Courses - Fall 2013

Introduces students to a variety of topics and methodologies associated with Africana
studies as a field of academic inquiry, including the history of the field and its growth
over the course of time. Specific topics may include the question of African retention
in the Americas, the comparative study of slavery, the concept of creolization, an
understanding of the black Atlantic, and the meaning of diasporic studies, as well as the
use of history, sociology, linguistics, anthropology, literature, music, and the arts as ways
in which the experiences of black peoples have been documented and transmitted.

This interdisciplinary course combines ethnographic readings, representations, and interpretations of city and urban cultures with a video production component in which students create short documentaries on the city of Accra. The interpretative classes will run concurrently with production management, sights and sound, and post-production workshops. The course will have three objectives: (1) teach students the documentary tradition from Flaherty to Rouch; (2) use critical Cinema theory to define a document with a camera; and (3) create a short documentary film.

Sample Syllabus

This is an interdisciplinary course designed to study the life and times, intellectual thought and practical activity, of Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah.  With the use of a variety of readings and audio-visual materials, this course will critically explore the socioeconomic and political factors that served to shape the life, thought, and times of Kwame Nkrumah.  The persons, ideas, and events that influenced Nkrumah and the ideas, persons and events that he also impacted will be covered as well.  Students interested in sociology, history, political science, economics, and cultural studies will find this course of particular interest as its subject matter will dovetail into each of these related fields of study.

Sample Syllabus

The course introduces students to aspects of Ghanaian society and culture. It considers both traditional aspects of life and how people live their lives in this first decade of the new millennium. How Ghanaians perceive and conceive themselves and their society; how others view the society and life of Ghanaians also receive critical attention. The course emphasizes that Ghanaians are not an undifferentiated lot and that what the different people say their behavior should be differs from what their actual behavior is. Students will get to examine these varied perceptions and perspectives as well as construct their own representations of the society. The course will also attempt to answer questions about Ghana and Ghanaians that are of interest to the non-Ghanaian getting acquainted with the country. The course combines talks, readings, discussions, visits, and students' presentations in class. There will be a written examination at the end of the semester and a dissertation on an aspect of Ghanaian society and culture that students might choose to explore.

Sample Syllabus

Note: this course is open to all students for elective credit. Comparative
literature majors in track ii (literary and cultural studies) may count this
course toward one of their non-core major requirements.

The course examines certain recurring themes and critical issues in post-colonial narratives in Africa. It begins with a look at the debate and polemics around post-colonialism as a critical and theoretical concept. It then dwells on specific narratives, mainly novels by African writers, works located in the period following classical colonialism. The reading of these narratives is informed by such critical issues as the crisis of cultures in contact; personal, class, ethnic and national identities; the politics of gender; debates over language; the aesthetics and politics of art; strategic transformations in narrative form, etc.

Sample Syllabus

This is a language course designed to provide basic communicative competence in oral and written Twi for beginners. It focuses on the structure of the language as well as the culture of the people. The areas covered include: (i) oral drills; (ii) orthography; (iii) written exercises; (iv)translation from English to Twi and from Twi to English; (v) reading and comprehension; (vi) conversation and narration involving dialogues, greetings, description of day to day activities and bargaining); (vii) Grammar (parts of speech—nouns, verbs, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, particles, determiners, tense/aspect, and question forms); (viii) Composition writing.

Sample Syllabus

Introduces students to the tools of cultural criticism and theory, with particular emphasis on black culture, urban environment, and black people’s relationships to a variety of social and cultural institutions and practices. The latter may include the mass media, class and poverty, the police, urban development, education, music, art, and sports. 

Sample Syllabus

This course provides students with knowledge of the diverse literatures composed and written in indigenous languages of Africa, as well as of the general issues relevant to the study of this literature. The languages covered include Swahili (East Africa), Hausa and Yoruba (Nigeria and West Africa), Xhosa (Southern Africa), and Somali (Horn of Africa). The literature is discussed largely according to major genre types, such as poetry and song, oral narratives, and written prose literature. No knowledge of these languages is required for the course. 

The course familiarizes students with a selection of the varying perspectives from which African experience has been perceived, analyzed, and interpreted, primarily by Africans and persons of African descent, both on the continent and in the diaspora. 

An introduction to thinking about the human faculty of language within a specifically African context. The course focuses on issues of language within the framework of human society at all levels, and not so much on language as a structural entity. Topics include the general characteristics of human language; the description of the languages of Africa; the question of language and cultural contact in Africa; and the contemporary issues of language and sociopolitics in Africa. 

The course examines not only the common concerns but also the diverse traditions, as a result of historical, social, and cultural imperatives, that have informed the literature produced by African writers. Topics include colonialism; the question of language; race and identity; nationalism and literature; modernity; exile; and the politics of gender in the African context. 

The aim of the course is to introduce students to cultural dimensions in Africa, and to ways of approaching the study of culture in Africa. It focuses on three overall themes: orality, performance and identity, exploring ways in which these find expression primarily (though not exclusively) through language, religious belief, music, literature, nationalism, and popular culture. After presenting a general theoretical framework for the study of the themes, it concentrates on specific cultural contexts, illustrated with "case studies". Students are also encouraged to do further reading within other culture areas of Africa and the African Diaspora. 

A historical and political inquiry into the French system of relations with Francophone Africa from the ‘race to Empire’ in the 19th century to the current day. The main goals of the course are: to describe the historical development of French-African relations from the colonial to the post-independence era; to investigate the political, economic and cultural mechanisms of French influence in contemporary Francophone Africa; to understand the consequences for France of complex developments subsequent to colonialism, such as African immigration in France. Conducted in French.

Sample Syllabus

The course introduces students to aspects of Ghanaian society and culture. It considers both traditional aspects of life and how people live their lives in this first decade of the new millennium. How Ghanaians perceive and conceive themselves and their society; how others view the society and life of Ghanaians also receive critical attention. The course emphasizes that Ghanaians are not an undifferentiated lot and that what the different people say their behavior should be differs from what their actual behavior is. Students will get to examine these varied perceptions and perspectives as well as construct their own representations of the society. The course will also attempt to answer questions about Ghana and Ghanaians that are of interest to the non-Ghanaian getting acquainted with the country. The course combines talks, readings, discussions, visits, and students' presentations in class. There will be a written examination at the end of the semester and a dissertation on an aspect of Ghanaian society and culture that students might choose to explore.

Sample Syllabus

The main objective of the course is to acquaint the students with similarities and differences of contemporary European cultures and with the role of cultural factors in present European integration processes. Stress will be laid on the description and interpretation of presently existing varieties of cultures, but the course will also help the students to understand the main historical roots of European cultural plurality, i.e.the political, economic and cultural processes that engendered this plurality. In the course Europe is conceived in traditional geographic terms, i.e. it includes not only countries of the European Union, but also countries of Eastern Europe as well as of Eastern Central Europe and of the Balkans.

Sample Syllabus

The course will introduce students to the development of Romany politics and culture from a persecuted minority through to the emergence of Romany organizations with an emphasis on Central and Eastern Europe. The aim is to challenge any essentializing view on Roma as either a people outside or/and without society or as perennial victims of oppression. Two main approaches have dominated the teaching of Romany issues: a culturalist/ethnic approach, which stresses Romany cultures, and an economistic approach, which stresses ´poverty´.  This course will challenge mono-causal and a-historic explanations for the social situation of Roma and will stimulate students to think about Roma in a critical holistic way that brings into consideration the societies they live in. Building on a diverse selection of empirical material, ranging from ethnographic, historical and sociological case studies to artistic representations of Roma, the course will present the Roma “as good to think” for our comprehension of current social issues. The course is divided into three interconnected thematic blocks – 1. Identity, community and culture, 2. Power, the State and social stratification, 3. History, memory and politics of representation – which will allow to cover much of the current debates on the plight of European Roma as well as a grasp of social theories on marginality.

Sample Syllabus

This course offers an introduction to some of the classical and current issues in the anthropology of
Indigenous Australia. The role of anthropology in the representation and governance of Indigenous
life is itself an important subject for anthropological inquiry, considering that Indigenous people of
Australia have long been the objects of interest and imagination by outsiders for their cultural
formulations of kinship, ritual, art, gender, and politics. These representations—in feature films
about them (such as Rabbit-Proof Fence and Australia), New Age Literature (such as Mutant
Message Down Under), or museum exhibitions (such as in the Museum of Sydney or the Australian
Museum—are now also in dialogue with Indigenous forms of cultural production, in genres as
diverse as film, television, drama, dance, and archiving. The course will explore how Aboriginal
people have struggled to reproduce themselves and their traditions on their own terms, asserting
their right to forms of cultural autonomy and self-determination. Through the examination of
ethnographic texts, historical accounts, films, live performances, and an autobiography, we will consider the ways in which Aboriginalities are being challenged and constructed in contemporary
Australia.

Sample Syllabus

This course is a survey of the principal themes and issues in the development of Indigenous art in Australia. It focuses on some of the regional and historical variations of Aboriginal art in the context of the history of a settler nation, while considering the issues of its circulation and evaluation within contemporary discourses of value. Topics include the cosmological dimensions of the art, its political implications, its relationship to cultural identity, and its aesthetic frameworks. Students will visit some of the major national collections of Indigenous Australian art as well as exhibitions of contemporary works. There will also be guest presentations from Indigenous artists and Indigenous art curators.

Sample Syllabus

Exploration of the technical & creative uses of digital photography and imaging. The class will explore the use of digital technologies to compose, shoot, scan, alter, & print images, as well as considering the ways in which photographic meaning has been changed by the use of the computer. Students must provide their own camera.

This course will likely carry a supplies & studio fee for all non-Steinhardt Studio Art majors. More details will be available soon.

Sound art is perhaps the multidisciplinary art par excellence. Eluding most attempts at tidy classification, sound art can share formal elements and concerns with traditional sculpture, film and video, performance art, conceptual art, architecture, installation, and of course with music. This studio course will explore sound across its many and sometimes contradictory vectors, allowing students intensive work on sounds and their composition, as well as on projects that explore the broad and rich interaction of sound with other disciplines of art.

There are two main tenets of the course. The first is that issues fundamental to sound art engage some of the key problems of modern and contemporary art. Rather than viewing sound as a peripheral practice, we will see how it has been decisive in the narrative of 20th and 21st century art, exciting many of the key debates that carry through to this day. The second principle is that listening, or careful observation, can be primary in the creative process, coming before expression. From John Cage onward, the value of listening, of observation as a primary creative act, has re-attuned many strains of western art (from conceptual, minimal, and land art to media and installation art) to new ideas of process, complexity, and ecology.

This course can be approached from any level of experience. No previous work with sound or with digital media is required, only a willingness to explore the boundaries of art-making that is a natural outgrowth of working with sound as an artistic medium.

This course will carry a supplies & studio fee for all non-Steinhardt Studio Art majors. More details will be available soon.

Intended for Studio Art students to work on projects over the course of the semester under the guidance of an artist mentor.

Sample Syllabus

This course usually addresses the question what today's art world is and how it can be navigated. What are the leading conventions, reoccurring trends, practical constraints and concerns within it? What are alternatives to the prevailing institutions and structures? Do artists need gallery representation or art school training to succeed? What constitutes success for individual artists, art-centric cities or institutions?  (The syllabus is currently in development.)

This course is a hands-on introduction to the use of photography as a medium of documentation and expression. Assignments and critiques enhance the development of independent individual work while developing photographic skills and techniques. Students provide their own cameras.

