Best American Social History Project Center For Media Podcasts (2025)

1
Making Queer History Public Episode 4: Realities of Teaching LGBTQ+ History with ASHP’s Summer Institute Participants 33:57

1M ago33:57

33:57

This episode of Making Queer History Public features interviews conducted in late 2024 with educators Kennita Ballard and Julian Shaefer, who attended ASHP’s LGBTQ+ Histories of the United States NEH-funded institutes during the Summers of 2022 and 2024 (respectively). Hosted by veteran educator and PhD student in history, Rachel Pitkin, the episod…

1
Making Queer History Public Episode 3: Preserving Queer History in Classrooms with Dr. Lori Burns and Kate Okeson 28:40

1+ y ago28:40

28:40

The third episode of Making Queer History Public features interviews conducted in 2020 with educators and activists Dr. Lori Burns and Kate Okeson, who have been on the frontlines of preserving queer history and topics in our classrooms for years. Today, we will discuss their fight for New Jersey’s first inclusive education law. Hosted by veteran e…

1
Making Queer History Public Episode 2: Trans Lives and Oral History with Michelle Esther O'Brien 29:50

2+ y ago29:50

29:50

In the second episode of Making Queer History Public, we talk with psychotherapist, teacher, and activist, Michelle Esther O’Brien. We discuss the work Michelle has put in coordinating the NYC Trans Oral History Project, a community archive devoted to the collection, preservation and sharing of trans histories. Making Queer History Public is sponso…

1
Making Queer History Public Episode 1: LGBTQ+ Archives with Steven G. Fullwood 28:15

2+ y ago28:15

28:15

In the first episode of Making Queer History Public, we talk with archivist, writer, and documentarian, Steven G. Fullwood, about his experiences archiving the lives of LGBTQ+ folks at the Schomburg Center. We also discuss the historical exclusion of the LGBTQ+ community in institutional archives and the work that people like Steven have done to br…

1
Introducing "Making Queer History Public," A New Podcast From ASHP 4:53

4y ago4:53

4:53

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 na…

1
Monuments of the Future, with Kubi Ackerman 16:15

5+ y ago16:15

16:15

1
Augmented Reality As Memorialization, with Marisa Williamson 16:18

5+ y ago16:18

16:18

This episode features Marisa Williamson, a multimedia artist based in Newark, New Jersey whose site-specific works, videos, and performances focus on the body, authority, freedom, and memory. Speaking during the third and final event in our public seminar series, “Difficult Histories/Public Spaces: The Challenge of Monuments in New York City and th…

1
Mary Anne Trasciatti on Creating Public Art Memorials in New York City 19:17

6y ago19:17

19:17

“Lots of hard work, lots of collaboration, and a long horizon.” These, according to Mary Anne Trasciatti, Professor of Writing and Rhetoric at Hofstra University, are the keys to erecting a public art memorial from the ground up in New York City. In this episode, Trasciatti speaks about the Reframing the Skymemorial for the Triangle Shirtwaist Fact…

1
Jack Tchen on Memorializing Obscured Histories: Monuments in New York and Beyond 20:37

6y ago20:37

20:37

How do we think about history? Whose history is it? And how is history constructed, both in academic terms and in a public way?These questions were made apparent in discussions of the NYC Mayor’s Commission on Monuments, where Jack Tchen, Professor of Public History and the Humanities at Rutgers University, served as a panelist. In this episode, Tc…

1
Who Decides? Michele Bogart on Monument Creation in New York City 18:03

6+ y ago18:03

18:03

In this episode, Michele Bogart, professor and author of the recently published Sculpture in Gotham: Art and Urban Renewal In New York City, untangles the bureaucracy of monument creation in New York City. Delving into decision-making processes behind the City's monuments and memorials, Bogart looks to the past and the present in discussing whose v…

1
Monuments As: History, Art, Power 1:25:46

6+ y ago1:25:46

1:25:46

In this four-speaker panel, professors, artists, and activists delve into the ongoing re-evaluation of public monuments and memorials, particularly those in New York City (NYC). Dr. Harriet Senie, professor of art history at The Graduate Center CUNY, offers insights into the decision making process of the 2017 Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Ar…

