Seminar 2 Encyclopedia

Neighborhoods of New York

Professor: Joseph Berger
ITF: Madison Priest
Campus: Hunter College
URL: https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/neighborhoodsofnyc/

Neighborhoods of New York is the result of research project undertaken by first year Macaulay Honors students at Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY) under the supervision of Professor Joseph Berger and Madison Priest. This website showcases student groups' profiles of New York City neighborhoods. Students integrated images, video and sound, created timelines, and left room for "surprises and serendipities."

The Peopling of New York City

Professor: George Gonzalez
ITF: Hamad Sindhi
Campus: Baruch College
URL: https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/gonzalez19/

Class site for Professor George Gonzalez's IDC 3001H The People of New York. Site was used mainly for hosting the syllabus and reading materials, as well as for student essays on the readings.

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.

NYCROPOLIS

Professor: Peter Vellon
ITF: Amanda Matles
Campus: Queens College
URL: https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/vellon18/

New York is dying. “But wait,” you say. “New York is dying? Impossible.” Sure, a visit to the Big Apple on any given day will yield sights of glass high-rises, bustling crowds of tourists and professionals, and shops with bedazzling variety: from classic bodegas to swanky yoga studios. But look closer. How can there be so many new skyscrapers and yet so many homeless? Why are trains on-time in Yorkville but not in Van Nest? And what on earth happened to the rent in Chelsea?

A visit to NYCropolis might leave you angry and frustrated with the current state of affairs. Good- that’s why we made it. The issues we researched relate to deep, unsolved problems in New York’s physical and social architecture. But our city is an amazing city, a feat of history that’s constantly reinventing itself. And we need you to be a part of its resurrection. Today, New York’s development conceals its death in essential areas. New life only comes when we stop treating the symptoms and start honestly working toward a cure. The more of NYCropolis you read, the more you will find that solutions to these problems don’t lie with the powers that be, but with the power of the people. Call your council member, join an advocacy group, and participate in Community Board meetings using your informed opinions. Turn this dying city into bright lights that inspire you and streets that make you feel brand-new.

-From the students of Honors 126, “The Peopling of New York,” Professor Vellon, and Amanda Matles

Macaulay Honors College and Queens College
Spring 2018
*With apologies to Jay-Z and Alicia Keys

A People's Guide to NYC

Professor: Arianna Martinez
ITF: Lindsey Albracht
Campus: Queens College
URL: https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/peoplesguidetonyc/

Inspired by the recently published book, A People’s Guide to Los Angeles, this assignment asked students at Queens Macaulay Honors College to construct an alternative tourist guide to New York City: a guide that highlights immigrant stories, prioritizes contested spaces, and creates a geographic record of sites of social movements and political struggles within the city.

Students selected a site in their own neighborhood or a neighborhood that was familiar to them, conducted research on the site, visited it to take photographs, and crafted a story about the site using excerpts from A People’s Guide to Los Angeles as a model.

Their New York

Professor: Mike Benediktsson
ITF: Christina Nadler & Madison Priest
Campus: Hunter College
URL: https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/theirnewyork/

This website is the result of a unique research project undertaken by first year Macaulay Honors students at Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY) under the supervision of Mike Owen Benediktsson, Madison Priest and Christina Nadler. The interviews, images, and research collected here were collected entirely by students, as part of their coursework for the People of New York City seminar, or Seminar II, an interdisciplinary class on the past and present of the city’s neighborhoods, with a focus on migration and immigration.

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

The People of New York City

Professor: Sarah Bishop
ITF: Anna Gjika
Campus: Baruch College
URL: https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/bishop17/

Class website to retain course materials (readings, syllabus), student reading reflections, and scaffolded final project assignment posts.

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.

Oral Histories: Becoming American

Professor: Nancy Aries
ITF: Julie Fuller
Campus: Baruch College
URL: https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/becomingamerican17/

Students created multi-media oral history stories on each other and also on someone else they know. Their public facing projects integrated long-form text (based on personal interviews) with visual artifacts, audio, moving clips, graphs, maps, and timelines that clarify both the informant's story and the context of the immigrant group which this person represents.

The Peopling of New York

Professor: Stephen Steinberg
ITF: Lindsey Albracht
Campus: Queens College
URL: https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/steinberg17/category/oral-history-project/

For the final project in this Seminar 2, students interviewed a member of their family about an immigration experience. They also reflected on the exercise in a brief statement that accompanied the post.

The goal of the oral history was to consider how some of the more abstract themes of the class actually played out in the particular lives of people that students actually knew. In the reflection, they were asked to make the connection between course themes and the interview, but also to reflect on the experience of interviewing itself.

The professor opted to display these projects on the existing course website rather than asking students to create separate sites or asking me to create something new. I think a site which displayed all of the posts at once (in Aesop, though I know that theme has its issues) and allowing the user to navigate to the histories that interested them would have been a better design choice, because the histories of students who posted early are a bit buried. But overall, I think the reflections mostly demonstrate that students met the goal of the assignment.

Contested New York

Professor: Peter Vellon
ITF: Amanda Matles
Campus: Queens College
URL: https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/vellon17/

This website is the hub for a collection of six digital projects 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.

It would have been great to coordinate link-backs to the hub site from each of the group project sites, but not all of the groups included one.

