Public Humanities
The April Institute
The April Institute is an antifascist research and education collective dedicated to educating the public about historical and contemporary fascist and antifascist movements in the United States using digital pedagogy, documentary production, and other public humanities projects. The significance of the April Institute’s name is twofold. April 1945 witnessed the deaths of Hitler and Mussolini, the liberation of several concentration camps by the Allied powers, and victory by the Resistance in Northern Italy. The likely etymology of April is the Latin verb aperiō, which means to open or make visible and thus aligns with our mission to disclose the past while creating openings for change and renewal.
I Can’t Stand Fences: Black Radicals at the German-German Border
Drawing on collections from the Beinecke Library and additional materials from the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg Museum and the German Federal Archive, this exhibit explores Black radical encounters with the Berlin Wall and East and West Germany from the late 1950s to early 1970s. It showcases three acts of Black radical border-crossing in Cold War Germany, from Paul and Eslanda Robeson, Langston Hughes, and Angela Davis. This travel produced diverse meanings for each of these prominent thinkers, informing their Black internationalist perspectives on global Cold War politics and their revolutionary freedom dreams both at home and abroad.
Pro-immigration rally in St. Louis, Missouri, February 4, 2017. Paul Sableman via Wikimedia Commons.
On holiday in Crimea, from left to right: Lotte Kühn, wife of Walter Ulbricht, W.E.B. Du Bois, Nikita Khrushchev, Paul Robeson, Eslanda Goode Robeson, and Johannes Dieckmann, President of the People's Chamber of the GDR. Commemorative Postcard Set, October 1960, James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
Hito Steyerl’s Drill
I served as a consultant and on-camera scholar for Drill, a major installation by the filmmaker and cultural Hito Steyerl, speaking about the origins of the National Rifle Association and the history of vigilantism and gun violence in the United States. The installation was commissioned by and filmed at the Park Avenue Armory in New York. Steyerl utilizes both the Wade Thompson Drill Hall and historic interiors of the building in mounting both pre-existing works as well as new projects commissioned by the Armory in her ongoing illumination of the world’s power structures, inequalities, obscurities, and delights. When viewed collectively, this material allows the viewer to zoom in on and out from some of the most complex and pressing issues of our time.
Contagious Cities: Life and Death at the Tenement
I served as a researcher for “Life and Death at the Tenement,” a new tour at the Tenement Museum developed as part of the Wellcome Trust’s multi-city, multi-institution Contagious Cities Initiative. Hosted between Berlin, Geneva, Hong Kong and New York, Contagious Cities ran from September 2018 to December 2019 and aimed to commemorate the centennial of the 1918 influenza pandemic, educate the world about the history of public responses to infectious disease, and support local conversations around the global challenges of epidemic preparedness.
Emergency hospital during Influenza epidemic, Camp Funston, Kansas, c. 1918. Otis Historical Archives, National Museum of Health and Medicine via via Wikimedia Commons.
Still from Drill featuring Anna Duensing. Ben Davis via ArtNet News.
An American and Nothing Else: The Great War and the Battle for National Belonging
An American and Nothing Else: The Great War and the Battle for National Belonging explores this moment of paradox at its centennial, as reflected in speeches, pamphlets, photographs, posters, popular songs, and other examples of propaganda and protest from the period. “100% Americanism” marginalized innumerable civilians and soldiers, even while soliciting their uncritical support. Their manifold response of dedication and dissent cast criticism on American hypocrisy and energized debates about belonging and inclusion. This intense period of cohesion and tension fundamentally shaped American society in the century that followed.
Scenes from the physical exhibition of An American and Nothing Else, Yale Sterling Memorial Library, February-June 2018.
Educator and Researcher, Tenement Museum
Beginning in 2011, I began work as an educator and researcher at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, an experience that has defined the foundation of my ongoing public history practice. I continued this work until beginning my postdoctoral fellowship at UVA in 2022. While there were many highlights to this role, one of my favorites was undoubtedly when Gawker reviewed one of my tour programs in 2015.
Anna Duensing photographed leading the “Outside the Home” walking tour in 2015 for the New York Times.