Public History Commons^™

His 127 Microhistories: A Lens Into The Past — Apartheid In South Africa Syllabus, Marta Millar

Open Educational Resources

The microhistory course introduces students to the study of history by exploring a particular event, individual, or issue, and its legacy. Students will read both primary source documents and modern texts to examine how the topic under consideration was shaped by, and in turn shaped contemporary culture.

This syllabus is for a course focusing on the history of apartheid in South Africa. Students will analyze the political, social, economic, and cultural aspects of the apartheid era. This includes understanding how segregationist policies developed in South Africa, what political transformations led to the implementation of the apartheid system, how different policies …

Conga Santiaguera: A Century Of Innovation And Competition, Nick Herman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Santiago de Cuba is home to the island’s biggest, oldest, and most famous carnival.  Any local resident will confirm that “sin conga no hay carnaval (without conga there is no carnival).” In Santiago, conga refers to a vibrant street procession, the music that drives it, and the ensemble that makes the music.  Conga Santiaguera: A Century of Innovation and Competition presents a musical history of the conga from roughly 1910 to 2010.  This project, https://cuny.manifoldapp.org/projects/conga employs an eBook, musical analysis, oral histories, and audiovisual media to show how the conga has been constantly reinvigorated by innovation, competition, and Afro-Diasporic …

In The Name Of The Mother, The Nation, And The Race: White Women, The Jim Crow South, & Moralized White Supremacist Feminism, Shayna M. Lawson

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis introduces the concept of moralized white supremacist feminism to examine the central role white women played in constructing, legitimizing, and sustaining racial hierarchies in the Jim Crow South through a network of cultural and political organizing, particularly through the United Daughters of the Confederacy and Women’s Ku Klux Klan. Far from passive observers, white women were strategic agents of segregation, leveraging ideals of purity, motherhood, and moral virtue to enforce anti-Black violence and oppression through educational, civic, legal, and symbolic institutions, as well as extra-legal practices. Drawing from archival materials, oral histories, and critical race theory, this study …

Cuny In The News: A History Of Reporting On The Humanities At The City University Of New York, Jacqueline R. Cahill

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project compiles newspaper articles concerning humanities at the City University of New York, placing them on a timeline to establish patterns and changes within media reporting and public perception. The archival research of this project explores four distinct eras, grouped around major events in the history of the university: 1961-1971, for the founding of the university and open admissions struggle; 1980-1990, for the response to the ‘70s fiscal crisis and introduction of the Board of Trustees; 2000-2010 for the post-open admissions era and the centralization of CUNY; and 2020-present, for COVID and a new fight for racial equity. Examining …

Past * An Introduction To The Problem, Zelimir Zilnik, Boris Buden, New Media Center Kuda.Org, Olivera Jokic

Publications and Research

Who can know what is in the past? Is it what historians can tell us? Should we also trust what we can remember? Past • An Introduction to the Problem proposes that the problem of the past now concerns everyone. Visions of a different, brighter future defeated in the Cold War and its heated afterlives, we are being offered the past as the only horizon of possibility. And what are we supposed to find in that past? Philosopher Boris Buden considers these questions in a series of essays and conversations with filmmaker Želimir Žilnik, one of the most prominent filmmakers …

The Migration Of South Asians From India To Guyana: The Journey, Struggles In A New Land, Reasons For Changes Over Time And Their Cultivation Of A New Culture., Cynthia C. Harry

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Indians from different regions of India arrived in Guyana through indentureship in 1838. They were under a five-year contract and had to work on the sugar plantations for the duration of their indentureship. While they tried to persist their Indian culture, assimilation in their new environments and interaction with people of different cultures, allowed them to develop a culture unique to Indo Guyanese heritage.

This thesis focuses on the history of Indian diaspora in Guyana. It evokes the struggles they faced on the ships, and during and after indentureship. It also touches on the political and racial issues they had …

Aguaaaa!!!, Cory Villegas

Theses and Dissertations

“AGUA” is a call for new models of learning and sharing, celebrating the diasporic as a place of global revolution. Salsa, rooted in Latin American and Afro-Caribbean histories, is choreographer Cory Villegas’s expression of cultural legacy. As an Afro-diasporic dance, Salsa carries the wealth and variety of African and Indigenous roots. Villegas contextualizes her thesis event “Las Leyendas: An Afro Cuban Suite,” presenting herself and her troupe Soul Dance Co. as evidence that contradicts the erasure of Latin & Caribbean Culture in US dance history. The paper uses English and Spanish, written, visual, and oral materials with an accompanying webpage.

