About the exhibition
To celebrate the Brooklyn College Listening Project, join us for "We are Brooklyn: Immigrant Voices" on Thursday, May 9 at 6:30pm for a discussion with Brooklyn College students and faculty on their experiences in creating this oral history archive of personal stories. During this evening they will discuss: How does engaging in the process of such a project contribute to a richer understanding of listening as a politically engaged act? How does working together to shape questions, conduct interviews, and listen deeply, further students’ sense of belonging to a public community and also to a community of writers, historians and active contributors to their own academic disciplines as public scholars? In turn, what is public scholarship, and what is its relation to politically engaged research and activism? Students will share excerpts from the oral histories they have conducted.
The Brooklyn College Listening Project is an oral history and community interview initiative at Brooklyn College, CUNY, where students interview family, neighbors, friends and strangers about their lives, their experiences and their perspectives on the world. In “Immigrant Voices” on view at the James Gallery May 9 through May 17, ten personal stories are explored through the students’ interviews with immigrants and children of immigrants from the Dominican Republic, México, Haiti, Pakistan, Albania, Italy, Guatemala, China, Grenada. Since its founding in 2015 by faculty at Brooklyn College (CUNY), over 800 students across classes in a wide range of departments— American Studies, English, History, Sociology, TV and Radio, Journalism, Puerto Rican and Latino Studies, Judaic Studies, Media Scoring, and more—have contributed more than 500 audio recordings of interviews in an on-line digital archive.
