FALL 2012
Undergraduate Course Offerings
table of contents
3
NEW COURSES
4
COURSE SCHEDULE
9
GLOBAL COURSES
FALL 2012 COURSE DESCRIPTIONS
10
FIRST-YEAR PROGRAM All students who enter Gallatin with fewer than 32 units are required to take three
INTERDISCIPLINARY SEMINARS Interdisciplinary seminars are liberal arts courses that engage a variety of
ADVANCED WRITING COURSES In a workshop format with no more than 15 students, the advanced writing
ARTS WORKSHOPS Gallatin offers a large variety of arts workshops in music, dance, theatre, and the visual arts.
COMMUNITY LEARNING Community learning courses bridge the gap between the classroom and the sur-
20
38
42
49
50 courses that constitute the First-Year Program: a First-Year Interdisciplinary Seminar, which introduces students to
the goals, methods, and philosophy of university education and to the interdisciplinary, individualized approach of the
Gallatin School, and a two-semester writing sequence (First-Year Writing Seminar and First-Year Research Seminar),
which help students develop their writing skills and prepare them for the kinds of writing they will be doing in their
other courses.
themes or issues in the history of ideas. Generally, these courses focus on significant works in the humanities, social
sciences, and sciences. These courses are relatively small (22 students) and they emphasize class discussion and
thoughtful writing assignments. Gallatin students are required to complete 16 units in interdisciplinary seminars.
courses engage students in a wide variety of writing exercises and offer an opportunity to share work with fellow
students and a practicing professional writer/teacher. Some of the courses focus on particular forms of writing—
fiction, poetry, comedy, the journal, the personal narrative, the critical essay—while others encompass several forms
and focus instead on a particular theme, such as writing about politics, writing about the arts, and writing about one’s
ancestry.
These workshops are taught by successful New York City artists, performers, and writers; they are designed for both
beginning and advanced students. The arts workshops all employ an “artist/scholar” model that involves giving students experiential training in the practice of particular art forms as well as providing opportunities for critical reflection about the artistic process, aesthetic theory, and the sociology of art.
rounding New York community. Students engage in various kinds of activities in the city: arts projects, oral histories,
documentary video-making, action research, community organizing. They also read and discuss theories relevant
to their work and consider the social, political, and ethical implications of the activities. These projects grow out of
partnerships with a variety of community-based organizations.
GRADUATE ELECTIVES Graduate electives are available in a variety of fields, including arts, creative writing, and
social theory and methods. These courses are open to advanced undergraduates with permission of the instructor.
INDIVIDUALIZED PROJECTS Gallatin offers students an opportunity to pursue their interests through a variety
TRAVEL COURSE FOR STUDENTS STUDYING ABROAD
52
53
of alternatives outside the traditional classroom: independent study, tutorials, internships, and private lessons.
54 FALL
58 FOUNDATION REQUIREMENT
60 KEY CONTACTS
2 2012 FACULTY
fall
new fall courses
fIRST-YEAR program
FIRST-UG 77
FYIS: Play and Games in Early China
Ethan Harkness
FIRST-UG 78
FYIS: Environmentalism: A Global History
Peder Anker
FIRST-UG 79
FYIS: Fantastic Voyage: The Art and Science of Science Fiction
José Perillán
FIRST-UG 80
FYIS: Happiness, Tranquility, and Mysticism
Bradley Lewis
FIRST-UG 81
FYIS: Fear and Loathing: Documentary and Subjectivity
Rahul Hamid
FIRST-UG 385
FYWS: Contemplation and Culture
Jean Gallagher
FIRST-UG 386
FYWS: Listening to Rebel Voices: From Medieval Peasants to Contemporary Protesters Sharon Fulton
FIRST-UG 387
FYWS: Keeping It Real: Thinking about Authenticity
A. Lavelle Porter
FIRST-UG 388
FYWS: Debating Science: Great Scientific Controversies in Context
José Perillán
FIRST-UG 389
FYWS: Translation: History, Theory, and Practice
Kathryn Vomero Santos
FIRST-UG 390
FYWS: The Return of the Soldier
Joanna Scutts
INTERDISCIPLINARY SEMINARS
IDSEM-UG 1698
The Social Contract: Early Modern European Political Theory
Justin Holt
IDSEM-UG 1699
Feeling, in Theory
Eve Meltzer
IDSEM-UG 1700
Becoming Global? Europe and the World: A Literary Exploration
Valerie Forman
IDSEM-UG 1701
The End of the World
Matthew Stanley
IDSEM-UG 1702
Spectacle and Mass Media
Moya Luckett
IDSEM-UG 1704
The Weary Blues: Rites of Passage and Writing about Passages
Matthew Vernon
IDSEM-UG 1705
Antigone(s): Ancient Greece/Performance Now
K. Horton / L. Slatkin IDSEM-UG 1706
The Origins of Language and Its Place in Western Thought
Luke Fleming
IDSEM-UG 1708
Visions of the Good Life in Ancient Greece
James Bourke
IDSEM-UG 1709
Global Surrealism
Lori Cole
IDSEM-UG 1710
Sex and the State
Lauren Kaminsky
IDSEM-UG 1711
Politics, Writing and the Nobel Prize in Latin America
Linn Mehta
IDSEM-UG 1712
Empire, Race and Politics
George Shulman
IDSEM-UG 1713
From Blackface to Black Power: Twentieth-Century African American Literature
Laurie Woodard
IDSEM-UG 1714
What is Critique?
A.B. Huber
Practicum in Fashion Business to be announced
practicum
PRACT-UG 1301
ADVANCED WRITING COURSES
WRTNG-UG 1019
The Basics and the Bold: Fundamentals of Editing Fiction and Creative Nonfiction Barbara Jones
WRTNG-UG 1215
Writing the Other
Aaron Hamburger
WRTNG-UG 1534
Sidelines: The World of the Cross-Genre Writer
Lizzie Skurnick
arts workshopS
ARTS-UG 1647
2012
Making Virtual Sense: 3D Graphics Studio for Critically-Driven Creative Applications Carl Skelton
3
fall
2012 course
schedule
First-Year Program
First-Year Interdisciplinary Seminars (Open to Gallatin first-year students only)
FIRST-UG 24
Migration and American Culture
Dinwiddie
Friday schedule for travel to and from NYC sites.
W
F
2:00-3:15
12:30-3:15
p. 10
FIRST-UG 32
The Social Construction of Reality
Duncombe
MW
11:00-12:15
p. 10
FIRST-UG 35
Family
McCreery
MW
11:00-12:15
p. 10
FIRST-UG 49
The Self and the Call of the Other
Greenberg
MW
12:30-1:45
p. 10
FIRST-UG 65
Beyond Language
Erickson
TR
2:00-3:15
p. 10
FIRST-UG 69
Boundaries and Transgressions
Cruz Soto
TR
9:30-10:45
p. 11
FIRST-UG 70
Holy Grails
Romig
MW
2:00-3:15
p. 11
FIRST-UG 71
Political Theatre
Forman
TR
3:30-4:45
p. 11
FIRST-UG 74
Historical Memory in War and Peace
Gurman
MW
12:30-1:45
p. 12
FIRST-UG 76
What is "Development?"
Fredericks
TR
2:00-3:15
p. 12
FIRST-UG 77
Play and Games in Early China
Harkness
TR
9:30-10:45
p. 12
FIRST-UG 78
Environmentalism: A Global History
Anker
MW
9:30-10:45
p. 12
FIRST-UG 79
Fantastic Voyage
Perillán
MW
3:30-4:45
p. 13
FIRST-UG 80
Happiness, Tranquility, and Mysticism
Lewis
TR
11:00-12:15
p. 13
FIRST-UG 81
Fear and Loathing
Hamid
TR
11:00-12:15
p. 13
First-Year Writing Seminars (Open to Gallatin first-year students only)
FIRST-UG 319
Aesthetics on Trial
Trogan
TR
6:20-7:35
p. 14
FIRST-UG 323
Artists' Lives, Artists' Work
Traps
MW
4:55-6:10
p. 14
FIRST-UG 324
Metamorphoses
Foley
MW
3:30-4:45
p. 14
FIRST-UG 345
Love and Trouble
Weisser
TR
9:30-10:45
p. 14
FIRST-UG 353
The Faith Between Us
Korb
MW
8:00-9:15
p. 14
FIRST-UG 357
Wilderness and Civilization
Libby
TR
4:55-6:10
p. 15
FIRST-UG 361
Collage: From Art to Life and Back
Vydrin
MW
2:00-3:15
p. 15
FIRST-UG 365
The Idea of America: What Does it Mean?
Gurman
MW
3:30-4:45
p. 15
FIRST-UG 375
Writing the Self
Huddleston
MW
9:30-10:45
p. 15
FIRST-UG 379
Utopia
Gellene
TR
8:00-9:15
p. 16
FIRST-UG 382
The Body Politic and the Politics of the Body Meyer
MW
11:00-12:15
p. 16
FIRST-UG 384
Walking and Writing in New York City
Ribeiro
TR
2:00-3:15
p. 16
FIRST-UG 385
Contemplation and Culture
Gallagher
TR
11:00-12:15
p. 16
FIRST-UG 386
Listening to Rebel Voices
Fulton
TR
3:30-4:45
p. 17
FIRST-UG 387
Keeping It Real: Thinking about Authenticity
Porter
MW
9:30-10:45
p. 17
FIRST-UG 388
Debating Science: Great Scientific Controversies Perillán
MW
12:30-1:45
p. 17
FIRST-UG 389
Translation: History, Theory, and Practice
Vomero Santos
MW
4:55-6:10
p. 17
FIRST-UG 390
The Return of the Soldier
Scutts
MW
12:30-1:45
p. 18
transfer student Research Seminars (open to transfer students only)
FIRST-UG 801
Myths and Fables in Popular Culture
Lennox
MW
11:00-12:15
p. 19
FIRST-UG 802
Coming Home: Identity and Place
Lemberg
MW
2:00-3:15
p. 19
FIRST-UG 803
Working
Ding
MW
9:30-10:45
p. 19
4 fall
fall
2012 course
schedule
Interdisciplinary Seminars
Sophomores Only
IDSEM-UG 1122
Discourses of Love: Antiquity to the Renaissance
Mirabella
TR
11:00-12:15
p. 20
Sophomores and juniors Only
IDSEM-UG 1592
American Narrative I
Shulman
R
3:30-6:10
p. 20
IDSEM-UG 1712
Empire, Race and Politics
Shulman
T
6:20-9:00
p. 21
Friedman
W
12:30-3:15
p. 21
Sophomores, Juniors, and Seniors Only
IDSEM-UG 1061
Literary Forms and the Craft of Criticism
open to all, 14-Week, Four-Credit Seminars
IDSEM-UG 1128
Bodily Fictions
Ciolkowski
R
3:30-6:10
p. 22
IDSEM-UG 1144
Free Speech and Democracy
Thaler
R
6:20-9:00
p. 22
IDSEM-UG 1156
The Darwinian Revolution
Cittadino
MW
2:00-3:15
p. 22
IDSEM-UG 1193
Culture as Communication
Varadhan
MW
11:00-12:15
p. 22
IDSEM-UG 1197
Narratives of African Civilizations
Dawson
M
3:30-6:10
p. 23
IDSEM-UG 1202
Tragic Visions
Mirabella
TR
3:30-4:45
p. 23
IDSEM-UG 1207
Origins of the Atomic Age
Cittadino
TR
11:00-12:15
p. 23
IDSEM-UG 1215
Narrative Investigations I
Pies
TR
11:00-12:15
p. 23
IDSEM-UG 1216
Doing Things with Words
Cornyetz
T
3:30-6:10
p. 23
IDSEM-UG 1300
Militaries and Militarization
Lauria-Perricelli
TR
4:55-6:10
p. 24
IDSEM-UG 1311
Mad Science/Mad Pride
Lewis
T
3:30-6:10
p. 24
IDSEM-UG 1314
Literary and Cultural Theory
Murphy
MW
4:55-6:10
p. 24
IDSEM-UG 1328
Jung and Postmodern Religious Experience
Robbins
TR
9:30-10:45
p. 24
IDSEM-UG 1381
Creative Democracy: The Pragmatist Tradition
Caspary
W
3:30-6:10
p. 25
IDSEM-UG 1388
Thinking About Seeing
Miller
T
3:30-6:10
p. 25
IDSEM-UG 1394
Latinos and the Politics of Race
Poitevin
MW
9:30-10:45
p. 25
IDSEM-UG 1417
Politics and the Gods
Tugendhaft
TR
6:20-7:35
p. 25
IDSEM-UG 1426
Boundary Crossings
White
MW
6:20-7:35
p. 25
IDSEM-UG 1454
The Iliad and Its Legacies in Drama
Slatkin
W
3:30-6:10
p. 26
IDSEM-UG 1468
Psychoanalysis and the Visual
Meltzer
M
12:30-3:15
p. 26
IDSEM-UG 1482
Consuming the Caribbean
Polyné
R
3:30-6:10
p. 26
IDSEM-UG 1503
American Poetics
Polyné
W
3:30-6:10
p. 26
Same as COLIT-UA 104.
Same as SCA-UA 721.001.
Same as SCA-UA 816. Formerly titled, "Hemispheric Imaginings: Race, Ideology and Foreign Policy in the
Americas." Course is not repeatable.
IDSEM-UG 1504
Guilty Subjects
Murphy
MW
11:00-12:15
p. 27
IDSEM-UG 1519
Biology and Society
Jackson
MW
3:30-4:45
p. 27
IDSEM-UG 1523
Feminism, Empire and Postcoloniality
Cruz Soto
TR
11:00-12:15
p. 27
IDSEM-UG 1527
Finance for Social Theorists
Rajsingh
M
7:45-10:15
p. 28
IDSEM-UG 1545
On Freud's Couch
Cornyetz
W
12:30-3:15
p. 28
IDSEM-UG 1552
Sociology of Religion: Islam and the Modern World
Mirsepassi
TR
2:00-3:15
p. 28
2012
5
fall
2012 course
schedule
open to all, 14-Week, Four-Credit interdisciplinary Seminars (cont.)
IDSEM-UG 1555
Imagining India: From the Colonial to the Global
Lukose
F
11:00-1:45
p. 28
IDSEM-UG 1566
History of Environmental Sciences Before Darwin
Anker
TR
9:30-10:45
p. 29
IDSEM-UG 1586
Consumerism in Comparative Perspective
DaCosta
T
3:30-6:10
p. 29
IDSEM-UG 1587
Who Owns Culture?
Drakes
W
3:30-6:10
p. 29
IDSEM-UG 1603
Modern Poetry and the Actual World
Goldfarb
TR
3:30-4:45
p. 29
IDSEM-UG 1609
Dante's World
Rutigliano
W
3:30-6:10
p. 30
IDSEM-UG 1617
Philosophy of Religion
Thometz
T
9:30-12:15
p. 30
IDSEM-UG 1618
Media and Fashion
Luckett
M
6:20-9:00
p. 30
IDSEM-UG 1643
Law and Legal Thought
Nesiah
TR
9:30-10:45
p. 31
IDSEM-UG 1648
Environment and Development in Africa
Fredericks
W
3:30-6:10
p. 31
IDSEM-UG 1651
From Memory to Myth: The Mighty Charlemagne
Romig
MW
12:30-1:45
p. 31
IDSEM-UG 1652
Science and Culture
Jackson
MW
12:30-1:45
p. 32
IDSEM-UG 1684
Indigenous Culture and Cultural Authenticity
Fleming
MW
3:30-4:45
p. 32
IDSEM-UG 1698
The Social Contract
Holt
F
12:30-3:15
p. 32
IDSEM-UG 1699
Feeling, in Theory
Meltzer
R
3:30-6:10
p. 33
IDSEM-UG 1700
Becoming Global? Europe and the World
Forman
TR
11:00-12:15
p. 33
IDSEM-UG 1701
The End of the World
Stanley
MW
11:00-12:15
p. 33
IDSEM-UG 1702
Spectacle and Mass Media
Luckett
F
11:00-1:45
p. 33
IDSEM-UG 1704
The Weary Blues
Vernon
F
11:00-1:45
p. 34
IDSEM-UG 1705
Antigone(s): Ancient Greece/Performance Now
Horton / Slatkin T
3:30-6:10
p. 34
IDSEM-UG 1706
The Origins of Language
Fleming
F
11:00-1:45
p. 34
IDSEM-UG 1708
Visions of the Good Life in Ancient Greece
Bourke
MW
9:30-10:45
p. 35
IDSEM-UG 1709
Global Surrealism
Cole
W
6:20-9:00
p. 35
IDSEM-UG 1710
Sex and the State
Kaminsky
M
3:30-6:10
p. 35
IDSEM-UG 1711
Politics, Writing and the Nobel Prize in Latin America Mehta
MW
3:30-4:45
p. 35
IDSEM-UG 1713
From Blackface to Black Power
Woodard
TR
2:00-3:15
p. 36
IDSEM-UG 1714
What is Critique?
Huber
W
3:30-6:10
p. 36
TR
2:00-3:15
p. 37
Same as SOC-UA 970.
Same as HIST-UA 245.
Same as COLIT-UA 800.001.
Same as COLIT-UA 800.002.
7-Week, Two-Credit Seminar: september 4–october 18
IDSEM-UG 1558
The Travel Habit: On the Road in the Thirties
Hutkins
PRACT-UG 1301
Practicum in Fashion Business t.b.a
Permission of the instructor required. Scheduling details and instructor information to be announced.
Practicum
p. 37
Advanced Writing Courses
WRTNG-UG 1019
The Basics and the Bold: Fundamentals of Editing Jones
W
6:20-9:00
p. 38
WRTNG-UG 1034
Writing about Performance
Malnig
MW
12:30-1:45
p. 38
WRTNG-UG 1039
Writing about Popular Music
Petrusich
W
6:20-9:00
p. 38
6 fall
fall
2012 course
schedule
WRTNG-UG 1070
Writing about Film
Bram
F
12:30-3:15
p. 38
WRTNG-UG 1215
Writing the Other
Hamburger
W
6:20-9:00
p. 38
WRTNG-UG 1300
Creative Nonfiction
Beam
R
3:30-6:10
p. 39
WRTNG-UG 1305
The Art of the Personal Essay
Friedman
M
3:30-6:10
p. 39
WRTNG-UG 1329
Writing the Fragment
Blythe
TR
4:55-6:10
p. 39
WRTNG-UG 1341
Oral Narratives: Stories and Their Variations
Snider
M
9:30-12:15
p. 39
WRTNG-UG 1508
Writing for Late Night Television
Gilles
M
3:30-6:10
p. 40
WRTNG-UG 1534
Sidelines: The World of the Cross-Genre Writer
Skurnick
R
6:20-9:00
p. 40
WRTNG-UG 1537
Crafting Short Fiction from the Sentence Up
Rinehart
T
7:45-10:15
p. 40
WRTNG-UG 1540
Reading and Writing the Short Story
Zoref
M
6:20-9:00
p. 40
WRTNG-UG 1550
Fiction Writing
Vapnyar
T
6:20-9:00
p. 40
WRTNG-UG 1555
Advanced Fiction Writing
Spain
R
6:20-9:00
p. 41
Students may take "Fiction Writing" two times.
Prerequisite WRTNG-UG 1550 or CRWRI-UA 815 or CRWRI-UA 816 or CWRI-UA 820 or permission of the instructor. Students may take "Advanced Fiction Writing" two times.
WRTNG-UG 1560/01 The Art and Craft of Poetry
Fragos
Students may take "The Art and Craft of Poetry" two times.
M
6:20-9:00
p. 41
WRTNG-UG 1560/02The Art and Craft of Poetry
Pies
Students may take "The Art and Craft of Poetry" two times.
TR
3:30-4:45
p. 41
WRTNG-UG 1564
M
3:30-6:10
p. 41
Advanced Poetry Writing
Hightower
Prerequisite WRTNG-UG 1560 or CRWRI-UA 817 or CRWRI-UA 830, or permission of the instructor. Students may take "Advanced Poetry Writing" two times.
writing-related course
CLI-UG 1460
Literacy in Action
Ramdeholl
M
6:20-9:00
p. 41
Arts Workshops
students may take any arts workshop two times.
ARTS-UG 1014
Something to Sing About: Acting in Musical Theatre Steinfeld
M
12:30-3:15
p. 42
ARTS-UG 1045
Oral History, Cultural Identity and the Arts
Sloan
M
6:20-9:00
p. 42
ARTS-UG 1080
Site-Specific Performance
Bowers
R
9:30-12:15
p. 42
ARTS-UG 1107
Body Wisdom for Performers
Powell
T
6:20-9:00
p. 42
ARTS-UG 1110
The Art of Play
Hodermarska
R
9:30-12:15
p. 43
ARTS-UG 1209
The Art of Choreography
Posin
R
3:30-6:10
p. 43
ARTS-UG 1211
Making Dance: Space, Place and Technology
Satin
W
11:00-1:45
p. 43
ARTS-UG 1305
Rudiments of Contemporary Musicianship
Castellano
W
6:20-9:00
p. 43
ARTS-UG 1325
Songwriting
T
3:30-6:10
p. 44
ARTS-UG 1405
Drawing and Painting
Katz
F
9:30-12:15
p. 44
ARTS-UG 1420
Rites of Passage into Contemporary Art Practice
Ruhe
R
3:30-6:10
p. 44
ARTS-UG 1445
Walls of Power: Public Art
Culver
T
6:20-9:00
p. 44
ARTS-UG 1470
The Public Square
Wyatt
M
9:30-12:15
p. 44
2012
Lab fee: $35. Course meets at Drummer's Collective, 123 West 18th Street.
Rayner
Lab fee: $35. Course meets at Drummer's Collective, 123 West 18th Street.
Students should not schedule any classes immediately before or after this class to allow ample time to travel to
off-site locations. Students are expected to pay for their own travel costs.
7
fall
2012 course
schedule
arts workshops (cont.)
ARTS-UG 1485
Beyond Picture Perfect
Day
T
3:30-6:10
p. 45
ARTS-UG 1490
Sound Art
Katchadourian
W
3:30-6:10
p. 45
ARTS-UG 1565
Playwriting
Churchill
T
6:20-9:00
p. 45
ARTS-UG 1570
Writing for the Screen I
Thompson
R
6:20-9:00
p. 45
ARTS-UG 1571
Writing for Television I
Douglas
M
3:30-6:10
p. 45
ARTS-UG 1603
Mapping Harpman
TR
F
2:00-3:15
12:30-1:45
p. 46
ARTS-UG 1604
Native American Film and Video
F
12:30-3:15
p. 46
ARTS-UG 1619
Architecture and Urban Design Lab I
Joachim
Please note this is a 6-credit course.
W
W
11:00-1:45
2:00-3:15
p. 46
ARTS-UG 1621
Architectural Design and Drawing
Goodman
W
6:20-9:00
p. 47
ARTS-UG 1626
Good Design: Scale
Harpman
MW
9:30-10:45
p. 47
ARTS-UG 1635
Digital Art and New Media
Allen
R
3:30-6:10
p. 47
ARTS-UG 1647
Making Virtual Sense: 3D Graphics Studio Skelton
F
9:30-12:15
p. 47
ARTS-UG 1652
Creating a Magazine
Friedman
MW
2:00-3:15
p. 48
Cordova
Community Learning Courses
CLI-UG 1444
Lyrics on Lockdown
Anderson / Hall
M
2:00-4:45
p. 49
CLI-UG 1445
Shifting Focus I
Read
M
6:20-9:00
p. 49
CLI-UG 1453
Gentrification and Its Discontents
Poitevin
M
3:30-6:10
p. 49
CLI-UG 1460
Literacy in Action
Ramdeholl
M
6:20-9:00
p. 49
Graduate Electives
Open to advanced undergraduates with permission of the instructor.
ELEC-GG 2545
The Shape of the Story: Content into Form
King
W
6:20-9:00
p. 50
ELEC-GG 2575
Dramatizing History I
Dinwiddie
R
6:20-9:00
p. 50
ELEC-GG 2720
American Society and Culture in Transition
Raiken
M
6:20-9:00
p. 51
ELEC-GG 2745
Democratic Persuasion Duncombe M 6:20-9:00
p. 51
Individualized Projects
INDIV-UG 1701
INDIV-UG 1801
p. 52
Pass/Fail Only. Deadline for submitting proposal is Sept 10. To register, please contact Faith Stangler Lucine
(fs1@nyu.edu).
Private Lesson
Internship
Pass/Fail Only. Deadline for submitting proposal is Sept 10. To register, please contact Faith Stangler Lucine
(fs1@nyu.edu). Students are required to attend two workshops (dates to be announced).
INDIV-UG 1901
Independent Study
INDIV-UG 1905
Senior Project
INDIV-UG 1925
Tutorial
8 p. 52
p. 52
Deadline for submitting proposal is May 1. To register, please contact studentservices.gallatin@nyu.edu.
p. 52
Deadline for submitting proposal is May 1. To register, please contact studentservices.gallatin@nyu.edu.
p. 53
Deadline for submitting proposal is May 1. To register, please contact studentservices.gallatin@nyu.edu.
fall
2012 global
fall
courses
gallatin Travel Course
TRAVL-UG 1200
The Art of Travel
Enrollment is restricted to students studying abroad at an NYU site during fall 2012.
Hutkins
to be arranged
p. 53
NYU global sites
accra
Internship Seminar and Fieldwork
BERLIN
European Environmental Policy
Topics in German Cinema: Heimat, the City and the Self
buenos Aires
Tango and Mass Culture
Creative Writing: Argentina, Travel Writing at the End of the World
Internship Seminar and Fieldwork
Florence
Postmodern Fiction: An International Perspective
Community Service in Florence
LONDON
Immigration
Paris
The French Art World in the Nineteenth Century
Paris Monuments and Political Power in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Topics in French Literature: Paris in French and Expatriate Literature
PRAGUE
Kafka and His Contexts Literature and Place of Central Europe
Civil Resistance in Central and Eastern Europe
Central European Film
Modern Dissent in Central Europe: The Art of Defeat
shanghai
Creative Writing
Internship Seminar and Fieldwork
tel aviv
2012
Internship Seminar and Fieldwork
9
first - year interdisciplinary seminars
GALLATIN FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS ONLY
Migration and American Culture
FIRST-UG 24 4 UN W 2:00-3:15, F 12:30-3:15
M. Dinwiddie
The extended meeting time on Friday accommodates travel to and
from NYC sites.
This course will examine the immigrant and migrant narratives of varied racial and ethnic groups in the United States.
What changes in identity and in political, social and economic
status did they experience? What were the newcomers’
expectations of their environment, and what reality did they
encounter? Our study will look at coping mechanisms, the
forging of intra-tribal identity, the sociology of survival, and
the concept of ‘otherness.’ We will visit notable sites including The Hispanic Society of America, the National Museum
of the American Indian, Henry Street Settlement House, the
Tenement Museum, the African Burial Ground, the Eldridge
Street Synagogue, El Museo del Barrio, the Islamic Cultural
Center of New York, the Schomburg Center for Research in
Black Culture, The Museum of Chinese in America, and the
Lewis H. Latimer House. Readings may include such texts
as How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis, The Warmth of Other
Sons by Isabel Wilkerson, The Lucky Ones by Mae Ngai, Down
These Mean Streets by Piri Thomas, and Imagined Communities
by Benedict Anderson. Films include Clint Eastwood’s Gran
Torino and the documentary Family Name by Mackie Alston.
The Social Construction of Reality
FIRST-UG 32
4 UN MW 11:00-12:15 Stephen Duncombe
How do we know what is real and what is illusion? From the
philosophy of the ancient Greeks to contemporary movies
such as The Matrix, this question has haunted humankind. This
course begins with the premise that "the real" is something
we construct. We create reality through the stories we tell
and the stories told to us. Since the most powerful storytellers today are the commercial media, we will pay special
attention to the role of entertainment, advertising, and public
relations in constructing our reality. Texts for the course
include works by Plato, Rene Descartes, W.E.B. Du Bois,
Maxine Hong Kingston, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herman
Melville, Walter Lippmann, Jean Baudrillard, Slavoj Zizek,
Judith Butler, Jonathan Lear and John Berger.
