Syllabus (Updated)

To download the original syllabus, click on (Dis)Placing Urban Histories, Spring 2016, Working Syllabus

To access the revised sections of the syllabus as of April 1, 2016, please read below:

Your Responsibilities and Grading

  • Class Participation: Attendance, thoughtful reading, and active participation in class discussions are essential components of the seminar format. Please come to class prepared to contribute fully to discussions.  You may find it especially helpful to take notes as you read and come to class with a few points and/or questions you would like to address.  (15%)
  • Journal (4x): At five points during the semester you will be given an assigned task – fieldwork, transcription, reflection, etc. – that will take the form of a journal entry. Each entry should be 2-3pp long (except the transcript, which likely will be longer.)  The journal will be graded as a whole, not per entry. (20%)
  • Completion of CITI Training Modules.  This is for Human Subjects Testing, which is required by NYU’s Institutional Review Board for oral history.  Your oral histories and work will not be publicly available unless you complete this training.  (5%)
  • Research-Based On-Line Exhibit: Using Omeka, you will demonstrate your ability to synthesize primary and secondary sources into a coherent and compelling analytical argument or story through an on-line exhibit of your own.  The form your exhibit takes — either an analytical argument or a story — will depend primarily on the information you are able to collect in your oral history interview.  Your primary sources will consist of the oral history you conducted, any material culture you collected from your subject, and neighborhood fieldwork.  Secondary research should make use of any texts (at least two) that you have read in class, accessed through our web discussion board, or independently. (30%)
  • Exhibit: The final project for this course is a collaborative effort to assemble and mount a museum-quality exhibit built upon the oral histories and material you have collected about Los Sures and the ways in which gentrification has changed the neighborhood.  (30%)

Class Schedule (Remaining Classes and Assignments Only)

April 8:   The Politics of “Neighborhood History”

  • READ: Nancy Raquel Mirabal, “Geographies of Displacement: Latina/os, Oral History, and The Politics of Gentrification in San Francisco’s Mission District” (2009)
  • REVIEW IN CLASS: Buscada, The Soho Memory Project, MORUS

April 15:  ON-LINE EXHIBIT DRAFT #1 DUE

JOURNAL #4 DUE Monday, 4/18

April 22:  Meet at El Museo de Los Sures,  120 S. 1st Street, Brooklyn 

  • BRING: Your transcripts, your Omeka exhibit drafts and whatever you would like to display in the final exhibit.  To show your Omeka exhibit, you may wish to bring your laptop.

OMEKA EXHIBIT DUE BY MIDNIGHT, APRIL 25.

April 29:  Designing the Exhibit

  • READ: Nina Simon, The Participatory Museum, Ch. 1, 6, pp. 1-22; 203-230

May 7:   Install exhibit/Opening Night  — Please note that installation and opening night depend on whether your exhibits are complete and ready for public viewing.  We cannot begin installing until May 7.

 JOURNAL #5 DUE Monday, 5/9