1
Beyond Migrant workers: Mexican Communities & Complexities in The United States 1986-2016 1:45:34

7y ago1:45:34

1:45:34

Lori A. Flores, Stony Brook UniversityCUNY Graduate Center, January 18, 2017Lori Flores, History Professor at Stony Brook University, contextualizes Mexican immigration and identity and examines how shifting borders complicate Mexican American identities. Flores covers the tumultuous relationship between Mexican immigrants and the United States Gov…

1
Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World 1:09:28

7y ago1:09:28

1:09:28

Joshua Freeman, ASHPThe Graduate Center, CUNYFebruary 26, 2018Joshua Freeman, professor of history at CUNY Graduate Center and Queens College and Steven Greenhouse, former labor reporter for the New York Times, discuss Freeman's recent book, Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modern World. From the origins of factories in the …

1
Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology 1:22:11

7y ago1:22:11

1:22:11

Deirdre Cooper Owens, Queens College CUNY Graduate Center, February 14, 2018Deirdre Cooper Owens reads a section from her recent work, Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology, which explores the intersections of slavery, capitalism, and medicine and discusses the work with Jennifer Morgan, Professor of History New York…

1
Setting the Stage: Reconstruction 48:56

8y ago48:56

48:56

Gregory Downs, UC DavisCUNY Graduate Center, July 19, 2016In this talk, Gregory Down provides historical context for viewing U.S. slavery in a global context and presents the complexities of reconstruction efforts to create a unified United States after the Civil War. Down focuses on the passage of new constitutional amendments, General Grant’s pre…

1
Reconstruction Political Cartoons Published in News and Humor Publications 1:32:00

8y ago1:32:00

1:32:00

Richard Samuel West, founder of New England's PeriodysseyCUNY Graduate Center, July 20, 2016In this presentation, Richard Samuel West analyzes political cartoons of the reconstruction era utilizing Thomas Nast’s Harper Weekly pieces as a timeline. West focuses on Southern Sentiment and Nast’s sharp criticism of it, presenting cartoons on Johnson’s …

1
Visualizing Emancipation and the Postwar South in the Popular and Fine Arts 1:32:39

8y ago1:32:39

1:32:39

Sarah Burns, Indiana UniversityCUNY Graduate Center, July 19, 2016In this discussion, Sarah Burns examines common Civil War narratives in fine arts in this period by examining the work of artists such as William Walker, Thomas Waterman, and Winslow Homer. Burns asks who created the pieces and for what audience and further questioning the works by e…

1
Bodies in Ruins 1:23:27

8y ago1:23:27

1:23:27

Megan Kate Nelson, Author of Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American Civil War CUNY Graduate Center, July 15, 2016In this talk, Megan Kate Nelson discusses the proliferation of photographs that focus on ruins and war-torn bodies in 1864/1865, at the end of the civil war. Nelson looks at photos taken by union photographers and the narratives creat…

1
Slavery & Anti-Slavery Imagery 1:22:37

8y ago1:22:37

1:22:37

Maurie Mcinnis, University of Virginia CUNY Graduate Center, July 12, 2016In this presentation, Maurie Mcinnis discusses the development of anti-slavery art in England and walks through American anti/pro-slavery imagery. Mcinnis presents art created at various stages of the anti-slavery movement on both sides of the Atlantic weaving a narrative hig…

1
Counter Legacies of The Civil War 1:18:48

8y ago1:18:48

1:18:48

Kirk Savage, University of PittsburghCUNY Graduate Center, July 20, 2016In this highly relevant presentation, Kirk Savage speaks on the legacy of the Civil War and its continued impact on shaping American identity. Savage examines counter legacies by critiquing a Confederate statue in St. Louis, a monument to a Confederate Cherokee Legion in North …

