Gerald Zahavi

* Consultant and interviewee, "Association Island" (film) by Timothy W. Lake, Lake Productions, 2013.
* "Allen B. Ballard: An African American Life," Parts 1 and 2." Produced and hosted by Gerald Zahavi. Broadcast 3/24 and 3/31/2011 on Talking History.
* "George F. Johnson and the Square Deal," Produced for NPR by Joe Richman and Radio Diaries / NPR broadcast. [Dec. 2010]. Interviewee and oral historian. Resource Web site: http://ejhistory.org/
* "Turkish Radical Poet Nazim Hikmet Recalls Hiroshima: The story of 'The Little Girl'/'I Come and Stand at Every Door.'"
Many events in American and world history have stimulated the composition of commemorative songs and poems. On this anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, we look back at one event and how writers and poets reacted to it -- through a close examination of ONE poem/song: recited by Hema Manicka. "The Little Girl" was written by Turkish Communist poet Nazim Hikmet in the 1950s, and originally titled "Kiz Cocugu." It is aso known in English by various titles -- in addtion to "The Little Girl" -- including "Hiroshima Girl" and "I come and Stand at Every Door." Nazim Hikmet (1901-1963) was one of Turkey's best know modern poets ane novelists; he was also a Communist and a political activist. In the 1940s, he was imprisoned in Turkey for his political activities, but freed in 1950s after a world-wide campaign on his behalf. Soon afterward he left Turkey and lived in exile in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe for the rest of his life. In the mid-1950s, he wrote the poem/song "The Little Girl."
In this segment of Talking History, aired on 8-6-2009, I examine the origins and evolution of Hikmet's poem and how it was re-shaped by later singers and song-writers, including Pete Seeger. Researched, hosted, and edited by Gerald Zahavi.
*      "Sam Adams Darcy on the San Francisco Strike of 1934." (July 23, 2009).
Selection from talks delivered by former U.S. Communist Party activist and leader Samuel Adams Darcy (1905-2005) at Cornell University in November of 1975. The talks were delivered to students in Professors Roger Keeran's and Cletus Daniels' classes. Edited and introduced by Gerald Zahavi.
* "Claire Parham on the Construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway." (June 25, 2009). Hour-long interview. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the completion of the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project, one of the great infrastructural construction projects of the 20th century. In this interview I explore the history of the Project with Claire Puccia Parham, author of the recently published The St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project: An Oral History of the Greatest Construction Show on Earth (Syracuse University Press, 2009). In our conversation, we delve into origins of this bi-national undertaking, dealving especially into lives of the workers who made it possible. Parham, a native of Watertown, NY, currently teaches history at Siena College. She earned a BA degres from St. Lawrence University, received her master's degree from the University of Massachusetts/Amherst and completed her Ph.D. in American history at SUNY Binghamton. She's also the author of From Great Wilderness To Seaway Towns: A Comparative History of Cornwall, Ontario, and Massena, New York, 1784-2001 (SUNY Press, 2004). Conducted, recorded, and edited by Gerald Zahavi.
*      "An Interview with Stetson Kennedy (From the Oral History Association 2008 Meeting, October 16, 2008)." Filmed and edited by Gerald Zahavi.
Stetson Kennedy, born in Jacksonville, Florida in 1916, is a writer, journalist, social and political activist, and a former administrator of the Florida Federal Writers Project (1935-39). Influenced by the documentary tradition that was emerging with and without federal government sponsorship during the Great Depression, and by such books as Erskine Caldwell and Margaret Bourke-White's You Have Seen Their Faces (1937), he sought to insure that on his state's level, the Florida Writers Project would contribute to that emerging tradition. After his years with the Project, he became an investigative journalist and established a strong reputation for his anti-racist writings, writings that came to include: Southern Exposure (1946), Forced Labor in the United States (1953), I Rode With the Klan (1954), Jim Crow Guide to the U.S.A. (1959) and The Klan Unmasked (1990). In his battles with the southern Ku Klux Klan, Kennedy not only exposed their violent work in print, but also through radio. He successfully encouraged the producers of The Adventures of Superman, an enormously popular radio show, to shift Superman's enemies from the WWII Nazi's and Japanese, to more domestic targets, like the Klan. This program was presented as an audio broadcast (edited for length) on Talking History. Stetson was introduced and interviewed in front of a large audience by David A. Taylor, head of Research and Programs with the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress and director of the Center's annual field school for cultural documentation.
