19552 GW Mag 26_Final_singles - Flipbook - Page 30
Students Bradley
Fowler and
Jocelyn Graham
traveled to D.C.’s
Chinatown during
an assignment for
Professor Elizabeth
Chacko’s Migrants
in the City Dean’s
Seminar.
Street Smarts:
Geography Class Maps
D.C.’s Immigrant Identity
In her Migrants in the City Dean’s
Seminar, Geography’s Elizabeth
Chacko turns the District into a
classroom as students explore people
and places shaping urban diversity.
FROM THE LITTLE ETHIOPIA NEIGHBORHOOD IN
Northwest to the Eden Center Vietnamese enclave in
Falls Church, the Washington, D.C., region is a tapestry
of immigrant communities and cultures.
The city’s diversity footprint leads from the Salvadoran
circles of Columbia Heights to the Chinese localities of
Rockville, Maryland. A quick Metro ride can carry a traveler
from the Fiesta DC celebration on Pennsylvania Avenue to
the Mid-Autumn Festival at the Chinese American Museum
on 16th Street.
And for Professor of Geography and International
Affairs Elizabeth Chacko, who has lived in the District for
nearly 30 years, that cross-cultural map makes Washington
her ideal destination—as a resident and a geographer.
“I can’t think of anywhere I’d want to live other than
D.C.,” she said. “It’s so diverse. I feel at home. There are
30 | www.columbian.gwu.edu
people who look like me, there are people who don’t look
like me. We all travel together.”
That’s the passion for people and places that Chacko
relays to her students in her Migrants in the City Dean’s
Seminar. Like all Dean’s Seminars within the Columbian
College of Arts and Sciences, Chacko’s class lets first-year
students take an in-depth look into topics relevant to the issues
of our time. Her class examines immigrants’ relationships with
their city—as ethnic neighborhoods grow, entrepreneurs
emerge and cultural identities take root.
“In this class, we look at the mutual influence of immigrants
and urban landscapes—how they interact and change each
other,” Chacko noted.
Throughout the course, Chacko sends her students out
of the classroom and into the streets—breaking free of the
“Foggy Bottom bubble,” as she puts it. They explore ethnic
identity and gentrification in D.C.’s Chinatown. Their final
project includes photo essays documenting immigrant
communities throughout the DMV region. Each lesson,
Chacko said, teaches them how to look at their surroundings
like urban geographers. “Place is very important for
geographers,” she said.
For journalism and mass communications major Drew
Kervick, the class served as both a lens into immigrant
experiences and an introduction to the D.C. area. He enrolled
