Key upcoming dates:

May 5 – Due date for the content of your final web project (500 words).

May 12 – Due date for adding your content to the final web project site, and for your final neighborhood projects.

Where the assignment is a post, please post to the appropriate assignment category on the day it is due. Please note a hard copy is also due in class.

Assignment #1: Your own immigration or migration story
DUE February 10

If your parents did not immigrate from abroad, try to find out what ancestor or ancestors did and how you ended up where you live now. What was it like coming to this city? What experiences stand out? What hardships were endured? What were the benefits? What was the emotional journey?

Some specific questions to consider: How did you or your family become New Yorkers? Would you consider yourself or any relative an immigrant? Where did you or your family live before coming to the United States? When and why did your family leave and what was the situation in their country at the time? Who made the trip, who was left behind, and why? How did you or your relatives get here? Why was the United States the destination? What changes in lifestyle did you or your family make when arriving here? What were your family’s hopes? Were they realized? (1,000 words)

Assignment #2: An immigrant journey
DUE February 24

Using the model of “From the Subway to the Synagogue” in Alfred Kazin’s A Walker in the City, trace an immigrant journey of your own or one that interests you. (This assignment can be interpreted loosely; for example, you might imagine and try to reconstruct a journey one of your ancestors might have taken.) As with the Kazin essay, yours should include a description of a specific journey related to the life of an immigrant in New York and an exploration of the emotional issues raised by that journey. (1,000 words)

Assignment #3: Objects of history
DUE March 31

After the class visit to the Tenement Museum, students will be asked to select an object that has been important in their lives and/or within their families (a religious artifact, an item of clothing, a cooking implement, a plaything, etc.) and write about its role in their own immigrant history. A goal will be to include photographs of family members for whom the item has been important, along with possible audio or video material. The responses will be incorporated into a website the museum is creating, exploring how specific objects related to religion, work, education, values, traditions, recreation, food, and clothing teach us in a concrete fashion about the history of immigration in New York City. (500 words)

You might want to check out this article about the project as you prepare to write this assignment.

Assignment #4: Neighborhood portrait
DUE May 12

This is the major writing assignment for the seminar. Working individually or in groups, you’ll be asked to choose a neighborhood that is interesting in terms of its ethnic history and to tell its story through factual and statistical information (history, demographics, physical appearance, etc.), your own observations, and its residents’ experiences, based on in-person interviews. More details here. (1,500 words)