Sample Syllabus

Students will work with traditional and digital photographic practices to engage with the people, art, and traditions of China. The class will include field trips to museums, galleries and studios, allowing students to interact with outstanding local photographers, media based artists, and the city's creative community. Assigned readings will help students understand the historical and theoretical context of photographic work, and deepen the meaning of critiques and discussions. Experimentation will be encouraged, and students will respond to the experiences, ideas, and influences they encounter abroad through the work they create. Projects may range from classical photographs to digital prints, performance, and installation.

Sample Syllabus

The contemporary art scene in China has developed quickly over the past three decades. The massive political, economic, and social changes the country has undergone since the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976 have dramatically altered the country’s cultural landscape. In this seminar course, the course will survey the main development areas in Chinese contemporary art from the end of the 1920s to the present day. Dedicated to responding to the new textures of China’s metropolitan culture, it will look at the relationship between visual arts, new media, architecture, and performance in the mega-city of Shanghai, often regarded as the cradle of Chinese modernity. The class will be complemented by guest lectures and visits to public museums, galleries and artists’ studios in and around Shanghai. Students will have the opportunity to meet leading figures from the art world in China as well as the international art community, including artists, museum directors, curators, art critics, and art dealers.

Sample Syllabus

This course uses an interdisciplinary approach to explore Ghanaian art and art history in their historical, anthropological and archaeological contexts. The course serves both as a survey and critique of the literature on West African art, and as an exploration of method and theory in sub-Saharan art historical research. Students explore major works from key periods of Ghanaian artistic and cultural production and are involved in practical work in laboratories and museums dealing with art specimens from local archaeological sites and ethnographic contexts.

Sample Syllabus

NYU Art History Students: This course counts for Urban Design credit or Art History Elective credit.

NYU Sociology Students: This course counts as an advanced seminar.

Berlin with its alternating history is a fascinating background to study the constantly changing relationship between "Place, Building and Time".
Together they are three important threads of the "urban fabric", we also will learn more about two other threads, the "Scale" and the "Public-Private Realm".
Classroom Discussions and tours during the semester will focus on different aspects of the complex relationship between the architecture of a building, the threads of the urban fabric surrounding it and the questions of sustainability.

Sample Syllabus

NYU Art History Students: This course counts for Urban Design credit or Art History Elective credit.

NYU Sociology Students: This course counts as an advanced seminar.

The seminar consists mainly of field trips to different museums in Berlin, with a focus on the ensemble of five major art museums on "Museuminsel", which have been built over a period of 100 years.  Discussions will focus on the nature and social function of museums as well as their role as places where the image of the state and its civil society are constantly reshaped.  Other topics include museum architecture, collecting as a cultural technique, and Prussian-German intellectual history from the 18th to the 20th century.  Selected pieces from the rich collections of the Berlin museums will be closely examined.  Previous knowledge of art history, architecture, or German history is not required, but useful.

Sample Syllabus

This course studies modern and contemporary art and architecture through a strategic focus on the cities of Buenos Aires, New York, Rio de Janeiro and Mexico City. We consider key artworks and architectural movements, approaching art history in urban, socio-historical and contextual terms. Emphasis is placed upon the city as a hub for the production and reception of art.

Sample Syllabus

NOTE: This course meets in the center of Florence. Student should allow for 30 minutes commute time between this class and their prior or subsequent class.

NYU Students who have already taken ARTH-UA 2 will not receive major credit for ARTH-UA 5 [Renaissance Art survey] or ARTH-UA 6 [Modern Art survey].

The city of Florence will be the classroom as students study the masters, explore museums, examine texts, and analyze the historical significance of monuments. With eyes cast simultaneously on painting, the graphic arts, sculpture, and architecture, this class will explore a broad range of art patronage that included religious and civic bodies, princely courts, and a growing number of private clients. The course will focus on points of intersection, transition, and the transformations that lead from one tradition to the next. Above all, our approach will encourage critical thinking and a search for unifying connections in studying the underlying logic of image making. Works will be examined on their native terms: both as physical objects, with sensitivity to their particular function and intended reception, and as visual images active within larger contexts. Conducted in English.

Sample Syllabus 

Prerequisite: ARTH-UA 2, History of Western Art II, ARTH-UA 300, Renaissance Art, or equivalent introductory art history course.

This course is conceived as a series of selected studies, offering in depth analysis of a few great masters of Early Renaissance Italian painting: Giotto, Masaccio, Fra Angelico, Benozzo Gozzoli and Ghirlandaio, Botticelli, Filippino Lippi, among others.  These artists have been chosen for the unique opportunity afforded by study in Florence to examine their works in original contexts, especially the great fresco cycles they created with their workshops.   The course is, however, neither limited to the study of these artists nor to the study of painting. Their works will be considered in relation to those of other contemporary masters active in the courts of Central and Northern Italy, including Andrea Mantegna, Piero della Francesca, Cosmé Tura and Leonardo da Vinci.  They will also be considered in rapport with other contemporary art forms, especially the sculpture of Ghiberti, Donatello and Verrocchio.  In studying original works of art on site, context, function and materials will be considered equal in importance to matters of style.  Special attention will be given to the phenomenon of collecting as an active force shaping the development of artistic forms and genres. The study of collecting will bring into consideration intellectual, social, economic and political issues that complicate and enrich our understanding of the work of the early masters of the Italian Renaissance. Conducted in English.

Sample Syllabus 

Starting from Villa La Pietra, this course explores the connection between the history of the Italian villa and the economy, architecture, art, and landscape. Historical and economic reasons have contributed to the unique typology of the Florentine landscape and the relationship between the villa, the farmer house and the "podere." The course examines the original development of the villa and the ideology of country life in Florentine culture and society. Conducted in English.

Sample Syllabus 

NOTE: This course meets in the center of Florence. Student should allow for 30 minutes commute time between this class and their prior or subsequent class.

The aim of this course is to provide an integrated approach to Museum theory and practice. It is designed for those students who are interested in the history and the nature of Museums, Museum management (including the international art legislation), the methods of research and documentation (file system and photography), conservation methodologies to preserve the collections in a Museum context, and the means of presenting all kinds of art objects to the public (the education role of the museum in the society). Themes such as the change of the artistic taste, the role of the artists, the collectors and the dealers in the creation of the public galleries and the house museums will be discussed. Conducted in English.

Sample Syllabus 

In this course, students learn how to ‘read’ and interpret the city by analyzing the architecture and the outdoor spaces that the buildings define. We adopt the approach of art history, architectural history,
and urban planning to study the buildings and monuments of Florence from antiquity to the present. On site, students consider buildings in context, and learn how to describe the architectural language used by architects over the centuries. Students learn about the building materials and technologies. They learn how to identify the typology and dynamics of buildings, monuments, and outdoor spaces, and their transformations (in form and function). They experience the coexistence of private and sacred in religious buildings, and of private and public in both residential and civic buildings.

Sample Syllabus

This course examines the rise of Modernity in Italian art from the Futurist avant-garde to current artistic practices. Consideringexhibitions as a particularly useful framework to investigate structuresand narratives of the Italian context in the 20th and 21st centuries, thecourse will examine through in-depth case studies (from Futurist shows tothe Venice Biennale) the development of modern Italian visual culture.The course aims to underscore this articulated history, using exhibitionsas critical subjects of research that would work as tool for the analysisof the intersection between Italian modernity and the internationalcontext.

Although the notion of Modernity in Italy is linked to leading figures orgroups that acted in parallel with international debates on visual art(Futuristi with the European avant-gardes, Lucio Fontana and AlbertoBurri with Informal culture, Arte Povera and Transavanguardia withConceptual art and Abstract Expressionism, just to list a few), thecontext of Italian art practices has been enriched by many actors thatcontributed to redefine medium and issues of Italian visual culture.Through a variety of languages, these figures were, and remain,significant contributors to the broad discussion of issues like thedialogue between historical memory and contemporary practice (Metafisicaand Valori Plastici), between art and design (Bruno Munari, Gruppo T),the notion of spazio/environment or the monument, questions of politicalart and public art, the development of sculptural practice towardsperformance (Maurizio Cattelan), the relationship between art, scienceand technology. Also among the topics to be discussed during the courseare the role of private collections and institutional exhibitions, thebook as a space of production, the art market and the gallerynetwork.

There will be artist lectures and studio, gallery and museum visits in Florence, Milan and Venice.

Sample Syllabus

Students in the NYU Art History Dept: This course counts for Art History elective credit.

A survey of British painting, sculpture and architecture of the 17ththrough 20th centuries. Museums, galleries, churches, palaces and stately homes in and around London will be visited to examine and critique major works.

Students in the NYU Art History Dept: This course counts for Art History elective credit.

London has some of the richest collections of renaissance art in the world. Students in this course will be brought into direct contact with a large variety of artefacts to be found in museums and galleries such as the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Museum as well as the British Library. Works by Van Eyck, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Durer and Holbein will be examined alongside those of less well-known artists. Rather than provide a standard chronological narrative of European Art History c. 1400- c. 1600, focus will be placed on subject areas such as the altarpiece and the private devotional image, the renaissance portrait, graphic practices, print culture, the materials and functions of sculpture, myth and allegory, the cabinet of curiosities, the concept of the 'Renaissance' itself. These topics will not be organised around traditional national or regional 'schools' considered in isolation from one another but instead interconnections will be explored between the development of different types, technical processes and cultural practices across the Netherlands, France, Germany and Italy. A special case will be made of the English Renaissance, in order to place it within the wider European context through additional visits to Westminster Abbey and Hampton Court. 

Students in the NYU Art History Dept: This course counts for Architecture and Urban Design credit only.

London, like New York is a rich and complicated city. Unlike New York however, it has been continuously occupied for just under 2000 years. Almost every epoch of London’s history can be detected in the city’s architecture and distinctive streetscape.

This course is designed to work in three ways. Firstly it is an opportunity to learn about London’s architecture and art by physically exploring it. Secondly this class is an introduction to sketching and keeping a travel notebook, a basic and useful skill that any liberal arts student should have an experience of. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, this course teaches how to 'read' a town or city. The ability to visually make sense of European built-environment should really help in understanding the architecture of New York City and, of course, town and cities throughout the United States, and anywhere else. 

Sample Syllabus

Students in the NYU Art History Dept: This course counts for Art History elective credit.

Contemporary art raises vigorous debate and criticism. But what is contemporary about contemporary art? This course introduces you to some of the key issues in dealing critically with contemporary art with a focus on work on display in exhibitions in London, both major national collections and private galleries. The course explores art produced since the late 1950s through case studies of the work of individual artists and through themes which include photography; representations of the body; gallery display; migration, visual imagery of political issues, video practice and installation art. Among other things we consider how contemporary art came to look as it does [with a focus on British art]; the different forms of material and presentation artists have employed; why and how diverse audiences are addressed; how markets, national prizes and private collections shape the kinds of art produced and inform public taste. We also look at the collection and display of contemporary art, on a private and a public scale; dealer galleries and issues of curation.

Students in the NYU Art History Dept: This course counts for Architecture and Urban Design credit only

Re-cycling or re-using buildings is one of the most important subjects in the built environment. It is an area in which there have been some remarkable successes in recent years both in America and in Europe: impressive and much loved public buildings have been given new life by progressive architects and developers, helping ensure that our towns and cities retain their individual character. Unlike international modern buildings, historic buildings are strong markers of the industry, aspirations, local materials and resources of a particular place. Recycling old buildings is crucial so our architectural and social history can be read in the townscape that surrounds us.

