The Nature of Freedom

A narrative of racial progress abounds in U.S. history, making it difficult for teachers to present complex interpretations of racial/ethnic discrimination. Historical complexity challenges such simplistic notions of race/ethnicity and encourages critical thinking. Adding anti-essentialist historical content about Latinx communities is one way to complicate perceptions of race relations in the United States. When combined with historical inquiry, or the act of “doing” history, anti-essentialist historical content can help students articulate a more complex understanding of history. Studying Mendez v. Westminster, a 1940s California case about Mexican American desegregation, offers an opportunity for educators to leverage these historical and racial/ethnic complexities. Specifically, we highlight how to (1) provide background on the historical and racial/ethnic context of the 1940s, (2) highlight Mexican Americans’ racial/ethnic and language complexity, and (3) use historical inquiry to expose the multidimensionality of Mexican American discrimination.     

Unrolling the Map in American History

Cinematic feature films are a big part of youth popular culture. When blockbuster movies are about historical topics, it is reasonable for teachers to be drawn to using them in the classroom to motivate students interest. This article overviews research on film in the history classroom and describes three learning functions that history movies can have fact and ficion; constructing the past and the people in it; and reacting to the past.     

Black Gotham: African Americans in New York City, 1900–2000

For almost four centuries, African Americans in New York City have engaged in ethnic “dream-work,” shaping the city and being shaped by the city in return. The longstanding practice of racism forced a heterogeneous community of Blacks—originating in different parts of the country and the world, speaking many languages, and comprised of different economic classes— to coalesce as a community in order to challenge their subjugation. This article explores the issues, conditions, and experiences that frame the coalescence of the African American community in New York City during the twentieth century, highlighting how racial identities have been produced in the city. In the first part of this article, I reflect on the presence of Blacks in New York City to illuminate some of the common themes that have emerged from the African American experience in Gotham. The second section is a historical exploration of the black experience in New York City, illuminating the conditions, expectations, events, and spaces that have shaped its formation.

     

Historical Thinking and Sports History: A Case Study Using the Brooklyn Dodgers

Abstract

This article discusses how the history of sports can serve as way to understand abstract concepts associated with local history and social studies education. An introductory discussion outlines how sports can engage and interest students, focusing especially on ideas related to history thinking (such as change and continuity). A case study using the Brooklyn Dodgers’ move to Los Angeles is used to illustrate these ideas, focusing on themes associated with suburbanization and urban renewal. A lesson plan is also provided.     

Development of a short-form scale of public attitudes toward homelessness

How do urban Americans regard the problem of homelessness? Recent surveys by pollsters and social scientists seem to document a “backlash” during the 1980s, with public sentiment shifting from sympathy to resentment. The U.S. Supreme Court, for example, recently upheld a controversial 1990 New York City law forbidding poor people from panhandling in the city's subways. This study was designed to develop a brief, reliable, valid scale to more precisely assess public attitudes toward homelessness (acronym PATH), which future researchers can use to more exactly chart changes and correlates of public opinion toward homelessness. Here, a cross section of 222 adults in New York City responded to a 38- item survey containing PATH and five other brief scales. Analysis of responses found general support for four initial hypotheses: (1) There was indeed a remarkable diversity of public opinion, from 3 to 20 points on the 0– 20- point PA TH Scale, ranging from profound sympathy to anger and disgust. (2) A short- form of MacDonald's Poverty Scale correlated only modestly with one's PATH score (r=+0.49) that, along with respondents' comments, suggests these two forms of social distress may now be viewed quite separately in the American psyche. (3) Psychometrically, the 5- item PATH proved to be high in internal reliability (α=0.74), and in construct validity, with significant correlations with 4 other items. (4) Results so far indicate at least some personality basis for PATH. As expected, those most sympathetic to the homeless were significantly lower in authoritarian personality (r=?0.24) and in belief in a just world (r=?0.13). Unexpectedly, PATH correlated negatively with Social Desirability (r=? 0.15, p < 0.05). Potential uses of this PATH scale are explored, along with the notion of important distinctions in poverty and homelessness as two increasingly separate forms of social distress.     

Urban ecosystem management and change during the past millennium: a case study from New York City

Changes in a deciduous forest and salt marsh ecosystem, Hunter Island, New York City, are related to management over the past millennium. Sequential methods, fossil pollen analysis, map and aerial photography series, and vegetation resampling were performed to supplement the historical and archaeological records. The enhanced ecosystem management history provides an expanded context to examine management planning alternatives.Siwanoy native Americans utilized Hunter Island to provide fuel, land for corn planting, and living space through cutting forests in at least the northeast portion of the island. The fossil pollen record indicates that about the time of site abandonment, the Siwanoy planted the forest opening with hickory. Dutch colonial settlers protected forest in the area, but later the island's forest was cut for the British Navy during the American Revolution. John Hunter created a gentleman's farm on the island beginning in 1812.The New York City Parks Department purchased Hunter Island in 1888 and permitted social agencies to clear trees for recreation during the next 46 years. The chestnut blight eliminated American chestnut from the forest in 1908, and at the same time a hickory bark beetle infestation decimated the hickory population. A survey in 1934 showed that the northeast portion of the Island contained a forest, dominated by oak and yellow poplar, and a field. The island became a day-use picnic site in 1943, and for this purpose all the woody plants with stems less than 10 cm in diameter were removed.Aerial photography demonstrated a trend of forest replacing field over the past century. A resurvey of the northeast section of the island in 1988 revealed that oak and yellow popular remained dominant in the old forest, and the field became a hickory and sassafras stand. The hickory dominance, which is typical of Hunter Island, is unusual for New York City forests and could be related to native American plantings over 700 years ago. The management plan for Hunter Island is focused on preservation of the field and forest legacy of the recent recreation period. Instead of preserving an environmental patchwork common in New York City parks, an alternative management focus could enhance the hickory forest component to represent the former native American cultural setting.     

