Fall 2009
Lyrics on Lockdown
K45.1444 4 CR W 6:20-9:00 Ella Turenne
This course will focus on the uses of the visual and performing arts and spoken word as a tool for positive social change. Through hands-on collaboration with the Blackout Arts Collective and Island Academy, students will create artistic and dialogical spaces for critically thinking about the crisis of incarceration in this country. Speakers may include representatives of the Prison Moratorium Project and Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. Readings include writings by Augusto Boal, Christian Parenti, Manning Marable, Bakari Kitwana, 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 will be an integral part of the curriculum.
Shifting Focus: Video Production and Community Activism
K45.1445 4 CR T 6:20-9:00 Elizabeth Press
From the taping of the police beating of Rodney King to the burgeoning growth of Independent Media Centers around the world, video has become an essential tool of social struggle. This course will be a hands-on class in video production in the service of progressive social change. Class time will be used to: examine the biases of corporate-controlled media; learn the theory and history of video activism; develop basic camera and editing skills; and reflect on lessons learned in the field. Outside of class students will break into groups and collaborate with local community organizations in the conception and production of a short video piece, and subsequently strategize with those organizations about how to most effectively use video in their particular struggles. Readings will include selections from Noam Chomsky, Robert McChesney and Thomas Harding.
Gentrification and Its Discontents
K45.1453 4 CR F 12:30-3:15 René Francisco Poitevin
This course focuses on the process of community restructuring known as “gentrification” – the displacement of poor residents and local stores by an influx of affluent and middle class people and businesses. Beginning with a case study of the Lower East Side (site of one of the most intense community battles against gentrification of the last thirty years), we’ll look at the theoretical and political debates around urban renewal, community development and neighborhood displacement. We’ll conclude, in collaboration with low income housing advocacy groups, with a closer look at some of the ongoing struggles and campaigns going on in New York City around affordable housing. Readings include Neil Smith’s The New Urban Frontier, Jane Abu-Lughod’s From Urban Village to East Village, and Christopher Merle’s Selling the Lower East Side.
Literacy in Action
K45.1460 4 CR W 6:20-9:00 Maura Donnelly
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 basic education. Students will work as volunteer teachers of reading and writing oral English or mentors at such institutions as the University Settlement, International Rescue Committee, 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 Auerbach's Making Meaning, Making Change; Horton and Freire's We Make the Road by Walking; and the journals Focus on Basics and The Change Agent.
Spring 2009
Cultural Mapping For Social Change
K45.1422 4 CR R 6:20-9:00 Jaime Martinez
Where do forces of gentrification intersect with grassroots efforts to preserve the cultural identity of a marginalized community? This course explores how to use Geographic Information Systems (GIS), a powerful application in mapping technology, as a tool for cultural documentation, community engagement, and public policy analysis. We will analyze how changing demographics and market forces are redefining the cultural landscape and boundaries of ethnic communities in New York. We will explore the effectiveness of GIS as a mapping tool to help reclaim cultural identity, uncover historical patterns of segregation and displacement, and empower community members to become informed citizens in the decision-making process. Specific skills we’ll learn include how to geocode addresses, do a spatial analysis, and use census data to map the racial and income composition of New York neighborhoods.
Shifting Focus: Video Production and Community Activism
K45.1445 4 CR R 6:20-9:00 Mark Read
From the taping of the police beating of Rodney King to the burgeoning growth of Independent Media Centers around the world, video has become an essential tool of social struggle. This course will be a hands-on class in video production in the service of progressive social change. Class time will be used to: examine the biases of corporate-controlled media; learn the theory and history of video activism; develop basic camera and editing skills; and reflect on lessons learned in the field. Outside of class students will break into groups and collaborate with local community organizations in the conception and production of a short video piece, and subsequently strategize with those organizations about how to most effectively use video in their particular struggles. Readings will include selections from Noam Chomsky, Robert McChesney and Thomas Harding.
Literacy in Action
K45.1460 4 CR M 6:20-9:00 Maura Donnelly
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 basic education. Students will work as volunteer teachers of reading and writing English or mentors at such institutions as the University Settlement, Union Settlement, International Rescue Committee, 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); and the journals, Focus on Basics and The Change Agent.
Policy, Community and Self
K45.1466 4 CR W 6:20-9:00 Eric Brettschneider
Intended to introduce policy, this course will include an internship at a policy and /or advocacy organization. Community building, service integration and child welfare will be featured in readings, discussion, and internships. Through examples such as ethnic matching placements in foster care, zero tolerance approaches to drug abuse, or public financing of political campaigns, students will come to understand how government, schools, gangs, religious institutions and families can, with varying degrees of explicitness and formality, all make policy. Students will at the course conclusion be able to: identify policies within their lives; argue all sides of a policy question; appreciate the importance of evidence; and distinguish implementation from formulation. Readings will include Bowling Alone, by Robert Putnam, and The Lost Children of Wilder, by Nina Bernstein. Students will be helped to connect meetings they attend and the policy concepts taught and discussed in class. The goal is to leave no student unaware of the importance of policy in their own and their community’s life. The course will focus on policies that are empowering. Assignments will include an internship journal.
Journalism, Lyricism, Activism and Power
K45.1476 4 CR F 12:30-3:15 Kathy Engel
Formerly titled “Political Journalism and Activism.” Course is not repeatable.
How is public information communicated? How is opinion developed? What gets filtered, left out, and how? What is censorship and how is it addressed? How do people decide what to believe? Is there such a thing as “objective” reporting? What makes people change their minds? Is any journalism not political, by definition? How do you work to stretch public dialogue, make space for alternative perspectives and information not accessible in traditional or mainstream outlets? How do civic and advocacy organizations work to develop relationships with the media? How do activists become their own reporters and documenters? What is the contribution of artists and writers to public information and opinion? These are some of the questions we will address in this course. We will make site visits to news institutions, work on developing campaigns to publicize critical issues, and meet with journalists. We'll discuss questions of audience, power, corporate control of media, accessibility and assumptions in reporting and in organizational communication and promotion. And we will look at the intersection between language, storytelling, imagination, and news and commentary.
