The CUNY-Graduate Center has instituted a fee for all Gotham Center Forums. Tickets are $10, Members $8. No Surcharges. To purchase individual tickets, click here or call 212-868-4444. To join the Graduate Center's Membership Program and receive an instant 25% discount code, click here. For more information about specific forums, please click on the link at the end of each forum description. All forums are FREE for CUNY Graduate Students (call 212-817-7295 for tickets).

Unless otherwise noted, all forums take place at the CUNY GRADUATE CENTER - 365 5th Avenue at 34th Street.

Books will be available for purchase and signing by the respective authors.

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Soviet-Jewish Experience in NYC, 1972-2000 in Fact and Fiction
February 16, 2012, 6:30 p.m.
Martin E. Segal Theater

Co-sponsored by the Center for Jewish Studies

Every immigrant has a story. For Russian immigrants in New York, such stories reveal the history, politics, and passion for storytelling of the Russian people. Please join us for a panel discussion on the Soviet Jewish immigrant experience from 1972 to 2000, with readings by authors whose essays and novels were inspired by that experience. Panel members include Russian emigre writers Anya Ulinich, Lina Zeldovich, Mikhail Iossel and American authors Emily Rubin and Annelise Orleck of Dartmouth University. Book signings to follow.

For online registration click here.

The Real MAD MEN! and the Golden Age of Advertising in NYC
March 1, 2012, 6:30 p.m.
Elebash Recital Hall

Are Don, Roger, Peggy and others at Sterling Cooper from the television series Mad Men! an accurate reflection of the office life and advertising personalities of the early 1960s? Join Andrew Cracknell, author of The Real Mad Men: The Renegades of Madison Avenue and the Golden Age of Advertising; Barbara Lippert, writer and curator of popular culture at Goodby, Silverstein and Partners; and Amil Gargano, advertising executive and founder of Ally and Gargano, as they reveal the reality of Madison Avenue in the late 1950s and 1960s -- a world even stranger than fiction. A revolution in advertising took place in these years, and it is a remarkable story -- of hard work, creative personalities and new business practices. Book signing to follow.

For online registration click here.

New York at War
March 14, 2012, 6:30 p.m.
Martin E. Segal Theater

This Forum is FREE

New York, arguably the most powerful city on earth, is also extremely vulnerable. From its earliest days, a host of dangers -- from Indian warriors and British redcoats to U-boats and terrorist bombers -- have menaced the city, shaping its landscape and character in fundamental ways. In New York at War (Basic Books), historian Steven H. Jaffe offers a riveting account of the attacks, battles, and acts of sabotage that, in threatening this defining American city, have helped forge its very identity. Book signing to follow.

For online registration click here.

Domestic Workers in New York City, Yesterday and Today
April 2, 2012, 6:30 p.m.
Room 9206 (9th Floor)

Co-sponsored by the Department of Sociology and the Women's Studies Certificate Program

This forum will examine the politics of domestic servitude in New York City, with a particular focus on nannies and child care workers. Panelists -- including Julia Wrigley, CUNY Graduate Center; Tamara Mose Brown, Brooklyn College, CUNY; Premilla Nadasen, Queens College, CUNY; and Joyce Gill-Campbell, Domestic Workers United -- will address the nature of domestic work and the workforce, as well as campaigns by domestic workers, past and present, to organize and improve the conditions of their work.

For online registration click here.

Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination
April 12, 2012, 6:30 p.m.
Martin E. Segal Theater

This Forum is FREE.


In this gripping memoir of the AIDS years (1981-1996), Sarah Schulman recalls how much of the rebellious queer culture, cheap rents, and a vibrant downtown arts movement vanished almost overnight to be replaced by gay conservative spokespeople and mainstream consumerism. Interweaving personal reminiscence with cogent analysis, Schulman details her experience as a witness to the loss of a generation's imagination and the consequences of that loss. Book signing to follow.

For online registration click here.

Beyond Borders: Social Movements, Immigrants, and New York City in the Transnational Context, 1895-1940
April 24, 2012, 6:30 p.m.
Martin E. Segal Theater

This Forum will explore the connections between immigration, race, policy, and social movements in New York City from the beginning of the "yellow peril" in the 1890s to the start of the Pacific War in the early 1940s, placing them into a transnational context. Topics examined will include anti-Japanese pulp novels from the turn of the twentieth century, the anti-German movement during WWI, the origins and work of the Issei radical movement in the 1920s, and Chinese-American labor and social activism during the 1930s. Panelists include Daniel Inuoye, Asian-American Center, Queens College; Dylan Yeats, New York University; Renqui Yu, Purchase, SUNY; and Christina Zeigler-McPherson, Museum of the City of New York.

For online registration click here.

View Fall 2011 Forums