On May 27, 2021, Doc Chat wrapped an amazing spring season of primary source-based programming and thought-provoking conversation.

A weekly series from NYPL's Center for Research in the Humanities, Doc Chat pairs an NYPL curator or specialist and a scholar to discuss evocative digitized items from the Library's collections and brainstorm innovative ways of teaching with them. In Episode Thirty, NYPL's Andy McCarthy and author and journalist Mark Harris considered what it means to analyze moments in history that do not align with the social ethics, cultural standards, and popular beliefs of the current moment. Using periodicals and other primary sources, they revealed how researching problematic content in historical materials can be productive for students of different ages and backgrounds studying the history of pop culture and the public mind.

A transcript of this event is available here.

Below are some handy links to materials and sources suggested in the episode.

Episode Thirty: Primary Sources 

Andy and Mark analyzed the following newspaper article:

"I, Claudia," New York Daily News, December 15, 1980, 76. The New York Daily News is accessible with a library card in ProQuest Historical Newspapers: U.S. Northeast Collection.

They also discussed the following primary source collections:

Playboy magazine collections at The New York Public Library

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1938 at The Library of Congress

Episode Thirty: Readings and Resources

Kathleen M. Blee, “Evidence, Empathy, and Ethics: Lessons from the Oral Histories of the Klan” Journal of American History 80: 2(September 1993), 596-606

James A. Grossman, “Whose Memory? Whose Monuments?History, Commemoration, and the Struggle for an Ethical Past” Perspectives on History,  Feb 1, 2016.

Mark Harris, “The Absolutist Case for Problematic Pop Culture” Vulture blog of New York Magazine, June 10, 2020.

Mark Harris, Mike Nichols: A Life (Penguin, 2021).

Have research questions? Reach out to the Milstein Division of US History, Local History and Genealogy at history@nypl.org.

More Doc Chats in Fall 2021!

Doc Chat has wrapped its Spring 2021 season.  Over the summer, you can catch up on past episodes and explore helpful Doc Chat resources on the Research Channel of the NYPL blog. We'll kick off another lively and thought-provoking season in September 2021—make sure you don't miss an episode by signing up for NYPL's Research newsletter.