to be Roy: to know the right thing to do, and be surrounded by lunatics who had no idea what the right thing—imagine the burden that must be! But he would work patiently to bring about this consensus, and the way he did it was not, in the community of George Mason, making his own agenda or his own personal grievance the first order of business. And that’s why he would never tell me where he wanted to end up. Partly he didn’t always know, but partly he didn’t want to make his agenda the first order of business; he didn’t want to make denouncing his opponents the first order of business, he didn’t want to make posturing what it was all about., So he built this culture that was extraordinarily collegiate, extraordinarily pleasant, extraordinarily comfortable. He did the scut work that people of his stature typically didn’t do. You now, we had a picnic every year; Roy would stay after to clean up. He was humble in that way—he didn’t put on the airs that someone of his stature was entitled to. In that way too he didn’t put himself forward: he didn’t put his own agenda and his own opinions forward. It was an extraordinary experience to be in a department with him: it was for e a completely new way of looking t how academics can conduct themselves, and how the life of a department can be conducted. It was extraordinary—I thought you had to be sort of bitter and infighting—I thought it was a requirement for the job! And it was a revelation to see otherwise. Every day at George Mason, every day, people walk around and say: “What would Roy do? What are we going to do with this problem? What would Roy do? How would Roy get to the answer?” It’s extremely difficult to do, but it’s a question we’ll never stop asking ourselves. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 257 Title A name given to the resource Coffee with Roy, Roy and George Mason University"" Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource You must be 13 years of age or older to submit material to us. Your submission of material constitutes your permission for, and consent to, its dissemination and use in connection with Thanks, Roy in all media in perpetuity. If you have so indicated on the form, your material will be published on Thanks, Roy (with or without your name, depending on what you have indicated). Otherwise, your response will only be available to approved researchers using Thanks, Roy. The material you submit must have been created by you, wholly original, and shall not be copied from or based, in whole or in part, upon any other photographic, literary, or other material, except to the extent that such material is in the public domain. Further, submitted material must not violate any confidentiality, privacy, security or other laws. By submitting material to Thanks, Roy you release, discharge, and agree to hold harmless Thanks, Roy and persons acting under its permission or authority, including a public library or archive to which the collection might be donated for purposes of long-term preservation, from any claims or liability arising out the Thanks, Roy's use of the material, including, without limitation, claims for violation of privacy, defamation, or misrepresentation. Thanks, Roy has no obligation to use your material. You will be sent via email a copy of your contribution to Thanks, Roy. We cannot return any material you submit to us so be sure to keep a copy. Thanks, Roy will not share your email address or any other information with commercial vendors. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Michael OMalley Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Michael OMalley Type The nature or genre of the resource Document Coffee with Roy collaboration community building Department Meetings George Mason University History Department Mediator Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. I was Roy’s student and worked with him at the Center for History and New Media for ten years. Working with Roy gave me a skewed, somewhat utopian perspective of what academia was really like. He was always happy to meet with me. He read all of my chapters within a week. He was in the audience when I presented my first conference paper and many times when I presented afterward. His letters of recommendation were written well before the deadline and required no reminder. One would expect that it would be stressful to have an adviser who was also your boss. And yet looking back at emails from that period it seems that it was me who constantly complained about needing to prepare a job talk or a paper, and it was Roy who always patiently sacrificed deadlines to give me time off. In fact, his Center have provided, and still does, this kind of flexible support to dozens of graduate students who have worked there through the years. Roy even gave me rides from campus to the metro occasionally so I didn’t have to take a bus. I was completely spoiled. I actually thought it was a matter of course to expect all these things from your adviser until I talked to my friends and found out that theirs did nothing of the sort. Today, now that I know how rare that experience had been, I would like to mention some things that I learned from Roy. For example, Roy taught me some of my English, my second language. From him, I first heard words like “deep-six,” as it “to deep-six this