History of New York City (Honors)
New York's 400 square miles play host to the most relentlessly commercial, pluralistic and dynamic city in the history of the world. Her more than eight million residents may represent the far extremes of cultural and economic difference, but they navigate the challenges of urban life in relative harmony. How did such a place come to be? What forces made and continue to make it possible? What does the future hold for New York? Through visits to New York's historic sites and neighborhoods, interviews with prominent authors, politicians, and community activists, and by engaging both primary and secondary texts, students discover and explore the individuals, ideas and events that have shaped the City over the centuries. Our approach to the study of history is skills-based, with special emphasis on the process of inquiry and on techniques for thinking critically about texts and ideas. Course highlights include a study of Harlem, an extensive exploration of immigration and a lengthy, research-based essay on a student’s topic of choice. Recent essays have explored AIDS activism in New York, Irish Republicanism, Gentrification, Zoning Laws and Islam in New York City.
Frequently Used Texts:
- Foner, Nancy. From Ellis Island to JFK: New York`s Two Great Waves of Immigration
- Jackson, Kenneth T. The Great Metropolis: Poverty and Progress in New York City
- Jackson, Kenneth T. and David S. Dunbar. Empire City: New York Through the Centuries.
- Riis, Jacob. How the Other Half Lives.
- Sleeper, Jim. The Closest of Strangers: Race Politics in New York City
- Wang, Harvey. Harvey Wang’s New York
Literature of New York City (Honors)
The written literature of New York City is, like the city itself, vast and eclectic. In any given semester, we might engage the short stories of James Baldwin, Junot Diaz, Delmore Schwartz, John Cheever and Toni Cade Bambara; the novels of Danzy Senna, Toni Morrison, Chaim Potok, and F. Scott Fitzgerald; the plays of Edward Albee and David Auburn; and the poetry of Walt Whitman, Frank O’Hara, Allen Ginsberg, and Vladimir Mayakovsky.
Our belief, however, is that it is crucial for readers to meet with writers in order to gain a deeper understanding of the process of writing. Therefore, we not only conduct our own seminars with writers whose works we are reading, but we enlist writers in the City to participate in our authorship series.
Our Authorship Series has also taken us to On and Off Broadway productions to discuss theater performances with the cast, director, stage managers and set designers. In 2008 the fall and spring semesters discussed productions with the cast & crew of Hair,West Side Story and Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson.
In the past few years, we have met with the following authors to discuss their work:
- Chiu, Christina. Troublemaker and Other Saints
- Diaz, Junot. Drown
- Egan, Moira. Cleave
- O’Neill, Joseph. Netherland
- Jacob, Mira. “Girl.”
- Senna, Danzy. Caucasia
- Senna, Danzy. Where Did You Sleep Last Night?
- Seshdri, Vijay The Long Meadow.
- Stringer, Lee. Grand Central Winter
Urban Environments (Honors)
This course centers around three important questions: How do human beings impact the natural environment? How does the urban environment amplify this impact? How is the interaction between humans and environment distinct in New York City? Students examine the City from multiple perspectives to uncover the ways in which human beings react to often unseen natural forces and attempt to control and even eliminate the restrictions that nature has imposed.
Students begin the semester with an exploration of the geography and geology of New York City. They explore the composition of New York's physical bedrock and the unseen (or unrecognized) evidence of New York City's original topography. Students learn to be alert to clues in the landscape and to trust their intuition in reading the lay of the land. Once attuned to the idea that nature has shaped our City, they discover example after example of the ways in which the triumphs of humans are brilliantly challenged by forces outside of their control.
The Urban Environments Curriculum is organized by distinct projects, where students work individually and in groups as scientists in the city to develop and test hypotheses or design proposed solutions to issues of resource constraints. For example, early in the semester Urban Environments explores housing in New York City. For this project, students interact with New Yorkers in their homes, conduct housing surveys of New York residents, visit the Lower East Side Tenement Museum and serve those without homes in order to experience New York's housing constraints first hand. In groups, students identify a specific housing constraint and generate a proposed solution, which they illustrate with a model and architectural drawings. They then present their designs to a panel of architects, preservationists and urban planners for feedback. Other projects have included public policy surrounding the major oil spill in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, a design proposal for remediating area brownfields (contaminated sites), an exploration of food, its origins and cultural implications, and a study of New York City’s parks.
Frequently Used Texts:
- Goldstein, Eric A. and Mark A. Izeman. H2O: Highlands To Oceans: A First Close Look at the Outstanding Landscapes and Waterscapes of the New York/New Jersey Metropolitan Region.
- Hiss, Tony and Christopher Meier. The New York Environment Book.
- Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities.
- Matthews, Anne. Wild Nights: Nature Returns to the City.
- Mittelbach, Margaret and Michael Crewdson. Wild New York: A Guide to the Wildlife, Wild Places, and Natural Phenomena of New York City.
- Stilgoe, John. Outside Lies Magic: Regaining History and Awareness in Everyday Places.
- Trefil, James. A Scientist in the City.