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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Neighborhood Projects

Professor: Angie Beeman
ITF: Amanda Licastro
Campus: Baruch College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/beemanneighborhoods/

This site is the final project for Dr. Angie Beeman’s Seminar 2 course on the “People of NYC.” This site was created completely by the students in this course and the content was generated by their research.

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.

Seminar 2: The Peopling of New York Spring 2013

Professor: Margaret Chin
ITF: Pamela Burger
Campus: Hunter College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/chinatownsdocumentaries/

This site for the public-facing project for Margaret Chin’s Seminar 2. At the request of the professor and students, the course site, used for weekly blog posts, assignments, and course information, was kept separate. This site features four brief documentaries that explore different aspects of the two Chinatowns of Manhattan and Brooklyn. Initially, the assignment asked students to document the different responses to Hurricane Sandy, but many groups had trouble finding enough information. In the end, the Manhattan groups profiled Chinatown, whereas the Brooklyn groups focused more on responses in Coney Island and Bensonhurst to Sandy. Each group was in charge of their video’s dedicated webpage, and the entire class collaborated on designing the home page.

The Peopling of East Broadway

Professor: Ken Guest
ITF: Owen Toews
Campus: Baruch College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/guest2013/

This site displays students’ research findings in a brief, visually attractive way. It allows students to share multi-media creations, such as video, photography, and visual presentations. The site functions as a static, outward-facing exhibition of student work, rather than as an evolving, interactive space for students to share and communicate over time. Because of the way the assignment was structured – students were each assigned segments of the East Broadway strip to research and report back on – gathering their work together on this site conveys an overall sense of place produced by students in collaboration over the course of the semester.

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.

Gentrification in New York City

Professor: David Rosenberg
ITF: Emily Sherwood
Campus: Baruch College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/rosenberg13/

The Changing Personas of New York City: What is gentrification? Gentrification emerges in lower income level neighborhoods where the dynamics of the area change completely. It often involves the poor residents being pushed out by the new residents, who are significantly wealthier than the former. The average income increases, as well as rent property tax, real estate. Old buildings are modernized, and new infrastructures are built. New York City has certainly faced gentrification in many of its neighborhoods, including Chinatown, the Meatpacking District, Astoria, Harlem, and Williamsburg. Cultural, economical and social reforms have led to a series of numerous changes in NYC. These neighborhoods have encountered numerous transformations, for better or for worse. This site will give an insight into these neighborhoods and demonstrate the role gentrification plays in them.

Making it in New York

Professor: Jackie Brown
ITF: Fiona Lee
Campus: Hunter College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/collectiveproject/

This website presents students’ findings and reflections on what they learned in addressing the question, What does it take to “make it” in New York? Popular media, as captured in the music of Frank Sinatra (“If I can make it here, then I can make it anywhere…”) and of Jay-Z and Alicia Keys (“New York/concrete jungle where dreams are made up/there’s nothing you can’t do/Now you’re in New York”), New York City is pictured as a city of endless opportunity for those who have what it takes. Working in groups, students explored the question from a range of perspectives: people who are or who have experienced homelessness; adult English language learners; workers handing out free newspapers at subway stations; subway commuters encountering solicitors; and Hunter College students on the topic of diversity.

Students opted to use Prezi to showcase their findings, a tool that worked especially well when they presented their research and website to their peers in person. For readers encountering the site on their own, the text accompanying the Prezi slideshows, as well as on the page explaining the overall theme of the project, is a helpful guide that ties together the wide range of perspectives presented. The header image, a modification of an image of the well known piece of graffiti art created by a student in the class, also captures the themes of struggle, defiance and fortitude reflected in the stories the class encountered in completing the project.

Seminar II: The Peopling of New York

Professor: Mike Benediktsson
ITF: Jesse Goldstein
Campus: Hunter College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/benediktsson2013

Our public facing work consisted of short video documentaries produced by small teams of students. Our website has a page in which all of these videos are embedded, though this site was not a focal point of our work. All of the videos are on vimeo and students are encouraged to link to them, add them to their personal eportfolios, etc.

Street | Lights: Micro-Documentary

Professor: Margaret Chin
ITF: Karen Gregory
Campus: Hunter College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/chinstreetlights2013/

Peopling of New York | Spring 2013
Prof Margaret M. Chin Thursday

Two themes developed as our class tried to capture the latest developments in the oldest and the newest New York City
Chinese neighborhoods, in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. It was clear in lower Manhattan that Sandy had lasting
effects on neighborhood institutions and the Chinese community. The collection of documentaries shows how stores, individual workers, and community organizations pulled together after the storm, “After the Lights Went Out”.

On the other hand, in Brooklyn, near Avenue U, the effects of Sandy weren’t as great. Instead, the students found that there were “Two Sides of the Street” along Avenue U, and these documentaries show how the Russian and Chinese immigrants coexisted right next to each other, peacefully and still apart.

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.

Urban Ethnography

Professor: Ida Susser
ITF: Fiona Lee
Campus: Hunter
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/susser11/

Professor Ida Susser’s class looked at three varied area and five neighborhoods in New York: Chinatown, the Greenpoint/Williamsburg area, and Harlem/Morningside Heights. Students completed entries on specific issues in each area, such as Columbia’s involvement in the community and street vendors in Chinatown. The class conducted interviews, went on walking tours, and provide video, maps, bibliographic resources, and demographic information.

New York's Four Asiatowns

Professor: Margaret Chin
ITF: Mike Porter
Campus: Hunter
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/chin11/

Margaret Chin’s class compared and contrasted the communities in New York’s four Asiatowns: Bay Ridge, Brooklyn; Flushing, Queens; Manhattan’s Chinatown; and Sunset Park, Brooklyn. They examined politics, issues of gentrification, and institutions in each neighborhood, including schools, libraries, community centers, medical facilities, and cultural centers. They include photos, interviews, and maps. ITF Mike Porter supported this seminar.

Immigrant Eyes

Professor: Philip Kasinitz
ITF: Jesse Goldstein
Campus: Hunter
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/kasinitz11

Overview
In Prof Philip Kasinitz’s class at Hunter, ITF Jesse Goldstein worked with the class to make a multi-neighborhood site that presented the work of groups who completed specific investigative tasks about the areas they studied: Chelsea, Chinatown, Williamsburg, the East Village, the Upper East Side, and Jackson Heights. Each group was tasked with examining and presenting the census data for the neighborhood, comparing statistics with their own observations of the area, finding out how residents think of their neighborhood, and creating a multimedia virtual walking tour. Students also completed individual final projects about immigrant experiences in the neighborhoods.

Peopling of New York City: East Broadway, Chinatown

Professor: Ken Guest
ITF: Lynn Horridge
Campus: Baruch
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/guestspring11/

Overview:
Working with ITF Lynn Horridge, Professor Ken Guest’s class at Baruch made a site about Chinatown, focused on the East Broadway area of Manhattan. The class took a geographical approach, studying the landmarks and services offered in the area. They drew on walking tours and interviews to complete their sites.