ASHP Podcast

In this episode of Making Queer History Public, we talk to Tristan, a high school student who worked with us to develop a brand new collection on our website, Social History for Every Classroom (SHEC). In Their Own Words: Crossing Gender in the 18th and 19th Centuries is a collection containing primary and secondary sources where gender-non conforming people spoke of their experiences and relationship with their own gender expression and identity. Tristan then discusses his experiences learning about LGBTQ+ history in the high school classroom during a time when curriculums are being attacked across the country.

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 episode takes a deep dive into how their experience teaching LGBTQ+ topics squares with both public rhetoric and major findings from The American Historical Association’s American Lesson Plan: Teaching U.S. History in Secondary Schools report, and the impact of ASHP’s NEH-funded LGBTQ+ Histories of the United States summer institute for teachers.

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 educator, Rachel Pitkin, we take a deep dive into what an inclusive education looks like and the efforts utilized by Lori and Kate to make this law a reality.For this episode, we also interviewed Ashley Chiappano Riker, Safe Schools and Community Education Manager at Garden State Equality. We were unable to use this audio in our finished episode. Check out these resources to learn more about efforts to incorporate and preserve LGBTQ+ history topics in our classrooms: SHEC (Social History Project for Every Classroom): https://shec.ashp.cuny.edu/Make it Better for Youth: https://makeitbetter4youth.org/Garden State Equality: https://www.gardenstateequality.org/Hidden Voices: LGBTQ+ Stories in United States History: https://www.weteachnyc.org/resources/resource/hidden-voices-lgbtq-stories-in-united-states-history-lesson-plans-Public-facing/GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network): https://www.glsen.org/ONE Institute (Formerly the One Archives Foundation): https://www.oneinstitute.org/"Looking Back, Looking Up, Moving Forward: A Survey of Social Studies in New Jersey Schools," New Jersey Historical Commission (2022): https://njsocialstudies.org/Rebekah Bruesehoff: https://www.rebekahbruesehoff.com/Teach.LGBT:https://www.teach.lgbt/ Keep up to date with the American Social History Project by signing up for our newsletter here! Make sure you follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter! Questions? Ideas? Feedback? Let us know at cml@gc.cuny.edu

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 sponsored by a Humanities New York Action Grant. Learn more about the NYC Trans Oral History Project, and access their archive, here. Listen to an interview with Michelle O’Brien on oral history methodology here. You can find out more about Michelle’s work here, and support her on Patreon @meobrien.Check out Miss Major's full interview here: https://nyctransoralhistory.org/interview/miss-major/To learn more about Miss Major, take a look at her website: https://missmajor.net/Check out B. Hawks Snipes' full interview here: https://nyctransoralhistory.org/interview/b-hawk-snipes/Follow B. Hawks Snipes on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bhawksnipes/?hl=en Find other LGBTQ+ archives and oral history projects in the NYC region:Lesbian Herstory Archives and Lesbian Elders Oral Herstory Project (Brooklyn, NY)LGBT Community Center National History Archives (New York, NY)Fales Collection at New York University (New York, NY)Princeton LGBTQIA Oral History Project (Princeton, NJ)Queer Newark Oral History Project (Newark, NJ)New York Public Library’s LGBTQ Initiative (New York, NY)ACT UP Oral History Project (New York, NY) Cherry Grove Archives Collection (Long Island, NY)LaGuardia and Wagner Archives LGBTQ Collection (Queens, NY) Follow Making Queer History Public on Spotify, Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, or Google Play. Follow the American Social History Project on Twitter at @ASHP_CML Keep up to date with the American Social History Project by signing up for our newsletter here!Questions? Ideas? Feedback? Let us know at cml@gc.cuny.edu

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 bring their stories to light. Learn more about the Nomadic Archivists Project here, and the In The Life Archives at the Schomburg Center (NYPL) here. Other sources mentioned in the episode:Find Ann Cvetkovich’s An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures (Duke University Press, 2003) at your local library.Read Joan Nestle, “The Will to Remember: The Lesbian Herstory Archives of New York,” Feminist Review, Spring, 1990.Read a blog post about the Black LGBTQ+ StoryCorps Archive at The Schomburg Center. Learn more about the Sylvia Rivera Law Project.Follow Making Queer History Public on Spotify, Stitcher, Apple Podcasts, or Google Play. Follow the American Social History Project on Twitter at @ASHP_CML. Making Queer History Public is sponsored by a Humanities New York Action Grant. Keep up to date with the American Social History Project by signing up for our newsletter here!Questions? Ideas? Feedback? Let us know at cml@gc.cuny.edu

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 at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.Making Queer History Public is made possible with funding from Humanities New York.

