In/Migration: How Immigrants and Migrants Changed New York City From a Small Trading Post to an Emerging World Metropolis

The question is: Who Created New York City? The answer is: slaves, immigrants, migrants—its people! This course traces the development of New York City beginning with its first inhabitants, the Lenape. It then follows its growth from a small trading post at the tip of Manhattan into a great commercial and cultural center. With special emphasis on the factors that push people out of one place and pull them into another, what they find when they arrive in their new environments, and how they struggle, negotiate, and figure out how to survive there—including how they exert power and how they deal with power exerted over them—we will explore the social, political, economic, and cultural history of the city through a wide range of readings that include primary source documents and historical scholarship. We will also experience the rhythms of this famous metropolis on its streets, as we attempt to understand the complex relationship between the city’s social history and its built environment through field trips (attendance required). The class focuses on those groups of migrants and immigrants who entered into and lived in the city from the early 1600s to the 1920s. Our historical explorations will provide an understanding of how and why New York City came to be what it is today and how, as a dynamic organism, it continues to change. Although the course covers a particular time period, students may do conference projects that cover years not specifically addressed in the course. Open to juniors, seniors and graduate students