Faculty in the News: Mapping Project and COVID and Dybbuks

• Prof. Rebecca Kobrin, along with principal investigators Mae Ngai, Laura Kurgan, Gergely Baics, Leah Misterlein, and staff members Wright Kennedy and Dan Miller have been awarded a major grant from the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation to create an online, interactive atlas of historic New York City spanning the years 1820 to 1940. The project is a collaboration of Columbia’s History Department and the Center for Spatial Research in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP).

  Using census data and historical maps, the project digitally displays changes in demography and land use over time. Users will be able to visualize the magnitude of changes that took place in New York City during this time period, including the arrival of new immigrants and the incorporation of parts of Long Island into the city. The project leads hope to also map the entire region at 1820, which would allow them to show the presence of enslaved African Americans, as slavery was not abolished in NY State until 1827.

  No other use of geographic information systems (GIS) has created digital mapping of New York City at this level of detail. The map of Manhattan and Brooklyn 1850-1910 is currently in a beta version, with plans for a public launch of a website this fall. The team at Columbia will continue to expand the site as they collect and refine data for other neighborhoods.

• Read Agnieszka Legutko’s take in this article Fact Check: Does COVID Backwards Mean 'Possession by an Evil Spirit' in Hebrew?