A course about recycling old buildings presents an opportunity to explore some basic themes in the built environment – architecture history, environmental issues and the rise of the conservation movement in the 19th and 20th centuries. Buildings are responsible for 50% of our carbon emissions each year, and more than half of a building’s energy footprint is expended in the relatively short spell of its construction. Re-using our redundant historic architecture for new purposes has obvious positive benefits for the planet. Equally, upgrading historic buildings in use, like our housing stock, is environmentally smarter that demolishing parts of our cities and starting again with new structures.

The locations and nature of industrial production has changed across the world. Most western cities have a surfeit of industrial spaces and buildings lying empty, often in their centres. This course will first cover the story of the development of industrial architecture from the 18th century onwards and look at how these robust, proud and often highly decorative structures can accommodate new uses. Based in London, we will have the opportunity to visit a number of key examples of re-use where we can see first-hand how industrial history, modern technology and the changing use of our city centres combine to form this essential story in contemporary urbanism.  

Sample Syllabus

 Art History Students: This course counts for Art History elective credit.

A gallery course focusing on the baroque schools of Rubens and Rembrandt, "tenebrist" painting, Velázquez, and the etchings and paintings of Goya. Ends with a survey of the painters of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Sample Syllabus

NYU Art History Students: This course counts for Advanced Modern Credit.

This course examines the rise of realist and impressionist art in Europe within its cultural, historical and social contexts. The novelty of these two important movements is considered in relation to preceding artistic movements, namely neo-classicism and romanticism. Works by artists such as Delacroix, Courbet, Millet, Manet, Monet, Renoir, Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec are studied. The course includes both class lectures with slides and museum visits. Conducted in French.

Sample Syllabus

Open to all NYU Paris students. For NYU Art History students this course counts for Art History Elective Credit.

This course investigates French art of the nineteenth-century, paying particular attention to the way in which historical factors informed artistic production during this period.  Beginning with David, Neo-Classicism and the French Revolution, we will move to the Napoleonic period, Romanticism, the Revolutions of 1830 and 1848, and trace the connection from Realism to Impressionism.  The second half of the course will examine the disparate movements spurred by Impressionism, collectively referred to as Post-Impressionism (including Neo-Impressionism, Synthetism, and Symbolism), and will culminate with the rise of Art Nouveau at the end of the century.  Throughout, we will interrogate how social forces (including politics, gender, race, religion, etc.) influenced the manner in which “Modern” art was produced and understood in nineteenth-century France. Conducted in English.

Sample Syllabus

The course covers the history of architecture from Mediaeval to contemporary with special attention to 19th and 20th Century architecture and urbanism as well as the visual arts. The course begins with the pre-Romanesque and Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and Classicism periods. The major focus will be on 19th and 20th Century architectural styles from Historicism and Art Nouveau through Cubism, Art-Déco, Avant-garde Functionalism, post-war Stalinist art and architecture, and the contemporary. It's necessary to have an understanding of the evolution of Mid European art and architecture, town planning and theory.

Sample Syllabus

This course presents a survey of art and architecture in Prague and its environs - from the Middle Ages to the present - placed within the context of the main periods and movements of Western art history. The course will be rooted in a discussion of the city of Prague, and students are encouraged through excursions and assignments to become acquainted with the city's architecture, monuments and urban design. Students will learn to analyse formal aspects of art and architectural styles (from Romanesque to modern) and will also be encouraged to investigate their sources and theoretical foundations. Emphasis will be given to the historical and cultural context of art styles and movements. We will also look at art patronage in some key periods of Czech history to see how this reflects political, cultural and ideological change. Classroom lectures will be combined with regular excursions to examine works of art and architecture at first hand. These will include architectural walking tours and visits to temporary exhibitions as well as the city's major art galleries.

Sample Syllabus

This course is a survey of the principal themes and issues in the development of Indigenous art in Australia. It focuses on some of the regional and historical variations of Aboriginal art in the context of the history of a settler nation, while considering the issues of its circulation and evaluation within contemporary discourses of value. Topics include the cosmological dimensions of the art, its political implications, its relationship to cultural identity, and its aesthetic frameworks. Students will visit some of the major national collections of Indigenous Australian art as well as exhibitions of contemporary works. There will also be guest presentations from Indigenous artists and Indigenous art curators.

Sample Syllabus

Prerequisite: High School Chemistry
Students registering for this course must also register for a Laboratory section & a Recitation section.

Introductory course mainly for science majors designed to acquaint the student with the fundamental principles and processes of biological systems. Subjects include the basics of chemistry pertinent to biology, biochemistry and cell biology, genetics and molecular biology, anatomy and physiology, neurobiology, ecology, population genetics, and history and classification of life forms and evolution.

Sample Syllabus

Taken in conjunction with the Principles of Biology I lecture.

Laboratory exercises illustrate the basics of experimental biology, molecular biology, and biochemistry as well as the diversity of life forms and organ systems. 

Taken in Conjunction with Lecture and Lab. 

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. Conducted in English.

Sample Syllabus 

Evaluates, from the management point of view, marketing as a system for the satisfaction of human wants and as a catalyst of business activity. Deals with the subject at all levels from producer to consumer and emphasizes the planning required for the efficient use of marketing tools in the development and expansion of markets. Concentrates on the principles, functions, and tools of marketing, including quantitative methods. Utilizes cases and projects to develop a problem-solving ability in dealing with specific areas.

Sample Syllabus 

Prerequisites: STAT-UB 103 or ECON-UA 18 or both STAT-UB 1 & STAT-UB 3

Designed to give students a better understanding of how firms can gain competitive advantage from their operations function. Typically this requires the firm to achieve, at a minimum, cost, quality and ecological parity; responsiveness and adaptability to customer needs and desires; rapid time to market; process technology leadership; and sufficient and responsive capacity. A problem-solving framework is developed that enables students to undertake managerial and technical analysis that should result in the desired competitive advantage. Both service and manufacturing case examples are utilized.

Sample Syllabus 

In this course, students learn how to increase their communication effectiveness for business and professional goals. During the semester, students focus on the strategic implications of communication for modern organizations. A variety of assignments are given to stress the following communication competencies: written, spoken and nonverbal communication basics for business; effective team communication strategies; informative, persuasive and collaborative presentations; communication techniques for required junior and senior year projects. Students regularly receive personal feedback about their writing and their oral presentations from instructors and staff.

Sample Syllabus 

This course is only open to Stern BPE Students.

Course description coming soon.

Prerequisites: (1) STAT-UB 103 Statistics for Business Control and Regression/Forecasting Models OR ECON-UA 18 Statistics (6 credits) OR ECON-UA 18 Statistics (4 credit) plus ECON-UA 19/STAT-UB 3 Regression/Forecasting (2 credit) OR STAT-UB 1 Statistics for Business Control (4 credit) plus STAT-UB 3 Regression/Forecasting (2 credit) AND (2) one of the following: ECON-UB 1 Microeconomics OR ECON-UA 2 Economic Principles II, OR ECON-UA 5 Introduction to Economic Analysis, AND (3) ACCT-UB 1 Principles of Financial Accounting AND (4) At least Sophomore Standing.

A rigorous course developing the basic concepts and tools of modern finance. Basic concepts of return and risk are explored in detail with a view to understanding how financial markets work and how different kinds of financial instruments are valued. These instruments, including equities, fixed income securities, options, and other derivative securities become vehicles for exploring various financial markets and the utilization of these markets by managers in different kinds of financial institutions to enhance return and manage risk. The course includes a segment on the use and application of computer-based quantitative technology for financial modeling purposes.

Prerequisite: Foundations of Finance (FINC-UB 2) and Statistics or equivalents.

The class focuses on the nature of financial management from a number of perspectives including the national, the corporate and the individual, but particularly the corporate. You will become familiar with the financial system, including that relating to banking, though there will be little overlap with courses that deal with the functioning of financial markets. The importance of behavioural finance will also be stressed during the course. 

Sample Syllabus

Investigates the nature, functions, and responsibilities of the management of organizations. Develops an analytical approach to the identification, structuring, analysis, and solution of organizational problems. Introduces the student to organizational policies and structures, functional areas, and production processes (including resource allocation, measurement and evaluation, and control), leadership style, and organizational adaptation and evolution. Teaching methodologies include lectures, case analysis, and class discussion.

This course carries an additional fee of £20 to cover the cost of course materials.

Evaluates, from the management point of view, marketing as a system for the satisfaction of human wants and as a catalyst of business activity. Deals with the subject at all levels from producer to consumer and emphasizes the planning required for the efficient use of marketing tools in the development and expansion of markets. Concentrates on the principles, functions, and tools of marketing, including quantitative methods. Utilizes cases and projects to develop a problem-solving ability in dealing with specific areas.

Sample Syllabus

Prerequisites: STAT-UB 103 Statistics for Business Control and Regression/Forecasting Analysis (also accepted: ECON-UA 18, ECON-UA 20, or BOTH STAT-UB 1 and STAT-UB 3)

Designed to give students a better understanding of how firms can gain competitive advantage from their operations function. Typically this requires the firm to achieve, at a minimum, cost, quality and ecological parity; responsiveness and adaptability to customer needs and desires; rapid time to market; process technology leadership; and sufficient and responsive capacity. A problem-solving framework is developed that enables students to undertake managerial and technical analysis that should result in the desired competitive advantage. Both service and manufacturing case examples are utilized.

Every professional business person must be aware of how legal systems work and effect business decisions. Furthermore, the interaction between Law and Business is multidimensional involving international, ethical, and technological considerations. In this course, students examine how key areas of business law, including contracts, torts, and business organizations, influence the structure of domestic and international business relationships. Students actively participate in legal studies designed to enhance business skills such as analytical thinking, written communication, oral presentation, conflict resolution, and team work problem-solving. 

Evaluates, from the management point of view, marketing as a system for the satisfaction of human wants and as a catalyst of business activity. Deals with the subject at all levels from producer to consumer and emphasizes the planning required for the efficient use of marketing tools in the development and expansion of markets. Concentrates on the principles, functions, and tools of marketing, including quantitative methods. Utilizes cases and projects to develop a problem-solving ability in dealing with specific areas.

Prerequisites: (1) STAT-UB 103 Statistics for Business Control and Regression/Forecasting Models OR ECON-UA 18 Statistics (6 credits) OR ECON-UA 18 Statistics (4 credit) plus ECON-UA 19/STAT-UB 3 Regression/Forecasting (2 credit) OR STAT-UB 1 Statistics for Business Control (4 credit) plus STAT-UB 3 Regression/Forecasting (2 credit) AND (2) one of the following: ECON-UB 1 Microeconomics OR ECON-UA 2 Economic Principles II, OR ECON-UA 5 Introduction to Economic Analysis, AND (3) ACCT-UB 1 Principles of Financial Accounting AND (4) At least Sophomore Standing.

A rigorous course developing the basic concepts and tools of modern finance. Basic concepts of return and risk are explored in detail with a view to understanding how financial markets work and how different kinds of financial instruments are valued. These instruments, including equities, fixed income securities, options, and other derivative securities become vehicles for exploring various financial markets and the utilization of these markets by managers in different kinds of financial institutions to enhance return and manage risk. The course includes a segment on the use and application of computer-based quantitative technology for financial modeling purposes.

