The Hartford Studies Project (HSP), now housed in the new Center for Urban and Global Studies at Trinity College, seeks to document, research, and communicate the recent history of Hartford to Trinity students and alumni, the College community, Hartford residents and activists, and the broader public. We teach classes and coordinate research with a focus on Hartford's post-Civil War history and on contemporary issues of race, immigration, culture, labor, social provision, social movements, and local politics. We work within the documentary tradition established in the U.S. in the 1930s to promote informed public discourse about Hartford's past development and present direction, in an effort to support cultural, social, and economic transformation.

Our central educational and research mission is the ongoing creation of a historically-informed narrative that accounts for the juxtaposition of wealth and poverty in the city and region over the last century, and identifies the structural circumstances which sustained and furthered racial prejudice and social inequality. The growth of vocal and effective agency and activism increasingly challenged these patterns with successes and failures. We seek to portray Hartford's history in the framework of its national political and economic context, and in relation to the flows of capital, people and culture, that connect Hartford to global patterns, both historical and contemporary. We seek to fulfill and further this mission by work in a variety of media and art forms.
 
The HSP was founded in 1989 by Trinity professors in the fields of history, American studies, and sociology, and has coordinated and contributed to local historical exhibits and public events in collaboration with the Connecticut Historical Society, the Hartford Public Library, local churches and arts and community organizations.  We maintain an archive of historical photographs, books, papers, articles, and primary documents on Hartford history. We act as a broker to link individuals, organizations and scholars to documentary and human resources throughout the region.

Our central project in recent years has been a feature-length documentary film on Hartford in the late 1960s and since. The project draws on a trove of footage shot in Hartford in the summer of 1969, and HSP faculty, Trinity students and alumni, and local residents and institutions have collectively gathered nearly 100 hours of interviews and other materials for the project, many from veterans of the 1969 efforts. We also engage the present culture of the city in our film work.  Portions of the video appear in the Connecticut Historical Society´s permanent exhibit on Hartford history in the Old State House, and address the issues of "urban renewal" as a problem of the city's past and present. We hope to complete a 90-minute documentary for screening in 2008, and to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the first film crews arriving in the city from California and Canada, in 2009.   

Steering Committee members:

Prof. Susan Pennybacker, Hartford Studies Project Director; Dept. of History, Trinity

Prof. Pablo Delano, Assoc. Prof. of Studio Arts, Trinity

Prof. Luis Figueroa, Assoc. Prof. of History, Film Studies, Trinity

Prof. Mark Jones, State Archivist, Connecticut State Library; Visiting Faculty, Trinity Graduate Program

Butch Lewis

Virginia Lewis

Stephen McFarland '00

Prof. Frank Mitchell, filmmaker, writer and curator; visiting faculty, Univ. of Connecticut Greater Hartford campus

Prof. Helen Raisz, St. Joseph's College

Dr. Elizabeth Rose, Project Director, History Is Central, Central Connecticut State University

Julio Ramos, Technical Assistant and Designer

Diane Smith, Connecticut Dept. of Housing and Finance

Thomas Smith (MA '98), English Dept., Weaver High School

Prof. Ronald Spencer, Associate Academic Dean, Trinity

Prof. Stephen Valocchi, Dept. of Sociology, Trinity

Prof. Andrew Walsh, Center for Public Values and Dept. of Religion, Trinity

James Williams, social worker, Manchester, CT; Hartford NAACP