Many CBH Talks were recorded. To view, visit the Center for Brooklyn History Talks YouTube channel at bklynlib.org/CBH-Talks.
Past Events
CBH Talk | Confronting Climate Change Part 2: The Science
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 Two: The Science—Understanding a Changing Planet
Part Two of…
CBH Talk | Birding New York: Migration, Community, and Conservation
Each spring, New York City becomes a vital stopover for millions of migrating birds, transforming parks, shorelines, and even city streets into sites of discovery. In this special program inspired by the book Bird City: Adventures in New York’s Urban Wilds, writer and birder Ryan Goldberg brings…
CBH Talk | Confronting Climate Change Part 1: Understanding Deniers
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 One: Understanding Denial—Manufacturing Doubt, Shaping…
CBH Talk | The Sparrow in the Archive: A Small Brooklyn Bird with a Global Story
In the mid-nineteenth century, the house sparrow was intentionally introduced to cities across the colonial world. Today this small brown bird is often dismissed as a pest—but its history tells a much larger story about migration, empire, and the reshaping of urban environments. Brooklyn played…
CBH Talk | Poetry in the Archives: Oral Histories as Inspiration
The archives echo with voices in this National Poetry Month celebration, as the Center for Brooklyn History welcomes five poets, all published by Brooklyn’s historic independent poetry publisher Hanging Loose Press, for an evening that brings poetry and oral history into…
CBH Talk | Eric W. Sanderson on Brooklyn’s Lost and Future Waterfront
In honor of Earth Day, join renowned landscape ecologist Eric W. Sanderson for a visual journey to pre-1609 Brooklyn with its landscape shaped by water, wetlands, and rich ecological systems, followed by an exploration of the inspiring efforts to reclaim and reimagine Brooklyn’s waterfront today…
CBH Talk | How Movements Are Built
Take your pessimism and your conviction that there is little you can do to alter the state of the country, and acknowledge this reality: you and two friends can change the world. All it will take is everything you have.
~ Saul…
CBH Talk | Simon and Simone Dinnerstein Discuss Art, Place and Imagination in the Work "Nocturne"
In considering this drawing, I wondered about the ‘baggage’ we take with us – in terms of associations with the past, loyalties to some location or dream, irrational pushes and pulls, and secret ambiguous longings.~Simon Dinnerstein on his painting Nocturne; American Artist, April 1986…
CBH Talk | Women Laughing: A Film Screening and Panel Discussion
In celebration of Women’s History Month, join us for a screening of the documentary Women Laughing, a joyful tribute to female humor and sensibility as expressed through the works and words of The New Yorker magazine’s women cartoonists. Directed by four-decade New Yorker cartoonist Liza…
CBH Talk | Preserving Your New York Story: Investigating Jewish Genealogy in Brooklyn
Join the Center for Brooklyn History and the New York Genealogical & Biographical Society (NYG&B) for this free in-person event to learn the essentials of tracing Jewish ancestors and preserving your own family history.
Family history is a fascinating and personal way for…
CBH Talk | Maya Kornberg and Julian Zelizer Discuss “Stuck”
Congress, the central democratic institution in the United States, is hanging on by a thread. In Stuck: How Money, Media, and Violence Prevent Change in Congress, political scientist Maya Kornberg chronicles the efforts of congressional reformers over the last fifty years, and documents the…
CBH Talk | Heather Ann Thompson on the Legacy of Bernie Goetz
In 1984, a white New Yorker named Bernie Goetz shot four Black teenagers on a subway train, igniting one of the most explosive public debates in modern New York history. Hailed by some as a hero and condemned by others as a vigilante, Goetz became a flashpoint for national anxieties about crime…
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