Seminar 2 Encyclopedia

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?

Bensonhurst: Two Albanians and a Jew go to 86th Street

Professor: Karen Williams
ITF: Alexis Carrozza
Campus: Brooklyn College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/peoplingofbensonhurst/

This site reflects the course’s emphasis on the five senses as an means of ethnographic research. The site does not focus on a particular ethnic group though the annotated bibliography in the Resources section offers insight into the changing demographics of Bensonhurst.

A Day in Downtown Brooklyn

Professor: Karen Williams
ITF: Alexis Carrozza
Campus: Brooklyn College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/barclays/

The students conceived their audience as visitors unfamiliar with downtown Brooklyn and as a result created a site that is easy to navigate, informative, and dynamic. Content hosted at the site includes social media, video, audio, photographs that fulfill the course’s focus on ethnographic research using the five senses. The reflection papers from the students demonstrate a thoughtful approach to the project while the site’s functionality reflects the students’ determination that this site be useful to anyone who looking for information about downtown Brooklyn.

Five Dudes Walk Into Brighton

Professor: Karen Williams
ITF: Alexis Carrozza
Campus: Brooklyn College
URL: https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/ethnographyatbrightonbeach/

This site provides a comprehensive introduction to Brighton Beach as told by the five group members. This class focused on the “five senses” as a lens to understand the neighborhood and the site content reflects this approach: audio of sounds, video interviews with residents, and field notes from the trips taken to the neighborhood.

Flatbush-Ditmas Ethnography Project!

Professor: Karen Williams
ITF: Alexis Carrozza
Campus: Brooklyn College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/danielacadiadanyelle/

This site explores the large neighborhood(s) of Flatbush-Ditmas in Brooklyn. The strength of this website is the very clear geographic boundaries that help visitors understand the differences in languages, ethnicities, and retail offerings within a single neighborhood.

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.

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 Astoria Project

Professor: Christos Ioannides
ITF: Caroline Erb
Campus: Queens College
URL: https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/ioannides16_astoriaproject/

Professor Christos Ioannides’ students created a site to highlight the demographic changes, cultural outlets, institutions, and commercial ventures of Greeks in Astoria, Queens. The website showcases the highlights of the Greek community as Astoria rapidly gentrifies. Each student authored a page for the site and the entire class revised different portions of the website.

Our Top 20 NYC Albums

Professor: Chris Bonastia
ITF: Rachel Bogan
Campus: Lehman College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/twentymostnycalbums/

Students in Chris Bonastia’s class examined social and political changes in NYC’s neighborhoods via NYC’s shifting music scenes. Using the 2014 Village Voice article, The 50 Most NYC Albums Ever, as inspiration, students chose one album and researched not only the artist/album, but also the space(s) the artist wrote about and where the artist performed.

The site’s purpose is to showcase each student’s artist/album analysis + to provide some collaborative aspect (the timeline!). Students wrote final papers and then turned their papers into blog posts, adding digital components. Good stuff: a few students created a timeline, showing the progression of albums. While they didn’t end up using TimelineJS, the timeline is the homepage’s focal point and is well-made and a strong asset to the site. Another student activated the plugin, Soundy Background Music, which allowed students to attach song(s) to their posts — this really added to the flavor of the site.

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.

Astoria Project: A Brief Overview of Life in Astoria, Queens

Professor: Christos Ioannides
ITF: Caroline Erb-Medina
Campus: Queens College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/ioannides15_astoriaproject

Welcome to the Astoria Project, a website completed by the Macaulay Honors College students of Dr. Christos Ioannides’ Seminar 2 course, The Peopling of New York. Students used WordPress and custom CSS coding to create an in-depth view of the cultural, historical, and social aspects of one of the most important ethnic enclaves in New York City. These aspects, as you will see as you explore the site, range from the influence of the Greek Orthodox Church to the importance of soccer in the area. The class hopes that their efforts and the website will give you an insight into how important and amazing Astoria, NY is.

The Peopling of Flatbush

Professor: Paul Moses
ITF: Maggie Galvan
Campus: Brooklyn College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/moses2015

In Spring 2015, Paul Moses, both a Brooklyn College English Professor and journalist, led students to deeply analyze the Brooklyn neighborhood of Flatbush through a variety of methods including oral histories and archival research. Their website, The Peopling of Flatbush, featured original research from the precolonial through the contemporary era. ITF Maggie Galvan taught students methods for recording their oral histories, how navigate an array of digital resources and work with demographic databases, and worked with groups of students over a series of classes as they organized their research for presentation on the class website.

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.

