Brooklyn History

Catalog description

Exploration of Brooklyn’s past, and the role the city and borough have played in the larger history of New York City and the United States. Topics include: the Lenape and the legacy of settler-colonialism and indigenous displacement in Brooklyn; slavery and the building of the pre-industrial city; industrialization, inequality, and work in the nineteenth century; the cultural history of the Brooklyn Bridge and other sites of history making and memory; immigration, ethnicity, and race and religious relations in the borough over time; and de- industrialization, segregation, gentrification, and the borough’s post-World War II cultural, economic, political, and social landscapes. Employing Brooklyn as a setting for examining major themes in American and global history, students will conduct historical research into the lives of everyday Brooklynites and the context for contemporary concerns about the future of Brooklyn, the United States, and the larger world.