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American Social History Project • Center for Media and Learning

American Social History Project Podcast

The American Social History Project Podcast features lectures, interviews, and conversations exploring social history topics with renowned scholars. The talks from ASHP’s public events and programs for educators started in 2009 and continue to the present. These audio and video resources offer historiographic overviews, new research, and pedagogical approaches for American history and culture. Several themes are strongly represented in the collection including the Visual Culture of the Civil War, U.S. Immigration history, and Latino/a history. You can filter the Podcasts by subject. Listen to individual episodes online, or subscribe in the iTunes Store. The direct link to our podcast feed is https://ashp.cuny.edu/podcast.xml. (Depending on your settings, you may be able to follow this link or may instead need to paste it into your podcast app/service.)
Published December 6, 2023

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 reality.

For this episode, we also interviewed Ashley Chiappano Riker, Safe Schools and Community Education...Read full description

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Published February 1, 2023

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 with Michelle O’Brien on oral history methodology here. You can find out more about Michelle’s work here, and support her on...Read full description

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Published January 12, 2023

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 .

Other sources mentioned in the episode:

Find Ann Cvetkovich’s An Archive of...Read full description

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Published June 21, 2021

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 is centered on queer archives. Here, we talk to Steven Fullwood, the founder of the In The Life Archive...Read full description

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Published January 22, 2020

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 urban futures.

This episode features audio from the program “Monuments of the Future: Alternative Approaches," held on February 6, 2019, in...Read full description

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Published December 11, 2019

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 struggle. By inviting the viewer to interact and engage with this history, Williamson opens new doors for alternative approaches to monuments and memorialization.

This episode features audio from the...Read full description

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Published June 12, 2019

“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 outside organizations to secure grants, donations, and permits. Her detailed and comprehensive summary offers a window into the public memorial creation process...Read full description

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Published March 15, 2019

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 Lenape life, history, and culture into historical discourse of the region.

This episode features audio...Read full description

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Published February 5, 2019

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 History and Future of Monument Creation in New York City," held on October 9, 2018, in the Segal Theatre at the...Read full description

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Published November 7, 2018

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).Read full description

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