This episode of Making Queer History Public features interviews conducted in late 2024 with educators Kennita Ballard and Julian Shaefer, who attended ASHP’s LGBTQ+ Histories of the United States NEH-funded institutes during the Summers of 2022 and 2024 (respectively). Hosted by veteran educator and PhD student in history, Rachel Pitkin, the episode takes a deep dive into how their experience teaching LGBTQ+ topics squares with both public rhetoric and major findings from The American Historical...
Apr 22, 2025•34 min
The third episode of Making Queer History Public features interviews conducted in 2020 with educators and activists Dr. Lori Burns and Kate Okeson, who have been on the frontlines of preserving queer history and topics in our classrooms for years. Today, we will discuss their fight for New Jersey’s first inclusive education law. Hosted by veteran educator, Rachel Pitkin, we take a deep dive into what an inclusive education looks like and the efforts utilized by Lori and Kate to make this law a r...
Dec 06, 2023•29 min
In the second episode of Making Queer History Public, we talk with psychotherapist, teacher, and activist, Michelle Esther O’Brien. We discuss the work Michelle has put in coordinating the NYC Trans Oral History Project, a community archive devoted to the collection, preservation and sharing of trans histories. Making Queer History Public is sponsored by a Humanities New York Action Grant. Learn more about the NYC Trans Oral History Project, and access their archive, here. Listen to an interview...
Feb 01, 2023•30 min
In the first episode of Making Queer History Public, we talk with archivist, writer, and documentarian, Steven G. Fullwood, about his experiences archiving the lives of LGBTQ+ folks at the Schomburg Center. We also discuss the historical exclusion of the LGBTQ+ community in institutional archives and the work that people like Steven have done to bring their stories to light. Learn more about the Nomadic Archivists Project here, and the In The Life Archives at the Schomburg Center (NYPL) here. Ot...
Jan 12, 2023•28 min
Making Queer History Public is a new podcast series by the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning that explores LGBTQ+ public history. We will be looking at archives, museums, public art, and education initiatives, all to investigate how queer and trans histories are being told, how LGBTQ+ people are pushing public history narratives forward, and where you can go to learn more about queer and trans-led projects and experiences.This is a preview of our first episode, which ...
Jun 21, 2021•5 min
This episode features Kubi Ackerman, then-Director of the Future City Lab at the Museum of the City of New York. Ackerman is not interested in monuments for the past, but instead asks how we might memorialize the present and the future, as well as send warnings or messages to future generations. Encompassing topics like socio-economic inequality and the climate crisis, Ackerman and the Future City Lab help us challenge conventional notions of monuments and develop participatory exhibitions about...
Jan 22, 2020•16 min
This episode features Marisa Williamson, a multimedia artist based in Newark, New Jersey whose site-specific works, videos, and performances focus on the body, authority, freedom, and memory. Speaking during the third and final event in our public seminar series, “Difficult Histories/Public Spaces: The Challenge of Monuments in New York City and the Nation,” Williamson details her work on “Sweet Chariot,” a smartphone-based, augmented-reality tour of Philadelphia’s spaces of black freedom strugg...
Dec 11, 2019•16 min
“Lots of hard work, lots of collaboration, and a long horizon.” These, according to Mary Anne Trasciatti, Professor of Writing and Rhetoric at Hofstra University, are the keys to erecting a public art memorial from the ground up in New York City. In this episode, Trasciatti speaks about the Reframing the Skymemorial for the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911. As president of the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition, Trasciatti and her colleagues—all volunteers—dialogued with government and...
Jun 12, 2019•19 min
How do we think about history? Whose history is it? And how is history constructed, both in academic terms and in a public way?These questions were made apparent in discussions of the NYC Mayor’s Commission on Monuments, where Jack Tchen, Professor of Public History and the Humanities at Rutgers University, served as a panelist. In this episode, Tchen walks us through the ways the city’s public history has been organized, the processes and findings of the Commission, and a vision to re-establish...
Mar 15, 2019•21 min
In this episode, Michele Bogart, professor and author of the recently published Sculpture in Gotham: Art and Urban Renewal In New York City, untangles the bureaucracy of monument creation in New York City. Delving into decision-making processes behind the City's monuments and memorials, Bogart looks to the past and the present in discussing whose voice is heard and valued in constructing urban spaces of meaning and rememberance. This episode features audio from the program "Who Decides? The Hist...
