The Peopling of New York
Professor: Robert Viscusi
ITF: Jennifer Corby
Campus: Brooklyn College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/viscusi16/#
This site was mostly used for students to submit written work regarding the course readings, as well as to submit travel notes from field trips around the city. There is the most potential in the concept of the Travel Notes section, and this could be fruitful in another class.
Contested New York
Professor: Peter Vellon
ITF: Amanda Matles
Campus: Queens College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/vellon16/
Contested New York is a collection of digital essays that focus on several key points of socio-economic conflict, struggle, and tension in New York City from the post World War II period to the present. Our guiding questions were: Does NYC always “work,” and what happens when it does not? Our project was created during the Spring 2016 semester by students from the Macaulay Honors College at Queens College, Class of 2019, as part of the seminar course The Peopling of New York City.
Astoria: The Falafel Squad
Professor: Karen Williams
ITF: Alexis Carrozza
Campus: Brooklyn College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/astoriablvd/
This site explores Astoria by documenting the sites, sounds, scents, textures, and tastes that the students experienced while visiting the neighborhood. The site’s organization and content reflects the course’s emphasis on ethnographic research using the five senses. The group put together a brief but informative history of Astoria and the inclusion of demographic data is especially helpful. One suggestion to improve on the site’s exploration of Astoria might be a comparison between the quantitative data about the demographics and the students’ qualitative data (field notes, reflections, etc.). How do their experiences reflect, refute, correspond, etc. to the data?
Bensonhurst: Two Albanians and a Jew go to 86th Street
Professor: Karen Williams
ITF: Alexis Carrozza
Campus: Brooklyn College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/peoplingofbensonhurst/
This site reflects the course’s emphasis on the five senses as an means of ethnographic research. The site does not focus on a particular ethnic group though the annotated bibliography in the Resources section offers insight into the changing demographics of Bensonhurst.
A Day in Downtown Brooklyn
Professor: Karen Williams
ITF: Alexis Carrozza
Campus: Brooklyn College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/barclays/
The students conceived their audience as visitors unfamiliar with downtown Brooklyn and as a result created a site that is easy to navigate, informative, and dynamic. Content hosted at the site includes social media, video, audio, photographs that fulfill the course’s focus on ethnographic research using the five senses. The reflection papers from the students demonstrate a thoughtful approach to the project while the site’s functionality reflects the students’ determination that this site be useful to anyone who looking for information about downtown Brooklyn.
Five Dudes Walk Into Brighton
Professor: Karen Williams
ITF: Alexis Carrozza
Campus: Brooklyn College
URL: https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/ethnographyatbrightonbeach/
This site provides a comprehensive introduction to Brighton Beach as told by the five group members. This class focused on the “five senses” as a lens to understand the neighborhood and the site content reflects this approach: audio of sounds, video interviews with residents, and field notes from the trips taken to the neighborhood.
Flatbush-Ditmas Ethnography Project!
Professor: Karen Williams
ITF: Alexis Carrozza
Campus: Brooklyn College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/danielacadiadanyelle/
This site explores the large neighborhood(s) of Flatbush-Ditmas in Brooklyn. The strength of this website is the very clear geographic boundaries that help visitors understand the differences in languages, ethnicities, and retail offerings within a single neighborhood.
Conflict and Coexistence in NY
Professor: Grazyna Drabik
ITF: Andrew Lucchesi
Campus: City College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/drabikgallery
This website focuses on the connections between personal storytelling and the deep repository of history connected to the New York City region. It is broken into three interrelated galleries: one contains objects from each author’s family history, as well as their personal reflections on how they see their relationship to history. The second and third galleries focus on New York City history, on iconic historical sites (which are mapped on an interactive Google Map) and on the historical and present-day figures associated with those sites. Readers of this website will see a complex, multi-layered representation of New York City, past and present–full of people, stories, objects, and an ever-changing urban background.
Weddings of New York
Professor: David Rosenberg
ITF: Anna Gjika
Campus: Baruch College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/weddingsofnewyork/
This site focuses on weddings in Jewish, Chinese and Indian subcontinent immigrant communities as a way of examining the experiences of these groups with assimilation and acculturation in New York City, and American culture more broadly.
The Astoria Project
Professor: Christos Ioannides
ITF: Caroline Erb
Campus: Queens College
URL: https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/ioannides16_astoriaproject/
Professor Christos Ioannides’ students created a site to highlight the demographic changes, cultural outlets, institutions, and commercial ventures of Greeks in Astoria, Queens. The website showcases the highlights of the Greek community as Astoria rapidly gentrifies. Each student authored a page for the site and the entire class revised different portions of the website.