Preservation Long Island (PLI) is embracing its role as keeper of a historic house museum of Black enslavement by engaging in public discourse around present-day issues. Centering the life history of Jupiter Hammon, the first published African American author, PLI will recruit experts to plan public-facing programs that explore the consequences of enslavement on Long Island. PLI received a Vision Grant in preparation for the “Round Table” series, which will provide opportunities to discuss and frame a multi-year reinterpretation initiative and to learn about the historical figure who inspires it all. HNY spoke to Lauren Brincat, Curator, and Darren St. […]
Humanities New York Awards $1 million in CARES Act Funding
NEW YORK CITY, NY — Humanities New York (HNY) today announced nearly $1 million in CARES Act funding to 197 New York cultural nonprofits affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. HNY CARES Emergency Grants focus on organizations with a core humanities mission, and range from $2500 to $15,000, reaching every region in New York. These grants may be used flexibly, whether for personnel, costs associated with the pandemic, or to maintain or adapt the humanities programs that are proving very useful to keep people connected during the pandemic. Sarah Gelman Carney, Chair, said from Buffalo that she was “amazed at the […]
Community & Protest: Reading List
Since the beginning of 2020, we have seen a social turmoil that has not been broadly expressed in at least a generation, marked by protests sparked by the all-too-common spectacle of a black man’s unjust death. George Floyd’s killing is a recent — but by no means even the latest — iteration of America’s gruesome heritage of racist violence. This heritage scaffolds the length of our history, its shadow dimming us and our institutions. As Ibram X. Kendi teaches us, indeed as he said at last year’s Buffalo Humanities Festival (video below), we at institutions all have influence on the […]
Democracy & Trust Today
HNY is continuing its Online Community Conversations series with a discussion on “Democracy and Trust Today.” Issues of democratic trust – and distrust – are not unique to today, of course, but the pervasive social isolation; differing dispositions toward public health and the economic reboot; and varying infection and mortality rates are adding another set of complications to our already distrustful and polarized society. Join us to talk through some of these issues this week Wednesday, July 8th. To complement these online conversations, we have curated a brief selection of texts that examine the interdependencies and tensions between trust and […]
Reading List: Pandemic & Inequality
On Wednesday, May 13th, HNY held its Conversations on Your Couch series with a discussion about “Pandemic and Inequality.” How do inequality and pandemics feed off of each other? Will the lessons we are learning about justice, fairness, and opportunity outlive the virus? To complement the conversation, we curated a brief selection of stories that examine the complex interconnections between the pandemic and inequality. For those interested in holding there own conversation this could serve as a starting point. Each selection is available to read / listen online, and each is free of charge. Some readings to get you started… […]
Community & Pandemic Perspectives
Are you reading obsessively about all aspects of the pandemic? We hear you! HNY has curated a brief selection of books, articles, and podcasts that examine the complex relationships and questions that have emerged during social crises. This complements our Conversation on Your Couch discussion on Community & Pandemic. Your library card may get you free access to digital versions of these books via platforms such as Libby and Hoopla. Don’t have a library card? New York Public Library has expanded its online offerings — any New York State resident may apply for a card via the SimplyE app. Books […]
Suffrage and Beyond: 19 Books for Women’s History Month
We’ve gathered nineteen suggestions to commemorate the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment. All are available in ebook format, and most have audiobook versions as well. Be sure to visit your public library’s website! Your library card may get you free access to digital versions of these books via platforms such as Libby and Hoopla. Don’t have a library card? New York Public Library has expanded its online offerings — any New York State resident may apply for a card via the SimplyE app. If you want to commemorate the U.S. women’s suffrage centennial. . . …here are some recently published […]
How Black Suffragists Fought for the Right to Vote and a Modicum of Respect
Hallie Quinn Brown and Other “Homespun Heroines” By Martha S. Jones Hallie Quinn Brown knew the power of black women and urged anyone who heard her to let it flourish. Read her remarks from 1889 and you might believe she saw the future or at least had the capacity to call it into being: “I believe there are as great possibilities in women as there are in men. . . . We are marching onward grandly. . . . We love to think of the great women of our race—the mothers who have struggled through poverty to educate their children. […]
Definitions of Black Agency: The Legacy of Mildred Johnson Edwards
Ansley Erickson, a historian at Teachers College, Columbia University, and Karen Taylor, the founder and director of “While We Are Still Here,” a Harlem-based heritage-preservation site, received an Action Grant to host two public events as part of their process in documenting Harlem’s rich tradition of education. Ansley is Co-Director and Karen is Director of Public History at the Harlem Education History Project, which uses archival materials and oral histories to preserve and share stories of education in Harlem. Humanities New York sat with them to learn about what inspired this initiative―and Mildred Johnson Edwards, whose vision materialized a legacy […]
The Sing Sing Revolt
By Lee Bernstein The New York History Journal has been re-imagined and re-launched by our partners at the New York State Museum and Cornell University Press. The journal welcomes submissions from public historians, municipal historians, museum professionals, and archivists, in addition to academic historians–very much in the spirit of Humanities New York as we help build the burgeoning field of the public humanities. The article we’d like to share with you on the blog concerns “The Sing Sing Revolt” which, coming ten years after the uprising at Attica, is less talked about, but sheds important light on the way that event shaped the criminal justice system in New […]