Feb 05, 2019•18 min
In this four-speaker panel, professors, artists, and activists delve into the ongoing re-evaluation of public monuments and memorials, particularly those in New York City (NYC). Dr. Harriet Senie, professor of art history at The Graduate Center CUNY, offers insights into the decision making process of the 2017 Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments, and Markers, an initiative convened to advise NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio about controversial monuments and markers on city-owned land. Dr....
Nov 07, 2018•1 hr 26 min
Lori A. Flores, Stony Brook UniversityCUNY Graduate Center, January 18, 2017Lori Flores, History Professor at Stony Brook University, contextualizes Mexican immigration and identity and examines how shifting borders complicate Mexican American identities. Flores covers the tumultuous relationship between Mexican immigrants and the United States Government from World War 1 into the present describing how during economic booms immigrants were welcomed and then quickly turned away during economic d...
Apr 09, 2018•1 hr 46 min
Joshua Freeman, ASHPThe Graduate Center, CUNYFebruary 26, 2018Joshua Freeman, professor of history at CUNY Graduate Center and Queens College and Steven Greenhouse, former labor reporter for the New York Times, discuss Freeman's recent book, Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World. From the origins of factories in the 1720s England through the current state of mega-factories like Foxconn, the conversation covers the rise and fall of factories across the world and th...
Mar 15, 2018•1 hr 9 min
Deirdre Cooper Owens, Queens College CUNY Graduate Center, February 14, 2018Deirdre Cooper Owens reads a section from her recent work, Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology, which explores the intersections of slavery, capitalism, and medicine and discusses the work with Jennifer Morgan, Professor of History New York University and Sasha Turner Bryson, Professor of History at Quinnipiac University. Owen’s study draws from the journals of doctors like James Marion ...
Mar 08, 2018•1 hr 22 min
Gregory Downs, UC DavisCUNY Graduate Center, July 19, 2016In this talk, Gregory Down provides historical context for viewing U.S. slavery in a global context and presents the complexities of reconstruction efforts to create a unified United States after the Civil War. Down focuses on the passage of new constitutional amendments, General Grant’s presidency, and the transition of political power in 1877. This talk took place on July 19, 2016, as part of ASHP’s Visual Culture of the Civil War Summe...
Aug 24, 2017•49 min
Richard Samuel West, founder of New England's PeriodysseyCUNY Graduate Center, July 20, 2016In this presentation, Richard Samuel West analyzes political cartoons of the reconstruction era utilizing Thomas Nast’s Harper Weekly pieces as a timeline. West focuses on Southern Sentiment and Nast’s sharp criticism of it, presenting cartoons on Johnson’s presidency, Grant’s oppositional stance, and images of the KKK and White League. This talk took place on July 19, 2016, as part of ASHP’s Visual Cultu...
Aug 22, 2017•1 hr 32 min
Sarah Burns, Indiana UniversityCUNY Graduate Center, July 19, 2016In this discussion, Sarah Burns examines common Civil War narratives in fine arts in this period by examining the work of artists such as William Walker, Thomas Waterman, and Winslow Homer. Burns asks who created the pieces and for what audience and further questioning the works by examining portraits showing a different narrative of African Americans. Ultimately concluding that these works are a contention between white construct...
Aug 22, 2017•1 hr 33 min
Megan Kate Nelson, Author of Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American Civil War CUNY Graduate Center, July 15, 2016In this talk, Megan Kate Nelson discusses the proliferation of photographs that focus on ruins and war-torn bodies in 1864/1865, at the end of the civil war. Nelson looks at photos taken by union photographers and the narratives created with these photos. By examining the historical context of the photographs, Nelson argues that photography can be as ambiguous as other forms of war...
Aug 22, 2017•1 hr 23 min
Maurie Mcinnis, University of Virginia CUNY Graduate Center, July 12, 2016In this presentation, Maurie Mcinnis discusses the development of anti-slavery art in England and walks through American anti/pro-slavery imagery. Mcinnis presents art created at various stages of the anti-slavery movement on both sides of the Atlantic weaving a narrative highlighting the important role women’s societies played in ending British slavery, the variety in illustrations of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and how even fine ...
