Additional Information
Big Onion is directed by Seth Kamil. Our guides are passionate about the people, history, and architecture of New York.
All guides...
Hold advanced degrees in American history or a related field from leading universities, including Columbia, CUNY, New York, Michigan, Rutgers and Stanford.
Have high school or college teaching experience and are quite often researching topics relevant to the tours they are leading.
Work exclusively for Big Onion and have completed our rigorous in-house training program.
Are licensed by the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs.
Amy Offner is a Ph.D. candidate in U.S. history at Columbia University. She studies twentieth-century labor history and foreign policy. Before entering graduate school, she worked as a union organizer and an editor at Dollars & Sense magazine.
Andrew Haringer is a PhD candidate in Historical Musicology at Columbia University, specializing in 19th century piano music. A native of Seattle, he received his BA in History and Music at Dartmouth College, and developed an interest in exploring cities on foot while studying abroad in London. Andrew currently teaches Music Humanities to Columbia undergraduates.
Brian McCabe is a PhD student in the Sociology Department at New York University. Before returning to graduate school, he was a city planner with the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development. Brian hails originally from upstate New York, but now resides in Bed Stuy, Brooklyn. An avid cyclist, he enjoys touring New York City by bike almost as much as he enjoys leading tours by foot.
Caleb Smith is an intrepid city walker: over a two-year period he walked the length of every single street on the island of Manhattan, a 500-mile journey. Currently he is a Masters candidate in American Studies at Columbia University, where his studies emphasize urban history and culture.
Cecelia Walsh-Russo is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at Columbia University. She is currently finishing her dissertation on the political connections between the British and American antislavery movements of the early 19th century. She grew up in the greater New York and New Jersey area, including Manhattan and Rochester, and graduated from Smith College. As soon as she finishes her doctorate, she can then begin to think about what she likes to do in her spare time.
David Madden is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at Columbia University. Born in Washington, D.C., he earned a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and MA and MPhil degrees from Columbia. His academic interests include urban sociology, social theory, and political sociology. He is currently researching his dissertation, an ethnography that explores politics and urban space in Brooklyn. A pianist for many years, David recently began playing the accordion.
Elizabeth Fitton is a Ph.D student in American history at the CUNY Graduate Century. A native of Rockland County, NY, she now resides in Brooklyn. Elizabeth earned her B.A. from Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts and her M.A. from the University of Virginia. She has taught at Hunter College, and conducted special museum programs for school children at the New-York Historical Society. Her academic interests include political, social, and immigrant history with a particular soft spot for New York City.
Elizabeth Pillsbury is a Ph.D. Candidate in American History at Columbia University. She grew up in Farmington, CT, attended Kenyon College as an undergraduate and spent three years working on environmental issues in the Pennsylvania coal fields. Her master's thesis looked at the contest between oystermen and the City of New York over sewage pollution in New York Harbor and Jamaica Bay. She is currently working on a dissertation looking at the transformation of fishing and fisheries management around Long Island during the twentieth century.
Eric Wakin is a PhD candidate in U.S. history at Columbia University. He also holds MAs in Asian studies and political science from the University of Michigan. Eric is a native New Yorker who was born in Manhattan and raised in Queens. He is the author of the Brooklyn Bridge & Brooklyn Heights and Central Park chapters of the Big Onion Guide to New York (NYU Press, 2002) and the co-author of the Five-Borough Driving Tour. Eric is the author of the Downtown Brooklyn tour and co-author of the Bedford-Stuyvesant, Prospect Park and Sunset Park chapters in the Big Onion Guide to Brooklyn (NYU Press, 2005). Eric is also the author of Anthropology Goes to War: Professional Ethics and Counterinsurgency in Thailand (University of Wisconsin/Center for Southeast Asian Studies).
James Hoff is a PhD candidate in American literature at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His research interests include American poetry and intellectual thought, especially American pragmatism, early century American modernism, and the literature of New York City. James has taught composition and literature at Lehman and Hunter Colleges, and currently teaches at the New School University, where his class, "Musing the Metropolis: Reading and Writing about New York" is offered each fall.
