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About Boston: An Ethnographic Approach
This guide provides selected course-specific resources for AN309 / AN709: Boston: An Ethnographic Approach, taught by Professor Merry White.
Featured Resource
Boston Chinatown: Resources
- Global Boston: Chinese Global Boston is a digital project based at Boston College that chronicles the history of immigration to greater Boston since the early nineteenth century. Examining different time periods, ethnic groups, and places of settlement, the site features capsule histories, photographs, maps, documents, videos, and oral histories documenting the history of a city and metro area where immigrants have long been a vital force in shaping urban life.
- The First Restaurants in Boston's Chinatown, Part 1 (The Passionate Foodie) What was the first Chinese restaurant in Boston’s Chinatown?
- The First Restaurants In Boston's Chinatown, Part 2--Expanded/Revised (The Passionate Foodie) Let’s continue our exploration of the history of Boston’s Chinatown restaurants and survey the first couple decades of the 20th century. At the start of the 20th century, Chinatown would continue to grow and expand, with a number of new Chinese restaurants opening. It would face a number of serious challenges and obstacles during this time period, including continued racism, legal issues, and Tong violence.
- Chinese Restaurant Finances in the 1920s (Sampan) How much did Chinese restaurants earn during the 1920s? How were they financed? And what did they pay their employees? We can get some insight into the answers through examining two restaurants, the Royal Restaurant in Chinatown and the Imperial Restaurant in Cambridge, both connected by one of the same partners, Chung Moi.
- Boston Chinatoen Master Plan 2020 Every ten years since 1990, the Chinatown community has come together to develop and publish our own vision and priorities for community development, to serve as an education, advocacy, and organizing tool for the community and as a guide to policy makers and developers. In the midst of publishing Chinatown Master Plan 2020, the COVID pandemic struck. This has not just meant a brief delay in publication as we moved to working online, but also that our plan now exists within a dramatically
- Chinatown Then and Now: Gentrification in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia Chinatown Then and Now is a report on the dramatic gentrification of Chinatowns in Boston, New York City, and Philadelphia in the past three decades. The report, contains some of the first-ever land-use data collected on the three largest Chinatowns on the East Coast.
- A Chinatown banquet : exploring Boston Chinatown (streaming, Academic Video Online) A Chinatown Banquet offers an unprecedented glimpse into the history, culture and character of Boston Chinatown through vignettes offering unique snapshots of this rich community. Blending public art, education and community development in an innovative, interdisciplinary format, the videos deepen public awareness about Chinatown and create a new, hybrid form of cultural landmark. This project directly engages community members across generations and geographic boundaries to discover and share Chinatown's untold stories, revealing the forces that have shaped and continue to influence Boston Chinatown.
- Moy Auk: band leader & famed chef (Sampan) During the late 1880s, one of the first and most famous restaurants in Boston’s Chinatown was owned by Moy Auk, who also led a famous Chinese musical band. His restaurant was referred to as the “Delmonico’s” of Chinatown. At this time, Delmonico’s, in Manhattan, was considered one of the finest restaurants in the country so this was very high prais
- The first attempt to eradicate Chinatown (Sampan) Around 1884, Boston’s Chinatown coalesced as a neighborhood and community, especially on Harrison Avenue. Only seven years later, the first attempt to eradicate Chinatown arose, fueled by racism and propelled by businesses seeking to get wealthier.
- An early history of Chinese laundries in Boston (Sampan) During the 19th century, the most prevalent occupation for Chinese men who settled in the Boston area was being a laundryman. This was also true for many cities across the country, especially as the Chinese had few available options, being barred from many other occupations.
- Boston's Chinatown: Community, Power and Placemaking A panel of community leaders discuss the legacy of Boston's Chinatown neighborhood, the birth of Pao Arts Center, and topics like urban expansion, resilience, public health, and other contemporary issues. This event was part of a series on Race, Place, and Space, co-hosted by the Initiative on Cities, BU Arts Initiative, and BU Diversity & Inclusion.
- A Tale of Three Chinatowns (WGBH) A TALE OF THREE CHINATOWNS explores the survival of urban ethnic neighborhoods in three American cities: Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Boston. Through the voices of residents, community activists, developers, and government officials, the film looks at the forces altering each community and the challenges that go with them, including the pressing issue of urban development and gentrification.
- Digital Commonwealth: Chinatown Explore historical collections from libraries, museums, and archives across Massachusetts for "Chinatown."
- The Boston Chinatown Atlas "The Boston Chinatown Atlas, a 15-year effort by Prof Tunney Lee, documents the origins of the Chinese in Boston and how they built Chinatown"
- A People's Guide to Greater Boston "People's Guide to Greater Boston reveals the region’s richness and vibrancy in ways that are neglected by traditional area guidebooks and obscured by many tourist destinations. Affirming the hopes, interests, and struggles of individuals and groups on the receiving end of unjust forms of power, the book showcases the ground-level forces shaping the city. Uncovering stories and places central to people’s lives over centuries, this guide takes readers to sites of
