Center on History and Education

Please join Ansley Erickson and guests on Monday, September 26 from 4-5:30pm for a discussion of Making the Unequal Metropolis: School Desegregation and Its Limits (University of Chicago Press, 2016). The book "presents a broad, detailed, and damning argument about the inextricable interrelatedness of school policies and the persistence of metropolitan-scale inequality. While many accounts of education in urban and metropolitan contexts describe schools as the victims of forces beyond their control, Erickson shows the many ways that schools have been intertwined with these forces and have in fact—via land-use decisions, curricula, and other tools—helped sustain inequality.

Taking Nashville as her focus, Erickson uncovers the hidden policy choices that have until now been missing from popular and legal narratives of inequality. In her account, inequality emerges not only from individual racism and white communities’ resistance to desegregation, but as the result of long-standing linkages between schooling, property markets, labor markets, and the pursuit of economic growth. By making visible the full scope of the forces invested in and reinforcing inequality, Erickson reveals the complex history of, and broad culpability for, ongoing struggles in our schools." (from the Publisher's Description)

Ansley T. Erickson is an Assistant Professor of History and Education, and an affiliated faculty member at the Institute for Urban and Minority Education and the Columbia University Department of History. She currently serves on the editorial board of the History of Education Quarterly and Theory and Research in Education. She has been the recipient of fellowships from the National Academy of Education, the Spencer Foundation, and the Eisenhower Institute. She and co-author Andrew Highsmith won the 2016 History of Education Prize for best essay in the field. 

Respondents include Carla Shedd, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Columbia University, and author of Unequal City: Race, Schools, and Perceptions of Injustice; Jeanne Theoharis, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Brooklyn College, and author of The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks; and Jose Vilson, Eighth Grade Math Teacher, Founder of EduColor, and author of This is Not a Test: A New Narrative on Race, Class, and Education.

This book talk is co-sponsored by the Department of Arts and Humanities, Institute for Urban and Minority Education, and the Center on History and Education.

Please rsvp by Friday, September 23rd.

Screening:  Los Sures, A Documentary Film about South Williamsburg, Brooklyn

 Date:  Wednesday, February 15, 2017

 Time:  7-9:30pm

 Location: Milbank Chapel

Please join us for a screening of Los Sures by Director Diego Echeverria.  Produced in 1984,  the film, which documents neighborhood life in South Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is an important record of the history of New York City and the communities of students we teach.  The film is a complex and sensitive portrait of the everyday lives of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans  living on the Southside of Williamsburg in the days before gentrification.

A panel discussion will follow the screening with the Director; Christopher Allen, Executive Director, Living Los Sures; and Cynthia Copeland, Educator and Public Historian.

Co-sponsors: Vice President’s Office for Diversity and Community Affairs, Institute for Urban and Minority Education, Department of Arts and Humanities, Program in History and Education, and Racial Literacy Roundtable.

Admission is Free.

RSVP: http://bit.ly/2iX3yUP

Many social studies and language arts teachers are familiar with close reading strategies to develop historical thinking based on the printed word. Traditional texts though can serve as a barrier for students who struggle with reading, particularly those who have language-based learning disabilities or are non-native English speakers. In this workshop, participants will learn how to develop historical thinking skills through the analysis of buildings and their histories. We will draw upon literacy theory and practice to show how the process of historical building analysis supports students’ development of higher order thinking skills and meets CCSS standards.

Please join us:

Voices Heard: Mid-20th Century Student Activism at HBCUs

Recent scholarship about the history of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and students' demands for change across educational and political spaces. Panelists will discuss HBCUs as sites of student activism and protest in mid-twentieth century America from varied institutional, group, and gendered perspectives.

with Cally Waite, Teachers College, Columbia University 

• Eddie Cole, College of William and Mary
• Deidre Flowers, Teachers College, Columbia University
• James Alford, William Paterson University

Co-sponsors: Vice President's Office for Diversity and Community Affairs, Program in History and Education, and the Black Student Network.

Speaker: Elizabeth Todd-Breland, Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Illinois at Chicago
Wednesday, October 11, 4:00 - 5:00pm
Lecture, Discussion and Light Reception
Russell 306

Presented with the Program in History and Education
Space is Limited.