Family
FIRST-UG 35
4 UN MW 11:00-12:15
Patrick McCreery
In our sciety, the concept of “family” is paradoxically omnipresent but elusive: politicians seek to define it, marketers
10 struggle to reach it, artists attempt to represent it, and many
individuals hope to transcend it. This course offers both a
critical examination of family in the United States and a survey
of the academic disciplines that study it. As we will see, legal,
social, and personal definitions of family are fluid because historical processes such as slavery, immigration, and demands
for gay rights re-shape popular conceptualizations of family.
Similarly, disciplines such as history, sociology, biology, law,
literature, and literary theory routinely offer new and sometimes contradictory ways of understanding family. This course
will use these disciplines to illuminate the complicated ideas
and emotions that can surround what arguably are our closest
relationships. Works we may study include Alice Walker's The
Color Purple, Nancy Polikoff's Beyond (Straight and Gay)
Marriage, and the photography of Sally Mann.
The Self and the Call of the Other
FIRST-UG 49
4 UN MW 12:30-1:45
Judith Greenberg
Ovid’s story of Echo and Narcissus from Metamorphoses
portrays the dangers of refusing to heed the call of the Other.
Absorbed by his own image, Narcissus ignores the nymph
Echo, who relies upon his words to speak. His solipsism leads
to their deaths. This class takes Ovid’s story as a model for
investigating how the self is shaped in relation to the other, a
question considered by psychologists, writers, philosophers,
filmmakers and literary critics. We will read psychological
discussions of the development of the self or ego (Freud,
Winnicott, Benjamin), literary portrayals of the self in relation to others (Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Joyce’s “The Dead,”
Duras’ The Ravishing of Lol V. Stein), and philosophical essays
(Blanchot, Levinas). We will examine the breakdown in the
connection between the self and the other due to trauma,
reading essays in trauma studies (Caruth and Brison), and the
ways in which colonialism and empire shape conceptions of
self and other, reading novels (Forster, A Passage To India) and
theory (Said, Spivak). We will also ask what problems arise
specifically when women speak—how Echo finds a voice—
viewing the films Spellbound and Sunset Boulevard.
Beyond Language:
The Surreal, the Monstrous, and the Mystical
FIRST-UG 65
4 UN TR 2:00-3:15
Gregory Erickson
Texts of the surreal, the monstrous, and the mystical are
portrayals of experiences that, while they may be outside
traditional logic, are clearly central to the human imagination.
The texts studied in this course will reveal these experiences
as metaphors of anxiety, depictions of radical subjectivity,
and as manifestations of our unconscious fears and desires.
fall
first - year interdisciplinary seminars
Students are presented with the fascinating but difficult
project of researching, interpreting, and describing irrational
mental states often said to be “beyond language,” yet existing within language. Through discussion, informal writing,
and experiential activities, we will take various approaches
to understanding depictions of these experiences as well as
their surrounding discourse. We will focus on issues of order
vs. chaos, logic vs. irrationality, chance and fate, immanence
and transcendence, self and other, and the concepts of
nothingness, the uncanny, and the posthuman. Readings will
include essays from diverse fields such as psychology (Freud,
Lacan), science (Hawking, Sagan, Gleick), and literary and cultural theory (Haraway, Beal, Kurzweil), as well as surrealistic
poetry, literary monster narratives from the Bible to Dracula,
mystical and devotional texts, and testimonies of paranormal
encounters. We will also look at visual art, installation art,
film, and television.
Boundaries and Transgressions
FIRST-UG 69
4 UN TR 9:30-10:45
Marie Cruz Soto
Boundaries, especially those thought to separate national
communities, are powerful human inventions that can scar
landscapes and bodies. The frontiers of the United States,
for example, have been centuries in the making. Yet, these
geographical imaginaries, however stable they may appear,
depend on their continuous embracing, enforcement and
redefinition. Indeed, the limits of the U.S. community (where
the national ends and the foreign begins) are redefined on a
daily basis along such sites as the Rio Grande, Guantánamo
and others. These sites—porous and formidable—are the
cause of much movement, anxiety and debate. This course
takes boundaries as a lens through which to think about
identity formation, community building and transgressions.
It will begin with a broad exploration of boundary-making,
subjectivities and imperial formations, and then address more
specific dynamics of national demarcations (with special
attention paid to U.S. and Haiti/Dominican Republic frontiers). The following questions guide the semester: How are
boundaries imagined into existence and made to matter in the
daily lives of different peoples? And, how can transgression
and its consequences be understood? Readings might include
Edwidge Danticat’s The Farming of Bones, Frederick Jackson
Turner’s The Significance of the Frontier in American History,
and texts by Sigmund Freud, Amy Kaplan, Gloria Anzaldúa
and Julia Kristeva.
2012
Holy Grails
FIRST-UG 70
4 UN MW 2:00-3:15
Andrew Romig
The Quest for the Holy Grail has captured the modern
Western imagination, spawning bestselling fiction, scholarly
and conspiratorial study, and no fewer than fourteen feature
films dating back to the silent era. Yet our twentieth-century
fascination with the legendary Cup is only the most recent
incarnation of a long obsession in popular Western culture—
an obsession that reaches back in time to at least the twelfth
century, and possibly earlier still. In this course, the legend of
the Holy Grail will serve as a case study for learning about
the Middle Ages and medievalism in our world today. We will
study the flourishing of the Grail legend in medieval courtly
society, but we will think about other “Grails” as well: quests
for the unknown, the unseen, and the unconquered; fascination with conspiracy; and above all, the hope that human
beings invest in symbols, not just of the divine, but also of
transcendent kindness, compassion, and sacrifice. Readings
will include Beowulf, the Perceval legends of Chrétien de Troyes
and Wolfram von Eschenbach, Robert de Boron’s Merlin,
and Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. We will examine
our modern associations of the Grail legend with Christian
femininity, the Knights Templar, the Papacy, and Leonardo da
Vinci. And in dialogue with theorists of anthropology, political
science, psychology, and comparative mythology, we will discuss why we pursue holy grails in the first place—what keeps
us striving for those tantalizing, ultimately unreachable goals
that nevertheless compel us ever forward.
Political Theatre
FIRST-UG 71
4 UN TR 3:30-4:45
Valerie Forman
What makes theatre political? How has the politics of theatre been imagined and practiced in different times? What
hopes for changing the world does theatre dramatize? What
does the study of theatre teach us about politics? How does
the theatre become a productive site for representing, and
even enacting, political change? This course explores these
questions by reading plays from three periods in which
theatrical production played a significant role in the politics
of its world—ancient Greece, Renaissance England, and our
contemporary globalized world. The primary objective of this
course is to introduce students to plays that not only address
a range of political issues (for example, about race, gender,
sexuality, class, violence, the governing of subjects, and the
production of good citizens) but also attempt to enact change
and engage the community. We will thus be reading innovative plays alongside theorists who investigate and imagine the
political potential of theatre and performance. By attending
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first - year interdisciplinary seminars
plays and participating in experimental theatrical exercises
ourselves, we will be able both to think about what makes
theatre political and to experience its effects through our
own creative actions. We will make at least one trip to the
theatre together, and students will be encouraged to explore
alternative theatrical sites in NYC. Likely playwrights we
will study include: Sophocles, Shakespeare, Brecht, Ngugi
wa Thiong'o & Ngugi wa Mirii, Anna Deveare Smith, Caryl
Churchill, Clifford Odets, and Sara Kane.
Historical Memory in War and Peace
FIRST-UG 74
4 UN MW 12:30-1:45
Hannah Gurman
In the aftermath of the Holocaust, Primo Levi wrote, “Never
forget that this has happened.” Levi’s imperative raises important questions about the role of memory in contemporary
atrocity and war. What is the purpose of remembering atrocity? What is the relationship between memory and justice?
Between memory and history? Focusing on the Holocaust,
the Rwandan genocide, the Vietnam War, and 9/11, this
course will examine how war tribunals, war memorials, literature, film and leaked government documents have shaped,
challenged, and revised the way we think about these events.
In addition to informal response papers, students will write 3
formal essays over the course of the semester. Readings may
include works by W.G. Sebald, Karl Jaspers, Hannah Arendt,
Philip Gourevitch, Daniel Ellsberg, and Noam Chomsky.
What is "Development?"
FIRST-UG 76
4 UN TR 2:00-3:15
Rosalind Fredericks
From Bono to indigenous community activists in the Amazon,
everyone is talking about 'development.' The term, however,
means different things to different people and has a long and
contentious history. This course considers understandings and
measures of international development and poverty from an
interdisciplinary perspective. Bridging different conceptions
of development rooted in economic, social, cultural, political,
psychological, and ecological traditions, it seeks to expose and
compare the fundamental assumptions behind different ideas
of how people and nations get ahead, indeed flourish. The
goal is to provide a clear sense of the chief objects, processes,
actors, and policies of development in order to grapple with
the important stakes held by these different approaches to
transforming societies and economies. Readings may include:
Amartya Sen, Frantz Fanon, Bill Easterly, and Herman Daly.
12 Play and Games in Early China
FIRST-UG 77
4 UN TR 9:30-10:45
Ethan Harkness
In this class we will combine academic study with an experiential approach to the topic of games and, more generally,
participatory entertainment in early China. Thus in addition
to thinking about the meaning of play as a universal human
activity and contextualizing examples of popular games from
the Chinese tradition with background reading on related
philosophical and cosmological beliefs, we will learn the
fundamentals of the ancient Chinese game of weiqi (go), a
favorite pastime of scholars since at least the Han dynasty.
Students will be introduced to on-line resources that allow
them to play the game in real time with opponents from
around the world, and they will also visit local New York City
go clubs. Through diligent study, students will be expected
to achieve a reasonable level of competence in the game
and asked to demonstrate that for a portion of their final
grade. By demanding real immersion in an absorbing and
characteristically Chinese activity that has remained essentially unchanged over at least two millennia, it is hoped that
students will begin to recognize the fundamental humanity
they share with the former peoples of early China. Readings
may include Homo Ludens by J. Huizinga, Man, Play and Games
by Roger Caillois, The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia by
Bernard Suits, selections from Science and Civilization in China
by Joseph Needham, The Art of War by Sun-tzu, and Learn to
Play Go by Janice Kim.
Environmentalism:
A Global History
FIRST-UG 78
4 UN MW 9:30-10:45
Peder Anker
We think of environmentalism as a new political movement, but in fact it has a long history--one that has always
been engaged as well with questions about the relationship
between different parts of the globe. This course traces the
history of environmentalism, ecology, and public health back
to natural history collecting and bioprospecting in the eighteenth century. The global history of ecological concern stays
at the center of this course, which discusses the Swedish,
British, German, Russian, South African, South American,
and North American contexts in subsequent centuries. We
will ask: How did scholars and activists around the world
conceptualize “the global”? Whose knowledge and which
rationality came to frame our environmental thinking? This
seminar will try to untangle the social and intellectual dynamics between natural sciences and environmentally concerned
citizens. Readings will include Carolus Linnaeus, Henry David
Thoreau, Julian Huxley, Jan Smuts, and Garret Hardin.
fall
first - year interdisciplinary seminars
Fantastic Voyage:
Fear and Loathing:
The Art and Science of Science Fiction
Documentary and Subjectivity
FIRST-UG 79
4 UN MW 3:30-4:45
José Perillán
To many people the latest theories in science may seem
distant and otherworldly. Complex mathematics and subjectspecific technical jargon can form intimidating barriers to
modern scientific understanding. Why then are big science
fiction movies like Star Wars and Avatar so successful at the
box office? Is the sci-fi genre simply a social lubricant for the
acceptance of science? Do these fictional narratives prophetically predict innovations within the sciences or do they actually serve to inspire these innovations? At its core, the sci-fi
genre emerges from the interlacing of scientific rationality and
the escapism of story-telling, extrapolating current scientific
knowledge into alternate realities. In this seminar we will
explore the genre of science fiction and its underlying literary
and scientific elements. Students will write two expository
essays and a short story. Readings may include works by:
Voltaire, Isaac Asimov, Ursula K. Le Guin, Arthur C. Clarke,
Orson Scott Card, Alice Sheldon, Kurt Vonnegut, Octavia
Butler, H.G. Wells, Philip K. Dick, Mary Shelley, Robert A.
Heinlein, and Jules Verne.
FIRST-UG 81
4 UN TR 11:00-12:15
Rahul Hamid
Through an examination of Cinema Verité, Direct Cinema,
and ethnographic film this course will examine the ways in
which filmmakers, writers and social scientists have sought
innovative ways to account for cultural difference and bias.
We will explore how “the other” is represented, and how
such representations always mirror the one doing the observing. By Focusing on the 1950s and 1960s, we also trace how
readings and films shift away from master narratives and
colonialist discourses. Class readings include Franz Fanon’s
Black Skin, White Masks; classic ethnographies by Marvin
Harris, Clifford Geertz, and Bronislaw Malinowski; Elizabeth
Warnock Fernea’s Guests of the Sheikh, and Norman Mailer’s
Armies of the Night. Films include Robert Flaherty’s Nanook of
the North, Robert Gardner’s Dead Birds, Jean Rouch’s Les maîtres fous, Chronicle of a Summer by Edgar Morin, Chris Marker
and Jean Rouch, Frederick Wiseman’s Titticut Follies, David
and Albert Maysles’s Gimme Shelter, and Maya Deren’s Ritual
in Transfigured Time. Class assignments will also include visits
to the Museum of Natural History, Anthology Film Archives,
and Union Docs.
Happiness, Tranquility, and Mysticism
FIRST-UG 80
4 UN TR 11:00-12:15
Bradley Lewis
After a century studying mental disease and pathology,
contemporary psychologists have recently charted a “new”
research agenda devoted to human happiness, flourishing,
and positive emotions. This new science of happiness deploys
modern quantitative and neuroimaging methods towards the
goal of discovering the secrets of human well being. Already,
this new science has many critics and adherents. In important
ways, the emerging research harkens back to seminal work of
William James on the Varieties of Religious Experience. At the
same time it is rediscovering and reinvigorating ancient philosophical and religious traditions that go back for millennia.
This seminar takes advantage of the renewed interest in the
good life to compare and contrast modern “positive psychology” with its critics and with other wisdom traditions. Authors
we read include Seligman, Csikszentmihalyi, Lyubomirsky,
Freud, Maslow, Ehrenreich, James, Plato, Epicurus, Epictetus,
Aurelius, Seneca, Montaigne, Origen, Saint Teresa of Avila,
Merton, Buddha, Dogen, and Nhat Hanh.
2012
13
first - year writing seminars
GALLATIN FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS ONLY
Aesthetics on Trial
FIRST-UG 319
4 UN TR 6:20-7:35
Christopher Trogan
While cultures often like to see themselves reflected in
the arts, groundbreaking art is frequently accompanied by
controversy. In literature, Nabokov was faced with charges
of obscenity. In photography, Mapplethorpe challenged the
role of the visual arts as innocent representation. In film,
Riefenstahl blurred the line between art and propaganda by
directing for Hitler while Pasolini directed what still remains
one of the most shocking films in cinematic history. Through
critical writing focused on specific case studies we will investigate such key questions as: Could there be a great work
of art that is morally flawed? What is the relationship, if any,
between aesthetic and moral values? What, after all, are aesthetic and moral values? Three shorter essays and a longer
literary-critical paper are required. Texts may include selections from Plato, David Hume, Vladimir Nabokov, as well as
contemporary writers such as Arthur Danto, Berys Gaut,
Kendall Walton, and Michael Tanner.
Artists' Lives, Artists' Work
FIRST-UG 323
4 UN MW 4:55-6:10
Yevgeniya Traps
What is the relationship between art and life, between the
luxury of creating and the necessity of surviving? In this writing seminar, we will explore the many ways artists’ experiences and the circumstances of creation influence artists’
work. How are artists shaped by the societies in which they
live? How do family background, historical events, political
movements, social disruptions, and celebrity influence our
creations? How do artists, in turn, shape their societies’ attitudes and values? Focusing on how art and writing reveal the
effects of race, gender, sexuality, and politics in the second
half of the twentieth century, we will consider a number of
works in their contexts. Using writing as a way of thinking
critically, students will produce descriptive, analytical, and literary-critical essays. Readings may include works by Richard
Wright, James Baldwin, Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Sylvia
Plath, Andy Warhol, Susan Sontag, and Joan Didion.
of the many varieties of metamorphosis, such as those linked
with disguise and dissimulation; madness and dissolution;
immigration and exile; sickness and healing; and self-creation
that reflects self-knowledge. Students write academic essays
that develop their own ideas in their own voices, in stages
that progress from freewriting and drafting to workshopping,
revising and polishing. Throughout the course, we reflect on
writing itself as a transformation of subjective, ephemeral
impressions into words fixed on paper (or shimmering in
cyberspace) through which we communicate with others.
Readings include selections from Ovid’s Metamorphoses
(Humphries trans.) and a contemporary play based on it by
Mary Zimmerman; fairy tales, folk tales and contemporary
revisions (ed. Maria Tatar); Kafka’s The Metamorphosis; essays
on neurological transformation and creative responses to it in
Oliver Sacks’s An Anthropologist on Mars; and essays on immigration and exile in Letters of Transit (ed. Andre Aciman).
Love and Trouble
FIRST-UG 345
FIRST-UG 324
4 UN MW 3:30-4:45
June Foley
This course explores the idea of metamorphosis, or transformation, by which humans become—among other things-stones, flowers, and stars; animals, gods, monsters; and
members of the opposite sex. We read and write about some
14 Susan Weisser
All you need is love, love makes the world go around, and
love is a battlefield, so the songs tell us. What kinds of love
are essential to our well-being, and why does love so often
go wrong? This course will examine friendship, romance
and marriage, and parenthood as forms of love that are
very personal and yet have social rules of their own, sometimes unspoken. We will use a selection of philosophical,
sociological and literary texts to see what they contribute
to our understanding of how love and trouble sometimes go
together. Readings might include selections from Aristotle
on friendship, Dan Savage on parental love, a history of
marriage, and the postmodern theorist Roland Barthes’ A
Lover’s Discourse; literary texts include drama by Neil LaBute,
memoir by Jamaica Kincaid, fiction by Jane Smiley and Yukio
Mishima, and poetry by Anne Sexton. Discussing what we
think and feel about these representations of love will serve
as the springboard for developing students’ writing on the
subject. Students will compose descriptive and critical essays
and workshop their writing in multiple drafts.
The Faith Between Us
FIRST-UG 353
Metamorphoses
4 UN TR 9:30-10:45
4 UN MW 8:00-9:15
Scott Korb
Look at the headlines, flip through a magazine, or click the
link to your favorite blog, and increasingly you’ll find that
whether faith comes between us, separating one believer
from another, or lives between us, forming the glue that
holds communities together, is a question we all must face.
Through a consideration of a variety of contemporary reli-
fall
first - year writing seminars
gion writing—mostly from newspapers, popular magazines,
journals, and Web sites—this course will ask students to take
their own excursions into faith and faithlessness, and through
a process of writing, workshopping, and the all-important
rewriting, create the stories that, in Joan Didion’s words, “we
tell ourselves in order to live.” Readings may include works
by Reza Aslan and Karen Armstrong, Paul Elie and Marilynne
Robinson, Peter Manseau and Darcey Steinke, Christopher
Hitchens and Chris Hedges, Sam Harris, and Irshad Manji.
4 UN TR 4:55-6:10
Andrew Libby
The ruin of the environment begins with agriculture. With
this assertion Paul Shepard sharpens a modern tradition of
radical environmental thinking that ranges from Rousseau to
Elizabeth Kolbert. In this course, we will consider some of
the basic issues behind our urges to protect, and squander,
the environment. If the environment includes wilderness,
how does such wildness relate to our own sense of who
we are? How wild, how civilized, are we? Is homo sapiens
hard-wired for violence? To what extent do our current
forms of economic and social organization allow or prohibit
us from accommodating ourselves to the world around us?
In this seminar, we will write about these issues and imagine
realistic alternative futures. Authors may include Matsuo
Basho, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Henry David Thoreau, Black
Elk, Darwin, Sigmund Freud, Franz Kafka, Elizabeth Bishop,
Edward Abbey, Paul Shepard, Elizabeth Kolbert, Alice Walker,
and Cormac McCarthy.
4 UN MW 2:00-3:15
4 UN MW 3:30-4:45
Hannah Gurman
This class will examine “America” as a complex, historicallyrooted, and malleable idea, which writers, social scientists,
politicians, and the state have shaped, changed, and critiqued
to fit their own contexts and purposes. We will explore the
historical roots and shifting conceptions of the idea of America
through analysis of political treatises, poetry, essays, and official government documents from the pre-colonial period to
the present. Approaching “America” as both a nation-state
and an empire, and considering how it has been imagined by
those within as well as outside its borders, we will analyze the
idea of America not only in the context of life in the United
States, but also in the context of global development, environmental crises, and American foreign policy. Students will
write informal response papers as preparation for drafting and
revising 3 essays over the course of the semester, including a
literary critical essay. Texts will include works by John Locke,
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederick Douglass, Walt Whitman,
Jose Martí, Henry Luce, Eugene Burdick, and Naomi Klein, as
well as official documents of U.S. Policy.
FIRST-UG 375
Eugene Vydrin
This writing seminar will explore the implications of making
the new from the ready-made, of constructing one’s own
from what was—and remains—somebody else's. Collage
aims at reintegrating art and life, so we will examine collage
works that comment on existing society, critique its values
and forms of representation and demand their revision. By
selecting heterogeneous elements from remote areas of
culture, high and low, and juxtaposing them on a single plane,
collage disrupts conventional associations and traditional narratives, collapses oppositions, scrambles classifications, and
levels hierarchies. What new meanings do the fragments and
quotations acquire from these radical juxtapositions, and how
does their assemblage contest the mythologies of the culture
from which they were taken? The class will consist of several
case studies in verbal and visual collage placed in relation to a
set of political and aesthetic ideas, which we will derive from
2012
What Does it Mean?
Writing the Self
Collage:
From Art to Life and Back
FIRST-UG 361
The Idea of America:
FIRST-UG 365
Wilderness and Civilization
FIRST-UG 357
a series of theoretical texts. Theorists may include Walter
Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag, John Berger, Dick
Hebdige, and Marjorie Perloff. Collages may include poetry
by T. S. Eliot, Susan Howe, and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, as
well as artworks by Hannah Hoch, Romare Bearden, and
Robert Rauschenberg.
4 UN MW 9:30-10:45
Robert Huddleston
Sylvia Plath writes: “There is no terminus, only suitcases /
Out of which the same old self unfolds like a suit / Bold and
shiny, with pockets of wishes, / Notions and tickets, short
circuits and folding mirrors.” Rather than simply telling the
truth, autobiography is a complicated mirage of wish fulfillment and creative self-fashioning. As Plath suggests, a life
can never be fully told; its narration is an ongoing journey of
self-discovery where the lies one tells and the style one uses
are just as revealing as the truth about what happened. In this
course, we consider how writers tell the story of themselves
by selecting certain events and images, how writers use their
writing to come to self-awareness, and how writers cover up
or omit important facts in the construction of selves. Students
will write and revise three essays and a longer literarycritical essay. Readings may include selections from works by
such authors as St. Augustine, Dostoevsky, Rimbaud, James
Baldwin, Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Hardwick and Sylvia Plath.
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first - year writing seminars
Utopia:
The Logic and Ethics of Imagining New Worlds
FIRST-UG 379
4 UN TR 8:00-9:15
Tara Gellene
In the sixteenth century, Thomas More, inspired by
Plato’s Republic, imagined his own ideal state. Instead
of Eutopia, which means ‘happy place,’ More ironically
named his imaginary island Utopia, which means simply ‘no
place.’ More’s influential book eventually lent its name to a
diverse set of texts and visions. The concept of utopia now
carries both meanings and embodies the logical and ethical
tensions that plague metaphorical (and sometimes geographical) borderlands between the ideal and the real. In the 20th
century authors and theorists began to seriously weigh
the benefits and dangers of utopian thought, as feminists,
Marxists, environmentalists, and cosmopolitans continued
to imagine new and complex utopias. In this course, we will
examine the long tradition of utopian writing and thinking,
analyzing its aesthetics and logic, uncovering and assessing its
recurring themes and assumptions, and evaluating its utility
and ethics. Students will write and revise four essays, each
of which emphasizes a particular analytic strategy. Readings
may include work by Plato, Augustine of Hippo, Thomas
More, Edward Bellamy, Ernest Callenbach, Charlotte Perkins
Gilman, Frederic Jameson, Karl Popper, Krishan Kumar, B.F.
Skinner, and George Orwell.
The Body Politic and the Politics of the Body
in American Culture
FIRST-UG 382
4 UN MW 11:00-12:15
Neil Meyer
When a group of English Puritans sailed for New England,
John Winthrop told them they would become "members of
the same body." As Winthrop assigned some to be the heart,
the head, and the limbs of their new colony he inaugurated
an imagination of the American body that runs from the
first colonial encounters to today. This class will examine
the complex work of creating, describing, writing, and quite
simply "inventing" bodies within American culture. Through
analytic and reflective writing, we will consider how the discourses of history, literature, psychology, and politics employ
images and ideas about the body to represent the nation. Our
own writing will explore the complex issues that arise when
considering bodies and their representation, including representations of slavery, the women’ s rights movement, and the
birth of the modern homosexual identity. Writing assignments
will include a course blog, critical and descriptive essays, and
feature workshops and revision as key parts of the learning
16 process. Readings may include works by Susan Bordo, Lisa
Duggan, Michel Foucault, Frederick Douglass, Laura Mulvey
and others.
Walking and Writing in New York City
FIRST-UG 384
4 UN TR 2:00-3:15
Helena Ribeiro
Writing and walking are both peripatetic activities: we wander
through our ideas, making observations along the way, often
taking a detour or two before arriving at our conclusion. This
class will take the streets of New York as its starting point—
our “primary text” will be the City itself—and we will read
the ways in which it has been walked through on paper, often
in the form of descriptions of seeing it for the first time, or
re-seeing it as if it were the first. Through a series of writing
assignments, including informal journals and analytic, revised
essays, students will contextualize and historicize their journeys through these texts–and through the city–as we come
to understand how New York City got from “there” to
“here.” Readings may include works by Paul Dunbar, Gloria
Naylor, Walter Benjamin, W.J.T. Mitchell, Michel de Certeau,
Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, Diane Di Prima, Joyce
Johnson, Rita Mae Brown, James Baldwin, Charles Brockden
Brown, Henry James, José Martí, Hart Crane, Frank O’ Hara,
Nathanael West, Jacob Riis, and others.