Woman Flytrap, Brianna Jo Hobson

Student Theses and Dissertations

Woman FlyTrap is a short story zine collection that explores the topic of sexual violence through the perpetrator and victim relationship with an explicit lens. Replete with cultural and entomological themes and motifs, Woman Flytrap seeks to remind survivors that we are not alone. In our bodies or in our lives. Neither in the world. There are over a million insects to every human, proving that there is strength in numbers. All five stories in the collection present different abstracts: revenge, transformation, justice, healing, body image, self-harm, mourning, etc. There is also a playlist and a section about the author. …

North Of The Grid: The Black Experience Of 17th -19th Century Rural New York City, Stephanie E. Barnes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the United States, transatlantic slavery was a racial project and template for race-making which created a country that relied on institutions that were organized and performed through social stratification. Today, the nation still operates on systemically racist institutions that have benefited whites while disadvantaging ‘others.’ The narratives presented in American history are rooted in whiteness and benefit the white community while marginalizing nonwhites. Over two hundred years of slavery history in this country has been purposely manipulated and left out. My research focuses on using an historical archaeological framework to research and share the lives of free and enslaved …

Go Off: The Geography And Labor Of Off- And Off-Off-Broadway, Sean C. Mellott

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Off- and Off-Off-Broadway remain ill-defined and misunderstood sectors of New York City’s theatre industry, at least when compared with Broadway. This capstone project examines these dual sociocultural spaces and defines some of their contours through a primary analytical lens of geography (the physical locations where Off- and Off-Off-Broadway are produced) and a secondary lens of labor (the professional contexts in which Off- and Off-Off-Broadway are produced). Both elements speak to the material conditions of theatrical production in New York City, offering clues as to Off- and Off-Off-Broadway’s position within the entertainment industry and their relationship to the larger social structure …

The Neighborhood Stories Indexing Project, Elena Abou Mrad

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Neighborhood Stories Indexing Project is part of the Neighborhood Stories project, an oral history initiative by the NYC Department of Records and Information Services (DORIS). My capstone is an attempt to solve the problem of information overload and that of access with an online application that allows DORIS to publicly share their oral history interviews and to make them easily searchable. The purpose of the indexing project is to increase the use of and improve access to the collections, without sacrificing the nuance and complexity of lived experiences in NYC. By allowing users to navigate the interviews as audio …

The Unknown Terror: Credit Card Debt Among The American Middle Class, Eamonn Maher

Theses and Dissertations

This Capstone focuses on a true crisis that affects many middle class Americans. Credit card debt has become a norm for American society and quietly has terrorized and dismantled the lives of many middle class Americans. From the rolling back of usury laws protecting predatorial interest rates, to many Americans losing jobs and income. This paper discusses the relationship between the reliance on credit cards and crippling debt for many Americans in the middle class.

The Origins Of The Pledge Of Allegiance, Paul T. Zurheide

Publications and Research

To some, the Pledge of Allegiance is a patriotic celebration of the nation, as it was advertised since its beginning. However, it is not simply a salute to a flag. It is also vow of loyalty to the nation, a vow that is consistently repeated by schoolchildren to ensure that loyalty is ingrained in them from the start, before they can even cognitively grasp the meaning of a vow, loyalty, or even the nation. This is because when the Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892, the United States, and its people, were undergoing tremendous change. It was becoming a …

Silences Of New York History: Legacies Of The New York Slave Revolt Of 1712, Jelissa N. Caldwell

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Silences of New York History is an interactive website project dedicated to the study and uplifting of little-known historical narratives of Black history weaved within the main narrative of New York City history. It is designed to be an accessible platform of primary and secondary sources for 4^th-12^th grade students wanting a supplementary archive of information and histories that may not be directly taught in public school education. This project focuses on the New York Slave Revolt of 1712 because it is the first recorded Black, enslaved uprising in the city’s history. By focusing on this early …

Animal-Human Vocabulary Builder, Domenick Acocella, Rene Cordero

Open Educational Resources

The assignment helps students individually build a usable, expanding vocabulary of terms and concepts, enabling each to further contribute to the ongoing, evolving written, oral, and visual conversations centered on the use of and thought about animals for food, clothing, work, entertainment, experimentation, imagery, and companionship.

