banner

American Social History Project • Center for Media and Learning

December 2002

ASHP/CML Presents at Technology Conference

In recognition of our contribution to developing innovative new media resources and approaches to their effective use in the classroom, five of the 38 sessions composing the First Annual CUNY-Wide Informational and Instructional Technology Conference held on Friday, November 15th at John Jay College were devoted to ASHP/CML projects or activities carried out under our auspices. The conference, co-sponsored by Converge magazine and entitled “Using Technology to Enhance Access and Excellence in CUNY: Realities, Plans, Visions,” attracted well over 500 CUNY faculty, staff and students (along with members of the digital industry) who were eager to learn about and evaluate the diverse ways the university is engaged in producing and applying educational new media. ASHP/CML’s well-attended sessions included a demonstration of the newly redesigned and expanded Lost Museum website by our head 3-D designer Lee Ann Pomplas-Bruening, a report on The September 11 Digital Archive by project director Fritz Umbach, a survey of the programs and philosophy of the New Media Lab by managing director Andrea Ades Vasquez, a delineation of our Learning to Look teaching with technology program by project director Donna Thompson, and a retrospective look at ASHP/CML’s 12 years in the digital wilderness by executive director Josh Brown. Three additional sessions focused on activities in which ASHP/CML has played a significant role, including the CUNY-wide U.S. History Initiative, the Interactive Technology and Pedagogy Doctoral Certificate Program at The Graduate Center, and the Visible Knowledge Project.

Lost Museum Recent Publicity

The Lost Museum recently received welcomed publicity in two publications. AAA World, the automobile magazine covering the mid-atlantic states, ran an in-depth article that included 6 images of the website and suggested the virtual museum as a complement to vacationers’ travels to actual Civil War sites. The Internet Scout Report, a prestigious long-running online magazine offering web resources for scholars, teachers and the public, featured The Lost Museum in its November 22 edition.

Virtual New York news

The Great Blizzard of 1888Virtual New York City continues to grow in size, and will be launching its second “Disaster” exhibit– “The Great Blizzard of 1888″– in December 2002. Nineteenth-century New York’s reaction to the Great Blizzard provides great insight into the city’s process of modernization. This natural disaster paralyzed the city for a week in March, and in the process of digging themselves out, New Yorkers realized some of the shortcomings of the city’s infrastructure. “The Great Blizzard of 1888″ features nearly one hundred fully-contextualized primary sources, including nearly seventy images and thirty documents from the Old York Library.

Virtual New York City has also recently added a search function that allows visitors to find all the documents and images scanned for use on the site, which numbers close to 400 items, and is growing. Once “The Great Blizzard of 1888″ is launched, researchers from the New Media Lab will begin work on the next two nineteenth century disasters that will appear on the site: “The Fire of 1835″ and “Cholera.” These two exhibits are scheduled to be completed by Spring 2003.

Calendar: The Civil War in New York–From Print to Pixels

Wednesday, March 26, 2003, 6–8PM
CUNY Graduate Center, Martin E. Segal Theater

The Civil War in New York imageNew York during the Civil War was the hub of the northern war effort and also a city at war with itself. Defined and divided by wealth and poverty, privilege and sacrifice, patriotism and dissent, and abolitionism and racism, it was a social and political powderkeg that finally exploded in the draft riots of July

1863. Novelist Kevin Baker, historian Jeanie Attie, and media producer Andrea Ades Vasquez will discuss and demonstrate the ways the story of New York during the Civil War years has been told and interpreted in recent fiction, scholarship, and new media.

Kevin Baker, author, Paradise Alley; Jeanie Attie, Associate Professor of History, Long Island University; author, Patriotic Toil: Northern Women and the American Civil War; Andrea Ades Vásquez, Project Director, The Lost Museum, American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning; Joshua Brown (Moderator), Executive Director, American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning.

Cosponsored by The Center for Media and Learning and The Gotham Center, The Graduate Center, CUNY.

Calendar: “Talking History” On-line Forums from History Matters

historymatters.gmu.edu/browse/talkhist/

February 2003 — Using Oral History to Teach U.S. History with Linda Shopes (Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission) as Guest Moderator

March 2003 — Teaching the U.S. Civil War with David Blight (Amherst College) as Guest Moderator

The discussions will focus on teaching these topics in the standard U.S. history survey course and suggestions for resources or strategies. Although the moderators will respond to questions and comments, we also hope that participants will respond to one another and continue the discussion after the guest moderator’s month.

Calendar: Learning to Look: Visual Evidence and the U.S. Past in the New Media Classroom at CUNY

Join expert presenters in an interdisciplinary dialogue about the “best practices” for integrating visual evidence, new media resources, and active learning pedagogy into classrooms where U.S. history and culture are taught.

See Web site for up-to-date information: web.gc.cuny.edu/ashp/LTLNMC/

Learning to Look

Friday, March 7, 2003, 10AM to 1PM

Queens College

Dr. Joshua Freeman, professor of history, Queens College

Bound to Live: Imaging the Worker as Activist

Friday, April 11, 2003, 10AM to 1PM

The Graduate Center

Saverio Giovacchini, fellow, Warren Center for Studies in American History, Harvard University

Politics, Film and Photography in the Age of the New Deal

Contact mailto:DThompson@gc.cuny.edu.