Jay Murray was born in New York City and spent his early childhood in Morningside Heights and in Kingston, Jamaica. He received his BA in Sociology & Psychology from Boston College and an MA and Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; in between, he worked as a Shelter Coordinator for the Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless. Jay currently teaches urban sociology and writing at John Jay and Eugene Lang colleges.
Jefferson Decker is a doctoral candidate in American history at Columbia University. His primary research interests are twentieth century political and social history. A former journalist, Jeff has written about historical books and controversies for Boston Review, Lingua Franca, and In These Times.
Jeffrey Trask is an Assistant Professor/ Faculty Fellow in the Program of Museum Studies at New York University. He has a Ph.D. in history from Columbia University and a M.A. in museum studies from F.I.T. His research focuses on late nineteenth and twentieth century cultural and intellectual history and urban studies.
Jenna Feltey Alden is a Ph.D. candidate in U.S. history at Columbia University. She focuses on twentieth-century cultural history and is working on a dissertation about postwar corporate sensitivity training. Before entering graduate school, she worked at the Museum of Television and Radio in New York City.
Jennifer Nugent Duffy, a proud New York native, is a doctoral candidate in American Studies at New York University. She holds a B.A. in History from the College of Mt. St. Vincent, a M.A. in History from Fordham University and a M.Phil. in American Studies from NYU. To pursue her interest in history, Jennifer taught social studies at Aquinas High School in the Bronx before returning to her studies. Her research interests include transnational migration, critical race theory and urban studies and she is writing her dissertation on the Irish in Yonkers, NY. She has been a Big Onion guide since 2001.
Jessica Adler is a PhD candidate in history at Columbia University. She studies 20th Century American History with a focus on health care and public health issues. Before entering graduate school, Jessica worked as a journalist, writing health and human interest stories for several newspapers.
Josh Wolff is a doctoral candidate at Columbia University. His field is nineteenth-century American history with a focus on urbanization, industrialization, and the rise of corporate power in the Gilded Age. He is writing his dissertation on the rise of Western Union, one of New York's first great corporations and America's first national monopoly.
Julie Golia is a Ph.D. Candidate in American history at Columbia University. Her research interests include nineteenth- and twentieth-century women's and gender history and the history of journalism. Julie's dissertation traces the cultural and economic history of advice columns in American newspapers. Prior to graduate school, she was the production assistant and assistant editor of the Peabody-award winning documentary "Tupperware!” which aired on PBS's American Experience in 2004. In her spare time, Julie loves taking long runs around the neighborhoods of New York City.
Jung Pak received her PhD in United States History from Columbia University. She wrote her dissertation on the children of American foreign missionaries and their role in the formation of US foreign policy in the early years of the Cold War. Jung is a native New Yorker and an avid New York Mets fan. She was a 2003-04 Fulbright Scholar in Southeast Asia.
Lavelle Porter is a Ph.D. candidate in English at the CUNY Graduate Center. He holds a B.A. in History from Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA. His intellectual interests include black nationalist thought, literary satire, gender and sexuality, and the work of science fiction writer Samuel R. Delany. He has lived in New York since 2002, and currently resides in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.
Leonard Benardo, an ABD in political science from Columbia University, is presently the Regional Director for Russia, Ukraine, the Baltics, Poland and Hungary at George Soros's Open Society Institute. Lenny is a life-long devotee of NYC history, architecture and planning. He is author of the "Architecture of Capitalism" and "Upper East Side" chapters in the Big Onion Guide to New York (New York University Press, 2002) as well as the Coney Island and Fort Greene chapters in the Big Onion Guide to Brooklyn (NYU Press, 2005)
Mariel Isaacson is currently a PhD student in American history, with a minor in urban history at The Graduate Center, CUNY. She holds an MA from NYU in history and is the writer/producer/director of Steeltown/ Hometown, a documentary film for high school students about the history of the steel industry in western Pennsylvania.
Megan Doherty is a PhD candidate in History at Columbia University. Her research focuses on comparative American/European cultural and intellectual history. She holds a B.A. (Hons.) from the University of Melbourne in Australia. Prior to graduate school, Megan worked for grantmaking foundations in Melbourne and New York. She enjoys reading non-academic writing, trying new foods, and using Big Onion tours as an excuse to explore New York as often as possible.
