John F. Kennedy Archives - Public Seminar

Podcast

Oswald’s Mother

Episode 40: A conversation with journalist Deanne Stillman about her new book, American Confidential: Uncovering the Bizarre Story of Lee Harvey Oswald and His Mother

November 15, 2023 • by Claire Potter

In Episode 40 of Why Now?, Claire Potter chats with journalist Deanne Stillman about her new book, American Confidential: Uncovering the Bizarre Story of Lee Harvey Oswald and His Mother....

Feature

Our Sixties: Blowin’ in the Wind

Thinking Morally, Acting Strategically

February 19, 2019 • by Richard Flacks and Miriam Flacks

Making History/Making Blintzes: How Two Red Diaper Babies Found Each Other and Discovered America is a chronicle of the political and personal lives of progressive activists Richard (Dick) and Miriam (Mickey) Flacks, two of the founders of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). As active members of the Civil Rights movement ...

Feature

JFK’s Queer White House

What we can learn about a straight President by looking at the gay men in his orbit

December 13, 2018 • by Claire Potter

President John F. Kennedy has become infamous for his vivid, and some might say almost compulsive, heterosexual affairs. But straight men can have a gay side, and JFK’s life was filled with prominent gay men, friendships which open the door to other histories. At least one of these intimates, Kirk ...

Education

Etchings of Democracy

School desks and the politics of nostalgia

June 1, 2018 • by Campbell F. Scribner

Desks have been ubiquitous in American schools since the mid-nineteenth century. Made of wood and iron, bolted to the floor, they began as fixtures in the truest sense of the word. So firmly did they anchor the classroom that when progressive reformers finally introduced movable models in the early 1900s, ...