Robin W. Winks (b. December 5, 1930, Indiana – d. April 7, 2003, New Haven, Connecticut) was an American academic, historian, diplomat, and writer on the subject of fiction, especially detective novels, and advocate for the National Parks. After joining the faculty of Yale University in 1957, he rose in 1996-1999 to become the Randolph Townsend Professor of History and Master of Berkeley College. At Oxford University, he served as George Eastman Professor in 1992-3, and as Harmsworth Visiting Professor of American History in 1999-2000.
Born in Indiana in 1930, Winks graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Colorado in 1952. As a Fulbright Scholar in New Zealand, Winks earned a master's degree in Maori studies from Victoria University before returning to the University of Colorado to earn a second master's degree in ethnography. He then earned a Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1957 with a dissertation on Canadian and American relations. After a year of teaching at Connecticut College, he joined the faculty at Yale in 1957, where he remained for the rest of his career. He held visiting lectureships and conducted research at universities around the nation and the world, including at Sydney University in 1963 where he lectured memorably on American History, Canada, Great Britain, New Zealand, South Africa, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and the Middle East. He was on leave 1969-71 to serve as United States Cultural Attache to the American Embassy in London and was a regular adviser to various governmental agencies.
Winks was a Fellow of the Explorers Club, the Society of American Historians, the Royal Historical Society, the Royal Commonwealth Society, and a member of both the Athenaeum Club and Special Forces Club. He was a Guggenheim Fellow, a Smith-Mundt Fellow, and a Stimson Grant winner. In 1989, he won the Donner Medal from the Association for Canadian Studies in the United States.
Winks held offices and committee chairmanships in the American Historical Association, the Canadian Historical Association, and the Organization of American Historians. He was honored with a Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Nebraska and from the University of Colorado.
Winks died in 2003 in New Haven, Connecticut.
Winks was a lover of the outdoors and spent much of his career advocating for the protection of open spaces. He served as chair of the National Parks System Advisory Board, and in 1988, was awarded the Department of the Interior’s Conservationist of the Year Award. In 1998, he became the first person to have visited all of the National Park Service units (there were 376 at that time). In 1999, the National Parks Conservation Association honored him with its first award for contributions to public education on behalf of the national parks. They subsequently established the honor as an annual award named the Robin W. Winks Award for Enhancing Public Understanding of National Parks.
Robin Winks is the author of The Blacks in Canada: A History. In The Blacks in Canada, Winks details the diverse experiences of Black immigrants to Canada, including Black slaves brought to Nova Scotia and the Canadas by Loyalists at the end of the American Revolution, Black refugees who fled to Nova Scotia following the War of 1812, Jamaican Maroons, and fugitive slaves who fled to British North America. He also looks at Black West Coast businessmen who helped found British Columbia, particularly Victoria, and Black settlements in the prairie provinces. Throughout Winks explores efforts by African Canadians to establish and maintain meaningful lifestyles in Canada. The Blacks in Canada (the second edition, 2000) investigates the French and English periods of slavery, the abolitionist movement in Canada, and the role played by Canadians in the broader continental anti-slavery crusade, as well as Canadian adaptations to nineteenth- and twentieth-century racial mores.
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Robin Winks, 72, Scholar, Parks Advocate and Author
Robin W. Winks, a Yale scholar who combined a love of British imperial history with enthusiasm for open spaces and a consuming interest in international espionage and detective fiction, died on Monday in New Haven. He was 72.
The cause was complications after a stroke, his wife, Avril, said.
In more than 40 years of teaching at Yale, Dr. Wicks, who held the Randolph W. Townsend Jr. chair of history, wrote extensively about the history of the British Empire, with particular emphasis on Canada and Canadian relations with the United States, as well as on Australian and New Zealand history.
He also developed a boundless enthusiasm for America's national parks and monuments, and in 1998 became one of the few people to have visited all 376 of these sites.
His tireless advocacy for preserving open spaces led the National Parks Association in 1999 to award him its first Robin W. Winks gold medal for ''enhancing public understanding of the national parks.''
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Another great interest of Dr. Winks's life was espionage and detective fiction, on which he wrote several books.
In 1987 he published ''Cloak and Gown: Scholars in America's Secret War,'' an account of the Central Intelligence Agency's relationship with major American universities, especially Yale, which included portraits of famous spy-hunters like James J. Angleton and Norman Holmes Pearson.
Some of the book's chapters remain unpublished because their subjects are still living. Dr. Winks deposited these writings with the Beinecke Library at Yale under a 50-year seal.
In 1999 he won the Edgar Award for his book ''Mystery and Suspense Writers.''
Robin William Winks was born in Indiana on Dec. 5, 1930, and graduated from the University of Colorado in 1952.
As a Fulbright Scholar in New Zealand, he received a master's degree in Maori studies from Victoria University before studying ethnography back at Colorado and earning his doctorate at Johns Hopkins in 1957.
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He joined the history faculty at Yale in 1959 and remained there for the rest of his career, with the exception of some visiting posts overseas. From 1969 to 1971 he was cultural attaché at the United States Embassy in London. From 1999 to 2000 he was the Vyvyan Harmsworth visiting professor of American history at Oxford University, to which he returned in 1992 and 1993 as George Eastman professor, lecturing on the history of the British Empire.
He is survived by his wife; a daughter, Honor Winks of Alpharetta, Ga.; and a son, Eliot Myles of Pittsburgh.
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