Seminar 2 Encyclopedia

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.

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.

Exploring Diversity in Jackson Heights

JacksonSights compiles historical and empirical studies of Jackson Heights in Queens. Aiming at providing an overview of the diversity found within Jackson Heights, the site is divided into four different sections: history, religion, food, and fashion. Information has been gleaned from on-site excursions, personal interviews, mini-ethnographic studies, and scholarly research materials. In addition to representing the culmination of the class’s exploration, this site hopes to share gained insights and to transform into learning to appreciate the hardships, the triumphs, and the rich heritages offered by the people of New York City.