Fall 2021

CUNY Class Information
Instructor: Samuel Finesurrey
Campus: Guttman Community College
Class Title: The History of Urban Life
International Class Information
Instructor: Momen El-Husseiny
Partner Institution: American University of Cairo, Egypt
Class Title: Urban Planning
Project Description: In 2021, undergraduate researchers in Egypt and the U.S. designed an ethnographic study of small businesses in New York City and Cairo, two of the world’s economic and cultural capitals. These parallel studies explored how each cities’ small businesses navigated a global pandemic, movements for social justice, vast inequity, and the uneven distribution of government resources. The results were uneven, sometimes heartwarming,, and other times unsettling. The experience of producing knowledge, however, proved transformative for the students involved.