ASHP Podcast

Jay Gitlin, Yale UniversityU.S. Territorial Expansion: From the Louisiana Purchase to the California Gold RushThe Graduate CenterFebruary 22, 2011Historian Jay Gitlin examines American diversity through the lens of westward expansion rather than immigration. In the nineteenth century hundreds of thousands of people who spoke a different language, held different religious beliefs, and came from a w...

Lisandro Pérez, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNYCubano New York: Nineteenth Century Immigrants to the World’s Sugar CapitalThe Graduate Center, CUNYMarch 4, 2011In the nineteenth century, Cubans were the largest Latin American or Spanish-speaking population in New York City. Lisandro Pérez discusses the importance of these immigrants to both Cuban and U.S. history in conversation with AS...

Carol Groneman, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNYCUNY, Graduate CenterHistorian Carol Groneman, whose dissertation grounds the scholarship of ASHP’s documentary “The Five Points: New York’s Irish Working Class in the 1850s,” looks at what happened when immigrants of the Irish famine came to the United States (1845-1855):How were they perceived? What institutions were built from their part...

Donna Thompson Ray, American Social History ProjectCUNY, Graduate CenterIn this three-part video podcast, ASHP/CML’s Donna Thompson Ray shares the benefit of her area of expertise with New York City Department of Education teachers in a discussion about the work of artist Jacob Lawrence.  Eliciting contributions from teachers, Thompson Ray leads a conversation about Lawrence’s Migration Series and...

Fritz Umbach and Kojo Dei, John Jay College, CUNY“Teaching America and the Slave Trade in Global Perspective”The Graduate Center, CUNYFebruary 8, 2008While most Americans understand slavery solely through the prism of its existence in the Americas, in fact the “peculiar institution” as practiced in the new world makes up only a small part of the global history of slavery. Historian Fritz Umbach an...

Peter H. Wood, Duke University Professor Emeritus“Thomas Day: Nineteenth-Century Free Black Cabinetmaker”The Graduate Center, CUNYNovember 8, 2010How might a southern-born free black also be an abolitionist? ASHP staff member, Donna Thompson Ray, interviews historian Peter H. Wood about the life of cabinetmaker, Thomas Day, and how his experience as a free black characterized nineteenth-century ra...

Premilla Nadasen, Queens College, CUNYWomen and Black Freedom: Rethinking the Civil Rights MovementThe Graduate Center, CUNYApril 22, 2010Historian Premilla Nadasen examines the importance of women in the Black Freedom Movements of the 1960s and 1970s. In Part 1 of this podcast, she outlines how the traditional narrative of the Civil Rights Movement, which tended toward “great men approach” is bei...

Gregory Downs, City College of New York, CUNY“Power & Slavery: Slave Communities in the Antebellum South”The Graduate Center, CUNYDecember 4, 2008Historian Gregory Downs explores the capacity for individual and social resistance evident in the American system of slavery. In the antebellum South, American slaves worked to build communities through religion, family, political networks, and communiti...

Carlos Sanabria, Hostos Community College, CUNY“Demographic Revolutions: Hispanic Migration to the United States”Hostos Community College, CUNYApril 24, 2009Why did we come here? And why are we so poor? Historian Carlos Sanabria discusses migration and the situation of the U.S. Hispanic population in the post-World War Two period. He outlines areas of study such as the demographic revolutions whic...

Barbara Winslow, Brooklyn College“Women’s History, Women’s Activism: The Shirley Chisholm Center at the CUNY Graduate Center”The Graduate Center, CUNYNovember 14, 2008Historian and educator Barbara Winslow (Brooklyn College) discusses the life and times of Shirley Chisholm, the legendary African-American activist, Congresswoman, and presidential candidate. Winslow places Chisholm’s legacy in the c...

Nancy Hewitt, Rutgers University“Many Paths to Progressive Reform: New Perspectives on the Progressive Era”The Graduate Center, CUNYMarch 27, 2007Early twentieth-century progressivism was a constellation of efforts undertaken by a wide range of people whose perspectives on reform were rooted in their race, class, region, and religion. In this talk to New York City teachers, Nancy Hewitt weaves tog...

Christian G. Appy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst“The Vietnam War: What Are We Fighting For?”The Paley Center for MediaMay 14, 2008Christian G. Appy (University of Massachusetts, Amherst), historian and author of Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides, shares the historical insights gleaned from his investigation of the Vietnam War from American and Vietnamese perspectives. His...

Roscoe C. Brown, Jr., The Graduate Center, CUNY“They Said It Couldn’t Be Done, But the Tuskegee Airmen Did It”The Graduate Center, CUNYFebruary 27, 2009Educator Roscoe C. Brown, Jr. shares his personal history of race in the United States as seen through the perspective of World War II. Dr. Brown describes incidents of discrimination and social injustice that propelled him into a life of activist...

Jeanie Attie, Long Island University“The Problem of Freedom in the U.S. Civil War”The Graduate Center, CUNYOctober 13, 2006Historian Jeanie Attie examines the significance of slavery to the people who fought in and lived during the American Civil War. The enslaved, as constant observers of the lives of free men, clearly understood the value of freedom. Free whites in the antebellum South had a sta...

Gerald Markowitz, John Jay College and The Graduate Center, CUNY“FDR, The Depression, and the New Deal: What Was New?”The Graduate Center, CUNYOctober 23, 2007In this presentation to New York City teachers, historian Gerald Markowitz discusses Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. He begins by focusing on what was new about the New Deal, including the government’s response to the Great Depression, the...

Kevin Kenny, Boston College“Irish Americans and the Meaning of Race in the Mid-Nineteenth Century”The Graduate Center, CUNYDecember 13, 2007Speaking before an audience of New York City teachers, historian Kevin Kenny describes the profound impact of the first great wave of Irish immigration to the U.S. in the mid-nineteenth century. Swelling the populations of major U.S. cities in a way that no pr...

Martha Hodes, New York University“Land and Labor in the Era of Reconstruction: Conflict, Compromise, Violence”The Graduate Center, CUNYFebruary 15, 2007Historian Martha Hodes explores the many meanings of freedom that emerged at the end of the Civil War. Although the war was over, new conflict erupted between freed slaves and former slave owners over what form emancipation would take. Freedpeople...

Matthew Jacobson, Yale University“Immigration and Conceptions of ‘Fit’ Citizenship, 1790-1924″The Graduate Center, CUNYApril 14, 2008In this talk to New York City schoolteachers, historian Matthew Jacobson challenges conventional notions about America’s immigrant past. First, Jacobson discusses immigration from Europe to the United States within the larger context of global migration set off by th...