The Attitude of High School Pupils Toward History

Music has been a source of inspiration, of protest, of wisdom, and of emotion for millennia. In the United States, music became woven into the fabric of the culture well before it became a nation and it remains so today. Songs have expressed a range of emotions and informed listeners of historical, social, and political issues at every level of sophistication. Yet our passion for music, coupled with its significance as an artifact of history, has not found its way into classrooms in any prominent way. This article explores four models of using music in the history classroom, each of which ventures to encourage history teachers to consider music, its analysis, and even its creation as integral to history curricula. Each model uses various instructional strategies grounded in tenets of historical thinking and range from a teacher-centered Close Reading Model to inquiry and discovery-based approaches, concluding with a student-centered model of Creative Development.     

Media Publicity and the Voluntary Sector: The Case of Nonprofit Organizations in New York City

Media publicity is an important resource for contemporary voluntary associations, but very little is actually known about the resources and organizational characteristics that are most important for getting media attention. To address this question, we collected and analyzed data on the organizational attributes and news publicity of 739 nonprofit organizations in New York City. We find that an organization's income, paid staff, membership size, and library resources are significantly related to getting media publicity, whereas the number of chapter affiliations is inversely related to publicity. Association type is also a significant factor that influences an organization's ability to get publicity. We discuss the implications that these findings have for current debates about advocacy and civic engagement in the nonprofit sector.     

Phytosociological analysis of restored and managed grassland habitat within an urban national park

Floyd Bennett Field (FBF), 579 ha in extent, is a division of Gateway National Recreation Area. It is the site of a former airfield, constructed by filling salt marshes with dredged materials. Except for the portion known locally as the North Forty, all sections of FBF have been cut over to maintain low vegetation. A grassland management plan (GRAMP) for 165 ha was initiated in 1986, to maintain habitats for open-country birds. Over the next few years, encroaching woody vegetation was removed manually and mechanically from the management area. Since then, it has been maintained as a grassland and receives annual mowing, as well as continued manual removal of the larger woody sprouts.A portion of the GRAMP management area (III) was selected for intensive study of vegetation composition. A grid system was created and vegetation cover was estimated in 127, 1 m × 1 m quadrats. The quadrats were subjected to cluster analysis (CA). Eleven clusters were recognized. These clusters were treated as plant associations. The following types were distinguished: (native) little bluestem–dewberry grassland, six-weeks fescue annual grassland, a grass marsh, a rush marsh, a switchgrass dry grassland, and a deer-tongue panicgrass grassland; (exotic) mugwort herbland, oriental bittersweet-Japanese honeysuckle vineland, Kentucky bluegrass-mixed grassland, Japanese knotweed tall herbland, and spotted knapweed-common St. Johnswort herbland. The little bluestem–dewberry association accounted for nearly half of all quadrats; six subclusters were recognized. The plant associations determined by CA were compared with plant lists compiled during traverses of all of the map categories in the six GRAMP Areas (I, II, III, IV, V, VI). A table was created to relate the quantitative data of the plant associations to the appropriate map categories. A nonmetric multidimensional scaling ordination (NMDS) was performed on the quadrat data. Finally, the plant associations were compared with those described in the literature of local vegetation studies. The mowing program has been effective in decreasing woody plant cover and has permitted the invasion of a few taxa into monospecific communities, but attendant disturbance of the substrate is likely to cause an increase in exotic plant taxa. As earlier studies noted, mowing has caused the increase in cover of sod-forming grass, and bare ground has virtually disappeared in the managed area. This has negative implications for the maintenance of those grassland bird species that require open ground for nesting.     

