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.

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

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.

What Happened When the Lights Went Out?

Professor: Philip Kasintz
ITF: Anton Borst
Campus: Hunter College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/downtownhurricanesandy/

This site, designed and built by a team of students, showcases the documentary projects Professor Philip Kasinitz’s seminar developed in small groups over the course of the semester. Each group was asked to investigate how the social history and social networks of a particulal lower Manhattan neighborhood shaped its inhabitants’ experience of and response to the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. It was a focused research question on a very relevant topic that gave students a lot of room to express their own point of view. Professor Kasinitz blocked off a considerable amount of time so that students could approach the project in stages throughout the spring: we led discussions and workshops on conducting interviews, planning through storyboarding and outlines, developing (and sticking to) a thesis, and, finally, how best to present the documentaries to the public. However, I think we both agreed that even more time could have been devoted to the project. In particular, I thought it would have helped if students had been asked to conduct more interviews and gather more material so they had a surplus of footage to choose from in telling more pointed stories. Bottom-line: to do even a 3-5 minute quality video takes A LOT of work and draws (or should draw) on many of the same skills as writing a research paper: namely planning, writing, gathering material, and developing a thesis or coherent point of view. As far as the site itself, I think the map navigation on the homepage is striking, attractive, and simple. I encouraged students to think about the first impression they wanted to make with the site, to think about how to ensure that visitors would quickly be able to understand what the site was about, who created it, and why it’s interesting–and I think they succeeded in that.

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.