a conversation with Nathan Perl-Rosenthal and David G. Troyansky
September 16, 2024, 2:15 PM to 3:30 p.m.
Online, pre-registration required:
https://brooklyn-cuny-edu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0ufuugrjopGdCRXCrmetCde0x_tSggFD-X
USC Professor Nathan Perl-Rosenthal’s The Age of Revolutions and the Generations Who Made It examines two generations of revolutionaries in late-18th- and early-19th-century Europe and the Americas, while BC Professor David G. Troyansky’s Entitlement and Complaint: Ending Careers and Reviewing Lives in Post-Revolutionary France explores careers and memories across the first half of the nineteenth century. These authors ask: What did it mean to be a revolutionary? How did individuals make revolutions, survive revolutions, and build identities in the shadow of revolution? And how did revolutionary pasts feed into the creation of institutions associated with the modern political world?
Entitlement and complaint : ending careers and reviewing lives in post-Revolutionary France by
Entitlement and Complaint explores the early history of the right to retirement and the shaping of the modern life course, applying cutting-edge insights from social, cultural, and political history as well as gerontology to an extraordinarily rich collection of retirement dossiers from the post-Revolutionary French Ministry of Justice. David G. Troyansky tells two intertwined stories. He traces the origins of state pensions in nineteenth-century France, which were increasingly understood by retirees as a right as opposed to a reward. Alongside the empirical data, Troyansky examines the ways retiring magistrates used their written requests for state pensions as an opportunity to engage in "life reviews." Through the analysis of more than five hundred individual dossiers, Troyansky uncovers the personal narratives of those working in a multitude of French political regimes. As employees aged and one cohort replaced another, their attempts to make sense of their careers and lives formed a larger story of post-revolutionary survival.
The age of revolutions : and the generations who made it by
A panoramic, "persuasive and inspiring" (New Yorker) new history of the revolutionary decades between 1760 and 1825, from North America and Europe to Haiti and Spanish America, showing how progress and reaction went hand in hand The revolutions that raged across Europe and the Americas over seven decades, from 1760 to 1825, created the modern world. Revolutionaries shattered empires, toppled social hierarchies, and birthed a world of republics. But old injustices lingered on and the powerful engines of revolutionary change created new and insidious forms of inequality. In The Age of Revolutions, historian Nathan Perl-Rosenthal offers the first narrative history of this entire era. Through a kaleidoscope of lives both familiar and unknown--from John Adams, Toussaint Louverture, and Napoleon to an ambitious French naturalist and a seditious Peruvian nun--he retells the revolutionary epic as a generational story. The first revolutionary generation, fired by radical ideas, struggled to slip the hierarchical bonds of the old order. Their failures molded a second generation, more adept at mass organizing but with an illiberal tint. The sweeping political transformations they accomplished after 1800 etched social and racial inequalities into the foundations of modern democracy. A breathtaking history spanning three continents, The Age of Revolutions uncovers how the period's grand political transformations emerged across oceans and, slowly and unevenly, over generations.
