New York City is, without a doubt, one
of the most culturally diverse
cities in the world. It's almost impossible to walk down the street
without seeing the vibrant interweaving of other cultures into the
American whole. To be in New York is to be in a city of countless
tongues. The languages of the world are deeply ingrained in every corner
of the city, and with them, their distinctive cultures.
In the Fall of 2001, the New York University
Morse Academic Plan (MAP) course, The Language of America's Ethnic
Minorities, undertook a project to hear the voices of real and imagined
immigrant communities, and learn about the people behind them. The
students of this class traveled throughout the city to seek out
neighborhoods where thirty-four separate ethnic cultures were thought to be flourishing.
There, they discovered the degree to which the distinct languages of
groups (LOTE: Languages other than English) are being maintained or lost,
and the implications for cultural
distinctiveness or assimilation.
Their findings, within words and images,
are archived here.
http://www.nyu.edu/classes/blake.map2001
Project Conceptualized by:
Renee Blake,
Asst. Professor, Linguistics Department, and
The Africana
Studies Program
Site created by:
Whitney A. Reynolds, MAP student
Course (Fall 2001):
The
Language of America's Ethnic Minorities
MAP:
Foundations of Contemporary Culture, Societies and the Social
Sciences
Graduate Student Preceptors:
Bill
Haddican and Erez Levon, Linguistics Department
Gratitude for support received from:
Matthew
Santirocco, Dean of the College of Arts and Science (CAS)
Sally
Sanderlin, Assoc. Dean of CAS
Vincent
Renzi, Asst. Director of the MAP for the Foundations of
Contemporary
Culture
