Courses - Spring 2013

This course is a lecture series designed to offer students a broad perspective on Israeli society and on the Middle East at large. The lectures - by experts in various disciplines as well as by eminent cultural and political figures, alongside excursions in and ouside Israel - will set for students geographical and social coordinates from which they will be given the opportunity to engage themselves in this vibrant locality, learn its history and explore contemporary aspects of a place which is always lively, controversial, and intriguing.

Sample Syllabus

Note: Students planning to continue to Elementary Arabic II are advised to defer Elementary Arabic I until the Fall in New York, followed by Elementary Arabic II in the spring.  Elementary Arabic II is not offered in New York during the fall semester.

Builds basic skills in modern standard Arabic, the language read and understood by educated Arabs from Baghdad to Casablanca.

Continuation of Elementary Arabic I.

Continuation of Intermediate Arabic I.

Active introduction to modern Hebrew as it is spoken and written in Israel today. Presents the essentials of Hebrew grammar, combining the oral-aural approach with formal grammatical concepts. Reinforces learning by reading of graded texts. Emphasizes the acquisition of idiomatic conversational vocabulary and language patterns.

Continuation of Elementary Hebrew I.

Builds on skills acquired in Elementary Hebrew I and II and develops a deepening command of all linguistic skills. Modern literary and expository texts are read to expand vocabulary and grammatical knowledge, with conversation and composition exercises built around the texts. Introduces selections from Israeli media. Addresses the relationship between classical and modern Hebrew.

Continuation of Intermediate Hebrew I.

Aimed at training students in exact and idiomatic Hebrew usage and at acquiring facility of expression in both conversation and writing. Reading and discussion of selections from Hebrew prose, poetry, and current periodical literature.

Designed to provide a thorough grounding in Hebrew grammar with special emphasis on phonology, morphology, and syntax. Concentrated study of vocalization, accentuation, declensions, conjugations, and classification of verbs

Under development.  Course description may change. 

An introduction to the area of financial accounting. Encompasses accounting concepts from the point of view of the corporate investor and business management. Accounting procedures are discussed to facilitate the comprehension of the recording, summarizing, and reporting of business transactions. The basic principles of asset valuation and revenue and cost recognition are presented. Various asset, liability, and capital accounts are studied in detail with emphasis on an analytical and interpretive approach. The area of financial accounting is further analyzed through a discussion of the concepts and underlying financial statement analysis and the exposition of funds flow.

Under development, course description may change:

Sleep is something akin to the ocean – it surrounds us, and we could not live without it; yet it remains a mystery, whose secrets we are only now beginning to unfold. Scientific research into sleep and dreams began in earnest about 50 years ago. Since that time, the small and burgeoning field of sleep medicine has taught us a great deal about how and why we sleep. This course will provide students with a comprehensive introduction to sleep and dreams throughout the life cycle. Our study will include a focus on normal sleep behavior and physiology, the evolution of sleep, circadian and biological rhythms, dreams, and the diagnosis and treatment of sleep disorders. Through exercises and assignments, students will learn about the importance of sleep for mental and physical well being and how to best establish a healthy sleep routine.

The course will enrich the students’ understanding of Israeli Cinema as a microcosm of the young, vibrant, and continually changing Israeli state and society. We will analyze the cinematic expression of the themes behind the inception and evolution of the small yet multifaceted country, and note the differences between the cinema of the first and second wave of Israeli filmmakers.

Syllabus under revision

Prerequisites: ECON-UA 1, ECON-UA 2, and MATH-UA 121.

Study of aggregate economic analysis with special attention paid to the determination of the level of income, employment, and inflation. Critically examines both the theories and the policies associated with them.

Sample Syllabus

Prerequisite: ECON-UA 9001, Economic Principles or ECON-UA 9005, Introduction to Economic Analysis

This course offers a view of Israel’s economy and of the current economic policy debates following the national ‘tent protest’ demands for economic and social justice. What is economic and social justice, and how can the government promote it? How can the government balance growth and equality? Using Israel’s unique setting we will learn about these and other general macroeconomic questions and explore policy implications for the housing, education, and labor markets. The topics studied will include affordable housing, differential funding of public education, and employment incentives for ultra-Orthodox men and Arab women. Throughout the course we will be discussing the scope and limits of government intervention from normative and positive perspectives.