an interdisciplinary discussion on gender discourses and policy approaches in Nigeria
Wednesday, October 23, 2024; 6:00 PM to 7:15 PM
Online, pre-registration will be required: https://brooklyn-cuny-edu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEqcuGrrjwoHNCI3idlU3gh8eFt4SK4EYRW
The event celebrates the publication of Gender and Development in Nigeria: Concepts, Issues, and Strategies, edited by Professors Oluwafunmilayo J. Para-Mallam and Mojúbàolú Olúfúnké Okome. The book asks: What conceptual and theoretical frames of analysis explain gender identity, status, roles and relationships across Nigeria’s richly diverse and culturally complex ethnic nationalities? What are the implications of such diversity and complexity for gender and development thinking, planning and policy? For academic as well as policy-related reasons, it is important that gender and development issues and analyses reflect the socio-cultural, political and economic dimensions of the Nigerian State from the perspective of those who live Nigerian realities. The speakers will be Oluwafunmilayo Josephine Para-Mallam, mni. Director of Studies, National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, Kuru, Nigeria; Clement J. Dakas, Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) Principal Partner, CJ Dakas SAN & Co.; and Mojúbàolú Olúfúnké Okome, Professor of Political Science, Brooklyn College, CUNY
Public College Students Expose the Hidden Inequalities of the COVID-19 Pandemic
Thursday, October 24, 2024; 12:30 PM to 2:00 PM
Woody Tanger Auditorium, Brooklyn College Library
This event centers the voices of Brooklyn College student authors who contributed to the recent book Until We’re Seen: Public College Students Expose the Hidden Inequalities of the COVID-19 Pandemic, co-edited by Professors Joseph Entin and Jeanne Theoharis. Through firsthand accounts by college students at Brooklyn College and California State University Los Angeles, Until We’re Seen chronicles COVID-19’s devastating, disproportionate effects on working-class communities of color. Very few of these students and their families had the luxury of laboring from home; if they were able to keep their jobs, they took subways and buses, and they worked. They drove delivery trucks, worked in private homes, cooked food in restaurants for people to pick up, worked as EMTs, and did construction. They couldn’t escape to second homes; if anything, more people moved in, as families were forced to consolidate to save money. The accounts in this book show that the COVID-19 pandemic did discriminate, following the race and class fissures endemic to US society. Recounting 2020–2022 through the experiences of predominantly young, working-class immigrants and people of color living in the first two major US COVID-19 epicenters, Until We’re Seen spotlights untold stories of the pandemic in New York, Los Angeles, and the nation.
Until We're Seen : Public College Students Expose the Hidden Inequalities of the COVID-19 Pandemic by
The first months of the COVID-19 pandemic were filled with talk of heroes, the frontline workers who kept the country functioning. “And when they write those history books, the heroes of the battle will be the hardworking families of New York,” Governor Andrew Cuomo trumpeted on Labor Day 2020. But what if those heroes, those essential workers and their families, wrote the book themselves?
In Until We’re Seen, the heroes write their own stories. Through firsthand accounts by college students at Brooklyn College and California State University Los Angeles, Until We’re Seen chronicles COVID-19’s devastating, disproportionate effects on working-class communities of color, even as the United States has declared the pandemic over and looks away from its impacts.
Very few of these students and their families had the luxury of laboring from home; if they were able to keep their jobs, they took subways and buses, and they worked. They drove delivery trucks, worked in private homes, cooked food in restaurants for people to pick up, worked as EMTs, and did construction. They couldn’t escape to second homes; if anything, more people moved in, as families were forced to consolidate to save money. Together, the accounts in this book show that the COVID-19 pandemic did discriminate, following the race and class fissures endemic to US society. But if these are tales of hardship, they are also love stories―of students’ families, biological and chosen―and of the deep resolve, mundane carework, and herculean efforts such love entails.
Recounting 2020–2022 through the experiences of predominantly young, working-class immigrants and people of color living in the first two major US COVID-19 epicenters, Until We’re Seen spotlights previously untold stories of the pandemic in New York, Los Angeles, and the nation as a whole.
a conversation with author Cherry Lou Sy and English Professor Helen Phillips
Wednesday, October 30, 2024, 6:00 PM to 7:15 PM
Online, pre-registration required: https://brooklyn-cuny-edu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0kdOyurT8pHtw1C3XpBbE6j-9Joxs9bc7-
Celebrate the publication of Cherry Lou Sy’s debut novel Love Can’t Feed You. Sy will be joined in conversation by novelist and Brooklyn College English Professor Helen Phillips. The book is a stunning coming-of-age story that finds Queenie, a young woman attempting to assimilate after immigrating to the United States, adrift between familial expectations and her own burning desires. As the pressures of assimilation compound, and the fissures within her family deepen into fractures, Queenie feels caught in the middle of everything. Full of rich prose and the pulsing, sensual curiosity of young adulthood, Love Can’t Feed You is perfect for fans of contemporary coming-of-age novels and novels about the immigrant experience. Exploring shifting notions of home and the disintegration of the American dream, the novel asks readers: What does it mean to be of multiple cultures without a road map for how to belong?
Love Can't Feed You by
A beautiful, tender yet searing debut novel about intergenerational fractures and coming of age, following a young woman who immigrates to the United States from the Philippines and finds herself adrift between familial expectations and her own burning desires Love Can't Feed You is a stunning, heartbreaking, and compressed look at coming of age, shifting notions of home, and the disintegration of the American dream. It asks us: What does it mean to be of multiple cultures without a road map for how to belong?
