Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM), formerly the Center for History and New Media (CHNM), is a research center specializing in digital history and information technology at George Mason University (GMU) in Fairfax County, Virginia. It was one of the first digital history centers in the world, established by Roy Rosenzweig in 1994 to use digital media and information technology to democratize history: to incorporate multiple voices, reach diverse audiences, and encourage popular participation in presenting and preserving the past. Its current director is T. Mills Kelly.
History
Under Roy Rosenzweig
CHNM was founded in the fall of 1994 by Roy Rosenzweig as a research center within the GMU Department of History and Art History. Its origins lay in Rosenzweig's work with Steve Brier and Josh Brown on a CD-ROM version of the American Social History Project's American history textbook, Who Built America? but as Rosenzweig was initially the only person at the center, it was located in his office. He was joined in 1995 by Michael O'Malley, who became the center's Associate Director, and then-PhD-student Elena Razlogova, who became the center's first paid staff member. During office moves in 1997, the center expanded to two offices connected by a lobby with the department's computers and printer. In 1999, it secured a challenge grant from the NEH which allowed it to establish an endowment in support of the center. This was followed in 2000 by a grant from the Alfred Sloan Foundation, which led to a major expansion of center personnel and its relocating to its own space, separate from the department.
Renaming
In 2007, Rosenzweig died of cancer at the age of only 57. Dan Cohen succeeded him as director and a second NEH challenge grant to build the center endowment provided the opportunity to rename the center in his honor. On April 15, 2011, the Center for History and New Media became the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media.
After Roy Rosenzweig
In 2013, Cohen left the center to become the founding executive director of the Digital Public Library of America and was succeeded as director by Stephen Robertson.
In 2018, The Chronicle of Higher Education released a report on the top universities to receive funding from the NEH over the past years. George Mason had the eighth highest funding amount nationwide, with 61% of that funding awarded to RRCHNM. As the center is administratively part of the Department of History and Art History, the department considered by itself would have ranked at number thirteen on the nationwide list.
In 2019, Robertson left the center and was succeeded as director by T. Mills Kelly.
Open educational resources
The center's first projects were aimed at K-12 teachers and students and this remains a significant strand of work done at the center to the present day. With funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), Rosenzweig continued work on the Who Built America? CD-ROMs before he transitioned to the then-new world wide web. Early online projects included Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, a history of the French Revolution; History Matters, for use in American history survey courses; and World History Sources and Women in World History for use in world history survey courses. Other high profile NEH-funded projects include T. Mills Kelly's Making the History of 1989, created in collaboration with the German Historical Institute, and Kelly Schrum's Children and Youth in History, created in collaboration with the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
In 2002, the center began to receive a series of grants from the US Department of Education's Teaching American History program, including a five year, $7 million grant to build an American history clearinghouse website in 2007. It also worked directly with school systems and cultural heritage institutes to create pedagogical materials ranging from lesson plans to digital archives of primary sources. One such project on historical thinking, Object of History, was created in partnership with the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History.
Its recent educational projects have focused on re-developing its open educational resources about world history. One of its newest projects, in conjunction with the National Museum of American Diplomacy, involves the creation of three historical diplomacy classroom simulations for secondary education instructors. CHNM is also involved with educational outreach with teachers in Virginia school districts.
In keeping with the center's commitment to democratize history, all web-based projects are open educational resources.