Events

This event will be on Zoom. Register for the event here.

An online talk presented by Sutro Library. This talk by Christine Sleeter will show how family history can illuminate broader social struggles and how those struggles connect to life today.

Family history has become a highly popular activity. But how often do we situate our family’s history within the wider socio-political contexts in which our ancestors lived? This talk will show how family history can illuminate broader social struggles such as those around racism, and how one’s own family history within those struggles connects with life today.

Christine Sleeter is Professor Emerita in the College of Education and Professional Studies at California State University Monterey Bay. For decades, she worked with teachers in multicultural education. On retiring from the university, she turned her attention to family history within social contexts, developing a blog devoted to Critical Family History, and a series of novels in which the protagonists, using family history, discover powerful links between past and present.

We will send you instructions 24 hours before the event on February 2 at 4:00 pm. If you register after 4:00 pm on February 2, then the instructions will be emailed at 3:00 pm the day of the event, an hour before the event starts. Please note all times are Pacific Standard Time.

This virtual event is sponsored by the California State Library Foundation.

This virtual talk took place on Wednesday, November 18, 2020.

David J. Silverman, author of This Land is Their Land, sheds light on the myths surrounding the founding of Plymouth colony and the Thanksgiving holiday.

David J. Silverman is Professor of History at George Washington University. He is the author of several books on Native American, colonial American, and American racial history, including This Land is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and Troubled History of Thanksgiving, and Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America. He is the recent recipient of the William Hickling Prescott Award for Excellence in Historical Writing, given by the Massachusetts branch of the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America. His essays have appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, National Geographic, and the Daily Beast.