*      The Story of Sosua: A Tale of Two Racisms. (August, 2008). Sosua: Haven in the Caribbean is a 1941 film produced by the Dominican Republic Settlement Association. It tells the (incomplete) story of a Jewish war refugee community established in the late 1930s in the Dominican Republic, with the blessings of its dictator, Rafael L. Trujillo. Trujillo, hardly known for his human rights record, took advantage of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's call for an international conference to address the plight of European refugees -- particularly Jewish refugees. A 32-nation conference to address the problem was convened in Evian, France in 1938. Only the Dominican Republic made a firm commitment to admit refugees, and soon afterwards took in around 500 Jews. Trujillo's motives were hardly humanitarian: he was not only trying to redeem his reputation as an ethnic cleanser (the term was not used then), but he also sought to racially transform his people. Trujillo had adopted a policy that strove to "whiten" the Dominican population and had practiced a vicious policy of racial discrimination against mostly-black Haitians -- one that came to be known as "antihaitianismo." In 1937 he ordered the massacre of thousands of Haitians residing in the Dominican Republic. The admission of white Jews -- the victims of racism in Germany and Austria -- served Trujillo's racist goal of "whitening" his own nation. Here, we present the sountrack from this archival film as a springboard to tell the story of Trujillo's racial policies and the fate of the lucky 500 Jews who were ironically saved by it.
*       Christine Ehrick on Radio Femenina.
Prof. Susan Gauss of the University at Albany, SUNY, interviews Christine Ehrick (MA, Phd UCLA), Associate Professor of History at the University of Louisville, about Radio Femenina and women and radio in the Puerta del Sol. Ehrick's first book, The Shield of the Weak: Feminism and the State in Uruguay, 1903-1933, which was published in 2005 by the University of New Mexico Press, is a comparative study of feminist political organizations across the political spectrum and their relationship to the emergence of Latin America's first "welfare state." She is currently researching women and citizenship in "golden age" of Latin American radio (1930s-1950s), and is interested in intersections of gender and technology in Latin America. Dr. Ehrick teaches courses in Colonial and Modern Latin America, the History of Mexico, Latin American Women, and Media History. Recorded (5/11/2008), edited, and produced by Gerald Zahavi.
*     Ann Pfau and David Hochfelder on World War II Radio Propaganda (April 2008).
Historians Ann Pfau and David Hochfelder discuss their recent research into real and imagined World War II propaganda broadcasts from Japan and Germany made by Iva Toguri, William Joyce, Mildred Gillars,and Rita Zucca. Our conversation with them explores such varied topics as wartime rumors, popular legends about World War II radio propaganda, oral history, British and American wartime propaganda monitoring, soldier surveys, and popular histories and Hollywood depictions of Tokyo Rose, Lord Haw Haw, and Axis Sally. Pfau holds a Ph.D. in United States history from Rutgers University and is author of Miss Yourlovin: GIs, Gender, and Domesticity during World War II (forthcoming as an e-book from Columbia University Press in May 2008). She will begin researching a book about World War II radio traitors later this month. David Hochfelder is assistant professor at SUNY at Albany. He is currently finishing a book on the history of the American telegraph industry. His interest in WW2 radio propaganda arose from his work in public history and oral history. Produced and hosted by Gerald Zahavi and Susan McCormick.
*       The Miracle Case.
