After thinking and staring up at the subway map on my way home (freaking out some other riders, no doubt), it occurred to me this idea of “four themes on your route” might be a little rigid. So my new proposal is this:

1. Everyone track their commute from their neighborhood, as we originally discussed. I suggested before that you include some of the Federal Writers’ Project Guide entries about your neighborhood; we might think also of hunting down a modern guidebook and including text from that. Either way, this part will be a little history of your neighborhood and also a discussion of how it’s different now. I’d love to see an exploration as well of how you do or don’t represent your neighborhood or identify with it–but that would be up to you.

2. Rather than trying to find stops along your route, think of how the subway lines intersect. I can’t remember all the lines you guys mentioned the other day, but I do recall a number of them. Subways often intersect in busy, important areas, and they’re where the city literally comes together. Subway intersections and transfers mix people from every neighborhood, making them important to a wide array of New Yorkers. Looking at the map, you can also see that many of those intersections come at places that coincide with our themes–especially if we increase the topics on which we focus (not just work, culture, recreation, and the fourth one I can’t remember).

So, for example, the 4/5/6 and Q (and L for you, Josh) intersect at Union Square. This was a big protest area (hello, Kevin, Anastasia, and Joanna) in the 1930s. Today it is a center of the city’s new food culture (Stephanie, Michelle). Farther uptown, the 4, 5, and 6 all converge on 125th Street (Josh?), the main boulevard of Harlem and a place that represents the way race shaped the New Deal and the way gentrification is changing the city now. The 1/2/3 lines hit the A/C at Columbus Circle–right at the edge of the park that comprises the city’s recreational heart. Farther south, the 1 hits the 5/6 near Wall Street (Quan?), the city’s financial heart then and now but also a source of protest. The J/Z and F converge on the Lower East Side, heart of the old immigration and center of the new gentrification.

Do you see where I’m going here? The project could consist of your own personal commutes and ways you understand your trips into the city; at the same time, you could sign up to be in groups that do a then-and-now look at where the lines cross and what they tell us about the city’s past and present. The groups you choose wouldn’t have to be for places on your line–just in your area of interest. And you might sign up to do “half” an entry–the “then” part of Union Square (protests) and the “Now” part of the N/R/4/5 transfer point. That way, you could fit your own interests into the sites you choose (further personalizing the site and making it about you, as well as NYC), and for at least some of you, there would be definite overlap between your research for this and your oral presentations.

I’m about to run off to my next class, but I want to write down what we decided before I forget all the details. I also invite you to comment further on what we discussed today and how we’ve chosen to organize the site.

First, everyone will write about the history and the present day status of where they’re coming from, unless they’re commuting from out of the city; those people will write about the destination neighborhood, Gramercy/Flatiron.

Second, each person or each group (we never decided which) will choose four stops (along his/her subway line or bus line) that are representative of one of four themes: culture, recreation, government, and work (everyone will write about all four).

I think we need to decide more specifically how we will choose these stops–this seems to be the least defined part of the project. I think this would be a more useful aspect of the site if we came up with a uniform way of choosing these four stops–their significance for students or their historical nature or the way they symbolize some aspect of the Depression/Recession eras…you get the point. Maybe one way to do this might be to group people by the lines they commute on and to have some focus on “historical” stops (where a person commuting in, say, 1936, would have stopped), and others focusing on contemporary stops (where the student him or herself would stop, and why).

ADDED TUESDAY MORNING: After thinking about this some more, another idea I had was that we could, as a class, choose some places along the lines that we think represent aspects of the four themes during the Depression. For example, in terms of government, we might choose a WPA structure, a building that used to be an office for the distribution of home relief, etc. Then we could choose some other places along the lines today that are parallel sorts of institutions. These “parallel” sites wouldn’t have to be on the same students’ line and thus could offer a different way of navigating the site. Another way would just be to follow a single student’s commute.

A second idea I had was to use the Federal Writers’ Project Guide to NYC to help describe the places from which you’re commuting. You could include direct quotes as well as a little extra research (from Social Explorer, for example) to depict each place in the 1930s. Then you guys could put together a similar blurb of your own–how you would describe your own neighborhoods today. Just an idea, though.

By the way, for the “Social Explorer” demographic site, go to the library databases page and enter through the Social Explorer gateway there: http://newman.baruch.cuny.edu/search/databases.php

Thoughts?

I’ve had a handful of questions so far about the website proposals that you’ll be turning in at the end of the month. A number of the queries centered on the open-endedness of the assignment, which I know is a little daunting. As one student wrote to me, “I am somewhat unclear… as to exactly you want us to do.”

One reason for this lack of clarity is that I’m trying to make the “exactly” your decision. In other words, I’ve created the broad framework here: a website that in some comparative way discusses the Great Depression and Great Recession in New York City. Since the site will focus on New York, it will naturally involve an examination of the lives of immigrants and migrants (the “Peopling” part of the seminar title). Other than that, though, I’m trying to leave it to you to decide how to focus the site. Is the best way to pick one area (food, economy, industry, architecture, welfare programs, Martian sightings…) and explore it in great depth over time? Or is the best way to do some kind of edited survey (in other words, to pick a number of areas and explore them in less depth)? Should we tackle a single neighborhood or try to discuss the whole city? Manhattan or the outer boroughs (for logistical reasons, I vote for Manhattan, but you can certainly make a good case for another borough)? What should the site look like? Whom should it target?

So this is a big, broad, scary assignment. There is no “right” answer, but if you do some good research, put a lot of thought into this, and show creativity and insight, you’ll do just fine. In fact, you’ll do exactly what I want you to do!