Newest Americans
July 6, 2021
12:00pm-1:15pm EST
Virtual lecture
VII Insider
Photo by Ed Kashi / VII. Mirian Mijangos, originally from Guatemala, fled a domestic violence marriage and since coming to America in 2008, she's worked in various jobs, including caring for horses, children and the elderly. Here she is photographed at her home in Freehold, New Jersey on June 30, 2019.
In 2014, at a moment when immigration was cresting a wave in the public consciousness in America, we launched Newest Americans. Cities and counties across the country were beginning to shift to minority majority status, DACA was altering the lives of hundreds of thousands of young people, and a backlash against immigrants would help fuel a presidential campaign. In this climate, project partners Talking Eyes Media, VII Photo, and the Center for Migration and the Global City at Rutgers-Newark birthed a project that honors the past, present and future of our migrating identities.
Newest Americans is a multimedia collaboratory of journalists, media-makers, artists, faculty and students telling the stories that radiate from the most diverse university in the nation and the global city of Newark, New Jersey. This project’s stories have been published in National Geographic, The New York Times, The Nation, The Atlantic, and Mother Jones, and have garnered support from National Geographic, the Dodge Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Most recently Newest Americans was named the 2021 Online Storytelling Project of the Year by Pictures of the Year International.
Ed Kashi, Julie Winokur, and Tim Raphael will share a sample reel and a selection of work from Newest Americans, discuss their most recent developments in curriculum and teacher training, and the process of creating the Newark Story Bus, which is a mobile media lab scheduled to launch this spring. The goal of this multi-year project is to shift the narrative on immigration and support the next generation of diverse storytellers.
