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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Peopling of Astoria, NY

Professor: Sofya Aptekar
ITF: Fiona Lee
Campus: Hunter College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/sa14

This website showcases the work of Macaulay Honors students at Hunter College in Seminar 2: The Peopling of New York in spring 2014. Focusing on the neighborhood of Astoria in western Queens, students investigated the role of immigration and migration in shaping the New York City’s identity— past, present, and future. Students maintained a Class Blog, discussing issues such as immigration, diversity, public space, gentrification, segregation through analyses of current events. As a supplement to their final research papers, they also created short documentaries that showcased a selection of their findings about the neighborhood.

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.

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.

Peopling of New York Documentaries 2014

Professor: Fatima Shama
ITF: Anton Borst
Campus: Hunter College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/peoplingofnydocumentaries14/

This site was developed by several students in Professor Shama’s seminar to showcase the six documentaries students developed in small groups over the course of the semester. The videos explore the experiences of immigrants in NYC through the lens of their vital–yet often invisible–roles in the city’s economies.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Staten Island: Ethnic Foodways and Food Deserts

Professor: Catherine Lavender
ITF: Scott Henkle
Campus: College of Staten Island
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/peoplingofnycspring2013/

Most people don’t think of Staten Island as part of NYC, or associate it with the rich cultural diversity commonly associated with the “Big Apple.” However, just a ferry ride across the harbor, Staten Island resonates with the culture of the city, and in its own unique way. Staten Island also has a rich food history. Each immigrant group has brought with it unique tastes and flavors from around the world. This site explores the foods of Staten Island, and the way in which its islanders eat, giving special attention to food deserts in the past twenty years.

The Peopling of New York

Professor: Peter Vellon
ITF: Caroline Erb
Campus: Queens College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/vellon13/finalprojects/

During the Spring 2013 semester, the students in Professor Peter Vellon’s Seminar 2 class researched the relationship between immigration and migration, race, and class on the Lower East Side’s identity. They translated their research into websites geared toward the general public with the help of the course’s Instructional Technology Fellow, Caroline Erb-Medina. Students were divided into groups to focus on the history, labor, food, culture, and demographics of different ethnic groups on the Lower East Side. Along with their research, students also learned how to customize a WordPress site. Every student participated in making the main design decisions for their sites. Each group incorporated tools including Google Maps, iMovie, iPhoto, and embedded music on their sites.

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.

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.

Dr Cho's The Peopling of New York

Professor: Grace Cho
ITF: Kamili Posey
Campus: Staten Island
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/mitchell2012/

This website is a catalogue of Professor Cho’s Seminar 2 students’ food and culture expedition in four New York City neighborhoods: Jackson Heights, Queens; Tompkinsville, Staten Island; Brighton Beach, Brooklyn; and Lower East Side, Manhattan. The students conducted ethnographic research on each neighborhood with an eye towards its respective history, demographic makeup, immigrant traditions, and food cultures. They did this while also balancing—and in some cases, incorporating—their own firsthand experiences as observers and/or participants.