Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Will Calhoun Interview, Mark Naison

Oral Histories

Summary by Eliza Anderson.

Will Calhoun is a Grammy award-winning drummer, producer, songwriter, and Bronx native.

He was born in Brooklyn but moved to the Northeast Bronx with his parents shortly after. He attended Lutheran schools as a kid in an Italian neighborhood, where he recalls having to run away from men with bats getting to and from school before switching to Evander Childs for high school. At Evander, he encountered Drummer’s Collective and Horacee Arnold, who introduced him to musicians like Elvin Jones and took him to jazz clubs in the city.

Calhoun’s first introduction to music came from …

Will Calhoun Interview, Mark Naison

Oral Histories

Summary by Eliza Anderson.

Will Calhoun is a Grammy award-winning drummer, producer, songwriter, and Bronx native.

He was born in Brooklyn but moved to the Northeast Bronx with his parents shortly after. He attended Lutheran schools as a kid in an Italian neighborhood, where he recalls having to run away from men with bats getting to and from school before switching to Evander Childs for high school. At Evander, he encountered Drummer’s Collective and Horacee Arnold, who introduced him to musicians like Elvin Jones and took him to jazz clubs in the city.

Calhoun’s first introduction to music came from …

Helen Diane Foster Interview, Mark Naison

Oral Histories

Summarized by Alan C. Ventura

In this extensive interview, Helen Diane Foster talks about her upbringing across different areas of the Bronx, her relationship with her father, Reverend T. Wendell Foster—the first black elected official to serve the Bronx—and her time spent on the city council, in turn becoming the first black woman elected to that position within Bronx County. Listen in as she and Dr. Mark Naison relive this monumental time in Bronx history, which most notably involved Foster’s attempts to stop the seizure of Macombs Dam Park for Yankee Stadium.

Gordon, Ina, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Summarized by Kathryn Amend

Ina Gordon grew up on Morris Avenue, just east of the Grand Concourse in the Bronx. She describes her childhood with two siblings in a tiny apartment, and her happy upbringing despite her family’s economic struggles. She reminisces on summers spent renting bungalows in the Catskills and childhood joys such as roller skating, visiting the library, and playing tennis.

Gordon explains the importance of education in her family, and describes how she ended up traveling to the University of Chicago for her undergraduate degree. She and her brother both received scholarships to attend. They had a …

Marlene Taylor-Ponterotto Interview, Mark Naison

Oral Histories

Summary by Eliza Anderson.

Marlene Taylor-Ponterotto is a vital member of both the Fordham and the Bronx communities who has worked diligently to promote racial justice and equity in New York City healthcare and in educational opportunities for marginalized students. Taylor graduated from Fordham College at Rose Hill in 1979 and was the only female student from her class to graduate with a Bachelors of Science in Biology. Taylor now resides in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx and is an active member of the MOSAIC alumni association and a trailblazing advocate for her patients at Heritage Clinic in Central …

Wanny Angerer Interview, Mark Naison

Oral Histories

INTERVIEWER: Lisa Betty, Mark Naison

INTERVIEWEE: Wanny Angerer

SUMMARY BY: Grace D’Ambrosio

Born in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Wanny Angerer is the founder of several global social movements. Her parents both came from small Garifuna communities and moved to larger cities to further their own education as well as expand the opportunities available to their children. Wanny’s family, including her grandparents, were leading members of the Garifuna cultural movement in Honduras. In her early years, Wanny and her siblings were raised to value education, spirituality, and community service. From a young age she was taking music and dance classes and would spend …

Patricia Payne Interview, Mark Naison

Oral Histories

Disciplines

African American Studies

Abstract

Summary by Jocelyn Defex.

This interview for the Bronx African American History Project was with Patricia Payne, a professor at Monroe College. She and Dr. Mark Naison discuss her family history and experiences growing up in the Patterson houses in the South Bronx.

Payne’s family moved to the Bronx from Harlem in 1949 and settled in the Patterson houses. Payne’s parents were from South Carolina; Her father worked as a taxman and auxiliary policeman, while her mother had limited formal education and worked occasionally as a domestic helper.