1
Slavery and Anti-Slavery-- Setting the Stage 39:27

8y ago39:27

39:27

Gregory Downs, UC Davis The Graduate Center, CUNY July 12, 2016In this talk, Gregory Downs discusses the development of slavery and anti-slavery in the United States. He positions the U.S. slave trade in a global context and examines the intricacies of the Second Middle Passage. Downs analyzes rhetoric framing the North as a symbol of bourgeois mod…

1
A War that Could Not End at Appomattox: The End of Slavery and the Continuation of The Civil War 55:15

8y ago55:15

55:15

Gregory Downs, UC Davis The Graduate Center, CUNY July 15, 2016In this talk, Gregory Downs presents the complexities of early Reconstruction in the post-bellum United States. Downs examines freedom in proximity to power by looking at the federal government’s implementation of U.S. laws and agencies in the South, specifically analyzing the tail end …

1
The Civil War as War for the West 1:24:40

8y ago1:24:40

1:24:40

Ari Kelman, Penn State The Graduate Center, CUNY July 18, 2016In this presentation, Ari Kelman examines the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre in Colorado and the controversial opening of The Sand Creek Memorial in 2007. Kelman explores the complicated question of how politics and violence engaged on the American borderland, and the interpretation by some un…

1
Seeing Boom and Bust in the Gilded Age 1:36:55

8y ago1:36:55

1:36:55

Joshua Brown, ASHPThe Graduate Center, CUNYJuly 20, 2016In this presentation, Joshua Brown delves into how Gilded Age newspapers portrayed current events. He analyzes news illustrations of events including The Centennial Exposition, and The Panic of 1873, to analyze how media narratives based on physiognomies vilified African-Americans, working-cla…

1
Latin@ Citizenship, Language Rights, and Identity Politics, 1880s-1930s 42:30

8y ago42:30

42:30

John Nieto-Phillips, Indiana University-BloomingtonCUNY Graduate Center (via Skype), December 6, 2013In this presentation, John Nieto-Phillips provides an overview of the ways that Latinos and Latinas figure into global Hispanism, or Hispanidad. He explores the origins of a burgeoning language rights movement, focusing more particularly on New Mexi…

1
Saving CUNY's Past: Student Activism Against Cutbacks, 1980s-present 1:18:24

8+ y ago1:18:24

1:18:24

Cynthia Tobar, Bronx Community CollegeCUNY Graduate Center, April 9, 2014In this panel discussion moderated by Cynthia Tobar, activists and organizers discuss campus-based movements across CUNY that resisted city and state cutbacks. Hear how self-archiving efforts can ensure a more egaltarian CUNY history.…

1
Saving CUNY's Past: The Fight for Open Admissions, 1969-1976 1:16:40

8+ y ago1:16:40

1:16:40

Stephen Brier, CUNY Graduate CenterCUNY Graduate Center, April 9, 2014In this panel discussion, moderated by Stephen Brier, former student and faculty activists who led the fight on CUNY campuses to open the University to all NYC high school graduates discuss this transformative historical moment.

1
Post-Civil War Visual Culture and the Shaping of Memory 52:29

9y ago52:29

52:29

In this panel presentation, scholars Sarah Burns (emerita, Indiana University), Josh Brown (CUNY Graduate Center), and Greg Downs (UC Davis) discuss the visual culture of the post-Civil War era in the fine arts and the illustrated press.

1
Envisioning Emancipation: The Black Image and Civil War Photography 54:55

9y ago54:55

54:55

In this presentation, photography historian Deborah Willis, and historian Barbara Krauthamer discuss the use of portrait photography as historical evidence. Together they examine several photographs of African Americans in the era of the U.S. Civil War, before and after emancipation; and analyze the evidence in the images in terms of the fundamenta…

1
Richard West: Civil War Political Cartoons 1:54:19

9y ago1:54:19

1:54:19

Richard Samuel West, historian of cartoons and popular publications and founder of New England's Periodyssey, discusses the range of topics in and formats of political cartoons published during the Civil War and delineates how the medium changed over the course of the conflict. This talk took place on July 16, 2012, as part of The Visual Culture of…

