Our program trains students to collect stories from local archives, community and national organizations, and our Harlem neighbors. We work with librarians and archivists to study these materials and share findings—via gallery exhibits, digital programs, and symposia. Our audience includes CCNY students and faculty, scholars from around the country and all over the world, and local residents of the Harlem community.
We are highlighting a few of the courses taught in our creative writing programs for MFA students and undergraduates. Listed briefly are the courses and a few selected projects that students have created.
The Evidence of Things Unseen: Art, Archives, and Harlem
Professor William Gibbons
The years between the collapse of Reconstruction and the end of World War I mark a pivotal moment in African American cultural production. Christened the “Post-Bellum-Pre-Harlem” era by the novelist Charles Chesnutt, these years look back to the antislavery movement and forward to the artistic output and racial self-consciousness of the Harlem Renaissance as “past is prologue.”
The Evidence of Things Unseen: Art, Archives, and Harlem examines the political, cultural, and social forces that influenced and defined the Harlem Renaissance. In addition to class discussions of assigned readings, the course functions as a research workshop, providing support for primary research and exposing students to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture to get hands-on experience accessing and utilizing archival collections and digitally publishing their findings.
Student Projects:
Gentrification & the Cultural Identity of Harlem
A Freshman Inquiry writing Seminar (FIQWS)
Professor William Gibbons
This course explores contemporary Harlem, which is at a crossroads. After three centuries and five decades of continuous. Students position themselves as community activists engaged with libraries and archives, community boards, non-profits, and city and state agencies with an aim toward creating useful resources that can inform public policy to achieve affordable housing and sustainable equitable economic and community development for both longtime residents, businesses and newcomers. development, Harlem is poised for a rebirth.
Student Projects:
Undergraduate: Fall 2019
Telling Rivers: Annotating and Writing with Artifacts
Professor Nelly A. Rosario
Telling Rivers: Annotating and Writing with Artifacts is an archival storytelling project based on the autobiographies of Langston Hughes, The Big Sea and I Wonder as I Wonder. This project comprises two collections of artifacts related to each work, as well as a selection of inspired writings. The contributors were students in Knowing Rivers (ENGL B2031, Fall 2020), an MFA Program writing workshop and critical-practice course centered around the Langston Hughes Festival Archives at City College.
Student Projects:
by Willette Francis
by Isabela Cordero
by Jacob Kose
by Students of ENGL B2031
The Harlem Lynching Tree, with Poems for Alma
by Taylor Alexis Baker
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Professor Gordon Thompson has a laudable career spanning nearly 24 years of teaching and service at City College, Louisiana State University, and Stanford University. As director of the Black Studies Program, he had a record of administrative leadership, including planning, budgeting for and managing an academic program. As creator, principal investigator, and director of the RAP-SI project of the Black Male Initiative, he demonstrated the ability to successfully organize a staff and build a service-oriented mentoring program. As director of the Langston Hughes Festival Committee, he has been in continuous service to the Committee since 1990. As professor of African American and American literature in the English Department he has demonstrated a strong publication record with scholarly expertise in the area of the African American narrative praxis. Lastly, as a scholar, he has several peer-reviewed publications, is a frequent participant at national and international conferences and is the editor/co-editor of several books.
Emily Raboteau
Dr. Vanessa K. Valdés is the director of the Black Studies Program at The City College of New York-CUNY. A graduate of Yale and Vanderbi
Sydney Valerio believes we are all a living archive of the stories and places our bodies navigate. As a creative, she is fueled by her professional work as an educator and community cultural worker to create spaces and experiences for all parts of the community to engage with and access. 
