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Reflections on September 11
This week marks the one-month
anniversary of the terrible events of September 11th. In the weeks
that have passed, like so many other New Yorkers we have moved from
shock to mourning to a resolve to emerge from this catastrophe with
a greater commitment to social equality and public knowledge. That
working people played such a significant role as both the victims
and heroes of this catastrophe only increases our determination to
continue our twenty-year effort to recover, present and teach workers'
history.
There has been a lot of discussion
that September 11th "changed everything." We can't, of course, foresee
the future, but there is no question that we all will be facing significant
challenges. The crisis in education lamented by politicians and educators
alike will only increase. Moreover, recession and a reversal from
social to military priorities can only exacerbate recent trends to
defer critical thinking to simply "teach to the test."
In the coming months, in addition
to our ongoing faculty development, teaching-with-technology, and
new media programs, ASHP will join with other public history projects
to collect resources and create materials to help teachers, students,
and the general public understand September 11th and its aftermath.
Now, more than ever, it is urgent to learn about the past in order
to understand how to cope with the present and to devise constructive
ways to repair and change our city, nation and world.
New York City High School students
performing a song they wrote at
ASHP/CML's annual Student Conference -- Hip Hop to History --
which took place on May 17, 2001 at the Borough of Manhattan
Community College. Students and their teachers attended workshops
throughout the day about the connection of hip hop to the study of
US history.
Putting the Past Onstage:
The Relationship of Theater and History
Wednesday, October 24, 6-8 PM, Martin Segal Theatre, CUNY Graduate
Center, 365 5th Ave. at 34th St.
Join us for a seminar on the presentation of the past, including a
conversation among artists who have created theatrical presentations
out of their extensive research into historical figures and events.
This discussion, with Wesley Brown, Brian Freeman and James V. Hatch,
will consider theater as a medium for presenting history, and take
up such questions as: What kind of issues do playwrights face when
they use historical sources? What are the benefits and drawbacks of
theater as a medium for communicating about the past? How do playwrights
and historians communicate with each other? What can a play do that
a history book cannot?
CUNY WIRED!
On Friday Nov. 16th at 12:30 new media and online projects by students
and faculty from across CUNY will be presented at an informal lunch/workshop
in the Martin Segal Theatre at the Graduate Center. The purpose is
to view work in advance of the spring 2001 CUNY WIRED! conference
organized by the Graduate Center's New Media Lab.
All are welcome. For information contact New Media Lab Managing Director
Andrea A. Vasquez at 817-1967 or e-mail.
History
Matters: The U.S. Survey on the Web continues to expand and
offer useful resources for teaching about the American past. During
the fall we will sponsor three "Talking History" online forums for
teachers: Reconstruction with Guest Moderator Eric Foner in October;
U.S. History in Global Perspective with Guest Moderator Thomas Bender
in November, and Religion with Guest Moderator Christine Heyrman in
December. Later this fall we will debut the first in a series of interactive
guides to analyzing particular types of historical evidence such as
oral history, films, and maps. To subscribe to the forums and check
out the new additions to History Matters go to http://historymatters.gmu.edu.
We are pleased to announce
that The Lost Museum: Exploring
Antebellum American Life and Culture, our digital 3-D re-creation
and archive of P. T. Barnum's American Museum, has received a major
production grant from the Division of Education of the National Endowment
for the Humanities. With the help of this grant, we will virtually
construct more museum rooms, significantly expand and restructure
the Archives section, and develop a new feature, The Museum Classroom.
Labor
at the Crossroads, a cable TV program about working people,
has received a North Star Fund grant this year in the amount of $4000
for general operations.
Learning to Look: Visual
Evidence and the U.S. Past in the New Media Classroom (LtL) is a collaborative
research project for humanities faculty interested in exploring the
study of American history, art history, and new media technologies.
Fueled by the new history scholarship and the growth of digitized
archives on the World Wide Web, LtL focuses on teaching strategies
that will help advance student understanding about the past through
the use of visual evidence: photographs, illustrations, painting,
film, and drawings.
LtL's structure includes week-long
institutes, leadership training seminars, campus workshops, case study
reports, and curriculum development projects. The program will be
held on 10 college/university campuses across the nation from Massachusetts
to California, and Louisiana to Michigan. For more information contact:
Donna Thompson.
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