Seminar 2 Encyclopedia

The Peopling of NYC through Film

Professor: Robert Tutak
ITF: Frieda Benun
Campus: Brooklyn College
URL: https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/tutak18/category/documentary-projects/the-community-i-dont-know/

For the final project, students were assigned to make a documentary film on the topic: "Their Community: The Community I Know the Least or Fear the Most"

The prompt:
Using journalistic, photojournalistic, and filmmaking tools, document the community that is most alien to you:
(1) Learn about the community and its members first hand; hear their story
(2) Confront your stereotypes, challenge your reservations & prejudice or confirm your fears

The students were encouraged to confront their own fears and/or prejudices by venturing out and delving deep into the feared/unknown community through interviews.

Note: A few of the interviews were secured with the promise that they would only be shown to the closed room of students in our class, as they feature incriminating (e.g. drug or crime-related) content. Those are password-protected.

An Exploration of Midwood

Professor: Karen Williams
ITF: Ben Haber
Campus: Brooklyn College
URL: https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/midwoodneighborhood/

This site looks at the Brooklyn neighborhood of Midwood, focusing in particular on the Jewish community.

Downtown Brooklyn

Professor: Karen Williams
ITF: Ben Haber
Campus: Brooklyn College
URL: https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/downtownbrooklyn2017/

This site gives a good overview of the things to do, see and eat in Downtown Brooklyn. Contains lots of audio and pictures to highlight the transformation of Downtown into an expensive entertainment and transit hub.

Freaks on a Ferris Wheel

Professor: Karen Williams
ITF: Ben Haber
Campus: Brooklyn College
URL: https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/freaksonaferriswheel/

This whimsical site explores the history and present of Coney Island. Working through the five senses, the students paint a rich portrait of this entertainment center.

An Expedition into Chinatown

Professor: Karen Williams
ITF: Ben Haber
Campus: Brooklyn College
URL: https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/ayampplnyc/

This site explores the transformation and gentrification of Chinatown. Includes a history of the neighborhood in the form of an interactive timeline and textual and audio-visual accounts of the neighborhood through the five senses

Brighton Beach Bro

Professor: Karen Williams
ITF: Ben Haber
Campus: Brooklyn College
URL: https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/bbbb/

This site uses the five senses to explore Brighton Beach. Well organized and aesthetically pleasing, this site includes student made videos, thick description and an interactive timeline of the neighborhood

People of the Ridge

Professor: Karen Williams
ITF: Ben Haber
Campus: Brooklyn College
URL: https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/peopleoftheridge/

This site explores Bay Ridge from the perspective of three student residents. They walk through the neighborhood and provide a visual and textual demonstration of the "surprisingly linear wealth gradient"

Reading Between the skyLines

Professor: Moustafa Bayoumi
ITF: Kelly Eckenrode
Campus: Brooklyn College
URL: https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/skylines/

Students divided into 7 groups and choose a language generally based on their ease with the language. The 7 groups included: Spanish, Japanese, Hebrew, Russian, African American, Arabic and Korean. Each group went to a bookstore that specializes in that language of literature. Students quickly learned that these stores are much more than deposits for books. Typically, the serve as a culture refuge to preserve culture of immigrants groups into the city. I thought it was a successful project.

For myself and the students, it was interesting to learn how different language prompted different interviews. Our most extreme example was the Arabic bookstore. The manger did not give consent to share their interview on the internet. What seemed like a snag initially–gave the students a moment to pause and reflect on seriousness of sharing stories of people. The students decided to re-frame their work to discuss Trump era problems.

Immigrants in New York City

Professor: Jessica Siegel
ITF: Laurel-Mei Turbin
Campus: Brooklyn College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/siegel2016/

This site was created for Prof. Jessica Siegel's Seminar 2 course, Spring 2016, Brooklyn College (ITF Laurel-Mei Turbin). The students contributed the following to the site: oral histories, neighborhood tours, and personal immigration narratives.

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.

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.

The Peopling of Flatbush

Professor: Paul Moses
ITF: Maggie Galvan
Campus: Brooklyn College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/moses2015

In Spring 2015, Paul Moses, both a Brooklyn College English Professor and journalist, led students to deeply analyze the Brooklyn neighborhood of Flatbush through a variety of methods including oral histories and archival research. Their website, The Peopling of Flatbush, featured original research from the precolonial through the contemporary era. ITF Maggie Galvan taught students methods for recording their oral histories, how navigate an array of digital resources and work with demographic databases, and worked with groups of students over a series of classes as they organized their research for presentation on the class website.

