Rainbow LaGuardia: An Interview With Stephen Petrus and Thierry Gourjon-Bieltvedt
Interviewed by Adam Kocurek
Today on the blog, we talk to Stephen Petrus and Thierry Gourjon-Bielvedt about their project Rainbow LaGuardia, a virtual exhibition that examines what it means to be LGBTQ in academia. In it, viewers can explore dozens of video and audio clips taken of twenty-seven LGBTQ faculty and staff at LaGuardia Community College. In these clips, participants talk about everything from their professional lives as LGBTQ academics to their formative experiences in their youth.
Interview with Douglas J. Flowe on Uncontrollable Blackness: African American Men and Criminality in Jim Crow New York
Interviewed by Willie Mack
African American men in early 20th-century New York City faced social and economic segregation, and a racist criminal justice system punctuated by violence by the police and white citizens. In Uncontrollable Blackness: African American Men and Criminality in Jim Crow New York, Dr. Douglas Flowe interrogates the effects that segregation, crime, and violence had on black men, and how these men were forced to navigate the “crucible of black criminality” in Jim Crow Era New York City in order to survive.
Prehistoric and Ahead of Her Time: Sapphasaura at the Museum of Natural History
By Rachel Pitkin
In the summer of 1973, members of the newly formed Lesbian Feminist Liberation (LFL) group were engaged in a unique construction project in the Upper West Side backyard of one of its members, Robin Lutsky. A physically onerous labor of love, the project unfolded over ten days of round-the-clock attention, a last-ditch protest effort to gain the attention of one of New York’s most celebrated yet controversial institutions: the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH).
Today on the blog, Gotham editor, Hongdeng Gao interviews Ariella Rotramel, author of Pushing Back: Women of Color–Led Grassroots Activism in New York City. The book explores women of color’s grassroots leadership in organizations that are not singularly identified with feminism. Centered in New York City, Pushing Back brings an intersectional perspective to communities of color as it addresses injustices tied to domestic work, housing, and environmental policies and practices.
“Ten Thousand Bigamists in New York”: The Criminalization of Jewish Immigrants Using White Slavery Panics
By Mia Brett
The late 19th century and early 20th century saw a huge influx of Jewish immigrants settling in New York City. Eastern European Yiddish speaking immigrants fled the Pale Settlements due to violent pogroms and punitive decrees after the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881.[1] This rise in immigration created a backlash of nativism and criminalization. In particular, anti-Jewish bigotry in New York City’s criminal justice system began to take the form of large-scale stereotypical assumptions as police, judges, prosecutors, and investigators became more familiar with Jewish immigrants from Russia and Poland.
Imitation Artist: An Interview with Sunny Stalter-Pace
Interviewed by Katie Uva
Today on the blog, Katie Uva talks to Sunny Stalter-Pace, author of the recently published Imitation Artist: Gertrude Hoffmann’s Life in Vaudeville and Dance. The book examines the life and times of Gertrude Hoffmann, an early 20th century dancer and choreographer whose career highlights the intersections of high and low culture in the performing arts of that era.
The Remarkable Life of Teuntje Straetmans, a Woman in New Amsterdam
By Annette M. Cramer van den Bogaart
Today, when you look at the impressive facade of the neoclassical building at 55 Wall Street in Manhattan, known as the National City Bank Building, you would never guess that somewhere buried deep below its foundation lie the remnants of a house owned by a woman with a storied past in the Dutch Atlantic world. On a map of Manhattan in 1660, we find at the intersection of Wall Street and Williams Street the entry, “two small houses under one roof” listed as owned by “Teuntje Straetmans and her fourth husband.”
Last summer, Oxford University Press published my book, Suffrage and the City: New York Women Battle for the Ballot. The book examines how leaders in such suffrage organizations as the New York City Woman Suffrage League and the Woman Suffrage Party perceived New York City, how those perceptions changed over the course of five decades, and how they informed campaign strategies.
Magdalena Dircx’s New Amsterdam: Speech, Sex, and the Foundations of a City
By Deborah Hamer
There is a curious passage in the correspondence of the directors of the Dutch West India Company and Peter Stuyvesant. Commenting in May 1658 on one Magdalena Dircx, who had been banished from New Amsterdam on Stuyvesant’s orders for her “dissolute life,” the directors wrote she would “not again receive our permission to return to New Netherland.” If she returned through “deceitful practices or under a false name,” the directors authorized Stuyvesant to punish her with a yet harsher sentence than banishment.
In Pursuit of Knowledge: An Interview with Kabria Baumgartner
Interviewed by Katie Uva
Today on the blog, editor Katie Uva speaks to Kabria Baumgartner, author of In Pursuit of Knowledge: Black Women and Educational Activism in Antebellum America. In her book, Baumgartner explores the origins of the fight for school desegregation in the 19th century Northeast by focusing on the stories of African American girls and women.
