Prof. Gerald Zahavi is Professor of History, Associate Director of the Oral History Program, and Director of Documentary Studies Program at the University at Albany, State University of New York. He was trained at Cornell and Syracuse Universities, and received his doctorate in U.S. history from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University (with a specialization in modern U.S. economic, social, and labor history).

Reflecting his interest in the use of media -- old and new -- to communicate history to a wide audience, Zahavi founded TALKING HISTORY in 1996, an aural history production center with a weekly FM radio program that is also broadcast over the Internet (http://www.talkinghistory.org). In 1997, he co-founded the Journal for MultiMedia History, and last year -- after two years of effort -- helped establish an interdisciplinary Documentary Studies Program at the University at Albany, a program which he now directs. He currently teaches courses in oral/video history (http://www.albany.edu/history/oralhistory/), historical radio/audio documentary production (http://www.albany.edu/faculty/gz580/documentaryproduction), historical film and video documentary production (http://www.albany.edu/faculty/gz580/histdocfilms/), as well as American labor and economic history, U.S. local and regional history, and general U.S. history.

Zahavi is the author of: Workers, Managers, and Welfare Capitalism: The Shoemakers and Tanners of Endicott Johnson, 1890-1950 (University of Illinois Press, 1988) and a number of articles on the history of labor -- as well as the producer and audio engineer of a 2-CD oral history of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. He is currently working on a number of research and media production projects -- focusing on such topics as welfare capitalism, the history of General Electric, and local and regional studies of Cold War America.

Back to: Advisory Board