In the second Honors College Seminar, students will investigate the role of immigration, migration, and social change in shaping the city’s identity – past, present, and future. Topics to be considered include the social dynamics that affect the relations between racial and ethnic groups in diverse neighborhoods; the factors that have driven and drawn people to New York since the 17th century; the different ways that religion, race, gender, and ethnicity have shaped immigrant encounters with the city; the formation and social organization of immigrant communities in such neighborhoods as the Five Points, the Lower East Side, Harlem, El Barrio, Little Italy, and Chinatown; the impact of successive waves of newcomers on urban culture and politics; and the continuing debates over assimilation and Americanization. Field trips will complement reading, writing, and research assignments. Students will work together in groups to study a shopping street in a “melting pot” neighborhood somewhere in the city, collect oral histories from local business owners and create a multimedia profile of the street that will be uploaded to a public website titled “Storefront Survivors” at the end of the semester.
Readings
There are no required books for this course! All of our readings will be accessible electronically, through links embedded in the class schedule.
Assignments / Expectations
- Contributions in Class and Participation in Tours (10%)
- Weekly Reading Responses (20%)
- Oral History #1 (10%)
- Oral History #2 (10%)
- Zooming In, Zooming Out Essay (10%)
- Looking Forward, Looking Back Essay (10%)
- Your Story, Our Stories Essay (10%)
- Final Multimedia Profile on Storefront Survivors (20%)
Class Discussions, etc.: Most classes, we’ll spend some time discussing the required readings. It is vital that you do the readings on time and come ready to talk about them. If you come to class on time and contribute frequently to class discussions and participate enthusiastically in workshops and tours, you can expect a very good participation grade. If you contribute only a handful of times to class discussions during the semester, you cannot.
Tours: There will be two or three tours or museum visits during the semester. Each one will be between two and three hours long. These will be scheduled either during class time or on the weekends. They are mandatory and an important part of the class. Early in the semester, I will ask you all for a one time $20 contribution to pay for our tours. Macaulay offers a tour budget, but it doesn’t cover all of our activity outside of the classroom. When we go on a tour, bring some cash for lunch and/or coffee breaks, and dress warmly if it’s cold! Like, really, really warmly. Trust me, if it’s anywhere near or below freezing, you can’t overdo it.
Weekly Reading Responses: Almost every week, you will be asked to post a 300-500 word response to the readings for that week no later than 10pm the night before class. These are a really important component of your grade in the class, because they are the only individual (as opposed to group) written assignments. The reading responses are your chance to engage with the class material on a direct, subjective and personal level. Most weeks, I will provide some questions to help you frame your responses, but feel free to ignore these if you would prefer to simply respond critically to the readings. All weekly assignments should be submitted as posts to our class website. Half of the credit for each reading response will be automatically awarded if it is submitted on time and meets the basic requirements. The other half will be based on my evaluation of your responses at the end of the semester. (This means you’ll be able to go back and revise them before they are definitively graded.) Once or twice during the course of the semester, I may provide some feedback on your reading responses and give you a sense of how you are doing with them.
Storefront Survivors: In addition to your reading responses, the primary assignment in the class is a research project on a local shopping street located in a diverse neighborhood somewhere in the city. Instead of generating a research paper, this project will involve creating five online multimedia “essays.”
- Oral History #1 and Oral History #2: By approximately the midpoint of the semester, you and your partner will have conducted four interviews with owners of storefront businesses. You (individually) will write up two blog posts (Oral History #1, and Oral History #2) each one based on one of these interviews, and will upload them to the class website. (You will have to decide with your partner how to divide up the interviews.)
- Zooming In, Zooming Out: For this essay you will use census data and maps to locate one of your businesses in the social context of the neighborhood.
- Looking Forward, Looking Back: For this essay, you will use archival materials to locate your business in the historical context of the neighborhood.
- Final Profile on Storefront Survivors: This is, in essence, the final project for the course – a multimedia profile of one of the businesses you studied, to be uploaded on a public website that will showcase your collective work this semester and that may help to call attention to the plight of small, independently owned storefront businesses in the city. You can choose to do an individual post, or you can collaborate with your research partner and create one together.
“Your Story, Our Stories” Essay: For this essay, you will choose an object that is relevant to the immigration story of someone you know, and tell a story about the object.
LEARNING OUTCOMES: This course is oriented toward achieving the following five learning outcomes:
- The ability to analyze and respond critically to academic and journalistic texts.
- The ability to develop and create a multimedia online essay based on original research (e.g. interviews) as well as secondary sources (e.g. census data).
- The ability to work in groups to plan and execute a collaborative research project.
- General familiarity with social science as a mode of inquiry.
- General knowledge of the sociology and history of New York City, particularly its immigrant communities.
ACADEMIC INTEGRITY: Hunter College regards acts of academic dishonesty (e.g., plagiarism, cheating on examinations, obtaining unfair advantage, and falsification of records and official documents) as serious offenses against the values of intellectual honesty. The College is committed to enforcing the CUNY Policy on Academic Integrity and will pursue cases of academic dishonesty according to the Hunter College Academic Integrity Procedures. If you draw on material written by someone else, you must acknowledge their work by enclosing any direct quotations in quotes and by citing all resources properly. When you draw upon a concept or a theory developed by an author, even when you do not quote or paraphrase that author, cite their work appropriately. When in doubt, refer to the “Writing from Sources” guide published by the Hunter College Reading and Writing Center and available both here and on this website. All cases of plagiarism will be reported to the Dean’s office.
ACCESSIBILITY: In compliance with the American Disability Act of 1990 (ADA) and with Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Hunter College is committed to ensuring educational parity and accommodations for all students with documented disabilities and/or medical conditions. It is recommended that all students with documented disabilities (Emotional, Medical, Physical, and/or Learning) consult the Office of AccessABILITY, located in Room E1214B, to secure necessary academic accommodations. For further information and assistance, please call: (212) 772- 4857 or (212) 650-3230.
