Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Out Of Reach, Benjamin Tenerella-Brody

Capstones

Months after the city agreed to make half of its taxi fleet accessible to people in wheelchairs, 219 West takes a look at the issue of subway accessibility, which has changed little since 1984. One disability-rights advocate takes us through the system, running into several obstacles. Others tell us why they think it is both immoral — and illegal.

Riot - The End Of Violent Protests In New York, Rikki Reyna

Capstones

In New York City, following the death of Eric Garner, protests and rallies against police brutality were sustained for months. For the most part it was peaceful. But what happened to Eric Garner would have incited a very different response in New York City in a different time. There was a time when New Yorkers wouldn’t just protest. They would riot. Those riots seem incapable of happening in today’s New York. This narrative project explores the reasons why. What social, political and economic changes have come together to make riots in this city seem improbable.

A Portrait Of The New York City Lunatic Asylum On Blackwell's Island, Austin C. Labau

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Statement of Purpose

"Insanity is a subject which touches our civil rights at so many different points, that it may be said to have a place in every problem involving human responsibility." -John Ordronaux, New York State Commissioner in Lunacy, 1878.

Mental illness can reduce even the strongest person to a state of helplessness. The way in which a society treats individuals with mental illness provides a window into what that society most values - what behaviors it approves, what people it sees as most valuable, and how much society is willing to sacrifice to help those who may or …

The Transnational Political Involvement Of Nigerian Immigrants In New York City: Motivations, Means And Constraints, Leila Rodriguez Ph.D.

Journal of International and Global Studies

Africans represent a small but rapidly growing immigrant population in the United States. Nigerians, who constitute the largest group, form a well-organized community with numerous ethnic, hometown and social associations. Through some of these organizations, many Nigerians have successfully intervened in the economic and social development and the political processes of their hometowns. Their political involvement in the U.S. is less. In this article I use quantitative and qualitative data to analyze the motivations that Nigerian immigrants have for political involvement in Nigeria or the U.S., the means that enable this participation, and the constraints to participating. Findings suggest the …

Demographic, Economic And Social Transformations In The Colombian-Origin Population Of The New York City Metropolitan Area, 1990 - 2010, Laird Bergad

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction: This study examines demographic and socioeconomic aspects of the Colombian-origin population of the New York City area between 1990 and 2010.

Methods: Data on Latinos and other racial/ethnic groups were obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, reorganized for public use by the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, IPUMSusa. Cases in the dataset were weighted and analyzed to produce population estimates.

Results: The demographic, social, and economic indicators considered in this report were influenced by decline of immigration from Colombia to the region after 2000. Like most immigrant groups before them Colombians are ambitious, hard workers, …

Have Dominicans Surpassed Puerto Ricans To Become New York City’S Largest Latino Nationality? An Analysis Of Latino Population Data From The 2013 American Community Survey For New York City And The Metropolitan Area, Laird Bergad

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction: This study examines three data sets from the recently released American Community Survey (ACS) of 2013 to estimate the population sizes of the largest Latino national sub groups in New York City and in the City’s surrounding counties.

Methods: Data on Latinos and other racial/ethnic groups were obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, reorganized for public use by the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, IPUMSusa. Cases in the dataset were weighted and analyzed to produce population estimates.

Results: The data released by IPUMS in November 2014 from American Community Survey for 2013, and analyzed here, …

Work-Life Experiences For People With Mobility Disabilities In New York City, Jessica A. Murray

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Work-family (or work-life) studies aim to measure interactions between the realms of work and home. It is necessary to examine these interactions within a broad context to understand external sources of tension on the work-life dynamic, including environmental, economic, and political factors. Exploratory interviews were conducted with participants of working age with a mobility disability, and when applicable, their significant others. Questions focused on work, home and transportation environments. Using Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory, a model of contextual issues was constructed as the basis for an in-depth analysis of work-life issues for people with a mobility disability. Contextual research and …

