American Studies

This video chronicles the history of Wall Street, America’s financial center since 1949, exploring the last half-century of economic history through the life of Jim Maguire.

This documentary examines two migrant experiences, one from the Caribbean and one from Latin America, which comprise an important part of the Hispanic experience in New York.

New and revised. This documentary examines the current controversy over the issue of slave reparations, addressing the most often voiced objections ("It’s long over," "I had nothing to do with it," "Affirmative Action is enough," etc.) to the claim for financial restitution to the ancestors of slaves for the wealth created by black labor in previous centuries.

This video chronicles, from inception to completion, the creation of a commissioned art work, showing how one community comes together to make a vision a reality.

The major political, cultural and social issues of each year in the decade are brought vividly to life in this ten-part series.

This ten-part series examines the history of the North American Indian, exploring their social, political and economic systems, as well as their art, religion, and educational values

The powerful Loomis Gang of Central New York may have been the largest family crime syndicate in 19th-century America. In this video, documentary filmmaker Brian Peter Falk returns to Waterville, New York, his boyhood home and the epicenter of Loomis power during the Civil War era, to chronicle the gang’s legend and explore the efforts by a handful of local people to revive it.

The major political, cultural and social issues of each year in the decade are brought vividly to life in this ten-part historical series.

Examines the history and current status of the region's family and commercial farms. It begins in the pre-settlement periods of 1640 and continues up to the present day, featuring interviews with numerous local farmers who explain how an increasing number of farms are vanishing from the Long Island landscape.

Between 1840 and 1870, over 250,000 Americans traveled west by covered wagon on the Oregon Trail. Some claimed land in Oregon; others headed for California gold country. Many went enthusiastically. Others reluctantly left homes, family and friends to face hardship and an uncertain future. Actress Amy Warner vividly presents the experiences and feelings of these pioneers in her one-woman performance based on entries from diaries, letters and memoirs of pioneer women and a young girl who trekked the Oregon Trail.

This video tells the story of a controversial mural painted on a Los Angeles building in 1932 by Mexican artist David Alfaro Siqueiros.

Dr. Robert Butler, a psychiatrist and specialist in gerontology, discusses the ways in which American society compartmentalizes people into age groups and discriminates aginst its senior citizens, who often face neglect, a lack of emotional and intellectual stimulation and economic hardship.