Prof. Laura Wittern-Keller, author of Freedom of the Screen: Legal Challenges to State Film Censorship (University Press of Kentucky) and visiting professor of History at the University at Albany, SUNY, tells the story of the attempt in the early 1950s to block the showing of Roberto Rossellini film 'The Miracle,' and film distributor Joseph Burstyn's battle against film censorship. Recorded at the University at Albany's History and Documentary Studies Sound Studio, April 11, 2008.
BACKGROUND: "In 1950 the Roberto Rossellini film 'The Miracle,' part of a trilogy called 'Ways of Love,' was condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency and censored by the New York State Motion Picture Division (the state censor board). The Miracle's" distributor, Joseph Burstyn, fought back through the New York courts and finally at the United States Supreme Court, claiming that his First Amendment rights had been violated by the state. Burstyn won and in 1952, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled that movies were entitled to the free speech protections of the First Amendment. The story did not end there, though, since the Court allowed state censorship statutes to stand provided they were "narrowly drawn." The fight over the right of states to pre-approve movies continued until 1965 when all states but Maryland stopped censoring movies." For more information on this story, see Laura Wittern-Keller's Freedom of the Screen and the forthcoming Burstyn v. Wilson: The Miracle Case by Ray Haberski, Jr. and Laura Wittern-Keller (Landmarks Law Cases series of the University Press of Kansas). Recorded, edited, and produced by Gerald Zahavi.
*       D. Graham Burnett on Maurice, v. Judd.
On Friday, November 16, 2007, Dr. D. Graham Burnett, a historian of science from Princeton University, was the keynote speaker at the annual Researching New York conference at the University at Albany, SUNY. He delivered this talk about an 1818 New York trial, Maurice, v. Judd, that raised public debate about the order of nature, and how we understand it. The trial dramatized the transformations that were taking place in the years of the early Republic, when Americans' understanding of the natural world was being challenged -- often in courts of law. Burnett explores the root question of Maurice, v. Judd: Is a whale a fish? The question was important economically, scientifically, and culturally. If indeed the courts ruled a whale a fish, whale oil was taxable as fish oil and subject to state inspection. But there was more at stake: arguments based on the new science of taxonomy challenged accepted Biblical interpretations and drove the debate. Burnett is the author of Trying Leviathan: The Nineteenth-Century New York Court Case That Put the Whale on Trial and Challenged the Order of Nature (Princeton University Press, 2007).
*       "Kevin Willmott on CSA: Confederate States of America." (2007). Interview conducted by Gerry Zahavi with Kevin Willmott on May 3, 2007. Willmott, who is an Associate Professor in the Film Studies Department of the University of Kansas, produced the film "C.S.A - THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA," as a counter-factual faux documentary -- modeled after a Ken Burns-style documentary -- about an America in which had the South won the Civil War. The film was selected for the 2004 Sundance Film festival and later sold to IFC Films (the film was also backed for distribution by Spike Lee). CSA has played in film festivals in Denver, Colorado, Stockholm, Sweden, Locarno, Switzerland and the Hamptons, New York and had its theatrical release in February of 2006.
*       "Songs from General Electric's Association Island" (2007).
Association Island is situated just off the coast of the northeastern edge of Lake Ontario in New York State near the outlet of the Great Lakes and the beginning of the St. Lawrence River. From 1907 until the mid-1950s it served as a summer retreat and conference center for managers and engineers from the National Electric Lamp Company and later the General Electric Company (GE), the National's corporate parent. The Island is perhaps more widely familiar to avid modern fiction readers as the satirized "Meadows" in Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano (1952). In Vonnegut's novel the "flat, grassy island" located on the St. Lawrence River, was a corporate playground that also served as a rite-of-passage to status and power within a technocratic dystopia. There, in Vonnegut's fictional realm-as in real life-managers and engineers, all male, "spent a week each summer in an orgy of morale building." Through "team athletics, group sings, bonfires and skyrockets, bawdy entertainment, free whiskey and cigars; and through plays, put on by professional actors, which pleasantly but unmistakably made clear the nature of good deportment within the system, and the shape of firm resolves for the challenging year ahead," the Island worked "its magic" on its temporary inhabitants, helping to forge a male-centered brotherhood of managers. Yet, ironically, Association Island in 1952, when Player Piano was published, was entering the final years of usefulness to the corporation. Soon, a new corporate structure and ethos emerged and swept away the seemingly quaint fraternalism of the serene Island. In 1959, the company turned the Island over to the YMCA.
