Recent OHMA graduate Fanny Julissa García (2016) recently accepted a position at the New-York Historical Society where she will provide administrative assistance to a variety of projects including the society’s annual Barbara and David Zalaznick Book Prize in American History and the Gilder Lehrman Book Prize for Military History. Fanny will also work with The Citizenship Project, a program that provides free civics and history classes to green card holders who must prepare for the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services naturalization exam. The classes take place at the New-York Historical Society and provide instruction about pivotal moments in U.S. history through engagement with the museum’s objects, documents, and installations.

Founded in 1804, the New-York Historical Society’s museum is the oldest in New York City. It presents exhibitions, public programs, educational events, and research that explores the rich history of the city of New York, the state, and the nation. The society aims to serve as a national forum on the discussion of issues about the making and meaning of history. In recent years, some of the society’s most popular exhibitions include Alexander Hamilton: The Man Who Made Modern America; Slavery in New York; Nature and the American Vision: The Hudson River School at the New-York Historical Society; Grant and Lee in War and Peace; and WWII & NYC.

Some of Fanny’s favorite past exhibitions at the New-York Historical Society include AIDS in New York: The First Five Years; “I am the King of the World”: Photographs of Muhammad Ali by George Kalinsky, Bill Cunningham: Facades, and Chinese American: Exclusion/Inclusion. She encourages you to visit the museum's upcoming exhibition, The Vietnam War: 1945 – 1975 which will feature such topics as the Cold War, the draft, military campaigns initiated by both sides, the growth of the antiwar movement, the role of the president, and the loss of political consensus.

Fanny's research at the Columbia University Oral History Master's Program focused on the 2014 Central American Refugee Crisis and the rise of immigration detention centers in the United States. She is the recipient of the 2016 Merit Scholarship and the Judge Jack B. Weinstein Fellowship. In October 2017, she will present an excerpt of her oral history project at the Oral History Association Annual Meeting during a workshop titled, "Orality, Affective Power, and Activism: Making Oral History Art" with Danielle Dulken, Kimber Symone Thomas, and Rachel Gelfand -- all emerging oral historians and Ph.D. candidates in American Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, plus Jess Lamar Reece Holler, an independent folklorist and oral historian with Caledonia Northern Folk Studios. Her contribution to the workshop is based in part on her oral history exhibit and installation titled, "Show Me Your Hands" which she wrote about in the article, Decolonizing Cultural Spaces to Tell Refugee Stories for OHMA.