The Core 100 program invites students and faculty from the College to join us for our weekly lecture series. Each week, all of the first-year students participate in lecture-discussions with about 400 of their classmates. We have space in the Center for the Arts (Building 1P) Williamson Theatre to accommodate individual guests (no permission needed) and can have as many as two additional classes at each of the lectures. Permission is not necessary for classes to attend, but please notify Donna Scimeca at 718.982.3405 if you plan to bring a class.

The lectures are 50 minutes in length and are all in the Williamson Theatre. They meet on the following days/times: Wednesdays at 1:25pm and 3:35pm, and on Thursdays at 8:00am, 10:10am, 4:40pm, and 6:30pm.

In the fall, the Saturday 10:10am lectures are held in the Williamson Theatre, but due to space limitations, we unfortunately cannot accommodate additional classes.

The Lecture Series schedule for the Week of Oct. 19, 2015 is as follows:

Wednesday,  Oct.21:

-1:25pm: “The Honeymoon That Changed the World,” presented by Michael Batson

When Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Henry B. Stanton used their honeymoon to attend the first World Anti-slavery Convention in London in 1840, they found that women were to be denied the right to participate in the assembly. Stanton and other women attendees left London determined to win equality for women.

This lecture will focus on the struggle of women to win the right to vote, and will provide a brief history of women in the United States from the American Revolution to the 19th Amendment, focusing primarily on the first Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, NY in 1848.

Michael Batson has been a Professor at the College of Staten Island since fall 2000. He teaches History, Women’s Studies, and Core 100. He earned his Master’s degree in Liberal Studies. Professor Batson specializes in Social History (the history of ordinary people and historically marginalized groups).

-3:35pm: “A Timeline of the Civil War,” presented by Robert Grosso

This lecture will focus on the American Civil War, including the root causes of the war and the eventual aftermath, leading up to the Reconstruction of the South.

Professor Robert A. Grosso is an Adjunct, teaching for Core for one full semester now. He has previously worked in the NYC DOE as a paraprofessional and substitute teacher, before going on to teach college lectures at Union County College in Elizabeth, NJ, and the College of Staten Island.

Thursday, Oct.22:

-8:00am: “Racial Segregation in the U.S. Military,” presented by Niles French

Explore the history of segregation in the United States through an examination of the experiences of African American soldiers and the legal changes that our nation has faced in the military.

Niles French is a published Adjunct Professor who has presented several papers about various historical topics. In addition to teaching in the Core 100 and American Studies program at the College of Staten Island, he is head of development at the Staten Island Historical Society at Historic Richmond Town.

-10:10am: “Rocking Civil Rights,” presented by Richard Gid Powers

In “Civil Rights and Popular Music” we will be exploring how popular culture and race have been intertwined throughout U.S. history, and how rock ‘n’ roll came to play a role in integrating this nation during the Civil Rights Era.

Richard Gid Powers has been teaching history at CSI since 1971 and was one of the people responsible for creating Core and having it be a required course at CSI.  He has written books on J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI, American Anticommunism, and FBI in popular entertainment, and has just published a religious thriller, The Mystery of the Trinity.

-4:40pm: “American Apartheid: The Federal Government’s Role in Residential Segregation,” presented by Jeff McGraham

This lecture examines the Federal Government’s role in exacerbating residential segregation and its negative impact on African Americans to this day.

Jeff McGraham earned his BA in philosophy at the College of Staten Island and an MA in Sociology from Brooklyn College. He is currently in the Sociology Doctoral program at The Graduate Center, CUNY and teaches in the Sociology Department at CSI.

-6:30pm: “Carpetbaggers, Scalawags, Redeemers, the Klu Klux Klan, and Jim Crow – the Failure of Reconstruction,” presented by Donna Scimeca

Historian Eric Foner argues, “What remains certain is that Reconstruction failed, and that for blacks its failure was a disaster whose magnitude cannot be obscured by the genuine accomplishments that did endure,” and sociologist and civil rights activist, W.E.B DuBois, wrote in Black Reconstruction in America, “The slave went free; stood a brief moment in the sun; then moved back again toward slavery.”

This lecture will examine the causes of the failure, what life was like for the newly freed people living in the South in the post-Reconstruction period, and how this would give rise to the Civil Rights Movement.

Donna Scimeca, earned a MA in History from the College of Staten Island, and is the Core Program and Learning Community Coordinator at CSI.