Power Play : An Historiographic about Women and Urban Renewal

This research will take form of a nonfiction graphic novel that resurfaces the lived experiences of womxn¹ in New York City during mid-twentieth century urban renewal projects. Pathologizing immigrant and nonwhite communities, city officials approved the wholesale demolition of the vibrant neighborh...

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Main Author: Berendschot, Octavie Eleonor
Other Authors: Huntley, Eric Robsky
Format: Thesis
Published: Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2023
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/152480
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author Berendschot, Octavie Eleonor
author2 Huntley, Eric Robsky
author_facet Huntley, Eric Robsky
Berendschot, Octavie Eleonor
author_sort Berendschot, Octavie Eleonor
collection MIT
description This research will take form of a nonfiction graphic novel that resurfaces the lived experiences of womxn¹ in New York City during mid-twentieth century urban renewal projects. Pathologizing immigrant and nonwhite communities, city officials approved the wholesale demolition of the vibrant neighborhood of downtown Brooklyn by issuing reports and approving masterplans for public housing. This group of exclusively white men intentionally made these documents opaque as a way to suppress protests and push their political agenda forward. The ongoing preservation of these records as part of the city’s archives ensures that the production of history about urban renewal is constrained by governmental archival practices; which biases histories towards formal participants in exclusionary processes. In contrast, this project seeks to amplify the voices of womxn who lived, worked and passed through these neighborhoods by both leveraging and questioning these archival sources as fragmented evidence of urban histories. This graphic novel explores techniques of representing authorial positionality, especially as it relates to the production of history. To fill the narrative gaps, the creative nonfiction story attempts to humanize neighborhood destruction; it also calls attention to the continuation of oppression and how these histories manifest in the present. ¹Womxn is an intersectional term used to signal the inclusion of those who have traditionally been excluded from white feminist discourse.
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spelling mit-1721.1/1524802023-10-19T03:32:47Z Power Play : An Historiographic about Women and Urban Renewal Berendschot, Octavie Eleonor Huntley, Eric Robsky Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Urban Studies and Planning This research will take form of a nonfiction graphic novel that resurfaces the lived experiences of womxn¹ in New York City during mid-twentieth century urban renewal projects. Pathologizing immigrant and nonwhite communities, city officials approved the wholesale demolition of the vibrant neighborhood of downtown Brooklyn by issuing reports and approving masterplans for public housing. This group of exclusively white men intentionally made these documents opaque as a way to suppress protests and push their political agenda forward. The ongoing preservation of these records as part of the city’s archives ensures that the production of history about urban renewal is constrained by governmental archival practices; which biases histories towards formal participants in exclusionary processes. In contrast, this project seeks to amplify the voices of womxn who lived, worked and passed through these neighborhoods by both leveraging and questioning these archival sources as fragmented evidence of urban histories. This graphic novel explores techniques of representing authorial positionality, especially as it relates to the production of history. To fill the narrative gaps, the creative nonfiction story attempts to humanize neighborhood destruction; it also calls attention to the continuation of oppression and how these histories manifest in the present. ¹Womxn is an intersectional term used to signal the inclusion of those who have traditionally been excluded from white feminist discourse. M.C.P. 2023-10-18T17:09:25Z 2023-10-18T17:09:25Z 2022-09 2023-09-18T20:08:41.489Z Thesis https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/152480 In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted Copyright retained by author(s) https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/ application/pdf Massachusetts Institute of Technology
spellingShingle Berendschot, Octavie Eleonor
Power Play : An Historiographic about Women and Urban Renewal
title Power Play : An Historiographic about Women and Urban Renewal
title_full Power Play : An Historiographic about Women and Urban Renewal
title_fullStr Power Play : An Historiographic about Women and Urban Renewal
title_full_unstemmed Power Play : An Historiographic about Women and Urban Renewal
title_short Power Play : An Historiographic about Women and Urban Renewal
title_sort power play an historiographic about women and urban renewal
url https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/152480
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