Investigates the nature, functions, and responsibilities of the management of organizations. Develops an analytical approach to the identification, structuring, analysis, and solution of organizational problems. Introduces the students to organizational policies and structures, functional areas, and production processes (including resource allocation, measurement and evaluation, and control), leadership style, and organizational adaptation and evolution. Teaching methodologies include lectures, case analysis and class discussion.

Sample Syllabus 

Evaluates, from the management point of view, marketing as a system for the satisfaction of human wants and as a catalyst of business activity. Deals with the subject at all levels from producer to consumer and emphasizes the planning required for the efficient use of marketing tools in the development and expansion of markets. Concentrates on the principles, functions, and tools of marketing, including quantitative methods. Utilizes cases and projects to develop a problem-solving ability in dealing with specific areas.

Sample Syllabus

In this course, students learn how to increase their communication effectiveness for business and professional goals. During the semester, students focus on the strategic implications of communication for modern organizations. A variety of assignments are given to stress the following communication competencies: written, spoken and nonverbal communication basics for business; effective team communication strategies; informative, persuasive and collaborative presentations; communication techniques for required junior and senior year projects. Students regularly receive personal feedback about their writing and their oral presentations from instructors and staff.

Sample Syllabus

This course focuses on China’s political and economic development over the last century and a half with particular attention to the last 33 years, the so-called Reform Period. Our three primary objectives are to (1) understand the historical trajectory of China’s development path; (2) consider in what ways and to what degree the growth experiences of East Asia’s high-performing economies helped inform China’s economic policymakers decisions and shed light on the prospects for the long-term success of reforms in China; (3) assess the state of China’s contemporary political economy and the current role of the government in generating or inhibiting economic activity.

This course investigates the nature, functions, and responsibilities of the management of organizations. The course develops an analytical approach to the identification, structuring, analysis, and solution of organizational problems, and introduces students to organizational policies and structures, functional areas, and production processes (including resource allocation, measurement and evaluation, and control), leadership style, and organizational adaptation and evolution. Teaching methodologies include lectures, case analysis and class discussion.

Sample Syllabus

This course explores the field of marketing by introducing and developing central concepts and philosophies of marketing, and exploring the relationship of marketing with other business disciplines. Keeping in mind the perspectives of both producer and consumer, the course examines the planning required for the efficient use of marketing tools in the development and expansion of markets. The course concentrates on the principles, functions, and tools of marketing, including quantitative methods. Ethical issues in marketing are also addressed. In addition to lecture, the course uses case studies and student projects as methods for student learning.

Sample Syllabus

Every professional business person must be aware of how legal systems work and effect business decisions. Furthermore, the interaction between Law and Business is multidimensional involving international, ethical, and technological considerations. In this course, students examine how key areas of business law, including contracts, torts, and business organizations, influence the structure of domestic and international business relationships. Students actively participate in legal studies designed to enhance business skills such as analytical thinking, written communication, oral presentation, conflict resolution, and team work problem-solving.

Sample Syllabus

In this course, students learn how to increase their communication effectiveness for business and professional goals. During the semester, students focus on the strategic implications of communication for modern organizations. A variety of assignments are given to stress the following communication competencies: written, spoken and nonverbal communication basics for business; effective team communication strategies; informative, persuasive and collaborative presentations; communication techniques for required junior and senior year projects. Students regularly receive personal feedback about their writing and their oral presentations from the instructor.

Sample Syllabus

Please note this course has been canceled for Fall 2013.

Prerequisites: (1) STAT-UB 103 Statistics for Business Control and Regression/Forecasting Models OR ECON-UA 18 Statistics (6 credits) OR ECON-UA 18 Statistics (4 credit) plus ECON-UA 19/STAT-UB 3 Regression/Forecasting (2 credit) OR STAT-UB 1 Statistics for Business Control (4 credit) plus STAT-UB 3 Regression/Forecasting (2 credit) AND (2) one of the following: ECON-UB 1 Microeconomics OR ECON-UA 2 Economic Principles II, OR ECON-UA 5 Introduction to Economic Analysis, AND (3) ACCT-UB 1 Principles of Financial Accounting AND (4) At least Sophomore Standing.

A rigorous course developing the basic concepts and tools of modern finance. Basic concepts of return and risk are explored in detail with a view to understanding how financial markets work and how different kinds of financial instruments are valued. These instruments, including equities, fixed income securities, options, and other derivative securities become vehicles for exploring various financial markets and the utilization of these markets by managers in different kinds of financial institutions to enhance return and manage risk. The course includes a segment on the use and application of computer-based quantitative technology for financial modeling purposes.

Evaluates, from the management point of view, marketing as a system for the satisfaction of human wants and as a catalyst of business activity. Deals with the subject at all levels from producer to consumer and emphasizes the planning required for the efficient use of marketing tools in the development and expansion of markets. Concentrates on the principles, functions, and tools of marketing, including quantitative methods. Utilizes cases and projects to develop a problem-solving ability in dealing with specific areas.

Only NYU Stern BPE students may register for this course under the BPEP-UB 9044 number. All other students should register under POL-UA 9530. For Non-BPE Stern this course does not count for Stern credit, though Stern students are welcome to take this course as an elective.

Course under development. description may differ from below.

Analysis of how political power relates to social structure, economic change, and international pressures in Latin America. Presents case studies of three to five Latin American nations at distinct levels of social modernization. These comparative cases illustrate trends including the struggle for democracy, military interference in politics, and party competition. Covers political conditions in Caribbean nations.

Prerequisite: CHEM-UA 102 College Chemistry II or its equivalent.

Students registering for this course must also register for the Laboratory & Recitation sections

An introduction to the chemistry of organic compounds, the course is presented in the functional group framework incorporating reaction mechanisms. Topics include structure and bonding of organic materials, nomenclature, conformational analysis, stereochemistry, reactions of aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons, and spectroscopy (IR, NMR, UV/visible, and mass spectroscopy). 

Sample Syllabus

Taken in conjuction with Organic Chemistry I Lecture

Provides training in the basic techniques of the organic chemistry laboratory, including crystallization, distillation, extraction, and other separation techniques such as column chromatography and gas chromatography. Experiments involving the synthesis of organic compounds are introduced as well as those performing qualitative organic analysis. 

Sample Syllabus

Taken in conjunction with Organic Chemistry I Lecture and Lab.

This course presents a review of adolescent and young adult developmental theory to provide students with a framework of the psychosocial conflicts involved during this particular moment. The psychology concepts about adolescence, identity and autonomy are brought to think on a complex way the theories and objectives of positive psychology. As we survey the contributions that positive psychology has made in helping individuals to create change in their lives, we find elevated self-esteem, improved physical well-being, and an increase in the overall sense of success to be achievable outcomes for college students. At the conclusion of the course, students are charged with synthesizing this material and creating their own project designed to improve mental health awareness.

Sample Syllabus

Please note that this course is currently under development.  The actual course description may vary.

This course will provide an overview of the scope and magnitude of child and adolescent mental
health issues globally, and how mental health and illness are understood and addressed around the
world.

A survey of anticolonialist cinema with special emphasis on Latin America. Despite conditions of economic and political oppression, Latin America has managed in recent years to forge a dynamically original cinema. After studying some European films that highlight the colonial background of current struggles in the world, we take a brief look at African cinema and then look closely at Latin American cinema, with films from Argentina, Chile, Brazil and Cuba. The emphasis throughout is on a common theme – the struggle against foreign domination and on the search for an authentic, innovative national cinematic style.

Sample Syllabus

Co-requisite: Enrollment in a screening time.

This course covers Italian film from the beginnings of the neo-realist movement to 1960, concentrating both on the aesthetic, theoretical development of neorealism and on its political, economic, social, and cultural context. Directors studied in detail include Rossellini, Visconti, de Sica, and Antonioni. Conducted in English.

Sample Syllabus

Students registering for this class must also register for the Screenings section.

This course carries an additional fee of £20 to cover the cost of course materials.

This course provides an exciting and challenging introduction to British Cinema, studying the rich and varied relationships between the society and its films. It is organised in four main parts, offering an Introduction to Film Studies; a look at National Identity and the Cinema in relation to England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the UK as a whole; case studies in key authors Mike Leigh and Ken Loach; and approaches to narrative and genre.

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

This course shall focus on the place of women in the literary tradition, an issue that is very current in the discourse on the literature of Africa and its Diaspora. Women writers have emerged at the forefront of the movement to restore African women to their proper place in the study of African history, society and culture. In this process, the need to recognize the women as literary artists in the oral mode has also been highlighted. Furthermore, the work of women writers is gaining increasing significance and deserves to be examined within the context of canon formation. Authors and texts will be examined, focusing on such topics as the heritage of women's literature, images of women in the works of male writers; women in traditional and contemporary society; women and the African family in the literary tradition; literature as a tool for self-definition and self-liberation; African women writers; female expressions of cultural nationalism in the Caribbean; female novelists of the African continent; Black women dramatists; the poetry of African women.

Sample Syllabus

Note: this course is open to all students for elective credit. Comparative
literature majors in track ii (literary and cultural studies) may count this
course toward one of their non-core major requirements.

The course examines certain recurring themes and critical issues in post-colonial narratives in Africa. It begins with a look at the debate and polemics around post-colonialism as a critical and theoretical concept. It then dwells on specific narratives, mainly novels by African writers, works located in the period following classical colonialism. The reading of these narratives is informed by such critical issues as the crisis of cultures in contact; personal, class, ethnic and national identities; the politics of gender; debates over language; the aesthetics and politics of art; strategic transformations in narrative form, etc.

Sample Syllabus

This course may be counted towards the Cultural Specialization and Elective requirement for Comp Lit majors, with prior DUS approval.

This course focuses on literary representations of WWI and WWII. The online course pack includes examples of the political and military rhetoric to which Montale and Hemingway objected, historical essays and images (war photographs, recruitment posters, etc.), as well as the shorter texts we are studying. Central themes in the course are the concepts of political literature and historical fiction and the contrasting approaches and theoretical premises of classical realism and modernism. Among the supplementary sources available in the Villa Ulivi library are two good cultural histories on the subject: James Shehan Where Have All the Soldiers Gone and Mark Mazower Dark Continent. Other recurring issues will be gender, sexuality, religion, class politics, kitsch, psychoanalysis, rhetoric, and power.  

Sample Syllabus

"A book must be an ax for the frozen sea in us," wrote Franz Kafka (1883-1924), one of the best known but least understood authors of our times. In this course, we will break some of the clichés which are stuck to Kafka's life and work and dive into the fascinating, intricate and profoundly humorous world of his thoughts and emotions. In Prague, the city that determined and held Kafka in its "claws", we will trace the possible sources of the writer's private obsessions which became the general characteristics of modern men: The sense of isolation, the anxiety, the self-irony, the sense of responsibility and guilt, the quest for freedom, the struggle of an individual against the system. We will read selected works of Kafka, but also Meyrink - the author of Prague ghetto - and Milan Kundera. This course aims to bring the students to a point from which they can find their own genuine and intimate understanding of Kafka's writing.

Sample Syllabus

This course endeavors to explore the reconstruction of Central and Eastern Europe through the currency of its poetry, through the desperate honor of its poets. With the war and subsequent occupation of Europe, literature, especially poetry, replaced consensus politics. Poets became the true accountants, and their ledgers contained the unprofitability of the human soul. A reading of the finest poets of the past half-century situates the times and the seminal engagements born to restore independence. The poets were/are personally well-known to the lecturer, with the sad exception of the great Russian poets, Celan and Brecht.

