By: Annie Tummino, Head of Special Collections & Archives, & Ailbhe McDonnell, Project Archivist
Special Collections and Archives is pleased to announce that the papers of Professor Roger Sanjek are now open for research. The collection was processed by Ailbhe McDonnell, a graduate student in the dual degree program in Information Studies/History.
Ailbhe McDonnell with the Roger Sanjek Papers
Dr. Roger Sanjek is an American anthropologist who has contributed to the theory and practice of the discipline through long-term ethnographic research on the sociocultural networks of diverse urban environments. Sanjek joined the Department of Anthropology as a professor in 1972 and remained at Queens College for 36 years.
The collection reflects Sanjek’s research and community engagement both during and directly preceding his years at the college. Well represented in the collection are research materials related to the Elmhurst and Corona neighborhoods of the borough of Queens, New York, and the Adabraka neighborhood of Accra, Ghana. Materials are primarily textual, including correspondence, field notes, press coverage, project, and research documentation.
Sanjek engaged in long-term fieldwork with a team of Queens College researchers in Elmhurst and Corona via his New Immigrants and Old Americans project from 1983-1996. Project members gathered rich ethnographic data on how communities in the Elmhurst-Corona neighborhoods lived and interacted, underpinned by consideration of how immigrants who arrived following the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act (also known as the Hart-Cellar Act) lived alongside older immigrant communities. This period of Sanjek’s research provides a fascinating snapshot of late 20th century Queens civic engagement, and cross-cultural community relations and activities.
Sanjek’s work on the New Immigrants and Old Americans project was instrumental to the opening of the Asian/American Center at Queens College (for which he spent time as Acting Director) and led to numerous scholarly works authored by himself and colleagues on the project, including The Future of Us All: Race and Neighborhood Politics in New York City. As noted in a review in the American Ethnologist by John Hartigan, the book is a “masterpiece of urban anthropology” that contributes “many critical insights about race” in the context of local politics and shifting demographics.
Special Collections and Archives is grateful to Dr. Sanjek for donating his papers to the library and supporting preservation and cataloging of the collection. The materials will be of interest to scholars in many disciplines, such as History, Anthropology, Urban Studies, English, and Ethnic Studies. To schedule a research appointment or class visit to view the Roger Sankek Papers, or for any other information, please email Special Collections and Archives at qc.archives@qc.cuny.edu.