I hope everyone is healthy and enduring these plague days. The team outline is due tomorrow and early submissions are encouraged if your team would like some early feedback. Please submit the outline on the team project site as either a post or a page. We’ll spend time in class discussing the annotated bibliography assignment, the final assignment and script, and next Thursday’s virtual field trip to Interference Archive. Team meetings are devoted to outline review and feedback, preparing to write the annotated bibliography, and the script for the final project. Please bring any questions you have about the projects for the rest of the semester.

We’ll stick with the same schedule for tomorrow’s class:

General Class meeting: 9AM -9:25AM

TEAM 1 MEETING: 9:30AM-10:05AM

TEAM 2 MEETING: 10:10AM-10:45AM

TEAM 3 MEETING: 10:50AM-11:25AM

TEAM 4 MEETING: 11:30AM-12:05PM

TEAM 5 MEETING: 12:05PM-12:40PM

Teams 1-5, please invite your professors to your team meeting before the scheduled time.

Take care and be well, everyone. See you tomorrow.

Thanks for a productive class today. All teams are making good progress. As always, reach out with questions or concerns via email or during office hours.

Here are links to a few of the information resources we discussed:

NYC Then & Now – compare arial photographs between 1924-2018

OLDNYC.org – historical photos from the NYPL, geocoded

NYPL Map Warper – historical maps overlaid onto the contemporary street grid, especially strong for fire insurance maps; see also NYC fire insurance, topographic, and property maps

The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1841-1963) and other historical digitized newspapers, free from the Brooklyn Public Library

What did I forget? Let me know in the comments.

Outlines are due on 4/23 and annotated bibliographies on 4/30; please post or share your draft outline before Thursday’s meeting to get feedback from Prof. Montgomery and me. See guidelines for each assignment. The OWL offers good advice and examples for outline and annotated bibliography assignments as well.

Please take 5 minutes and fill out the mid-term survey to offer some feedback on how we can make the class better. It’s available until Tuesday 4/21.

Take care and be well, everyone.

I truly hope everyone is healthy and safe during this terrible time. I was definitely cheered up by reading all of the reflective blog posts last week – nice work, everyone! As teams approach the annotated bibliography, it’s good practice to write reflective responses to things you’ve read. On Thursday we will have a regular class meeting at 9 via zoom, and teams will work on outline development and the annotated bibliography.

It looks like we will be able to take one of our field trips virtually. Part of our class meeting on Thursday, April 30 will be an online visit to Interference Archive, an organization close to our study site that preserves artifacts and ephemera of social movements. We will tour the newest exhibit A Visual History of Climate Justice, and learn about the Archive, its collections, and its work.

Don’t forget to take the midterm survey! It is a 6 question survey that seeks your constructive feedback on how we can make this class better.  The college decided not to administer Student Evaluations of Teaching this semester, so this is a chance to let us know how it’s going and what could be improved. The survey is open until Friday, April 17 and responses are anonymous.

I hope everyone is doing well. As you make progress with research for Learning Places and projects in your other courses, you may need access to scholarly and primary sources, including ebooks and articles, from the library’s online resources. Log in with the activated library barcode from your college ID. Type your LIB barcode number here to see if your ID has been activated for the semester. If you see the message Full library access granted. Hurray! you are good for the semester. If you get the barcode does not exist in this database… message,  please email me the information below and I’ll get your ID activated:

In class today, we discussed the updated class schedule and noted that teams have until 5pm today to post the revised draft research question.

Please take the midterm survey to give your instructors and classmates some feedback on improving the class. The survey is open through Tuesday, April 7.

Classes are not held April 8-10 and we do not meet next week, Thursday, April 9. Your professors will keep their usual office hours (Montgomery | Leonard). Stay safe and healthy, everyone.

Of interest to anyone looking for paid part-time work with a community service learning component, the deadline to apply to the CUNY Service Corps has been extended to April 19.

The reading and blogging assignment due Tuesday, April 7 is below:

Please read the following 3 pieces: one is an opinion piece by Joseph Alexiou, author of Gowanus: Brooklyn’s Curious Canal. The next is a booklet that explains zoning and offers templates for workshops and activities to better understand this complicated concept. The last is a primary source, a collection of documents from the NYC Department of City Planning, that together comprise the rezoning proposal for the Gowanus.

1. Alexiou, Joseph. “The Gowanus Canal Will Never Be Clean.” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 20 Jan. 2020. https://brooklyneagle.com/articles/2020/01/17/the-gowanus-canal-will-never-be-clean-opinion/.
2.  Center for Urban Pedagogy, What Is Zoning? 2013. welcometocup.org/file_columns/0000/0530/cup-whatiszoning-guidebook.pdf. Read pages 10-35 and 79-105.
3. Gowanus Neighborhood Planning Study from the NYC Department of City Planning, 2018. Explore and skim, but no need to read the entire study.

After you’ve read all 3 pieces, write a 150-word reflective blog post, due on April 7 by 5pm. Please respond to the following prompt:

Alexiou offers an overview of the tensions between development and environment while expressing doubt that current practices will ever result in a cleaned-up, safe environment. The Gowanus Planning Study is an overview of a plan to rezone (or upzone) the neighborhood to allow denser residential development. How could New York do things differently, what does “clean” even mean in 2020, and what right to New Yorkers have to a clean and safe place to live? Your reflection could offer a critique of current NYC zoning practices, a critique of the Gowanus draft study, and/or a critique of the EPA cleanup efforts under the Superfund project.

We can meet via zoom here: https://zoom.us/j/7827527794 or use meeting ID: 782 752 7794.

Email me with a phone # if you’d prefer.

Thanks for a good meeting today. For next Tuesday, each group should post the draft research question as a blog post on their project site, and each member should continue finding and annotating at least three primary and secondary sources that are relevant to the group’s research question. Earlier posts on primary source research and refining the research question might help, and do not hesitate to reach out with questions.

The following readings will give everyone some background information on the Gowanus. Some groups may have already found these in the course of research.

Please read the following 3 pieces: one is an opinion piece by Joseph Alexiou, author of Gowanus: Brooklyn’s Curious Canal. The next is a booklet that explains zoning and offers templates for workshops and activities to better understand this complicated concept. The last is a primary source, a collection of documents from the NYC Department of City Planning, that together comprise the rezoning proposal for the Gowanus.

1. Alexiou, Joseph. “The Gowanus Canal Will Never Be Clean.” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 20 Jan. 2020. https://brooklyneagle.com/articles/2020/01/17/the-gowanus-canal-will-never-be-clean-opinion/.
2.  Center for Urban Pedagogy, What Is Zoning? 2013. welcometocup.org/file_columns/0000/0530/cup-whatiszoning-guidebook.pdf. Read pages 10-35 and 79-105.
3. Gowanus Neighborhood Planning Study from the NYC Department of City Planning, 2018. Explore and skim, but no need to read the entire study.

After you’ve read all 3 pieces, write a 150-word reflective blog post, due on April 7 by 5pm. Please respond to the following prompt:

Alexiou offers an overview of the tensions between development and environment while expressing doubt that current practices will ever result in a cleaned-up, safe environment. The Gowanus Planning Study is an overview of a plan to rezone (or upzone) the neighborhood to allow denser residential development. How could New York do things differently, what does “clean” even mean in 2020, and what right to New Yorkers have to a clean and safe place to live? Your reflection could offer a critique of current NYC zoning practices, a critique of the Gowanus draft study, and/or a critique of the EPA cleanup efforts under the Superfund project.