“资治”和“通鉴”：城市史研究中的悖论

在城市史研究中,＂资治＂和＂通鉴＂本该是一对并重的关系,但是很多时候两者反而形成了悖论。在具体的城市史研究中,重视其＂资治＂作用,忽略其＂通鉴＂作用的情况时有发生。本文将对城市史的研究进行综合考察,并以失败和成功两方面的案例来说明,在城市史研究中,＂资治＂和＂通鉴＂是可以得到有机结合并且达到最佳状态的。     

The soil seed bank and its relationship to the aboveground vegetation in deciduous forests in New York City

The soil seed bank was studied in two deciduous forests in Bronx (New York City), NY. The purpose of this study was to determine how the biotic andabiotic differences between urban and rural forests arereflected in urban forest seed banks. Soil samples werecollected in two consecutive years and monitored for emergencein the greenhouse over two years. In 1993, the mean number ofemergents ranged from 4636 to 5373 m^-2 (excluding ferns), or from 6972 to 9651 m^-2 (including ferns). In 1994, the mean number of emergents ranged from 1656 to 2013 m^-2 (excluding ferns), or from 5019 to 5992 m^-2 (including ferns). Graminoids and fernscombined accounted for approximately 70% of all emergents eachyear. Three taxa, Rubus spp., Betula lenta, and Liriodendron tulipifera, comprised 60–80% of the woody emergents and were theonly woody taxa to exhibit delayed germination. A substantialnumber of forbs, graminoids and ferns (15–50%) exhibiteddelayed germination. The nonnative woody species Ailanthusaltissima, Morus alba, and Celastrus orbiculatus were absentfrom the aboveground vegetation of some forest plots yet werepresent at low densities in the seed bank. A greater meandensity of emergents and the presence of nonnative species arethe main differences between the seed banks of these urbanforests and those reported for similar nonurban forests in thisregion.     

A Sense of Place: The Politics of Immigration and the Symbolic Construction of Identity in Southern California and the New York Metropolitan Area

American immigration has long been characterized by spatial concentration within major urban areas. Los Angeles and New York City are two of the most important immigrant meccas today. Recent studies of immigrant adaptation within these cities have emphasized material factors at the expense of cultural considerations. This paper adopts a comparative perspective to demonstrate extreme differences in the symbolic construction of identity vis-a-vis immigrants in these two urban areas. Using The Los Angeles Times and The New York Times as indicators of elite cultural orientations, a content analysis is performed. The results demonstrate the social construction of an exclusive threat narrative in Southern California, and an inclusive immigrant as victim narrative in the New York metropolitan area. I argue that this extreme variation in cultural orientations must be understood as the result of divergent material and symbolic contexts. In order to demonstrate the importance of cultural factors, this paper focuses on symbolic differences between these areas and the influence these differences have on the political process of inclusion/exclusion.     

纽约城市转型与绿色发展对北京的启示

纽约城市转型表现为由制造业到服务业再到高端知识型服务业和绿色发展的城市演变轨迹,其特征主要表现为重视创新驱动、高端服务业集群、人才教育培养、城市功能融合、城市绿化建设等。借鉴纽约城市转型经验,北京应加强城市功能的均衡化疏解、基本公共服务均等化,加强产业多中心集聚和分散布局,大力发展教育、医疗、卫生、文化休闲等服务业,完善公共交通系统,加快绿色产业、绿色技术创新和城市绿化建设,促进城市转型与绿色发展。     

A Tentative Study of New Historicism in China

The concept of New Historicism provides us with a new and critical perspective to understand the historical truth. Influencedby New Historicism, more and more scholars have been tapping into the truth of history by interpreting the literary texts of history inChina. This paper aims at telling the impact of New Historicism on Chinese scholars, writers, and readers by analyzing the characteristics ofhistory books, historical novels and new historical novels.     

History in War Time Britain

This article presents four guidelines for providing direct instruction in thinking skills in social studies and history at any grade level. The author first describes, with examples, three major components of any thinking skill that students need to know. Second, he presents teaching techniques for making these components explicit. Third, he outlines and explains two different strategies for organizing introductory skill lessons. Fourth, he describes a variety of techniques for scaffolding and cueing continuing thinking-skill practice as well as strategies for organizing different types of skill-practice lessons. He explains principles for employing these techniques and strategies throughout. He also highlights three factors teachers should consider in implementing thinking-skills instruction. The article concludes with a brief research-based rationale for infusing thinking-skills instruction with social studies and history instruction.     

Embedded Systems: The Case of HIV/AIDS Nonprofit Organizations in New York City

In this paper the notion of an embedded system is developed as an analytic model to examine how state–nonprofit relations develop and become differentiated, using the case of HIV/AIDS nonprofit organizations. Drawing on extensive fieldwork among three prominent HIV/AIDS nonprofit organizations in New York City, this paper shows how the kinds of relationships these nonprofit organizations are likely to form with state agencies are based on their embeddedness in the state–nonprofit system of relations. Three forms of embeddedness are distinguished according to the type and regularity of state–nonprofit contact—direct, outsider, and mediating. Importantly, it is shown how the configuration of relations within which an organization is embedded determines many of the organization's constraints and opportunities.     

Development of a Short-Form Scale of Public Attitudes Toward Homelessness

Nationwide, demographic changes have led to an increased awareness of the impact of cultural diversity on the delivery of medical and psychological care. Due to the over-representation of minority and socially stigmatized groups among those affected by HIV, understanding the effects of psychosocial, linguistic and cultural membership or treatment relationships is crucial. In the psychological treatment of HIV-infected patients, psychotherapists can enhance the lives of their patients and support their involvement and compliance with medical treatment planning Case studies are presented in which psychotherapy helped resolve difficulties in the medical care of three HIV-positive women that were due to cultural misunderstanding between doctors and patients.