Patricia's memories of the Paterson houses began …

Maribel Gonzalez Interview Part 2, Mark Naison

Oral Histories

Summarized by Alan C. Ventura

Maribel Gonzalez is a small business owner in the Bronx and serves as sole operator of The South of France restaurant. As part of the Bronx COVID-19 Oral History Project, she sits with Fordham University senior Bethany Fernandez to share her experience of running a business during the pandemic.

Gonzalez reflects on how her business has progressed along with COVID-19 protocols since her first interview in June 2020. She discusses the ongoing challenges of running a business during the pandemic, with uncertainty and financial struggles continuing to persist with the passage of time. The flow …

"Robin", Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

“Robin” was born in 1944. Her parents were both born in the United States, with her mother’s family immigrating from Ukraine. “Robin” grew up on 205th street in an apartment until she turned 12 and her family moved to a two-family home on 208th street. While the 205th street area was both Irish and Jewish, the 208th street neighborhood was mostly Jewish. She attended PS 56, which was considered experimental because they learned Spanish in 6th grade. “Robin” remembers biking, playing basketball, and taking ballet classes.

“Robin” traveled with her family to beaches such as Fire Island, Rye Beach, and …

Maribel Gonzalez Interview Part 1, Mark Naison

Oral Histories

Summarized by Alan C. Ventura

Maribel Gonzalez is a small business owner in the Bronx and serves as sole operator of The South of France restaurant. As part of the Bronx COVID-19 Oral History Project, she sits with Fordham University senior Bethany Fernandez to share her experience of running a business during the pandemic.

Gonzalez begins by looking back at the history of the establishment, revealing the love story which gave The South of France its name and explaining the Puerto Rican-American roots of the restaurant’s cuisine. Gonzalez then shifts to reflect on the interactive pre-pandemic life in the Bronx …

Mangum, Claude, Mark Naison

Oral Histories

Summary by Eliza Anderson.

Dr. Claude Mangum is an integral member of the Fordham community, arriving first as the director of the Upward Bound program in 1969 before joining the faculty of the Institute of Afro-American Studies, which would later become the Department of African and

African-American Studies. Dr. Mangum was an assistant professor, associate professor, and chair of the department before his retirement in 2011.

Dr. Mangum began his educational career as a high school teacher, attending Queen’s College before starting to teach at John Bowne High School in Flushing, Queens. He completed a Masters and PHD at Columbia …

Gurock, Jeffrey, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Jeffrey Gurock’s parents, his father, originally from Harlem and his mother from Brooklyn, were among the first people to move into Parkchester when it opened. His father was a firefighter and his mother was a bookkeeper. Gurock was born in 1949 and lived in Parkchester until he married in 1974. After living briefly in Cincinnati, Ohio, he returned to the Bronx and has been living in Riverdale ever since.

Gurock remembers Parkchester as predominantly Irish Catholic with many Italian and Jewish children. No Hispanics or African Americans were allowed to move in until 1968. While he recognizes this segregation now, …

Seperson, Susanne, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Summarizer: Reyna Stovall

Susane Seperson was born in Germany to Polish Holocaust survivors, Annie and David Bleiburg. Due to sponsorship from extended family living in New York, Seperson’s family immigrated to the United States. The family’s first home was on Tiffany Street and Seperson remembers being taken in a carriage to Crotona Park as a young child. Later, the family moved to an apartment above Seperson’s father’s cleaning store on 355 East 187th Street off Fordham Road and the Grand Concourse.

Seperson’s family remained in the 355 East 187th Street apartment through her elementary and junior high school years in …

Rotman, Diana, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Diana Rotman was born in the Bronx to Jewish immigrant parents who migrated from what was Poland in the 1920s. The youngest of three children, Rotman grew up on Teller Avenue and remembers the demographics of the street being overwhelmingly Jewish until the Bronx’s demographics began shifting and more black and Hispanic families started moving in. This prompted Rotman’s family to move to Mosholu Parkway when she was twelve years old, where she lived until moving to Manhattan after graduating high school.