Aug 22, 2017•1 hr 23 min
Kirk Savage, University of PittsburghCUNY Graduate Center, July 20, 2016In this highly relevant presentation, Kirk Savage speaks on the legacy of the Civil War and its continued impact on shaping American identity. Savage examines counter legacies by critiquing a Confederate statue in St. Louis, a monument to a Confederate Cherokee Legion in North Carolina, and the concept of “remembering those who have fallen for your freedom.” He closes by exemplifying the fact that there are stories we choose...
Aug 17, 2017•1 hr 19 min
Gregory Downs, UC Davis The Graduate Center, CUNY July 12, 2016In this talk, Gregory Downs discusses the development of slavery and anti-slavery in the United States. He positions the U.S. slave trade in a global context and examines the intricacies of the Second Middle Passage. Downs analyzes rhetoric framing the North as a symbol of bourgeois modernity, and how it led to the development of the North v. South narratives. He concludes with the question of why the Civil War occurred in a context ...
Jul 12, 2017•39 min
Gregory Downs, UC Davis The Graduate Center, CUNY July 15, 2016In this talk, Gregory Downs presents the complexities of early Reconstruction in the post-bellum United States. Downs examines freedom in proximity to power by looking at the federal government’s implementation of U.S. laws and agencies in the South, specifically analyzing the tail end of Sherman’s March, the surrender at Appomattox, and the difficulties of enforcing the 13th amendment in rural southern areas. This talk took place on...
Jul 12, 2017•55 min
Ari Kelman, Penn State The Graduate Center, CUNY July 18, 2016In this presentation, Ari Kelman examines the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado and the controversial opening of The Sand Creek Memorial in 2007. Kelman explores the complicated question of how politics and violence engaged on the American borderland, and the interpretation by some unionists that “civilizing Indians” was essential to preserving the Union. This talk took place on July 18, 2016, as part of ASHP’s Visual Culture of th...
Jul 12, 2017•1 hr 25 min
Joshua Brown, ASHPThe Graduate Center, CUNYJuly 20, 2016In this presentation, Joshua Brown delves into how Gilded Age newspapers portrayed current events. He analyzes news illustrations of events including The Centennial Exposition, and The Panic of 1873, to analyze how media narratives based on physiognomies vilified African-Americans, working-class people, and immigrants. This talk took place on July 20, 2016, as part of ASHP’s Visual Culture of the Civil War Summer Institute, an NEH professio...
Jul 12, 2017•1 hr 37 min
John Nieto-Phillips, Indiana University-BloomingtonCUNY Graduate Center (via Skype), December 6, 2013In this presentation, John Nieto-Phillips provides an overview of the ways that Latinos and Latinas figure into global Hispanism, or Hispanidad. He explores the origins of a burgeoning language rights movement, focusing more particularly on New Mexico, and to a lesser extent, on New York City. This talk was delivered via Skype, so the sound quality is less than optimal.
Apr 19, 2017•43 min
Cynthia Tobar, Bronx Community CollegeCUNY Graduate Center, April 9, 2014In this panel discussion moderated by Cynthia Tobar, activists and organizers discuss campus-based movements across CUNY that resisted city and state cutbacks. Hear how self-archiving efforts can ensure a more egaltarian CUNY history.
Dec 21, 2016•1 hr 18 min
Stephen Brier, CUNY Graduate CenterCUNY Graduate Center, April 9, 2014In this panel discussion, moderated by Stephen Brier, former student and faculty activists who led the fight on CUNY campuses to open the University to all NYC high school graduates discuss this transformative historical moment.
Dec 20, 2016•1 hr 17 min
In this panel presentation, scholars Sarah Burns (emerita, Indiana University), Josh Brown (CUNY Graduate Center), and Greg Downs (UC Davis) discuss the visual culture of the post-Civil War era in the fine arts and the illustrated press.
May 18, 2016•52 min
In this presentation, photography historian Deborah Willis, and historian Barbara Krauthamer discuss the use of portrait photography as historical evidence. Together they examine several photographs of African Americans in the era of the U.S. Civil War, before and after emancipation; and analyze the evidence in the images in terms of the fundamental influence of African Americans, particularly African-American women, in shaping our understanding of this period of American history.
May 03, 2016•55 min
Richard Samuel West, historian of cartoons and popular publications and founder of New England's Periodyssey, discusses the range of topics in and formats of political cartoons published during the Civil War and delineates how the medium changed over the course of the conflict. This talk took place on July 16, 2012, as part of The Visual Culture of the American Civil War, an NEH Summer Institute for College and University Teachers.
May 03, 2016•1 hr 54 min
