Writing for Roy

I am one of the fortunate ones who benefited in profound ways from knowing Roy even though I did not know him very well. Larry Levine, whom I got to know when he served on an advisory board of a film reference book project that I was involved in, encouraged me to enroll in Mason’s cultural studies program by talking up the history department he recently had joined. He suggested I look at Eight Hours for What We Will. That book, along with Larry’s Highbrow/Lowbrow, showed me what could be done with the study of popular culture when historians approached it from a broader perspective. I recently completed my dissertation, writing much of it after both Larry and Roy had become ill. I realize now that in a sense I was writing it for them to read, knowing that in some ways, both obvious and oblique, it was hugely informed by their work.