Many CBH Talks were recorded. To view, visit the Center for Brooklyn History Talks YouTube channel at bklynlib.org/CBH-Talks.
Past Events
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…
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…
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