Contemplation and Culture
FIRST-UG 385
4 UN TR 11:00-12:15
Jean Gallagher
There is a significant body of cultural work that seeks to
describe the experience or results of contemplation or
meditation, offer instruction in its various methods, or to
induce or encourage a contemplative state. This course will
examine texts and images from a number of fields (including spiritual autobiography, sermons, psychological studies,
philosophical writing, painting, and poetry) and from a range
of religious and philosophical traditions (Christian mysticism,
Daoism, Buddhism, Sufism), which represent some aspect of
contemplative experience. Readings may include works by
James Austin, Karen Armstrong, Meister Eckhart, Teresa of
Avila, Simone Weil, William James, Rainer Maria Rilke, William
Blake, Eihei Dogen, Lao-tzu, Walt Whitman, Gerard Manley
Hopkins, Gary Snyder, Dante Alighieri, Jelaluddin Rumi, and
Basho; visual art may include work by Duccio, Mark Rothko,
Barnett Newman, Wassily Kandinsky, and Bill Viola. Writing
in the course will include a daily journal (which will include
observations of assigned readings or images), four shorter
essays (4-5 pages), and a longer critical essay (6-8 pages).
fall
first - year writing seminars
Listening to Rebel Voices:
From Medieval Peasants to Contemporary Protesters
FIRST-UG 386
4 UN TR 3:30-4:45
Sharon Fulton
Shouts, yells, and cries cause social revolutions. This course
will look at two shattering moments in European History,
The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 and the French Revolution of
1789-99, and will study how rebel voices spread from the
streets into formal discourse. Mladen Dolar has argued that
“The principle of orality, the use of the living voice,” has long
been used to protest corruption. As the rebel voice resounds
in popular imagination, it eventually comes to articulate the
ingrained prejudices and hopes of citizens in every social stratum, transforming into a symbol with the potential to unify or
split apart a people. We will trace the impact of the resonant
voice of Wat Tyler, the rebel leader in The Peasants’ Revolt,
a rebellion that threatened to topple London and overthrow
the reigning government of Richard II. We will read late
fourteenth-century rebel letters, historical chronicles, and
relevant excerpts from poems by Geoffrey Chaucer and John
Gower. Reading and writing about current political, literary,
and sound theory will frame our discussions of this divisive
leader’s clarion call. In considering the historical influence of
Tyler’s cry for social justice, we will look at the ways in which
Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and Robert Southey reinterpreted the unique contribution of Wat Tyler during the years
of the French Revolution. In their essays, students will analyze
these historical rebellions and may pursue a variety of topics
related to modern and contemporary rebel voices: sectarian
sounds during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, the music of
1968 and 1969, Occupy Wall Street’s ban on megaphones,
the use of social media in the Arab Spring, or the role of texting during the recent British Riots of 2011.
Keeping It Real:
Thinking about Authenticity
FIRST-UG 387
4 UN MW 9:30-10:45
A. Lavelle Porter
In his book The Authenticity Hoax (2010), Andrew Potter
refers to authenticity as “one of the most powerful movements in contemporary life, influencing our moral outlook,
political views, and consumer behavior.” Scholars have linked
the concept of authenticity to various phenomena including
the mass production and marketing of material goods, the
development of audio-visual media, the move from agrarian
to urban ways of living, and populist politics. This course will
explore the idea of “keeping it real” in its various manifestations, focusing on how the concept of the authentic has been
used (and abused) in contemporary advertising, music, literature, visual arts, religion and politics. In this course we will
2012
contextualize our contemporary ideas about the authentic,
and we will seek to understand how authenticity influences
the way we think about identity and culture. We will use
different forms of essay writing as a way of thinking critically
about these issues. Three shorter essays and a longer critical
essay are required. Texts for this course will include a mixture of critical and creative works, and may include works
by Andrew Potter, Zadie Smith, Walter Benjamin, Percival
Everett, Woody Allen, and Elia Kazan.
Debating Science:
Great Scientific Controversies in Context FIRST-UG 388
4 UN MW 12:30-1:45
José Perillán
Is light a wave, a particle, or both? Were the ‘Bone Wars’ controversies of the late nineteenth century good for the study
of paleontology? Does quantum physics deny the existence of
physical reality? Which is the more powerful driver: nature or
nurture? Will the universe continue expanding forever or will
it ultimately end in a fiery collapse? Tesla vs. Edison: is AC or
DC more likely to cause death by electrocution? These are
some of the greatest debates that have gripped the scientific
community over the past two hundred and fifty years. Many
of these debates have been restricted to a healthy dialogue
within the scientific community but on occasion they have
sparked lively and even ad hominem exchanges between
scientists. In this seminar we will explore the nature of these
debates within their appropriate contexts. No mathematical
or scientific background is necessary; a sincere interest in
the subject matter is the only pre-requisite for this seminar. Students will write, workshop and revise three shorter
expository essays and a longer literary critical essay. Readings
may include works by: Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Thomas
Henry Huxley, Samuel Wilberforce, Harlow Shapely, Heber
Curtis, Othniel Marsh, and Edward Cope, Jill Jonnes, Manjit
Kumar, Kevin Davies, Brenda Maddox, Edward Lawson, and
Tom Rea.
Translation:
History, Theory, and Practice
FIRST-UG 389
4 UN MW 4:55-6:10Kathryn Vomero Santos
The problems and pleasures of translation have shaped
cultural, economic, intellectual, religious, and diplomatic
interactions for centuries. Emily Apter has noted that “the
9/11 tragedy, followed on its heels by the Iraq invasion and
occupation, has contributed to the focus on translation
in film, fiction, academic research, and the media.” In an
increasingly globalized and technologized world, we translate
across linguistic and cultural boundaries all the time. Looking
17
first - year writing seminars
at translation as a powerful dynamic in our daily interactions
helps us to understand the world in which we live. In this
seminar, we will explore many aspects of cross-linguistic
communication, including language acquisition, textual translation, professional interpreting, and the role of technology in
translation. In addition to reading and comparing translations
of literary texts, we will engage with theoretical works about
translation, statements written by translators about their craft
and profession, and recent news articles about the politics
of translation and translation in politics. In various essays
and projects, students will be encouraged to pursue a range
of topics that reflect their interests and curiosities about
language and intercultural exchange. Readings may include
works by Apter, David Bellos, Edith Grossman, Octavio Paz,
and Lawrence Vanuti.
The Return of the Soldier
FIRST-UG 390
4 UN MW 12:30-1:45
Joanna Scutts
What happens to soldiers and to society when war is over
and troops come home? How are soldiers and soldiering represented and understood by civilians? Do these views square
with how soldiers see themselves? In this writing seminar we
18 will explore the long and fraught history of military-civilian
relations. We will begin by analyzing excerpts from literary
works by Homer, Shakespeare, and First World War poets, in
order to understand how our cultural perceptions of returning combatants are constructed, in terms either of heroism,
adventure, sex appeal, and political authority, or of trauma,
alienation, and victimization. We will then examine literary,
historical, and sociological accounts of the return of American
soldiers from Vietnam, in order to analyze the lasting impact
of the war on U.S. culture and politics. Case studies will
include the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C.,
literature and films such as Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and
Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, as well as historical
accounts of the role of veterans in 1960’s anti-war and civil
rights movements. Students will write several shorter essays
and a longer critical essay that investigates an issue relevant
to the relationship between military and civilian society since
World War Two, such as the impact of the GI Bill(s), the
diagnosis and treatment of PTSD, or the role of online social
networks in mediating soldiers’ experiences and memories.
For final reflective essay, you will be asked either to contact
and interview a veteran or to review a recent work by a
veteran author.
fall
transfer student research seminars
Working
TRANSFER STUDENTS ONLY
FIRST-UG 803
Myths and Fables in Popular Culture
FIRST-UG 801
4 UN MW 11:00-12:15
Patricia Lennox
Myths, fables, folk tales, and fairy tales are universal. Their
heroes, villains, gods and monsters are as old as storytelling
and as new as the latest award-winning film. In this class we
will examine some of these stories and their histories, watching the shifts in emphasis as they are retold and adapted,
but also considering why certain mythic figures, such as the
wizard, gain greater currency in contemporary tales. Our
research will focus on old and new versions of tales, their
cultural construction and the critical discourse surrounding them. It will serve as the springboard for a series of
exercises focused on research methods, several short writing assignments, and a major research paper. Sources will
include, but not be limited to, selections from works by:
J.R.R. Tolkien, Disney, Ovid, Apuleius, Charles Perrault, the
Brothers Grimm, Angela Carter, Bruno Bettelheim, Joseph
Campbell, Jack Zipes, and Marina Warner.
Coming Home:
4 UN MW 9:30-10:45
Chinnie Ding
Visible and invisible, lonesome and collaborative, inspired and
endured, labor makes and maintains the world we live in. To
learn about work is to learn how most people spend most of
the day, securing means, pursuing dreams, existing in active
relation to other people. How do we come to choose the
work we do, and how to assess and redress the injustices
that often come with the division of labor? What are the
ethical and economic relationships that bind us to the faraway
strangers, or familiar faces we greet everyday, upon whose
efforts our own routines rely? How have artists and writers
depicted working people, and in what ways does creative
work fit into or fall outside the economy at large? How has
work structured our notions and experience of time? In this
course, students develop individual research projects across
diverse disciplines, such as anthropology, philosophy, art history, law, and critical theory, to explore the challenges that
work has posed to political thought, political action, and aesthetic representation alike. Readings drawn from literature,
visual culture, intellectual history, and globalization discourse
will be supplemented by artworks, films, and the occasional
excursion.
Identity and Place
FIRST-UG 802
4 UN MW 2:00-3:15
Jennifer Lemberg
In this writing seminar, we will interrogate the concept of
returning home--to places known briefly or well, to the
deeply familiar or merely imagined. Depictions of going home
in the aftermath of major historical events figure in much
recent literature, and through writing and class discussion,
students will explore the effects of violent upheavals of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries—including, for example,
the Holocaust, the Vietnam War, and American Indian dislocation—through the efforts of those affected by these events to
return to sites from which they were displaced. We will also
consider the relationship between identity and place, and the
tensions that can develop between collective versus individual
ideas of the self. The ways in which contemporary authors
treat the theme of "coming home" across boundaries of time
and space and the role this notion plays in the construction of
contemporary ethnic, racial, and national identities will serve
as our impetus for frequent exploratory writing, three formal essays, and a final research paper. Readings will include
works by Eva Hoffman, Jonathan Safran Foer, Tim O’Brien,
Danielle Trussoni, Sherman Alexie, James Welch, and Sharifa
Rhodes-Pitts, among others, as well as theoretical texts and
short films.
2012
19
interdisciplinary seminars
Sophomores Only
Discourses of Love:
Antiquity to the Renaissance
IDSEM-UG 1122
FULFILLS: 4 UN TR 11:00-12:15
Bella Mirabella
HUMANITIES, PREMODERN, EARLY MODERN
This course explores the impulse to define, understand,
contain, praise, analyze, lament, restrain, and express love.
Through a study of philosophy, poetry, drama, religion, art,
and music we will endeavor to discourse on the meaning of
this profound emotion. However, in order to understand the
place of love within the lives of humans, we need to look at
love in its historic, cultural, social, and political contexts from
Sappho and Plato to Shakespeare. We want to consider Love's
multiple roles with regard to desire, seduction, betrothal,
marriage, manners, morals, political power, and the pursuit of
wisdom, as well as its role in class, gender, and race. Possible
readings could include Plato’s Symposium, mystical writings,
the poetry of Sappho, the stories of Marie de France, selections from Dante, as well as two plays of Shakespeare.
20 Sophomores and juniors Only
American Narrative I
IDSEM-UG 1592
FULFILLS: 4 UN R 3:30-6:10
SOCIAL SCIENCE
George Shulman
The premise of this course is that there is no great political
philosophy in the American tradition—the Federalist Papers
do not rival Plato or Marx—but that profound thinking about
politics does occur—in the literary art of Melville, Faulkner,
Ellison, Mailer, and Morrison among others. Moreover, formally "political” writers, like Madison and Hamilton in The
Federalist Papers, present a world that seems antithetical to
the world presented by, say, Melville and Morrison: one depicts
rational bargaining and self-interested contracts among men
in markets and legislatures, whereas the other depicts racial
and sexual violence, rape and slavery, in domestic spaces or
on "the frontier." One depicts rationality and progress, the
other madness and tragedy. The literature thus makes visible
what is made invisible by prevailing forms of political science
and American political thought, not only the power of race
and gender, but also the deep narrative forms structuring
the culture. Our goal, then, will be to compare prevailing
forms of political speech and American political thought, to
American literary art. How do literary artists retell the stories Americans tell themselves about themselves? How does
that art re-orient people toward the assumptions, practices,
and tropes that rule their world and govern what "American"
means? To pursue these questions we focus on Herman
Melville’s Moby Dick, and Toni Morrison’s Beloved, while surrounding and contextualizing each text with contemporary
political speech and political theory.
fall
interdisciplinary seminars
Sophomores and juniors Only
Empire, Race and Politics
IDSEM-UG 1712
FULFILLS: 4 UN T 6:20-9:00
SOCIAL SCIENCE
Literary Forms and the Craft of Criticism
George Shulman
The goal of this course is not to define kinds of empire or to
narrate its historical transformation, though we will consider
these issues. Our goal, rather, is to consider how "empire"
has been represented, defended, and opposed in American
politics. We will focus especially on anti-imperial voices, to
consider how they depict what "empire" is and why it is dangerous or wrong, as well as how they justify their opposition
and imagine alternatives. We will move through the history of
such voices, from critics of the 1787 Constitution to Henry
Thoreau and other abolitionist critics of the Mexican War and
then of the Spanish-America War, and from critics of World
War Two to critics of Vietnam. We will analyze how arguments about and against empire are related to arguments
about capitalism, race, masculinity, modernity, and democracy. We will explore the recurring patterns of metaphor,
narrative, and argument in this chorus of voices, and analyze
the problems, dangers, and variants in their language. (For
instance, do critics remain too much within a nationalist
frame by telling nostalgic stories of loss and decline? Are they
unintentionally imperialist in the kinds of racial priveleges
they assume? Do their alternatives to empire enact a wish to
escape from valuable aspects of modernity or of democracy?)
The course readings end with the Vietnam War, but final projects will consider how contemporary critics of empire do or
should relate to these inherited idioms. Readings include J.M
Coetze's Waiting for the Barbarians; Norman Mailer's Armies
of the Night and Why are We in Vietnam?; poetry by Allan
Ginsberg, speeches by SDS leaders and Eugene McCarthy,
treatises by C. Wright Mills, David Harvey, and Talal Asad;
essays by Audre Lorde and Gloria Anzaldua.
2012
Sophomores, Juniors, & Seniors
IDSEM-UG 1061
FULFILLS: 4 UN W 12:30-3:15
HUMANITIES
Sharon Friedman
This seminar focuses on the study of literature and literary
criticism. Through close reading of a range of literary forms,
including short stories, novels, plays, and narrative essays,
we identify the conventions that characterize each genre
and that invite various strategies of reading. In addition to
the formal analysis of each work, we will consider theoretical approaches to literature—for example, new historicism,
postcolonial studies, feminist and gender analysis, and psychoanalytic criticism—that draw on questions and concepts from
other disciplines. Attention will be given to the transaction
between the reader and the text. The aims of the course are
to encourage students to make meaning of literary works and
to hone their skills in written interpretation. Authors may
include Poe, Melville, Chekhov, Hawthorne, Bellow, Beckett,
Baldwin, Woolf, Morrison, Conrad, Gordimer, Achebe, and
Erdrich.
21
interdisciplinary seminars
The Darwinian Revolution
OPEN TO ALL
IDSEM-UG 1156
FULFILLS: Bodily Fictions
IDSEM-UG 1128
4 UN R 3:30-6:10
Laura Ciolkowski
Freud once famously announced that femininity is a riddle
and the female body is a problem. Some years later, feminist
philosopher Simone de Beauvoir insisted that the problem
is not the female body as such but rather the fictions we
produce about the body. In this course, we will focus simultaneously upon two kinds of bodily fictions: Works of literary
fiction with the body as their subject; and the various social
fictions and cultural representations of the body that are to
be found in a wide range of scientific, sociological, and critical
texts. Some of the key questions that will structure our work
include: How has our understanding of male and female bodies been shaped over time? What does it mean to explore
the body as a historical rather than a biological object? How
do we define deviant bodies and which bodies get to count
as normal? How does our understanding of the opposition
between Nature and Culture structure our beliefs about
gender and the body? Authors may include: Sigmund Freud,
Franz Kafka, Susan Bordo, Luce Irigaray, Michel Foucault,
Margaret Atwood, Audre Lorde, and Joan Brumberg.
Free Speech and Democracy
IDSEM-UG 1144
FULFILLS: 4 UN R 6:20-9:00
SOCIAL SCIENCE
Paul Thaler
The tension between free expression and social control has
shadowed the Great American Conversation since the birth
of this country. The constitutional ideal that our government
"shall make no law" abridging free speech has given way, in
fact, to laws that limit discussion, ostensibly for the public
good. Likewise, new media technologies advance our ability
to access and exchange ideas and information, but raise new
questions as to the limits of such dialogue. This course, then,
addresses the delicate balance between free speech and
democracy, guided by seminal readings from Milton, Locke,
Meikeljohn, among others, as well as important Supreme
Court decisions that have critically shaped First Amendment
rights in regard to hate speech, pornography, corporate
control of mass media, the student press and the rights of
journalists. With this foundation, we ask: Are there any forms
of free speech that should be restricted? If so, which? And,
who should decide?
22 4 UN MW 2:00-3:15
SCIENCE Gene Cittadino
Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection may be the
single most influential, and controversial, scientific theory
ever proposed. This course will examine the origin, nature,
and consequences of Darwin’s theory, with an emphasis on
interrelationships among the social, cultural, and intellectual
dimensions of the scientific enterprise. Topics include the
connections between Darwinian theory and social, political,
and moral discourse in Victorian Britain; initial and more
recent scientific and public controversies; resistance to the
theory by conservative Christians; applications and misapplications of the theory, such as Social Darwinism, eugenics,
and sociobiology; and the influence of Darwinian thought on
literature and the arts. In addition to the Origin of Species and
excerpts from Voyage of the Beagle, Descent of Man, and other
Darwin writings, readings will likely include Kurt Vonnegut’s
Galapagos, selections from Malthus, Spencer, and Huxley,
and recent works by Richard Dawkins, E.O. Wilson, Stephen
Gould, Marlene Zuk, and Sarah Hrdy, among others.
Culture as Communication
IDSEM-UG 1193
FULFILLS: 4 UN MW 11:00-12:15
SOCIAL SCIENCE
Vasu Varadhan
This course examines the concept of culture through its
forms of communication. The shift from orality to literacy to
electronic media and now digital media has important consequences for the social, political, and economic structures
within a culture. If we take as axiomatic that every culture
wishes to preserve itself through its forms of communication,
we then need to ask ourselves which forms of communication are best suited for this purpose. What happens to cultures when traditional forms of communication are forced to
compete with the newer technologies? What do we mean by
“knowledge” in the age of information? The impact of written
narrative on orality will be discussed as well as the changes
brought about by the invention of the printing press. We will
examine the development of electronic media, including the
newer technologies such as the Internet, and analyze their
effects on individual and cultural levels. Readings may include
Plato’s Phaedrus, Ong’s Orality and Literacy, Achebe’s Things
Fall Apart, McLuhan’s Understanding Media, and Carr's The
Shallows. There will also be selected handouts on the impact
of social media in the political, social and economic spheres.
fall
interdisciplinary seminars
Narratives of African Civilizations
IDSEM-UG 1197
FULFILLS: 4 UN M 3:30-6:10
Dan Dawson
HUMANITIES, PREMODERN, GLOBAL
African civilizations speak to us as much through monumental
edifices, visual artifacts, sign systems, oral tradition, and films
as they do through alphabetic texts. In their varied expressions, these societies, ancient and contemporary, present us
with new ways of knowing. When we encounter these social
imaginations through their multiple texts, the experience is
reflexive, double-imaged, because of the complex interaction
of the perceptions of Africa with the West’s own image of
itself. Texts may include hieroglyphics, architectural symbolism, music, visual art, epics, folktales and proverbs, cosmologies and rituals (such as the ancient Egyptian Book of the
Dead), The Epic of Sundiata (which explores medieval Ghana
and Mali), and the society of the Dogon and its extraordinary cosmology. African modernist art and writing will
also be represented, through novels like Conde’s Segu and
Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions, and films like Keita, Finzan
and Ceddo. Using ideas both ancient (African Cosmology of
the Bantu-Kongo by Fu-Kiau) and contemporary (In Search
of Africa by Manthia Diawara), African civilizations will speak
through their own words.
Tragic Visions
IDSEM-UG 1202
FULFILLS: 4 UN TR 3:30-4:45
Bella Mirabella
HUMANITIES, PREMODERN, EARLY MODERN
This course studies the nature of the tragic form in dramatic literature and performance, as well as its role in
human existence. Focusing on two of the great periods of
tragedy in Western literature and culture­—ancient Greece
and Renaissance England—we read selected tragedies by
Aeschuylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Shakespeare as well
philosophical considerations of the tragic by, for example,
Aristotle and Nietzsche. We examine these works in their
social, political, and cultural contexts, while considering questions such as gender, power, fate, free will, and the origins and
evolution of tragedy as a literary and political genre. Readings
might include Sophocles' Oedipus, and Euripides' Medea, as
well as Shakespeare's Macbeth, or King Lear. Special attention
is paid to performance.
life. Although the end of the Cold War relaxed the tensions
somewhat, the combined arsenals of existing nuclear powers
are still sufficient to destroy most of life on this planet many
times over, and controversies continue over nuclear weapons
programs in Iran and North Korea. How did this extraordinary state of affairs come about? Why were the bombs made
when and where they were made? Why were they used? Did
the individuals involved understand the destructive potential
of these new weapons and ponder moral questions involving
their manufacture and use? Did they anticipate the nuclear
arms race that has resulted. How does this episode fit into
the longer history of the relationship between science and
warfare? How were both hopes and fears transferred to
the debates over nuclear power? Readings will likely include
Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Hachiya, Hiroshima
Diary, Gordin, Red Cloud at Dawn, and a variety of selections
concerning nuclear proliferation, the disarmament movement, and nuclear power.
Narrative Investigations I
IDSEM-UG 1215
FULFILLS: 4 UN TR 11:00-12:15
HUMANITIES, EARLY MODERN
Stacy Pies
How does narrative create a sense of identity and give value
to our lives? What are the ethical implications of looking at
knowledge as a construction of narrative? The concept of
narrative is currently used across disciplines to describe how
people, texts, and institutions create meaning. This course
will explore the idea that stories organize our thinking and
our lives. We will begin with Plato’s ideas on tragedy and
Aristotle’s Poetics, which later narrative explorations emulate and challenge. Our reading of Cervantes’s Don Quixote,
Diderot’s Jacques the Fatalist, and modern fictions will investigate the ways fictional texts radically reinvent literary forms
and question social conventions. The works of critics such
as Bakhtin, Chatman, Schafer, and Iser will reveal how narrative has been adopted as both a theoretical model and a
methodology within a variety of fields. Students will carry out
projects that explore narrative trends within their particular
areas of interest.
Doing Things with Words:
Arts and Politics Across Cultures
Origins of the Atomic Age
IDSEM-UG 1207
FULFILLS: 4 UN TR 11:00-12:15
SCIENCE Gene Cittadino
The uranium and plutonium nuclear fission bombs dropped
on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 permanently altered the
world we live in. Fear of nuclear annihilation became a fact of
2012
IDSEM-UG 1216
FULFILLS: 4 UN T 3:30-6:10
HUMANITIES, GLOBAL
Nina Cornyetz
The course will focus on an eclectic group of mostly contemporary, politically-directed writers and other artists primarily from various ethnic or racial minority backgrounds. We
begin with performance proper, and then narrow our focus
23
interdisciplinary seminars
to discuss what elements of performance are incorporated
into narrative text to produce “performative writing.” Does
minority positioning affect the content, structure, and manner in which these artists perform or write, and in turn, how
they are received? How might sexual/gender politics nuance
that positioning? Rather than seeking division under the rubric
of “national literature,” or the multicultural versions such
as “African-American” or “Asian-American” writers/artists,
the course will look for structural and contextual models
that cross these categories - concern with oral histories and
family-community genealogies, for example. We will also analyze how specific power politics inform these artists’ activities across their broadly diverse sociocultural, ethnic, and
geopolitical contexts. Texts may include: fiction by William
Faulkner, Nakagami Kenji, Ruth Ozeki and Toni Morrison, and
theoretical selections from Jacques Derrida, Antonin Artaud,
Judith Butler.
Militaries and Militarization
IDSEM-UG 1300
FULFILLS: 4 UN TR 4:55-6:10 Antonio Lauria-Perricelli
SOCIAL SCIENCE
What are the effects of a large, permanent military upon the
political economy and society of the United States? What
are the effects on other countries of their militaries? What
are the effects on local societies of US military bases? What
is the role of the various militaries in the history of colonial/
neo-colonial control, and in contemporary empire? How
are military establishments and violence linked to ethnonational, class and other social movements—and to the
repression and domination of such movements? What does
a military do to/for the people who staff it? What are the
implications of militarization in such areas as gender, human
rights, the environment, sports, knowledge and learning?
What is the role of militias, “para-militaries”, and guerrillas?
What methods can social or popular movements use in their
attempts to subvert, paralyze, eliminate or otherwise struggle
against militaries, military bases, and weapons? Texts may
include: Lutz, Homefront: A Military City and the American
Twentieth Century; Enloe, Maneuvers: The International Politics
of Militarizing Women’s Lives; McCaffrey, Military Power and
Popular Protest: The U.S. Navy in Vieques, Puerto Rico; and
Green, Fear as a Way of Life.
Mad Science/Mad Pride
IDSEM-UG 1311
FULFILLS: 4 UN T 3:30-6:10
SCIENCE Bradley Lewis
In recent years, questions of madness, psychiatry, and psychopharmaceuticals have been the subject of considerable
24 strife and controversy. This class uses narrative theory to
map out the terrain of these conflicts and explore competing approaches to psychiatric concerns. We start with an
overview of narrative theory as relevant to issues of mental
difference and suffering. Key narrative topics we discuss
include plot, metaphor, character, and point of view. With
this theory as our guide, the alternative approaches we consider include biopsychiatry, psychoanalysis, cognitive therapy,
family therapy, feminist therapy, spiritual approaches, and
creative approaches. We conclude with a consideration of
the Icarus Project idea that sometimes madness is best seen
as a “dangerous gift.”
Literary and Cultural Theory:
An Interdisciplinary Introduction
IDSEM-UG 1314
FULFILLS: 4 UN MW 4:55-6:10
HUMANITIES
Sara Murphy
In this course, we will examine several questions that arise for
students interested in the relation of theory to interdisciplinary study. What is theory essentially? How does it help us to
develop approaches and shape questions for study? What are
some influential theoretical schools and theoreticians? What
do they say and how might they be related to one another?
We will proceed through readings from Structuralism to
Post-structuralism, focusing on language, feminism, psychoanalysis, deconstruction and interpretations of power and
discourse. Authors considered may include Levi-Strauss,
Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jacques
Lacan, and Luce Irigaray.
Jung and Postmodern Religious Experience
IDSEM-UG 1328
FULFILLS: 4 UN TR 9:30-10:45
HUMANITIES
Lee Robbins
C.G Jung wrote: “I am not addressing myself to the happy
possessors of faith, but to those many people people for
whom the light has gone out, the mystery faded, and God is
dead.” The course unfolds around the question: How does
a person locate meaning in the postmodern age when traditional belief systems have been emptied of symbolic authority? In his discovery of the symbol making function within
the human psyche, Jung offers a possible answer. Variously
described as the religious, imaginative or creative instinct,
this psychological function offers the possibility of losing and
finding multiple meanings throughout the cycles of life. We
begin by defining pre modern, post modern and post secular
within their historical context with special attention to the
role of language. We identify the influences that shaped Jung’s
discovery, focusing on the classical elements that characterize
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a religious experience. Finally, we look to figures in the history
of culture that have lost and found meaning, Jung himself in
his Red Book and the Buddha. Readings may include selections from the Collected Works of C.G. Jung; Julia Kristiva,This
Incredible Need to Believe; Nietzsche, The Gay Science; William
James, The Varieties of Religious Experience; Gaston Bachelard,
Poetics of Reverie; Ernst Cassirer, Language and Myth; Caputo’s
The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida and On Religion;
Richard Kearney, Anatheism.