Processing Government Data: Zip Codes, Python, And Openrefine, Frank Donnelly

Publications and Research

While there is a vast amount of useful US government data on the web, some of it is in a raw state that is not readily accessible to the average user. Data librarians can improve accessibility and usability for their patrons by processing data to create subsets of local interest and by appending geographic identifiers to help users select and aggregate data. This case study illustrates how census geography crosswalks, Python, and OpenRefine were used to create spreadsheets of non-profit organizations in New York City from the IRS Tax-Exempt Organization Masterfile. This paper illustrates the utility of Python for data …

What Was Squatting, And What Comes Next?: The Mystery Of Property In New York City, 1984-2014, Amy Starecheski

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Framing property as a socio-historical process and squatters as situated actors within that process, this dissertation seeks to understand how a relatively stable and hegemonic property regime, such as private property in the United States, works and changes. Squatting is an ideal lens for understanding the complex transformation of private property, as it leads us to the times and places where the political and moral economies of property are actively contested and renegotiated. Squatters who make successful claims on property draw our attention to disjunctures between the moral economy and the legal system of property. Squatters had a complex and …

The Children Of Spring Street: The Remains Of Childhood In A Nineteenth Century Abolitionist Congregation, Meredith Alyson Berman Ellis

Dissertations - ALL

This dissertation examines the skeletal remains of 75 children interred the burial vaults (1820-1846) of the 19th century Spring Street Presbyterian Church in lower Manhattan. New York City and the 8th Ward neighborhood of the church were rapidly urbanizing and diversifying in the early 19th century. These changes affected how children lived and grew. Family life, institutional involvement, and the city itself are considered as structuring forces that helped shape the skeletal remains of the children that did not survive. This dissertation combines historical data, theoretical models of embodiment and agency, and skeletal data to reconstruct their experiences of growing …

The Bronx: Creating Fashion Identity Through Race, Class, Hip-Hop Culture And J.Lo, Milesska Jordana Contreras-Hernandez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The following thesis is a three-part look at the way that fashion identity is created, practiced and understood in the Bronx. The majority of the thesis focuses on the area of Fordham Road, which is an area that is regarded as one of the biggest producers of fashion and consumption in the working class borough. This paper provides a look at the history of the borough to understand how an area like Fordham was shaped. Fordham is an area consisting of a variety of small and large businesses that cater to the members of the surrounding communities. These residents are …

The Ceramics From The Weeksville Excavations, Brooklyn, New York, Bert Salwen, Sarah Bridges

Northeast Historical Archaeology

No abstract is available at this time.

Moving Home: An Evaluation, Center For Social Policy, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Office of Community Partnerships Posters

The Center for Social Policy (CSP) is carrying out an analysis of data on the housing situations of participants in the Moving Home program, which is run by the Bowery Residents’ Committee (BRC) in New York City (NYC). BRC is one of the largest, most comprehensive social service agencies in NYC, offering a client-focused continuum of 27 programs that serve 2,600 individuals daily. Launched in 2007, BRC’s Moving Home initiative applies an individualized, low-threshold model to transitioning chronically homeless men and women from the streets to permanent housing.

Landfill And Health, A Municipal Concern Or, Telling It Like It Was, Joan H. Geismar

Northeast Historical Archaeology

Land reclamation in port cities is a worldwide phenomenon that clearly represents economic considerations and, often, intensifying urbanization. Analysis of the fill matrix of two New York City sites suggests that the imposition of municipal controls may be one facet of the urbanizing process documented in the archaeological record. Differences between the fill from the 175 Water Street site, an East River block filled in the 18th century, and Site 1 of the Washington Street Urban Renewal Area adjacent to the Hudson River, an early 19th-century fill site, are best explained by the introduction of city ordinances to regulate land …

Resurrectionists' Excursions: Evidence Of Postmortem Dissection From The Spring Street Presbyterian Church, Shannon A. Novak, Wesley Willoughby

Northeast Historical Archaeology

In this paper we contextualize two unique individuals recovered from the historic Spring Street Presbyterian Church burial vaults in lower Manhattan (ca. 1820-1846). The crania of one adolescent and one infant display clear evidence of a craniotomy. Both had complete circumferential incisions to remove the calvarium for internal examination. Both crania were sectioned using a saw, though the adolescent underwent further postmortem preparation: thin scalpel marks indicate defleshing, and metal pins embedded in the frontal and occipital bones would have facilitated disarticulation and rearticulation of the vault, presumably for teaching. By the early 19th century, the illicit exhumation of graves …

