MITH Faculty Fellow Answers Readers' Questions on Times’ “Taking Questions”

Carla Peterson, professor of English and a MITH Faculty Fellow, is being featured this week by The New York Times City Room "Taking Questions" series on her recent book, Black Gotham: A Family History of African Americans in Nineteenth-Century New York City (Yale University Press, 2011). Black Gotham is a riveting account of Peterson's quest to reconstruct the lives of her nineteenth-century ancestors. As she shares their stories and those of their friends, neighbors, and business associates, she illuminates the wider history of African-American elites in New York City. Readers may submit their questions to Dr. Peterson about nineteenth-century black New York on the "Taking Questions" page, and she will respond in subsequent posts.

During her current MITH faculty fellowship, Peterson is creating the Black Gotham Archive, a dynamic website based upon her book, Black Gotham. The site chronicles the visual and textual history of Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, and links this information to interactive maps, in order to create a deeper understanding of nineteenth-century black New Yorkers. Follow the project on Twitter @bgarchive.

Additionally, this Sunday Dr. Peterson will be giving book talks at St. Philip's Episcopal Church in Harlem and at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum on February 29. Please visit the Black Gotham Archive for a schedule of full events.