Creative Democracy:
The Pragmatist Tradition
IDSEM-UG 1381
FULFILLS: 4 UN W 3:30-6:10
SOCIAL SCIENCE
Bill Caspary
From Emerson, through William James, to John Dewey, and
beyond, Pragmatism has been a uniquely American contribution to political theory and philosophy. Pragmatism, like
classical political theory, is concerned with politics as a way of
achieving the good life rather than viewing politics narrowly
in terms of elections and governments. Through texts by
and about the Pragmatists, especially Dewey, the course will
introduce theories and practices of participatory democracy,
economic democracy, civic journalism, progressive education,
participatory action research, and conflict resolution. Reading
Pragmatism as philosophy, in the Hegelian tradition, we will
address many of the questions pursued by Marx, Nietzsche,
and the postmodernists, and will uncover rich alternative
answers. Possible readings include Emerson’s “Self Reliance”;
James’s “Moral Equivalent of War”; Dewey’s The Public and
Its Problems, “Creative Democracy,” and “The Economic
Basis of the New Society”; Royce’s The Hope of the Great
Community; Seigfried’s Pragmatism and Feminism; and West’s
writings on “prophetic pragmatism.”
Thinking About Seeing
IDSEM-UG 1388
FULFILLS: 4 UN T 3:30-6:10
HUMANITIES
Keith Miller
Through an art historical lens, this course explores visual
communication in a media-saturated society. We will analyze
how people “speak” through images and symbols as well
as words and how we “read” what we see. This class will
attempt to understand the tools used to reach an audience.
Images and texts from the past and present will help us assess
the character of various media and their personal as well as
political implications. Texts will include works by Barthes,
Baudrillard, Benjamin, Lev-Strauss, McLuhan, Sontag and
other seminal essays on the media.
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Latinos and the Politics of Race
IDSEM-UG 1394
FULFILLS: 4 UN MW 9:30-10:45
SOCIAL SCIENCE
René Poitevin
This course takes a look at the history of racial and ethnic
relations in the U.S. from the standpoint of Latinos. We will
explore how recent changes in Latino demographics, now the
largest minority group in the U.S., are challenging our notions
of whiteness, blackness, and the dominant White-Black race
paradigm. Are Latinos the ‘new whites’? Or are they becoming instead the ‘new blacks’? What does this mean for politics
and public policy debates? Through memoirs, fiction, videos,
and social science theory, we will trace the history of racialization in the U.S. (from slavery to our latest Latino immigration cycle) in order to interrogate both the fluidity and the
challenges confronting race relations in U.S. society. Readings
will include Michael Omi, David Roediger, Leo Chavez, James
Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Lisa Lowe, Clara Rodriguez, Piri
Thomas, and Samuel Huntington.
Politics and the Gods
IDSEM-UG 1417
FULFILLS: 4 UN TR 6:20-7:35
Aaron Tugendhaft
HUMANITIES, PREMODERN
What is the relationship between political life and the divine?
What role do the gods play in the course of history? How
has religion influenced the organization of human communities and the conduct of war between them? How have
political events shaped peoples’ understanding of the divine?
This course will explore such questions through the study
of texts from ancient Israel and Greece. We will read the
works of poets, prophets, and historians, and consider the
different ways that they grapple with the human-divine relationship. Readings may include selections from the Hebrew
Bible, Greek poetical works, and the historical writings of
Herodotus, Thucydides, and Josephus. Though occasional
secondary sources may be assigned, emphasis throughout will
be on close and careful reading of primary texts.
Boundary Crossings
IDSEM-UG 1426
FULFILLS: 4 UN MW 6:20-7:35
HUMANITIES
E. Frances White
The words we use to categorize people are proliferating,
signaling the increasing instability of our cultural categories
for describing race, gender, and sexuality. But is this instability and border crossing a new phenomenon or are we
simply more aware of the tenuousness of identity? How are
we to understand this explosion of identities and conscious
border crossings? We will explore such questions from a
historical perspective, beginning with the eighteenth century
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and ending in the mid-twentieth century. To further focus
our discussions, we pay particular attention to racial and
gender boundary crossing. Where possible, we will look for
circumstances where these racial and gender boundaries
intersect. Throughout the course, we hope to give students a
historical context for understanding the various ways people
cross-cultural boundaries and to alert students to the ways
race, gender, and sexuality can be intertwined. Writers we
will most likely read include: Nella Larsen, Marjorie Garber,
Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and Ross Chambers. Films we
may study include Imitation of Life and Looking for Langston.
The Iliad and its Legacies in Drama
IDSEM-UG 1454
FULFILLS: 4 UN W 3:30-6:10
HUMANITIES, PREMODERN
Laura Slatkin
Same as COLIT-UA 104.
"The poem of force," according to Simone Weil, the Iliad is
also a poem of forceful influence. In this course we will read
the Iliad intensively, followed by an examination of its heritage on the dramatic stage. In the first half of the semester
we will primarily explore the Iliad in terms of the poetics of
traditionality; the political economy of epic; the ideologics of
the Männerbund (the "band of fighting brothers"); the Iliad's
uses of reciprocity; its construction of gender; its intimations
of tragedy. In the second half of the course, informed by
a reading of Aristotle's Poetics, we will focus on responses
to the Iliad in dramatic form; possible readings will include
Sophocles' Ajax; Euripides' Iphigeneia in Aulis; Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida; Racine's Andromaque; Giraudoux's La
guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu; Ellen McLaughlin's Iphigenia and
Other Daughters. Students will give presentations on an Iliadic
intertext of their own choosing.
Psychoanalysis and the Visual
IDSEM-UG 1468
FULFILLS: 4 UN M 12:30-3:15
HUMANITIES
Eve Meltzer
At least since Freud’s “Dream Book,” psychoanalysis has
taught us that psychic life is thoroughly steeped in images.
This course will pursue the implications of Jacques Lacan’s
theory of the subject. By examining a range of psychoanalytic
texts alongside several films and photographs, we will consider Lacan’s proposition that the “I” comes into being though
the subject’s identification with his or her mirror image. This
is ultimately a problem for sociality itself, for we learn to
relate to others by way of how we relate to ourselves, our
primordial other. Course materials include the writings of
Borch-Jacobsen, Butler, Descartes, Fanon, Freud, Heidegger,
Lacan, Laplanche as well as several films, including Capturing
the Friedmans, American Psycho, and The Thin Red Line.
26 Consuming the Caribbean
IDSEM-UG 1482
FULFILLS: 4 UN R 3:30-6:10
HUMANITIES, GLOBAL
Millery Polyné
Same as SCA-UA 721.001.
Paradise or plantation? Spring break, honeymoon, or narcotics way station? First World host or IMF delinquent? Where
do we locate the Caribbean? From Columbus’ journals
to Pirates of the Caribbean, the Caribbean has been buried
beneath the sedimentation of imagery by and large cultivated
by non-Caribbeans, including colonial governments, settlers,
international tradesmen, tourist agents and their clients.
Caribbean peoples have had to re-member the islands that
they eventually called home—haunted by a history of slavery
and still a site of consumption and exploitation. A unifying
trope, Caribbean landscapes function as metaphor, emblem,
or even character. This course takes an interdisciplinary and
transnational approach by examining the material relations
of consumption, which links places, bodies, capital, text,
plants and landscapes, within the Caribbean, the U.S. and its
former colonial powers. Thus, the study of the Caribbean
emphasizes that the region is central to the understanding
of modernity and globalization as a modern construct. Some
of the theorists/writers we will engage are Edouard Glissant,
Jamaica Kincaid, Maryse Condé, Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire
and Mimi Sheller.
American Poetics:
Inventions and Intimate Dialogues in the Making of a
Hemisphere
IDSEM-UG 1503
FULFILLS: 4 UN W 3:30-6:10
HUMANITIES, GLOBAL
Millery Polyné
Same as SCA-UA 816. Formerly titled, "Hemispheric Imaginings:
Race, Ideology and Foreign Policy in the Americas." Course is not
repeatable.
The idea of an America has been diffracted but reconstituted
by a number of theorists, policymakers, (forced) laborers,
and artists. Each of these actors sought to craft a new existence that distinguished itself from “Old World” tyranny,
particularly through the creation of imagined communities
of identity (i.e. racial, political, religious or sexual). America
proved to be an extraordinarily malleable idea. Yet, the narrative of “Our America” also revealed its internal contradictions and fissures within institutions and social phenomena it
helped to perpetuate such as slavery, race, and empire. This
course examines the cultural and political investments that
have characterized the American Hemisphere. The matrix
of race, class and gender has been a useful lens to analyze
the systems and structures in place that both benefited and
suppressed American peoples and their contributions to the
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construction of America. Yet, the themes of migration, exile,
nationalism, sexuality, creolization, and empire-building also
serve as essential tools to untangling and mapping the roots
and routes of American development. Through a diverse
set of materials (primary documents, secondary readings,
films, music, and art) that utilize a multimedia and interdisciplinary approach to a range of anthropological, historical,
literary, political and economic questions central to American
experience(s), this course will critically engage the writings of thinkers (José Martí Walter Mignolo, Amy Kaplan,
Toni Morrison) who have helped us better understand the
spheres where Francophone, Anglophone and Hispanophone
worlds collide, coalesce and interpenetrate.
Guilty Subjects:
Guilt in Literature, Law and Psychoanalysis
IDSEM-UG 1504
FULFILLS: 4 UN MW 11:00-12:15
HUMANITIES
Sara Murphy
This seminar will explore guilt as the link between the three
broad disciplinary arenas of our title. Literary works from
ancient tragedy to the modern novel thematize guilt in various ways. Freud places it at the center of his practice and his
theory of mind. While law seems reliant mainly upon a formal
attribution of guilt in order to determine who gets punished
and to what degree, we might also suggest it relies upon
“guilty subjects” for its operation. With all of these different
deployments of the concept, we might agree it is a central
one, yet how to define it remains a substantial question. Is the
prominence of guilt in modern Western culture a vestige of a
now-lost religious world? Is it, as Nietzsche suggests, an effect
of “the most profound change man ever experienced when
he finally found himself enclosed within the wall of society
and of peace?” Freud seems to concur when he argues that
guilt must be understood as a kind of internal self-division
where aggressivity is turned against the self. Is guilt a pointless self-punishment, meant to discipline us? Or does it continue to have an important relation to the ethical? Readings
may include Freud, Nietzsche, Foucault, Slavoj Zizek, Toni
Morrison, Ursula LeGuin, W.G. Sebald, and some case law,
among others.
Biology and Society
IDSEM-UG 1519
FULFILLS: 4 UN MW 3:30-4:45
SCIENCE Myles Jackson
Perhaps the most recent ethical challenge faced by all of
us is biotechnology. This seminar explores the relationship
between the biological sciences and society in the U.S.
throughout the twentieth century. We will examine how
debates concerning "nature versus nurture" have been framed
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historically. We shall discuss the history of eugenics and investigate how the U.S. government saw eugenics as proffering
an objective tool for testing immigration and sterilization policies. We shall ask if there is a link between eugenics and the
Human Genome Project. How has the patenting of human
and plant genes reshaped the conduct of scientific research?
How are molecular biology and pharmaceutical and biotech
firms simultaneously challenging and reifying notions of race
in the age of biocapitalism? How much of human behavior is
shaped by genes, and how does that affect issues concerning
free will and culpability? Is it ethical for developing countries
to use genetically modified crops rather than their own sustainable practices? How has the HIV/AIDS epidemic reshaped
the historical notions of the doctor-patient relationship and
objectivity of drug testing? This course aims at drawing
attention to the ethical, legal, and social issues generated by
biology over the past century. Readings will include works
from twentieth-century politicians such as Teddy Roosevelt,
eugenicists, including Charles Davenport, the historian of
science Dan Kevles, the philosopher of science Michael Ruse,
the sociologist and historian of medicine Steven Epstein, the
sociologist of race Troy Duster, and intellectual property lawyers such as Rebecca Eisenberg, as well as recent works by
molecular biologists and geneticists on the definition of race,
the role of patenting in biotechnology, and how commercial
interests are driving scientific research.
Feminism, Empire and Postcoloniality
IDSEM-UG 1523
FULFILLS: 4 UN TR 11:00-12:15
HUMANITIES, GLOBAL
Marie Cruz Soto
Jamaica Kincaid once said, “I now consider anger as a badge of
honor. [It is] the first step to claiming yourself.” Anger, rather
than Betty Friedan’s “problem that has no name,” has haunted
the life of many women whose negotiations of the meaning
of gender, race and sexuality are marked by the violence of
colonial-imperial encounters. Accordingly, this course examines the following questions: How have colonial-imperial
encounters shaped the imagination of gender, race and
sexuality? How have women built feminist solidarities amidst,
or perhaps based on, the shared experience of violence and
anger? In turn, how has the imagination of gender, race and
sexuality redefined the histories of colonies and empires?
To pursue these questions, course readings include literary
and other scholarly texts engaging feminist and postcolonial
theory. Readings range from Kincaid’s The Autobiography of
My Mother and Rigoberta Menchú’s I, Rigoberta Menchu: An
Indian Woman in Guatemala to other texts by scholars like
Uma Narayan, Patricia Mohammed, Vandana Shiva, Gayatri
Chakravorty Spivak and Ann Stoler.
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Finance for Social Theorists
IDSEM-UG 1527
FULFILLS: 4 UN M 7:45-10:15
SOCIAL SCIENCE
Sociology of Religion:
Peter Rajsingh
Why are some private, profit-making institutions “too big
to fail,” what are the main contours of the Global Financial
Crisis (GFC), where do you find the Shadow Banking System?
The objective of this course is to provide students with conceptual, interpretive and analytical tools for understanding
contemporary themes in finance. The approach will be interdisciplinary and interpretive, drawing upon political theory,
economics, psychology, basic statistics and accounting. For
example, we will use the GFC to explore core concepts
associated with credit, banking, business ethics, fiscal and
monetary policy and macro economics. We will reference
key ideas from familiar texts and also take up contemporary debates in finance. The aim is to help students become
more literate and numerate as economic and social agents.
Readings include Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (excerpts);
John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy (excerpts);
Peter Bernstein, Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of
Risk; Mohammed El-Erian, When Markets Collide; and Nassim
Taleb, Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in the
Markets and in Life.
Islam and the Modern World
IDSEM-UG 1552
FULFILLS: 4 UN TR 2:00-3:15
SOCIAL SCIENCE, GLOBAL
Ali Mirsepassi
This course is designed to explore the role of religion in
modern societies. We will examine religion as an important
social institution and also as a cultural system. We will study
canonical and contemporary theories of religion. The focus
of the course, however, will be Islam. We will look at the
cultural context and historical construction of Islam, as well as
the different social contexts within which Islam has evolved.
We will examine the relationship between Islam and modernity, including secular ideologies, gender politics, and modern
democracy. We will pay particular attention to the role that
Islam plays in the everyday life of those who practice it, who
are affected by it, or who struggle with it as their tradition.
Our goal is to study Islam not as a fixed object or authentic
tradition but as a social and cultural phenomenon subject
to change, contestation, and critique. Texts may include
Mernissi, Islam and Democracy; Arkoun, Re-Thinking Islam;
Fernea, In Search of Islamic Feminism; and Armstrong, Islam.
Imagining India:
From the Colonial to the Global
On Freud's Couch:
IDSEM-UG 1555
FULFILLS: Psychoanalysis, Narrative and Memory
IDSEM-UG 1545
FULFILLS: 4 UN W 12:30-3:15
SOCIAL SCIENCE
Nina Cornyetz
In this course we will read closely and thoroughly a selection of Sigmund Freud’s papers, including “Three Essays on
Sexuality,” and “Screen Memories,” and three of his classic
case histories: “Fragment of an Analysis of Hysteria,” (Dora),
“From the History of an Infantile Neurosis,” (the Wolfman),
and “An Autobiographic Account of a Case of Paranoia,” (Dr.
Schreber). In general, we will focus on how the psychoanalytic method takes narrative seriously—that is, “at its word,”
or literally—at the same time as it recognizes that whatever is
articulated may be in a negative or “canted” (in other words,
“encoded”) relation to what it “means.” We will watch a
selection of films alongside the primary texts. We will explore
how time, memory and history signify in psychoanalytic
frameworks, and ask what literature, film and poetics might
share with psychoanalysis. Finally, we will debate the validity
of what might be called Freud’s “reductionism” in relation to
drive theory and the sexual instincts.
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SOCIAL SCIENCE, GLOBAL
Ritty Lukose
Drawing on an interdisciplinary set of readings about India,
this course explores a fraught and difficult dynamic within the
modern world—democratic nation-building. We move from
a variety of pre-colonial and colonial imaginings of South Asia
to politicized assertions of a unified Indian identity during the
anti-colonial movement. Here, nation is not only a political
entity, but also a cultural project that re-shapes ideas of self,
religion, community, region, family, gender and kinship. The
post-independence period is explored through writings on
the Partition that created India and Pakistan, “development”
as a key concept that has been central to nation-building,
and struggles around caste, gender, sexuality, tribal identity,
environment, region and religion. How the state contends
with majority and minority identities and claims, the complexities of secularism, notions of equality and difference, all
in the context of vibrant social movements and a large NGO
(Non-Governmental Organization) sector will enable an indepth exploration of how democracy, as idea and practice,
happens in India. How globalization shapes contemporary
understandings of India will be explored towards the end of
the course. Readings include: Ronald Inden’s Imagining India,
Amitav Ghosh on the Indian Ocean World, Modern South Asia:
History, Culture, Political Economy by Sugata Bose and Ayesha
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Jalal, the writings of Gandhi and Nehru, subaltern studies
collective writings on nationalism in India, The Nation and its
Fragments by Partha Chatterjee, Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s
Children, Menon and Bhasin’s Borders and Boundaries: Women
in India’s Partition and India’s New Middle Class: Democratic
Politics in an Era of Economic Reform by Leela Fernandes.
History of Environmental Sciences Before
Darwin
IDSEM-UG 1566
FULFILLS: 4 UN TR 9:30-10:45
SCIENCE Peder Anker
This seminar will provide an overview of the history of
the environmental sciences from ancient times to Charles
Darwin’s The Origin of Species. We will explore ways in which
naturalists and lay people came to know the environment and
in what ways nature could mobilize social and moral author­ity.
With a focus on the history of the European environmental
problems from the ancient Greeks, Middle Ages, to colonial
and Modern experiences, we will survey different ways of
knowing nature. Where did the idea of nature as "designed"
come from? How did natural philosophers (i.e. magicians)
unveil nature’s secrets? What role did scientists play in the
colonial experiences? How could Modern scholars imagine
“improving” the face of the Earth? These broad questions
will guide us in our readings of a series of primary sources,
including great and not-so-great books by Hippocrates, Plato,
Aristotle, Pseudo-Aristotle, Pliny, St. Francis, Evelyn, Grew,
Bacon, Rousseau, Voltaire, Linnaeus, Malthus and Darwin,
as well as largely forgotten texts by anonymous authors and
colonial explorers.
Consumerism in Comparative Perspective
IDSEM-UG 1586
FULFILLS: 4 UN T 3:30-6:10
Kimberly DaCosta
SOCIAL SCIENCE, GLOBAL
Same as SOC-UA 970.
Consumerism—the linking of happiness, freedom, and economic prosperity with the purchase and consumption of
goods—has long been taken for granted as constitutive of the
“good life” in Western societies. Increasingly, global economic
shifts have made it possible for some developing countries
to engage in patterns of consumption similar to those in the
West, such that one quarter of humanity now belongs to the
“global consumer class.” At the same time, however, nearly
three billion people struggle to survive on less than $2 a
day. This course takes an international and interdisciplinary
approach to examine consumption in different societies, and
we do so by asking several central questions: What are the key
determinants of patterns of consumption, and how are they
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changed or reshaped over time? In turn, how do patterns of
consumption shape class formation, racial inequality, identity,
aesthetic sensibility, and international boundaries? How do
practices of consumption inform the ways in which people
understand their values and individuality, imagine success and
failure, or conceive happiness? By reading widely in sociology,
anthropology, and history we will develop a framework for
analyzing the ethical, environmental and social justice implications of consumerism. Readings include case studies from the
US, China, India, Europe and Africa Some likely texts are:
Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class; Mauss, The Gift; Bourdieu,
Distinction; Marx, “Commodity Fetishism;” Twitchell, Lead
Us Into Temptation; Bill McKibben, Deep Economy; Lizabeth
Cohen, A Consumer's Republic.
Who Owns Culture?:
Intellectual Property Law and the Cultural Commons
IDSEM-UG 1587
FULFILLS: 4 UN W 3:30-6:10
SOCIAL SCIENCE
Gail Drakes
Can a yoga pose or a dance step be considered “private property?” Who owns the genetic sequences found in your DNA?
What are the rights of an author/artist and how do those
rights overlap with the rights of the community to engage
with works of art? How can the “public domain” and the
“cultural commons” survive in a free-market economy? In this
course, we will deepen our understanding of the cultural and
ethical implications of copyright, trademark and patent law
by placing the concepts of ownership and authorship in both
historical and global context. In addition to scholarly essays
drawn from the fields of history, legal studies, anthropology
and sociology, this course will also draw on a range of texts
from the visual arts, music, and literature. Course requirements include: research-based essays and creative projects,
in-class presentations, and a general willingness to both critique and create. Texts studied may include Boon's In Praise of
Copying, Demer’s Steal this Musicand Patry's Moral Panics and
the Copyright Wars. Visual and audio sources from Girl Talk,
DJ Spooky and Joy Garnett may also be included.
Modern Poetry and the Actual World
IDSEM-UG 1603
FULFILLS: 4 UN TR 3:30-4:45
HUMANITIES
Lisa Goldfarb
Although lyric poetry is the art of language that we reserve
for the expression of the emotional dimension of our human
experience, lyric poets also importantly use the forms
and conventions of their art to respond to the shape and
substance of the world they inhabit; that is, the historical,
political, and physical aspects of the world—the “actual
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world”—in which they live. This course has two principal
aims: first, to help us to develop skills in the reading of
lyric poetry, and, second, to consider the complex relation
between lyric poetry and the actual world. In the first half
of the class, we will study the forms and conventions of lyric
poetry and work on developing our poetic sensibilities. In the
second half, we will focus our attention on the relationship
of modern poets to the concrete or actual world and focus
our study on W.H. Auden and Wallace Stevens, two poets
who address the pressing questions of their day, and the
world they shared, in strikingly different ways. Yet, however
different their approaches, both poets ponder questions of
faith and secularity, consider heroism and loss in a century
marked by war, and probe our human relationship to nature
in answer to an increasingly industrialized and technological world. Readings will include texts that consider how to
read lyric poetry (Hirsch, Vendler, Perloff), a representative
selection of modern lyric poetry (Eliot, Pound, Valéry, Éluard,
Apollinaire, Moore, H.D., Bishop, Hughes, Brooks, Rich), the
works of Auden and Stevens (essays and poems), as well as
the philosophical, historical and political narratives to which
they refer and that inform their work (Freud, Nietzsche,
William James, Santayana).
Dante's World
IDSEM-UG 1609
FULFILLS: 4 UN W 3:30-6:10
Antonio Rutigliano
HUMANITIES, PREMODERN
This course will explore the social, political, intellectual and
religious evolution of the late medieval dantesque world,
by focusing on Dante’s Divine Comedy. A close reading
of The Divine Comedy will serve as a forum to discuss and
analyze Dante's writings and those important works that
helped to shape the thirteenth-century Florentine society
that ultimately served as a stepping stone for the humanist
movement that paved the way for the Italian Renaissance.
But Dante’s Divine Comedy is not just a text of and for its own
time. It has left readers fascinated and shuddering for over
700 years because its poetical and literary tropes enable them
to confront their experience of the human condition and
transform what and how they desire. During the class, therefore, students will conduct research projects on more historical and more enduring aspects of Dante’s Commedia. As well,
field trips to museums, cinematic recreations, documentaries,
music and other visual and auditory aids will be used to
enrich our sense of the text’s meaning and context. Readings
include: The Divine Comedy, The Confessions, The Consolation
of Philosophy, The Aeneid, and The Book of the Zohar.
30 Philosophy of Religion
IDSEM-UG 1617
FULFILLS: 4 UN T 9:30-12:15
HUMANITIES
Joe Thometz
Is there such thing as religion--definable and singular? If
there is no agreement, how can we have a philosophy of
it? Departing from this predicament, this course will first
examine how “religion” has been construed over time and in
a variety of contexts. After touching upon various Western
medieval endeavors to “prove” God’s existence, we’ll attend
to the nineteenth century and Friedrich Nietzsche’s On the
Genealogy of Morals. We will consider the ways in which
Nietzsche employs Hegel’s master/slave dialectic to identify
the psychological state of ressentiment as a key factor in
the birth and character of Jewish/Christian morality. Also,
William James’s Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) will be
read as a groundbreaking study in the psychological states of
religious consciousness. We will also draw Western notions
of the “ineffability”of God—especially as appearing in the
Pseudo-Dionysian tradition of the via negativa—into conversation with the second century (CE) Buddhist philosophy
of Nagarjuna and his influences on the Zen/Ch’an tradition.
Finally, we’ll explore recent reimaginings of religion in light of
postmodern themes such as nihilism and the death of God.
Readings include: Anselm of Canterbury, Friedrich Nietzsche,
William James, Teresa of Avila, Mircea Eliade, Rene Girard,
Gianni Vattimo, Pseudo-Dionysius, Nagarjuna, and Shunyru
Suzuki.
Media and Fashion
IDSEM-UG 1618
FULFILLS: 4 UN M 6:20-9:00
HUMANITIES
Moya Luckett
This course will examine the roles fashion plays in film, television and digital media and their cultural and economic significance. As a signifying system in its own right, fashion contributes to the semiotics of popular forms. It can also operate as a
means of authentication (especially in period films and TV) or
reveal a variety of ways in which media plays with space and
time, purposeful or not. Besides evoking specific temporalities and narrative tone, fashion plays an important role in the
construction of gender, both in terms of representation and
address. This course will examine the history of the intersection of the fashion and media industries from the free distribution of film-related dress patterns in movie theaters of the
1910s to the current trend for make-over TV, networks like
the Style network, the increasing proliferation of fashion blogs
and the construction of specifically feminine video games.
How does fashion’s specific configuration of consumerism,
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signification and visual pleasure lend itself to the articulation
of modern/postmodern cultures and their presentation of
the self? Texts will include Stella Bruzzi and Pamela Church
Gibson, Fashion Cultures: Theories, Explanations and Analysis;
selections from Roland Barthes, The Fashion System;Elizabeth
Wilson, Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity; assorted
articles and selected clips from films and television shows
including Marie Antoinette, What Not To Wear, The New York
Hat, Fashions of 1934, Now, Voyager and Sex and the City.
Law and Legal Thought
IDSEM-UG 1643
FULFILLS: 4 UN TR 9:30-10:45
SOCIAL SCIENCE
Vasuki Nesiah
This class introduces students to critical legal studies through
focused engagement with diverse areas of law. It is anchored
in reading cases that captured pivotal debates in American
legal history, cases such as Brown v. Board of Ed., Roe v.
Wade, Lochner v. NY, MacPherson v. Buick Motor Co., Univ. of
CA v. Bakke, King v. Smith, Perry v. Schwarzenegger and Citizens
United v. Federal Election Commission. Through discussion
of these cases, we examine different understandings of the
relationship between legal debates and social justice. Can
law be tilted towards the powerful, while also being ‘indeterminate’? Does it undermine the ‘rule of law’ if, as some
scholars argue, legal rules contained ‘gaps, contradictions and
ambiguities’? How do unjust outcomes and appear legally
necessary? How do different understandings of gender impact
anti-discrimination law? How does the legal architecture of
property impact labor rights? What are the legitimate roles,
rights and responsibilities of different actors in the system—
from judges to corporations to welfare recipients? In addition
to reading cases and legal scholarship, we will also analyze
films focused on law and society. Readings include Duncan
Kennedy, Cornell West, Karl Klare, Janet Halley, Rich Ford,
Martha Minow, Joe Singer, James Clifford, Austin Sarat, Alan
Freeman and others.
