It’s mid-June and a lively discussion is in progress among Brooklyn College undergraduate students in a sunny conference room at CUNY’s Center for Worker Education at 25 Broadway. The room has been given over to an urban anthropological field school. The subject is gated communities—walled and guarded—and their effects on an increasingly polarized American public. But instead of suburban enclaves far outside of New York City limits, the students are talking about recently gated co-ops on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. After an hour’s talk dissecting the concepts of urban fear, security, class division, and gentrification, the class, with anthropology professors Naomi Schiller and Kelly Britt, walk more than two miles to the Masaryk Towers. A subsidized middle-income housing complex, the towers had new gates installed, cutting off a shortcut through the complex that until very recently was open to the public, particularly the residents of the Baruch and Gompers Houses across the street. The classroom discussion is now playing out in living color, as a guard barks at the students for proof that they have legal access to the property. “It’s okay, I live here,” says one of the students flashing her ID. “These people are my guests.” For Schiller and Britt, the summer course called The Urban Anthropology Project is a bit of an experiment. To begin, this type of cultural anthropology and archaeology field school—an immersion in the Lower East Side—has never been taught at Brooklyn College. “The neighborhood is in the midst of a major new wave of gentrification and waterfront development,” says Schiller. “We’re asking the students to explore how class, race, gender, and migration status intersect to shape the ways that residents approach the contemporary threat of extreme weather and rising seas. But we’re starting way back—before European settlement—to think about land use, social relationships, and the changing built environment over time” The class is also unique in that Schiller and Britt have teamed up to combine their subfields, cultural anthropology and archaeology. Walking tours are just one of the ways Britt and Schiller are helping their students explore the history and contemporary struggle for space and survival on the Lower East Side. The professors also scheduled films, museum visits, trips to observe community board meetings, visits from experts, interviews with local residents, and archaeological artifact analysis. “What’s different is that we’re teaching archaeological and ethnographic methods in the same course. That’s not been done here before,” says Britt. “We’re helping students develop essential skills such as recording field notes and interviewing as they study resiliency, gentrification, urban planning, community organizing, sea-level rise, and climate change.” “And we’re co-teaching,” Schiller and Britt say almost together. “We volunteered to split the salary between us because we wanted to teach this new course and learn from each other,” says Schiller. “We are aiming to give future anthropologists the tools to approach the field in a more ethical, holistic manner than traditionally taught in many anthropology departments. The courses of the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology present the richness in human variation and cultural diversity, and offer the anthropological perspective as a way of thinking, a way of problem solving, and as a model for future learning. Field schools usually occur during the summer sessions or the winter intersession. To learn more, visit the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology.
