Richard Macksey was born in 1931. He received his B.A from Johns Hopkins in 1953 and earned his Ph.D. from the University in 1957. Macksey went on to work for the university as a professor teaching critical theory, comparative literature and film studies. He also served as the co-founder and director of the Johns Hopkins University Humanities Center. Macksey is also known for his extensive private library, which is home to more than 70,000 books and manuscripts. In this interview, Macksey recounts Hopkins' early history and those who were instrumental in shaping it. This oral history is a part of the Mame Warren oral histories series.

H. Alan Shapiro is a classical archaeologist serving as a professor in Johns Hopkins University's Department of Classics. Prior to his professorship at Hopkins, Shapiro taught at Columbia, Tulane, Stevens Tech and Canterbury in New Zealand. Sanchita Balachandran is the Curator/Conservator of the Johns Hopkins Archeological Museum and Lecturer in the Department of Near Eastern Studies. She trained as an objects conservator at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and completed additional training in the Antiquities Conservation Department of the J. Paul Getty Museum and at the Straus Center for Conservation at the Harvard Art Museums. In this interview, Shapiro and Balachandran discuss David M. Robinson's contributions to classics at Hopkins as well as the role of the Archaeological Museum on campus. This oral history is part of the Hopkins Retrospective oral histories series.