Rhythm, Identity, and Turf

Professor: Chris Bonastia
ITF: Ben Miller
Campus: Lehman College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/bonastia15_turf/

The site gathers together individually researched and written multimedia-enhanced research essays by all the students in the class. These projects clustered into three themes related to the peopling of New York City: the role of musical scenes (“rhythm”), the relations among ethnic or cultural groups (“identity”), and the changing faces of particular neighborhoods (“turf”).

Each student was able to customize a “cover” image, which displays in a grid on the list of posts as well as in a parallax splash screen within each post.

Uses the Jorgen theme, with five active plugins: Aesop Story Engine, Aesop Story Front, CMB2, Co-Authors Plus, Jetpack, and Subtitles.

From Residences to Retail: The Commercialization of 57th Street

Professor: Richard Ocejo
ITF: Kevin Ambrose
Campus: John Jay
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/57thstreet/

57th Street is a very dynamic street in New York City representing decades of architectural and commercial developments. As we make our way from the West Side of Manhattan towards the East, take note of the inherent differences that come to light, not only in the buildings along 57th Street but also in the people who make up the society of the area. The phases of New York City over the years can be found on this single street in Manhattan.

Clash of Cultures: Fort Greene

Professor: Richard Ocejo
ITF: Kevin Ambrose
Campus: John Jay
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/clashofculturesfortgreene/

In this website you can learn about the neighborhood of Fort Greene, the process of gentrification it is undergoing, and the issues occurring as a result of it.

Walking Wall Street

Professor: Richard Ocejo
ITF: Kevin Ambrose
Campus: John Jay
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/walkingwallstreet/

A virtual tour of a changing neighborhood

The changing colors of williamsburg

Professor: Richard Ocejo
ITF: Kevin Ambrose
Campus: John Jay
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/williamsburggraffittiart/

THE GENTRIFICATION OF STREET ART

Authentic City

Professor: Richard Ocejo
ITF: Kevin Ambrose
Campus: John Jay
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/lesproject/

A Lower East Side Experience

The Peopling of New York City

Professor: Rafael Mutis
ITF: Joseph Pentangelo
Campus: College of Staten Island
URL: http://peoplingofnyc.tumblr.com/

The Seminar 2 class was broken up into groups which each focused on a particular population’s role in the peopling of NYC: Native Americans, Greeks, Italians, Sri Lankans, and Jewish immigrants were covered. The site presents all posts in reverse chronological order, by default as an amalgamation of all groups, but each group also tagged their posts consistently, allowing the site to be navigated by simply clicking on one of the groups’ links. Posts are almost entirely original content, including photographs, interviews, and ethnic restaurant reviews. Students were engaged and posted regularly, and took to the ease of tumblr-use quickly.

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!

A Tale of Two Coney Islands

Professor: Richard Ocejo
ITF: Scott Henkle
Campus: John Jay
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/ocejospring2014coneyisland/

This was one of three sites created for the course. The other two were: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/ocejospring14chinatown/ and http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/ocejospring14chelsea/

Gentrification* In Chelsea

Professor: Richard Ocejo
ITF: Scott Henkle
Campus: John Jay
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/ocejospring14chelsea/

This site was one of three created for the course. The other two were: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/ocejospring14chinatown/ and http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/ocejospring2014coneyisland/

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/

Astoria Project

Professor: Christos Ioannides
ITF: Caroline Erb
Campus: Queens College
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/ioannides14_astoriaproject/

For our Macaulay Seminar 2, The Peopling of New York City, we focused on the Greek influence in the ethnic enclave of Astoria. If one were to walk down Ditmars Boulevard, one would see thriving “cafenions” (Greek coffee shops), Greek regional organizations, Greek diners and restaurants, Greek Orthodox Churches, and most notably, a bustling community rich with Greek tradition. Our seminar was dedicated to this flourishing Greek community in Astoria, and this website is the culmination of a semester’s work as we discovered how Greek immigrants made Astoria their new home without losing traditions from their heritage.

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.

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.

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

Religious Life on Staten Island and New York City

Professor: Melissa Borja
ITF: Kamili Posey
Campus: College of Staten Island
URL: http://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/borja2014/

This spring, the students of Prof. Borja’s Macaulay Honors College seminar studied “The Peopling of New York City,” with a special focus on Staten Island. By conducting original research with archival sources and multilingual oral history interviews, we endeavored to document the rich diversity of religious practices and institutions on Staten Island, the most understudied borough of New York City. Ultimately, our research and our website were motivated by a public-minded commitment to Staten Island. Our goals were to deepen understanding of Staten Island’s changing population, to share stories of religious life on the ground, and to create a public archive in the service of preserving the collective history—and diverse histories—of our community.