Peopling NYC: Siegel 2015

Professor: Jessica Siegel
ITF: Tahir Butt
Campus: Brooklyn College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/siegel15/

This course website comprised walking tours of immigrant neighborhoods, immigration narratives, worker profiles, etc.

Cornucopia of Cultures: Welcome to New York City

Professor: Jessica Siegel
ITF: Maggie Galvan
Campus: Brooklyn College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/siegel2014/

In this course, students investigated certain neighborhoods and ethnic groups with a journalistic eye. Over the course of the semester, they wrote about their own immigration narratives and completed walking tours, interviews, and worker profiles that drew from their chosen neighborhoods and ethnic groups.

The following groups and neighborhoods were the objects of focus in this class:
Pakistanis/Bangladeshis in Kensington, Brooklyn
Jamaicans/Caribbeans in Crown Heights, Brooklyn
Russians in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn
Mexicans in Corona, Queens
Ecuadorians in Jackson Heights, Queens
Chinese in Sunset Park, Brooklyn
Haitians in Flatbush, Brooklyn

Yemen Across the Atlantic: Exploring NYC Immigration Through the Lens of Yemen Cafe

Professor: Moustafa Bayoumi
ITF: Lydia Pelot-Hobbs
Campus: Brooklyn College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/bayoumi2014/

The purpose of this site was to examine the case of immigration in Brooklyn through the specific example of Yemen Cafe located in Cobble Hill. This site approaches Yemen Cafe from a range of angles: the people (both owners, staff, and customers), the plot of the restaurant, the neighborhood, culture, and food.

While the story of Yemeni immigration to New York is the central immigration story of the site, through examining the site through these various lenses brings into conversation the history of other immigrant communities that have existed in the neighborhood over time, and utilized the building that Yemen Cafe is housed in.

Students drew upon a wide range of media for the various sections of the website.This makes the site not the most consistent in terms of format, but displays how different types of media help tell different types of stories.

The Peopling of New York

Professor: Eric Alterman
ITF: Jennifer Corby
Campus: Brooklyn College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/alterman2014/

In this seminar, students worked independently or in small groups to make 2 presentations: one on an NYC neighborhood, and one biography of an NYC landmark.

Brooklyn Literature in Context

Professor: Martha Nadell
ITF: Laurel-Mei Turbin
Campus: Brooklyn College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/nadell2013/

If you think you know Brooklyn, think again. Your views, preconceptions & ideas will be challenged by the scholarly explorations of this Brooklyn College course. The Peopling of New York City offered a view into Brooklyn neighborhoods that changed our understandings of each place. Readings, class discussions, and film & web projects helped us understand the historical & sociopolitical contexts of Brooklyn literarature. Take a look around; you might be surprised at what you find!

Seminar 2, Professor Sharman

Professor: Russell Sharman
ITF: Maggie Galvan
Campus: Brooklyn College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/sharman2013/

Three groups of students investigated the ethnic diversity and immigrant populations in three neighborhoods in Manhattan and Brooklyn. These students identified cultural points of interest and put together an audio walking tour and map guide using the Leaflet Maps Marker plugin.

The Peopling of New York City

Professor: Phil Napoli
ITF: Amanda Licastro
Campus: Brooklyn College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/napoli13/

On this site, you can find a collection of four wikis about the history, demographics, and current issues of four prominent New York City neighborhoods: Chinatown, Midwood, Flushing, and Jackson Heights. After exploring these neighborhoods on your screen, be sure to check out the fun and informative audio walking tours, complete with interactive maps.

Professor: Brendan O’Malley
ITF: Jenny Kijowski
Campus: Brooklyn College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/bcimmigrantexperience/

The students’ mission statement is as follows: “”To chronicle the growth and development of Brooklyn College as an institution, through the lens of the immigrant experience there.

This is done through:

1) Documenting immigrant experiences there through oral history accounts,

2) Analyzing the extent to which the history of New York has shaped the immigrant experience at Brooklyn College, and

3) Analyzing the role that immigrants have played in shaping the Brooklyn College experience.

Immigrants "R" Us

Professor: Phil Napoli
ITF: Jenny Kijowski
Campus: Brooklyn
URL: http://macaulay.cuny.edu/seminars/napoli10

Our projects for this semester are based on immigrant experiences in New York and our own identities as descendants of immigrants. The immigration process is addressed at JFK airport and compared to immigrant experiences in Ellis Island. Then, the local communities of Flatbush and Williamsburg are explored. Finally an overview of Arab Americans in NYC covers their adjustment to life in the region. With insightful interviews, nostalgic pictures, and helpful statistics, a broader picture of immigrant life is established.