1
Prints and Pictorial Ephemera at the Homefront during the Civil War 48:11

9+ y ago48:11

48:11

Georgia Barnhill, Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Graphic Arts at the American Antiquarian Society, discusses the methods, meanings, and uses of various types of printed Civil War ephemera, and how they were used to document, memorialize and shape public opinion about the war on the home front. This talk took place on July 17, 2012, as part of The Visu…

1
Harold Holzer: Iconography of Emancipation 57:55

9+ y ago57:55

57:55

Harold Holzer, chairman of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation and the author of numerous books on Lincoln and the Civil War, talks about the visual representations of the emancipation proclamation as well as the images of Abraham Lincoln as emancipator. This talk took place on July 19, 2012, as part of The Visual Culture of the American Ci…

1
Seeing the Civil War: Artists, the Public, and Pictorial News and Views 1:21:05

9+ y ago1:21:05

1:21:05

Joshua Brown, Executive Director of the American Social History Project and Professor of History at the Graduate Center, CUNY, discusses the pictorial journalism of the Civil War and the ways battlefront artists covered the conflict before photography could document warfare. This talk took place on July 11, 2012, as part of The Visual Culture of th…

1
Rending and Mending: The Flag, the Needle, and the Wounds of War 39:03

9+ y ago39:03

39:03

Sarah Burns, the Ruth N. Halls Professor of the History of Art (emerita) at Indiana University, provides an in-depth analysis of Lilly Martin Spencer's "Home of the Red, White, and Blue." She places the painting within the broader visual context of women, veterans, and the flag during the U.S. Civil War. This talk took place on July 12, 2012, as pa…

1
Jeanie Attie: Women in the Civil War 40:34

9+ y ago40:34

40:34

Jeanie Attie, professor of history at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University, provides a sweeping overview of the roles and images of women during the Civil War. She discusses northern and southern women and the ways the war shifted notions of domesticity and women's public space. This talk took place on July 17, 2012, as part of The Visual…

1
Josh Brown: Images of the 1863 New York City Draft Riots 41:33

9+ y ago41:33

41:33

Joshua Brown, Executive Director of the American Social History Project and Professor of History at the Graduate Center, CUNY, presents a case study of interpreting a historical event through images. He examines images of the 1863 New York City draft riots from a range of pictorial newspapers in order to piece together the changing nature of the ev…

1
Alice Fahs: Visual Landscape of the Civil War Era 1:01:04

9+ y ago1:01:04

1:01:04

Alice Fahs, professor of history at the University of California, Irvine, presents a broad range of images that made up the visual landscape of the 1860s and explores how the Civil War did and did not transform the dominant images especially for African Americans and women. This talk took place on July 9, 2012, as part of The Visual Culture of the …

1
U.S. Mexican Borderlands, 1848-1941 32:13

10y ago32:13

32:13

María Montoya, New York UniversityCity University of New York, April 25, 2014In this talk, Professor Montoya examines the history of the U.S.-Mexican border, and its role in shaping the national memory and identity of both countries. Notions of Mexican American citizenship and property rights are entwined with this history, and have shifted over ti…

1
Something Old and Something New: The Not So Recent Phenomenon of Unaccompanied Latin American Minor Migration 43:55

10y ago43:55

43:55

Isabel Martinez, John Jay CollegeCUNY Graduate Center, October 24, 2014In this presentation, Isabel Martinez places the recent experiences of unaccompanied minors migrating from Central America to the United States in a historical context, describing her family’s own youth migration story which begins in Mexico, 1902. She goes on to explore some of…

1
NAFTA and Narcos: How Free Trade Brought You the Drug Trade 43:12

10y ago43:12

43:12

Maria Josefina Saldaña-Portillo, New York UniversityCUNY Graduate Center, October 24, 2014In this lecture, Professor Saldaña-Portillo addresses the multiple ways in which the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has affected the price of labor, increased narco-terrorism, and facilitated the transfer of drugs from Latin America to the United …