The two songs featured in this selection come from the GE archival collection of the Hall of History at the Schenectady Museum, Schenectady, NY and were digitized for the Museum some years ago in an attempt to preserve these very rare recordings of the "Island Chorus" which reflect the culture of the Island during its heyday.
*       "Mark Klempner on Dutch Rescuers of Jews During WWII." Mark Klempner, an oral historian and folklorist who recently published a book on Dutch rescuers of Jews during World War II (The Heart Has Reasons: Holocaust Rescuers and Their Stories of Courage, 2006) discusses his research and book in this lengthy interview. Klempner began as a research project during his senior year as an English major at Cornell in 1996-97. The interview includes audio excerpts from some of the individuals Klempner interviewed. Go to Talking History to listen to the interview. April 20, 2006. [Producer/editor/inteviewer].
*       "Agrarian Movements in Nineteenth-Century New York." Thomas Summerhill, Associate Professor of History at Michigan State University, and author of Harvest of Dissent: Agrarianism In 19th Century New York (Univ. of Illinois Press, 2005), joins Gerald Zahavi in a discussion of agrarian movements in nineteenth-century central New York. Summerhill explores Northern farmers' complex attitudes toward a spreading capitalist market and their tendencies to both embrace and resist it. Zahavi and Summerhill focus on such topics as the Anti-Rent Wars, the debate over the construction of the Albany and Susquehanna Railroad, and the rise and significance of the Grange. Go to Talking History to listen to the interview. March 30, 2006. [Producer/editor/inteviewer].
*        "Reginald Jones on GE's Jack Welch." Reginald Jones died on December 30, 2003 in Greenwich, Ct. He began his career at General Electric in the 1930s, and worked his way up the corporate ladder until, in 1972, he was selected as President and CEO of the firm. He headed the company from 1972 through 1981, implementing various innovative strategic planning initiatives and driving the corporation further into a global marketplace. Under his watch, the company's sales more than doubled; its profits did even better. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, several business publications acknowledged him to have been one of the most influential business leaders in America. In fact, in 1981, the year of his retirement, U.S. News & World Report ranked him as the most influential man in business. Not surprisingly, three presidents had relied on his counsel. In this short selection from a day-long interview conducted by Gerald Zahavi on June 12, 2000, Jones speaks about how he went about selecting his successor, Jack Welch. Aired Sept. 15, 2005. [Producer/editor/interviewer]
*       "Howell Harris, Chad Pearson, and Gerald Zahavi Discuss Business Ideology and Labor-Capital Relations in American History." Historian Howell Harris from Durham University (England), Chad Pearson, a doctoral student at the University at Albany, SUNY and Talking History's Gerald Zahavi discuss the evolution of business ideology and labor-management relations in the 19th and 20th centuries. [Producer/editor/interviewer]. 2005.
*       "Sharra Vostral on Julia Dent Grant and the Moveable Homefront." An interview with Prof. Sharra L. Vostral about the multiple, complex, and important roles that Julia Dent Grant played before and during the Civil War. Vostral is a member of the faculty of the Science and Technology Studies Department at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a specialist in gender history, medical history, and the history of sexuality. She is the author of "Julia Dent Grant and the Moveable Homefront: Maintenance of a General's Family," published in Gateway Heritage (the magazine of the Missouri Historical Society) in 2003. [Producer/editor/interviewer]. 2005.