Rotman was raised in an Orthodox, Yiddish-speaking household, and her family attended shul, kept kosher, and changed dishes …

Wolfthal, Diane Fialkow, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Diane Wolfthal was born in the Bronx in 1949 and lived on Pelham Parkway. However, shortly after her birth, Wolfthal’s family moved to the Amalgamated Housing Corporation. She remembers the co-op being an idyllic utopia. The co-op, from her memory, was very homogenous, with almost every family in the compound being Jewish, socialist, or communist, and either first or second-generation migrants. Additionally, most of the Jewish families at the Amalgamated Housing Corporation were secular. Wolfthal remembers observing Jewish holidays and going to Bar Mitzvahs but never having her Jewish practices tied to a notion of God. Instead, her Jewishness was …

Journal For The Philosophical Study Of Education, Allan Johnston, Guillemette Johnston

Research Resources

J P S E

Journal for the Philosophical Study of Education

Vol. 4 (2023)

Editors: Allan Johnston, DePaul University and Columbia College Chicago Guillemette Johnston, DePaul University

Special Symposium Editor: Elias Schwieler, Stockholm University

Outside Readers:

Sabrina Bacher, Universität Innsbruck

Christian Kraler, Universität Innsbruck

James Magrini, College of DuPage

Alexander Makedon, Chicago State University/Arellano University (emeritus)

Rifkin, Howard, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Howard Rifkin was born in the Bronx. His grandparents, both maternal and paternal, were Orthodox Jews. However, Rifkin and his parents were not, although he was bar mitzvahed in an Orthodox synagogue, the Mount Eden Jewish Center. While Rifkin’s mother was a homemaker, she eventually worked as a bookkeeper for Maurice Ratner. His father worked as a truck driver.

For his education, Rifkin attended PS 70, Wade Junior High School, and Taft High School, all of which were within several blocks of his childhood home. Rifkin attended university for a few years at Pace College. However, he dropped out and …

Rosen, Michael, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Michael Rosen was born in the Bronx in Parkchester in 1943 to immigrant parents who came to New York in the early 20th century. He remembers the freedom of his childhood and going all over the city with his friends, visiting the New York Stock Exchange, sports games, and even once interviewing the artist Salvador Dalí.

Rosen had a fast-tracked education, skipping both kindergarten and one year of middle school, eventually graduating at the age of sixteen. Rosen went to PS 106 for elementary school and fondly remembers his teachers from the time. For middle school he attended Junior High …

Patriotism And The Mass Line: Ccp Ideology From Mao To Xi, Anne Elizabeth Weston

Senior Theses

China’s modern ideology and political environment have shifted over time, as lessons learned from various mass movements and policies have been incorporated into its ideological construction. Analyzing these elements and their impact on modern CCP ideology is key to understanding CCP ideology and the role it plays in Chinese politics. This paper will construct a timeline of significant movements and policies throughout modern Chinese history and examine how CCP ideology was shaped by these events.. The CCP’s ideology combines Maoist ideas, such as the mass line, with ideas of patriotism and nationalism to create governmental compliance within China. It attempts …

A Path To Achieve European Energy Security, Nicholas Wolf

Student Theses 2015-Present

The apparatus of Europe’s energy security has collapsed. The Russian Federation’s invasion of Ukraine, hydrocarbon market turmoil, and the ever-growing threat of climate change has thrust the continent into crisis. As the risks of severe recession, acute energy shortages, and climatic disasters have begun to materialize, the member states of the European Union (EU) have been left scrambling to secure novel energy supplies. In the short-term, these developments pose severe risks to the EU and its member states. Yet, opportunity often presents itself in the midst of hardship, and the European Energy Crisis of 2022 is no different. This essay …

"Foul Death, Bitter Death": On Ivan Illich's Amicus Mortis, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

No abstract provided.