Sample Syllabus

This class is devoted not only to a "close reading" of the selected texts, but also to relevant broader issues. While the approach and methods are interdisciplinary, the main emphasis is on literary theory (explaining and applying basic literary terms), literary history (both American and European), and literary criticism (analyzing different responses to given works). Every class starts with the oral presentation delivered by a student, then there is a minilecture by the teacher, and a discussion follows.

Sample Syllabus

This is a workshop type course intended for a small group of students, each with a strong aptitude and/or demonstrated talent for creative writing. Our basic objective is to guide students into a more systematic approach to creative writing in any of the main genres, especially fiction and poetry. Each student is expected to engage in critical discussions on samples of their own writing as well as on writing by other members of the class. Our focus shall be on developing a grasp of the rudiments and general mechanics of the writer's craft, while at the same time allowing for a fuller realization of the personal/individual creative impulse and talent. Some class sessions will be devoted to various types of writing exercises, others to the discussion of sample texts, most of it produced by members of the class. Each student will be expected to share his/her work with the class and possibly with a wider audience when possible. At the end of the semester, each student will be expected to have produced a substantial body of creative writing for assessment by the course instructors.

Sample Syllabus

A practical course in the writing of creative literary texts: prose (short stories as well as literary non-fiction) and poetry. Selected published works will be analyzed in class both to provide inspiration for student writing as well as to represent literary structures and strategies. Writing assignments ranging from spontaneous to long-term projects will promote creative exploration and self-expression. Critical skills are emphasized and enhanced as students respond to each others’ work. Awareness of correct conventional use of the English language will be upheld. Students build up a body of work over the semester. For full credit and in demonstration of a writing “process,” the final portfolios should include both first drafts and subsequent revisions. At least one longer text (or set of poems) will be selected for submission as would be appropriate to publishers or literary contests.

Sample Syllabus

Beginning workshop in creative writing designed to explore and refine the student's individual writing interests. This course may include fiction and/or poetry and creative non-fiction. 

Sample Syllabus

In this class students are encouraged to consider the intersectional environments (natural, urban, cultural, historical etc.) that they interact with and within, and how their sensibilities differ living away from home to contemplate how a sense of place can be conveyed through writing. We will engage with a diverse range of readings – featuring many Australian authors – and discuss technical elements and affective poetics to learn how to ‘read as a writer’. Weeks are devoted to crafting the short story, contemporary indigenous storytelling, creative nonfiction, and poetry. The class emphasizes the importance of embodied interaction with the city through a field trip using ‘The Disappearing’ – a downloadable app featuring over 100 site-specific poems spanning a ‘poetic map’ of Sydney, created by The Red Room Company. Students will think about the possibilities of marrying new technologies with writing as they navigate using poems as landmarks. Students shall workshop their drafts during the course, learning how to effectively communicate critical feedback and how to be receptive to constructive critique.

Sample Syllabus

Although the Italian peninsula has been the site of some of the oldest and most significant
civilizations in Western history, the modern Italian state is relatively young, having been
established only in 1861. Italy’s geographical and cultural complexities have ensured that
regional identities throughout the country remain strong, to the extent that many Italians
still identify closely with their more immediate social, cultural, and political traditions.
Furthermore, Italy is positioned as a gateway of the Mediterranean world, making it both
the center (if one views it from the shores of North Africa) and the periphery (if one views
it from the countries bordering the North Sea) of Europe. This course will focus on the
tensions and ambiguities present in post‐unification Italian society, using the rich cultural
and social heritage of Florence as a starting point for the study of the delicate mixture of
regional and national elements that make up contemporary Italy.

Sample Syllabus

Open to all students. For NYU, fulfills MAP Cultures & Contexts requirement.

This class introduces students to an in-depth academic study of changing views of British national identity and culture, using a variety of primary and secondary sources. Britain is a multi-national state, a union of 4 nations, each with their own distinctive cultures and heritages. Three of the nations, Wales, Scotland and Ireland have been brought under the English monarchy and political system, and, in the case of the first two, they have been long-term partners in the benefits accruing to the largest empire the world has seen and the first, and for a long time, the most successful industrial nation. The height of that unity was probably in the period of the Second World War and its aftermath. Since then, with the collapse of the British Empire, Britain’s membership of the European Union, devolution of power to Scotland and Wales, the union has come under increasing pressure from centrifugal forces. The course examines the image that Britain presents to the world, the myths on which the national identity of the component nations were formed and the institutions that might be considered to hold the union together today. This involves looking at the self-image of Britain in relation to empire, foreign policy, immigration and multiculturalism, monarchy, parliament , sport and media representations. British national identity is revealed as an increasingly contested concept in a globalised world.

Sample Syllabus

France and the U.S. have a habit of looking at one another as anti-models when it comes to discussions of assimilation and difference, “race,” identity, community and diversity. In this course, we explore this comparison as a productive means for re-considering these terms. Why is the notion of “ethnic community” so problematic in France? And why do Americans insist on the “homogeneity” of the French nation, even as, at various points throughout modern French history, France has received more immigrants to its shores than the United States? Through readings, film screenings, and site visits we explore the movements and encounters that have made Paris a rich, and sometimes controversial, site of cultural exchange. Topics include contemporary polemics on questions such as headscarves, the banlieue, the new Paris museums of immigration and “primitive” art, affirmative action and discrimination positive, historic expressions of exoticism, négritude, and anti-colonialism. Occasional case studies drawn from the American context help provide a comparative framework for these ideas. Conducted in English.

Sample Syllabus 

Russia’s rich and multifaced cultural identity has been shaped in a thousand year long process of interaction with a range of diverse cultural formations of the ‘West’ and ‘East’ (including Byzantine/ Christian ‘East’, Central Asian/Muslim ‘East’, South Asian/Indian ‘East”, and East Asian/Confucian ‘East’). For the last 300 years, since the era of Peter the Great, Russia’s greatest statesmen, philosphers, religious thinkers, writers, poets and creative artists were obssesed with the question of Russia’s distinctive cultural identity. This passionate search for the ‘Russian soul’ is apparently far from over, as the recent rise of interest in the ideas of ‘Eurasianism’ and ‘Neo-Slavophilism’ testifies. This course in Russian intellectual history explores the sources of Russia’s unique cultural blend through examination of some of the principal textual and artistic images representative of traditions that emerged at the geographic and cultural crossroads of Eastern Europe, including those which constitute Russia’s unique contribution to world culture. Students are encouraged to think critically and with a historically informed sensibility about the diverse perceptions of reality in cultures different from their own, especially about such fundamental categories as national identity, religion, morality, community, individual, gender, and the ‘other’.

Sample Syllabus

Open to all students. For NYU, fulfills MAP Cultures & Contexts requirement.

Prague is without doubts one of the most important historical, geopolitical and cultural capitals of Central Europe. The concept of Central Europe is somewhat elusive and it is difficult to define it by geographical or political categories. Often, it is characterized simply as a space on the edge between the West and East. However, most scholars agree that there is a distinct Central European culture. Identified as having been one of the world’s richest sources of creative talent and thought between the 17th and 20th centuries, Central Europe was represented by many distinguished figures such as Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Kant, Goethe and Hegel; later followed by Kafka, Rilke, Freud, Mendel and Dvorak, to mention at least some. Central European culture is based on historical, social and cultural characteristics shared by the countries of this geopolitical entity. It is a result of complicated historical, political, ethnic, cultural, artistic and religious interactions throughout more then thousand years of its history. We explore characteristics of Central Europe primarily from the perspective of Prague and its cultural history, which is so typical and almost archetypal for this region. Students study geopolitical characteristics and various phenomena that co-create the idea of Central Europe. Taking advantage of course location in Prague, students have the opportunity to examine the primary sources and artifacts (literature, music, art, film) in their contexts and environment.

Sample Syllabus

Students registering for this course must also register for the theatre visits section.

This course carries an additional fee of £280 to cover the cost of theatre tickets.

This course, designed to introduce students to the range of 20th-century drama staged in the contemporary London theater scene, presents a wide variety of British, American, and multicultural works currently playing. Students analyze the history of the modern theatre in London. Emphasis is placed on comparative interpretation of texts and the dramatic performances of works.

Sample Syllabus

Students registering for this class must also register for the Theatre Visits section.

This course carries an additional fee of £130 to cover the cost of theatre tickets.

This course provides an introduction to the dramatic work of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Students read and attend representative comedies, tragedies, and histories, their selection to be determined by the plays actually in production in and around London, particularly at the Barbican, New Globe, and Stratford to which at least one excursion will be made. Special attention will be given to the playhouses and the influence they had on the art of the theatre, actors' companies, and modes of production and performance. Lectures and discussions will focus on the aesthetic quality of the plays, their relationship with the audiences (then and now), the application of the diverse attitudes and assumptions of modern critical theory to the Elizabethan stage, the contrasting structures of Shakespearean and non-Shakespearean drama, the new emphasis on selfhood and individuality, and the major themes of hierarchy, order, and justice, the conflict of Nature and Fortune, the role of Providence, the ideals of love, and the norms of social accord. Opportunities will be given to investigate the interrelations of the plays and other arts, including film, opera, and ballet. 

Sample Syllabus

Prerequisite of SPAN-UA 100 or to be taken concurrently with SPAN-UA 9100 with permission of the director.

A survey of Spanish cinema from the early beginnings of the silent movie to the present day. Important figures, such as Luis Buñuel, Luis García Berlanga, Edgar Neville, Juan Antonio Bardem, Fernando Fernán Gómez, Carlos Saura, and others are studied, as well as the phenomenon of cinema as a reflection of the political, social, and cultural development of the country and its people. A selection of the most representative films is shown in class.

Sample Syllabus 

This course will examine contemporary and classical French theater from a new perspective. Far from scholarly chronological norms, we will use contemporary writings in order to better study their classical sources and inspirations. Theatre is an artistic discipline that is constantly in communication with its past. Theatre examines its roots in order to reorient and renew itself. Actors and directors reinvent the verses of Corneille, Moliere and Shakespeare so that they can better discover the writings of today. Dramaturgists reflect contemporary society, yet are always nourished by their predecessors so that they can either create a connection or break with them definitively. In this course we will examine great contemporary authors such as Jarry, Cocteau, Giraudoux, Sartre, Camus, Beckett, Ionesco, Koltes, Wajdi Mouawad, etc. As for the great classical figures, we will discuss such various authors as Sophocles, Corneille, Shakespeare and Racine. How did Jean-Paul Sartre use Corneille and Racine to give credence to his theatre? How was Cocteau or Giraudoux inspired by ancient theatre? What did Koltes take from classical tragedy in order to create his own dramas? This course will examine both theatrical writings as well as current productions in order to answer these questions. All the performances seen for the course as well as the works read will be discussed in oral presentations or written summaries. Conducted in French.

This course examines the notion of French culture through an analysis of French cinema. Placing films in their historical and cultural context, we consider how cinema provides a window on French society, while recognizing that they are cultural products specific to a particular historical moment. Social history, cultural archetypes and artistic creation will be some of the topics under consideration. Conducted in French.

Sample Syllabus

This course examines the notion of French culture through an analysis of French cinema. Placing films in their historical and cultural context, we consider how cinema provides a window on French society, while recognizing that they are cultural products specific to a particular historical moment. Social history, cultural archetypes and artistic creation will be some of the topics under consideration. Conducted in English.

