HIS 217 History of NYC (was Three Hundred Years of NYC)

3 hours 

As early as 1640, 18 different languages were spoken in New Amsterdam; today, Jamaica Hospital provides interpreters in 180 languages. This course tracks the ways peoples from around the planet settled in New York and how they constructed a city of spectacular diversity. New York's different nationalities, races, religions, and classes didn't always agree, but their clashing and fusing generated a cosmopolitanism that made the city a site of dramatic cultural production and political innovation. Gotham's economic arrangements became equally complex over the centuries, adding functions to its original seaport base and ultimately producing today's diverse mix of finance, media, marketing, manufacturing, entertainment and tourism, among many others. New York City is arguably the most complex human construction ever created, and students in this course will learn how it got to be that way.