DAVID JAFFEE

JAFFEE--David P.,

beloved father, friend, teacher and scholar, died after a valiant struggle with pancreatic cancer on January 20, 2017. He was 62. A native New Yorker, David received his B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University, and always marveled that he became a professor. Being paid to read books was a dream come true. Trained in Colonial American History, David soon became interested in American Material and Visual Culture and reinvented himself as a scholar who focused on how objects and images could speak to history. He taught at City College of New York from 1987 to 2008, and at the Bard Graduate Center, where he was Professor and Director of New Media Studies from 2007 to the present. The author of People of the Wachusett (1999) and A New Nation of Goods (2010), he was a prolific essayist and workshop instructor who introduced many students to the study of non-literary documents. Son of the late Dorothy Brown and late Eugene Jaffee, and husband of the late Barbara Brooks, he is survived by his daughter Isadora Jaffee, his greatest pride, his beloved Schneider cousins he considered to be like siblings, and by legions of friends and students inspired by his kindness and generosity. Memorial gifts may be made to the David Jaffee Fellowship in Visual and Material Culture at the American Antiquarian Society, 185 Salisbury St., Worcester, MA 01609.