Storefront Survivors

Professor: Mike Benediktsson
ITF: Christina Nadler
Campus: Hunter College
URL: https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/storefrontsurvivors

This website is the result of a unique research project undertaken by first year Macaulay Honors students at Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY) under the supervision of Mike Owen Benediktsson, Marnie Brady, Caroline Loomis, Christina Nadler, and Tommy Wu. The interviews, images, and research collected here were collected entirely by students, as part of their coursework for the People of New York City seminar, or Seminar II, an interdisciplinary class on the past and present of the city’s neighborhoods, with a focus on migration and immigration. In the last few years, elected officials and the media have begun to acknowledge the plight of small, independent businesses in the city. Blogs like Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York have called attention to the loss of valuable landmark institutions due to unregulated commercial rent markets and municipal rezoning. Local elected officials, including Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, have put forth competing legislative measures that would seek to relieve some of the economic pressure faced by small business owners in the city. Attention to the precarious position of small business is growing. But is it enough? Explore our website to find profiles of small business owners across the city who are conducting their own individual struggles against the crosscurrents of economic, social, and policy change in the city.

Here to Stay NYC

Professor: Lina Newton
ITF: Tommy Wu
Campus: Hunter College
URL: https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/heretostaynyc/

This is a public-facing site for the class (in addition to a class site for administration). I'm using the Kerouac theme here and I have mixed feelings about it. Aesthetically, I think it looks great but there are also some bugs and limitations (if students don't want to use CSS). Overall, I would recommend it because the student groups took ownership of the site and spent a lot time perfecting their profile pages. They seemed to be proud of what they have produced. I think this would be a good example for future students.

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.

Becoming American

Professor: Nancy Aries
ITF: Kara van Cleaf
Campus: Baruch College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/aries16/

Students created oral history projects on each other and also on someone else they know.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Exceptional NYC

Professor: Lina Newton
ITF: Christina Nadler
Campus: Hunter College
URL: https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/exceptionalnyc/

This is a site created by Prof Lina Newton’s Seminar 2 course–the Peopling of New York City.

Students worked in groups throughout the semester to undertake research on 5 immigrant groups–Chinese, Haitian, Dominican, Russian and Mexican. In these posts you can find the key findings of the research, statistical profiles, and researched narratives on the history of the immigrant group’s migration & settlement.

Enjoy exploring the projects on the exceptional histories of NYC residents!

Exploring the Gentrification of Chinatown Through Eateries

Professor: Richard Ocejo
ITF: Scott Henkle
Campus: John Jay
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/ocejospring14chinatown/

This site was one of three created in the course. The others include: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/ocejospring14chelsea/ and http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/ocejospring2014coneyisland/

The Peopling of New York City: Neighborhood Stories

Professor: Ellen Scott
ITF: Andres Orejuela
Campus: Queens College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/neighborhoodstories14/

This site conglomerates the individual sites that each student group made. One of the strengths of this approach was that students were not only able to design and think about their site’s organization, but also worked with tools that were new to them.

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

The Peopling of Staten Island

Professor: Catherine Lavender
ITF: Kamili Posey
Campus: College of Staten Island
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/lavender2014/

During Seminar 2, Macaulay Scholars investigate the role of immigration and migration in shaping New York City’s identity — past, present, and future. This website documents immigration of various communities to Staten Island. The information discussed includes demographic patterns, history of the community, literature about the communities, and community resources and institutions. This website was created by students in Professor Lavender’s Seminar Two class in Spring 2014 at the College of Staten Island. Students taking this course come from a variety of majors and fields of study including: chemistry, biology, psychology, history, pre-law, political science, engineering, math, physics, education, and the liberal arts.

NYC’s D Train

Professor: Nancy Aries
ITF: Owen Toews
Campus: Baruch College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/aries2014finalproject/

In Spring 2014, professor Nancy Aries’ CUNY Baruch/Macaulay Honors seminar studied the diverse neighborhoods linked by New York City’s D Train. The class broke into small teams, each researching one of seven neighborhoods. The primary purpose of the site is to bring together the seven neighborhood studies, with links to individual sites for each neighborhood (students decided to use the same theme for each of their sites, which gave them the united aesthetic they wanted, but limited some groups in what they could do). The secondary purpose of the site is to host a map displaying the seven stops along the D train. The map includes bubbles displaying photos and basic information for each stop, giving a nice overview of the entire project. However, the way the Google map embed displays makes it a bit difficult to see all this information at once. Students chose the ever-popular sliding doors theme to create a colorful, engaging snapshot of human life on the D train.

Seminar 2: The Peopling of NYC | Prof. Ken Guest

Professor: Ken Guest
ITF: Gwen Shaw
Campus: Baruch College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/guest14/

This site was meant to supplement the students work throughout the course, acting as an archive of their experience conducting research and field work on East Broadway in New York City under the supervision of Dr. Ken Guest. For their projects, the students conducted their own fieldwork, formulated questions for further research, and engaged the community with site visits and interviews. This site acts as an archive of their experiences in class and a resting place for their final projects. Although ultimately designed for their final projects, I am especially proud of the students reflections on creating both hand-drawn and digitized maps– they offer astute insights and cost-benefit analysis of each mode of representation.

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.