Roy Rosenzweig, Presente
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I wasn’t one of Roy’s closest friends, but I feel lucky to have known him for a long time. We met when I joined the Radical History Review editorial collective in late 1990, and worked together on that for many years.
I can’t be surprised that so many others have used the word “generous” about Roy. Usually it means a nice person, someone who gives you some time and tips. Roy was the real thing: without any pretence or show, he helped other scholars, including me, in substantial ways. Over and over, more times than I count, his advice and assistance was crucial, on everything from big to small. He left me with an example of what it means to understand history as a collegial rather than competitive initiative.
Roy’s generosity was tied up with his politics, as a radical historian, and a central figure in establishing the practice of radical history in the 1970s and 1980s at RHR, the American Social History Project and CHNM. Yet here, as in everything else he did—and he did so much, as a scholar-activist—he was exceptionally modest. Not self-consciously humble, the way some are on the left: he could tell some very funny stories about the old days of MARHO, and was quietly helpful in explaining to those of us younger to the enterprise what had actually taken place, minus any mythography.
The great radical historians of the past forty years, among whom Roy numbered, are people who took seriously the idea of opening up how history works to everyone—undergraduates, K-12 students and teachers, and the politically-engaged public, as well as our disciplinary peers and graduate students. His contributions are monumental in that respect, from Who Built America?, to “History Matters,” to charting the path to a democratized digital history, let alone his own books, which will be read and taught for a very long time. And then there is a whole other side: how, as one half of “R.J. Lambrose,” he showed up the absurd misappropriations of history by bad scholars and reactionaries of every stripe, helping to make sure that no one would ever mistake the RHR for just another journal. There were many times when I read that section of the journal first, laughing and declaiming it aloud to whomever was in the vicinity. To be judiciously, bitingly funny and radical too—a rare gift in our country, let alone our profession. That’s what Roy was, a rare gift.
I can’t be surprised that so many others have used the word “generous” about Roy. Usually it means a nice person, someone who gives you some time and tips. Roy was the real thing: without any pretence or show, he helped other scholars, including me, in substantial ways. Over and over, more times than I count, his advice and assistance was crucial, on everything from big to small. He left me with an example of what it means to understand history as a collegial rather than competitive initiative.
Roy’s generosity was tied up with his politics, as a radical historian, and a central figure in establishing the practice of radical history in the 1970s and 1980s at RHR, the American Social History Project and CHNM. Yet here, as in everything else he did—and he did so much, as a scholar-activist—he was exceptionally modest. Not self-consciously humble, the way some are on the left: he could tell some very funny stories about the old days of MARHO, and was quietly helpful in explaining to those of us younger to the enterprise what had actually taken place, minus any mythography.
The great radical historians of the past forty years, among whom Roy numbered, are people who took seriously the idea of opening up how history works to everyone—undergraduates, K-12 students and teachers, and the politically-engaged public, as well as our disciplinary peers and graduate students. His contributions are monumental in that respect, from Who Built America?, to “History Matters,” to charting the path to a democratized digital history, let alone his own books, which will be read and taught for a very long time. And then there is a whole other side: how, as one half of “R.J. Lambrose,” he showed up the absurd misappropriations of history by bad scholars and reactionaries of every stripe, helping to make sure that no one would ever mistake the RHR for just another journal. There were many times when I read that section of the journal first, laughing and declaiming it aloud to whomever was in the vicinity. To be judiciously, bitingly funny and radical too—a rare gift in our country, let alone our profession. That’s what Roy was, a rare gift.
Citation
Van Gosse, “Roy Rosenzweig, Presente,” Thanks, Roy, accessed April 27, 2024, https://thanksroy.org/items/show/520.