Videos

Robert Giard Photographs with Jonathan Silin

Mondays at the Beinecke at Yale University

June 28, 2021

This talk, given at the Beinecke Library, Yale University, describes the life and work of the American photographer Robert Giard, my first life partner. Giard is best known for having photographed over 500 LGBTQ+ writers and activists during the 1980s and 1990s. The Beinecke houses the complete Giard archive, including photographs and ephemera.

The Robert Giard Grant for Emerging LGBTQ+ Photographers

The Robert Giard Foundation & Queer|Art 

May 24, 2020

The Robert Giard Foundation which I established in 2002 gives grants to emerging and heretofore unrecognized LGBTQ+photographers. This short video describes the grant program against the background of a major exhibition of Giard images of LGBTQ+ writers and activists.

Projects with Purpose: I Learn from Children Then and Now

City and Country School

December 18, 2020

In December 2020 I was invited to participate in a panel discussion marking the publication of the latest edition of Caroline Pratt’s seminal book, I Learn from Children. The panel explores the relevance of Pratt’s contribution to our understanding of what progressive education is and can be.

Notes from the Country of the Young-Old

The Institute for the Life Course and Aging, University of Toronto

May 28, 2018

This talk explores the central themes of my 2018 book, Early Childhood, Aging and the Life Cycle, especially the period of “young-old age” that is little understood and often ignored in the literature on aging.

"Hope belongs to all of us — the oldest as well as the youngest, the most vulnerable as well as the able bodied. Regardless of age and situation feeling hopeful for ourselves as well as for those who are to follow is essential to a fully realized life." 

  —Jonathan Silin, Early Childhood, Aging and the Life Cycle: Mapping Common Ground