Seminar 2 Encyclopedia

Seminar Two

Professor: Grazyna Drabik
ITF: Andres Orejuela
Campus: City College
URL: https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/20crossroads/

Students visited 20 crossroads on Broadway and Fifth Avenue. The stops began in lower Manhattan on Wall Street, and arrived at 181st Street in Washington Heights. The stops are arranged in order on the homepage of site, including the name of the street and neighborhood. For each entry, students wrote up a short post about their experience of the location and about the location itself.

Chronicles of a Changing New York

Professor: Grazyna Drabik
ITF: Andres Orejuela
Campus: City College
URL: https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/yesterdaytodayny/

A number of sites throughout New York with historical changes detailed in text and image.

Podcasting the People of New York

Professor: Amy Weiss
ITF: Katherine Logan McBride
Campus: City College
URL: https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/weiss17/podcasts/

Students created podcasts to address an historical question of their choosing about the inhabitants of New York City.

Caribbean New York

Professor: Jennifer Lutton
ITF: Katherine Logan McBride
Campus: City College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/caribbeannewyork16/

Students in the course worked to understand the transnational connections between the Caribbean (specifically the West Indies and Haiti) and New York City from the early 20th century to the current context, and the influences they have had on each other’s cultural, political, and economic development. We explored theories of transnationalism, mobility, and diaspora to examine the impact of multidirectional flows of Caribbean people, culture, goods, and ideas enlivened by contemporary communication and transportation technologies.
Throughout the semester students contributed scaffolded assignments to a course website, building a repository of notes, data, papers, sources, scripts for their research and worked in small groups to curate a multimedia online exhibition to present what they learned. Group projects explore: political economy; music and dance; gender and identity through art and literature; media in the diaspora; and cultural identity through food.

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.

History Through Objects

Professor: Constance Rosenblum
ITF: Andres Orejuela
Campus: City College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/objects2016/

The students in Professor Rosenblum’s Seminar 2 participated in The Museum’s Your Stories, Our Stories project. For our final course site, students used the assignments they had prepared for that project, and added them to a site with the Aesop story engine, experimenting with different ways to present their stories.

NEW YORK: A CITY WITH NO LIMITS

Professor: Grazyna Drabik
ITF: Katherine Logan McBride
Campus: City College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/conflictandcoexistenceincosmopolis/

New York City is the city that never sleeps: its inhabitants run on the coffee served by cafes around every corner, but more than that, its history never sleeps. This city is the madness that courses through its veins. But it is also a single tapestry woven by diverse ideas and people. This is how we change throughout the course of hundreds of years: building, deconstructing, rebuilding. Today, this is our city.

This site represents both the discovery of NYC and its history by MHC CCNY First Year students in Professor Drabik’s class and also their reflections of their coursework, themselves as New Yorkers and the city they study in.

The Peopling of New York

Professor: Prabal De
ITF: Bronwyn Dobchuk-Land
Campus: City College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/de2014/

This is the full course site for Professor Prabal De’s Spring 2014 Seminar 2 course. There is another site on the encyclopedia that belongs to his class – “Surviving Sandy’ – which can be accessed through this site. This site is focused on a collection of each student’s personal immigration stories, and their reflections on the content of the course. It features blog post reflections on their field trips and assignments, as well as personal immigration story videos that they recorded either alone or in groups. These videos can be found under the “our stories” tab, as well as by clicking each student’s name on the home page.
The site contains reflections on as many ethnic groups and neighborhoods as there are represented in the students of this class.

New York Dreams

Professor: Constance Rosenblum
ITF: John Boy
Campus: City College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/nydreams/

An immersive storytelling site. The stories presented on this site tell of New Yorkers who chased their dreams — sometimes succeeding, sometimes not. These people traveled very different paths, but they have one thing in common: All of them sought to make a place for themselves in a big, complicated, challenging but often profoundly rewarding metropolis.