The Space Between “Seen” And “Unseen:” Queer People And The 1915-1945 New Negro Renaissance, Claudia R. Campanella

Dissertations and Theses

In November 1926, a group of Black artists, writers, and activists created the first and only edition of Fire!!, edited by novelist Wallace Thurman. Fire!! was created by a younger generation of New Negroes and “devoted to the younger Negro artists” who dissented from the mainstream ideas of the New Negro Movement and used the magazine to spread their own views on the 1915-1945 New Negro Renaissance. Fire!! and other texts speaking to this dissent against a Black intellectual middle class image of the movement will be studied in reference to showcasing the multi-faceted elements of the movement touching …

Repealed: Indigenous Fight For An Independent Press, Bryce A. Buyakie

Capstones

Indigenous Communities in the United States have historically been underserved by traditional mainstream news outlets. To fill this gap, many tribes created their own radio, television and print newsrooms to cover local politics and events, but between Supreme Court rulings and tribal law the press often falls under the influence of tribal governments that hold the purse and editorial strings. In the Muscogee (Creek) Nation of Oklahoma, this was true. Their official news outlet, Mvskoke Media, fought to be independent of the government they cover for over a decade. Twice they succeeded. Twice they were under the thumb of censorship. …

Using Monuments To Teach About Racism, Colonialism, And Sexism, Susan Phillip

Publications and Research

This chapter examines how an interdisciplinary high-impact practice approach to teaching and learning using selected contested monuments can reveal intersections of racism, colonialism, and sexism, and lay the foundation for students’ civic engagement. In place-based and virtual experiences, students observe and investigate local and national monuments, integrating knowledge from multiple disciplines, including history, psychology, art, culture, and tourism. Students make critical analyses about how monuments reveal power relationships in our society. Students from various disciplines explore the origin of contested monuments, the evolving national and local debates around them, and their effect on students’ learning to evaluate historical, contemporary, and …

“The Amazing Iroquois”: Haudenosaunee History In Myth And Memory, 1776–1955, John C. Winters

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project is a history and memory study of Iroquois exceptionalism. This is an idea that shaped our understanding of the Iroquois as the “most studied” Indian nation and that they, as the debunked Iroquois Influence Thesis claimed, influenced the structure and scope of the U.S. Constitution. My study examines the lives of four related (by blood and by claim) Seneca leaders: Red Jacket, Ely S. Parker, Harriet Maxwell Converse, and Arthur C. Parker. These four stand out because each was one of the most famous Native Americans of their generation who worked within and against American colonial society and …

Spatial Distribution Of Chinese Language Education And Historical Development Of Chinese Language Pedagogy In Higher Education In The United States, Jing Zhao

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone project includes two major components: an interactive digital map that displays the geographical distribution of Chinese language programs in colleges and universities in the United States, their program starting years, the types of such universities and colleges, and their names and states; and a multimedia essay on the evolution of Chinese language pedagogy in colleges and universities in the United States. Data has been collected on the program start year, school names, states where schools are located, school types, and whether the school had been funded by two federal sponsored language programs: the National Defense Education Act in …

Setting The Terms Of Our Own Visibility A Conversation Between Sam Feder And Alexandra Juhasz On Trans Activist Media In The United States, Alexandra Juhasz

Publications and Research

In the summer of 2016, I sat down at my computer and Skyped with my friend and fellow queer media activist Sam Feder about their film, Disclosure: Trans Lives on Screen. What follows is a highly edited transcript of our conversation, paying particular attention to Sam’s core research findings about trans representational history and how their findings might align with their processes and goals as a trans activist media maker committed to telling this complex story.