Megan Wolff is a PhD candidate in the history of public health at Columbia University, where she takes a special interest in the history of health conditions in early New York City. Though she has lived elsewhere and plans to do so again, she now works, studies, and resides within eyeshot of the hospital in which she was born. Megan holds an MPH from Columbia and a B.A. in English from Wesleyan University. She is writing her dissertation on the history of risk and “risk factors” in twentieth century medicine.
Melissa Borja earned her A.B. from Harvard College in 2004 and her M.A. from the University of Chicago in 2005. She is currently a Ph.D. student in United States history at Columbia University, where her research focuses on religion and immigration in the twentieth century. Her most recent projects have examined religious change in Hmong refugee communities and relations between the Nation of Islam and immigrant Muslims. Her fascination with immigration comes from her own experiences: born to Filipino immigrants, she was raised in Saginaw, Michigan, and has lived in places as far-flung as Okinawa and Casablanca. She is now proud to call herself a New Yorker and to live in a city where she can satisfy her craving for udon in the middle of the night and practice her Arabic with strangers on the subway.
Michelle Chase is a Ph.D. student in the History Department of New York University specializing in modern Latin America. Her academic interests include women and gender, radical politics, and the Cold War. She holds a BA in Anthropology from Stanford University. She is currently working on a social history of the Cuban revolution in Havana.
Pam Epstein is a PhD candidate at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, but lives happily in Brooklyn. She has a BA in American Culture from Vassar College, and is now pursuing a degree in American History with a concentration in Urban History. She is currently doing research for her dissertation about courtship and marriage in the mid-nineteenth through the early-twentieth centuries. In addition to Big Onion tours, she has also taught several college courses, including History of the United States, American Urban History, and the History of Popular Music in America.
Pavel Shlossberg is a Ph.D Candidate in communications at Columbia University. He is writing a dissertation about the cultural appeal of Mexican indigenous/folk art in Mexico and the United States, and his work sheds light on the state-of-relations between Mexican and Anglo communities in the United States, and on the state-of-relations relations between indigenous and mestizo communities in Mexico as well. Pavel has taught at Queens College, CUNY, and at Fordham University, and he speaks Spanish, Russian, and English. Pavel grew up in and around the city, and he enjoys taking long walks in the city, which is also his favorite past-time.
Sara Fanning is currently completing her dissertation “The Land of Promise: African Americans and Haiti From Revolutionary Solidarity to Emigration, 1800-1830” which examines the social, cultural, and political relationship of Haiti and the United States during the first three decades of the nineteenth-century. She is also the author of a Slavery and Abolition article entitled “Roots of Early Black Nationalism” that traces African Americans’ political awakening to their engagement with Haiti. In addition to her work with Big Onion, Sara has also held a position at the New-York Historical Society as an Exhibition Researcher.
Sarah Bridger is a PhD candidate in U.S. History at Columbia University. Her interests include 20th century political and intellectual history, labor history, and the Boston Red Sox. Prior to graduate school, Sarah investigated police misconduct allegations as a civilian investigator at the NYC Civilian Complaint Review Board.
Sarah Rindner has an MA in English Literature from Columbia University and teaches English literature at Ma'ayanot high school in New Jersey. Originally from Rockland County, NY, Sarah currently lives on the Upper West Side, and dreads leaving the city for any extended period of time. Sarah's graduate studies were centered on religion and American literature, and she continues to be interested in the complicated ways religious communities interact with the New York landscape.
Sarah Torretta Klock is a doctoral candidate in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. She holds a B.A. in English and French from the University of South Dakota, an M.A. in English from Boston College, and an M. Phil in English from Columbia. Her research interests include 20th century American social, cultural and intellectual history, literary modernism, and Cold War literature and culture. She is writing her dissertation on literary and photographic collaborations under New Deal initiatives. She enjoys teaching and hopes someday to run a marathon, which she trains for annually but has yet to complete.