After a harrowing flight, Queenie, her younger brother, and their elderly Chinese father arrive in the United States from the Philippines. They're here to finally reunite with Queenie's Filipina mother, who has been working as a nurse in Brooklyn for the past few years--building a life that everyone hopes will set them up for better prospects. But her mother is not the same woman she was in the Philippines: Something in her face is different, almost hardened, and she seems so American already.
Queenie, on the cusp of adulthood, has big dreams of attending college, of spending her days immersed in the pages of books. But there is not enough money for her and her brother to both be in school, so first she must work. Queenie rotates through jobs and settles, tentatively, into her new life, but her brother begins to withdraw and act out, and her father's anger swells. As the pressures of assimilation compound, and the fissures within her family deepen into fractures, Queenie is left suspended between two countries, two identities, and two parents.
How are our memory, attention, and inhibition functions related to our language skills?
Thursday, November 14, 2024; 6:00 PM to 7:15 PM
Online, pre-registration required: https://brooklyn-cuny-edu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMpceygqjotGtRjIaw1LMzaWNPJuoBxo7ty
The panel discussion centers around Klara Marton’s recent book Cognitive Control Along the Language Continuum. The discussion will center on some of the most relevant and controversial questions in cognitive science about the relationship between cognition and language. In addition to current findings, experts will also discuss educational and clinical implications with an emphasis on individual differences. The panel features Klara Marton, Professor and Chairperson of the Department of Communication Arts, Sciences, and Disorders at Brooklyn College and the Director of the Cognition and Language Laboratory at The Graduate Center, CUNY; and Baila Epstein, Associate Professor in the Department of Communication Arts, Sciences, and Disorders and Director of the Child Language and Cognition Laboratory at Brooklyn College. They will be joined by Caroline Larson, Assistant Professor in the Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences and Director of the Larson Language and Cognition Lab at the University of Missouri; and Luca Campanelli, Assistant Professor in the Department of Communicative Disorders and Director of the Psycholinguistics Laboratory at the University of Alabama and an Affiliated Scientist at Yale University.
Cognitive Control along the Language Continuum by
This book provides a comprehensive review of the interactions between language and cognitive control in children. Broadening its scope beyond specific dimensions of language and cognition, it provides an extensive review of the dynamic changes in cognitive control along the entire language continuum. It integrates behavioral and neurophysiological findings from different disciplines, such as bilingualism, cognitive psychology, and communication disorders. A better understanding of the relationship between cognitive control and language in various speakers allows us to develop more sensitive experimental paradigms, as well as more efficient assessment and intervention methods.
From Colonial Fathers to Bachelor Banisters in 19th and 20th Centuries India and England
November 19, 2024, 2:15 PM to 3:30 PM
Woody Tanger Auditorium, Brooklyn College Library
Celebrate Brooklyn College History Professor Swapna M. Banerjee’s latest book, Fathers in the Motherland: Imagining Fatherhood in Colonial India. Banerjee will be joined by New York University History Professor Ren Pepitone and Emory University History Professor Gyanendra Pandey. Fathers in the Motherland contends that during a period of social and political change in late 19th and early 20th-century colonial India, fathers extended their roles beyond breadwinning to take an active part in rearing their children. Exploring specific moments when educated men—as biological fathers, literary activists, and educators—assumed guardianship and became crucial agents of change, Banerjee interrogates the connections between fatherhood and masculinity. The last chapter of the book draws on the lives of Mohandas K. Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru to provide a broader salience to its argument. Reclaiming two missing links in Indian history, the book argues that biological and imaginary “fathers” assumed the moral guardianship of an incipient nation and rested their hopes and dreams on the future generation.
Fathers in a motherland : imagining fatherhood in colonial India by
This monograph breaks new ground by weaving stories of fathers and children into the history of gender, family and nation in colonial India. Focusing on the reformist Bengali Hindu and Brahmo communities, the author contends that fatherhood assumed new meaning and significance in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century India. During this time of social and political change, fathers extended their roles beyond breadwinning to take an active part in rearing their children. Utilizing pedagogic literature, articles in scientific journals, autobiographies, correspondence, and published essays, Fathers in a Motherland documents the different ways the authority and power of the father was invoked and constituted both metaphorically and in everyday experiences. Exploring specific moments when educated men--as biological fathers, literary activists, and educators--assumed guardianship and became crucial agents of change, Banerjee interrogates the connections between fatherhood and masculinity. The last chapter of the book moves beyond Bengal and draws on the lives of Mohandas K. Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru to provide a broader salience to its argument. Reclaiming two missing links in Indian history-fathers and children-the book argues that biological and imaginary "fathers" assumed the moral guardianship of an incipient nation and rested their hopes and dreams on the future generation.
