Authored by Jenna L. Caccavale
The Archives Room within Ryan Library at Iona College stores the Archive and Special Collections. The contents are related to Irish life and literature. One of the collections housed here is the Brother Edmund Rice Collection (Iona College 2020).
Continue readingAuthored by Daisy Lorenzo
Roy Cohn/Jack Smith is Ron Vawter’s depiction of two white, homosexual men who lead very different lives in the 1950s, but whom both died of AIDS related illnesses in the 80’s. Vawter (1994) uses his performance to focus on the “two powerful forces which shaped their lives: A Virus, and a society which sought to repress their sexuality” (0:10:36-0:10:45). This one-man show has been, thankfully, preserved with the help of filmmaker Jill Godmilow.
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Authored by Casey L. Stiller
There have been three major migration periods in the United States in the last century: a largely laissez faire outlook in the 1930s; the Bracero Program, in effect during and after World War II; and, following the elimination of the Bracero Program, passage of major immigration laws in 1965 (Rosenblum and Brick 2011, 1). The Bracero Program was a formal agreement signed between the United States and Mexico in 1942, establishing “a migrant guest worker program,” which had favorable conditions for Mexican immigrants (Rosenblum and Brick 2011, 4). The Bracero Program experienced significant pushback, and upon its expiration in 1964, was followed instead by the Immigration and Nationality Act in 1965, which established per-country caps and a tiered preference system for rationing visas within a country (Rosenblum and Brick 2011, 5).
Continue readingAuthored by Marissa Heim
While education systems unjustly underserve students of color, tenacious and creative teachers and librarians are working hard to strengthen their school communities. At Brooklyn Center Secondary, one example is a larger-than-life, colorfully connected friendship quilt.
Continue readingAuthored by Melissa Nogues
‘Gigi’ is a great example of how a story can be told in different formats to give the viewers unique experiences. The story of ‘Gigi’ originated as a novel by Collete (Barnes 1973). This was then turned into a play, which Lerner and Loewe originally decided to adapt into a movie musical in 1958 (Encyclopedia of World Biography 2020). From the movie musical, the pair then created the Broadway show with additional songs and flair. The above advertisement highlights these new changes. In this story, the main character Gigi is sent off to be taught how to be an elegant woman, but on the way she falls for a man for which an interesting arrangement is then made (Barnes 1973). The details from the original story might be lost in the musical production, but what is gained is an enchanting viewer experience.
Continue readingAuthored by Darian Donachie
President Lyndon B. Johnson authorized the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) on October 3, 1965, during the mid-Cold War period (Kennedy 2019). The INA changed America’s formerly biased policy to reunite immigrant families as well as encourage skilled workers from other countries to establish a new life in the United States (History 2019). As a result, immigration to the United States soared throughout the 1960s and 1970s as people sought to start a new life free from “poverty or the hardships of communist regimes in Cuba, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere” (History 2019, under “Immediate Impact”). The number of immigrants from Asian countries to the United States was considerably high on account that they were now allowed to migrate to the United States; moreover, many of these immigrants sought to relocate to the United States from “war-torn Southeast Asia” (History 2019, under “Immediate Impact”).
Continue readingAuthored by Elliot Clement
Coretta Scott King devoted “a lifetime to raising public consciousness around issues related to human rights and social justice,” and although many know her primarily through her husband, Martin Luther King, Jr., she was a powerful force for change in her own right (Crawford 2007, 116). She earned numerous accolades and over sixty honorary doctorates, including one from Marymount Manhattan College, during her lifetime, but her story is still often overshadowed by her husband’s (Suggs 2006). Her own dedication to social justice arose when she was not allowed to student teach in the Ohio public schools, because despite the fact that the students were integrated, the faculty remained all white (Crawford 2007). It was this instance that spurred King into a life dedicated to social justice, both with and without her husband.
Continue readingAuthored by Paula Leahy Welch
Since Carol Dweck first published her research around the concept of growth mindset more than 20 years ago, social scientists, corporations, and educators have been searching for ways to apply the theory to obtain practical benefits. “Numerous studies have found that students fare better if they believe that their intellectual abilities can be developed—a belief called growth mindset—than if they believe that their intellectual abilities are immutable—a belief called fixed mindset” (Claro, Paunesku, and Dweck 2016, 8664).
Continue readingAuthored by Allison Payne
When Jonathan Larson’s musical Rent debuted in the 1990s, the small show quickly grew in popularity. Rent started as seven performances in late 1994 that led to an extended off-Broadway run, all presented by the New York Theatre Workshop (Heredia and Span 1996). It then spent over 5,000 performances between 1996 and 2008 at Broadway’s Nederlander Theater, telling its story of a diverse group of friends trying to live their lives while dealing with the horrors of AIDS (Grode 2015, 253).
Continue readingAuthored by Brittany E. Partinico
On March 13, 1926, the “Great Neck News” editorial first addressed the allegations present in Owen Davis’s playwright depiction of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” where critics surmised that the peninsula of Great Neck was loosely based on his fictionalized “West Egg” (Lanigan 1926, 18). Fitzgerald’s literary masterpiece, not only sparked enlightenment in American culture and addressed the “American Dream” regarding cumulative wealth, but also sparked a debate amongst New Yorkers and Long Islanders as to whom was synonymously represented as the infamous “gaudy, West Egg” (Pumphrey 2011, 115-119). The presumptions of critics did not sit well with Great Neck residents, with feelings that the correlation to the novel would evoke preconceptions and undesirable impressions of Great Neck. Great Neck residents felt the “unfair” symposium by critics was presumptuous based on the lack of factual evidence present in the novel as well as the bias being reflected merely on Fitzgerald’s short-lived residency in Great Neck (Lanigan 1926, 18).
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