“They get the summer to actually focus on their research, instead of having classes or jobs or other things going on,” explained Christopher Aubin, Ph.D., Fordham College at Rose Hill faculty director for undergraduate research. “And they get to interact with other students outside of their disciplines, in a way where they’re watching each other generate knowledge.”

Students in the program worked closely with faculty to pursue topics that they find interesting.

“Everyone was very very helpful, and there were workshops if you didn’t know what you were doing, or if you needed help,” said Diana Paradise, a rising junior who worked on a psychology research project this summer. “It was a really great experience. I wouldn’t have been able to find what I found or learn what I learned without this program.”

Maura B. Mast, Ph.D., dean of Fordham College at Rose Hill, attended the presentations, and spoke to the students on day two.

“This program is amazing. I’m so excited that you all get to learn from each other and that we get to learn from you,” Mast said. “And I’m really grateful for [our donors’]  support. We are able to fund this because we get amazing support from our alumni; they’re the ones who gave the money so that you could have this incredible experience.”

Hear from four of our summer scholars in in this video series, including the video below:

“They’re writing for the academic audience, but what about us high school students?” asked Suvanni Oates, a high schooler from Bronxdale High School who is an intern for the project. “What about us students who can’t receive that message that they’re trying to send in that way?” 

From June 14 through 16, Fordham welcomed 12 scholar-authors from multiple universities alongside local New York City high school students and Fordham undergraduates for a writing workshop where they could all learn from each other. 

Creating New Articles—and TikTok Videos

“High school students were introduced to undergraduates [and they are]working with linguistic anthropologists, our authors. We prepared student teams to each read one author’s paper and give feedback on what they understood, what they didn’t understand, what spoke to them,” said Ayala Fader, Ph.D., professor of anthropology at Fordham and founding director of both the Demystifying Language Project and Fordham’s New York Center for Public Anthropology, which is launching next year. 

During the workshop, held at the Lincoln Center campus, teams of undergrads and high school students worked with their author to “transpose” previously published articles into two-page digital pieces in language teens can understand. Students even spent a day making TikToks that conveyed the main messages of the articles.

“To hear [the authors’]perspective and actually work with them in person, that was the cool part,” said one of the Bronxdale high schoolers, Athalia McCormack.

The resulting 12 papers will be published as a multimedia open educational resource on the website for Fordham’s New York Center for Public Anthropology.

“Our long-term goals include housing these 12 digital pieces on an interactive website that will be free to use,” said Fader. “We hope that this is going to be a resource for high school teachers to use in existing curricula and also for high school students to experiment with social science, especially linguistic anthropology, which is not part of most curricula in NYC public schools.” 

Fordham Students See the Impact

Sitara Vaidy, who graduated from Fordham College at Lincoln Center in May with a psychology and sociology major, was one of the Fordham students working on the project. She said the workshop “allowed the high school students to better understand the significance of fields such as anthropology, sociology, linguistics, etc., and the interesting and important work that they produce.”

Theater and anthropology major Ashira Fischer-Wachspress, FCLC ’23, who also worked with the teams, said she appreciated the justice aspect of the work.

“I am very grateful for the opportunity to have met so many fascinating, driven people working for social justice,” she said. 

Expanding into Communities

The DLP is also planning to use the short articles in a summer institute for high school students, where they will study language and power in their own communities. The following summer they plan to host a teacher-training institute. 

“By demystifying students’ own experiences with language, the DLP strives to create a grounded, hands-on, potentially life-changing set of social justice tools for high school students and teachers and the faculty and undergraduates who collaborate with them,” Fader said.  

The DLP has been externally supported by a Spencer Conference Grant and a Wenner-Gren Workshop Grant. Internal support comes from an Arts and Sciences Dean’s Challenge Grant and Fordham’s Center for Community Engaged Learning, who hosted the pilot project in 2019, and will be collaborating on future programs. Fordham members of the organizing committee include Johanna Quinn, Ph.D. (sociology); Britta Ingebretson, Ph.D. (MLL); and Crystal Colombini, Ph.D. (the Writing Center), who were joined by Mike Mena, Ph.D. (Brooklyn College); Justin Coles, Ph.D. (UMass); Lynnette Arnold, Ph.D. (UMass); Bambi Schieffelin, Ph.D. (NYU), and high school teacher Scott Storm (Harvest Collegiate). 

On June 1, the three parts of the team gathered in person for the first time at Fordham’s LITE Center at Rose Hill to show off their work and speak more about the exciting new app that they are hoping to complete.

The app will allow users to walk around New York City and use their phones to pull up 3D models, images, and information about medieval-inspired structures that once stood where they are standing. It will also show viewers medieval-inspired elements that still exist in the city today.  

“We have [created] these … walking tours … that showcase points [around the city] that aren’t medieval, but are medieval in a way that’s understood very broadly,” explained Christina Bruno, Ph.D., co-director of the project and associate director of the Center for Medieval Studies. 

These points include examples of medievalism in architecture around the city, like coats of arms, statues and monuments that depict medieval figures, and places that have collections of medieval objects (like the Met Cloisters). In addition, they have included spots that speak to what New York itself looked like during what we think of as the medieval period, between 500 and 1500 CE, before contact with Europeans.

“[This] will hopefully be supported by a mobile application with audio guides, AR/VR content; and that is how we got involved with the New Rochelle High School students,” Bruno said.

Katherina Fostano, visual and digital resources director at the Center for Medieval Studies, happens to be friends with the chair of the math department at New Rochelle High School.  

“She connected us with a class of architecture students who went on to become very interested in the project and [began] to build 3D models of structures around the city that no longer exist,” said Bruno.  

Building Castles in 3D

One student in particular was especially interested in working on the project: New Rochelle senior Maximiliano Aguilar.  

The Center for Medieval Studies gave Aguilar incomplete pictures and drawings of medieval-style castles built during the 19th century that used to exist in New York City. Using only the pictures, Aguilar was able to construct 3D scale models of these formally impressive structures. In the year he’s been working on the project, he has been able to build two castles, Libbey Castle and Paterno Castle, fully, and plans to finish a third model that he has started over the summer.

“[The coolest thing] was the introduction to a new type of architecture,” said Aguilar, who will start at Fordham this fall. “In class, it was just simple house designs, and when I got introduced to this, I got introduced to castles … which was definitely something new to me.”

The castles that Aguilar has built and is building are the AR/VR element of the Medieval New York Project. When a user opens the app near where the castle once stood, they will be able to see through the camera a 3D model of what the castle would have looked like.

“We realized that we have a valuable opportunity to leverage emerging technologies and capture and share medievalism throughout New York City,” said Nicole Zeidan, Ed.D., assistant director, emerging educational technology and learning space design at Fordham.