unconvincing argument,” and academic stock phrases such as “a study that fills a much-needed gap.” I learned my email-speak from Roy—how to say “thanks!” constantly no matter how trivial the task done for you; how to send encouraging one-liners, “That’s great! Roy,” in response to emails most people would ignore; how to preface work assignments with “whenever you have time” and “no rush on this,” when you really mean “do it as soon as you can.” Roy taught me how to be a researcher. He researched everything. At the first memorial for Roy at George Mason University in Arlington, a friend of his described how Roy embarked on a research project to get a letter to the editor published in the <em>New York Times</em>. He determined the published letters often started with “We are shocked and dismayed,” and used the phrase. The letter was published. Roy demanded the same dedication from his students and research assistants. I still remember how I spent hours going through the <em>Washington Post</em> in search of a Doonesbury cartoon for him that gave the only two possible reasons for producing web sites as “fear and greed,” and then through the Hearst press from the 1940s in search of an anti-Sidney Hillman limerick, to include on the <em>Who Build America</em> CD. The limerick was not printed when Steven Fraser’s book <em>Labor Will Rule</em> claimed it would be, but several weeks later. None of his students could get away with close readings of a few texts—a method then popular in my field of historical cultural studies. I don’t need to refer to <em>The Chicago Manual of Style</em> to format my book; I can refer to Roy’s and Elizabeth Blackmar’s <em>The Park and the People</em>, a study that cites every possible kind of source, and has the most elaborate abbreviation system I have yet to encounter in a work of scholarship. Roy taught me how to comment on other people’s work. When he showed me how to rewrite completely one of my less successful drafts, in a 5-page single-spaced line-by-line commentary, he was quite direct and at times sarcastic. To one of my wilder propositions he responded, “I am prepared to believe that this is the case, but the claims here seem to rest on two anecdotes.” Yet he was also kind—he also used, quite without foundation, words “perceptive,” “well-written,” and “wonderful,” the latter three times. I’m not sure Roy was capable of writing comments that were not detailed—he gave such thorough responses not just to dissertation and book chapters but also to papers he assigned in his Clio Wired class (an introduction to digital history) that he invented and taught for years. Roy taught me how to be a radical historian. I read mounds of books that claimed to provide ever more radical readings of various practices and texts. In contrast, it was useful to encounter Roy’s less ostentatious, everyday brand of radicalism. At the first memorial for Roy at George Mason University in Arlington, Alison Landsberg, his friend, colleague, and neighbor, read an email from Roy and Deborah from 2003 where they invited friends to participate in an antiwar candlelight vigil in Arlington, Virginia. “If there is interest,” they wrote, “we would be happy to organize a group dinner of take out food at our house before hand (5:30?) or after.” At the time it seemed that mass demonstrations in DC, while inspiring to participants, changed neither gender policies nor war plans of the Bush Administration. Yet Roy never gave up. Every single one of his projects—from an antiwar vigil to his work at the <em>Radical History Review</em> to convincing the AHA to make articles in the <em>American Historical Review</em> available for free on the web—aimed at getting things done. The Center for History and New Media, which he founded to democratize history, is perhaps his most important work of radical scholarship. Most importantly, in doing all of the above, Roy taught me how to be a human being. He ignored no one—at every meeting or party, he would make sure to find the least important person in the room and strike up a conversation. Even after he became ill and was often tired he continued to help colleagues, advise students, direct the Center, and of course, answer his email. Many people had no idea how ill he was and where shocked by his passing because he never stopped being Roy, in any circumstances. I miss the sense of security Roy gave his students immensely and yet I will always have his sense of purpose in doing history. Most of all, I miss him. Thanks, Roy. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 261 Title A name given to the resource Morning Coffee with Roy, Roy as Mentor"" Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource You must be 13 years of age or older to submit material to us. Your submission of material constitutes your permission for, and consent to, its dissemination and use in connection with Thanks, Roy in all media in perpetuity. If you have so indicated on the form, your material will be published on Thanks, Roy (with or without your name, depending on what you have indicated). Otherwise, your response will only be available to approved researchers using Thanks, Roy. The material you submit must have been created by you, wholly original, and shall not be copied from or based, in whole or in part, upon any other photographic, literary, or