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1976 |
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| I live in Amherst, Massachusetts I am divorced. |
2001 |
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| Richard
in 2006 |
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| 30 year update - again in his
own words ........ As of August, 2005, I'm a professor
of American History at the American University of Sharjah (quite
near Dubai) in the United Arab Emirates (http://www.aus.edu/cas/is/
... look under "Faculty"). I teach U.S. and world history there
and this last year helped create only the second American Studies
program in the Arab World (the first beat us by several months.)
I'm planning to stay for the next several years, at least. The
university teaches in English and follows the American model. My
students range from across the world but are a majority Arab,
mainly from the Emirates, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf region, and
Palestine, along with solid numbers of Indians, Pakistanis,
Iranians, etc. In general, it's quite a nice place to be; the
Emirates are mostly extraordinarily modern and English is the
predominant language, my students are nice, and the campus is new.
(And the weather? Well... between late Oct. and early April it's
pretty sweet. Let us not speak of the rest :) ... This year and in
coming years I'll stay in the UAE during the fall and spring
semesters but will come back to my home in Amherst, Massachusetts
during the winter and summer breaks. Unfortunately, I won't be
able to come to the reunion this time due to my responsibilities
there.
As for the rest... After high school I bummed around, growing my
hair for several years before I joined the Navy (1978-82; I was an
aircrewman/radio operator in P-3s), worked in a factory (82-83),
and then went to college at Ohio University (B.S. in Computer
Science, 1988; M.A. in Geography, 1992). I worked at O.U. for five
years, 1990-95, before returning to university full time in the
fall of 1995. At that point I moved to the University of
Massachusetts at Amherst, where I earned an M.A. in History (1997)
and finally a Ph.D. in 2002. In the process, my eleven-year-long
relationship disintegrated; I remain unmarried. From 2002 to 2005
I taught at a number of schools in the Amherst area (UMass, Smith
College, Western New England College, etc.) before getting this
job in the UAE. This summer (2006) I'm finishing the manuscript of
my first book, _The Birth of American Tourism_, which I'm
contracted to deliver to the University of Massachusetts Press by
early July. It's a history of to
urism in the U.S. before 1830 ... which, I realize, is massively
arcane and a bit bizarre; I'm expecting to sell hundreds of
copies. My next book, which I'm beginning to research this summer,
should be about American tourism from 1830 to the Civil War.
Best wishes to everyone! I enjoyed re-meeting many of you back in
2001 and I hope you have a great reunion this time. And massive
thanks to Gale Webber for maintaining these pages and to Kathy
Duncan-Smith for organizing everything!
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| 25 year update -In his own words................ |
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For the two years after graduation, I worked at
not doing much, but that began to pale and so in 1978 I joined the
U.S. Navy. After training and all that (as an aircrewman on P-3
patrol planes), I ended up in Hawaii, where I lived until my
discharge in 1982. I moved to Mt. View, California, where I worked
in a factory and tried to do night school. In 1984, after an
invitation by my father, who taught there, I went to Athens, Ohio,
to do a degree at Ohio University, and in 1988 I got a B.S. in
Computer Science. Curiously, I followed that with an M.A. in
Geography (Cartography and Historical Geography). At the same
time, I worked at the university's fundraising office, where I
stayed until 1995. That year, I decided that either I was going
to die there or move on, and so I took the leap and returned to
school, this time to pursue my life-long dream of getting a Ph.D.
in history. My wife and I moved here, to Amherst, Massachusetts,
and after a year of graduate school she decided that Vermont was a
much more attractive place to live and so after eleven years of
partnership and marriage we divorced. At last, as we approach
2002, I'm nearing the end of my Ph.D. And so I'm writing my
dissertation, on the social and cultural implications of the
earliest decades of American tourism, 1790-1830, teaching, as an
instructor at the University of Massachusetts and as an adjunct
professor at Western New England College, and, by the time I come
to the reunion, looking for a full-time job in academia. And
although Amherst is a wonderful town and I would love to stay here
indefinitely, the nature of the academic job market means that I
may be somewhere else entirely come the fall of 2002. |
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