Sample Syllabus

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

Note: On Albert course is posted under NYU Shanghai: Chinese Language

This course introduces students to Chinese language, history and culture. It is aimed at students with no prior knowledge of Chinese. The language component of the course runs for 14 weeks and focuses on the development of competence in verbal communication and communication structures which can be used in daily life in China. The ‘daily culture’ component includes weekly excursions that are closely tied to the language topics being studied. The history and broader cultural components of the course will start from Week 8 and involve a weekly lecture and/or film to provide students with a basic overview of important historical events, as well as more recent economic, social and environmental developments. This course does not cover Elementary Chinese I. It is designed for students who have already completed their language requirement for their major or who will complete their language requirement with another language. Students cannot take this class if they have already completed Elementary Chinese I or equivalent or more advanced course. This course is not intended for native Chinese speakers. Finally, completion of this course does not qualify students to take Elementary Chinese II.

This course is designed for students who have Chinese-speaking background and who can understand and speak conversational Chinese related to daily life situations. It aims to develop students' correct pronunciation, grammatical accuracy and overall competence in reading and writing. Students who pass this class can enroll in "Intermediate Chinese I for Advanced Beginners".

Sample Syllabus

This course is the second part of a one-year elementary-level Chinese course designed for students who have completed NYU-SH’s Elementary Chinese I or equivalent. It is designed to reinforce and further develop language skills in listening, speaking, reading, and writing as it relates to everyday life situations. The objectives of the course are: (1) to continue mastering the Chinese phonetic system (pinyin and tones); (2) to become further familiarized with the construction of commonly used Chinese Characters (both simplified and traditional); (3) to understand and use correctly basic Chinese grammar and sentence structures; (4) to continue building up essential vocabulary; (5) to read and write level appropriate passages (150-200 characters long); and (6) to become acquainted with aspects of Chinese culture and society related to the course materials.

Sample Syllabus

This course is the first part of a one-year intermediate-level Chinese course designed for students who have completed NYU-SH’s Elementary Chinese II or equivalent. It is designed to consolidate and develop overall aural-oral proficiency. Objectives are: (1) to be able to obtain information from more extended conversation; (2) to express and expound on, in relative length, feelings and opinions on common topics; (3) to develop vocabulary needed to discuss common topics and begin learning to decipher meaning of compound words; (4) to develop reading comprehension of more extended narrative and expository passages; (5) to write, in relative length (200-250 characters long), personal narratives, informational narratives, comparison and discussion of viewpoints with level-appropriate vocabulary and grammatical accuracy, as well as basic syntactical cohesion; (6) to continue being acquainted with aspects of Chinese culture and society related to the course materials.

Sample Syllabus

This course is designed for students who have Chinese-speaking background and who can understand and speak conversational Chinese related to daily life situations. It aims to develop students' correct pronunciation, grammatical accuracy and overall competence in reading and writing. Students who pass this class can enroll in "Advanced Chinese 1".

This course is the second part of a one-year intermediate-level Chinese course designed for students who have completed NYU-SH’s Intermediate Chinese I or equivalent. It is designed to continue consolidating and developing overall aural-oral proficiency, gradually focusing more on semi-formal or formal linguistic expressions. Objectives are: (1) to further develop competence in obtaining information from more extended conversation; (2) to express and expound on, in more extended length, feelings and opinions on socio-cultural topics; (3) to develop more specialized vocabulary needed to discuss sociocultural topics; (4) to improve students’ ability to decipher meaning of compound words; (5) to further develop reading comprehension of extended narrative, expository and simple argumentative passages; (6) to learn to solve simple syntactical problems independently; (7) to write, in relative length (250-300) characters long) informational narratives, expository and simple argumentative passages with level-appropriate vocabulary and grammatical accuracy, as well as basic syntactical cohesion; and (7) to continue being acquainted with aspects of Chinese culture and society related to the course materials.

Sample Syllabus

This course is the first part of a one-year Advanced Chinese course designed for students who have successfully completed Intermediate Chinese II at NYU-SH, or who have at least the equivalent knowledge of Chinese upon registration. It is designed to reinforce and further improve students’ overall communicative competence by incorporating semi-formal or formal usages. The objectives of the course are: (1) to learn to apply formal linguistic expressions in speaking and writing; (2) to acquire specialized vocabulary and patterns necessary for conducting formal discussions of socio-cultural topics; (3) to develop reading comprehension of texts with more advanced syntax; (4) to learn to make context-based guesses about the meaning of a new word and further enhance students’ ability to analyze as well as produce sentences with more complex syntactical features; (5) to learn to write expository and argumentative passages in more extended length; and (6) to learn to employ basic rhetoric devices in writing.

Sample Syllabus

This course is the second part of a one-year Advanced Chinese course designed for students who have successfully completed Advanced Chinese I at NYU-SH, or who have the equivalent knowledge of Chinese upon registration. It is designed to reinforce and further improve students’ overall communicative competence by incorporating semi-formal or formal usages. The objectives of the course are: (1) to enhance further students’ oral and written communicative competence using formal linguistic expressions; (2) to expand further specialized vocabulary and patterns necessary for conducting formal discussions of socio-cultural topics relevant to today’s China; (3) to improve further students’ reading comprehension of texts with more advanced syntax; (4) to develop further their competence in making context-based guess about the meaning of a new word, and further enhance ability to analyze as well as produce sentences with more complex syntactical features; (5) to improve further their ability to write expository and argumentative passages in more extended length; (6) to improve their ability to effectively employ basic rhetoric devices in writing.

Sample Syllabus

In this course we will select a number of critical issues in modern Chinese history to examine the political, social and cultural transformations of modern China. Topics of lectures include Confucianism and its modern fate, popular movements, the Great Leap Forward Movement, the role of Shanghai in modern China, Tiananmen Movement and the prospect of Chinese political reforms. The course will be approached through lectures, site visits, class discussions, and research.

Sample Syllabus

This course examines Chinese films in their social, cultural and political context. Spanning the history of Chinese film, this course traces the stylistic development of Chinese cinema, and the political and social movements that shaped film content and aesthetics as well as the structure of film production.

Sample Syllabus

This course is not open to NYU Stern students.

Prerequisite: ECON-UA 1 (Economic Principals) or ECON-UA 5 (Introduction to Economic Analysis)

There are two parts to this course. In the first part of the course we will study two of the main financial asset markets: bond markets and stock markets. We will study the concept and determination of interest rates; the risk structure and the term structure of interest rates; stock pricing and the efficient markets hypothesis; cross-border arbitrage. We will also analyze financial structure in Argentina and other Latin American banks.

In the second part of the course we will study the monetary and financial system. We will study how money is created, the tools of monetary policy, the commercial banking industry and its links to monetary policy and the Central Bank, and how monetary policy affects the economy in general. In this part we will also analyze how market failures (such as information asymmetries) and distortionary policies (such as financial repression) may hinder the contribution of financial markets and monetary policy to macroeconomic stability. The roles of state-owned banks in Latin American economies will also be discussed.

Sample Syllabus

This course is not open to NYU Stern students.

Prerequisites: Pre-calculus or equivalent level of mathematical training

Introduction to the American economy, elements of supply and demand, and basic macroeconomic principles. Includes national income and employment, money, banking, inflation, business fluctuations, monetary and fiscal policy, the balance of payments, and comparative economic systems. Conducted in English.

Sample Syllabus

This course is not open to NYU Stern students.

Prerequisites: Pre-calculus or equivalent level of mathematical training

Focuses on individual economic decision makers—households, business firms, and government agencies—and how they are linked together. The emphasis is on decision making by households and firms and how these decisions shape our economic life. Explores the different environments in which businesses sell their products, hire workers, and raise funds to expand their operations; the economic effects of various government policies, such as minimum wage legislation, rent controls, antitrust laws, and more. Conducted in English.

Prerequisites: ECON-UA 1 Economic Principles or ECON-UA 5 Intro to Economic Analysis or equivalents

The financial crisis that hit the global economy since the summer of 2008 is without precedent in post-war economic history. Although its size and extent are exceptional. the crisis has many features in common with similar financial-stress driven recession episodes in the past. However, this time there’s something different, with the crisis being global akin to the events that triggered the Great Depression of the 1930s. This crisis spread quickly and rapidly moved from the US to European countries that show the weakest economic indicators (PIIGS: Portugal, Ireland and Italy, Greece and Spain). This course will focus on the long run causes, consequences and EU responses to the crisis, conditionally on the characteristics of the countries involved. We will focus on the long process of European Integration and discuss whether it may represent a possible solution to the recent crisis.

Sample Syllabus

This course is not open to NYU Stern students.

Prerequisite: ECON-UA 1 (Economic Principals) or ECON-UA 5 (Introduction to Economic Analysis)

We offer a perspective on the workings of the monetary and financial system within a country and at an international level. The role of money and the tools to conduct monetary policy will be analyzed in detail. The concept of the value of money now and in the future helps in understanding the role of interest rates and of risk; various way to store wealth will take us into the structure of financial markets where financial instruments are created and traded to meet diverse needs. Some basic concepts on the role played by commercial banks will introduce the function of the Central Bank and of monetary policy in the overall goal of ensuring financial stability to the system. Current issues, such as the role of the European Central Bank and the instability created by the subprime mortgage crisis, will be discussed.

Sample Syllabus 

This course is not open to NYU Stern students.

Prerequisites: Microeconomics & Macroeconomics (ECON-UA 1 and ECON-UA 2) or equivalents.

Focuses on international trade in goods, services, and capital.The issues discussed include gains from trade and their distribution; analysis of protectionism; strategic trade barriers; the trade deficit; exchange rate determination; and government intervention in foreign exchange markets.

Prerequisites: Intermediate Microeconomics, Intermediate Macroeconomics, & International Economics (NYU ECON-UA 10, ECON-UA 12, & ECON-UA 238) or equivalents.

This course aims at offering a global perspective on development, long term change in the world economy, and the interaction between countries, regulatory systems and firms. Recent developments have changed completely the patterns of development and the relationships between developed and developing/emerging countries.
The focus of the course is on the shift of production to East Asia, on poverty and inequality, on the dynamics of international trade and investment, including changes in production patterns (outsourcing, offshoring, service offshoring), on the relationship between trade and economic growth, trade imbalances and protectionism, and on the impact of technological innovation on international competitiveness.

Sample Syllabus

Prerequisites: ECON-UA 2 and MATH-UA 121 (Calculus I). (Not open to NYU Stern students.)

Examines the manner in which producers, consumers, and resource owners acting through the market determine the prices and output of goods, the allocation of productive resources, and the functional distribution of incomes. The price system is seen as a network of interrelated decisions, with the market process serving to communicate information to decision makers.

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.

This course is not open to NYU Stern students.

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

The principal characteristics of the financial system and its current challenges; derivatives, financial innovation and the banking industry; money supply and monetary policy; bonds, equities and interest rates; financial supervision and regulation; pricing of financial securities and balanced portfolios; foreign exchange and how currency markets impact policy and asset choices; international policy co-ordination; banking crises and reform programmes.

This course is not open to NYU Stern students.

Prerequisite: ECON-UA 9001, Economic Principles and ECON-UA 9002, Economic Principles II

This course focuses on international trade in goods, services, and capital. It serves as an introduction to international economic issues and as preparation for the department’s more advanced course in ECON-UA 324. The issues discussed include gains from trade and their distribution; analysis of protectionism; strategic trade barriers; the trade deficit; exchange rate determination and government intervention in foreign exchange markets.

