Lockdown Staten Island Collection
Lockdown Staten Island is a project documenting the experiences of Staten Islanders during the lockdown phase of the pandemic, from March to June 2020. We are looking for images – photos or videos – of your life during this period. What did you do? What did you eat? Who did you see the most? Whether you were an essential worker or spent a lot of time at home, we want to hear from you. Share Your Lockdown Staten Island Story here.
From the start of the pandemic, the Public History program at the College of Staten Island set out to collect the experiences of Staten Islanders in that unprecedented time. With the support of the John J. Marchi Fellowship at the College of Staten Island, Professors Susan Smith-Peter and Joseph Frusci have worked collaboratively with graduate-level public history students to create a trailer highlighting the experience of lockdown. We are looking for more submissions so that this can become a longer documentary that will preserve the memory of this difficult but important era of history.
In 2023, CSI History Professor Susan Smith-Peter unveils the final video, Lockdown Staten Island, about this early part of the pandemic. Prof. Smith-Peter gathered artifacts from CSI faculty, staff, and students, as well as members of the Staten Island community, by submitting their photos and videos of their own experiences in order to create a documentary.
The Public History project tells the story of COVID on Staten Island, which has already been featured at the Museum of the City of New York and in a book about teaching during the pandemic published by Harvard University Press.
Lockdown Staten Island is part of the broader Journal of the Plague Year digital archive. Inspired by Daniel Defoe’s novel of the same name, this archive also seeks to chronicle daily life during a pandemic. A Journal of the Plague Year was initiated by Catherine O'Donnell, Richard Amesbury, and Mark Tebeau in the School for Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies at Arizona State University. The Journal of the Plague Year is supported financially by the public history endowment at Arizona State University, a fund endowed by Noel Stowe.