*        "Diggers." [Documentary]. A short-form audio documentary on the Bennington Cloverleaf Archaeological dig of the late 1990s. 5 minutes. 1998. [A longer 30 minute version is currently in production].
*        "Leon Carl Brown and the Study of Middle Eastern History." Prof. Karl Barbir of Siena College interviews Leon Carl Brown, the Garrett Professor in Foreign Affairs Emeritus at Princeton University and a specialist on Middle East history, about Brown's career and perspectives on Middle East history. [Producer/editor]. 2004.
*        "Black Inventors." Gerald Zahavi interviews Rayvon David Fouche, Assistant Professor of Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, on African American inventors in American history. Fouche is the author of Black Inventors in the Age of Segregation (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), co-editor of Appropriating Technology: Vernacular Science and Cultural Invention (University of Minnesota Press, 2004), and is currently editing a manuscript for Perdue University Press titled Race and the Machine: Technology and Black Cultural Experience (forthcoming). [Host/Producer/Editor]. 2004.
*        "A History of Menstruation and Menstrual Technologies in America." Gerald Zahavi interviews Sharra L. Vostral, Assistant Professor of Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Vostral is a specialist in medical history and the history of sexuality and is the author, most recently, of "Masking Menstruation: The Emergence of Menstrual Hygiene Products in the United States" in Andrew Shail, ed. Menstruation: History and Culture from Antiquity to Modernity (Palgrave, UK., forthcoming), and "Reproduction, Regulation, and Body Politics," Journal of Women's History 15-2 (Summer 2003): 197-207. Vostral is currently working on a monograph titled Red Marks: Menstruation, Menstrual Hygiene Products, and Women's Rights in the United States.
*        "White Boy: A Conversation with Historian Mark Naison." Gerald Zahavi interviews Mark Naison, Professor of African and African-American Studies and Director of the Urban Studies Program at Fordham University. Naison is the author of White Boy: A Memoir (Temple University Press, 2002), Communists in Harlem During the Depression (University of Illinois Press, 1983), co-author of The Tenant Movement in New York City, 1940-1984 (Rutgers University Press, 1986), and the author of several articles on African-American culture and contemporary urban issues, including "Outlaw Culture in Black Culture" (Reconstruction, Fall 1994). In this interview Naison reviews his life and career as a specialist in African American history -- and his participation in some of the most significant social and political movements in recent American history: the Civil Rights Movement, the Anti-War Movement, SDS, and the Weathermen.
*        "Howard Blue on World War II Radio Dramas and the Post-War Blacklist." (Part 1 and 2). Produced: October 2003; original interview date: May 14, 2003. [Host/Producer/Editor]. 2003.
*        "From the Archives series: dozens produced in 2003-2005. [Host/Producer/Editor].
*       "Robert Snyder on September 11th and the Response of New Yorkers." Edited talk delivered at the annual Researching New York conference in November of 2002. [Producer/editor]. 2002.
*       "James W. Loewen on Historical Lies and Distortions." Interview of sociologist James Loewen about historical lies and distortions -- by omission and commission -- in textbooks, historical markers, and monuments. Loewen, now retired from the University of Vermont, is the best-selling author of Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your High School History Textbook Got Wrong and Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong. [Interviewer and producer/editor]. 2002.
*       "Benjamin Filene Recalls Alan Lomax. Benjamin Filene, author of Romancing the Folk: Public Memory and American Roots Music, recalls the life and contributions of Alan Lomax.[Producer/editor]. 2002.
*       Eric Foner on "The Abolitionist Movement and the Idea of American Freedom." Recorded in Elizabethtown, New York, August 11, 2002. [Producer and editor]. 2002.