1
Border, Immigration, and Citizenship 43:45

10y ago43:45

43:45

Lori Flores, State University of New York, StonybrookCUNY Graduate Center, April 25, 2014In this lecture Professor Flores traces the peaks and valleys of undocumented immigration, as well as the political and economic aspects of the influxes. She examines the U.S. Bracero labor program, the relationships between citizens, Bracero workers, and undoc…

1
Dominican Immigration to the United States 52:12

10y ago52:12

52:12

Ramona Hernandez, Dominican Studies Institute, City CollegeCUNY Graduate Center, February 7, 2014In this lecture, Professor Ramona Hernández closely examines both the statistics and the demographics of the increasing Dominican presence in the United States. Why is there a geographic shift in the locations that Dominicans are settling? How do Domini…

1
Cuban Immigration to the United States 1:10:32

10y ago1:10:32

1:10:32

Lisandro Pérez, John Jay CollegeCUNY Graduate Center, February 7, 2014In this lecture, Lisandro Pérez unpacks the long, distinct, and prolific history of Cuban Americans and their history’s close correlation with U.S. foreign and domestic policy. He uses census materials, forms, archives, city directories, naturalization records, vital records, new…

1
Latin@s en Nueva York: Exiles & Citizens—Revolutionaries, Reformers & Writers, 1823-1940 45:12

10+ y ago45:12

45:12

Orlando Hernandez, Hostos Community ColllegeCUNY Graduate Center, December 6, 2013In this talk, Professor Hernández interprets texts from Puerto Rican educator and sociologist Eugenio María de Hostos as well as the Cuban poet and scholar José Martí. He describes the work of both writers as humanistic and cooperative, and situates both the writers a…

1
Beyond Cardboard Conquistadores and Missionaries: The First Europeans in the New World 33:18

10+ y ago33:18

33:18

Andrés Reséndez, University of California – DavisCUNY Graduate Center, October 18, 2013In this talk, Professor Reséndez expands the traditional conception of America’s colonial past and paints a richer, more historically accurate picture of the Europeans who settled in the New World. The “Spanish Conquistadores” were not all Spanish, all male, and …

1
Conceptualizing Latino/a History 58:21

10+ y ago58:21

58:21

CUNY Graduate Center October 18, 2013In this panel discussion, Pablo Mitchell, Professor of History, Oberlin College; Virginia Sánchez Korrol, Professor Emerita, Brooklyn College; and Andrés Reséndez, Professor of History, University of California, Davis deliberate on ways to incorporate Latino/a histories into Anglo American history, often portray…

1
Karl Jacoby: The Contest for the Continent 36:35

11+ y ago36:35

36:35

Karl Jacoby, Columbia UniversityCUNY Graduate CenterMay 7, 2013In this 35 minute talk, historian Karl Jacoby complicates the story of the history of North America by presenting the history of the Plains Indians through the perspective of multiple revolutions in the late eighteenth century: the expansion of the Spanish empire along the west coast an…

1
Josh Freeman: Teaching the New Deal 46:00

12y ago46:00

46:00

Joshua Freeman, Murphy Institute for Labor Studies, City University of New YorkCUNY Graduate Center, March 7, 2013In this 45 minute talk, historian Josh Freeman describes how the New Deal expanded and fundamentally changed the role of government in American life, and why the Great Depression triggered such profound change when previous economic cri…

1
Peter H. Wood: Blacks in the Civil War through the Eyes of Winslow Homer 50:07

12y ago50:07

50:07

Peter H. Wood, Duke UniversityNewark MuseumJuly 12, 2012Peter Wood, emeritus professor of history at Duke University, discusses the career of Winslow Homer and his portrayals of African Americans during the Civil War. While many of Homer’s drawings and paintings appear nonpolitical, Wood argues that his training at Harper’s Weekly as a news illustr…

1
Cynthia Mills: Civil War Monuments 45:18

12+ y ago45:18

45:18

Cynthia Mills, The Smithsonian American Art MuseumCUNY Graduate CenterJuly 19, 2012In this forty-five minute talk, Cynthia Mills (1947-2014) the former executive editor of American Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and co-editor of Monuments to the Lost Cause: Women, Art, and the Landscape of Southern Memory traces the arc of Civil War com…

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