The Children Of Spring Street: Rickets In An Early Nineteenth-Century Congregation, Meredith A. B. Ellis

Northeast Historical Archaeology

This paper examines the prevalence of rickets, or vitamin D deficiency, in the subadult skeletal remains from the burial vaults of the Spring Street Presbyterian Church of New York City. The burial vaults of the church were active from approximately 1820–1846 and contain the remains of at least 86 subadults (minimum number of individuals count [MNI] of left tibiae). Over 34% of the subadult tibiae in this collection display pathology consistent with vitamin D deficiency. Since vitamin D is acquired through access to sunlight and specific foods, a high rate of rickets can give clues about living conditions, parenting strategies, …

Archaeologies Of Disease And Public Order In Nineteenth-Century New York: The View From Spring And Varick, William Werner, Shannon A. Novak

Northeast Historical Archaeology

The authors situate evidence of disease among the burial population of the Spring Street Presbyterian Church within evolving attitudes towards public health and civic order in 19th-century Manhattan. Two personal vignettes illustrate how individuals interacted with the physical space of the church’s vicinity at different moments in the history of municipal reform. The first, a 16-year-old girl named Louisa, was virtually absent from the historical record until the recovery and analysis of her skeletal remains from the church burial vaults. Her skeletal biography conveys the cosmopolitan nature of Manhattan social relations in the early 19th century and the complex ways …

"That Class Of Person Who Cannot Afford A Pew": Analysis Of The Human Remains From The Spring Street Presbyterian Church Burial Vaults, Thomas A. Crist

Northeast Historical Archaeology

The analysis of the skeletal remains of 85 people interred between ca. 1820 and 1846 in the vaults of the abolitionist Spring Street Presbyterian Church provides unique insights regarding the biological history of antebellum New York City unavailable from other sources. Even though the sample size is small, the remains reflect the prevalence of infectious diseases, metabolic disorders, nutritional deficiencies, premature deaths, and high infant mortality that characterized the rapidly industrializing city. Among the most remarkable discoveries were a rare case of abdominal cancer; a mother and her full-term fetus in utero buried together; two autopsied children; and a dental …

Stories From The Rubble: Analysis Of Mortuary Artifacts From The Spring Street Presbyterian Church Vaults, Rebecca L. White, Douglas B. Mooney

Northeast Historical Archaeology

Archaeological investigations of the Spring Street Presbyterian Church vaults resulted in the recovery of coffin plates, hardware and other burial-related artifacts that convey information regarding the individuals interred within these chambers. These interments also offer a glimpse at mortuary customs and practices in vault burials during the first half of the 19th century.

Lost Within The Rubble: The Archaeological Findings From The Spring Street Presbyterian Church Burial Vaults, Douglas B. Mooney

Northeast Historical Archaeology

Archaeological investigations of the former Spring Street Presbyterian Church property resulted in the discovery of four stone and brick subterranean congregational burial vaults. In active use for only about 25 years, these chambers were found to contain the remains of more than 200 individuals, including large numbers of children. Excavations revealed that remains had been impacted by both natural and manmade processes at various points in the past; however, a total of 46 discrete burials were identified during the excavations. Findings from these investigations provide much previously unavailable information regarding the structure, internal organization, and preservation of remains within 19th-century …

"A Free Church For The People": The History Of The Spring Street Church And Its Burial Vaults, Elizabeth D. Meade

Northeast Historical Archaeology

The Spring Street Church was constructed in the early 19th century to accommodate worshipers in what was then the unsettled area north of the developed portion of New York City. Burial vaults were constructed alongside the church by circa 1820 and were in use for more than 20 years, when changing legislation regarding human burials in Manhattan forced the church to close the vaults. During the period of the vaults’ use, the Spring Street Church members participated in the Abolitionist movement and, as a result of the congregation's promotion of anti-slavery ideologies, the church was demolished by an angry mob …

Introduction: Archaeological And Forensic Investigations Of An Abolitionist Church In New York City, Edward M. Morin

