January Term Study Away

Dr. Paul C. Light is NYU Wagner's Paulette Goddard Professor of Public Service and founding principal investigator of the Global Center for Public Service, Before joining NYU, Dr. Light served as the Douglas Dillon Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, founding director of its Center for Public Service, and vice president and director of the Governmental Studies Program. He has served previously as director of the Public Policy Program at the Pew Charitable Trusts and associate dean and professor of public affairs at the University of Minnesota's Hubert Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. He is the author of 25 books, including works on social entrepreneurship, the nonprofit sector, federal government reform, public service, and the baby boom.

His books include the award-winning Thickening Government and The Tides of Reform. He received the 2010 Herbert Simon award from the American Political Science Association for A Government Ill Executed: The Decline of the Federal Service and How to Reverse It. The award was for the most important book on public administration in the preceding three-to-five years. He is also a co-author of a best-selling American government textbook, Government by the People. His research interests include: bureaucracy, civil service, Congress, entitlement programs, executive branch, government reform, nonprofit effectiveness, organizational change, and the political appointment process.

This course will explore the transition into office during January 2013. It will focus specifically on the presidential transition, but will also examine changes in Congress as new members arrive and are defeated or retiring members leave. The course will focus on the transition process from beginning to end. Although the process will begin immediately after election day, it will reach a crescendo in early January as the president makes appointments to key posts, sets the agenda, builds his Inaugural Address, and lays claim to a mandate for his first 100 days. The course will also include visits to Capitol Hill, the Executive Office of the President, K Street firms, trade associations, and think tanks. Students will also visit a number of key institutions involved in transitions and American presidential history, including the House and Senate, the National Portrait Gallery, the Museum of Natural History, Newseum, and the National Archives.

Sample Syllabus

Melissa Fisher, PhD is a Visiting Scholar at New York University's Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, is the author of Wall Street Women (Duke University Press). Previous publications include co-editing Frontiers of Capital: Ethnographic Reflections on the New Economy, also by Duke University Press.
She has taught at Columbia University, New York University, and Georgetown University. Prof. Fisher is an invited member of Govermark, a network of international scholars engaged in research on market actors as policy actors, based out of the Stockholm Center for Organizational Research at the University of Stockholm.  In addition, Prof. Fisher has worked as a business anthropologist and consultant for a range of corporate and not-for-profit organizations, including the National Council for Research on Women (NCRW), BBDO Worldwide Advertising, and Batten and Company. She has also been the keynote speaker at both business and academic venues, including the Critical Finance Conferences at the University of Amsterdam. Her current ethnographic work focuses on the creation and implimentation of the Gender Equality Principles Initiative by Calvert Investments, a socially responsible investment firm headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland. Fisher earned her Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from Columbia University and BA from Barnard College.

This course provides an introduction to key themes in urban studies, focusing on a selected set of issues that are particularly relevant to Washington D.C. Each class will begin with an hour long lecture that places the readings and visits in a historical, national, and/or global context. We will use the remainder of our class time for seminar discussions and, on occasion, class trips and speakers.

We will read classic and important contemporary works in urban studies, with a particular focus on urban culture and politics. We will also read historical and ethnographic case studies of classic and emerging issues, such as: diversity and community; urban growth and gentrification; artistic movements and politics; monuments and nationalism; the Presidential Inauguration and rituals.

We will also conduct a series of visits to the places we discuss in the seminar, take tours of city’s neighborhoods, cultural and governmental institutions, and have guest lectures from local experts in history, culture, politics, and the economy.

Sample Syllbus