Cyborgs For Environmental Justice: East Asian American Stories From The 1991 People Of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, Lisa Ng

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The goal of this paper is threefold: to serve as an oral history archive of the East Asian American experience at the 1991 People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit, to analyze the role of East Asian Americans in the Environmental Justice Movement (EJM), and to fill an ideological and political vacuum that exists in East Asian American communities. This work analyses the experiences of East Asian Americans who were present at the 1991 People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit--an event scholars have attributed to igniting the EJM. The paper argues that East Asian Americans act as “Cyborgs”—both as their ascribed …

From Mourning To Monuments: How American Society Memorialized The Dead After 1945, Eugenia M. Wolovich

Theses and Dissertations

The following four memorials — the World War II Memorial in The Fens in Boston, the Brooklyn War Memorial in Cadman Plaza Park, the Pennsylvania Railroad World War II Memorial in the 30th Street Station, and the East Coast War Memorial in Battery Park — suggest that mid-twentieth century commemorative architecture possessed defining characteristics that differentiated them from monuments of the previous era and from each other. These unique qualities make it difficult to define this architectural period in a unified way because multiple forms of memorials arose in the wake of World War II.

Immigration, Small Business And Assimilation: Three Stories Of Small-Time Capitalism On The Lower East Side, Marcus Hillman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Small businesses in New York City have often been a catalyst to assimilation for individual immigrants, their families and their communities. For this capstone project, I have recorded conversations with three small-time entrepreneurs on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and created a narrative audio piece that explores some of the important and study-worthy characteristics of New York City including economic opportunities in the city, immigration, assimilation and the ways that New Yorkers share space, just to name a few. These themes are threads that ran through all three of the conversations that I had and are crucial elements of …

Jerome Lefkowitz: A Pragmatic Intellect And Major Figure In Taylor Law Historytaylor Law History, William A. Herbert

Publications and Research

This article examines the professional career of Jerome Lefkowitz, a central figure in the history of the Taylor Law, New York's public sector collective bargaining statute. Mr. Lefkowitz helped draft the Taylor Law, and served as the first Deputy Chairperson of the New York State Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) from 1967 until 1986, and the agency's fifth Chairperson from 2007 until 2015. PERB is the state agency responsible for administering the provisions of the Taylor Law. Between his two tenures at PERB, Mr. Lefkowitz was Deputy Counsel for the Civil Service Employees Association, Local 1000, AFL-CIO. The article examines …

From Establishment To Final Independence: A Study Of The National Archives Of The United States Of America From 1934–1985, Daniel M. Frett

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis is a study of the National Archives of the United States from the institution’s establishment in 1934 under the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt to becoming the National Archives and Record Administration in 1985. The Archives during the 1930’s and 1940’s functioned as an independent agency, until the Archives lost their independence under the Hoover Commission. In 1949 the Archives became part of the newly formed General Services Administration. During the 1950’s and 1960’s National Archives helped change the archival profession. Furthermore, we see how the two independence movements in the 1960’s and 1980’s that were ultimately successful in …

100 Years Ago: The Death Of Quentin Roosevelt, Keith J. Muchowski

Publications and Research

This blog post focuses on the life and military career of Quentin Roosevelt. Lieutenant Roosevelt died in an aviation firefight in France on July 14, 2018, Bastille Day. He left behind his fiancee Flora Payne Whitney, an heir to the Whitney and Vanderbilt fortunes.

100 Years: The Death Of John Purroy Mitchel – New York City’S Boy Mayor, Keith J. Muchowski

Publications and Research

The blog post focuses on the life and times of John Purroy Mitchel, the mayor of New York City during the First World War. Mitchel was active in the Preparedness Movement and eventually killed in a military training exercise in July 1918, six months after leaving office.

Swimming In A Sea Of No's: Controlling And Managing The New York Public Pools, Mette L. Jensen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Swimming in a Sea of No's: Managing and Controlling the New York Public Pools traces the genealogy of the regulations, surveillance, and rules employed at New York public pools. The thesis discusses the intent and implications of the spatial strategies created to order and control the environment surrounding the swimming pools, and discusses how municipal public pools as specific, local landscapes manifest broader social and cultural processes. The main focus is on the transformation of the pools during the 1980s and 1990s, two decades after the fiscal crisis in 1975, when the pools had become defunded, dysfunctional spaces. By tracing …

Nora Evelyn Cordingley, Keith J. Muchowski

Publications and Research

Nora Evelyn Cordingley worked for the Roosevelt Memorial Association at the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace. She helped Hermann Hagedorn build the extensive collection of materials related to President Theodore Roosevelt starting in the early 1920s until the collection moved to Harvard University in the early 1940s. She also helped in the project to publish Theodore Roosevelt's letters. Ms. Cordingley died in her office within the Widener Library in 1951.