Helen Phillips discusses her novel Hum with sociologist Ken Gould
Tuesday, November 19, 2024, 3:40 to 5:00 PM
Room 411; Brooklyn College Library
Brooklyn College English professor Helen Phillips discusses her new novel, Hum, with Ken Gould, professor of Sociology and Urban Sustainability at Brooklyn College. Early in the research process for Hum, Prof. Phillips interviewed Prof. Gould about climate change and capitalism. In this conversation, they will reflect on that interview, and discuss how creative works can intersect with sociological inquiry related to science and technology, with a particular focus on climate change and artificial intelligence. For more information on the book: https://www.brooklyn.edu/bc-brief/helen-phillips-publishes-novel-hum/
Hum by
In a city addled by climate change and populated by intelligent robots called “hums,” May loses her job to artificial intelligence. In a desperate bid to resolve her family’s debt and secure their future for another few months, she becomes a guinea pig in an experiment that alters her face so it cannot be recognized by surveillance.
Seeking some reprieve from her recent hardships and from her family’s addiction to their devices, she splurges on passes that allow them three nights’ respite inside the Botanical Garden: a rare green refuge where forests, streams, and animals flourish. But her insistence that her son, daughter, and husband leave their devices at home proves far more fraught than she anticipated, and the lush beauty of the Botanical Garden is not the balm she hoped it would be. When her children come under threat, May is forced to put her trust in a hum of uncertain motives as she works to restore the life of her family.
Written in taut, urgent prose, Hum is a work of speculative fiction that unflinchingly explores marriage, motherhood, and selfhood in a world compromised by global warming and dizzying technological advancement, a world of both dystopian and utopian possibilities.
Professors Greg Smithsimon and Prudence Cumberbatch discuss the Black Middle-Class
Tuesday, November 20, 2024; 2:15 PM to 3:30 PM
Woody Tanger Auditorium, Brooklyn College Library
To celebrate the publication of his recent book, Liberty Road: Black Middle-Class Suburbs and the Battle Between Civil Rights and Neoliberalism, Brooklyn College Sociology Professor Gregory Smithsimon is joined in conversation by African Studies Professor Prudence Cumberbatch. In Liberty Road, Smithsimon focuses on a Black middle-class suburb of Baltimore to tell the story of how residents broke the color barrier, against all odds, in the face of racial discrimination, tensions with suburban whites and urban Blacks, and economic crises like the mortgage meltdown of 2008. Drawing on interviews, census data, and archival research he shows us the unique strategies that suburban Black residents employed, creating a blueprint for other Black middle-class suburbs. Smithsimon re-orients our perspective on race relations in American life to consider the lived experiences and lessons of those who broke the color barrier in unexpected places.
Liberty road : Black middle-class suburbs and the battle between civil rights and neoliberalism by
A unique insight into desegregation in the suburbs and how racial inequality persists Half of Black Americans who live in the one hundred largest metropolitan areas are now living in suburbs, not cities. In Liberty Road, Gregory Smithsimon shows us how this happened, and why it matters, unearthing the hidden role that suburbs played in establishing the Black middle-class. Focusing on Liberty Road, a Black middle-class suburb of Baltimore, Smithsimon tells the remarkable story of how residents broke the color barrier, against all odds, in the face of racial discrimination, tensions with suburban whites and urban Blacks, and economic crises like the mortgage meltdown of 2008. Drawing on interviews, census data, and archival research he shows us the unique strategies that suburban Black residents in Liberty Road employed, creating a blueprint for other Black middle-class suburbs. Smithsimon re-orients our perspective on race relations in American life to consider the lived experiences and lessons of those who broke the color barrier in unexpected places. Liberty Road shows us that if we want to understand Black America in the twenty-first century, we must look not just to our cities, but to our suburbs as well.