Students enrolling in this course will be required to purchase property insurance. The plan costs approximately $130 and covers personal student property in addition to the film equipment students will be using in this course. Instructions on purchasing insurance will be provided after enrollment.

Fundamentals of Filmmaking combines storytelling, research, and cutting-edge filmmaking technology. Students will be encouraged to ask engaging questions and delve into investigations of the region's social, cultural and political realities, and in the process, make a series of short documentary videos. Through the viewing of recent documentary films, to meeting with filmmakers, students will be introduced to a variety of documentary methodologies.

Students will work in Production Crews. They will choose their own projects for their documentary short films. Each crew will research, produce, shoot and edit its project.

 Course includes weekly seminar and minimum of 10 hours fieldwork/ week at approved internship field-site.

The seminar is designed to complement your internship fieldwork, exploring many different aspects of your organization and of Israel's Civil Society. Israel is a country where the government and the establishment at large have historically been very central in determining the country's political direction as well as its social fabric and political culture. It is therefore of special interest to study the emergence of new players in Israel, especially the role of the Third Sector, or Civil Society and within it the even newer phenomenon of Social Change Organizations and their effect on Israeli political and social life over the past three decades. Your goal is to finish the semester with an in-depth understanding of your agency, its approach, its policies, its programs, and the context in which it operates. You will also spend time reflecting on the internship experience itself as a way to better understand your academic, personal, and career goals.

Sample Syllabus

Experiential Learning II includes both classroom instruction and community experience (whenever practicable, individual community experience). the principle goal of Experiential Learning II is immersion in the current and historical character of the site.

The objective of the course is threefold. First (weeks 1-3), it exposes students to the relationships between food, class and gender and to the extent to which food is part of our symbolic system and mode of thought. This discussion introduces students to the main issues in food studies and provides them with a theoretical ground for the course.

Second, (weeks 4-7), we will look at the ways in which food has been used to support the Zionist ideology and the formation of the Jewish nation-state. Lectures focus on the ways in which women have been involuntarily recruited into the process of nation building via food practices. Additionally, I address the various immigrant communities in Israel that, although encouraged to change their food habits, have kept their foodways at the level of the home. We will analyze the ways in which immigrants change their domestic foods and the reasons for the changes. Our discussion will question the social, political and economic circumstances that have pushed immigrants to use food as a means of making a living and the changes their dishes have undergone in aim of appealing to a wide array of consumers. Moreover, in order to understand the relationship between ideology, migration and ethnicity in Israel, we will look at the role food and feeding have played in the formation and protection of the ideology of the traditional kibbutz, as opposed to the new kibbutz. Finally, we shall look at various Israeli open-air food markets and their contribution to the preservation of ethnic hierarchies in Israeli society. We will conclude the second part of the course with a field trip to the “Mahane Yehuda food market” in Jerusalem (week 8) and an in-class short midterm followed by a movie on week nine.

The third part of the course (weeks 10-14) looks at social and political processes that have affected Middle Eastern cuisines. Our discussion on food and colonialism will elaborate on issues such as the identity of the Palestinian citizens of Israel and the role food occupies in creating a distinctive national identity. Also we shall look at the modernization of the Middle East and its effect on local diets. We will conclude the course by analyzing the consequences of globalization on local diets and the way in which certain Middle Eastern foods have gone global.

Sample Syllabus of course as taught in NYC.

The course examines the archaeological findings, the biblical text and ancient Near Eastern records in an attempt to reconstruct the history of ancient Israel in the first Millennium BCE.  The study of ancient Israel in biblical times attracts the imagination of millions around the world.  Biblical accounts on kings such as David and Solomon are at the heart of most cultures today and it is no wonder that pure academic debates about the historicity of these biblical accounts echoes into public realm.  Can we use archaeology and biblical scholarship in order to reconstruct a better image of these decisive events? Five currently hotly debated subjects in biblical history will be discussed with the students in class meetings, in field trips and with the help of guest speakers who will present their side of the argument.