This course is not open to NYU Stern students.

Prerequisite: Precalculus (NYU MATH-UA 9)

Focuses on the economy as a whole (the "macroeconomy"). Begins with the meaning and measurement of important macroeconomic data (on unemployment, inflation, and production), then turns to the behavior of the overall economy. Topics include long-run economic growth and the standard of living; the causes and consequences of economic booms and recessions; the banking system and the Federal Reserve; the stock and bond markets; international exchange rates and the impact of global economic events; and the role of government policy.

Sample Syllabus

NOTE: This course does not count for NYU Economics major credit.

Prof. V. Semerak
The course deals with issues of transition from socialism to market economy and democracy in Central and Eastern Europe. It will cover topics ranging from the characteristic properties of classical socialism: political structure, ownership, co-ordination mechanisms, growth pattern, investment, prices, wages and employment in the system. The course then discusses inducements for reforms and experiments with market socialism. The main focus is issues of transition: political transformation, economic stabilization, privatization, corporate governance issues, changes in employment, income distribution and social security. The course analyzes political aspects of the transition process and identifies the main political constraints of economic decisions taken by transition countries. Finally, the course focuses on the accession of transition countries to the European Union, on its economic and political aspects. Basic principles of EU economic policies are discussed and framed into the transition process of Central European countries.

Syllabus

Prerequisites: ECON-UA 10 or ECON-UA 11, Intermediate Microeconomics or Microeconomics (Theory).

The subject of the course is to describe one of the most profound changes to take place in the history of the world economy - the rapid change from centrally planned economies to market economies throughout what used to be known as "the Soviet block". Although some reforms in some countries began much earlier, the true transition began in most Central and Eastern European countries roughly in 1990. This means that scholars and researchers are only now beginning to have the data and a sufficient distance needed to study and analyze the transition process.

Sample Syllabus

Prerequisite: Economic Principles I & II (ECON-UA 1 & ECON-UA 2) or equivalents

This course will examine the global financial crisis of 2007-2009, including the hypotheses underlying the origins and propagation of the crisis, and the policy responses that occurred along a variety of dimensions. Topics covered will range from the role of financial institutions (banking and shadow banking) and capital markets, overview of emergency measures taken including monetary and fiscal policy, and regulatory reform both domestic and abroad.

The course will be a combination of lecture, discussion and special meetings with outside participants who have played a role in the financial crisis and policy response.

Sample Syllabus

This course is not open to NYU Stern students.

Prerequisite: Economic Principles I & II (ECON-UA 1 & ECON-UA 2) or equivalents

This course focuses on international trade in goods, services, and capital. It serves as an introduction to international economic issues and as preparation for the department’s more advanced course. The issues discussed include gains from trade and their distribution; analysis of protectionism; strategic trade barriers; the trade deficit; exchange rate determination and government intervention in foreign exchange markets.

Sample Syllabus

On Christmas Day, 1764 Horace Walpole published The Castle of Otranto, the very first Gothic novel. The Gothic flourished especially in the nineteenth century, creating a whole vocabulary of new creatures and landscapes and two of the great books of the genre: Frankenstein And Dracula. This course concentrates on the great works of Gothic which are central to an understanding of literature, film, early Romanticism and popular culture. Specialising on the works of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries we will also explore how those texts were reinvented for film and what new elements were added in the twentieth century. Using a selection of texts and using a variety of approaches from the historical to the post modern and the feminist to queer theory we will explore the multifarious levels of meaning in Gothic texts as well as looking at narrative strategies and a variety of themes including the political and revolutionary, the erotic and the exotic, the Promethian and the undead, the role of religion, the role of women, the Wandering Jew and the 'mock' medieval.

Most of these major texts from the canon of English literature have been selected because they open out onto life in London at the time they were written. We shall be concerned not only with topics of place and setting, but also with issues of individual and national identity, as well as with forms of verse, drama, and fictional narratives. We shall be seeing a performance of Marlowe’s Dr Faustus at Shakespeare’s Globe, witnessing justice in action in a London court, as well as visiting the houses of Dr Johnson and Charles Dickens, Tate Britain, and viewing screen versions of a couple of our chosen novels. Texts will be studied in chronological order; the course is weighted towards literature of the last 100 years. The Oxford Book of English Verse will help give us a sense of continuity and change.

Sample Syllabus

Students registering for this course must also register for the theatre visits section.

This course carries an additional fee of £280 to cover the cost of theatre tickets.

This course, designed to introduce students to the range of 20th-century drama staged in the contemporary London theater scene, presents a wide variety of British, American, and multicultural works currently playing. Students analyze the history of the modern theatre in London. Emphasis is placed on comparative interpretation of texts and the dramatic performances of works.

Sample Syllabus

This course will study a variety of texts written at particular times in the history of London. The aims of the course are to encourage student to think historically, in terms of the way London and representations of the city have changed and developed over time; and theoretically, in terms of the way the city is mediated through different forms and genres (e.g. poetry, novels, essays, film). We will also examine the texts in relation to issues such as gender, the definition of the modern metropolis as a labyrinthine city of Babylon, the influence of metropolitan culture on Modernism and Modernity, assimilation versus multiculturalism, immigration, and the effects of new modern spaces on individuals.

Students registering for this class must also register for the Theatre Visits section.

This course carries an additional fee of £130 to cover the cost of theatre tickets.

This course provides an introduction to the dramatic work of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Students read and attend representative comedies, tragedies, and histories, their selection to be determined by the plays actually in production in and around London, particularly at the Barbican, New Globe, and Stratford to which at least one excursion will be made. Special attention will be given to the playhouses and the influence they had on the art of the theatre, actors' companies, and modes of production and performance. Lectures and discussions will focus on the aesthetic quality of the plays, their relationship with the audiences (then and now), the application of the diverse attitudes and assumptions of modern critical theory to the Elizabethan stage, the contrasting structures of Shakespearean and non-Shakespearean drama, the new emphasis on selfhood and individuality, and the major themes of hierarchy, order, and justice, the conflict of Nature and Fortune, the role of Providence, the ideals of love, and the norms of social accord. Opportunities will be given to investigate the interrelations of the plays and other arts, including film, opera, and ballet. 

Sample Syllabus

This course will examine the major British novels of the 19th Century in the context of their setting in London and British culture. The course will include visits to London sites presented in the works that will be read. Readings include such major novelists as Dickens, Thackeray, Wilde, Woolf, and others. 

This course is an introduction to the literatures of Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific region, with a focus on indigenous, migrant and diasporic writing. In addition to major texts from Australia and New Zealand, we will also encounter a range of works from Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, and the Pacific islands. Some questions we will tackle include: How have the cultural, historical, and economic processes of colonialism, diaspora and migration connected and shaped this diverse region? How have issues of race and indigeneity been central to various discourses of nationalism? What particular roles have Australia and New Zealand, as sub-imperial powers, played in the region? Finally, what can the latest generation of migrant writing in Australia show us about new forms of interconnections across the globalizing Asia-Pacific? Students in this course will examine novels, poetry, films and theoretical texts to develop critical thinking, reading and writing skills. Along the way, they will gain a solid grounding in the problematics of postcolonialism, race, diaspora, indigeneity, nationalism and multiculturalism.

Sample Syllabus

Recent findings in the biological and physical sciences pose complex questions not just for those who work in the lab, but for philosophers, scholars, artists and students of literary theory. In this course we consider the cultural reverberations of ecological awareness—focusing on literature, cinema and visual art. Eco-criticism is a relatively young field of study in the humanities, developed in response to twin crises: actual environmental degradation, and a breakdown in intellectual categories of ‘the natural’ brought on by technology and politics. This course provides an opportunity to reflect on a number of key tropes in ecological thinking including wilderness, pollution, animals, food and apocalypse. Learn about a philosopher who survived a crocodile attack, the beach at the end of the world, how to prepare and eat Australian moths, and why the Large Hadron Collider is a metaphysical machine. Principle texts in this course include American and Australian novels, films and documentaries, read alongside supplementary sources in literary, audio and artistic mediums. We ask how literature—one of the richest arenas for the practice of human imagination—does, has, or could shape environmental thought and action. How does the non-human world enter into human artforms? What are the historical and structural obstacles to admitting different forms of consciousness into text? What literary genres and styles are called forth by the huge ecological challenges of our times?

Sample Syllabus

With the focus on urban ecology this course examines Berlin’s urban planning approaches and their history, asking whether and how, the city’s built form, biophysical processes, and social life are intertwined and ‘sustainable’. The course offers an extensive survey of theory and method drawn from the fields of ‘urban’ ecology, geography, and anthropology, as well as site visits to several facets of Berlin’s ‘green’ past and present. By combining the experience of site visits with a careful study of contemporary urban ecology, we will consider how contests over environmental knowledge, socio-cultural ideology, and discourse shape human engagement with urban nature. The main questions are: how have Berlin’s ‘green’ features developed in relation to economic, socio-cultural, and political processes? How do sustainable projects change Berlin, and how are they experienced and shaped by different social groups? This is a reading-intensive 6-credit course that meets for 3,5 hours per week.

Sample Syllabus

This course explores the environmental situation in China by examining both the very serious environmental challenges that China faces and the governance system(s) that exist in China for dealing with those challenges. In order to assess these challenges and systems, the course introduces a comparative dimension – looking at not only the Chinese system, but the American system as well, examining the environmental challenges and governance system of the United States, as well as the broader context within which China and the U.S. together constitute the two primary sources of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Is it possible to compare the American and Chinese systems? Can concepts of governance and assessment be translated between the two systems? What can China learn from the U.S.? What can America learn from China? Will the profound differences in our political and economic systems make environmental cooperation impossible, leading inevitably to conflict? Will globalization and technological innovation lead to healthy competition and cooperation to address common problems?

Sample Syllabus

In this hybrid reading / writing class, we will explore environmental journalism from an Australian perspective. Each week we will read and discuss work that explores this journalistic tradition, its forms and its themes and the place it takes in the new media world. Drawing our inspiration from great writers, we will find our own stories, our own voices and learn to tell our own tales. We will grapple with the debates around environmental advocacy, ethics and objectivity and develop techniques to help us wade through the quicksand of scientific proof and funding agendas. Big local issues in the environmental conversation in Australia include water scarcity and the battle over inland rivers, damage caused by intensive agriculture such as spreading dryland salinity, land clearing, the felling of old-growth forests, combating exotic animals and plants, preserving the Wild, marine conservation and the Reef, protecting our primarily coastal homes from rising sea-levels, our economic reliance on uranium, coal and other mining, urban encroachment into agricultural land and the tension between indigenous rights and environmental aims. As a big coal and uranium miner, Australia also plays an important part in global debates around nuclear issues and ocean and air quality.

Sample Syllabus

For the first time in world history, the number of people living in urban areas exceeds the number of people living in rural areas. In acknowledging the urgent demands of our urban present and future, this course examines the social, economic, and environmental dimensions of contemporary cities. Because projections show that most population growth will continue to take place in and around cities, this course makes the case for sustainable development as a way to mitigate the impacts of human growth. We will explore what is, and what could be, by discussing these themes: urban sprawl, slums and slum typology, green urban planning, air and water quality, new paradigms for energy/water/waste infrastructure, green building, sustainable materials, and whole systems design. We will consider how to measure sustainability and discuss the effectiveness of sustainability indicators. We will examine governance structures, social entrepreneurship, and the power of information technology and social networks in promoting sustainable development and the diffusion of ideas. We will also highlight the transformative role of art and culture in our sustainable urban future.

