Mapping Time: History of the Lower East Side
Wed, Jun 7, 2017
1:00 PM–3:30 PM
The New York Public Library, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, 476 Fifth Avenue (at 42nd Street), Trustees Room
Join the Bard High School Early College students who participated in our interdisciplinary digital humanities course “Mapping Time,” as they showcase their final projects on the history of the Lower East Side at this End of Year Colloquium.
In spring 2017, the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center, CUNY collaborated with Bard High School Early College and the New York Public Library to create the Lower East Side history course “Mapping Time.” The course aimed to accomplish two goals: 1) to teach high school students the rich history of the school’s neighborhood and 2) to foster digital literacy with the newest archival and digital research techniques.
Students used NYPL’s new Space/Time Directory, its digital collections, and archival holdings to explore the history of the school’s neighborhood through photographs, maps, building plans, oral histories, government records, newspaper articles, art, and literature, and by making personal visits to the site of their own choice around the school’s neighborhood. The goal of this project was to have high school students immerse themselves in primary material to uncover and ultimately narrate the history and evolution of the city. In essence, high school students had the opportunity to write history—and, in most cases, a history that had never been written before.
By working directly with two Teaching Fellows from the Graduate Center, CUNY and NYPL’s staff and through an interdisciplinary study of history and a comprehensive grounding in research methodologies, students received training that not only prepared them for their future academic endeavors but, more importantly, gave them the unique opportunity to be part of a larger civic project, with their findings becoming a permanent fixture of NYPL’s digital resources.
This event is free and open to the public, but to attend, please click here to RSVP.
Cosponsored by The New York Public Library and Bard High School Early College.
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