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.
Adin Lears is a PhD student in English literature at the CUNY Graduate Center. She holds a B.A. in Medieval and Renaissance Studies from Vassar College. Though she continues to specialize in early English literature, she enjoys augmenting her studies by giving tours for the Big Onion. In addition to going to graduate school and giving walking tours, Adin plans to start teaching at John Jay College in the fall, where the theme of her first writing course will be "Nature, Leisure, and Play in NYC," (Thanks for the idea, Big Onion!)
Anna Seastrand is a PhD candidate at Columbia University in the Department of Art History. Born and raised in the Big Sky Country, Anna's adjustment to NYC was a little rocky at first. But the city and all of its quirks, surprises, and rewards have grown on her, and sharing them with both visitors and city natives has only enhanced her enjoyment of them. Squeezing through the security grate every morning to garden on her fire escape, Anna feels like she's finally becoming naturalized.
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.
Ben Lyons is a Ph.D. candidate in U.S. history at Columbia University. He is interested in antebellum issues including slavery & abolition, the growth of Anglo-American law, and the early development of international norms and institutions. Before coming to New York, Ben lived and worked in China for two years and is proficient in Mandarin Chinese, as well as Modern Hebrew and Spanish.
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 a graduate student in American Studies at Columbia University, where his research emphasizes urban history and culture. He has taught classes in New York Architecture at Columbia University, and is a writer for the Encyclopedia of New York City. He is also an intrepid city walker: over a two-year period he documented a 500-mile journey along every single street on the island of Manhattan.
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. He is currently working on a dissertation that examines community politics and urban development in downtown Brooklyn.
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 Adair is a PhD candidate in Latin American History at New York University. Her dissertation focuses on the transition to democracy in Argentina (1983-1989). Other research interests include U.S.-Latin American relations and the Cold War. Before graduate school she worked with a human rights organization in Buenos Aires, contributing to the design of "memory tours" related to history of 1970s military rule, social activism, and the democratic transition.
Jennifer Nugent Duffy is an Assistant Professor of History at Western Connecticut State University. She earned her Ph.D. in American Studies from New York University in 2008. Her research focuses on different cohorts of Irish in the city of Yonkers, New York. She has been a Big Onion guide since 2001.
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.
Kara Schlichting is a second year Ph.D. student in American history at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, in New Brunswick, N.J. Originally from Fairfield, Connecticut, she now lives in the East Village. Kara earned her B.A. in American Studies at Cornell University. Her intellectual interests include 19th century cultural history and the history of technology, environment and health. Her recent research includes public history and historic landscape analysis.
Laura Hymson is a Ph.D. candidate in the Program in American Culture at the University of Michigan. Her field of study is U.S. cultural history with a focus on globalization. She holds an M.A. in Gender/Cultural Studies from Simmons College and a B.A. in American Studies from Wesleyan University. Originally from Long Island, Laura lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn and teaches at Rutgers University and Hunter College.
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.
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.
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.
Rachel Taylor is an Ed.D. student in Curriculum and Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her favorite city is her hometown of Hartford, CT, but New York is growing on her rapidly. She did her A.B. in Social Studies at Harvard University, then spent three years teaching high school history in Connecticut. Before making the leap to grad school, she spent a year on her own multi-ethnic food tour of 17 countries around the world.
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, with interests in 20th century political and intellectual history, labor history, and the Boston Red Sox. She is writing her dissertation on the politics and ethics of Cold War weapons science. Prior to graduate school, Sarah investigated police misconduct allegations at the NYC Civilian Complaint Review Board.
Sarah Rindner has an MA in English Literature from Columbia University and teaches English literature at SAR high school in Riverdale, NY. Originally from Rockland County, NY, Sarah currently lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. 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.
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 holds a B.A. in Medieval and Modern European History from Brown University, an M.A. in Medieval European History from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in Medieval European History, also from Stanford University. When she is not leading tours for Big Onion, she works as a Program Officer and Special Assistant to the President at the Social Science Research Council, and continues to pursue her research interests as a visiting scholar with the Institute for Public Knowledge at NYU and affiliated faculty member of the Institute for the History of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College. Additionally, Siovahn Walker has many extracurr icular interests, including music composition, creative writing, hiking, bookbinding and arts & crafts.
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 became a Big Onion guide in 2000. In his academic research, Tim investigates the history of the Manhattan theatre district in the 20th century, with an emphasis on the economy of Broadway. He is currently a Schwartz Postdoctoral Fellow at the New School and New-York Historical Society, and he has recently had the opportunity to teach history at Yeshiva University and St. Joseph's College of Brooklyn.
Big Onion alumni guides include:
Adam Rothman, Professor of History, Georgetown University
Annie Polland, Education Director, The Museum at Eldridge Street
Beverly Gage, Professor of History, Yale University
Cindy Lobel, Professor of History, CUNY/Lehman College
David Kinkela, Professor of History, SUNY Fredonia
Edward O’Donnell, Professor of History, The College of Holy Cross
Eliza Byard, Executive Director, GLSEN
Erik Goldner, Professor of History, California State University-Northridge
Jana Lipman, Professor of History, Tulane University, New Orleans
Jennifer Fronc, Professor of History, Virginia Commonwealth University
Leonard Benardo, Regional Director, Open Society Institute
Mark Elliott, Professor of History, Wagner College, Staten Island NY
Max Page, Professor of Architecture and History, Univ. Massachusetts/Amherst
Philip Napoli, Professor of History, Brooklyn College
Sam Haselby, Harvard Society of Fellows, Harvard University
Reiko Hillyer, Professor of History, Lewis & Clark College
Thorin Tritter, Research Fellow, School of Advanced Study, University of London
Vincent Cannato, Professor of History, Univ. Massachusetts/Boston