"Len", Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

“Len” was born in the Bronx to Hungarian immigrants who immigrated to the United States in their early twenties. Len’s mother was a housekeeper in Brooklyn until she married Len’s father, a factory worker. After marriage, Len’s mother became a homemaker, and both of Len’s parents moved to the Bronx. Len’s mother had aspirations for him to become a rabbi, and as a result, he attended yeshiva before electing to leave parochial school for high school. Len’s family lived within two blocks of the yeshiva for the first fourteen years of his life, and Len describes his childhood as insular …

Hochberg, Herbert, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Herbert Hochberg, born in 1930, spent the first 10 years of his life in economic hardship because of the Great Depression. Both his parents migrated from Western Ukraine and lived in the Bronx since their marriage in 1928. They took in an infant to make end’s meet, and after the war his father went into the business of building two-family homes in the Bronx, while his mother stayed at home. Hochberg grew up across from Bronx Park until 1939 when his family moved to the newly developed Northeast Bronx near Allerton Avenue and Pelham Parkway. He describes the area as …

Adler, Lucille, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Her mother born in Poland and her father raised in Manhattan, Lucille Adler grew up in a two family house on Morris Avenue and 174 Street. She describes the neighborhood as 99% Jewish, with a few Black students in her public school. They would go shopping on 174 Street and she loved walking up and down to see all the shops. Her mother taught math at a Jewish school and her father had an insurance company. She envied the other girls whose mothers stayed at home, because she was a latchkey girl and would come home to an empty house …

Rothstein, Richard, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Richard Rothstein, born in 1942, was born in Beth Israel Hospital in Manhattan, and lived on Webster Avenue with his parents who initially moved to the Bronx from Manhattan. Rothstein’s mother was a Hungarian immigrant, and he spoke Hungarian at home until the age of eight. The family later moved to Harrison Avenue, where he remembers having many Italian and Irish neighbors but very few Jewish ones. However, as Rothstein’s family was not religious, their lack of Jewish neighbors was not a bother. Rothstein remembers being bullied as a kid by some of his Irish and Italian peers and recalls …

Stern, Mark, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Mark Stern was born in 1961 in the South Bronx. His paternal grandfather moved to the Bronx from Germany because of the Nazis. Stern’s maternal grandfather was from Turkey and a Ladino speaker. He moved to the Bronx where he met Stern’s paternal grandmother and got involved in the laundry business. Stern’s maternal grandmother’s family lived on Warner Street and owned a bakery, however because of local competition from Pectoris and a lack of enthusiasm for continuing the family business, the bakery closed. As a kid, Stern remembers visiting the industrial laundry building and visiting his grandparent's home in Clawson …

Brock, Joan, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Joan Brock, born 1943, grew up on Bryant Avenue between 173 and 174 Streets in the Bronx. The East Bronx was considered poorer than the West Bronx, split by the Grand Concourse. Both of her parents were born and raised in New York, and they met while they were both working in a tea factory. Her father would get into the business of selling vending machines until Brock was 13 and he bought a hardware store. Her mother never worked after marrying except to help her husband with the store.

Brock describes the neighborhood as predominantly Jewish and Italian, though …

Salinger, Marianne, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Marianne Salinger was born in Berlin, Germany in 1923 and moved to New York with her family when she was 15. Fleeing from the Nazis, her family first moved to England, then to Philadelphia, and then to Kew Gardens in Queens, New York. Salinger lived in Kew Gardens for the largest portion of her life. She remembers how initially, Kew Gardens was filled with immigrants, primarily Jewish immigrants, but became more Hispanic and Russian over time. She moved to the Bronx in 2016.

Salinger did not know that she was Jewish until she was nine years old and considered herself …

Hochberg, Marc, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Marc Hochberg was born 1949. He grew up with parents, both the children of immigrants, in a six story apartment building on Holland Avenue, off the south side of Pelham Parkway. The area is remembered as 90% Jewish, with one Italian friend from elementary school. He attended Castle Hill Junior High School in Parkchester, which still had few non-white students at the time, and the Bronx High School of Science. When he was in high school his parents moved to Grand Concourse and 165th Street. Bronx Science is remembered as a top education, and he would go to Franklin and …

Several, Ruth, Sophia Maier Garcia

Bronx Jewish History Project

Ruth Several was born in 1951 and grew up living on the Grand Concourse, where her parents were living at the time. Her father worked at the Concourse Center of Israel, an orthodox synagogue on the Grand Concourse. They lived in a large apartment in an art deco style building. She remembers 95% of the building as Jewish, not including the non-Jewish superintendent. The neighborhood had many mom and pop stores, no chain stores, and many synagogues. Several attend a Jewish Day School in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, so her mother was a bookkeeper nearby who would take …