On the (New York) Waterfront

This course will examine the history of New York City through the lens of the city’s 520 miles of coastline, from the pre-European environment of “Manahatta” and its use by the Lenape, to the waterfront’s historical use as a site of commerce and industry, to its recent reappropriation by real estate developers, parks, and leisure-seekers. Focusing on Manhattan and its rival, Brooklyn (with occasional but less frequent reference to Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island), we will explore what the waterfront can reveal about the city’s environmental, commercial, industrial, and cultural history, considering such topics as Native American dispossession, free and enslaved labor, immigration, urban politics and planning, industrialization and deindustrialization, capitalism, and globalization.

Tuesdays & Thursdays (7/6-29), 7–8:30 PM (ET)
$350 (8 sessions, 90 minutes each)

Sean Griffin is a fellow at the Library Company of Philadelphia, and holds a Ph.D. from The Graduate Center, CUNY. He is the author of Labor, Land, and Freedom: Working-Class Radicalism and Antislavery, 1790–1860 (forthcoming, University of Pennsylvania Press), based on his dissertation, a finalist for the Society of the History of the Early American Republic (SHEAR)’s prize for best dissertation in 2016.