About:
Black educators were on the front lines of educational and political struggles in Chicago. Increasingly during the 1960s, Black teachers engaged in dual struggles—organizing and advocating to improve the quality of education for Black students and to improve their own standing within the predominantly White teaching force and teachers union. From the 1960s to the 1980s, Black educators in Chicago grew from an insurgent group of activist teachers into a political base of the coalition that elected Harold Washington as the first Black mayor of Chicago. The growing number of Black teachers and school staff transformed Black politics as anchors of communities, caretakers of children, and as a relatively stable Black urban middle-class employed in the public sector during a period of deindustrialization and growth in the lower wage service sector. Understanding this history is even more urgent given the recent political attacks on public school teachers and public sector employees nationally, which have had a disproportionately negative impact on Black workers and Black communities.

About the Speaker:
Elizabeth Todd-Breland is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is currently a National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellow. Her research and teaching focuses on U.S. urban history, African American history, and the history of education. She is completing a book, A Political Education: Black Politics and Education Reform in Chicago since the 1960s, which analyzes transformations in Black politics, shifts in modes of education organizing, and the racial politics of education reform from the late 1960s to the present. Professor Todd-Breland has also organized professional development workshops, curricula, and courses for K-12 teachers on critical pedagogy, African American history, urban education, and college readiness.

Date: November 8, 2017
Time: 5-8pm
Location: Cowin Center, Teachers College

RSVP: bit.ly/2z2ZGq4

Please join us -

We are proud to present with our cosponsors a screening of I Am Not Your Negro. Directed by Raoul Peck, the film is based on James Baldwin's unfinished manuscript, Remember This House. A discussion will follow the screening with Special Guest Trevor Baldwin and Associate Professor Cally L. Waite, Program in History and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University.

Sponosred by:

Teachers College Center on History and Education, The Racial Literacy Project, Department of Arts and Humanities, and Vice-President's Office for Diversity & Community Affairs.

Film Running Time: 93 minutes

For more information, please contact: che@tc.columbia.edu

Please join Ansley Erickson and guests on Monday, September 26 from 4-5:30pm for a discussion of Making the Unequal Metropolis: School Desegregation and Its Limits (University of Chicago Press, 2016). The book "presents a broad, detailed, and damning argument about the inextricable interrelatedness of school policies and the persistence of metropolitan-scale inequality. While many accounts of education in urban and metropolitan contexts describe schools as the victims of forces beyond their control, Erickson shows the many ways that schools have been intertwined with these forces and have in fact—via land-use decisions, curricula, and other tools—helped sustain inequality.

Taking Nashville as her focus, Erickson uncovers the hidden policy choices that have until now been missing from popular and legal narratives of inequality. In her account, inequality emerges not only from individual racism and white communities’ resistance to desegregation, but as the result of long-standing linkages between schooling, property markets, labor markets, and the pursuit of economic growth. By making visible the full scope of the forces invested in and reinforcing inequality, Erickson reveals the complex history of, and broad culpability for, ongoing struggles in our schools." (from the Publisher's Description)

Ansley T. Erickson is an Assistant Professor of History and Education, and an affiliated faculty member at the Institute for Urban and Minority Education and the Columbia University Department of History. She currently serves on the editorial board of the History of Education Quarterly and Theory and Research in Education. She has been the recipient of fellowships from the National Academy of Education, the Spencer Foundation, and the Eisenhower Institute. She and co-author Andrew Highsmith won the 2016 History of Education Prize for best essay in the field. 

Respondents include Carla Shedd, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Columbia University, and author of Unequal City: Race, Schools, and Perceptions of Injustice; Jeanne Theoharis, Distinguished Professor of Political Science, Brooklyn College, and author of The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks; and Jose Vilson, Eighth Grade Math Teacher, Founder of EduColor, and author of This is Not a Test: A New Narrative on Race, Class, and Education.

This book talk is co-sponsored by the Department of Arts and Humanities, Institute for Urban and Minority Education, and the Center on History and Education.

Please rsvp by Friday, September 23rd.