Environment and Development in Africa
IDSEM-UG 1648
FULFILLS: 4 UN W 3:30-6:10
Rosalind Fredericks
SOCIAL SCIENCE, GLOBAL
This course explores the political ecology of African development in historic perspective. Drawing from anthropology,
geography, environmental history, development studies, and
political science, the course joins theoretical and empirical
perspectives on the politics of African environments. The first
part will focus on the history of human-environment relations
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on the continent, paying particular attention to the exploitation of the natural environment during colonialism and patterns of extraction and trade set up during that time. Building
on this history, we will then concentrate on the postcolonial
period in order to compare different forms of exploitation
across Africa and their connections to key development
debates and national development trajectories. Specific topics will include: the extractive industries; the management
of the urban environment; wildlife conservation and tourism; agriculture and rural livelihoods; environmental governance regimes; environmental health and justice; gender and
environment; natural resources and war; and vulnerability
and adaptation to climate change. Aiming to provide more
complex, critical, and nuanced understandings of humanenvironment relations on the continent, we will draw from
academic texts and novels as well as documentaries. Readings
may include: James Ferguson, Paul Richards, James Fairhead,
and Adam Hochschild.
From Memory to Myth:
The Mighty Charlemagne
IDSEM-UG 1651
FULFILLS: 4 UN MW 12:30-1:45
HUMANITIES, PREMODERN
Andrew Romig
Same as HIST-UA 245.
In this course students will explore historical memory,
mythmaking, and the myriad ways in which human beings
construct and reconstruct the past to address present hopes,
dreams, and fears. Our case study will be the Frankish
Emperor Charlemagne (d. 814), who in life helped to lay the
foundations of modern European society, and in death would
continue to represent an imagined pan-European unity that
predated factionalism, regionalism, and nationalism. The
seminar will begin in the ninth century with Charlemagne
in memory before moving briskly forward in time to study
Charlemagne in legend and myth. Along the way, we will discuss themes and problems of particular relevance, including
the birth of “Europe,” the advent of “the state,” Christianity
and Crusade, the rise of vernacular literature, and early colonialism. In addition to theoretical works on memory, myth,
and history-writing, texts for discussion will include a vibrant
mix of canonical and lesser-known gems: Einhard’s Life
of Charlemagne, The Song of Roland, and Ariosto’s Orlando
Furioso; but also the Astronomer’s Life of Louis the Pious, The
Voyage of Charlemagne to Jerusalem and Constantinople, and
the anonymous Charlemagne play from the London of
Shakespeare and Marlowe.
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Science and Culture
IDSEM-UG 1652
FULFILLS: 4 UN MW 12:30-1:45
SCIENCE Myles Jackson
This course, which spans from the Scientific Revolution to
the present, examines various examples of how the conduct
and context of science are framed by culture, and conversely,
how science shapes culture. Which models proffered by
various historians, philosophers, cultural anthropologists, and
sociologists can begin to explain this relationship? The first
portion of this course addresses how scientific knowledge
was intricately intertwined with religious and political knowledge during the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment.
The next section illustrates how important developments
in thermodynamics (or the physics of work and waste) led
to improvements in nineteenth-century musical instrument
design and a change in musical aesthetics. Similarly, we shall
discuss how twentieth-century technological and scientific
developments in fin-de-siècle Europe and the U.S. directly led
to new artistic expressions and aesthetics. The final third of
the course looks at how the content of scientific and technological knowledge associated with “Big Science” from World
War II to the present owes much to the development of
national defense in the case of physics and to venture-corporate capitalism in the case of molecular biology. Rather than
simply stay at the level of case studies, we shall continually
test the various models, which attempt to explain the complex and historically contingent relationship between science
and culture, including Marx’s theory of base-superstructure,
Kuhn’s paradigm, Latour’s social constructivism, Shapin and
Schaffer’s historical social constructivism, and Galison’s bricolage model and trading zones. Finally, the course will force
students to think about related issues, such as the history of
objectivity and the differences and similarities between science on the one hand, and the social sciences and humanities
on the other. Readings include: Shapin and Schaffer, Galison,
Jackson, Latour, Marx, and Kuhn. This interdisciplinary seminar may be used to fulfill the science requirement.
Indigenous Culture and Cultural
Authenticity
IDSEM-UG 1684
FULFILLS: 4 UN MW 3:30-4:45
SOCIAL SCIENCE, GLOBAL
Luke Fleming
Even as indigenous groups have found themselves subjugated by centuries of colonialism, they are increasingly finding
that they must prove their “indigeneity” to legal, national,
or colonial authorities so as to gain territorial, cultural and
political rights. Here, national and colonial authorities are
concerned to distinguish inauthentic from authentic cultural
practice and tradition. But what does it mean for a culture
32 to be “authentic”? What are the criteria by which cultures
are evaluated as genuine or spurious, and who judges? This
course interrogates the relationship between discourses of
cultural authenticity and performances of indigenous identity as a lens through which to understand the particularly
post-colonial (and post-modern) predicaments of indigenous
peoples today. The course will look at how the concept of
indigeneity as a globalized identity-category has emerged
historically out of conditions of settler colonialism. We examine common strains in colonial, anthropological, missionary and tourist encounters with local linguistic and cultural
communities in order to better understand how indigenous
peoples have been represented and constructed as social
“Others”, and how indigenous “culture”—as a set of objectified practices—has been discovered, documented, and often
prohibited through these encounters. An aim of this course
is to understand the double-bind that indigenous groups
face: they must publically display signs of “traditional” indigenous culture in order to gain recognition, but in performing
“indigeneity” they are then accused of being fakes. Readings
will include: James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture; Jean
& John Comaroff, Ethnicity, Inc.; Kirk Dombrowski, Against
Culture: Development, Politics, and Religion in Indian Alaska;
Circe Sturm, Blood Politics: Race, Culture, and Identity in the
Cherokee Nation; and Elizabeth Povinelli, The Cunning of
Recognition: Indigenous Alterities and the Making of Australian
Multiculturalism.
The Social Contract:
Early Modern European Political Theory
IDSEM-UG 1698
FULFILLS: 4 UN F 12:30-3:15
Justin Holt
SOCIAL SCIENCE, EARLY MODERN
What holds a society together? This course will explore
one influential answer to this foundational question within
philosophy and social theory, namely social contract theory
as it developed within early modern European political philosophy. Modern assumptions about the relationship between
individual and society, private property and ownership,
rationality, economics and the market, and rights and responsibilities of citizenship have all been shaped by social contract
theory. But, even though this theory has enjoyed great influence, it has been severely criticized as unrealistic and biased
towards individualism and property holders. We will read the
foundational social contract works in this course and try to
understand their assumptions, strengths, and weaknesses.
The works to be read will include: Shakespeare's Richard
III, Hobbes' De Cive, Locke' Two Treatises of Government,
Rousseau's The Social Contract, and Kant's The Groundwork
for the Metaphysics of Morals.
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Feeling, in Theory
IDSEM-UG 1699
FULFILLS: 4 UN R 3:30-6:10
HUMANITIES
Eve Meltzer
Over the past two decades, scholars from a wide range of
disciplinary perspectives—literature, women’s studies, political science, and aesthetics, to name a few—have returned
to the question of “affect,” also referred to as “feeling” or
“emotion,” as well as “passion,” “pathos,” “mood,” or even
“love.” This course aims to familiarize students with the field
of “affect theory” by surveying some of the most important
texts that ground it (such as Chaucer and Aristotle, Freud
and Thompkins) as well as several that have emerged more
recently (Massumi, Terrada, Ngai, among others). When we
consider the stakes and claims of some of the more recent
work on affect, it becomes clear that a central predicament
is at hand: how are we to understand affective life now, after
so many “deaths”—that of the subject, the author, art, and
so on—have been announced by theories of postmodernism? How do we reconcile the resurgence of theories of
affect when the end of the feeling subject is also touted by
these same theories? This question leads us to our second
challenge: to tackle the relationship between feeling and
theory. While art and music have long been associated with
emotionalism and affective life, what about the feelings that
theory gives us? Alternatively, what is the affective life of
theory? How does it harness, repress, produce, or otherwise
make use of affect? While this course has no prerequisites,
it is particularly appropriate for students who have strong
feelings—love or hate—for so-called “theory.”
Becoming Global?
Europe and the World: A Literary Exploration
IDSEM-UG 1700
FULFILLS: 4 UN TR 11:00-12:15
Valerie Forman
HUMANITIES, EARLY MODERN
Same as COLIT-UA 800.001.
Over and over, we are told that the world we live in is
becoming increasingly global. All its parts are connected to
one another, and goods, people, culture, and information can
move from one place to another, seemingly without barriers.
Yet how new is this phenomenon? Scholars have pointed to
the middle of the sixteenth century as the moment when
the economy became global, and the age of exploration and
colonization began to connect many parts of the world to
each other in a complex network that included cooperation,
piracy, and slavery. This course will explore the emergence
of a global consciousness through the study of literary and
cultural developments. Our primary questions include: to
what extent did early modern Europeans begin to imagine
and experience the world globally, that is, as an entity whose
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regions were interdependent rather than separate? How did
that globalization influence cultural developments? How were
things, places and persons not previously seen by Europeans
categorized, and what influence did these encounters have on
ideas about gender, sexuality, class and religious differences?
Was this global economy seen as cooperative or competitive?
To answer these questions, we will consider how the struggle
to understand this global world produced new narratives and
forms of interdisciplinary thinking. We will discuss a wide
variety of works, such as travel narratives, plays, novels,
early forms of ethnography, and visual representations. We
will also look at the ways that these early modern global
encounters have been represented in recent films. Likely
authors include Christopher Columbus, Sir Walter Raleigh,
William Shakespeare, Michel de Montaigne, Aphra Behn,
Richard Ligon, Bartolome de las Casas, Philip Massinger and
Theodore De Bry.
The End of the World
IDSEM-UG 1701
4 UN MW 11:00-12:15
Matthew Stanley
The idea of the world coming to an end is a characteristic
and fundamental part of the western tradition. The course
will examine the emergence of the idea of end-time thinking,
often called apocalypticism, and consider its persistence and
influence through religious, psychological, sociological, and
literary lenses. We will examine Jewish and early Christian
apocalypticism, its revival in the middle ages and nineteenth
century America, the rereading of Biblical narratives as atomic destruction during the Cold War, and the development of
science-based apocalypses. The course will close with deep
investigation of the Mayan calendar and the modern eschatological movements inspired by it. Readings may include:
Book of Daniel; Book of Revelation; Wessinger, Millenialism,
Persecution, and Violence; Kyle, The Last Days are Here Again;
Paul Davies, The Last Three Minutes; Mary Shelley, The Last
Man; Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood's End; Paul Boyer, When
Time Shall Be No More; Mayan calendrical documents relating
to 2012; Cormac McCarthy, The Road; John Hall, Apocalypse;
Film: On the Beach; Carl Sagan, The Cold and the Dark; Al
Gore, An Inconvenient Truth.
Spectacle and Mass Media
IDSEM-UG 1702
4 UN F 11:00-1:45
Moya Luckett
It is not surprising that concepts of spectacle have been
of great importance for studies of visual media. From the
earliest modernist theories that linked spectacle to medium
specificity, historians, theoreticians and critics have attempted
to understand the centrality of spectacle to mass media. This
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class looks at some of the pivotal ways in which spectacle has
been understood, exploring the differences between modern
and post-modern critics and the distinctions and overlaps
between historical and theoretical investigations. Starting with
Tom Gunning’s idea of attractions, a concept that revolutionized understanding of early cinema and its seemingly cavalier
approach to narrative, we will explore how the concept of
spectacle links history/theory and representation/reception.
We will look at modernist debates around the image and
consider their consequences for theories of perception,
exploring the impact of consumerism in reshaping the image.
We will also consider the relationship of spectacle and narrative, looking at how theorists like Laura Mulvey tied this
regimen into the presentation of sexual difference. Mulvey is
one of many critics to link spectacle to femininity, a topic we
will explore as we consider the relationship of spectacle to
sexuality. Finally, we will consider the postmodern consumerist spectacle and the creation of a “virtual gaze,” explored
by Anne Friedberg. Readings will include Tom Gunning, “An
Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In)Credulous
Spectator,” Anne Friedburg, Window Shopping: Cinema and
the Postmodern, Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative
Cinema,” Jonathan Crary, Suspensions of Perception: Attention,
Spectacle and Modern Culture.
The Weary Blues:
Rites of Passage and Writing about Passages
IDSEM-UG 1704
FULFILLS: 4 UN F 11:00-1:45
HUMANITIES, PREMODERN
Matthew Vernon
This course will consider the intimate relationship between
writing, identity and movement. We will survey texts in the
English literary tradition that use the language of motion –
travel, migration and wandering– to articulate the problems
of identity formation, ranging from mythmaking on a large
scale in Anglo-Saxon poetry to the self-fashioning of individuals, such as the poetic aspirations of Langston Hughes. The
texts we will consider will include rewritings of the Exodus,
the European arrival in the New World and the Middle
Passage as well as literary texts that enable literal movement.
The swirl of ideas and genres we will question center on the
idea of passages, or the possibility of transformation through
travel and writing. The course will help students think about
the political and effective implications of the written word
to bridge cultural gaps, mobilize peoples and excavate one’s
sense of heritage. The reading for this course will be crosstemporal and focus on medieval and African-American texts.
Medieval texts will include the Old English Exodus, Egil’s
Saga, Chaucer’s “Man of Law’s Tale” and “The Clerk’s
Tale,” Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain.
34 Later texts will include: Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Dave
Eggers’ What Is the What, Langston Hughes’ poetry, Saidiya
Hartman’s Lose Your Mother, Barack Obama’s Dreams From
My Father, Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Sharifa RhodesPitts’ Harlem is Nowhere.
Antigone(s):
Ancient Greece/Performance Now
IDSEM-UG 1705
FULFILLS: 4 UN T 3:30-6:10
K. Horton / L. Slatkin
HUMANITIES, PREMODERN
A production of Antigone is taking place somewhere in the
world every day—right now, as you are reading this. What
was Antigone? What is Antigone? What might Antigone yet be?
Our course—a collaboration between a stage director and
a classicist—begins with an immersion in Sophocles' prizewinning play (441 BCE), with close attention to the history,
politics, aesthetics, performance conditions, and production
features of ancient Athenian drama more generally. The second half of our course turns to contemporary renditions of
Antigone and will consider the dramatic and cultural configurations each new production activates. Antigone's exploration
of the complexities of gender, kinship, citizenship, law, resistance to authority, family vs. the state, and religion (among
other issues) has been compelling for modern thought, and
especially galvanizing to theaters of resistance and dissent.
Our classes will combine critical inquiry into the plays and
surrounding discourse as well as experiments in interpretation—including acting workshops and staging exercises.
Students need no background in acting, theater, or ancient
literature, but do need critical energy and discipline. Among
the modern plays we might address, in the second half of the
semester, are reimaginings of Antigone by Brecht, Fugard,
McLaughlin, and Miyagawa. To help us place antiquity and
modernity in a productive conversation, we will also read
secondary literature from several fields (classics, political
theory, anthropology, theory of sexuality/gender).
The Origins of Language and Its Place in
Western Thought
IDSEM-UG 1706
FULFILLS: 4 UN F 11:00-1:45
HUMANITIES
Luke Fleming
How did language emerge? Language is arguably the most
important of social institutions and yet its origins and what
it reveals about human nature have posed a persistent and
unresolved riddle to philosophers and evolutionary biologists
alike. This course looks at the long history of thought about
the origins of language in the Western tradition, from enlightenment thinkers like Rousseau and Diderot through modern
linguists like Chomsky and Pinker, as a way to explore how
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ideas of the human and of society are theorized. As we will
see, each theory of language origins invariably involves a
theory of human nature, of the relationship between emotions and rationality, and of the individual to society. How do
various theories of language presuppose theories of society
and human nature? How do thinkers about language origins
account for linguistic diversity and what implications does it
have for their understandings of human nature and difference? The course will engage with a lineage of texts from
philosophy, anthropology, linguistics, and evolutionary biology
in order to explore these questions. Texts include Locke, An
Essay Concerning Human Understanding; de Saussure, Course
in General Linguistics; and von Herder, Treatise on the Origin
of Language.
Asia, and North America, to ask: What makes something
“Surrealist” and how does this change across geographic
locations? How does Surrealism interact with place and how
is it affected by displacement? In addition to contextualizing Surrealism globally, this course critically reexamines
the movement through the lens of ethnography, gender,
and psychoanalysis by pairing primary readings such as
Breton’s Nadja and Claude Cahun’s Disavowals with critical
texts, including Michel Foucault, This is Not a Pipe, Rosalind
Krauss, “Photography in the Service of Surrealism,” and
James Clifford, “On Ethnographic Surrealism.” We will look at
artwork on view at the Museum of Modern Art and analyze
manifestos from Martinique, Cuba, Egypt and Spain alongside
poetry, painting, and film to map out the international networks created by Surrealism.
Visions of the Good Life in Ancient Greece
IDSEM-UG 1708
FULFILLS: 4 UN MW 9:30-10:45
PREMODERN
James Bourke
How should one live? What is the best life? The thinkers of
Ancient Greece contemplated these questions in different
ways, and their responses have powerfully influenced subsequent political and social philosophies. In this course, we
will examine four ways in which the Greeks thought about
and articulated the idea of the good life—the heroic, which
understands the good life as striving for distinction and lasting
fame through great deeds; the tragic, which sees the pursuit
of happiness as fraught with conflict, ambiguity, and finitude;
the philosophical, which prizes contemplation and the quest
for truth; and the political, which emphasizes the contribution of collective life to individual happiness. Texts will include
Homer’s Iliad, selected plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and
Euripides, Plato’s Republic, and Aristotle’s Politics. We will
explore the visions of the good life these texts present, their
possible points of overlap, the internal tensions that complicate them, and their continuing relevance and impact on
modern ethical and political ideals.
Global Surrealism
IDSEM-UG 1709
FULFILLS: 4 UN W 6:20-9:00
HUMANITIES, GLOBAL
Lori Cole
While Surrealism had its origins in France, it was decidedly
an international phenomenon, as evidenced by Surrealist art
and writing emerging from places as disparate as Mexico
and Japan. Influenced by both Freud and Marx, Surrealists
sought to liberate and represent the subconscious through
techniques such as automatic writing and dream-like imagery. The class begins by exploring the origins of Surrealism
and its manifestations in Europe before looking at Surrealist
tendencies in the Caribbean, Latin America, the Middle East,
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Sex and the State
IDSEM-UG 1710
FULFILLS: 4 UN M 3:30-6:10
SOCIAL SCIENCE
Lauren Kaminsky
Why are gay marriage and family planning at the heart of the
cultural divide that polarizes contemporary American politics? What is at stake in debates about family values and the
right to choose, and what subject positions do these debates
produce and refuse? This course will take a comparative look
at the ways citizens inhabit categories of sex, gender, and
sexuality, with attention to the fact that some identities are
made more legible than others. We will call into question the
separation of the so-called public and private spheres, asking
what is gained and what is lost by imagining a ‘private’ sphere
as somehow outside of politics and the market. If we understand registered marriage as one mode of addressing the
state, how does it both generate and violate fantasies of privacy? What is the relationship between private property and
the sanctity of the home? What bodily practices are at stake
in asserting a relationship between sex, dignity and humanity?
Readings may include works by Janet Halley, Hendrik Hartog,
Saba Mahmood, Timothy Mitchell, Mimi Thi Nguyen and
James Scott.
Politics, Writing and the Nobel Prize in Latin
America
IDSEM-UG 1711
FULFILLS: 4 UN MW 3:30-4:45
HUMANITIES, GLOBAL
Linn Mehta
In the course of the twentieth century, seven Latin American
authors have won the Nobel Prize: Gabriela Mistral (1945);
Miguel Angel Asturias (1967); Pablo Neruda (1971); Gabriel
García Márquez (1982); Octavio Paz (1990); Rigoberto
Menchú (Peace Prize, 1992); Mario Vargas Llosa (2010).
Together, they give us a chance to consider some of the major
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literary and political movements in Latin America leading up
to the present. The poetry of Mistral and Neruda reveals the
successive influences of surrealism, communism, socialism,
up to the eve of the Pinochet coup in Chile; through novels
and autobiography, Asturias and Menchú explore very different aspects of the indigenous struggle in Guatamala; the novels of García Márquez in Colombia and Vargas Llosa in Peru
embody different sides of magical realism; and Paz, in Mexico,
in his poetry and essays, represents a country that has been a
literary cornerstone of Latin America.
From Blackface to Black Power:
Twentieth-Century African American Literature
IDSEM-UG 1713
FULFILLS: 4 UN TR 2:00-3:15
HUMANITIES
Laurie Woodard
The modern African American literary tradition explores
identity within the context of the quest by African Americans
for the full rights of United States citizenship during the
twentieth century. Throughout this complex period, African
Americans made considerable gains in their pursuit of equal
rights. Simultaneously, black identity underwent dramatic
and subtle changes as the majority of African Americans
transformed themselves from slaves to free men and women
to New Negroes to Proud and Beautiful Black Americans.
Focusing upon the intersection between the cultural and
political realms, this interdisciplinary seminary explores this
literary tradition within a wider cultural field. It explores
the roots and routes of the African cultural Diaspora as the
foundation of urban, northern, politically-conscious cultural
production. Using a variety of literary and other texts including critical analysis, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, film, music,
and visual arts we will examine touchstone moments such as
the New Negro or Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts
Movement. We will attempt to bridge the gap as we delve
into representative works including the poetry and plays of
Langston Hughes, the blues of Billie Holiday, and the collage of Romare Bearden as well lesser-known works such as
Georgia Douglass Johnson’s “Blue Blood” and the fiction of
Cecil Brown.
36 What is Critique?
IDSEM-UG 1714
FULFILLS: 4 UN W 3:30-6:10
HUMANITIES
A.B. Huber
Same as COLIT-UA 800.002.
The social theorist and philosopher Michel Foucault argued
that critique is a powerful form of insubordination and a
crucial “instrument for those who fight, resist, and who no
longer want what is.” Might critical philosophy help us combat forms of injustice that appear resilient even to collective
disobedience and direct action, and if so how? In this seminar
we will consider the history and politics of critique: what is
the nature of the persistent resistance to what is broadly
called theory, and can theory, or perhaps some form of
theorizing, be a meaningful mode of political resistance? If, for
instance, we come to understand power as making the world
and not simply dominating it, might this shift engender alternative and productive forms of political contestation and new
social imaginaries? The seminar begins with a consideration of
the uneasy place of critique in the western philosophical tradition, reading Plato, Kant, Marx, Foucault, and Butler among
others in order to establish a sense of how critique emerges
as a technique, art, or ethos that interrogates the shifting,
historically specific relationships between power, truth and
the subject. Together we will ask after the conditions of what
can and cannot be thought or said, and how these conditions
tend to shape our formation as gendered, racialized, and
liberal subjects. Possible authors include: Spivak, Mahmood,
Chuh, Brown.
fall
two - credit , seven - week interdisciplinary seminar
The Travel Habit:
On the Road in the Thirties
IDSEM-UG 1558
FULFILLS: 2 UN TR 2:00-3:15
HUMANITIES
Steve Hutkins
Course meets September 4–October 18.
The Great Depression turned millions of people into travelers. Many of the unemployed took to the road in search of
work, preferring to give up their homes rather than their
cars; others hitchhiked and rode the rails. Ironically, it was
also a time for leisure travel too, and this was the era when
taking a family trip on a paid vacation became a national
ritual. Government and industry promoted tourism to help
the economy—and to pacify the working class. But getting
people to travel required a deliberate, large-scale effort. As
one tourism promoter put it, “The travel habit was not born
with Americans. It’s an acquired taste that must be religiously
and patiently cultivated.” So the Roosevelt administration
created a national travel bureau to assist the hospitality
industry, poured millions of dollars into roads and highways,
and put authors like Eudora Welty, Saul Bellow, and Ralph
Ellison to work writing WPA travel guides. The travel theme
attracted novelists like Nathaniel West and Nelson Algren,
who used the journey motif in their fictions, and writer-andphotographer teams like James Agee and Walker Evans traveled to document the suffering of sharecroppers and migrant
workers. This course will survey the travel writing of the
1930s and provide an introduction to the social history of
travel and tourism during the period. Readings may include
Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, West’s A Cool Million,
Kromer's Waiting for Nothing, Caldwell and Margaret BourkeWhite’s You Have Seen Their Faces, and Agee and Evans’ Let Us
Now Praise Famous Men, as well as the WPA travel guides and
histories of the Depression and the tourist industry.
practicum
Practicum in Fashion Business
PRACT-UG 1301
4 UN T.B.A.
Permission of the instructor required. Scheduling details and
instructor information to be announced.
The fashion industry’s need to balance the conflicting
demands of specialization and globalization requires innovative approaches that connect creativity, design and business.
This course considers the dialogue surrounding ways the
fashion business can meet these demands by linking aesthetic
goals to financial plans. The course is designed to provide
2012
students interested in the fashion industry with an opportunity to develop their understanding of various approaches to
bridging the gap between design and business. The course
will combine hands-on group projects and case studies with
interdisciplinary readings in business and design history, consumerism, merchandizing and the business of fashion. The
course will be taught by the Guess Distinguished Visiting
Professor in Fashion and Fashion Business, and by Patricia
Lennox, a member of the Gallatin faculty. Admission is by
permission of the Visiting Professor.
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advanced writing courses
The Basics and the Bold:
Writing about Popular Music
Fundamentals of Editing Fiction and Creative Nonfiction
WRTNG-UG 1019
4 UN W 6:20-9:00 Barbara Jones
Book editors and agents find that a great variety of submissions (including novels, short story collections, memoir and
narrative nonfiction) require precisely the same kinds of editorial attention. Learning to identify and attend to these ubiquitous weaknesses in concept, narrative and prose can lift a
manuscript from the “no” pile to enthusiastic acceptance and,
later, from lackluster publication to strong word of mouth and
review attention. This class will focus on two kinds of editing
that can address those frequent, genre-crossing manuscript
problems: the bold—identifying and troubleshooting the
bigger conceptual and structural problems, including the
young writer’s frequent habit of not being bold at all; and
the basics—sweating the small stuff by learning and using the
tricks of an editor’s trade. Readings will include works by
writers such as Jennifer Egan, Jeffrey Eugenides, Mary Karr,
Laura Hillenbrand and others (models of successful basics and
boldness), and student writings. Students will be expected to:
1) bring in one story, chapter of a novel, piece of memoir or
narrative nonfiction that they have written, 2) edit (including a
line edit and an editorial letter) and 3) revise their own piece
of writing in response to editorial feedback from the class.
Writing about Performance
WRTNG-UG 1034
4 UN MW 12:30-1:45
Julie Malnig
This writing seminar will train students to become critical
viewers of performance and translate their "looking" into
descriptive and analytical prose. Students will be introduced
to a variety of critical strategies and approaches---from formalist to ethnographic to various forms of sociological and
cultural criticism---to develop their interpretive skills. These
analyses will help students discover how various performance
mediums are constituted, how they "work," and how they
create meaning for viewers. Assignments will include interviews, artists’ profiles, performance documentations, cultural
reviews, and critical and/or theoretical analyses. Occasional
group excursions to performances will be arranged, as well
as class speakers. Some of the authors, essayists, and artists
whose works we may read include: Susan Sontag; Michael
Kirby; Edwin Denby; Deborah Jowitt; Joan Acocella; Joyce
Carol Oates; Anna Deavere Smith; Spalding Gray; and Henry
Louis Gates, Jr.
