Lehigh University

My teaching asks students to use anthropological inquiry to make sense of the world outside the classroom. The projects below show how this approach has informed my teaching and public engagement.

Southside Permaculture Park

My classes engage with the Southside Permaculture Park, a student-led project in Bethlehem, to examine land use and ecological restoration in the urban landscape. The park brings questions from our readings into a local setting: how land is used, what restoration entails, and how a university relates to the community around it.

Global Studies Film Series

I organize the Global Studies Film Series, pairing documentary screenings with talks by scholars and other subject matter experts. The series brings questions from Global Studies into public discussion and invites audiences to consider how films represent the people and places they depict.

Freie Universität Berlin

From 2010 to 2018 I co-taught the course Digital Anthropology in the MA Program in Visual and Media Anthropology at the Freie Universität Berlin. More information about the VMA program can be found here.

Below: An outdoor screening of Digital Anthropology final projects at the Freie Universität Institut für Ethnologie, photos by Mike Terry

Visualizing (Im)mobility: a Psychogeography Walk

Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility, November 7th, 2018

The following site was used by participants of the Visualizing (Im)Mobility walk, which incorporated smartphone activities at each stop. The project was undertaken in collaboration with Dr. Julia Morris.

Mapping our route, 1961 map of Greenwich Village via the New York Public Library

Join the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility faculty on an experiential walk that will reveal the hidden, invisible, and illegible boundaries that guide and shape our involvement with urban life.

What parts of the city are open or available to you, socially and materially, and via what pathways? At what scale do you experience and conceptualize the city? How does your experience of city change depending on your perspective—your race, immigration status, profession, and historical moment?

The city is an ecosystem where the built and natural environments merge. As such, we will examine places where the boundary between the built and the natural is negotiated. Drawing on Guy Debord’s concept of dérive, we will explore how we as humans have shaped the natural environment, how we protect it—particularly against climate change—and how institutions and governments use both built and natural environments to create social boundaries.

Stop 1: Mannahatta

LINK: The Welikia Project

Other image sources:

Bolton 1922

Pickman and Yamin 1985

6sqft blog

Stop 2: Minetta

Image sources:

Images 1-3: Viele Map 1865

Images 4-6: Alison Meier, Untapped Cities 2012

Stop 3: NYU Native Woodlands Garden

Link: NYU Native Woodlands Garden Guide

Stop 4: The Grid

Interactive Randel Map

University of Richmond: Mapping Inequality

Map of the Twelve Avenues in the City of New York, compiled for D.T. Valentine’s Manual, 1850

The Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations

Egbert L. Viele, View of 2nd Ave. Looking up from 42nd St., 1861. Lithograph

Museum of the City of New York, Gift of Mrs. Wendell T. Bush

Brennan Farm House, 84th and Broadway, 1879

Collection of The New-York Historical Society

Robert L. Bracklow, Fifth Avenue and 117th Street, ca. 1870

Museum of the City of New York, Gift of Sonia and Alexander Alland, Jr.

View south on 94th Street near Riverside Drive, ca. 1895. Cyanotype

Museum of the City of New York, Prints and Photographs Collection

One of the few remaining rock spurs, Bennet Avenue between 181st St and 182nd St

Randel Farm Map no. 27, vol. 1, p. 9, showing 45th to 53rd Streets from Third Avenue to the East River, 1820

Randel Farm Map No. 20, vol. 4, p. 5, showing 37th to 45th Street, from Ninth Avenue to the Hudson River, December 1, 1819. Pen and ink with watercolor on paper

Other image sources:

The Greatest Grid, Museum of the City of New York, 2015

Stop 5: Minetta Street

Image source: Armchair Atlas

Stop 6: Policing

Link: Compstat 2.0

Stop 7: Houston Street Station

Stop 8: Varick Street

Photo by Brendan McDermid/Reuters, via PRI

Stop 9: The Underground

New York's oldest manhole cover, Soho

Coal chute, St. Luke's Place

Cornell Iron Works

Abbott Hardware Co

CT&ES, Consolidated Telegraph and Electrical Subway, the company that put electrical lines underground

IRT, Interborough Rapid Transit, the forerunner of the MTA

Jacob Mark manhole cover, patented 1870, Madison Ave & 37th St

Jacob Mark manhole cover, patented 1870, Waverly Place

Markouts explained by Nicholas Pevzner

Markouts decoded by Nicholas Pevzner

List of manhole cover abbreviations (Wikipedia)

Images of manhole covers via Hyperallergic, Ephemeral New York and Stephen Sherman

Images of utility markouts via Urban Omnibus and ACS Underground

Stop 10: Rising Sea Levels

Link: NYC Flood Hazard Mapper

Map showing the old high water line along the shores of Brooklyn & New York together with the pier lines as established by law [cartographic material] / R. Graves, City Surveyor. 1855. Source: NYPL

The Blizzard of 1888

Stop 11: Judson Memorial Church

Link: New Sanctuary Coalition

Participant Images

The following images were taken by participants and depict activities at Stop 10. Using the NYC Flood Hazard Mapper, we used chalk to make future flood zones visible in the urban landscape—until such time as they were washed away. Participants were also invited to creatively express their reactions to the threat of rising sea levels.