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October 3, 2024

This summer, undergraduate students from Brooklyn College, Columbia University, and Florida International University contributed to ASHP, assisting with research, creating social media posts, and developing new content for SHEC. We love the creative ideas and energy that students bring to ASHP and are proud of the work they help to produce. If you – or people that you know – are looking for an opportunity to conduct historical research or to share it publicly through educational and digital resources, please contact us to talk about how we can design an internship together.

Chloe Stoia is a first-year History PhD student at the Graduate Center.  She graduated summa cum laude from The College of New Jersey with a Bachelor of Arts degree in History. Her undergraduate thesis topic was female sterilization in Puerto Rico from the 1920s to the 1990s. While at the GC, Chloe looks forward to continuing her research on the intersections between race, birth control, and empire. As a Graduate Assistant, Chloe is excited to contribute to the American Social History Project supporting its mission of making history accessible to the masses.

ASHP mourns the passing of Simin Farkhondeh, who served as director of our Labor at the Crossroads (LaborX) public access and CUNY TV program from 1995 to 2006. Simin produced and directed the monthly program covering a broad range of activism, including immigrant and gay and lesbian worker rights, racism on the job, NAFTA and GATT, various union organizing drives, prison labor, sweatshops, and the rights of welfare recipients. Simin expanded the Labor X work to include training rank-and-file unionists to be media producers and media activists. Simin brought great creative energy, political commitment, and international perspectives to her work and helped connect labor history to current labor struggles. It was an honor to work with Simin, and we miss her gracious camaraderie, critical insight, humor, and commitment to a more just world.

In June, ASHP researcher Emily Uruchima (Kichwa) participated in Indigenous Voices of the Americas: Celebrating the National Museum of the American Indian at the 2024 Smithsonian Folklife Festival. This year the annual festival highlighted the work of artists, cultural workers, healers and storytellers, offering the space to share contemporary and traditional teachings from their respective communities across the globe. 

At the Festival, Emily moderated and hosted a few panels: one session, “Motherhood on Native Lands,” brought together women from across Abya Yala to discuss the role of motherhood in Indigenous communities, the relationship between the land and womanhood, and the networks they’ve built to exchange teachings, knowledge, and medicine. One of the people in conversation with Emily was Catalina Alvarado-Cañuta (Mapuche), a current Fulbright scholar at the University of Connecticut, who reflected on her work with Mapuche midwives at an Intercultural Hospital in Wallmapu (Chile) where she observed the constant tensions between Mapuche cultural practices and the state’s medical system. Emily also discussed her academic research on Indigenous migrant women’s domestic labor, particularly in childcare work across New York City. 

The Festival gave way to fruitful conversations, ceremonies, and cultural exchanges across generations, as elders and youth gathered to discuss language revitalization, cultural preservation, and land/environmental protection. Emily also enjoyed the opportunity to play a game of Lacrosse alongside Haudenosaunee athletes and coaches! More information on the 2024 Indigenous Voices program and/or annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival can be found here. 

Intern William Diep, a Columbia University student, returned to work with us again this summer and has played a central role in conceptualizing, researching, scripting, filming, editing, and posting TikTok videos. He attended sessions of the 2024 LGBTQ+ Histories of the United States Summer Institute and produced videos about the group’s visits to the LGBTQ+ Community Center, the Lesbian Herstory Archives, and Greenwich Village. William also conducted research about many historical topics such as the origins of the Black Panther Party, the actions of Students for a Democratic Society in the 1960s, and the lives of Japanese immigrants in San Francisco. Researcher Carli Snyder has also added a variety of archival images to our Instagram page from repositories such as the Library of Congress, New York Public Library, and various state historical societies. Be sure to follow us on TikTok, IG, and X at @ashp_cml and connect with us on LinkedIn!

ASHP is thrilled to welcome Stefano Morello, Assistant Director for Digital Projects. Stefano is currently finishing a Ph.D. from the Graduate Center’s program in English, where his work has focused on digital humanities and American Studies. As a student, Stefano actively participated in the New Media Lab and served as a GCDI Digital Fellow. At the ASHP, he will be developing new digital projects, helping to manage the New Media Lab, and launching the new digital version of Who Built America? Contact Stefano if you want more information about the NML, WBA?, or other digital initiatives.

Ahead of the fall semester, we released an expanded and updated beta edition of our popular textbook, Who Built America? Working People and the Nation’s History. Now available as a free, open-access digital resource, this version includes a comprehensive social history textbook alongside thousands of primary sources from our History Matters website, and new teaching resources. Designed as an Open Educational Resource for college-level and Advanced Placement high school classes, Who Built America? is well suited for US history surveys and courses in labor, immigration, African American, ethnic, and gender studies. 

We invite you to explore this new edition and check back frequently as we continue to add new features and content.

In spring 2024, Trystin Curbelo joined ASHP as an intern to work with researcher Carli Snyder on a new collection for our popular database, Social History for Every Classroom (SHEC). Carli and Trystin compiled primary sources and collaboratively wrote teaching activities, essential questions, and a background essay. The collection, Workers Behind Bars: The Exploitation of Incarcerated Labor, focuses on prison labor and the economic dimensions of mass incarceration in the United States from the 1880s to the present. Trystin, who graduated from Brooklyn College in May 2024, has begun his first year as a high school teacher and plans to incorporate the materials from the collection into his classroom. Please visit SHEC to see the new collection!

In July, thirty secondary school teachers joined ASHP for an NEH-funded summer institute focused on topics in LGBTQ+ history and culture, discussion of pedagogy, and an introduction to historical documents and materials for classroom use. After meeting virtually for a week, participants traveled from across the U.S. to gather at the Graduate Center and to visit New York City archives and cultural sites. Throughout, we were fortunate to learn from scholars, archivists, and documentarians whose research has shaped historians’ understanding of LGBTQ+ lives and culture, past and present. We also benefited from the enthusiastic contributions of six teachers who had previously taken part in 2022’s LGBTQ+ summer institute and who worked alongside Dr. Stacie Brensilver Berman (NYU), Grad Center students Rachel Pitkin and Danielle Bennett, and ASHP staff to attend to participants’ historical and pedagogical explorations. A full schedule of institute sessions can be found here. 

In the coming months, we plan to make additional institute materials available via SHEC and other ASHP resources. Stay tuned for future announcements!