38 WRTNG-UG 1039
4 UN W 6:20-9:00
Amanda Petrusich
Effective music criticism—criticism that places a song or
album within the appropriate social, political, personal, and
aesthetic contexts—can be as enthralling and moving as the
music it engages. In this course, we will explore different
ways of writing about music, from the record review to the
personal essay. We’ll consider the evolving tradition of pop
music criticism (How are MP3 blogs and Web sites challenging print media? How is the critic’s role changing?) and the
mysterious practice of translating sound into ideas (How do
we train ourselves to be better and more thoughtful listeners?). Through reading, writing, and class discussion, we’ll
contemplate the mysterious circuitry that causes people to
embrace (or require) music—from Bob Dylan to Lil’ Wayne
—and how best to explore that connection on the page.
Readings will include Lester Bangs, Rob Sheffield, Carl Wilson,
Sasha Frere-Jones, Robert Christgau, Ann Powers, Simon
Reynolds, Chuck Klosterman, Ellen Willis, and others.
Writing about Film
WRTNG-UG 1070
4 UN F 12:30-3:15
Christopher Bram
Writing about movies is more than just issuing thumbs-up,
thumbs-down judgments. In this class you will learn how to
discuss a film’s content, style, and meaning in ways that can
interest even people who disagree with you. You will explore
some of the many different ways there are to write about
cinema, expanding your command of words by reading such
critics as James Agee, Pauline Kael, James Baldwin, Molly
Haskell, and others. Students will write (and rewrite) five
papers ranging from brief movie reviews to a final eight-toten page essay.
Writing the Other
WRTNG-UG 1215
4 UN W 6:20-9:00
Aaron Hamburger
Writing professors often advise students, “Write what you
know.” But how about writing from what you know into
what you don’t know, specifically by tackling the perspective
of someone who is different from you? In this course, we’ll
explore a range of identities: gender, race, sexual orientation,
class, age, disability, body type, and many more. How can we
learn to recognize our own blind spots that prevent us from
fully seeing the people and the world around us? And how
can we confront and overcome our fears of causing offense in
our attempts to get inside someone whose life experience we
don’t share? During the course, we’ll examine how categories
of “Same” and “Other” can shift wildly not only from person
to person, but within each person. We’ll also look at how
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advanced writing courses
the process of choosing or rejecting various identity labels
intersects with issues of characterization. Finally, we'll consider the possible dangers of writing about the Other, such
as distortion, erasure, or stereotype. Students will produce
several short pieces of creative fiction and two complete
short stories (10-15 pages each) to be workshopped and then
revised, each focusing on capturing a character who does not
share at least one identity marker with the author. For inspiration, we’ll also read examples of work by writers like Ha
Jin, Manuel Munoz, Edwidge Danticat, Victor LaValle, Lorrie
Moore, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Bernard Malamud.
Creative Nonfiction
WRTNG-UG 1300
4 UN R 3:30-6:10
Cris Beam
Creative nonfiction marks the intersection between journalism and literature, and bears the hallmarks of both. Stories feature strong character development, well-developed, nuanced
scenes, and a tangible narrative arc. But they also privilege
thorough research, live reporting and a writer’s quizzical,
intelligent stance. In this course, students will not only learn
the components of a good story, but what makes an idea
compelling to a diverse audience to begin with. Students will
choose their own topics, but we’ll all write and revise one
profile and one long investigative-style piece of researched
and reported literary nonfiction. We will workshop these longer stories in sections, and students will learn effective editing
strategies for their own writing by working closely with their
peers. We’ll read masters of the genre like Joseph Mitchell,
Katherine Boo, and Alex Kotlowitz as well as some newer
or more experimental voices like Pumla Gobodo–Madikizela
and Lauren Slater. We’ll also look at broader ethical questions
like going undercover, cloaking source identities, and writing
outside of one’s own experience.
course, we will read and write personal essays, and, in the
process, explore how writers create “persona,” “tone,” and
“voice.” We will also consider concepts such as “the self,”
“personal identity,” and “sincerity.” Readings may include
essays by Seneca, Michel de Montaigne, George Orwell,
Virginia Woolf, Jorge Louis Borges, Natalia Ginsburg, James
Baldwin, Joan Didion, Alice Walker, Maxine Hong Kingston,
Adrienne Rich, and Hanif Kureishi.
Writing the Fragment
WRTNG-UG 1329
4 UN TR 4:55-6:10
Victoria Blythe
This writing seminar will explore the fragment as a literary
genre and as a modality for literary production. Our engagement with the fragment will focus on interruption as a force
for generating writing, a dynamic that leaves in its wake
literary debris to be collected and recouped. Revisiting our
own literary scenes of destruction we will develop a writing
technique based on bricolage. Using the writing workshop
as a literary archeological dig we will learn to recognize
our usable fragments, to reconfigure and recontextualize
them into revitalized works. (Students will bring fragments
from their own work to the project.) We will look at some
famous literary fragments such as the classic “Anaximander
Fragment” and the remains of Sappho’s odes on love.
Shelley’s “Ozymandias,” Eliot’s “Wasteland,” Rilke’s “Archaic
Torso of Apollo,” and selections from Benjamin’s monumental
bricolage-work will figure in our itinerary among the ruins.
Theoretical writings may include Said's “Beginnings” and
Blanchot's “Writing the Disaster.” Students will revisit and
redeploy their own literary fragments and will also work
within the genre of the “intentional fragment.”
Oral Narratives:
Stories and Their Variations
The Art of the Personal Essay
WRTNG-UG 1305
4 UN M 3:30-6:10
WRTNG-UG 1341
Sharon Friedman
The personal essay is a flexible genre that often incorporates
rumination, memoir, narrative, portrait, anecdote, diatribe,
scholarship, fantasy and moral philosophy. The title of
Montaigne’s Essais (“attempts"), published in 1580, suggests
the tentative and exploratory nature of this form as well as its
freedom. The hallmark of the personal essay is its intimacy—
the sharing of the writer’s observations and reflections with
a reader, establishing a dialogue on subjects that range from
the mundane to autobiographical and political meditations
to reflections on abstract concepts and moral dilemmas.
Style, shape, and intellectual depth lend the personal essay
its drama, charm, and its ability to provoke thought. In this
2012
4 UN M 9:30-12:15
Suzanne Snider
In this workshop, we’ll embrace oral history as both methodology and genre, seizing upon narrative discrepancies as oral
history opportunities. Considering texts such as Voices from
Chernobyl and Legs McNeil's Please Kill Me, we’ll explore how
oral history can help us approach complex subjects and historic events, particularly those stories containing conflicting
accounts. As part of this discussion, we’ll examine the elastic
nature of memory, and the distinctions between individual
memory and collective memory. We will challenge ourselves
to reflect divergent viewpoints in our nonfiction writing, borrowing the lessons of conventional, as well as more overtly
experimental nonfiction to accomplish this. How do we
chronicle stories that do not conform to narrative conven-
39
advanced writing courses
tion? How can we retain conflicting accounts within our
chronicle, rather than synthesizing them into one account?
Students will read newspapers and magazines, looking for
missing stories and missing voices. These omissions will serve
as the inspiration for interviews and writing projects. The
work of writers and documentarians such as Mary Ellen Mark,
Luc Sante, Anna Deveare Smith, and Moises Kaufman will be
included in our coursework.
Writing for Late Night Television:
Monologue, Jokes, Bits, and Sketches
WRTNG-UG 1508
4 UN M 3:30-6:10
D.B. Gilles
This course introduces students to writing for the world of
late night television. Every talk show host has a unique voice
and style. Work will include learning how to write opening
monologues for The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Chelsea
Lately, Conan and Jimmy Kimmel among others. Other subjects
we will cover include understanding the difference between a
sketch and a bit, how to structure a joke, and and how to find
material. Work will also involve writing sketches such as those
on Saturday Night Live. Students will learn how to go from
idea, to building the sketch, to completing it and rewriting it
to make it funnier. Writing assignments may include creating
original on-going sketch characters, a Letterman Top Ten List,
fake news items ala Weekend Update and writing short film
parodies.
Crafting Short Fiction from the Sentence Up
WRTNG-UG 1537
4 UN T 7:45-10:15
Steven Rinehart
This class explores the craft of writing, starting with the sentence and ending with the scene. Half of each class is devoted
to craft exercises and the remaining half to a traditional workshop approach to discussing student submissions. By the end
of the semester we’ll be able to talk intelligently about some
of the “micro” parts of a short story or novel, giving the students some practical tools for editing those parts.
Reading and Writing the Short Story
WRTNG-UG 1540
4 UN M 6:20-9:00
Carol Zoref
This short story workshop is designed for the writer who
believes that there is as much to be learned from reading the
works of others as from writing their own stories. We will
devote a portion of each class to discussions of master stories,
as well as to careful readings and discussions of stories by the
members of the workshop. Exercises will be assigned each
week as a way of developing and reinforcing each writer’s
relationship to literary craft. Each writer will also present her
or his own stories in class. Workshop members are required
to participate actively in classroom critiques.
Fiction Writing
WRTNG-UG 1550
4 UN T 6:20-9:00
Lara Vapnyar
Students may take "Fiction Writing" two times.
Sidelines:
The World of the Cross-Genre Writer
WRTNG-UG 1534
4 UN R 6:20-9:00
Lizzie Skurnick
There’s the work writers actually do over their careers, and
then the work for which they’re remembered. What’s the
difference between a cookbook author and a Pulitzer-Prize
nominated novelist? A video-game reviewer and a literary
icon? An anthropologist and a cultural satirist? Less than
you’d think, if you examine the work of writers whose brilliance spans these genres and more over the course of their
careers. In Sidelines, we’ll look at Patricia Highsmith’s first
novel, The Price of Salt, a lesbian coming-of-age work; Martin
Amis’s video game reviews; Ernest J. Gaines’ children’s novel,
A Long Day in November; Nora Ephron’s searing GQ cultural
criticism; Shirley Jackson’s comedic essays on parenting, and
other forgotten works in order to gain valuable understanding
about the writing life and the use of mastering many media.
Students will also take a crack at writing in the standard and
nonstandard forms of the writers of our age, such as blogging, Tumblring, and tweeting, and then write their own
cross-genre works, anything from straightforward fiction to
narrative recipes for nutmeg cake.
40 This course provides students interested in writing fiction an
opportunity to explore (and practice) various forms of fiction
in a workshop environment. The main objective of the course
is to help students develop their individual styles and voices
and to make them aware of the various techniques available
to them. We will examine every aspect of the craft of traditional fiction writing: plot, structure, point of view, narrative
voice, dialogue, building of individual scenes, etc as well as
the new techniques of the digital age: hypertext, self-editing
text, visual and audio images, animation. We will learn how to
balance the traditional with the new without overwhelming
the written text with gadgets. Students will be taught to look
at texts from the unique perspective of a fellow writer and
encouraged to become part of a community of writers where
they will work with their peers in a safe, honest and considerate environment. Students will present their own fiction,
respond to the writings of others, and pose questions about
literature, editing, and publishing. Students will be required to
write either two short stories, or a short story and a chapter
from a novel, or a short story and several pieces of flash fiction. The reading assignments will include selections from old
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advanced writing courses
and contemporary authors such as Chekhov, Joyce, Borges,
Nabokov, Alice Munro, George Saunders, Edward P. Jones,
Junot Diaz, Jennifer Egan.
Advanced Fiction Writing
WRTNG-UG 1555
4 UN R 6:20-9:00
Chris Spain
The aim of this course is to fathom why fiction works when
it works, and why it doesn't when it doesn't. We will attempt
to teach ourselves to read like writers, so we can learn from
those who have come before, so we can began to write like
writers. We will engage all the elements that give a fiction
a chance at success--obsession, seduction, evoking of the
senses, the removal of filters, scene and summary, theatre of
the mind, et cetera. Students will turn in three first drafts of
fiction, each 10-14 pages long, to be critiqued in a workshop
setting. The critiques will be rigorous but constructive; no
nastiness allowed. We will also complete short, extemporaneous, writing exercises. Readings taken from The New Yorker,
Zoetrope, and others.
The Art and Craft of Poetry
4 UN M 6:20-9:00
4 UN TR 3:30-4:45
Literacy in Action
CLI-UG 1460
Prerequisite WRTNG-UG 1550 or CRWRI-UA 815 or CRWRI-UA
816 or CWRI-UA 820 or permission of the instructor. Students
may take "Advanced Fiction Writing" two times.
WRTNG-UG 1560/01
WRTNG-UG 1560/02
writing-related course
Emily Fragos
Stacy Pies
4 UN M 6:20-9:00
Dianne Ramdeholl
This course combines volunteer work in New York City adult
literacy and English as a second language programs with an
academic introduction to the philosophy, history, and current
issues of adult literacy. Students will work as volunteer teachers of reading and writing oral English or mentors at such
institutions as the University Settlement, International Rescue
Committee, Turning Point, and Fortune Society. In class they
will read about and discuss such key issues as which “basic
skills” U.S. adults now need; which adults lack these skills and
why; the implications for our economy, families, communities, and democracy; the instructional approaches developed
for adults; and the steps that might be taken to build support
for high-quality, adult basic-skills programs. Throughout the
course, students will relate such issues to their own on-site
experiences in class discussion and role-playing, and create
a portfolio of writing that includes on-site observations, lesson plans, reflections, and a final analytical paper. Readings
may include Making Meaning, Making Change (Auerbach); We
Make the Road by Walking (Horton and Freire); Pedagogy of
the Oppressed (Freire), as well as other articles and journals
( Focus on Basics and The Change Agent).
Students may take "The Art and Craft of Poetry" two times.
In this workshop poets will focus on the foundations and intricate dynamics of poetry as a writer’s process. A weekly reading of a poem by each poet in the circle will serve as point
of departure for discussion of the relationships of craft and
expression. Each student will also briefly present a favorite
poet/poem for the enjoyment and learning of the class. A final
portfolio of poems is required at the end of the course.
Advanced Poetry Writing
WRTNG-UG 1564
4 UN M 3:30-6:10
Scott Hightower
Prerequisite WRTNG-UG 1560 or CRWRI-UA 817 or CRWRI-UA
830, or permission of the instructor. Students may take "Advanced
Poetry Writing" two times.
A workshop designed for serious poets, this class will teach
students how to take their writing to another level both
intellectually and artistically; depth of theme, imagination, and
craft will be discussed. Emphasis will be placed on developing
and strengthening one’s personal style and voice. Through
work-shopping, students will further refine their critical eye
as poet and reader. The class will include exercises and readings. Submission of work will be discussed and encouraged.
2012
41
arts workshops
ARTS WORKSHOPs repeatable one TIME
Something to Sing About:
Acting in Musical Theatre
ARTS-UG 1014
4 UN M 12:30-3:15
Ben Steinfeld
The “American Musical” as it has evolved over the last century has become a remarkable model of interdisciplinary
practice. From its early iterations and influences in burlesque,
vaudeville, and operetta to the complex contemporary amalgams of book, music, lyrics, and dance, the American musical
has proven a rich crucible for the exploration of identity and
culture, form and content, and ideas and emotions. This arts
workshop will offer actors a technical foundation for acting in
musical theater. We will deal broadly with the history of musical theater in context by exploring both the process by which
actors engage with musical material and the development
and aesthetics of the form. Participants will work on songs
and scenes taken from the giants of musical theater including:
Rodgers & Hammerstein, Kander & Ebb, Stephen Sondheim,
and more. How do we merge the receiving nature of acting
with the giving nature of singing? How do we “justify” the
decision to sing at all? Our survey of the evolution of musical
theater will ask: What does the history of the American musical tell us about our cultural history? What do musicals teach
us about the interdisciplinary nature of living in the arts? All
students in this course must be comfortable and confident
singing actors. Everyone will be required to rehearse outside
of class time, complete written and analytical assignments, and
commit to a public presentation at the end of the semester. In
order to be accepted into this course, attendance at the first
class is mandatory for all, including registered students.
Oral History, Cultural Identity and the Arts
ARTS-UG 1045
4 UN M 6:20-9:00
Judith Sloan
Oral History is a complex process in the creation of artistic
projects across the disciplines: documentary film, theatre,
book arts, exhibitions, interactive websites, public radio,
etc. This course offers training in interviewing and editing
techniques, and looks at the impact of “truth-telling” on the
people we interview, their families and friends, ourselves
and the culture at large. Research explores the ways artistic
projects informed by oral history have impacted popular culture. Readings, listening to public radio documentaries, and
viewing films will be used to address the balance in accurately
reflecting the realities and integrity of the people represented
while staying true to the vision of the artist. Readings include
(but are not limited to): Art Spiegelman’s Maus I & II ; Works
by Studs Terkel including Working and Will the Circle Be
42 Unbroken; Greg Halpern’s Harvard Works Because We Do,
listening to audio and reading Slave Narratives from Remember
Slavery project, Smithsonian; Anna Deveare Smith, and Dave
Isay. For final projects students create collaborative or solo
work in the discipline of their own training; theatre, artist
books, photography, poetry, music, radio, audio art, film or
video.
Site-Specific Performance:
Art, Activism and Public Space
ARTS-UG 1080
4 UN R 9:30-12:15
Martha Bowers
This course looks at the development of site-specific performance with a special emphasis on projects that directly
involve specific communities and include activist agendas.
“Site-specific” is a term frequently associated with the visual
arts but since the Happenings of the ’60s and ’70s, a body
of work termed “site-specific performance” has evolved as
highly structured works of art that are designed around, for
or because of place and associated communities. As site artists confront the matrix of social forces and overlapping communities that relate to a given site, their aesthetics, creative
process and goals have shifted. How are they blurring the
lines between art and activism, art and urban renewal, art and
spirituality, art and real life? This arts workshop will emphasize making site work by completing a progressive series of
studies, using various artistic mediums, designed to build skills
as students work towards creating a final hypothetical site
project . We will also be reading about and viewing site work
by seminal artists in this field. This course is recommended
to adventurous students with interests and some training in
at least one of the following mediums: dance, theatre, spoken
word poetry, media, photography and/or visual art. Readings
include excerpts from One Place After Another, Miwon Kwon;
Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art, ed. Suzanne Lacy;
Local Acts, Jan Cohen Cruz among others.
Body Wisdom for Performers
ARTS-UG 1107
4 UN T 6:20-9:00
Robin Powell
Performing artists have a special need to understand the
body’s full capacity. Enhanced kinesthesic awareness of our
muscles and bones allows us to move and perform with more
confidence, safety, and expression. This body awareness
course uses Kinetic Awareness to gain greater knowledge
of your bones and muscles in motion and at rest. You will
integrate kinesthetic experience with factual and visual information, focused attention, movement, and touch. Each week
you will focus on one area of the body. You will use directed
attention, move the part in all directions, release any held tension, apply strengthening exercises and study the bones and
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arts workshops
major muscles of that area. Olsen’s Body Stories: A Guide to
Experiential Anatomy and Irene Dowd's Taking Root to Fly are
required reading along with selections from Sieg and Adams’s
Illustrated Essentials of Musculoskeletal Anatomy.
Dance? by Roger Copeland and Marshall Cohen (eds.), The
Art of Making Dances by Doris Humphrey, The Intimate Act
of Choreography by Blom and Chaplin, and Space Harmony by
Rudolph Laban. To view a clip of the final performance from
last year, visit YouTube, The Art of Choreography.
The Art of Play
ARTS-UG 1110
4 UN R 9:30-12:15
Maria Hodermarska
We know that for children play is more than just fun; it
is the work through which they develop. But what about
when adults play? Plato wrote, “Life must be lived as play.”
Through play we find our freedom, spontaneity, and our
aesthetic. What is there in human beings that enables us to
play? Why is play considered an innate capacity of people
from the beginning of recorded history? What qualifies as
play? When does play become art? In this course, everyone
plays and in doing so examines the historic and contemporary uses of play as a universal impulse of humans, across
generations and time. Play’s capacity to mitigate the grosser
aspects of life will be considered. We will examine play as it
is reflected through theories of child development, dramatic
improvisation, fine art, politics, technology, the symbolism of
fairy tales, the historic and contemporary, uses of puppets,
masks, performance, and ritual across all cultures. Students
will examine the necessity of play in their own child and
adult lives—the creative spirit, the adventurer, and empathic
connection with humanity, and laughter, too. Books may
include: Nachmanovitch’s Free Play, Bettelheim’s The Uses
of Enchantment, Huizinga’s Homo Ludens, Jung’s Man and His
Symbols, Nietzche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
The Art of Choreography
ARTS-UG 1209
4 UN R 3:30-6:10
Kathryn Posin
It was the modern dance choreographer Martha Graham who
said, “We are all born with genius. It’s just that most people
lose it in the first five minutes.” This class helps the student
get back his or her original choreographic ability. We will
study the elements of dance—time, space and energy—and,
each week, explore a different aspect of the choreographic
process. The students, through improvisations and short
movement studies, will discover their movement vocabulary.
Each dancemaker will find their own individual choreographic
voice while being introduced to some of the major twentieth
century choreographers. By nature we are all dancers, with
or without years of training. Choreographic process, whether
one wishes to be a choreographer or not, is a superb model
for thinking, assembling and creating. A digital media component teaches students to incorporate video into their work.
The final performance is in a theatrical setting with lights, simple costume and possibly video. Readings will include What is
2012
Making Dance:
Space, Place and Technology
ARTS-UG 1211
4 UN W 11:00-1:45
Leslie Satin
In this workshop, students will explore the possibilities of
dancing across spatial categories, making dances in "real" and
digital space. Taking our cues from contemporary experimental and primarily post-modern choreographers, we will examine how our arts practices and beliefs about bodies and space
are linked to evolving ideas and cultural systems; we will ask
questions that tug at the assumptions of what dance is, what
bodies are, what space is, and how these elements are significant as components of choreography and of our dance experiences. We will make and watch dances ranging from lowtech works to high-tech virtual partnerships; most excitingly,
we will collaborate on performance with a group of dancers
in a locale outside of NYU. In addition to making dances, we
will read about contemporary dance, technology, and other
practices and disciplines (i.e., architecture, philosophy, neuroscience), view performances of choreographers and visual
artists, and meet with practitioners engaged in the questions
and practices of our study. Readings might include work by
Gaston Bachelard, Matthew Frederick, Valerie Briginshaw,
Merce Cunningham, Kent DeSpain, Andrew Gurian, Ivar
Hagendoorn, Yi-Fu Tuan, and other artists and scholars. The
course is open to all students: anyone interested in dance
and/or technology is welcome. Note: all workshop members
will be expected to participate as movers!
Rudiments of Contemporary Musicianship
ARTS-UG 1305
4 UN W 6:20-9:00
John Castellano
Lab fee: $35. Course meets at Drummer's Collective, 123 West
18th Street.
This course is designed to help students develop a better
understanding of music by presenting the opportunity to
experience music “as a musician.” Students learn basic music
theory, develop rudimentary musicianship skills, and use that
experience to compose and rehearse student compositions.
The goal is for each student to be able to compose, rehearse,
and then perform his or her own original music. The workshop meets in a professional music rehearsal studio where
students have access to a wide variety of musical instruments
and other resources. The course culminates in a public recital
of works written and performed by students.
43
arts workshops
Songwriting
ARTS-UG 1325
Walls of Power:
4 UN T 3:30-6:10
Bill Rayner
Lab fee: $35. Course meets at Drummer's Collective, 123 West
18th Street.
Public Art
ARTS-UG 1445
4 UN T 6:20-9:00
Terence Culver
Song is the oldest musical form established in all eras and
cultures. Ancient Greek and African musicians used song for
recreation, to preserve communal memory and to link the
visible world with the invisible. Music making was rooted
in mythology, legends and folklore and was associated with
gods, ancestors and heroes. The musician, through his/her
technique, had to be able to combine sounds and images
through the use of voice, gesture, dance, and instruments to
form a musical reminiscence. In this workshop, songwriting
will be explored as both a musical and cultural practice. Each
student will develop songwriting techniques through the study
of historical, cultural and musical aspects of songwriting.
This workshop will explore how visual art, performance art,
and activist art in the public sphere contribute to political
dialogue and community building. The course will integrate
the hands-on practice of public art making with the study of
politics, community building, culture, and social issues as they
relate to public art, with a special focus on New York City.
A major component of the course will be a public art project that students will plan and execute during the semester.
Selected readings will include: Bachelard, The Poetics of Space;
Deutsche, Evictions: Art and Spatial Politics; Lacy, ed., Mapping
the Terrain: New Genre Public Art; Malraux, Museum Without
Walls; Raven, Art in the Public Interest; Rochfort, Mexican
Muralists: Orozco, Rivera, Siqueiros.
Drawing and Painting
The Public Square:
ARTS-UG 1405
4 UN F 9:30-12:15
Bert Katz
This workshop is designed to provide both beginning and
advanced students with studio experience in drawing and
painting. A variety of media will be used, including acrylic
paint. The problem of visual conversion will be addressed as
will the distinction between “what is seen and what is known”
(Picasso). In addition, by way of critiques, discussions and
gallery visits, the student will explore the problem of visual
“form” and aesthetic judgment. Selected works produced
during the semester will be shown in the Gallatin arts studio
on the 4th floor of 1 Washington Place.
Rites of Passage into Contemporary Art
Practice
ARTS-UG 1420
4 UN R 3:30-6:10
Barnaby Ruhe
Modern art has been a balancing act between control and
letting go. This course focuses on the psychological interface between the two, the “liminal” zone. We will survey
modern artists’ techniques for tapping the sources of creativity, including Dada collagists’ free-associations; Surrealists’
automatic writing, doodles, and “cadavres exquises”; and
Abstract Expressionists’ embrace of chaos as a resource. We
will engage in very simple exercises: doodling, speed drawing, painting an abstract mural as a group, keeping a liminal
journal, collaging, and exploring ritualistic techniques. We
will follow up each exercise with discussions, take a trip to
MoMA, and conclude the course with an essay, reexamining
modern art in light of the inner journey each of us has taken
during the course. Readings include writings by Arnold van
Gennep, R.D. Laing, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Victor Turner,
Mircea Eliade, James Elkins, and Frida Kahlo.
44 From Concepts—to Models—to Monuments
ARTS-UG 1470
4 UN M 9:30-12:15
Greg Wyatt
Students should not schedule any classes immediately before or
after this class to allow ample time to travel to offsite locations, as
well as to the Modern Art Foundry and the Art Students League.
Students are expected to pay for their own travel costs.
This workshop focuses on the nature of creativity for the
public space and the “model to monument” design and
bronze casting. We will explores the process by which a concept becomes a three dimensional model and consequently
a public monument. We will also investigate how ideas, or
concepts in history have influenced individual artist in making
public monuments. Some examples of this type of didactic art
that we will explore are: Perikles’ Athenian building program
after the Persian wars, Michelangelo’s David, the Columbia
University “Alma Mater” in the middle of Columbia’s campus, the Peace Fountain next to St. John the Divine, Ghandi’s
bronze on Union Square, Grand Army Plaza, “Sherman
Memorial,” Avenue of Americas “Liberators Monuments,”
Central Park “Literary Walk-Shakespeare” and “Angel of the
Waters” and other sculptures and architectural sights in New
York City. In addition to visiting most of the above New York
City’s public monuments, each student in the class will adopta-monument that is in a decaying state and develop plans to
restore it or study the possibilities to prevent it from further
decay. Some sessions of this workshop will be conducted at
the Art Students League with visits to the Queens Modern Art
Foundry. Readings may include Plato’s Timaeus, Benvenuto
Cellini’s Autobiography, Cezanne’s Letters, Delacroix’s Jounal,
as well as Goethe and Leonardo on painting.
fall
arts workshops
Beyond Picture Perfect:
Personal Choice in a Digital World
ARTS-UG 1485
4 UN T 3:30-6:10
Jeff Day
Beyond Picture Perfect explores the many choices available to today’s image makers. New technology combined
with traditional photographic techniques will be addressed,
enabling the students to realize their distinctive image-making
vocabulary. Weekly discussions include understanding hardware mechanics, choosing a personal color palette, and recognizing “your” unique composition key. We will debate the
many analog and digital tools available to photographers vital
to their artistic expression. These concepts will be supported
by weekly assignments and class critiques culminating in a final
project portfolio. Students with interest in analog or digital
formats will be encouraged to develop an understanding of
their medium and form an original visual strategy. Museum/
gallery visits and field trips for on-location photographing will
inspire students to create their own way of seeing. Readings
may include selections from: Robert Adams, Why People
Photograph; London and Upton, Photography.