*       "Joshua B. Freeman on New York City Workers." Professor Joshua B. Freeman of CUNY is interviewed by Gerald Zahavi about the history or New York City unions and workers. Freeman is the author of Working-Class New York: Life and Labor Since World War II (2000), In Transit: The Transport Workers Union in New York City, 1933-1966 (1997, revised ed., 2001), and a co-author of Vol. 2 of Who Built America?: Working People and the Nation's Economy, Politics, Culture, and Society: From the Gilded Age to the Present. [Interviewer, editor, and producer]. 2002.
*      "A Brilliant Solution." Professor Carol Berkin, City University of New York, is interviewed by Professor G.J. Barker-Benfield about the "invention" of the American constitution. [Producer and editor]. 2002.
*       Dr. John Stauffer on "Timbuctoo and the Origins of an Integrated America." 50 minutes. Recorded in Elizaberthtown, New York, August 5, 2001.
*       "The Myth of the Violent West." Gerald Zahavi interviews historian Robert Dykstra about his revisionist scholarship on Western violence. 30 minutes. 2001.
*        "I'm a Hobo, Not a Bum." Greg Giorgio talks about the life and history of tramps and hoboes with IWW minstrel Mark Ross. 45 minutes. 2001.
*        Peter Kornbluh on "The Bay of Pigs Declassified." 30 minutes. 2001. [Producer and editor].
*        Richard S. Wortman on Nicholas II. 30 minutes. 2001. [Producer and editor].
*        Timothy Gilfoyle on City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution, and the Commercialization of Sex, 1790-1920. 30 minutes. 2000. [Producer and editor].
*        Mary Beth Norton on "Sex, Religion, and Society in Early America." 60 minutes. 2000. [Producer and editor].
*        Ossie Davis on John Brown and his Legacy. Reading from Frederick Douglas' 1881 address on John Brown. 60 minutes. 2000. [Producer and editor].
*        Alex Lichtenstein on "Labor On the Move: Current Perspectives and Historical Contexts." 60 minutes. 1999. [Producer and editor].
*        Daniel Horowitz on "Betty Friedan and the Making of The Feminine Mystique." 60 minutes. 1999. [Producer and editor].
*        Pauline Maier on "The Making the Declaration of Independence." 60 minutes. [Producer and editor].
*        Rachel Bliven on "Looking for Kate Mullaney: Documenting the Story of An Irish Working Woman." 45 minutes. 1999. [Producer and editor].
*        Mark Solomon on The Cry Was Unity: Communists and African Americans, 1917-36. 60 minutes. 1999. [Producer and editor].
*        "Frank Capra's Populism." Historians Robert Brent Toplin (U.N.C. at Wilmington), Lawrence W. Levine (George Mason University), and Dan T. Carter (Emory University), present assessments of Frank Capra's cinematic works. Recorded at the American Historical Association (AHA) meeting in Washington, D.C. on January 9, 1999. 60 minutes. 1999. [Producer and editor].
*        Thomas J. Sugrue on history, race, and urban crises. 60 minutes. 1999. [Producer and editor].
*        Daniel J. Walkowitz on the Labor Movement in Troy, New York. 45 minutes. 1999. [Producer and editor].
*        Scott Christianson on the History of American Prisons. [Producer and co-editor]. 1998.
*        Spencer Crew, Director of the National Museum of American History, on "New Challenges for History Museums."
*        Douglas Brinkley on Pres. Jimmy Carter's foreign policy. 40 minutes. 1998. [Producer and editor].
*        D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus on the art of cinema verite. 60 minutes. 1998. [Producer and editor].
*        Richard Hamm on "Animals and Cannibals on Trial." 60 minutes. 1998 [Producer and editor].
*        Filmmaker Laurie Kahn-Leavitt on the making of A Midwife's Tale. 30 minutes. 1998. [Producer and editor].
*        "Nuclear Disarmament Activism in the 1950s and 1960s." Andrew Feffer, Lawrence Wittner, David McReynolds, and Ursula Franklin examine the history of the nuclear disarmament movement. 60 minutes. 1998. [Co-producer and editor]