other material, except to the extent that such material is in the public domain. Further, submitted material must not violate any confidentiality, privacy, security or other laws. By submitting material to Thanks, Roy you release, discharge, and agree to hold harmless Thanks, Roy and persons acting under its permission or authority, including a public library or archive to which the collection might be donated for purposes of long-term preservation, from any claims or liability arising out the Thanks, Roy's use of the material, including, without limitation, claims for violation of privacy, defamation, or misrepresentation. Thanks, Roy has no obligation to use your material. You will be sent via email a copy of your contribution to Thanks, Roy. We cannot return any material you submit to us so be sure to keep a copy. Thanks, Roy will not share your email address or any other information with commercial vendors. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Elena Razlogova Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Elena Razlogova Type The nature or genre of the resource Document chnm coffee commitment kindness mentor radical Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. “Roy as New Media Historian” OAH, March 29, 2008 Yesterday was my birthday and something didn’t happen that I had come to rely on for the past quarter century: I didn’t receive a wonderfully witty and politically astute card from Roy wishing me a happy birthday. That kindness and attention to personal detail were the essence of our dear friend and colleague and one of the things I will sorely miss in the years to come. I don’t think you can separate Roy and his various identities as historian, as we are trying to do here today, from the quintessential fact that he was an unusually kind and generous human being. That generosity extended to all of Roy’s connections and relationships, whether he was reading and editing, multiple times, thick manuscripts; writing untold numbers of job references and letters of recommendation for students, colleagues, and friends; or engaging in serious gossip about the historical profession and the personal quirks and idiosyncrasies of its self-involved and self-regarding practitioners. My job today is to talk about Roy as a new media historian. But to do that I need first to establish what I see as five essential truths and political commitments that defined Roy’s entire career: • broadening the subject of historical inquiry; • fighting for the democratic possibilities of doing and communicating history; • overcoming the theoretical obfuscations that marred so much scholarly writing; • finding new ways and presentational forms to convey historical ideas to a broad public audience; and, most of all, • working collaboratively. Roy loved to collaborate, which was especially evident in his early and vigorous embrace of new media as a form that could reshape the way we thought and learned about the past. Roy and I entered the wonderful world of computers together, buying matching Kaypro II computers in 1982, Roy to do academic work and my ASHP colleagues and me to write the WBA? textbook. Our early shared use of computers led us to start poking around the emerging field of computer controlled media in the late 1980s. I was down in Arlington visiting some time around 1989 and Roy and I took the Metro into DC near Union Station to visit an exhibit of computer controlled training programs that some company or museum had on display. Out of that experience emerged the idea to use new media to do a new kind of history. We’d been doing films and videos at ASHP (Roy was a valued consultant on these productions) but the computer opened new and seemingly limitless vistas for teaching and learning and for working collaboratively. Roy immediately grasped that new media, because of its complexity and technical demands, necessitated collaboration. He was thrilled at that prospect. I guess my fondest memories of working with Roy as a new media historian go back to the origins of our first new media venture, which centered on researching and writing the considerable amount of text that introduced and framed the rich multimedia content of the Who Built America? CD-ROMs that we (meaning the American Social History Project and Roy) conceived and developed together. Much of that writing took place in Roy’s book-lined and paper-strewn office in Roy and Deborah’s Jackson St. house in Arlington. I’d move in for a week or two at a time to work closely with Roy, which consisted of being chained (metaphorically speaking) to a computer all day and well into every evening, working with the kind of intensity, focus and sheer sense of discovery that defined everything that Roy did. I could never manage to keep up with Roy’s output or his brilliant historical insights (I don’t think any of his collaborators did), though I tried damned hard to do so. I learned pretty quickly that the best thing you could do was push yourself, work hard and then sit back and appreciate Roy’s incredible ability to work harder and produce more. Even our hard working team of a dozen or more comrades at ASHP was not enough to keep up with Roy, leading him to create and head up his own new media history operation at GMU, the Center for History and New Media. And, as I think about it, even Roy’s CHNM