What comes to mind when you think of Brooklyn? The bridge? Hipster culture? Perhaps a certain Major League Baseball team that decamped to L.A.—and the sore feelings that persist, more than six decades later?
How about straight-laced Protestants, a half-dozen or so generations off the Mayflower?
The latter—as surprising as it may seem—are at the center of a new cultural history by a pair of prominent faculty.
Published by Cornell University Press’s Three Hills imprint, The Rise and Fall of Protestant Brooklyn traces how an influx of New Englanders made an indelible mark on the borough—and how the arrival of Catholic and Jewish immigrants from Italy, Germany, and elsewhere challenged that hegemony to form the vibrant, diverse community we know today.
The book is the latest collaboration by Glenn Altschuler, PhD ’76, the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies, and Stuart Blumin, a professor emeritus of American History and former director of the Cornell in Washington program.
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From left, MFA students Gerardo Iglesias, Sarah Iqbal and Aishvarya Arora listen to observations by two young poets at the Ithaca Children’s Garden.
Ryan Young/Cornell University
Semiconductors are at the core of the economy and national security. Their importance makes them a target. Sarah Kreps, director of the Tech Policy Institute in the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, discusses how Cornell is helping to keep the semiconductor supply chain safe.
Doug Nealy/Unsplash
The Peace Arch, situated near the westernmost point of the Canada–United States border in the contiguous United States, between Blaine, Washington and Surrey, British Columbia.