4 UN W 3:30-6:10
Nina Katchadourian
This workshop investigates sound as a medium as it comes
into play in contemporary visual art and installation. We will
ground the course by looking at examples from early and
mid-twentieth century experimental and electronic music
that have provided the intellectual and conceptual antecedents for sound art today. John Cage, Alvin Lucier, Pierre
Schaeffer, Max Neuhaus, Pauline Oliveros and Iannis Xenakis
are some historical touchpoints; Bruce Nauman, Marina
Rosenfeld, Christian Marclay, Kaffe Matthews, Steven Vitiello,
Chris Kubick and Anne Walsh are examples of contemporary
artists for whom sound is central. Students will work both
collaboratively and individually using simple sound-editing
software. After basic technical instruction in recording, editing and mixing, students will undertake a series of production
assignments that will require the use of found sound, appropriated sound as well as field recordings. The course will
culminate in an assignment that explores the site-specific uses
of sound. There will be visits to various venues in New York,
such as The Dream House (La Monte Young/Marian Zazeela),
and guest lectures by contemporary artists working with
sound. Readings include selections from Audio Culture (Cox/
Warner), listening selections from UbuWeb, and a variety of
contemporary reviews, criticism and artists’ statements. The
emphasis of this class will fall more on expanding conceptual
2012
Playwriting
ARTS-UG 1565
4 UN T 6:20-9:00
Myla Churchill
This writer’s workshop explores the symbiotic nature of
playwriting. Through a series of exercises, we will discover
how environment and experience influence identity, how
plot is built on desire and need, and why perception and
cultural context dictate the form or structure of a play. By
examining classical paradigms and their influence on modern
theatre, we can determine how to use or break these rules
to find our own voices. And as we mine our souls and surroundings for the seeds of creation, we will write a one-act
play. Some readings include Fornes, Parks, Fugard, Bogosian
and Chekov.
Writing for the Screen I
ARTS-UG 1570
Sound Art
ARTS-UG 1490
skills rather than on technical development, and experience
in sound or video editing is helpful but not required. There
will be a very strong emphasis placed on group critique and
discussion.
4 UN R 6:20-9:00
Selma Thompson
This workshop is for writers ready and willing to make the
time commitment necessary to produce a well-structured
outline and at least the first act of feature-length screenplay
(although students will be supported/encouraged to write
a complete first draft, if possible). We will hone our craft
through writing exercises, and through screenings of film
scenes that illustrate aspects of dramatic writing. Attention
will be paid to the fundamentals of drama, including dialogue, subtext, motivation and character-revealing action.
The majority of our time will be spent presenting work and
giving/receiving feedback; the ability to engage in collaborative discussion, and offer useful commentary, is an essential
professional skill. Additionally, we will read/analyze recently
produced screenplays to understand structure and how to
make the story exciting “on the page.” Students should come
to the class with some scriptwriting experience and/or a
background in acting or film.
Writing for Television I
ARTS-UG 1571
4 UN M 3:30-6:10
Imani Douglas
This workshop will explore the process of turning an idea
into a teleplay. Prior to delving into the world of television,
we will take a peek into writing for stage and film. The differences and similarities of these mediums will be investigated,
via such works as Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple, successful
45
arts workshops
in all forms—stage, film, and TV sitcom. Structure, function and form will be examined via the reading of scripts
and viewing of films and classic TV. Students will spend ten
weeks of the semester creating, developing, and writing a
sitcom episode of a classic television series, such as I Love
Lucy.Students will learn first-hand what it takes to complete
a writing assignment from pitch, to beat sheet, outline, first
draft, rewrite, to table draft, under the direct supervision and
guidance of an executive producer. In this way, students will
learn the business of the TV writer and what it takes to be
successful in “the room” of a Hollywood TV show. Readings
may include Writing for Television by Madeline DiMaggio
and Laughs, Luck and Lucy! by Jess and Gregg Oppenheimer.
Mapping as a Spatial, Political, and
Environmental Practice
ARTS-UG 1603 4 UN
TR 2:00-3:15, F 12:30-1:45 L. Harpman
This arts workshop engages the practice of mapping as a
cultural project with its attendant socio-political and environmental implications. The course looks critically at visual
documentation of information, focusing on how our understanding of the environment is shaped by different maps and
map-making protocols. All maps are tools and they all shape
and challenge our understanding of space, place, and events.
This arts workshop is conceived as a laboratory for the study
and creation of maps. We will review the history of maps and
map-making; create maps and diagrams for real-time events,
which may include natural resource management, population
migration, epidemics, weather, and public festivals. Authors
may include Denis Cosgrove, Mark Monmonier, Michel de
Certeau, James Corner, Peter Hall, Edward Tufte, Ginger
Strand, Ingrid Gould Ellen, Nicholas Felton, and Matt Ridley.
In a workshop format, this class will ask students to create graphic and written responses to the weekly readings.
Digital design experience (familiarity with the Adobe Suite) is
strongly suggested, but not required.
Native American Film and Video:
Performing Self-Representation Through Media
ARTS-UG 1604
4 UN F 12:30-3:15
Amalia Cordova
This course will study the ways that Indigenous peoples
and independent Native artists in the Americas have turned
to film, video, and digital arts to dispute ethnographic and
Hollywood imagery, and create their own audiovisual media
“from within.” We will explore notions of Third and Fourth
cinema, indigenous self-representation, collective authorship,
46 Indigenous people’s representation, in mainstream films,
photography, and exhibition sites such as museums. We will
research specific authors and media projects, and discuss the
roles of the institutions that present this work through exhibitions, events, festivals, and publications. The course features
guest lecturers and requires class viewing of films and videos
that are otherwise unavailable on the market. Central readings may include Through Navajo Eyes: An Exploration in Film
and Communication and Anthropology (1997), by Sol Worth
and John Adair, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism
and the Media (1994), by Ella Shohat and Robert Stam,
Wiping the War Paint Off the Lens: Native American Film
and Video (2001), by Beverly Singer, and Global Indigenous
Media: Cultures, Poetics and Politics, by Pamela Wilson and
Michelle Stewart (2008). Films will include works by Victor
Masayesva, Jr. (Hopi), Dante Cerano (Purepecha), Zacharias
Kunuk (Inuit), and works from the Video in the Villages project in Brazil.
Architecture and Urban Design Lab I
ARTS-UG 1619 6 UN W 11:00-1:45, W 2:00-3:15 M. Joachim
Please note: This is a six-credit course with extended meeting
hours on Wednesday.
This workshop and design lab aims to impart skills and theories essential to intelligent green design, an socio-ecological
practice applicable to all materials, buildings, and infrastructure systems. The course will look broadly at types of inhabitation, including hives, webs, nests, and lodges; houses, housing, cities, and regions; and extreme environments including
emergency shelters and outer-space habitats. Our objectives
are grounded in understanding the architectural consequences of socially responsible and community based endeavors in
urban areas. As a project-based course, students will work
individually and in teams and will combine original research
with design proposals. Intellectual design exercises in the
beginning of the semester will prepare students for an intense
focus on a current problem facing New York City. Students
will be expected to present their ideas in mock-ups, scaled
models, schematics, lifestyle drawings, and other forms of
imaging. Thus, as they create and develop their own original
design proposals, students will experiment with a variety of
techniques and forms of representation. Authors may include
Stephen Johnson, William McDonough, Witold Rybczinksi,
Constance Adams, Ricky Burdett, Keller Easterling, Peter
Hall, William Mitchell, Keith Critchlow, Ernst Haeckl, James
Corner, Victor Papanek, Stan Allen, Kate Orff and others.
fall
arts workshops
Architectural Design and Drawing
Digital Art and New Media
ARTS-UG 1621
ARTS-UG 1635
4 UN W 6:20-9:00
Donna Goodman
Gropius once described architecture as a combination of
"form, function, and delight." In this workshop, students are
introduced to the experience of designing buildings. The
first project explores the design process. Students develop
diagrams and drawings, analyzing issues of form, function,
technology, site, and environment in buildings by well known
architects. Drafting techniques are also presented through
preparation of plans, sections, elevations, and renderings. In
the second project, students design residential lofts. They
begin with a program and a basic design concept. Planning
theories, such as function, circulation, massing, and spatial
organization are discussed. Visual concepts, such as symmetry, axis, and proportion are also introduced. Methods
for developing designs through models, perspectives, and
isometric drawings are also presented. Prior drafting experience is helpful, but not required.
Good Design: Scale
ARTS-UG 1626
4 UN MW 9:30-10:45
Louise Harpman
The principles of what is considered “good design” are unique
to each design discipline. And yet, by territorializing the
design professions, we fail to provide a shared dialogue to
engage a wider discussion that extends to the public realm.
The Museum of Modern Art in New York institutionalized its
support for mid-century design artifacts, through its curated
Good Design shows in the early 1950s. Through those shows
and the newly developed "gift shops," American consumers came to appreciate contemporary design of furniture,
cheese slicers, textiles, and "branded" storage containers,
like Tupperware. But, by focusing on domestic objects and
consumption, it can be argued that the opportunity for a
larger discourse on the value of good design for towns, cities,
and regions was lost. This workshop engages and evaluates
the tools and processes that are used to design objects as
well as buildings and landscapes. Projects increase in scale
throughout the term, as students design a thing they can hold
(an object), something that can hold them (clothing, furniture), and a space they might inhabit (a room, a house). As a
project-based course, students will work individually and in
teams. Digital design experience is helpful but not required.
2012
4 UN R 3:30-6:10
Cynthia Allen
This workshop seeks to bring students from varying backgrounds together to engage in evaluating and developing
digital new media for the Internet and other new media art
installations. The Web makes possible a powerful new kind
of student-centered, constructivist learning by collecting
at a single site a phenomenal array of learning and creative
resources that can be explored with simple point-and-click
skills: photos, text, animation, audio and film materials.
Emerging new media technologies allow cross-development
and implementation to the Web. Each student brings to the
class a set of experiences and skills, such as research, writing,
design, film, music, photography, computer gaming, performance, illustration, computer literacy, software knowledge
or Internet experience. Through lectures, including a survey
of digital new media currently on the Internet, group discussions, field trips and workshops focusing on their personal
skills, students will develop individual projects. The workshop will deconstruct innovative Web sites, computer and
video games, film, using digital new media, as well as discuss
concepts, content strategies, and frameworks that bridge
theory and practice. Class projects, readings, writings, and
Blog journal-keeping are essential components of this course.
Students are encouraged to supply their own media.
Making Virtual Sense:
3D Graphics Studio for Critically-Driven Creative Applications
ARTS-UG 1647
4 UN F 9:30-12:15
Carl Skelton
Until recently, the creation of interactive 3D graphics was
only possible for large and capital-intensive uses: the armed
forces, large-scale architectural/engineering work, mass
entertainment. Now, open-source applications and powerful
personal and portable computers are making it practical for
individuals and small groups to independently build and share
alternative visions. Whether you are interested in exploring
new ways to construct complex networks of ideas in the
present, or to imagine physical spaces to reflect and support
new ways of life, this arts workshop provides a blend of critical orientation and hands-on experience. In this open project
studio, the majority of course time and work will be taken
up with the development of student-built individual or small
team concepts, to be developed as 3D graphic "fly-through"
models. Theoretical discussions will be initiated with a mix of
relevant writings and media. Here is a representative sampling of sources: Douglas Engelbart, Eric Raymond, William
47
arts workshops
Gibson, Zaha Hadid, Judith Donath, the Athenian Acropolis,
the Kalachakra mandala, Salisbury Cathedral, the Schindler
house, Artigas gardens, the 1958 World's fair Philips pavilion,
the Seagram's building, Grant Theft Auto IV, the monastery of
La Tourette, the Mangin plan, compendium.org, Betaville.
Creating a Magazine:
From Inspiration to Prototype
ARTS-UG 1652
4 UN MW 2:00-3:15
Lise Friedman
A crazy-quilt of high and low culture, magazines—whether
printed or rendered digitally—are one of our most potent
forms of cultural commerce, a striking mix of content and
form, covering everything from politics, fashion, and celebrity
48 to performing and visual arts, technology, crafts, and the environment. No matter the topic, design has become an increasingly crucial editorial element. It sets one publication apart
from the next, and at its best unifies the content and instantly
telegraphs to the reader where it figures in the media landscape. In this workshop we will explore this rapidly changing world. We will discuss notions of good vs. bad design,
engaging vs. dull content. And, through the development of
in-class publications, will put into practice the many aspects
that contribute to a magazine's creation, from initial concept
to the realization of a prototype. Directed readings (including
"I Wonder" and "The Best American Magazine Writing 2011"),
fieldtrips, and visits from magazine professionals will contribute to our discussion.
fall
community learning
Lyrics on Lockdown
CLI-UG 1444
4 UN M 2:00-4:45
Gentrification and Its Discontents
P. Anderson / M. Hall
This course will focus on the uses of the visual and performing
arts and as tools for positive and therapeutic social change.
Through hands-on collaboration with the Blackout Arts
Collective and the East River Academy, students will create
artistic and dialogical spaces for critically thinking about the
crisis of incarceration in this country and the role of spirituality and healing. Speakers may include representatives from
the Institute for Juvenile Justice & Alternatives and Voices
Unbroken. Readings include writings by scholar/activists such
as Augusto Boal, Paulo Freire, Michelle Alexander and Bryonn
Bain. Students will create arts-based workshops which
they will facilitate with incarcerated youth at Rikers Island.
Students do not need to be artists to participate in the course,
however, creative building and contemplative practice will be
an integral part of the curriculum. Weekend meetings are a
requirement of the course.
Shifting Focus I:
Video Production and Community Activism
CLI-UG 1445
4 UN M 6:20-9:00
Mark Read
Shifting Focus I examines the history, theory and practice of
video advocacy. The moving image has long been used by
grassroots political movements to mobilize constituencies
in order to effect social change. Today, video has become an
essential tool for social and political actors working on a wide
array of issues. In part one of this hands-on class, students will
examine the biases of corporate-controlled media; learn the
theory and history of video activism; develop basic camera
skills; and reflect on lessons learned in the field. Outside of
class, students will break into groups and begin work on collaborative video projects with local community organizations;
projects that will be completed in Shifting Focus II, in the
Spring 2013 Semester. Readings will include selections from
Noam Chomsky, Thomas Harding, and Harvey Molotch.
2012
CLI-UG 1453
4 UN M 3:30-6:10
René Poitevin
This course takes a close look at the process of community
restructuring known as “gentrification” – namely the displacement of poor residents and local stores by affluent and middle
class households and businesses. Through social theory, literature, and film, we will explore the intersection of global,
local, and institutional mechanisms driving the gentrification
process. More specifically, we will look at the ways in which
gentrification in NYC, while triggered by macroeconomic
forces, is in turn mediated by local ‘growth machines’ led
by real estate coalitions – and community resistance. And
we will also explore at the geography of gentrification in the
context of several NYC neighborhoods (i.e., the Lower East
Side, Chinatown, and East Harlem).
Literacy in Action
CLI-UG 1460
4 UN M 6:20-9:00
Dianne Ramdeholl
This course combines volunteer work in New York City adult
literacy and English as a second language programs with an
academic introduction to the philosophy, history, and current
issues of adult literacy. Students will work as volunteer teachers of reading and writing oral English or mentors at such
institutions as the University Settlement, International Rescue
Committee, Turning Point, and Fortune Society. In class they
will read about and discuss such key issues as which “basic
skills” U.S. adults now need; which adults lack these skills and
why; the implications for our economy, families, communities, and democracy; the instructional approaches developed
for adults; and the steps that might be taken to build support
for high-quality, adult basic-skills programs. Throughout the
course, students will relate such issues to their own on-site
experiences in class discussion and role-playing, and create
a portfolio of writing that includes on-site observations, lesson plans, reflections, and a final analytical paper. Readings
may include Making Meaning, Making Change (Auerbach); We
Make the Road by Walking (Horton and Freire); Pedagogy of
the Oppressed (Freire), as well as other articles and journals
(Focus on Basics and The Change Agent).
49
graduate electives
PERMISSION OF INSTRUCTOR REQUIRED
Content into Form
4 UN W 6:20-8:20
Dave King
Open to advanced undergraduates with permission of the instructor
(davekingwriter@gmail.com).
How does the telling transform a story? And how can a story
govern its own telling? In this course for writers of fiction and
nonfiction, we consider diverse storytelling strategies, looking
at fiction, creative nonfiction and narrative poetry, as well as a
few short films. Through exercises in both prose and poetry,
we explore how a writer reimagines a project via formal decisions about voice, genre, point of view, diction, even meter
and rhyme. The intent is to move us away from comfort
zones, to help us draw invention from the unfamiliar and to
broaden our literary palettes, so students should be prepared
to be daring, open-minded and seriously playful. (Please note
that while this is not a workshop in the conventional sense,
the instructor will be available during office hours to discuss
personal creative projects at the student’s request.) Readings
will include works by Amy Hempel, Ryszard Kapuscinski,
Vikram Seth, Vladimir Nabokov, Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
Nicholson Baker, Robert Frost, David Foster Wallace, Marjane
Satrapi, David Shields and others; also films by Su Friedrich,
Maya Deren and Kenneth Anger.
50 ELEC-GG 2575
4 UN R 6:20-8:20
Michael Dinwiddie
Open to advanced undergraduates with permission of the instructor
(michael.dinwiddie@nyu.edu).
The Shape of the Story:
ELEC-GG 2545
Dramatizing History I
How does the dramatist bring alive an historical epoch to
enliven a work for stage, film or television? What elements
are essential to create a compelling narrative? Should the
characters be actual people or fictionalized composites?
And what ethical issues are raised in such decision making?
In this arts workshop students will embark on a journey to
bring alive and shape stories that hold personal significance.
Whether the tales are connected to family, culture, gender
or ‘race’ memory, there are certain steps that may enhance
the creation and development of dramatic work based on
historical information. The goal, based on the student’ work,
is the fully develop the outline of the story. Readings may
include such texts as Aristotle’s Poetics, Lajos Egri's The Art of
Dramatic Writing, Robert McKee's Story Jeffrey Sweet’s The
Dramatist’s Toolkit, and plays by David Henry Hwang, Lynn
Nottage, Matthew Lopez and monologuist Michael Daisey,
among others.
fall
graduate electives
American Society and Culture in Transition
Democratic Persuasion
ELEC-GG 2720
ELEC-GG 2745
4 UN M 6:20-8:20
Laurin Raiken
4 UN M 6:20-8:20
Stephen Duncombe
Open to advanced undergraduates with permission of the instructor
(lr2@nyu.edu).
Open to advanced undergraduates with permission of the instructor
(stephen.duncombe@nyu.edu).
What changes in Post WWII American society led to the current economic crisis and political stalemate? For almost seven
decades following World War II the United States and the
industrialized Western World experienced unprecedented
economic growth and geopolitical dominance. The Cold
War,a period of superpower nuclear threat, tuned out unexpectedly to be a period of relative global security. The primary
leader and beneficiary of the Cold War was the United States.
More recently new and unforeseen eruptions of violence and
major geopolitical clashes have caused threats to political
stability. Mounting crises in American and European economies have brought about economic downturn, disruption and
austerity, also threatening world economies. Conservative
forces have reasserted their influence in American society and
reignited the Culture Wars of the last four decades; American
society and the world order are in radical flux. This seminar
introduces the perspectives necessary for an interdisciplinary approach to social change and the our uncertain political,
social and economic lives. Readings will include Dorothy Lee,
Valuing the Self; Hannah Arendt, On Violence; John Kenneth
Galbraith, The Good Society; Tony Judt, Ill Fares the Land; John
Lanchester's Why Everybody Owes Everybody and No One Can
Pay; writings of Barrington Moore Jr., and economists such as
Thorstein Veblen, Amartya Sen, John B. Taylor, Joseph Stiglitz
and Paul Krugman.
This course begins with the controversial premise that
persuasion and propaganda are a necessary part of modern
politics. With this approach we reject the simple project of
critique and condemnation of propaganda and set for ourselves the far more difficult task of rethinking how one might
create methods of mass persuasion that build democracy
instead of undermining it and facilitate political discussion
instead of closing it down. We begin by exploring the history
of rhetoric and persuasion, and defining what we mean by
propaganda. Next, we will study classic examples of propaganda produced by advertising agencies and totalitarian
states. Then, as an extended case study, we will explore how
photographs, speeches, architecture, murals, guidebooks and
even material projects of the New Deal in the United States
might suggest an alternative model of propaganda. Finally, we
will use what we have learned to sketch out a set of principles
for democratic mass persuasion. Authors, artists, and sites
we will look at include Plato, Aristotle, Susan Sontag, Stuart
Ewen, Walter Lippmann, Lizabeth Cohen, Michael Denning,
Michael Schudson, Lawrence Levine, Alan Trachtenberg, Leni
Riefenstahl, Joseph Goebbels, Edward Bernays, Lewis Hine,
Dorothea Lange, Pare Lorentz, Woody Guthrie, Franklin
Delano Roosevelt, the Timberline Lodge, Bonneville Dam,
and Coit Tower.
2012
51
individualized projects
Private Lesson
Independent Study
INDIV-UG 1701
INDIV-UG 1901
1–4 UN 2–4 UN Pass/Fail Only. Deadline for submitting proposal is Sept 10. To
register, please contact Faith Stangler Lucine (fs1@nyu.edu).
Deadline for submitting proposal is May 1. To register, please
contact studentservices.gallatin@nyu.edu.
Private lessons provide students with the opportunity to
earn academic credit for their studies at performing or visual
arts studios in the New York area. These studies are meant
to supplement work begun in regularly scheduled classes at
NYU or to provide students with the opportunity to study
areas for which comparable courses at the University are
unavailable to Gallatin students. Private lessons may be taken
in voice, music, dance, acting, and the visual arts, with teachers or studios of their choice—as long as they have met with
the approval of the Gallatin faculty. Credit for private lessons
is determined by the number of instruction hours per semester. Students taking private lessons are required to submit
a journal and final assessment paper to the faculty adviser.
Unlike private lessons offered elsewhere in the University,
Gallatin’s private lessons are arranged and paid for by the
student. The student is responsible for full payment to the
studio or instructor for the cost of the private lessons, as well
as to NYU, for the tuition expenses incurred by the number
of private lessons course credits.
In an independent study, students work one-on-one with
a faculty member on a particular topic or creative project.
Often the idea for an independent study arises in a course;
for example, in a seminar on early 20th-century American
history, a student may develop an interest in the Harlem
Renaissance and ask the professor to supervise an independent study focused exclusively on this topic during the next
semester. Students may also develop creative projects in areas
such as music composition, filmmaking, or fiction writing.
Independent studies are graded courses, the details of which
are formulated by the student and his or her instructor; these
specifics are described in the Independent Study proposal and
submitted to the Dean’s Office for approval. The student and
instructor meet regularly throughout the semester to discuss
the readings, the research, and the student’s work. Credit is
determined by the amount of work entailed in the study and
should be comparable to that of a Gallatin classroom course.
Generally, independent studies, like other courses, are 2 to
4 credits. Meeting hours correspond to course credits; a
4-credit independent study requires at least seven contact
hours per term between the teacher and the student.
Internship
INDIV-UG 1801
2–8 UN Pass/Fail Only. Deadline for submitting proposal is Sept 10. To
register, please contact Faith Stangler Lucine (fs1@nyu.edu).
Students are required to attend two workshops (dates to be
announced).
Internships offer Gallatin students an opportunity to learn
experientially at one of New York City’s many social institutions in the arts, media, government, business, nonprofit
or community action sectors. Students gain first-hand work
experience and develop skills and knowledge that will help
them to explore the relationship between practical experience and academic theory, as well to pursue career options.
Gallatin provides an extensive list of available internships; students may pursue their own as well. Internships are typically
unpaid positions, although students in paid positions are permitted to receive credit. Students work anywhere from 8 to
24 hours each week; for each credit, students are expected
to devote three to four hours per week during the fall and
spring semesters, and at least seven to nine hours per week
during the six-week summer sessions.
52 Senior Project
INDIV-UG 1905
4 UN Deadline for submitting proposal is May 1. To register, please
contact studentservices.gallatin@nyu.edu.
The senior project is a 4-credit independent research or
artistic project that a student pursues under the guidance
of a faculty mentor generally in the final semester before
graduation. In some cases, a student may choose to do a
senior project in his/her penultimate semester and draw that
project into the senior colloquium discussion. Senior projects
may include, but are not limited to, a paper based on original
research, a written assessment of a community-learning initiative, an artistic project such as a film or novel, etc. Successful
completion of the senior project will be noted in two ways:
the student will receive a letter grade for the course titled,
“Senior Project,” and upon graduation a notation will appear
on the transcript listing the title of the senior project. Senior
projects deemed exceptional by the Gallatin Senior Project
Committee will be awarded honors.
fall
individualized projects
Tutorial
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2–4 UN Deadline for submitting proposal is May 1. To register, please
contact studentservices.gallatin@nyu.edu.
Tutorials are small groups of two to five students working
closely with a faculty member on a common topic, project, or
skill. Tutorials are usually student-generated projects and like
independent studies, ideas for tutorials typically follow from
questions raised in a particular course. Students may collaborate on creative projects as well, and some titles of recent
tutorials include “Creating a Magazine,” “Dante’s Literary
and Historical Background,” and “Environmental Design.”
Tutorials are graded courses, and students work together
with the instructor to formulate the structure of the tutorial,
the details of which are described in the tutorial proposal and
submitted to the Gallatin School for approval. The tutorial
group meets regularly throughout the semester, and students
follow a common syllabus: all participants complete the same
readings, write papers on similar topics, etc. Students in the
same tutorial must register for the same number of credits.
Credit is determined by the amount of work (readings and
other types of assignments) and should be comparable to
that of a Gallatin classroom course. Tutorials range from 2
to 4 credits. Meeting hours correspond to course credits: a
4-credit tutorial requires at least fourteen contact hours per
term between the teacher and students.
travel course for students studying abroad
The Art of Travel
TRAVL-UG 1200
2 UN Steve Hutkins
Enrollment is restricted to students studying abroad at an NYU site
during Fall 2012.
This online course provides an opportunity for students
studying abroad to reflect, analytically and creatively, on their
travel experiences. We examine the art created by travelers—travel literature, photography, paintings—and consider
how traveling can itself be viewed as an art, with its own
conventions, styles, traditions, and opportunities for innovation. All of the course activities are conducted on the class
2012
Web site: students blog about their responses to the readings
and their own travels, post photos, and comment on each
other’s posts. Enrollment is limited to students studying at
one of NYU’s study abroad sites. Reading assignments are
individualized for the city and country of each study-abroad
site, but some readings are for the whole class: these may
include selections from de Botton’s The Art of Travel, Urry’s
The Tourist Gaze, MacCannell’s The Tourist, and Leed’s The
Mind of the Traveler. For more information, see the course
website: travel-studies.com.