This episode features Kubi Ackerman, then-Director of the Future City Lab at the Museum of the City of New York. Ackerman is not interested in monuments for the past, but instead asks how we might memorialize the present and the future, as well as send warnings or messages to future generations. Encompassing topics like socio-economic inequality and the climate crisis, Ackerman and the Future City Lab help us challenge conventional notions of monuments and develop participatory exhibitions about urban futures.This episode features audio from the program “Monuments of the Future: Alternative Approaches," held on February 6, 2019, in the Martin E. Segal Theatre at the CUNY Graduate Center. This program was sponsored by the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning, The Gotham Center for New York City History, and the CUNY Public History Collective. The series is supported by a grant from Humanities New York and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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 the Nation,” Williamson details her work on “Sweet Chariot,” a smartphone-based, augmented-reality tour of Philadelphia’s spaces of black freedom struggle. By inviting the viewer to interact and engage with this history, Williamson opens new doors for alternative approaches to monuments and memorialization. This episode features audio from the program “Monuments of the Future: Alternative Approaches," held on February 6, 2019, in the Martin E. Segal Theatre at the CUNY Graduate Center. This program was sponsored by the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning, The Gotham Center for New York City History, and the CUNY Public History Collective. The series is supported by a grant from Humanities New York and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

“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 Factory Fire of 1911. As president of the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition, Trasciatti and her colleagues—all volunteers—dialogued with government and outside organizations to secure grants, donations, and permits. Her detailed and comprehensive summary offers a window into the public memorial creation process in New York City. This episode features audio from the program "Who Decides? The History and Future of Monument Creation in New York City," held on October 9, 2018, in the Segal Theatre at the CUNY Graduate Center. This program was the second event in the series “Difficult Histories/Public Spaces: The Challenge of Monuments in New York City and the Nation,” sponsored by the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning, The Gotham Center for New York City History, and the CUNY Public History Collective. The series is supported by a grant from Humanities New York and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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, Tchen walks us through the ways the city’s public history has been organized, the processes and findings of the Commission, and a vision to re-establish Lenape life, history, and culture into historical discourse of the region.This episode features audio from the public program "Who Decides? The History and Future of Monument Creation in New York City," held on October 9, 2018, in the Segal Theatre at the CUNY Graduate Center. This program was the second event in the series “Difficult Histories/Public Spaces: The Challenge of Monuments in New York City and the Nation,” sponsored by the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning, The Gotham Center for New York City History, and the CUNY Public History Collective. The series is supported by a grant from Humanities New York and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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 voice is heard and valued in constructing urban spaces of meaning and rememberance. This episode features audio from the program "Who Decides? The History and Future of Monument Creation in New York City," held on October 9, 2018, in the Segal Theatre at the CUNY Graduate Center. This program was the second event in the series “Difficult Histories/Public Spaces: The Challenge of Monuments in New York City and the Nation,” sponsored by the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning, The Gotham Center for New York City History, and the CUNY Public History Collective. The series is supported by a grant from Humanities New York and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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 Art, Monuments, and Markers, an initiative convened to advise NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio about controversial monuments and markers on city-owned land. Dr. Deirdre Cooper Owens, professor of history at Queens College CUNY, details the work of J. Marion Sims, who developed gynecological procedures by practicing on the bodies of enslaved black women. Marina Ortiz, activist and founder of East Harlem Preservation, discusses the decades-long fight to remove an East Harlem statue of Sims. Francheska Alcantara, artist and activist, explores the ways in which art can and should engage social protest. This panel took place on June 13, 2018, as the first program in the series “Difficult Histories/Public Spaces: The Challenge of Monuments in New York City and the Nation,” sponsored by the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning, The Gotham Center for New York City History, and the CUNY Public History Collective. The series is supported by a grant from Humanities New York and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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 Government from World War 1 into the present describing how during economic booms immigrants were welcomed and then quickly turned away during economic declines. Flores analyzes how the varied names associated with Mexican American immigrants illuminate the deep-rooted history of Mexicans in this country. This talk took place on January 18, 2017, as part of Reading Area Community College’s Conexiones Project in partnership with ASHP. ​

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 1720s England through the current state of mega-factories like Foxconn, the conversation covers the rise and fall of factories across the world and the societal consequences that came with each transition. This conversation took place on February 26, 2018, at the CUNY Graduate Center sponsored by the Ph.D. Program in History and the Advanced Research Collaborative.

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 University and Sasha Turner Bryson, Professor of History at Quinnipiac University. Owen’s study draws from the journals of doctors like James Marion Sims and examines the labor enslaved women performed as they endured medical experimentation and assisted doctors in developing careers in gynecology. This talk took place on February 14, 2018, sponsored by Center for the Study of Women and Society and co-sponsored with the Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean (IRADAC), the CUNY Graduate Center Ph.D. Program in History, and the Feminist Press.

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 presidency, and the transition of political power in 1877. This talk took place on July 19, 2016, as part of ASHP’s Visual Culture of the Civil War Summer Institute, an NEH professional development program for college and university faculty.

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 presidency, Grant’s oppositional stance, and images of the KKK and White League. This talk took place on July 19, 2016, as part of ASHP’s Visual Culture of the Civil War Summer Institute, an NEH professional development program for college and university faculty.

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 examining portraits showing a different narrative of African Americans. Ultimately concluding that these works are a contention between white construction and black agency. This talk took place on July 19, 2016, as part of ASHP’s Visual Culture of the Civil War Summer Institute, an NEH professional development program for college and university faculty.

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 created with these photos. By examining the historical context of the photographs, Nelson argues that photography can be as ambiguous as other forms of wartime narratives. This talk took place on July 15, 2016, as part of ASHP’s Visual Culture of the Civil War Summer Institute, an NEH professional development program for college and university faculty.

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 highlighting the important role women’s societies played in ending British slavery, the variety in illustrations of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and how even fine art entered into the debates on slavery. This talk took place on July 12, 2016, as part of ASHP’s Visual Culture of the Civil War Summer Institute, an NEH professional development program for college and university faculty.