Many CBH Talks were recorded. To view, visit the Center for Brooklyn History Talks YouTube channel at bklynlib.org/CBH-Talks.
Past Events
Map Your Brooklyn Summer: A Collaging Workshop
Celebrate the season with a creative collage workshop inspired by the parks, people, playgrounds, and beaches that make Brooklyn a summertime oasis!
Using Brooklyn maps past and present as your canvas, pull from a fun selection of vintage photographs, archival images, and ephemera…
CBH Talk | Building Access: The History and Future of Disability Rights
The disability rights movement has transformed American life and expanded access, opportunity, and civil rights for millions of people. These hard-won gains are the result of decades of organizing, advocacy, and political struggle. And the fight for equality continues.
As we celebrate July…
CBH Talk | An Unfinished Revolution: Dialogues on Freedom and Democracy with Khalil Gibran Muhammad
Marking the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding, join us to reflect, reckon, and reimagine the ideals at the heart of the American experiment.
Across three evenings, CBH invites distinguished historians to select short readings as starting points for guided public…
CBH Talk | Black Brooklyn’s Fight for Community Control: From Ocean Hill-Brownsville to "Livonia Chow Mein"
As Black residents of Brooklyn neighborhoods like Brownsville and East New York continue to confront displacement, inequality, and questions of who has the power to shape community life, what can earlier movements for self-determination teach us about the present moment? And how can literature…
CBH Talk | Queer Modernism and “The Little Review” - How Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap Reshaped Literature and Each Other
This Pride Month, the Center for Brooklyn History turns to the story of Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap, the visionary editors behind "The Little Review," whose partnership, both personal and professional, helped shape the course of modern literature.
At a time when both queerness…
CBH Talk | Puerto Rico at a Crossroads
As Puerto Rico confronts mounting economic pressures, climate vulnerability, migration, and renewed debates over sovereignty and self-determination, questions about the island’s political future have taken on new urgency. In the wake of the most recent election cycle, what paths lie ahead for…
CBH Talk | The Battle of Brooklyn Revisited: A Screening & Conversation
The Battle of Brooklyn, the largest battle of the American Revolution, unfolded across landscapes many of us pass every day without realizing the history beneath our feet. This screening of The Brave Man, directed by filmmaker Joseph M. McCarthy brings that pivotal moment vividly to life…
CBH Talk | Confronting Climate Change Part 3: Solutions
Confronting Climate Change is a three-part series that explores one of the most urgent issues of our times. Join leading thinkers, scientists, journalists, and advocates for these vitally important conversations.
Part Three: Solutions—From Innovation to Action
Part Three of…
Just Conversations | Watching the Watchers: Surveillance, Power, and the Fight for Accountability
As surveillance technologies grow more sophisticated and more embedded in everyday life, questions of privacy, power, and accountability have taken on new urgency. From facial recognition and predictive policing to the monitoring of protest movements, today’s surveillance landscape raises…
CBH Talk | Life, Death, and Bioethics
What is bioethics and how does it shape the decisions we make in our own lives?
Through powerful first-person storytelling and live audience discussion, this program invites you to wrestle with real-world dilemmas at the intersection of medicine, technology, law, and ethics. Should people…
CBH Talk | Africa Reframed: Rethinking a Continent’s History (with BAM DanceAfrica 2026)
This program is presented in partnership with BAM as part of DanceAfrica 2026. As DanceAfrica celebrates the vitality of African and diasporic cultures, the Center for Brooklyn History presents an event that asks a different set of questions: How has Africa’s history been told, and by whom?
…
CBH Talk | Separate: NYC Public Schools 72 Years After Brown v. Board, An Intergenerational Discussion
Each year on May 17, the anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education invites reflection on the promise and limits of school integration. To mark 72 years since that historic decision, the Center for Brooklyn History hosts a live recording of the student-led Miseducation podcast and an…
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