Screening:  Los Sures, A Documentary Film about South Williamsburg, Brooklyn

 Date:  Wednesday, February 15, 2017

 Time:  7-9:30pm

 Location: Milbank Chapel

Please join us for a screening of Los Sures by Director Diego Echeverria.  Produced in 1984,  the film, which documents neighborhood life in South Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is an important record of the history of New York City and the communities of students we teach.  The film is a complex and sensitive portrait of the everyday lives of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans  living on the Southside of Williamsburg in the days before gentrification.

A panel discussion will follow the screening with the Director; Christopher Allen, Executive Director, Living Los Sures; and Cynthia Copeland, Educator and Public Historian.

Co-sponsors: Vice President’s Office for Diversity and Community Affairs, Institute for Urban and Minority Education, Department of Arts and Humanities, Program in History and Education, and Racial Literacy Roundtable.

Admission is Free.

RSVP: http://bit.ly/2iX3yUP

Many social studies and language arts teachers are familiar with close reading strategies to develop historical thinking based on the printed word. Traditional texts though can serve as a barrier for students who struggle with reading, particularly those who have language-based learning disabilities or are non-native English speakers. In this workshop, participants will learn how to develop historical thinking skills through the analysis of buildings and their histories. We will draw upon literacy theory and practice to show how the process of historical building analysis supports students’ development of higher order thinking skills and meets CCSS standards.

Please join us:

Voices Heard: Mid-20th Century Student Activism at HBCUs

Recent scholarship about the history of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and students' demands for change across educational and political spaces. Panelists will discuss HBCUs as sites of student activism and protest in mid-twentieth century America from varied institutional, group, and gendered perspectives.

with Cally Waite, Teachers College, Columbia University 

• Eddie Cole, College of William and Mary
• Deidre Flowers, Teachers College, Columbia University
• James Alford, William Paterson University

Co-sponsors: Vice President's Office for Diversity and Community Affairs, Program in History and Education, and the Black Student Network.

Speaker: Elizabeth Todd-Breland, Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of Illinois at Chicago
Wednesday, October 11, 4:00 - 5:00pm
Lecture, Discussion and Light Reception
Russell 306

Presented with the Program in History and Education
Space is Limited.

About:
Black educators were on the front lines of educational and political struggles in Chicago. Increasingly during the 1960s, Black teachers engaged in dual struggles—organizing and advocating to improve the quality of education for Black students and to improve their own standing within the predominantly White teaching force and teachers union. From the 1960s to the 1980s, Black educators in Chicago grew from an insurgent group of activist teachers into a political base of the coalition that elected Harold Washington as the first Black mayor of Chicago. The growing number of Black teachers and school staff transformed Black politics as anchors of communities, caretakers of children, and as a relatively stable Black urban middle-class employed in the public sector during a period of deindustrialization and growth in the lower wage service sector. Understanding this history is even more urgent given the recent political attacks on public school teachers and public sector employees nationally, which have had a disproportionately negative impact on Black workers and Black communities.

About the Speaker:
Elizabeth Todd-Breland is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is currently a National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellow. Her research and teaching focuses on U.S. urban history, African American history, and the history of education. She is completing a book, A Political Education: Black Politics and Education Reform in Chicago since the 1960s, which analyzes transformations in Black politics, shifts in modes of education organizing, and the racial politics of education reform from the late 1960s to the present. Professor Todd-Breland has also organized professional development workshops, curricula, and courses for K-12 teachers on critical pedagogy, African American history, urban education, and college readiness.

Date: November 8, 2017
Time: 5-8pm
Location: Cowin Center, Teachers College

RSVP: bit.ly/2z2ZGq4

Please join us -

We are proud to present with our cosponsors a screening of I Am Not Your Negro. Directed by Raoul Peck, the film is based on James Baldwin's unfinished manuscript, Remember This House. A discussion will follow the screening with Special Guest Trevor Baldwin and Associate Professor Cally L. Waite, Program in History and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University.

Sponosred by:

Teachers College Center on History and Education, The Racial Literacy Project, Department of Arts and Humanities, and Vice-President's Office for Diversity & Community Affairs.

Film Running Time: 93 minutes

For more information, please contact: che@tc.columbia.edu