General Public

Matthew Jacobson (Yale University), “Dancing Down the Barricades: Sammy Davis Jr. and the Long Civil Rights Era”

Join us for a conversation with Matthew Jacobson (co-director of the Yale Public Humanities Program and the Sterling Professor of American Studies, History & African American Studies at Yale) and Robin D. G. Kelley (the Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at the University of California, Los Angeles) on Professor Jacobson’s new book, “Dancing Down the Barricades: Sammy Davis Jr. and the Long Civil Rights Era, A Cultural History” (University of California Press, 2023).

Red Summer: Percival Everett’s American Landscapes

Over a period of two years, starting in 2019 when he began work on his novel The Trees, Percival Everett made a series of paintings to commemorate the century anniversary of the Red Summer, a summer that saw so many lynchings in the United States. In the conversation and slide presentation, Everett and Crystal Feimster discuss the ways he uses oil paints, watercolors, and photographs of his own paintings to create portraits of an American landscape that is ever-present, but often conveniently ignored.

Inaugural Lecture in American Studies: Audra Simpson, “Savage States: Settler Governance in an Age of Sorrow”

Audra Simpson, Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University

Author of the award-winning book Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States, Audra Simpson is a political anthropologist whose work is rooted within Indigenous polities in the US and Canada and crosses the fields of anthropology, Indigenous Studies, American and Canadian Studies, gender and sexuality studies as well as politics.

Exhibition Discussion - The Practice of Democracy: A View from Connecticut

Join us for a conversation with Elihu Rubin, Associate Professor of Urbanism at the Yale School of Architecture, and Melissa Kaplan-Macey, Vice President, State Programs & Connecticut Director at the Regional Plan Association, on the current Housatonic Museum of Art exhibition, The Practice of Democracy: A View From Connecticut. This site-specific immersion examines how justice, equality and power appear in our built environment – our cities and neighborhoods, the places we call home. On view at the Housatonic Museum of Art (January 17 - February 24, 2023).

Elihu Rubin: "Spaces for Democracy: The Goffe Street Armory as Civic Infrastructure"

Join us for a conversation with Elihu Rubin, Associate Professor of Urbanism at the Yale School of Architecture, moderated by Matthew Jacobson, co-director of the Public Humanities Program and the Sterling Professor of American Studies, History & African American Studies at Yale. This program is presented as part of the ongoing “Democracy in America” series, a collaboration between the New Haven Free Public Library and Public Humanities at Yale.

“Abolition: Where Do We Go From Here?”

A roundtable discussion with Robin D.G. Kelley, Derecka Purnell, and Garrett Felber
Moderated by Elizabeth Hinton

Yale’s Portraits of Elihu Yale: New Light on the Group Portrait of Elihu Yale, His Family, and an Enslaved Child

Join Courtney J. Martin, Paul Mellon Director, Yale Center for British Art, in conversation with Matthew Jacobson, co-director of the Public Humanities Program and the Sterling Professor of American Studies, History & African American Studies at Yale, with YCBA researchers Eric James, Abigail Lamphier, Lori Misura, David Thompson, and Edward Town.
This program is presented as part of the ongoing “Democracy in America” series, a collaboration between the New Haven Free Public Library and Public Humanities at Yale.

How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics

Join Laura Briggs, Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in conversation with Matthew Jacobson, co-director of the Public Humanities Program and the Sterling Professor of American Studies, History & African American Studies at Yale.
This program is presented as part of the ongoing “Democracy in America” series, a collaboration between the New Haven Free Public Library and Public Humanities at Yale.

Trails and Rails: Mobilizing Public History with Amtrak Trains and the National Park Service

Join Laura Barraclough, the Sarai K. Ribicoff Associate Professor of American Studies at Yale University, in conversation with Matthew Jacobson, co-director of the Public Humanities Program and the Sterling Professor of American Studies, History & African American Studies at Yale.
This program is presented as part of the ongoing “Democracy in America” series, a collaboration between the New Haven Free Public Library and Public Humanities at Yale.

Five Myths about Gun History

Join Jennifer Tucker, Associate Professor of History, Environmental Studies, Science in Society, and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Wesleyan University, in conversation with Matthew Jacobson, co-director of the Public Humanities Program and the Sterling Professor of American Studies, History & African American Studies at Yale.
This program is presented as part of the ongoing “Democracy in America” series, a collaboration between the New Haven Free Public Library and Public Humanities at Yale.

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