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fall
2012 faculty
Cynthia Allen
Amalia Cordova
Gregory Erickson
digital new media; Net art; digital archival art
preservation on the Internet; Web comics; computer gaming
indigenous media and politics; Latin American
cinema; documentary studies; museum and curatorial studies; performance and post-colonial
theory; Afro-Brazilian dance and culture
20th-century American and European literature;
20th-century music; postmodernism; music and
literature; Bible as literature; theology and atheism; cultural studies; television studies
applied theatre; community-based performance;
community cultural development; arts-in-education; youth development; prison arts projects;
community-based strategies for prisoner reentry; community healing through performance
Nina Cornyetz
Luke Fleming
critical, literary and filmic theory; intellectual
history; gender and sexuality; cultural studies;
psychoanalytic and materialist-feminist methodologies; specialization in Japan
Peder Anker
Marie Cruz Soto
language and culture; Amazonian ethnography;
language shift and language politics in indigenous communities; gender and language; taboo
and avoidance speech; honorifics and politeness; comparative ethnolinguistics; performativity and the philosophy of language
history of science, environmental affairs, ecology, and sustainable design
literary nonfiction; memoir; urban journalism;
gender research; prison writing
cultural history of the peoples of the Caribbean,
Latin America and the United States with an
emphasis on identity negotiations, postcolonial
and feminist theory, memory and historical narrations, nationalism, empire studies, community
formations and transnational networks
Victoria Blythe
Terence Culver
English literature; law and literature; critical
theory; genre studies; the journal
public art; art history; community and international development; the role of technology and
media in education and art
Piper Anderson
Cris Beam
Christopher Bram
fiction; nonfiction; writing about movies
Kimberly DaCosta
James Bourke
concepts of race in different societies, consumption in comparative perspective, interracial intimacy, sociology of the family
democratic theory; history of political thought
(pre-modern and modern); value pluralism and
moral disagreement; ethics; global justice and
human rights
Martha Bowers
social dialogue through the arts; community
arts practices and youth development; cross-cultural arts projects; dance; social choreography;
arts and urban renewal
Bill Caspary
modern social and political thought; democratic
theory; political psychology; philosophy of science; peace studies
Dan Dawson
African and African American art, history and
culture; spirituality and art; oral traditions; photography and social change
Jeff Day
photography; documentary; mixed media; visual
theory and practice; color theory; traditional and
contemporary street celebrations; exploration
of cultural overlaps; sailing, sustainability and
documentation of coastal waters
June Foley
19th- and 20th-century literature; the novel; fiction writing; memoir writing; writing for young
readers
Valerie Forman
literature and culture of early modern England;
early modern European drama, especially
English and Spanish; early modern European
women writers; early modern Caribbean; early
modern England in a global context; economic
history; political theatre; political theory; and
Marxist theory
Emily Fragos
poetry; fiction writing; rhetoric
Rosalind Fredericks
political economy of African development; African cities; youth and gender studies; cultural,
political, and urban geography; political ecology;
Senegal
Lise Friedman
performing and visual arts; translating performance experience into words and images; photography; graphic design; writing
Chinnie Ding
Sharon Friedman
music performance, business, and technology
modernisms; the 1930s; Asia; labor; poetry and
poetics; political feeling; world cinema; pastoral;
dance; opera
modern drama; literary interpretation; feminist
criticism; critical writing; writing across the
disciplines
Myla Churchill
Michael Dinwiddie
Sharon Fulton
African American culture; theatre history and
criticism; filmmaking; dramatic writing; ragtime
music
medieval literature and culture; 14th-century
British literature; oral tradition; storytelling;
animal studies; essay writing; fiction writing
19th- and 20th-century literature and culture;
critical theory; gender studies; travel literature;
cultural studies; gender and technology; literature and the body
Imani Douglas
Jean Gallagher
theatre; aesthetic education; women/African
American women in drama; television and film
writing
Gene Cittadino
Gail Drakes
poetry and poetics; modernist literature and
culture; feminist theory and gender studies;
visual culture; 19th- and 20th-century American
literature
John Castellano
dramatic writing; musical theatre; visual media;
film and video production
Laura Ciolkowski
history of science and medicine; environmental
history; science, technology, and society; history
of ecology and evolutionary biology
American studies; 20th-century U.S. history, African diaspora studies; historical memory; legal
studies; “heritage” and consumer culture
Lori Cole
Stephen Duncombe
transatlantic avant-garde; theories of translation;
20th century literature and visual culture; modernism of Europe and the Americas
54 media and cultural studies; history of mass
media; activist media and alternative culture;
arts and politics
Tara Gellene
nineteenth- and twentieth-century- British literature; the novel; theories of fiction; ethics and
literature; utopian literature; fin de siècle occultism; genre fiction
D.B. Gilles
history of comedy on television; great screen
comedies; art of parody; the humorous essay
fall
fall
2012 faculty
Lisa Goldfarb
A. B. Huber
Antonio Lauria-Perricelli
19th- and 20th-century European and American
poetry and fiction; music and literature; questions of belief in literature; expository writing
twentieth-century American literature; the novel;
the literature and culture of modernity; photography; critical theory; psychoanalysis; gender
and queer theory
power, class, culture, state; empire; everyday life;
Caribbean/Latin America
Donna Goodman
art; architecture; philosophy; film; visionary
theories; technology; urban and environmental
studies
Judith Greenberg
Robert Huddleston
19th- and 20th- century literature; history and
theory of poetry; philosophy and literature;
translation studies; autobiographical writing
Jennifer Lemberg
late 19th- and 20th-century American literature;
gender; trauma; Holocaust studies; American
Indian literature; ethnic literature
Patricia Lennox
Shakespeare studies and performance; Elizabethan/Jacobean literature and culture; early modern women; theatre and film history; fashion;
mythology, ancient and modern
20th-century French and British literature; trauma studies, psychoanalysis; women’s studies;
Holocaust studies
Steve Hutkins
Hannah Gurman
cultural history of physics in 19th-century Germany; the relationships between music and
physics, performers and musical automata; the
history of creativity, humans and machines;
intellectual property and human and plant genetics; genetic privacy
Bradley Lewis
Mitchell Joachim
18th- and 19th-century Romantic poetry; critical
and literary theory; social and political theory
history and culture of US foreign relations; the
cold war; history and theory of international
conflict; twentieth-century American literature
and film; political rhetoric
Aaron Hamburger
19th-, 20th-, and 21st-century literature; creative
writing; gender and sexuality; cultural identity;
the relationship of place to the self; travel
Rahul Hamid
Iranian cinema; modernism in cinema; early
film; narrative theory; politics and aesthetics;
adaptation; film criticism
Ethan Harkness
Early Chinese cultural history and technical
traditions (e.g. agriculture, medicine, calendrical science, divination, and structured play and
games); history of science; pre-Buddhist history
of religion; Chinese apocrypha; Chinese paleography and excavated manuscripts
Louise Harpman
architectural and urban design; sustainability;
infrastructure systems; and literature of alternative futures
Scott Hightower
writing, poetry, non-fiction, translation, comparative literary studies, prosody and poetics
Maria Hodermarska
creative arts therapies; community-based mental health services; arts-in-education; group
dynamics; improvisation and autobiographical
performance
Justin Holt
literature; place; travel; utopia; writing
Myles Jackson
architecture; urban design; ecological design
and planning; media technology; transportation;
environmental studies; urban studies; computation; fine and applied arts; contemporary art
history and theory
Barbara Jones
fiction writing, memoir writing, narrative nonfiction writing, and the personal essay; the power
of strong writing skills in daily life, commerce
and politics; the business of book publishing,
book marketing and book reviews in the 21stcentury
Lauren Kaminsky
modern world history; Western and Eastern
European studies; gender and sexuality; state
theory and socialism; film
Nina Katchadourian
contemporary art (sculpture, sound, video, photography, drawing, and public art); songwriting
and performance; Balinese music; hybrid visual
art and music forms; interdisciplinary practice;
collaboration; language and translation; natural
history and animal studies
Bert Katz
studio art; photography; contemporary art
thought; histories of visual art and artist’s training
ethics; social and political philosophy; political
economy; German Idealism; history of metaphysics and epistemology; philosophy of science; theories and history of the welfare state;
philosophy of law
Dave King
Kristin Horton
essay writing; memoir; creative non-fiction; religious writing; belief and popular culture; faith
and politics; ethics; Civil War; reform movements; slavery and slave narratives
directing; new play development; Shakespeare
in performance; W. B. Yeats; Caryl Churchill;
religion and theater; process drama; puppetry;
theater for social change; cross-cultural dialogue
2012
fiction and poetry; writing, rhetoric and translation; art and art history; film and film history;
folklore; politics
Scott Korb
cultural studies of bioscience, medicine, and
psychiatry; disability studies, science studies;
cultural and representational theory; medical
humanities; psychoanalysis
Andrew Libby
Moya Luckett
film history, theory and criticism; television studies; new media; gender, media historiography;
theories of modernity, fashion, celebrity and
consumer culture
Ritty Lukose
gender, globalization, colonial, postcolonial and
diasporic modernities; youth, education, development, mass media; feminisms, South Asia
and its diasporas; political, cultural and social
theory
Julie Malnig
performance studies, dance and theatre history,
theory, and criticism; social dance; early 20thcentury American culture and the arts; feminist
performance and criticism; performance art;
critical writing
Patrick McCreery
sexual politics; childhood; family life; urban
studies; American studies
Linn Mehta
19th- and 20th-century comparative literature;
literature of the Americas; historical approaches
to European and postcolonial literatures, especially in Ireland, India, Africa, and Latin America
and the Caribbean; poetry; modernism and
post-modernism; literary theory; cultural development; women and development
Eve Meltzer
contemporary art, theory, and criticism; history
and theory of photography; psychoanalysis;
structuralism; phenomenology; discourses on
materiality and material culture
Neil Meyer
18th- and 19th-century American literature and
culture; religion and literature; queer theory;
affect studies
55
fall
2012 faculty
Keith Miller
Robin Powell
Antonio Rutigliano
modern and contemporary art; Realism; figurative painting; narrative cinema; video art; filmmaking
dance; performance; mind/body integration/
body therapies; health and fitness; psychology;
clinical social work
Bella Mirabella
Laurin Raiken
Greek, Roman and medieval literature; semiotics; romance languages; transformation of
desire; luminality: Dante, Virgil, and Boethius;
French and Italian cinema; medieval and Renaissance art, philosophy, and history
Shakespeare; Dante; English, Italian and Renaissance literature; drama and culture; ancient
drama; women and performance; feminism and
gender studies; critical writing
comparative social and cultural history; sociology of the arts; analysis of American social,
political, and economic institutions; political
economy of art, artists, and cultural institutions;
arts professions and artists’ careers; arts services; arts management and cultural policy; Native
American culture; comparative religion
Ali Mirsepassi
contemporary social theory; sociology of religion; Islam and modernity; Middle Eastern
societies and cultures; postcolonial studies;
knowledge, citizenship, and geography; critical
globalization
Kathryn Vomero Santos
early modern English and Spanish literature;
drama; translation studies; performance studies;
history of the book; material culture
Leslie Satin
social and political philosophy; ethics; applied
ethics particularly pertaining to business; constituitional law and jurisprudence
dance and performance; performing and visual
arts; choreography; gender and performance;
assemblage art; scores and structures for performance; contemporary avant-garde; arts criticism, autobiography, and creative nonfiction
comparative studies in 19th- and 20th-century
literature and culture; women’s writing; gender
theory; psychoanalysis; literature and political
theory
Dianne Ramdeholl
Joanna Scutts
critical theory/critical pedagogy, adult education for democratic social change, participatory
research
Vasuki Nesiah
Bill Rayner
20th-century literature and cultural history; modernism; war literature; cultural memory studies;
urban history; biography, autobiography and
memoir; creative non-fiction
Sara Murphy
international legal studies; human rights and
humanitarianism; politics of memory and transitional justice; law, culture and society; law
and politics of violence; critical social theory;
colonialism and postcolonial modernities; feminisms; globalization; development policy; jurisprudence of identity; South Asia
J0sé Perillán
Peter Rajsingh
music composition, improvisation, and performance; guitar studies; recording technology
Mark Read
documentary film; anti-capitalist struggles; media activism; science fiction film and literature;
history of religions and religious philosophy;
American literature
history of science; physics; writing
Helena Ribeiro
Amanda Petrusich
19th- and 20th-century American poetry; modernisms; modernity; democracy studies
music and culture writing; criticism, creative
nonfiction; travelogue; the personal essay; subcultures
Stacy Pies
poetry; American and European literature, 17th–
20th centuries; narrative; psychoanalysis
René Francisco Poitevin
urbanism; race and ethnicity in the US; grassroots organizing; geographical information
Millery Polyné
19th and 20th century African American and
Caribbean Intellectual History; Haitian history;
U.S. foreign policy in Caribbean; jazz; hip hop
aesthetic; race and sports; film and propaganda
systems (GIS)
A. Lavelle Porter
19th and 20th century African-American literature; 20th century American and British academic fiction; the literature and history of New
York; gender and sexuality
Kathryn Posin
dance and choreography; theater ; dance fusion
forms; digital media; performance technique,
body placement
56 Steven Rinehart
fiction, nonfiction, and memoir writing; Web
development
Lee Robbins
history, mythology, and philosophy of depth psychology; Freud, Jung, and postmodern psychoanalytic thought; Buddhist psychology; literature
and psychoanalysis
Andrew Romig
late antique, medieval, and Renaissance cultural
studies; comparative Latin and vernacular literature; history of emotion, gender and sexuality,
spirituality, visual arts; historical and literary
theory
Barnaby Ruhe
visual art; art criticism; art history; art and
anthropology; art and psychology; shamanism;
history of warfare and revolution
Marcella Runell Hall
social justice education; critical pedagogy; HipHop culture; arts/activism; race/ethnicity in the
US; grassroots organizing; social movements
George Shulman
history of European and American social
thought including relevant literary works; American studies; contemporary political, psychoanalytic, and feminist theory; the Bible in Western
politics and thought
Carl Skelton
art/technology collaborations; socially constructive technologies; making science fiction come
true
Lizzie Skurnick
cultural criticism (fiction, television and film);
essay writing; social media; classic young adult
fiction; publishing trends; intersection between
print and online; blogging; radio commentary;
alternate forms of journalism
Laura Slatkin
Greek and Roman antiquity: cultural poetics
of early Greece (including literature, myth, religion); ancient and modern drama and lyric;
Greek philosophy; ancient Near Eastern literature; cultural and gender studies of antiquity
Judith Sloan
theatre; solo performance; oral history; humor
and social satire; immigration and the changing
face of America; documentary arts: radio and
multimedia, digital art on the web; community
projects; trauma studies; dialogue across race,
ethnicity, class and gender
Suzanne Snider
narrative nonfiction; oral history; communes;
ethnography; audio documentary; collaboration
Chris Spain
creative writing; film
fall
fall
2012 faculty
Matthew Stanley
Christopher Trogan
Susan Weisser
history of science and technology; science and
religion; physics and astronomy; philosophy
of science; history and philosophy of religion,
mind and consciousness; science education;
peace and war
aesthetics; ethics; 20th-century German and
American literature/culture; history of philosophy; philosophy of music; philosophy of law
19th-century British novel; autobiography; women and romantic love in literature; women and
sexuality; feminism
Aaron Tugendhaft
e. Frances White
history of religions; philosophy of religion; political philosophy; ancient near eastern studies;
ancient Greek literature
history of Africa and its diaspora; history of
gender and sexuality; critical race theory
Lara Vapnyar
African American performance, literature, history, and politics; race, gender, sexuality; identity
formation and representation; the politics of
performance
Ben Steinfeld
acting, directing, theatre history, music, Shakespeare, 20th-century American drama, and
musical theatre
Paul Thaler
media technology and culture; First Amendment
and media law; propaganda; history of mass
media; media ethics
Joseph Thometz
comparative philosophy of religions; Christianity
with emphasis on its mystical traditions; South
and East Asian religious and philosophical traditions, with emphasis on Mahayana Buddhism;
ancient, modern, and contemporary epistemology; theories and methods in cross-cultural and
comparative religious studies
fiction writing; memoir writing; contemporary
immigrant novel; Russian literature
Vasu Varadhan
media, globalization, and cultural identity; international communications; women in developing
countries; expository writing
Matthew Vernon
vernacular literatures; migration narratives;
trans-historical themes; language and politics;
medieval literature; nineteenth century AfricanAmerican literature; graphic novels; interraciality; genealogy; narrative essays
Selma Thompson
Eugene Vydrin
screenwriting; playwriting; adaptation; script
analysis and development; business issues for
writers; cinema studies; New York City culture
20th-century poetry and poetics; modernism
and the avant-garde; 20th-century art history,
criticism, and theory; art historiography; film
history and theory; legacies of Romanticism
Yevgeniya Traps
Laurie Woodard
Greg Wyatt
sculpture studio studies; craftsmanship and its
relationship to mastery, creativity and three-dimensional design theory; historical artistic influences upon public art monuments; art history
and philosophy
Carol Zoref
fiction and essay writing; 19th-, 20th-, and 21stcentury literature; photography and other visual
narratives
19th- and 20th-century literature; literary and
cultural theory; aesthetic theories; literature and
psychology
2012
57
foundation requirement
As students plan their schedule, they should keep in mind the foundation requirement, which is comprised of two areas: the liberal
arts foundation and the historical and cultural foundation. The liberal arts foundation must be distributed as follows: 8 units in the
humanities; 8 units in the social sciences; and 4 units in either mathematics or science. The historical and cultural foundation must be
distributed as follows: 4 units in the pre-modern period, 4 units in the early modern period, and 4 units in global cultures.
To fulfill this requirement, students may take courses in several schools, departments, and programs of the University, as well
as in Gallatin. Below is a list of Gallatin interdisciplinary seminars being offered this fall that may be counted toward the foundation
requirement. On the next page is a list of NYU departments and courses that satisfy an area of the liberal arts foundation. For more
informatin about this requirement and to see the list of CAS courses and departments that satisfy the historical and cultural foundation,
please visit Gallatin's Web site.
GALLATIN COURSEs that fulfill the liberal arts foundation
Humanities
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1603
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Literary Forms
Discourses of Love
Narratives of African
Tragic Visions
Narrative Investigations I
Doing Things with Words
Literary & Cultural Theory
Jung
Thinking About Seeing
Politics and the Gods
Boundary Crossings
The Iliad and Its Legacies
Psychoanalysis & Visual
Consuming the Caribbean
American Poetics
Guilty Subjects
Feminism, Empire
The Travel Habit
Modern Poetry
Dante's World
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1617 Philosophy of Religion
1618 Media and Fashion
1651 From Memory to Myth
1699 Feeling, in Theory
1700 Becoming Global?
1704 The Weary Blues
1705 Antigone(s)
1706 The Origins of Language
1709 Global Surrealism
1711 Politics, Writing & Nobel
1713 From Blackface
1714 What is Critique?
Social Science
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1193
1300
1381
1394
1527
1545
Free Speech & Democracy
Culture / Communication
Militaries & Militarization
Creative Democracy
Latinos & Politics of Race
Finance Social Theorists
On Freud's Couch
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1710
1712
Sociology of Religion
Imagining India
Consumerism
Who Owns Culture?
American Narratives I
Law and Legal Thought
Environment & Development
Indigenous Culture
The Social Contract
Sex and the State
Empire, Race and Politics
Science
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1207
1311
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1652
The Darwinian Revolution
Origins of the Atomic Age
Mad Science/Mad Pride
Biology and Society
History of Environmental
Science and Culture
GALLATIN COURSEs that fulfill the historical & cultural foundation
premodern
early modern
IDSEM-UG
IDSEM-UG
IDSEM-UG
IDSEM-UG
IDSEM-UG
IDSEM-UG
IDSEM-UG
IDSEM-UG
IDSEM-UG
IDSEM-UG
IDSEM-UG
IDSEM-UG
IDSEM-UG
IDSEM-UG
IDSEM-UG
58 1122
1197
1202
1417
1454
1609
1651
1704
1705
1708
Discourses of Love
Narratives of African
Tragic Visions
Politics and the Gods
The Iliad and Its Legacies
Dante's World
From Memory to Myth
The Weary Blues
Antigone(s)
Visions of the Good Life
1122
1202
1215
1698
1700
Discourses of Love
Tragic Visions
Narrative Investigations I
The Social Contract
Becoming Global?
GLobal cultures
IDSEM-UG 1197 Narratives of African
IDSEM-UG 1216 Doing Things with Words
IDSEM-UG 1482 Consuming the Caribbean
IDSEM-UG
IDSEM-UG
IDSEM-UG
IDSEM-UG
IDSEM-UG
IDSEM-UG
IDSEM-UG
IDSEM-UG
IDSEM-UG
1503
1523
1552
1555
1586
1648
1684
1709
1711
American Poetics
Feminism, Empire
Sociology of Religion
Imagining India
Consumerism
Environment & Development
Indigenous Culture
Global Surrealism
Politics, Writing & Nobel
fall
foundation requirement
NYU depts & courses that fulfill the liberal arts foundation
Humanities
CAS Departments and Programs
Africana Studies, SCA-UA 101-199
American Studies, SCA-UA 201-299
Art History, ARTH-UA
Asian/Pacific/American Studies, SCA-UA 301-399
Classics, CLASS-UA
Comparative Literature, COLIT-UA
Dramatic Literature, DRLIT-UA
East Asian Studies, EAST-UA
English, ENGL-UA
European & Mediterranean Studies, EURO-UA
French, FREN-UA
German, GERM-UA
Hebrew Language and Literature, HBRJD-UA
Hellenic Studies, HEL-UA
History, HIST-UA
Irish Studies, IRISH-UA
Italian, ITAL-UA
Medieval & Renaissance Studies, MEDI-UA
Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies, MEIS-UA
Music, MUSIC-UA
Philosophy, PHIL-UA
Religious Studies, RELST-UA (all courses with the exception of
Theories and Methods in the Study of Religion, RELST-UA 1,
which fulfills the social science requirement)
Russian and Slavic Studies, RUSSN-UA
Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature, SPAN-UA
Morse Academic Plan, MAP-UA 400–599, 700-799
Politics, POL-UA (all courses with the exception of Quantitative
Methods in Political Science, POL-UA 800, which fulfills the
math/science requirement)
Psychology, PSYCH-UA (all courses with the exception of Statistical
Reasoning for the Behavioral Sciences, PSYCH-UA 9, and
Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences, PSYCH-UA 10, both of
which fulfill the math/science requirement)
Sociology, SOC-UA
Morse Academic Plan, MAP-UA 600–699
CAS Course (in addition to the
departments listed above)
Theories and Methods in the Study of Religion, RELST-UA 1
Steinhardt Courses
Art and City: A Sociological Perspective, LIBAR-UE 201
Power, Resistance Identity: American Social Movements, LIBAR-UE 202
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the New Immigration, LIBAR-UE 531
Culture Wars in America, LIBAR-UE 551
Education and the American Dream, LIBAR-UE 552
History of the Professions in the United States, LIBAR-UE 553
Introduction to Education, LIBAR-UE 554
Introduction to Media Studies , LIBAR-UE 591, MCC-UE 1
History of Communication , LIBAR-UE 592, MCC-UE 5
Introduction to Human Communications & Culture, LIBAR-UE 593
Survery of Developmental Psychology, LIBAR-UE 631
Introduction to Personality Theories, LIBAR-UE 632
Developmental Psychology Across the Lifespan, LIBAR-UE 633
MATH OR SCIENCE
CAS Departments and Programs
Social Science
CAS Departments and Programs
Animal Studies, ANST-UA
Anthropology, ANTH-UA (all courses with the exception of Human
Evolution, ANTH-UA 2, which fulfills the math/science
requirement)
Child/Adolescent Mental Health, CAMHS-UA
Economics, ECON-UA (all courses with the exception of Statistics,
ECON 18, which fulfills the math/science requirement)
Gender and Sexuality Studies, SCA 401-499
International Relations, INTRL-UA
Journalism, JOUR-UA
Law and Society, LWSOC-UA
Linguistics, LING-UA
Metropolitan Studies, SCA-UA 601-699
Biology, BIOL-UA
Chemistry, CHEM-UA
Computer Science, CSCI-UA
Environmental Studies, ENVST-UA
Mathematics, MATH-UA
Neural Science, NEURL-UA
Physics, PHYS-UA
Morse Academic Plan, MAP-UA 100–399
CAS Courses (in addition to the
departments listed above)
Human Evolution, ANTH-UA 2
Statistics, ECON 18
Quantitative Methods in Political Science, POL-UA 800
Statistical Reasoning for the Behavioral Sciences, PSYCH-UA 9
Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences, PSYCH-UA 10
NYU depts & courses that fulfill the historical & cultural foundation
Please visit Gallatin's Web site: http://www.gallatin.nyu.edu/academics/undergraduate/requirements/historical-cultural-foundation
2012
59
key contacts
Admissions, Undergraduate, Jeffrey S. Gould Welcome Center, 50 West 4th Street (at the southeast corner of
Washington Square Park), (212) 998-4500, http://admissions.nyu.edu/
GALLATIN SCHOOL
1 Washington Place, New York, NY, 10003, (212) 998-7370, www.nyu.edu/gallatin/
Academic Advising, 1 Washington Place, 5th Floor, (212) 998-7320, advising.gallatin@nyu.edu
The Office of Academic Advising coordinates all aspects of advising at Gallatin. Students at Gallatin meet regularly with their primary
faculty advisers, who are assigned based on their areas of study. In addition, Gallatin students also work closely with class advisers,
who work with cohorts of students by holding office hours, liaising with other offices around the university, and hosting workshops
on academic policies and opportunities. Students are encouraged to visit the Office of Academic Advising and speak with an adviser
about any academic questions or concerns.
Deans' Office, 1 Washington Place, 8th Floor, (212) 998-7330
The Office of the Dean is charged with the overall leadership of the School, from admissions to academic offerings to alumni relations. Students are encouraged to meet with the deans by appointment.
Faculty Services, 1 Washington Place, 4th Floor, facultyservices.gallatin@nyu.edu
Gallatin’s Office of Faculty Services provides administrative support to faculty, schedules courses and publishes the course catalogue.
Students may contact Faculty Services to request syllabi and faculty contact information, or with questions about course offerings.
Global Programs, (212) 998-7371 gallatin.global@nyu.edu
The Office of Global Programs coordinates Gallatin’s international endeavors. These include helping students plan semesters abroad
at one of NYU’s global campuses; administering and helping students apply to Gallatin’s Summer and Winter intersession travel
courses; planning and coordinating travel for Gallatin’s scholars groups; and serving as a resource for all Gallatin students abroad,
regardless of circumstance.
Student Affairs, 1 Washington Place, 5th Floor, (212) 998-7380 gallatin.studentaffairs@nyu.edu
The Office of Student Affairs is dedicated to supporting students who are experiencing academic or personal difficulties. The office
works to connect students with vital support services throughout Gallatin, NYU and beyond. Students are encouraged to contact
Student Affairs when considering a leave of absence.
Student Life, 1 Washington Place, 5th Floor, (212) 992-9823 gallatin.studentlife@nyu.edu
The Office of Student Affairs enhances student life and community. This entails fostering student-to-student and student-to-faculty
interaction through club activities and school-wide events; working with student leaders in student government organizations and
honor societies. In addition, the office coordinates major events at Gallatin, including: Orientation, Convocation, Black History
Month, the Albert Gallatin Lectures, the Gallatin Arts Festival and Graduation.
Student Services, 1 Washington Place, 8th Floor, (212) 998-7378, studentservices.gallatin@nyu.edu
Gallatin’s Office of Student Services provides administrative support to students by liaising with the University’s central offices of the
Registrar, Bursar, and Financial Aid. Students can contact Student Services for help with the following: registration assistance (class
permission numbers, special permission to register, registration blocks, waitlisting); financial inquiries (e-billing, tuition payment,
tuition insurance, University refund policy, financial aid); and inquiries about grades, minors, the IAPC, NetID, NYUHome, Albert,
and NYU email.
60 fall
6:20-9:00
6:20-7:35 or
4:55-6:10
3:30 -4:45
2:00-3:15
12:30-1:45
11:00-12:15
9:30 -10:45
8:00 -9:15
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Schedule Planner
Thursday
Friday
NYU Gallatin
1 Washington Place
New York, NY 10003
212.998.7370