Seth Kamil holds advanced degrees in American History from Columbia University and a BA in Social Thought & Political Economy from University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He is founder and director of Big Onion Walking Tours and Big Onion Historical Consulting. He is author of "Tripping Down Memory Lane: Walking Tours on the Jewish Lower East Side" an essay in: Remembering The Lower East Side (Indiana University Press, 2000) and a contributor to the Encyclopedia of New York. Seth is also author of Immigrant New York, Green-Wood Cemetery, and co-author of the Five Borough Driving Tour in the Big Onion Guide to New York City (New York University Press, 2002). Kamil is the author of the Brooklynites in Green-Wood Cemetery tour and co-author of the Bedford-Stuyvesant, Prospect Park and Sunset Park chapters in the Big Onion Guide to Brooklyn (NYU Press, 2005). When not walking the city he can be found fly fishing a Catskill stream where cell phones don’t work. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife Traci & two black Labs.
Siovahn A. Walker, born in England and raised in the United States, holds a B.A. in Medieval and Modern European History from Brown University, an M.A. in Medieval European History from Stanford University and expects to receive her Ph.D in Medieval History, also from Stanford University, in the fall of 2007. In addition to working for Big Onion, she supports her research interests by teaching History and English, and serving as administrator for the Institute for the History of Psychiatry/Oskar Diethelm Library at Cornell Weill Medical College. When she is not doing research or teaching, she composes music, paints, plays her viola, and writes constantly. Most recently, she completed her doctoral dissertation on high medieval psychology (entitled Five Libri de Anima in an Age of Cures), a book of historical verse and short fiction called Clio & Erato, as well as an article on and translation of Honorius Augustodunensis' De exsilio et patriae animae.
Sonja Drimmer is a PhD candidate in the department of art history at Columbia University. She is a native Manhattanite, with five generations of roots on that very island. So while she spends much of her time poring over medieval manuscripts, she finds ample opportunity to schlep through the streets admiring the architecture of New York and searching for the perfect cup of cawfee.
Stephen Petrus graduated from Gettysburg College, majoring in history and philosophy. He also gave tours of the civil war battlefield. Although dreaming of becoming a novelist, he pursued a master's degree at the University of Alabama. With M.A. in hand and a passion for urban culture, he left Tuscaloosa for Gotham in 1997. Currently at the CUNY Graduate Center, Steve is writing his dissertation on the politics and culture of Greenwich Village from 1955 to 1965. He has taught at Lehman and Hunter Colleges and is currently at Baruch College, where he is an adjunct instructor and a Fellow at the Bernard L. Schwartz Communication Institute. Steve has published journal articles in Studies in Popular Culture and New York History and frequently writes book reviews for the publication New York History.
Tim White hails from Southern CA, received his B.A. from Dartmouth College, and finished his doctorate in History at Columbia University in May 2007. After moving to New York City in 1999, Tim quickly developed a passion for the city's history, and became a Big Onion guide in 2000. His dissertation examines the dynamic transformation of the Manhattan theatre district in the 20th century, with an emphasis on the economy of Broadway. An avid theatre-goer and an enthusiastic guide, Tim has also had the opportunity to teach New York City History as an adjunct professor at St. Joseph's College of Brooklyn. He currently resides in Brooklyn Heights.
Big Onion alumni guides include:
Eliza Byard, Executive Director, GLSEN
Vincent Cannato, Professor of History, Univ. Massachusetts/Boston
Mark Elliott, Professor of History, Wagner College, Staten Island NY
Jennifer Fronc, Professor of History, Virginia Commonwealth University
Beverly Gage, Professor of History, Yale University
Leonard Benardo, Regional Director, Open Society Institute
Erik Goldner, Professor of History, California State University-Northridge
Sam Haselby, Harvard Society of Fellows, Harvard University
Reiko Hillyer, Professor of History, Lewis & Clark College
Jana Lipman, Professor of History, St. Joseph’s College, Brooklyn NY
Cindy Lobel, Professor of History, CUNY/Lehman College
David Kinkela, Professor of History, SUNY Fredonia
Philip Napoli, Professor of History, Brooklyn College
Edward O’Donnell, Professor of History, The College of Holy Cross
Max Page, Professor of Architecture and History, Univ. Massachusetts/Amherst
Annie Polland, Education Director, Eldridge Street Project
Adam Rothman, Professor of History, Georgetown University
Thorin Tritter, Research Fellow, School of Advanced Study, University of London