American Studies About Town
Our students select great events around town and online.
February Events
In the early 1990s, murder rates in the Brooklyn neighborhood of East New York climbed to the highest in the city’s history. How did this once thriving, diverse, family enclave fall into such ruin? In this groundbreaking work of investigative journalism, Stacy Horn finds the answer in the subprime mortgage scandal of the 1970s. In response to redlining and discriminatory housing practices, Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration passed the Housing and Urban Development Act, ostensibly meant to help low-income families of color achieve homeownership. But they could never have predicted how banks, lenders, realtors, and corrupt FHA officials themselves would use the newly passed law to make victims of the very people they were supposed to help, and the devastation they would leave in their wake. The Killing Fields of East New York reveals how white-collar crime reduced a prospering neighborhood to abandoned buildings and empty lots, weaving a narrative of government failure with the downfall of a community and the largest series of mortgage fraud prosecutions in US history.
Tickets and more info here!
02/03/2026 (Tuesday): 6:30 PM - 8:00 PM
Online
A performance and cultural event presented by The Harlem Chamber Players. While musical in nature, this event is often contextualized with historical commentary relevant to the African American experience and cultural geography.
Tickets and more info here!
02/05/2026 (Thursday): 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
The City College of New York - Aaron Davis Hall
129 Convent Avenue New York, NY 10031
Welcome back to King Manor! We kick off 2026 with a collaboration to celebrate Black History Month. Stop by to learn more about Black figures in American history and revolutions around the world. This event will have reading circles, access to our learning library, and create art inspired by the work of Alma Thomas.
02/07/2026 (Saturday): 1:00 PM - 4:00 PM
King Manor Museum in Rufus King Park
150-03 Jamaica Ave, Queens, NY 11432
Get your tickets here.
BLACK HISTORY COMES ALIVE™ is a groundbreaking Black History Month concert that turns traditional performance into a living museum of Black history. This concert invites both performers and audience members to arrive in Cultural Tribute Attire honoring Black historical figures, cultural icons, movements, and ancestral legacies. Rather than observing history from a distance, participants become history, walking, singing, dancing, and gathering as living embodiments of Black excellence across centuries and continents. This Masterpiece Concert blends music, dance, spoken word, and visual storytelling to celebrate the breadth of the Black experience, from Africa to the Diaspora, from resistance to renaissance, from ancestral wisdom to future vision. Cultural Tribute Attire allows participants to honor Black history with intention, transforming remembrance into a visible act of respect, education, and collective pride.
02/21/2026 (Saturday): 5:00 PM - 9:00 PM
P.S./I.S. 210 - Twenty-first Century Academy for Community Leadership
501-503 West 152nd Street New York, NY 10031
Get your tickets here.
Centering on AAI’s philosophy of Data, Narrative, and Action (DNA), this panel discussion will showcase several existing projects that analyze national and local data on Asian Americans, explore directions for future research, and discuss implications for policy and action.
02/23/2026 (Monday): 5:30 PM - 7:00 PM
Pulitzer Hall, Columbia University
2950 Broadway New York, NY 10027
RSVP and get more information here
In 1990, seven-year-old Julia Ioffe and her family fled the Soviet Union. Nearly twenty years later, Ioffe returned to Moscow—only to discover just how much Russian society had changed while she had been living in America. The Soviet women she had known growing up—doctors, engineers, scientists—seemed to have been replaced by women desperate to marry rich and become stay-at-home moms. How had Russia gone from portraying itself as the vanguard of world feminism to becoming a bastion of conservative Christian values? In 1990, seven-year-old Julia Ioffe and her family fled the Soviet Union. Nearly twenty years later, Ioffe returned to Moscow—only to discover just how much Russian society had changed while she had been living in America. The Soviet women she had known growing up—doctors, engineers, scientists—seemed to have been replaced by women desperate to marry rich and become stay-at-home moms. How had Russia gone from portraying itself as the vanguard of world feminism to becoming a bastion of conservative Christian values?
In "Motherland," Ioffe turns modern Russian history on its head, telling it exclusively through the stories of its women. From her own physician great-grandmothers to Lenin’s lover, a feminist revolutionary; from the hundreds of thousands of Soviet girls who fought in World War II to the millions of single mothers who rebuilt and repopulated a devastated country; from the members of Pussy Riot to Yulia Navalnaya, the wife of opposition leader Alexey Navalny, Ioffe chronicles one of the most audacious social experiments in history and documents how it failed the very women it was meant to liberate—and how that failure paved the way for the revanche of Vladimir Putin.
02/27/2026 (Friday): 12:15 PM - 1:45 PM
International Affairs Building, Columbia University - Kellogg Center, Room 1512
420 W. 118th New York, NY 10027
RSVP and get more information here