It is difficult to come up with an American Social History Project effort in the last twenty years that David Jaffee did not have a hand in. The number of ASHP/CML projects in which he participated is startling and only outdone by their variety. His vast historical knowledge, expertise as a teacher, and insight into the ways digital media was reshaping instruction and inquiry (all of which are summarized so well on the tribute page set up by his home institution, the Bard Graduate Center) influenced the first applications of our Who Built America? CD-ROMs in college courses in the mid-1990s—and shaped the subsequent conception and implementation of our nationwide New Media Classroom: Narrative, Inquiry, and Technology in the U.S. History Survey faculty development seminars. Always simpatico with ASHP's approach to visual evidence as resource and documentation, his pioneering scholarship about material and visual culture refined the thinking behind our Learning to Look: Visual Evidence and the U.S. Past seminars. And, for the last six years, his multiple roles as principal faculty, mentor, and lecturer enhanced our NEH summer institutes on the visual culture of the Civil War. Then there were the numerous digital projects in which he played a crucial part as a coordinator, researcher, or writer, from Investigating U.S. History, to Picturing U.S. History: An Interactive Resource for Teaching with Visual Evidence, to History Matters: The U.S. History Survey on the Web. And the third edition of our Who Built America? was so greatly improved by his astutely chosen and beautifully interpreted work as co-visual editor of the two-volume textbook.

In short, we would not be what we are without David. And what a voluminous listing of his ASHP projects cannot convey is the pleasure of his company, his comradeship, his insights and observations, and the humor and generosity he brought to every endeavor.

The American Antiquarian Society has established a fellowship in his honor, The David Jaffee Fellowship in Visual and Material Culture. The fellowship will support the study and use of visual and material culture in the pursuit of research on all aspects of American history before 1900 by a scholar in residence at AAS.

February 2017 marked the 75th anniversary of a grim moment in the history of U.S. civil rights. On February 19, 1942 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order authorizing the mass incarceration of more than 110,000 Japanese Americans in camps across the United States. The order was the culmination of years of discrimination against people of Japanese ancestry, which escalated after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in December, 1941. Approximately 60 percent of the people incarcerated were American citizens.

As we observe this anniversary and contemplate the impact and implications of more recent presidential decrees, ASHP/CML has begun work on the sixth installment in the Mission US series of free online interactive games produced in collaboration with public television station WNET/Thirteen and game designer Electric Funstuff—one with particular relevance to contemporary events. Prisoner in My Homeland will focus on the experience of of a Japanese American teenage boy who—amid the chaos and terror of incarceration—must make choices that reflect broader strategies for survival and resistance. Funded by the National Park Service Japanese American Confinement Sites program, Prisoner in My Homeland and its supporting educational resources will, like its five preceding games, involve and inform middle- and secondary-school students about a critical chapter in the U.S. past.

With more than one million registered users in classrooms across the country, Mission US has garnered numerous citations and awards—in 2016 alone cited as a Best Learning Game Finalist by Games for Change, winner of the Parents’ Choice Gold Award, and nominated for a Daytime Emmy.

On October 21, 2016 ASHP/CML celebrated the 35th anniversary of its founding with a half-day symposium devoted to assessing the accomplishments, missed opportunities, and prospective future goals of U.S. public history. 

More than 100 people attended the event, which included two round table discussions, a keynote speech, a poster exhibit, and closing reception. ASHP co-founder Stephen Brier, Executive Director Joshua Brown, and Board Chair Carol Groneman welcomed the crowd and provided a brief overview of the organization and its past and current programs. The round table panelists discussed a wide range of issues and challenges facing public historians including the demands of fundraising for collecting, preserving, and presenting the histories of LGBTQ communities; democratization of archival materials through opening family archives or aggregating online community archives; ways to involve the public in the process of making history snd not just consuming it; and illuminating the intersections of history and social justice. Keynote speaker James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association, argued that all historians need to become public historians as he examined the commemorative landscape of the Civil War and Jim Crow eras, which too often perpetuates false histories and reinforces racial inequality.

The proceedings of the symposium can be viewed online here.