News
In his book The Salome Ensemble, Board of Visitors member Alan Ginsberg connects the four Eastern European immigrant Jewish women who inspired, created, wrote, and embodied Salome of the Tenements, a 1922 novel and later screenplay. This week the book was named a finalist for the 2016 National Jewish Book Award.
Ginsberg's book follows the lives of Rose Pastor Stokes, Anzia Yezeierska, Sonya Levien, and Jetta Goudal in a historical and literary examination of early 20th Century American immigrant culture.
Salome of the Tenemenets, written by Anzia Yezeirska, tells the story of Sonya Verusky, a poor female reporter for a Jewish newspaper in New York's Lower East Side tasked with interviewing a millionaire Protestant philanthropist. Yezeireska modeled her protagonist on the Jewish reporter Rose Pastor Stokes, who interviewed and later married James Graham Phelps Stokes, a wealthy Christian from an old New England family. Pastor Stokes's socialist, internationalist, and later communist convictions led to the deterioration of the marriage in 1925. Sonya Levien, editor of Metropolitan magazine wrote the novel's screenplay, and Jetta Goudal played the part in the 1924 film.
Ginsberg's book uses the four women's stories to explore divergent yet interconnected approaches to confronting assimilation, gender inequality, social class, and race in early 20th Century America.
On December 13, American Studies graduate Benji de la Piedra (CC '14) will be participating in the 2016 Fellows Conference of the Alliance for Historical Dialogue and Accountability through the Institute for the Study of Human Rights. The talk is open to the public, and all are encouraged to attend.
Benji will be speaking about the GSAS Life Histories Project he has been undertaking since completing his master's in oral history last spring. His talk will be part of the culminating conference for the Alliance for Historical Dialogue & Accountability fellowship program at Columbia. Benji will speak about the genesis of his project, take stock of the lessons he and his partner have learned in interviewing graduate students, and outline their vision for expanding he scope and reach of their interviews and initiate nuanced public dialogues on campus about student identities and experiences at Columbia.
On the centennial of John Dewey's classic Democracy and Education (1916), Columbia's Center for American Studies is sponsoring a day-long conference that will consider Dewey's legacy for twenty-first century civic education. Lectures and sessions will examine contemporary debates about educational policy, civic engagement programs, education and equality, access to higher education, and the public responsibilities of colleges and universities, among other topics.
Explaining the great economic and demographic shifts that fueled the rise of Trump
Luke Mayville presents the first extended exploration of John Adams’s preoccupation with a problem that has a renewed urgency today: the way in which inequality threatens to corrode democracy and empower a small elite.
Benji de la Piedra drew on his studies in literature, sociology, and history to create an interdisciplinary thesis grounded in fiction and history.
Anjelica Neslin (CC’16) reflects on the global experiences she has had at Columbia College–from her coursework to studying abroad in Argentina to volunteering in the Freedom and Citizenship program–that have influenced her path.
Double Discovery Center, which works to foster college matriculation for low-income and first-generation students, has been renamed the Roger Lehecka Double Discovery Center.
American Studies faculty member Adam Kirsch is awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowships for work that demonstrates “prior achievement and exceptional promise.”
Roosevelt Montas, associate dean of Columbia College, discusses the humanities in public life in conversation with Dan-el Padilla, assistant professor of classics at Princeton University.
Walter Benn Michaels is a famously acerbic critic of American politics and culture, and his critique of multiculturalism has been influential and hotly contested.
Watch Civil Rights icon Rep. John Lewis discuss his New York Times-bestselling graphic novel series MARCH with co-author Andrew Aydin and Casey N. Blake, director of the Center for American Studies.
Civil Rights icon Congressman John Lewis will discuss his award-winning, New York Times-bestselling graphic novel series MARCH with co-author Andrew Aydin.
New York Times op-ed columnist Frank Bruni opines on the promise of higher education, highlighting Columbia's Double Discovery Center.
Professor Rachel Adams publishes Raising Henry, A Memoir of Motherhood, Disability, & Discovery, winner of the 2014 Delta Kappa Gamma Society Educator's Award.