Northeast Historical Archaeology

While excavating the foundations for a planned condominium hotel complex in Manhattan, construction crews discovered human remains. The construction staff subsequently ceased excavation and notified the New York City Police Department and the Medical Examiner’s office. Project officials also notified the New York City Department of Buildings and the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission who requested all excavation be stopped in the vicinity of the remains. Ultimately, the Department of Buildings, the construction permitting agency, determined that all further construction activities be suspended pending the receipt and approval of an integrated work plan for the recovery, documentation and analysis …

From Pork To Mutton: A Zooarchaeological Perspective On Colonial New Amsterdam And Early New York City, Haskell J. Greenfield

Northeast Historical Archaeology

This article analyzes the zooarchaeological remains from historical deposits to increase our understanding of the relationship between diet and ethnicity in early colonial New York City. Excavations at the Broad Financial Plaza recovered faunal remains documenting approximatley two centuries of historical occupation (middle 17th to the middle of the 19th century), a sequence rivaled by few other early colonial North American localities. Several trends are apparent in the data. Relative frequencies of pig remains declined while mutton and cattle increased correspondingly as New Amsterdam became the British colony of New York and as the Dutch residents on the block were …

Brooklyn's Thirst, Long Island's Water: Consolidation, Local Control, And The Aquifir, Jeffrey A. Kroessler

Publications and Research

The creation of greater New York City in 1898 promised a solution to the problem of supplying Brooklyn and Queens with water. In the 1850s, the City of Brooklyn tapped ponds and streams on the south side of Queens County, and in the 1880s, dug wells for additional supply. This lowered the water table and caused problems for farmers and oystermen, many of whom sued the city for damages. Ultimately, salt water seeped into some wells from over-pumping. By 1896, Brooklyn’s system had reached its limit. Prevented by the state legislature from tapping the aquifer beneath Suffolk’s Pine Barrens, the …

Succeeding In The City: A Report From The New York City Black And Latino Male High School Achievement Study, Shaun R. Harper, Ph.D., And Researchers From The Center For The Study Of Race And Equity In Education

Shaun R. Harper, Ph.D.

This report is the first publication from the New York City Black and Latino Male High School Achievement Study, a project that entailed individual interviews with 415 students from 40 public high schools – 90 were enrolled in 44 colleges and universities, the rest were college-bound high school juniors and seniors. Understanding how these young men succeeded in and out of school, developed college aspirations, became college-ready, and navigated their ways to postsecondary education was the primary aim of this project. Instead of further amplifying deficits and documenting failures in urban schools, 13 Black and Latino male researchers from the …

Exploring Relationships Between Building And Transportation Energy Use Of Residents In U.S. Metropolitan Regions, Timothy Pede

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

There is much potential to decrease energy consumption in the U.S. by encouraging compact, centralized development. Although many studies have examined the extent to which built environment and demographic factors are related to household energy use, few have considered both building and transportation energy together. We hypothesized that residents living further from city centers, or urban cores, consume more energy for both purposes than their inner city counterparts, resulting in a direct relationship between building and transportation energy usage. This hypothesis was tested with two case studies.

The first focused on New York City. Annual building energy per unit of …

The Concentration Of Wealth In New York City: Changes In The Structure Of Household Income By Race/Ethnic Groups And Latino Nationalities 1990 - 2010, Laird Bergad

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction: This study examines the concentration of wealth in New York City between 1990 and 2010 using data on household income from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Methods: Data on Latinos and other racial/ethnic groups were obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, reorganized for public use by the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, IPUMSusa. Cases in the dataset were weighted and analyzed to produce population estimates.

Results: The data indicate an extraordinary, and growing, concentration of wealth in the City at large and among each major race/ethnic group, as well as among the five largest Latino national …

New York City's Community-Based Housing Movement: Achievements And Prospects, Laura Wolf-Powers

Laura Wolf-Powers

A contribution to the book about the relationship of community-based activism to planning, this paper, highlights the experience of community-based not-for-profit housing organizations in New York City and their relationship (from the 1970s through to the present) with that city’s elected officials and executive agencies. I argue that in New York City, community-based organizations have unambiguously added strategic value in the social housing arena, becoming part of the production system and governance framework for the city's affordable housing. Moreover, their political participation and advocacy have helped to bring about many of the policies that currently structure this system. Their role …