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American Social History Project • Center for Media and Learning

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"Save Hostos!" CDHA Collection Now Available

Published February 15, 2017

In the introductory essay for the recently completed CUNY Digital History Archive (CDHA) collection “Save Hostos!,” professor emeritus Gerald Meyer states:

From the fall of 1973 until the spring of 1979, Hostos Community College became the site of one of the most prolonged and successful mass movements in New York City during the 1970s. Throughout that five-year period, students, staff, faculty, and members of the community mobilized three massive year-long campaigns.

Working from a larger collection...Read more

The American Social History Project Reaches A Banner Year!

35th anniversary rollerskates
Published September 17, 2016

This fall the American Social History Project is old enough to run for president of the United States! The year 2016 marks the 35th anniversary of ASHP’s founding--and to commemorate this milestone in our history, we will hold a public event that celebrates our past and also reflects on the achievements, challenges, and continuing goals of the fields of history education and public history of which we are a part.

The Past and Future of Public History: A Symposium in Celebration of 35 Years of the American Social History Project will be held on Friday, October 21, from Noon to...Read more

ASHP works with Reading Area Community College on NEH Conexiones program

Published September 9, 2016

Reading Area Community College in Pennsylvania, in partnership with ASHP/CML, was a awarded a two-year National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) professional and curricular development grant focusing on Latino history and culture. Conexiones: Linking Berks County Latino Communities to a Larger World, aims to build faculty participants' competency in Latino history and culture, and help them develop Latino-based humanities content for Reading Area Community College’s (RACC) general education and other courses. ASHP will conduct four seminars featuring noted scholars and archive and museum professionals. In addition, teaching workshops featuring active learning pedagogies will focus on advancing student learning with primary source documents (text, visual art, audio, film),...Read more

2016 NEH Summer Institute – The Visual Culture of the American Civil War and Its Aftermath

Published September 9, 2016

During two steamy weeks this past July, the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning held our third National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute. “The Visual Culture of the American Civil War and its Aftermath” institute was hosted by the CUNY Graduate Center and three New York City cultural institutions (New York Public Library, New-York Historical Society, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art). Attended by thirty NEH Summer Scholars selected from colleges, universities, and museums across the country, the institute featured presentations, discussions, visits to local archives and museums, and hands-on workshops that focused on the era’s...Read more

New Collections Now Available in the CUNY Digital History Archive

Published September 8, 2016

As higher education is increasingly a subject of contentious debate, one way to explore the history of our own public university system is to visit the onine CUNY Digital History Archive. This online participatory archive and portal is a work-in-progress and we welcome your contributions. Focused on stories and material that document the struggle to build and sustain the democratic mission of the university and its colleges, this growing resource will inform and involve teachers, students and the general public. Visitors to the website can do keyword searches, browse all items (now over 300), or search by subject, date,...Read more

Up from the Dust – A New Mission US Release

Up from the Dust title page
Published September 2, 2016

Up from the Dust, the fifth in the Mission US series of online history games produced in collaboration with New York public television station WNET/Thirteen and game producer Electric Funstuff, was released on September 2nd. The role-playing game provides young people with an experiential understanding of the enormous hardships Americans faced during the late 1920s and early 1930s as they struggled against the joint catastrophes of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. The game is divided into five parts, with a prologue offering background on the settlement of the Texas panhandle and the expansion of wheat farming, and...Read more

"City of Immigrants" Wins Parents' Choice Award

Published February 16, 2016

City of Immigrants—the fourth in the Mission US series of free online history games produced by public television station WNET/Thirteen in collaboration with ASHP/CML, the game company Electric Funstuff, and the Educational Development Center—just received the Parents' Choice Gold Award in the Spring 2016 website competition. Issued by the Parents' Choice Foundation, the oldest nonprofit guide in the U.S. for outstanding children's media, Gold Award winners are judged as "the highest quality, most appealing products in their genre," the criteria including the "highest production standards, [and conveying] universal human values."

Launched in 2015, City of Immigrants immerses players...Read more

New York City Social Studies Curriculum Writing Project

Cover of New York City Department of Education Scope and Sequence for Social Studies, Grades 9-12
Published February 1, 2016

​ASHP is pleased to be participating in an ambitious social studies curriculum writing project currently underway at the New York City Department of Education. NYCDOE's centrally-based Social Studies team, led by Executive Director Eric Contreras, has selected a group of social studies teachers representing grades K-12 who are writing model curriculum lessons and units to align with each year in the city's Scope and Sequence for Social Studies. Once complete, these units will be made available to social studies teachers citywide. Since January 2015, Ellen Noonan, ASHP's director of online professional development, has been meeting regularly with the high school grade level teams of curriculum writers to...Read more

New Features Added to WBA Badges

WBA Badge
Published January 29, 2016

ASHP recently launched new features on the Who Built America: Badges for History Education website, our online professional development program. These improvements represent our continued commitment to providing classroom ready, discipline specific professional learning to history teachers.

We’ve developed four tutorials designed to aid teachers in modeling disciplinary literacy and historical thinking skills in their classrooms. The skill tutorial topics include: thinking historically, building context, using evidence, and reading and writing for arguments.  We feel strongly that such skills are essential to effective instruction, and have incorporated the tutorials into the badge earning process.

To make badges more accessible to those...Read more

ASHP Redesigns HERB: Social History for Every Classroom

Published January 29, 2016

ASHP is pleased to announce a major overhaul of HERB: Social History for Every Classroom, our free web resource of primary sources, curated collections, and teaching activities on U.S. history. HERB is now entering its fifth year online, and has been used by thousands of educators around the country.

We’ve improved the visual layout of the site, optimized it for use on tablets and other mobile devices, and redesigned the search functionality with more accurate and filterable search results. And teaching activities are now sorted by pedagogical strategy and include a description of how best to implement each in the...Read more

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