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American Social History Project • Center for Media and Learning

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Sloan Foundation Funds CUNY Digital History Archive

CDHA Image Slider
Published January 7, 2016

ASHP has received funding from the Arthur P. Sloan Foundation to further develop the CUNY Digital History Archive, a participatory project to create, collect, and conserve the histories of the City University of New York. This open archive and portal gives the CUNY community and the broader public online access to a range of materials related to the history of the City University of New York. The CDHA will make available materials contributed by individuals whose lives, in diverse ways, have shaped and been shaped by CUNY.  Faculty, staff, and students have fought to sustain the university’s democratic mission and one of the goals...Read more

Apply Now! NEH Summer Institute, The Visual Culture of the American Civil War and Its Aftermath

Published November 18, 2015

The American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning at the City University of New York Graduate Center will host a two-week NEH Summer Institute for college and university teachers in July 2016 on the visual culture of the American Civil War and its aftermath. Applications to participate will be accepted via mail, e-mail, and our online application system until March 1, 2016.

The Institute will focus on the era's array of visual media--including the fine arts, ephemera, and photography--to examine how information and opinion about the war were recorded and disseminated, and the ways visual media expressed and shaped Americans' understanding...Read more

Latino/a History and Culture in the Community College Classroom

Bridging Historias Conference Poster Display by Marci Littlefield
Published September 11, 2015

On May 8, 2015 our Bridging Historias through Latino History and Culture: An NEH Bridging Cultures at Community Colleges Project concluded with a full-day conference at The Graduate Center, CUNY. More than one hundred educators from colleges, libraries, high schools, and public institutions across the region attended the panels, workshops, poster displays, and keynote speech. The conference opened with a plenary panel entitled “Infusing Latino/a Content into the Curriculum—the Big Picture” that explored the broad institutional context for implementing Latino Studies at community colleges, reviewed Latino enrollment in higher education, provided examples of innovative configurations, and discussed the impact...Read more

July 2016 NEH Institute for College and University Faculty

images of African American celebrating emancipation from slavery
Published September 11, 2015

The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded a grant to ASHP to host a two-week institute in July 2016 on the visual culture of the American Civil War and its aftermath. Following on the heels of our successful summer 2014 institute, this iteration will extend its purview to encompass the ways the war was recorded, reported, represented, and remembered via an array of visual media—including the fine arts, photography, cartoons, prints, and a range of “ephemeral”pictorial items and publications—as well as the visualization of Reconstruction, the postwar West, and the rise of Jim Crow. Institute participants will work...Read more

Mission US Receives Additional Funding

Mission US logo
Published September 10, 2015

Over the summer we received news of funding that will allow ASHP to build two additional “missions” in the award-winning Mission US series of online adventure-style games in which players take on the role of young people during critical moments in U.S. history. In June, the National Park Service awarded our project partner public television station WNET-Thirteen a grant to create “Prisoner in My Homeland,” which will place students in the role of a Japanese American teen-aged boy who must make choices as he and his family are forced to leave their home on Bainbridge Island, Washington, for one of...Read more

Refreshing Our Websites: Relaunching The Lost Museum and ASHP’s Main Site

ASHP front page, showing screenshot from the Lost Museum
Published September 8, 2015

In summer 2015, ASHP redesigned and updated The Lost Museum as well as our primary site. Both designs embrace modern web standards and improve browsing on mobile devices, along with general usabilty and accessibility.

Visitors to The Lost Museum are given the opportunity explore a 3D recreation of P. T. Barnum’s American Museum in mid-nineteenth century New York. The redesigned site, launched to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the fire that destroyed the museum, includes larger, higher-resolution graphics and easier navigation of the museum. Visitors also have the option to seek out clues to discover who, among suspects...Read more

150 Years Later: Who Burned Down P. T. Barnum’s American Museum? Award Winning Digital Re-Creation Returns

Lost Museum relaunch still from game
Published June 30, 2015

On July 13, 1865, in a spectacular fire witnessed by thousands of New Yorkers, P. T. Barnum’s American Museum in downtown Manhattan mysteriously burned to the ground. The five-story building on Broadway and Ann Street—called “the most visited place in America”—had housed a continuing array of artifacts, oddities, productions, and creatures since its opening in 1841. This July, to mark the 150th anniversary of the destruction of Barnum’s American Museum, the award-winning Lost Museum website (http://lostmuseum.cuny.edu/), first launched by American Social History Project in 2000, will re-launch in a new, enhanced format with larger graphics, clearer navigation, and with full access for the many tablets and devices that now connect to the Internet.Read more

Bridging Historias Conference

Bridging Historias graphic
Published May 4, 2015

Bridging Historias: Latino/a History and Culture in the Community College Classroom will culminate its two-year National Endowment for the Humanities-funded program with a one-day conference featuring top scholars and innovative pedagogy. This event, sponsored by the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning, comes at an opportune moment when much-needed attention is being given to the importance of community colleges and to the Latino community. In addition to a keynote address by Vicki Ruiz (Distinguished Professor, University of California, Irvine) on relevant recent scholarship, conference presenters will address institutional policies and pedagogical approaches that support Latino Studies...Read more

Staff Changes

Published March 10, 2015

In May 2014, Leah Potter departed ASHP-CML to begin work at Electric Funstuff, our game design partners on the Mission US series of online games. Leah made substantial contributions to ASHP-CML’s history education and professional development work, playing a central role in the design and implementation of our Teaching American History professional development programs, HERB: Social History for Every Classroom website, and Who Built America Badges for History Education online professional development program. She will be sorely missed, though we are glad to continue our collaboration with her on Mission U.S.

...Read more

CUNY Digital History Archive

CUNY Digital History Archive (CDHA) Logo
Published March 10, 2015

CUNY Digital History Archive (CDHA) Logo
The CUNY Digital History Archive (CDHA) is an open, participatory, digital repository and portal that gives the CUNY community and the broader public online access to a range of archival materials related to the history of the City University of New York. This effort involves coordination and collaboration with college libraries and archives that house significant historical collections. The CDHA will conduct and collect oral history interviews as well as accept historical materials and records...Read more

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