2021-22 Robert D.L. Gardiner Writing Fellows

The Gotham Center is pleased to announce the 2021-22 awardees of “Writing the History of Greater New York.” Established with generous support by the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation, this writing fellowship program supports independent and early-career professional scholars with book manuscripts substantially underway, which explore 1) the history of the so-called “outer boroughs” (Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and the Bronx), 2) Long Island’s contributions to the development of the metropolitan region, and 3) work that integrates or advances these histories somehow, re-approaching the fields of urban and suburban history with a metropolitan or regional lens. It is currently the only program supporting research on the history of all three subjects.

Ross Perlin is a linguist (PhD, University of Bern) and Co-Director of the Endangered Language Alliance (ELA). He is completing the first major linguistic history of New York City—currently the most linguistically diverse urban area on Earth, with an estimated 800 of the world’s 7,000 languages, and also home to distinct varieties created by the interaction of different ethnicities, including ‘New York City English.’ The project builds on ten years of research by the ELA, and focuses on lesser-known languages in Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, as well as the surrounding metropolitan area (Long Island, Westchester, and New Jersey). It begins, however, with the Lenape, explores multilingual New Amsterdam, looks at the stateless Europeans (Irish, Istrian, Jewish, Gottscheer, Pontic, and Rusyn, among others) who arrived in large numbers from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century, and then focuses on the period after the 1965 Immigration Act, which brought newcomers from some of the world's most linguistically diverse countries (including Mexico, Nepal, Nigeria, Indonesia, India, the Philippines). The manuscript, tentatively entitled “A Wonderful Madness,” will be submitted to several publishing houses shortly.

Brett Palfreyman is an Assistant Professor of History at Wagner College, on Staten Island, writing the first major book to examine the fate of the approximately 400,000 Loyalists who remained after the War for Independence. Unlike most instances of civil war, the losers of the American Revolution integrated peacefully into the new United States. Although there were calls for retribution and fears that a royalist fifth column might subvert the republic, reconciliation quickly followed. New York was the epicenter of this nation-wide process, with more supporters of the King on Long Island and in the five boroughs and Westchester than anywhere else in the country. Initially, the state government confiscated property and passed a rash of laws limiting the freedom of enemy Tories. But in just a few years, with the help of leaders such as Alexander Hamilton, their most foremost advocate, those laws were repealed, everywhere. Because of their sheer numbers (one in every seven people), Loyalists even had a hand in reshaping and preserving legal and political institutions during the ‘Critical Period’ (1783-89). The manuscript, entitled “Peace Process,” is under review by the University of Virginia Press.