colleagues, who numbered more than three dozen before he died, can no doubt attest that they couldn’t keep up with Roy, either. I know I speak for all ASHPers and CHNMers when I say that to have been able to collaborate with Roy on imagining and realizing history in new media was a privilege, allowing us all to engage in a common project that helped redefine the way history was thought about and presented. Roy’s influence will be felt for years to come in the profession and beyond. I am certain that he will be remembered not only for his staggering intellectual output, but also for the endearing friendship and support that he offered to so many people, inside the profession and far beyond it. Thanks, Roy, not only for your brilliant intellect and tireless work ethic, but much more for your extraordinary generosity of spirit and for your kind heart. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 256 Title A name given to the resource Coffee with Roy, Roy as New Media Historian"" Language A language of the resource eng Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource You must be 13 years of age or older to submit material to us. Your submission of material constitutes your permission for, and consent to, its dissemination and use in connection with Thanks, Roy in all media in perpetuity. If you have so indicated on the form, your material will be published on Thanks, Roy (with or without your name, depending on what you have indicated). Otherwise, your response will only be available to approved researchers using Thanks, Roy. The material you submit must have been created by you, wholly original, and shall not be copied from or based, in whole or in part, upon any other photographic, literary, or other material, except to the extent that such material is in the public domain. Further, submitted material must not violate any confidentiality, privacy, security or other laws. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Steve Brier Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Steve Brier Type The nature or genre of the resource Document chnm generosity new media productivity. ashp roy who built america Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. Coffee with Roy March 29, 2008 In thinking about what to say this morning, in thinking about Roy and the Center for History and New Media, I looked through the hundreds of entries on the Thanks, Roy website, many from former and current CHNMers, and was once again struck by the eloquence, the humor, the passion for social justice, and the incredible work ethic that comes through—all things that Roy both embodied and fostered in others. I also looked at the tags and the themes that had emerged. Some were to be expected—coffee, history and digital history, the ever-present red (or maroon) shirt and jeans. Many others were also no surprise to those who knew and worked with Roy—decency, kindness, generosity, humility. One tag that drew my attention was “driving.” It reminded me of a drive I took with Roy shortly after I started working at CHNM. We were flying to New York City to meet with Josh, Ellen, and Pennee about History Matters. Roy and Deborah lived close to National Airport, so I drove from my home in Maryland, parked at their house, and Roy drove us to the airport. On the way, Roy started telling a complicated, engaging story about the “ins and outs” of publishing Who Built America—the curious twists and turns, the quirky individuals and intrigues along the way. Somewhere in there, we exited the GW Parkway and entered the airport, the circular drive that takes you past the various parking garages, the passenger drop off, the rental cars. And as Roy talked and drove, we passed the rental cars, the departures and arrivals, and the parking terminals A, B, and C. And we drove right back out of the airport and onto the parkway. Roy was a devoted storyteller and deeply engaged in many interesting, intellectual ideas at any given moment. In this case, Roy’s passion for making history public, making it available and accessible, for telling the stories of ordinary people, and his fascination with the sometimes convoluted path that it took to do so led to a new way of reaching the airport, but one that worked in the end nonetheless. We found our way back to the airport and made the plane in plenty of time. Working with Roy for more than 7 years at CHNM, I came to appreciate and cherish that some days were like this. That getting from point A to point B might take an unexpected path. But whatever the path, Roy had the remarkable ability to stay focused on the important things in life—people, history, and open access to the past—through untold histories as well as through technology. In day-to-day work, sometimes get distracted by annoyances or minor setbacks, but Roy always had the truly admirable ability to keep things in perspective, to focus on the larger meaning of the work. In a discipline known for the work of individuals, Roy was dedicated to collaboration (another popular tag on Thanks, Roy) and to breaking down traditional boundaries. Roy remained committed to the process of collaboration, even when it was slower and messier than working alone, as it usually is. In part, I think it is because Roy knew the advantages of bringing together a range of minds and ideas, of sharing and discussing. But he also truly enjoyed working with people—talking, listening, developing ideas collaboratively. As CHNM grew from one full time employee, Elena, and a few graduate assistants to a staff of more than 40, this got harder to do. Roy’s days were filled, truly packed from beginning to end, with email, meetings, problems to be resolved, grants to be written, and ideas to be grappled with. But he always made time to get to know each person who was hired, to help them make connections and plan their futures; to make sure that they felt welcome and a part of the larger purpose of CHNM and its work. Roy signed his emails “Take Care, Roy” and this he always did—of the past and of the present, of the stories and the people. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 255 Title A name given to the resource Coffee with Roy, Roy and CHNM"" Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource You must be 13 years of age or older to submit material to us. Your submission of material constitutes your permission for, and consent to, its dissemination and use in connection with Thanks, Roy in all media in perpetuity. If you have so indicated on the form, your material will be published on Thanks, Roy (with or without your name, depending on what you have indicated). Otherwise, your response will only be available to approved researchers using Thanks, Roy. The material you submit must have been created by you, wholly original, and shall not be copied from or based, in whole or in part, upon any other photographic, literary, or other material, except to the extent that such material is in the public domain. Further, submitted material must not violate any confidentiality, privacy, security or other laws. By submitting material to Thanks, Roy you release, discharge, and agree to hold harmless Thanks, Roy and persons acting under its permission or authority, including a public library or archive to which the collection might be donated for purposes of long-term preservation, from any claims or liability arising out the Thanks, Roy's use of the material, including, without limitation, claims for violation of privacy, defamation, or misrepresentation. Thanks, Roy has no obligation to use your material. You will be sent via email a copy of your contribution to Thanks, Roy. We cannot return any material you submit to us so be sure to keep a copy. Thanks, Roy will not share your email address or any other information with commercial vendors. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Kelly Schrum Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Kelly Schrum Type The nature or genre of the resource Document chnm Coffee with Roy driving Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Text Any textual data included in the document. I have admired Roy's scholarship for many years, but I will remember him best for his democratic and egalitarian manner. In a profession where traditional scholarship often earns the greatest acclaim, Roy worked in public history, among other fields, and helped to make it a vibrant and important enterprise. He did as much as anyone to make the Web a source of learning and intellectual exchange. And he always had time to offer advice or encouragement to everyone he met. His combination of deep learning, a modest manner, and generosity were utterly winning. It is tragic that he is gone, but his memory will be an inspiration for a long time to come. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 254 Title A name given to the resource Loss and Inspiration Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource You must be 13 years of age or older to submit material to us. Your submission of material constitutes your permission for, and consent to, its dissemination and use in connection with Thanks, Roy in all media in perpetuity. If you have so indicated on the form, your material will be published on Thanks, Roy (with or without your name, depending on what you have indicated). Otherwise, your response will only be available to approved researchers using Thanks, Roy. The material you submit must have been created by you, wholly original, and shall not be copied from or based, in whole or in part, upon any other photographic, literary, or other material, except to the extent that such material is in the public domain. Further, submitted material must not violate any confidentiality, privacy, security or other laws. By submitting material to Thanks, Roy you release, discharge, and agree to hold harmless Thanks, Roy and persons acting under its permission or authority, including a public library or archive to which the collection might be donated for purposes of long-term preservation, from any claims or liability arising out the Thanks, Roy's use of the material, including, without limitation, claims for violation of privacy, defamation, or misrepresentation. Thanks, Roy has no obligation to use your material. You will be sent via email a copy of your contribution to Thanks, Roy. We cannot return any material you submit to us so be sure to keep a copy. Thanks, Roy will not share your email address or any other information with commercial vendors. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Rob Snyder Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Rob Snyder Type The nature or genre of the resource Document