NYU - New York University
04/21/2025 | News release | Distributed by Public on 04/21/2025 10:22
Cool Course: Storied New York
Jackson Heights, Queens. Photo credit: Haizhan Zheng/Getty Images
From James Baldwin's novel Go Tell It on the Mountain and WH Auden's poem "Refugee Blues" to the Pogues' "Fairytale of New York" and John Badham's "Saturday Night Fever," artists have blended fact and fiction in weaving narratives of New York.
"New York is the most storied city in America and possibly the world," says Suketu Mehta, a professor at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute, who has lived in cities around the globe virtually all of his life and has penned books documenting both New York (This Land is Our Land: An Immigrant's Manifesto) and Mumbai (Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found).
Mehta brings his own experiences to students through the institute's "Storied New York" course, which he has taught since 2008. In it, they develop a deep understanding of New York by studying it as an ever-changing-and perhaps elusive-character across journalism, memoir, fiction, poetry, music, and film and through the works of Robert Caro, Joan Didion, Alicia Keys, LCD Soundsystem, and Colson Whitehead, among others.
Professor Suketu Mehta talks with students at 82nd Street and Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights, Queens. Photo by Tracey Friedman/NYU
Authors of the syllabus's works also, on occasion, speak to the students; over the years, for example, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, who penned Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx, has often spurred lively and constructive classroom discussions about her book.
In exploring New York's portrayals in both historical and contemporary contexts-and how it exists in the imagination of its many chroniclers-students are equipped to produce their own works. This semester, students rode the Staten Island Ferry, during which they read Walt Whitman's mid-19th-century poem "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" as a class, before writing their accounts of the experience.
"In previous classes, students have also submitted an entire CD of songs about New York," says Mehta. "This year, one student knitted a group of six dolls that represent six eras of New York street fashion. A former student said, 'Think of this class as a really great book club'."
The course also includes a field trip to Jackson Heights, where Mehta and his family moved to from Mumbai in 1977. Situated in Queens-the self-proclaimed "World's Borough"-the neighborhood is thought to be one of the world's most diverse places, with about 180,000 people who speak over 160 languages and a global array of restaurants serving Ecuadorian, Indian, Mexican, Nepali, Peruvian, and Tibetan food.
A mural by artist Timothy Goodman celebrating Queens at 37th Avenue and 76th Street in Jackson Heights. Photo by Tracey Friedman/NYU
On an April afternoon, Mehta, who is currently working on another nonfiction book about contemporary New York, City of the Second Chance, and his students visited Jackson Heights, where they learned about the history of the Community United Methodist Church-it's the birthplace of "Scrabble"-and the Jewish Center of Jackson Heights, which now hosts the Iftar celebration for a local Muslim group. While walking through the area's historic district, which parallels Roosevelt Avenue and the No. 7 subway line, they discussed the neighborhood's early-to-mid-20th-century architecture.
Council Member Shekar Krishnan, left, speaks with Professor Suketu Mehta and students in the Carter Journalism Institute's "Storied New York" course at his Jackson Heights office. Photo by Tracey Friedman/NYU
They also met with local Council Member Shekar Krishnan-who told the class that "The future of New York City depends on the future of this neighborhood"-before concluding the day with a meal at Nepalese restaurant Lakeside NYC.
Mehta and his students outside the Jackson Heights Community United Methodist Church, which is the birthplace of Scrabble, as commemorated on the 35th Avenue sign (partially obscured). Photo by Tracey Friedman/NYU