Community Learning

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.

Organizing and Unions in New York City
K45.1465 4 CR W 6:20-9:00 David Paskin

This course is intended to provide students with little prior background in organizing with an understanding of how unions work. This class is not a “union organizing” course per se. Using the “contingent or nonstandard” sector as our main focus, students will have to go out into the community and select an occupation to analyze in order to look at the specific issues these workers face; how to develop possible strategies for organizing; and possible long term plans of action. Regular weekly reading assignments will be discussed and each student’s written research will be central to the class discussions.

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. 

Political Journalism and Activism
K45.1476 4 CR TR 2:00-3:15 Kathy Engel

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? 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.

Latino Cartographies
K45.1477 4 CR M 9:30-12:15 René Francisco Poitevin

This course looks at the ways in which Latino communities are transforming urban space and politics in NYC. Through films, social science theory, and fieldwork in NYC neighborhoods such as Washington Heights, East Harlem and the South Bronx — and in partnership with grassroots organizations — we will explore and contextualize the many challenges and opportunities facing the Latino population. Specifically, we will look at the ways in which economics, history, race, culture, gentrification, and public policy congeal to create cartographies of community resistance and Latino identity. Because of the fieldwork component of this class, fluency in Spanish is strongly recommended, even though it is not required.  Readings may include among others, Arlene Dávila’s Barrio Dreams, Michael Jones-Correa’s Between Two Nations, Robert Smith’s Mexican New York, Kim Moody’s From Welfare State to Real Estate. Please note: this course entails an average of five hours of fieldwork per week in addition to assigned readings.