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American Social History Project • Center for Media and Learning

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Published September 14, 2021

Over the summer ASHP/CML published a new collection on Social History for Every Classroom, our database of primary documents, classroom activities, and other teaching tools in U.S. history. “Military History and the LGBTQ+ Community”(https://shec.ashp.cuny.edu/exhibits/show/lgbtq-military-history) explores the multitude of ways members of the LBGTQ+ community impacted and were affected by service in the United States military. Primary sources in the collection span almost the whole of U.S. history, from an excerpted letter by Alexander Hamilton to fellow Revolutionary War soldier John Laurens, to the adoption of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” military policy in the 1990s. The sources are supplemented by...Read more

Published September 14, 2021

This semester ASHP/CMLwelcomes Maggie Schreiner as our new graduate assistant. Maggie is a first year PhD student in History at The Graduate Center. Maggie has over a decade of experience working in archives and public history settings, and is an adjunct faculty member in the Archives and Public History program at NYU. Maggie's current research explores queer and trans activist responses to the housing crisis, homophobia, and AIDS during the 1980s.  As a graduate assistant, Maggie will help plan the NEH Summer Institute on LGBTQ+ History and continue production of the podcast series.Read more

Published September 14, 2021

We are pleased to announce that David Scheckel has joined ASHP as our new office administrator. David has just moved to New York upon finishing his Master's in Public Policy this summer at Northeastern University. Along with academic interests in urban planning and policy, he has spent much of his time political organizing in his college's DSA chapter and short-filmmaking with the TV production club. Growing up in New Jersey, David had always dreamed of one day moving to NYC and is ecstatic for all the opportunities here!Read more

Published September 13, 2021

On October 27, ASHP/CML will co-sponsor an event organized by the PublicsLab, featuring Anna Malaika Tubbs for a discussion of her groundbreaking and critically acclaimed book The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation. In this “dynamic blend of biography and manifesto” (The New Yorker), Tubbs celebrates Black motherhood by telling the story of the three women who raised and shaped some of America’s most pivotal heroes. The author speaks with Robyn C. Spencer, professor of history at the CUNY Graduate Center and Lehman College and author of The Revolution has Come: Black...Read more

Published September 9, 2021

In August, ASHP/CML was notified that it was selected to receive a $190,000 NEH grant to coordinate a summer institute focused on LGBTQ+ Histories of the United States. The two-week summer institute will take place at the Graduate Center in July 2021, bringing together about two dozen middle and high school teachers for an immersive learning experience. The institute will cover historical content, introduce primary sources useful for the study of LGBTQ+ history, and create an opportunity for educators to discuss pedagogy. After the institute, ASHP/CML will create a digital resource with primary sources and curriculum materials that can be shared with other teachers.

The summer institute builds on ASHP/CML's...Read more

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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Teaching and Learning LGBTQ+ History of the United States

On June 28, 1970, LGBTQ+ activists in New York organized Christopher Street Liberation Day, commemorating the resistance of queer and trans people after a police raid at the Stonewall Inn a year earlier. For the past fifty years, LGBTQ+ people have continued this tradition. At Pride parades and other activities, they have gathered to make their presence visible, to protest injustices and express demands for political and legal change, to revel in a sense of community, and to challenge forces that have sought to ignore, silence, or oppress them. This year, Pride Month is tempered by a wave of local and state attempts -- many successful -- to roll back hard-won gains that affect the health and well-being of LGBTQ+ people and those who love them. Numerous states have proposed or passed “Don’t Say Gay” legislation, amounting to government-sanctioned acts of censorship in k-12 public schools in order to deny LGBTQ+ people’s historical agency and contributions. In a recent letter opposing these bills, the Organization of American Historians noted that their impact could be devastating not only for LGBTQ+ youth who are stereotyped and stigmatized in school; the bills also amount to historical erasure with potentially harmful consequences for American democracy. These efforts coincide with current moves to suppress the teaching of the history of slavery and racism and attacks on voting rights that compound the threat posed to Americans’ understanding of the past and their future civic and political participation.

Not only do we think LGBTQ+ history should be taught, we don’t think it should be relegated to June only! Fortunately, numerous educators, filmmakers, museums, archives and libraries, and historians have worked diligently to preserve LGBTQ+ history and encourage its presentation, both within classrooms and other venues. On the page below, we have assembled a selective list of resources for educators, students, and others looking for sources for teaching and learning about a variety of topics related to LGBTQ+ experiences in the past.

Published January 29, 2021

We are pleased to announce that Humanities New York has awarded ASHP/CML a grant of $5,000 for Spaces, Places, and Faces: Exploring Queer Public History. The grant will be used to research and develop a podcast series that looks at how the work of historians, activists, educators, and archivists have preserved and reclaimed the telling of LGBTQ+ history. ASHP/CML will produce two episodes to air in fall 2021 and script four additional episodes in the series.

Spaces, Places, and Faces builds on ASHP/CML's recent work with the New York City Depatment of Education developing LGBTQ+ curriculum for grades 4-12. The podcasts are designed for a broad public audience of classroom educators,...Read more

Published January 27, 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly affected teaching and learning throughout New York City. With public school closures due to the virus, K-12 educators have been forced to reimagine their teaching styles to accommodate for the new reality of remote learning. In order to help ease this transition, ASHP/CML and other organizations have been working with the New York City Department of Education’s social studies curriculum team to develop online U.S. history lessons. We are using the DOE’s existing history resources––many of them previously created by and/or sourced from ASHP materials––as guidance as we translate in-person lessons into digital units. To...Read more

Published January 27, 2021

American Social History Project/Center for Media Learning has developed a list of teaching resources and reflection questions to contextualize the recent attempted insurrection in Washington, DC, and connect it to broader themes and moments in US History.

On January 6, 2021, an angry mob stormed Washington, DC to stop the certification process of the recent presidential election and demand that the election results be overturned. Smaller groups of armed rioters also converged on state houses across the country. For months, this insurgency was incited by an angry president, mobilized through social media and an intense misinformation campaign. In...Read more

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