College of Staten Island Professor of History and Director of the Public History program Dr. Susan Smith-Peter will be premiering her documentary feature, Lockdown Staten Island on Tuesday, May 9, at the College of Staten Island’s Center for the Arts. Registration is now open for the event, which will be held both in-person, in 1P-Lecture Hall at 6:30pm, and remotely via Zoom.
The goal of Lockdown Staten Island, Dr. Smith-Peter’s John J. Marchi Fellowship project, is to document Staten Islanders’ lives during the COVID-19 lockdown that took place from March to June 2020. Dr. Smith-Peter, working with the Public History program at the College of Staten Island, collected photos and videos from Staten Islanders during the lockdown, which she used to create a documentary film that provides a look at Staten Island’s experience during that time. Dr. Smith-Peter will present the final version of the film at Tuesday’s event alongside Borough of Manhattan Historian Robert Snyder.
“This is a great opportunity for everyone at the college and in the larger community to see what we went through and overcame together,” Dr. Smith-Peter said. “Even though there were some difficult times, the resilience of the college and the city is what really stands out to me now. This is a moment to reflect and to see ourselves reflected in the history of Staten Island. It’s my hope that some viewers may even feel a sense of closure when it comes to that time of their life.”
The event on Tuesday, May 9, is free and open to all, carrying co-curricular CLUE credit for students in attendance. Dr. Smith-Peter will speak to the collaborative process of the project and the impact it will have on the public history of Staten Island. The documentary that will be presented features submissions from Staten Island residents, such as stories, photos, video blogs, and various posts and captions from social media platforms, collected from the project’s landing page and social media presence on Facebook. Manhattan Borough Historian Dr. Robert Snyder will discuss how he used the oral histories collected by the project for his book on the pandemic in NYC, which is forthcoming with Cornell University Press.
“Lockdown Staten Island” is part of the curatorial collaborative, A Journal of the Plague Year. This digital archive began at Arizona State University and has since expanded to include collections from Australia, New Orleans, the Philippines, Boston, Canada, Las Americas, and Sacramento. Fellow CUNYs such as Bronx Community College, Brooklyn College, and The City College of New York have also joined the effort.
Get more info on “Lockdown Staten Island” by visiting their Website.