The course includes 5 class meetings, 4 field trips to relevant sites and 5 meetings with guest speakers.

Sample syllabus coming soon.

This course will teach journalism fundamentals as well as more advanced reporting techniques necessary for covering conflict the world over, from domestic issues affecting local communities to some of the most important geopolitical conflicts of our time. Alongside reading some of the best writing on contemporary conflict and discussing some of the difficulties of covering conflict, students will be expected to practice their reporting skills through field work. With supervision and assistance from the course instructor, students will take advantage of their surroundings in Tel Aviv-Jaffa as well as easy access to other locations in Israel.

Sample Syllabus

Media and religion are strange bedfellows. From kosher cell phones and hallal internet to Christian romance novels and twittering Gurus, the pursuit of spirituality is married to a never-ending array of media forms. This course explores the complex interrelationships between religion, media and culture through a series of case studies with special emphasis upon Israeli popular culture and religion. Students will be required to come prepared for discussion and to write two critical/analytical papers for the course. 

NYU Politics majors can petition to have this course count for elective credit.

More than 30 years have passed since 1979, the year when a self-styled Islamic Revolution unfolded in Iran. Historian Eric J. Hobsbawm branded this revolution as "one of the central social revolutions of the twentieth century"; and social scientist Richard Cottam described it as perhaps "the most popular revolution in the history of mankind." Whatever the case may be, we are now permitted to use the benefit of hindsight to revisit the 1979 revolution. In the first part of the course we will review the manifold causes of the 1979 revolution in a historical perspective, tracing the social, political, economic and cultural bases of the rise of the revolutionary movement and political Islam (or Islamism) in Iran. We will then move on to situate the revolution in a global context. This will enable us to examine Iranian history since 1979 in comparative perspective as well as to integrate the revolution into the "entangled histories" of modernity of which it is part. At the same time we will examine the cultural dimensions of the post-1979 state in Iran. We will consider cultural production in the Islamic Republic of Iran as a site of state domination and oppositional resistance. We will suggest that the Islamic Republic is a "scopic regime," developing a symbolic Islamism as a tool of propaganda and hegemony. At the same time, literature, cinema, and the visual arts have been sites of resistance.

Sample Syllabus

International negotiation has become the most widely used means of conflict management in international affairs.  Negotiations of international significance are today conducted not only between individual states, but also within and beyond them. At the same time negotiation practice itself is undergoing much change with changing patterns of conflict and intervention, new urgent issues on the global agenda, new actors and new emerging norms.

This course provides an overview of negotiation and conflict resolution theories and practices of international importance – bilateral, regional and multilateral. The emphasis is on different approaches/aspects to understanding what drives the negotiation process and explains the outcome. Why do some negotiations succeed, while others keep failing? Why do some peace settlements succeed while others fail?  We will examine not only the official negotiation process but also the important functions of pre-negotiation, second-track diplomacy and post-agreement negotiations concerned with implementation and compliance. 

While we will give many examples from various civil and international conflicts, our main focus will be on two regional conflicts – Cyprus and the Arab-Israeli conflict.  There will also be guest lectures by some of those who were involved in peace negotiations in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Syllabus under revision.

The purpose of this course is to examine the relation between religion and public life in both western and non western societies. Recently, the question of the relation between religion and public life has come to the fore again, for several reasons. First, the Third Wave of Democratization in certain Catholic, Orthodox and non-Christian societies has raised the question of the relation between religion and democratic political culture. Second, the immigration of non-Christians to certain western, ”Christian“ nations has tended to underline the Christian foundations of those national states. And third, the resurgence of religious fundamentalism in many parts of the world has sharpened the question of the relation between religion and public life in still other societies. All of these developments cast doubt on traditional theoretical formulations about both the privatization of religion and the secularization of the state. It seems that religion plays an important role in the formation of regimes and political patterns; that religious establishments and religious communities are occasionally involved in political struggles; and that religions introduce powerful symbols of identification that often mobilize the public for political purposes.

Sample Syllabus 

Course under development, exact course description may differ.

Introduction to the field of public health epidemiology, emphasizing methods for assessing factors associated with the distribution & etiology of health & disease, including social factors such as race & gender & global differences in disease distribution & control.