The Peopling of New York City

Professor: Ramona Hernandez
ITF: Aaron Kendall
Campus: City College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/hernandez2014/

This Seminar 2 website compares various aspects of two unique neighborhoods in New York City, Flushing and Washington Heights/Harlem. Several topics are discussed, including transportation, food, music and health.

Although the site was envisioned as a comparison between two neighborhoods, since groups were free to choose any topic from either neighborhood, instead of both neighborhoods, the result is more of a summary of various cultural aspects of each neighborhood.

The website is organized in a clear manner, with introdctory text and the option of choosing which neighborhood and topic the user would like to explore further. The use of media is somewhat limited, with a lot of very small images, and is lacking in video/audio that might help the user get a better idea of the feel of the neighborhoods.

Overall, the students did a fine job of researching their topics and presenting the information in a clear and concise manner.

Surviving Sandy: An eye on the storm

Professor: Prabal De
ITF: Bronwyn Dobchuk-Land
Campus: City College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/de2014final/

This site might be of particular interest to Professors who are interested in taking a different approach to the idea of “peopling” New York. The original idea for this class was to produce a documentary about the movement around New York City caused by Hurricane Sandy, and City College’s relationship to the crisis.
At some point it was decided that a documentary project wouldn’t work out, so students re-packaged the work they had done into a website, which can be viewed as its own project, and is also linked to from the course site which features other work the students did throughout the semester: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/de2014/.
The Surviving Sandy site features interviews students did with each other about their experiences of the storm, interviews with a couple of Professors, news footage, original photographs, and original student photos of Sandy devastation. It showcases an attempt to use Aesop story engine.

We Are New York

Professor: Prabal De
ITF: Dana Milstein
Campus: City College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/spring13definal

Walking tours of various neighborhoods in New York and analysis from students’ perspectives.

The Peopling of New York City

Professor: Gabriel Haslip-Viera
ITF: Aaron Kendall
Campus: City College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/haslipviera2013/

Students investigated the role of immigration and migration in the shaping of New York’s identity – past, present, and future, through oral history interviews and neighborhood research projects. The projects were carried out individually and with little structuring, which made the website content too broad in my opinion. Next time around I would suggest the students do the project in groups and focus on a few particular issues related to immigration and migration.

Hidden Histories

Professor: Grazyna Drabik
ITF: John Boy
Campus: City College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/hiddenhistories/

The aim of this site is to make little-known aspects of New York City history visible on a map. In addition, the site links to resources in the form of books, films, and websites that cover these “hidden histories.” [This project remains incomplete]

Prof De’s Peopling of New York Site

Professor: Prabal De
ITF: John Boy
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/de2012

This is a class site created by Macaulay Honors College students in the course of a seminar on The Peopling of New York City with Professor Prabal De at City College during the spring 2012 term.

Our aim is to explore a variety of current and historical issues in immigration in New York City, in the United States, and in our own lives. We engaged with these issues in a number of ways:

Our blogs consist of short essays: The Immigration Nation explores issues surrounding immigration to the United States through statistical data and documentary films, while Around New York takes a closer look at New York City’s immigrant communities through reflections on the Tenement Museum and an analysis of U.S. Census data at the neighborhood level.

Our Immigrant Food page features videos that provide unique culinary insight into New York City’s immigrant communities.

The Peopling of New York: Astoria, Flushing, Coney Island, and Washington Heights

Professor: Joseph Berger
ITF: Chris Caruso
Campus: City College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/berger2011/

Overview:
Working with ITF Chris Caruso, Prof Berger’s class at City completed a detailed site with information about four major neighborhoods in NYC: Astoria, Flushing, Coney Island, and Washington Heights. The groups provide comprehensive information about each neighborhood, including histories, demographics, landmarks, entertainment, and food options. The class also included reflections on personal experiences doing the project.

West Harlem

Professor: Grazyna Drabik
ITF: Dana Milstein
Campus: City College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/drabik11/

Overview:
Prof Grazyna Drabik of City College and ITF Dana Milstein created a site that explores the neighborhood of West Harlem. The site takes a detailed look at a small area, covering numerous aspects of the neighborhood, from history to geography to cultural institutions.