Faculty Statement

Faculty Statement

This is the third consecutive year in which I have taught the Macaulay Honors College Seminar Two, The Peopling of New York City.

I wanted to change my approach this term. In the past I had treated this strictly as an immigration course. My classes had produced wikis about the development of the various ethnic communities and their geographic locations within the five boroughs.

However, there were a number of problems with this approach. First, student projects that involved building websites or wiki pages seemed divorced from the course content in an uncomfortable way. I wanted to make the course content and the final project tightly knit together.

Second, I was very well aware that students who picked immigrant communities arriving in the 19th century, or geographic locations that were only developing early in New York City’s history were faced with the problem that they could not necessarily find adequate research resources.

In order to change this dynamic, I determined to focus the class on the history of New York City since 1945. Certainly there has been substantial immigration and out-migration from the city in this period. And there has been much change of other kinds as well. So The Peopling of New York City became The Peopling, Un-peopling and Re-peopling of New York City, as the class traced the process of suburbanization, immigration and redevelopment, population shifts and other changes within the city itself as the term moved along.

This semester I also encouraged students to take any topic they wished in the history of New York City since 1945 that dealt with the city’s people. I was, and am, effectively making an argument that for both people and places, identities are not ascribed, but made and remade.

I also elected to have students make multimedia presentations of their findings. As one of the students pointed out above, this meant that they had to learn to write in an entirely different language. Each one of these short films that you are about to watch was produced from an outline, has a thesis, and draws upon much evidence to make an argument. At the same time the students learned the same kind of research skills that would be necessary in any research paper, including going to books and archives, maps and images, census records and crime reports. But the medium itself seemed to require a more human element. Their movies could not simply be illustrated papers. The movie had to “talk” to the viewer in order to be interesting. That led them to oral histories.

Two of our groups secured interviews with former Mayor Edward Koch. Other groups found CUNY faculty to speak to. Still others located Vietnam veterans and other knowledgeable people who could give them direct, first-person impressions of subject under study. These interviews were done with care and with proper respect to professional guidelines.

In all, I believe these groups found themselves working at a much higher level than they imagined they might do at the beginning of the semester. They learned new skills; they learned how to critically view media products, they learned how to conduct themselves with grace and poise while speaking with people they do not know; they learned a tremendous amount about their own topics in a fashion that was built directly into the course syllabus; they learned by creating very moving, intelligent short films about the history of New York City since 1945. Most importantly, they learned how to identify their own strengths and weaknesses and work in a team environment as they connected directly with the members of a wide range of New York City communities. All of this allowed them to create very fine short films, as you are about to see.

I am very proud of them all.

As a final word, I am compelled to say something about the assistance of my Instructional Technology Fellow, John Sorrentino. This project, like the other two before it, would simply not have been possible without John. I have enjoyed his company, valued his knowledge, and most of all come to depend upon his sense of humor and balance over the past three years. John will not be an ITF at Brooklyn next year, as he will be joining the instructional technology staff at Macaulay Central where he will be able to employ his talents more broadly in the Macaulay Honors College Community. I will miss him and his help.

Philip F. Napoli
Assistant Professor
US Social and Public History
514 Whitehead Hall
Brooklyn College
City University of New York

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