In the fall of 2017, I taught a talented group of freshmen students that had come to CCNY from around the world. We had people from California, Taiwan, China, and Central America as well as Brooklyn, Harlem, and the Bronx! We talked about gentrification and studied its impact on the inhabitants of an area–mostly within the confines of New York City.
Most of the students had first-hand encounters with gentrification whether being forced to move because of rent increases, paying triple for a soda at the corner bodega, or going to an “apartheid school,” everyone had a story. It seemed that even the newest arrivals to NYC had a history with gentrification and could add their unique perspective to the conversation.
This document repository is the student’s response to an annotated bibliography assignment. Students focused on different issues in gentrification such as housing; food deserts; whiteness or lack of diversity; poverty; public schools; inequality, or economic justice. They found a variety of texts that covered every period of NYC.
The assignment was to write a summary of the article, book, film or other media and relate it back to their thesis. In addition to the synopsizes, they also wrote brief biographies of the authors and publications.
When the students turned in their work, I realized that we had something much more than an academic exercise, we had a repository of knowledge that could assist others in research. In the documents were references to photos, articles, books, poems, videos, and movies about gentrification from all viewpoints. This was a treasure of information not to be dismissed or relegated to the backwaters of BlackBoard.
My first step to making a repository was to get the students’ permission to use their work. Then I went to SOA library to see if they already had a repository, but they didn’t and sent me to the main library. Ching-jung Chen told me how to create the repository, and I have finally done it. So on this site is the fruits of 20+ student’s work from the fall of 2017.
