A divided movement brought about the Nineteenth Amendment. By Lisa Tetrault In 1869, a bold new idea was born. It would have been inconceivable a few years earlier. Upending everything about the balance between state and federal power, this idea strove to remake American democracy. It proved so vexing that we are still sorting out its implications. “Woman’s Suffrage by the proposed Sixteenth Amendment is before the nation for consideration,” one newspaper heralded. Demanding their enfranchisement through a constitutional amendment, “women,” another column remarked, “strike out in a new path.” Women had been demanding the vote for some time, but this […]
Cultural Field Survey – 2019
History Humanities New York first circulated its Cultural Field Survey in 2016, in order to complement other data sets important to the public humanities (these include Data Arts and the National Humanities Indicators). This year’s survey used both quantitative and qualitative questions to build on the previous year’s survey in order to help HNY better serve its grantees and program partners. Method The survey data was collected in the Summer of 2019 using data from 393 responses. Respondents were drawn from the HNY database and community partners, with 94% of respondents having heard of HNY prior to taking the survey. […]
HNY Board News
HNY WELCOMES TWO NEW BOARD MEMBERS Wendy S. Walters‘ current projects address the postindustrial city, intersections between writing and design, and organic form in arguments for the essay. She is the author of a book of prose, Multiply/Divide: On the American Real and Surreal, named a best book of the year by Buzzfeed, Flavorwire, Literary Hub, The Root, and Huffington Post. She is also the author of two books of poems: Troy, Michigan and Longer I Wait, More You Love Me. In 2018-19 she was artist-in-residence at BRIClab in Brooklyn. Other work appears in The Normal School, Fourth Genre, Full […]
Puerto Rican Migration to New York, Then and Now
In September 2017, Hurricane María struck Puerto Rico, leaving its entire population in complete darkness and scrambling for basic resources. Consequently, hundreds of thousands of people left Puerto Rico to the continental United States in an effort to improve their quality of life and escape chaotic conditions. In fact, estimates show that more than 4% of the population left the Island, out of which tens of thousands alone came to New York State.1 As part of our mission to be responsive to cultural shifts, Humanities New York proudly supported Puerto Rican Migration Then and Now Through the Lens of Contemporary […]
HNY Board News
HNY WELCOMES THREE NEW BOARD MEMBERS Herman Bennett is Professor of History at the Graduate Center who has most recently published: African Kings & Black Slaves: Sovereignty and Dispossession in the Early Modern Atlantic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019). His previous books include: Africans in Colonial Mexico: Absolutism, Christianity & Afro-Creole Consciousness, 1570-1640 (Indiana 2003) and Colonial Blackness: A History of Afro-Mexico (Indiana 2009). Since 2013 he has been the Executive Officer (EO) of the Educational Opportunity & Diversity Programs (OEODP) at the Graduate Center. As EO of the OEODP, Director of the CUNY Pipeline Program, and the Project […]
Into the Rainforest with Community Conversations
Starting with one conversation on the environment, Mambo Tse has seen how Community Conversations can bring people together, and how those conversations can lead to other fruitful projects. From discussions on immigration and food insecurity came an idea for project exploring the community’s relationship to African history and how it impacts them today, which was funded by an HNY Action Grant. In this interview, Mambo shares how public humanities programming has helped her group engage with youth across New York City, in classrooms and afterschool programs, as well as the general public and elderly populations at senior centers discussing topics […]
Place and Story
By Rick Bass We are pleased to share the introductory essay for our newest Reading & Discussion theme: “Place and Story.” Humanities New York commissioned noted novelist, essayist, and environmentalist Rick Bass to curate a selection of texts that explore the manifold ways the American landscape influences our experiences and way of life. As with all R & D groups, the texts selected–which include fiction, nonfiction, and poetry–explore the theme from a variety of perspectives. We also ask our R & D Scholar-Advisors to pen an original essay contextualizing the selected readings. Below, in the “Place and Story” essay, Rick discusses each reading in the series within the […]
HNY Board & Staff News
SARAH G. CARNEY APPOINTED CHAIR OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS Sarah G. Carney will lead the organization’s Board of Directors as it enters a new phase of programming, which includes working with populations affected by mass incarceration, and the celebration of the centennial of the 19th Amendment (2020) and the fifty year anniversary of the Stonewall Riots (2019). HNY also continues its grant-making and direct programs that encourage in-person engagement with issues and challenges in our democratic society; all are available to tax-exempt entities in New York State. Sarah is the founder of Sarah G. Carney LLC. In nearly 28 […]
Cultural Field Survey
Humanities New York first circulated its Cultural Field Survey in 2016, in order to complement other data sets important to the public humanities (these include Data Arts and the National Humanities Indicators). This year’s survey used both quantitative and qualitative questions to build on the previous year’s survey in order to help HNY better serve its grantees and program partners. A printable version can be found here. Method The survey data was collected in January and February of 2018 using data from 376 responses, with 208 complete and 168 partial (responses that were less than 50% completed were not tabulated). […]
Excerpt: “Making Mass Incarceration”
The following is an excerpt from Elizabeth Hinton’s From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime. Elizabeth is Assistant Professor in the Department History and the Department of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. Hinton’s research focuses on the persistence of poverty and racial inequality in the 20th century United States. If you’d like to explore the broader historical context of mass incarceration, you may watch After Attica: Criminal Justice and Mass Incarceration on our YouTube channel. In the century between the end of the U.S. Civil War in 1865 and Johnson’s call for the War […]