Provides an overview of the legal and institutional foundations of the European Union before focusing on the question of the EU's democratic legitimacy or lack thereof. The historical process of European unification will be explored and various positions on the EU's democratic deficit and ways to remedy it examined. The roots of the current tensions between Europe and the U.S. and the future of European-American relations will also be discussed. 

Sample Syllabus

NYU Sociology Students: This course counts as an advanced seminar

Examines the development of Europe's and America's images of one another from the 18th century to the present through literary texts and historical documents, with special attention to sources from Germany. The roots of current U.S.-European tensions, both cultural and political, will also be explored. 

Sample Syllabus

This course introduces contemporary Italy in all its complexity and fascination. Reviewing politics, economics, society, and culture over the past two centuries, the course has a primary goal -- to consider how developments since the 1800s have influenced the lives and formed the outlook of today's Italians. In other words, we are engaged in the historical search for something quite elusive: Italian “identity”. Topics will include the unification of the country, national identity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the First World War, and Italian fascism, World War Two and the resistance, the post-war Italian Republic, the economic "miracle", the South, the Mafia, terrorism, popular culture, and the most recent political and social developments, including Italy and the European Union. Lectures combine with readings and films (taking advantage of Italy’s magnificent post-war cinema).

Sample Syllabus 

Built out of the rubble of World War II, the European Union was hailed in the latter part of the 20th century as a brilliant model of supranational organization, that would ensure both the security and economic prosperity of its member states. Since the turn of the 21st century, however, this vision has given way to a sense of disillusionment and crisis. In this course, we investigate the history of these shifts, with a specific focus on France, in an effort to understand the current crisis. Topics include the history and development of the Union, its structure and current developments, cooperation among member-states and integration policies, the impact on member states of economic and monetary integration, the problem with the euro, European citizenship and its limits, past and future enlargements, and geopolitical strategies and considerations. Conducted in French.

This course investigates the history, the structure and the inner logic and working of European integration from the end of the Second World War to present day. It will provide students with an overview of the political institutions, the member states and the current developments of the European Union while focusing on the paramount role played by France throughout the years. Conducted in English.

Sample Syllabus

This course will try to put European security into the context of today’s world: from the collapse of communism and dissolution of the Warsaw Pact through the years of wars in the former Yugoslavia, the wars on former Soviet territory, and to the stateless threat of terrorism today. But study limited to Europe would be pointless; the Old Continent is no longer the prime player on the planet. Therefore a series of related topics and areas will also be discussed: U.S. military might (especially compared to the European armed forces); the situation in adjacent regions (North Africa, Middle East, Russia and Ukraine) and its implication for Europe; and the new types of terrorism. 

Sample Syllabus

The overriding goal of this course is to reach an understanding of the key strategic issues facing Europe in today’s global context. We will track how Europe has reached the present critical juncture in its history and consider where it is headed, including the options available to European policy-makers amid the on-going crisis in the EU. To this end, we will examine the key events of the 19th and 20th centuries that led to the foundation of the EU and have shaped contemporary Europe. At the same time, we will consider Europe’s relations with the US as today’s sole superpower, the challenges posed by the resurgence of China and Russia and Europe’s role as a major player in the resource-rich Eurasian continent, where a new round of great power competition is unfolding.
The course is interdisciplinary: it draws on political economy, history, international relations and geopolitics. It aims to raise questions and stimulate discussion rather than provide clear-cut answers.

Sample Syllabus

Totalitarian ideologies which were used in European political discourse in the twentieth century to explain major historical changes have changed forever the relationship between the state and its citizens. The aspiration of the totalitarian state to acquire total control over individual lives through control of education, employment and health systems succeeded beyond anything perceived possible until then in any political regime after European Enlightenment. Nazism and Communism mobilized irrationally motivated mass support and won power in a very short time. Their success was partially based on a mass propaganda, using fear as primary instinctive argument against a picture of both external and internal enemies. The major focus of the course will be oriented towards topics trying to explain the reasons for mass support for totalitarian ideologies and states on the basis of individual psychology. We will examine psychological explanations of a selfvictimisation, role of a victim and a perpetrator, majority society response to mass human rights abuses and the abusive past. On this background a phenomenon of a political and cultural dissent will be introduced and discussed. The role of electronic mass media, antiglobalisation movements and global terrorism are discussed as possible modern vehicles of totalitarian tendencies and reactions against them.

Sample Syllabus

This course will concentrate on the analysis of the pursuits of democracy in Western Europe. Firstly, the conception of Europe will be explored in its historical perspective and different perceptions: territorial, political, spiritual, cultural etc. Secondly, the characterizing social cleavages of Europe will be introduced: territorial, economic, religious, national, ethnic etc. Furthermore, we will discuss how these cleavages get expressed in the formation of different social interests and lead to the organization of interests groups, political parties and NGOs. Thirdly, turning towards the institutional structures of West European parliamentary democracies, we will address the existence of political party systems, as well as the executive and legislative powers represented by government and parliament. Fourthly, we will explore the rules and outcomes of different electoral systems, which ensure regular rotation of political elites at power – however, under different principles. Finally, we will assess the enrichment of the classical models of government in Western Europe, which have in the last 20 years been supplemented by additional players participating in the decision making processes on different levels (local, regional, national and European) – leading to new political conceptualization of ‘governance’. Also, while European states remain core units of European integration, they are also influenced by the EU, leading to their Europeanization. The new challenges facing Western Europe, such as globalization, continuing European integration, regionalization, restructuring of social welfare systems and the issues of identity, will be discussed. 

Sample Syllabus

How has Australian cinema engaged with significant and often contested historical, political and cultural events in the nation’s past? The films in this course offer critical perspectives on the history of colonisation in Australia; the legacies of the Stolen Generations; the controversies surrounding Australia’s role in World War One and the Vietnam War; as well as Australia’s relationships with its Pacific Asian neighbours. We will focus on films that have marked significant shifts in public consciousness about the past such as Gallipoli (1981), Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002) and Balibo (2009). We will also draw on films that have employed innovative narrative and aesthetic strategies for exploring the relationship between the past and the present such as Two Laws (1982) and The Tracker (2002). Throughout the course, students will develop their understanding of the basic methods and concepts of cinema studies. In particular, students will develop a critical vocabulary for analysing how filmmakers have approached the use of memory, testimony, re-enactment, researched detail, allegory and archives across a diverse range of examples. This includes restorations, revivals and re-imaginings of Australian cinema history such as the controversial restoration of Wake in Fright (1971) as an Australian classic; the reconstruction of Australia’s first feature film, The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906); and the revived interest in Ozploitation after the release of Not Quite Hollywood (2008).

Sample Syllabus

Emphasizing one of the most influential film movements in the post-World War II era, the cinema of the Czech New Wave. This cinema studies course explores the history and development of Czech and Slovak cinema. Lectures are supplemented with screenings.

Sample Syllabus

Open to students in both Programs I & II

This workshop allows students the opportunity to sing their way to a discovery of French language and culture. Students expand their vocabulary and improve their pronunciation through performance while learning about the history and context of this popular art form. The workshop culminates in a performance at the end of the semester. Conducted in French.

Sample Syllabus 

Open to students in both Programs I & II

In this workshop students have the opportunity to deepen their understanding of phonetics and improve their pronunciation and comprehension of spoken French. Through listening exercises, poetry, and role-plays, students will work on articulation, rhythm and intonation. Conducted in French.

Sample Syllabus 

Open to students in both Program I & II

Working in collaboration with the Experimental Theatre Workshop and Acting French courses, this course provides a coherent framework for students to produce and present a sustained body of visual work that will constitute an integrated part of the end of semester theatre performances. Students may work in a variety of media including but not limited to drawing, electronic arts, installation, painting, photography, sculpture, sound and video, and will have the opportunity to create in the professor’s studio. The course includes visits to museums and galleries to explore the wide range of subjects and materiality available to contemporary artists, and culminates with the exhibition/ theatre performances in a prestigious Parisian venue at the end of the semester. Conducted in English.

Sample Syllabus 

Open to students in both Programs I & II

This workshop is both an active language and literature course, destined to introduce French poetry to students. In this course we will read poetry out loud in order to show how poetry is founded on rhythm and the repetition of phonetic and syntactic elements. This pragmatic approach will not only allow students to improve their pronunciation, but also to understand the poetic genre, the quality of poets’ language, their interest in etymology, metaphor, imagery, etc. Close readings, paraphrase and translations will allow students to considerably improve their mastery of the French language so that they in turn will be able to produce poetry of their own. This course will help them to integrate the phonic, rhythmic and musical dimensions of poetry, as well as learn about its various uses, from the intimate to historical testimonies. Conducted in French.

Presentation and systematic practice of basic structures and vocabulary of oral French through dialogues, pattern drills, and exercises. Correct pronunciation, sound placement, and intonation are stressed. For students with little or no command of French. Completes the equivalent of one year's elementary course. Textbook: Alors? Conducted in French.

Sample Syllabus

Prerequisite: FREN-UA 10 or FREN-UA 1-2. Open to students who have completed the equivalent of a year's elementary level and to others on assignment by placement test. Completes the equivalent of a year's intermediate level in one semester.

Acquisition and practice of more sophisticated structures of French. Development of fundamental oral and written skills, vocabulary enrichment, conversational ability. Short reading texts; guided compositions. Completes the equivalent of one year's intermediate course. Textbook: Alors? Conducted in French.

Sample Syllabus

Prerequisite: FREN-UA 11-12 or FREN-UA 20. Open to students who have completed the equivalent of a year's intermediate level and to others who have passed the proficiency examination but who wish to review their French in order to take advanced courses in language, literature, and civilization.

Systematizes and reinforces language skills presented in earlier level courses through an intensive review of grammar, written exercises; an introduction to composition, lexical enrichment, and spoken skills. Conducted in French.

Sample Syllabus 

Please note that this course can be counted toward the Media, Culture, & Communication major. Should you choose to enroll in this course, please notify your MCC primary advisor. He or she will make sure this course is accurately reflected in your academic record.

Professor Barbara Shapiro Comte
This course explores the evolution of French art across 200 years of tumultuous upheavals in Paris, 1630-1830, from the Ancien Régime of Louis XIII to the Revolution, into the Napoleonic Empire up to the Bourbon Restoration. Through analysis of the reciprocity between artists and politico-cultural institutions of the capital, we discover how art of diverse media―painting, architecture, and popular prints, including political broadsheets and caricature―operated as a visual language of persuasion and propaganda, and/or as a critique of social and moral values. Our ultimate goal is to establish how French art of the past serves as a model to investigate the role of contemporary print and electronic media (including advertising) in its representation of power and its influence on our perceptions of the global world. Illustrated lectures are enhanced by seminars, museums visits, architectural walks, analysis of visual press clippings, and independent assignments based on examination of original artworks.

NYU Art History students: This course counts for Art History Elective credit.

This course aims to understand and appreciate the creativity and dynamism of the Parisian art scene today through an exploration of contemporary art in the capital. The course will focus on the diversity of resources provided by the city, with special attention to new artistic practices and loci of production, as well as the multiple actors involved, from artists themselves to private galleries to art critics and museum curators. Reference to major avant-garde art movements of the past such as dada, geometrical abstraction, surrealism and expressionism will also be made in order to better situate today’s artistic concerns. Conducted in English.

Sample Syllabus 

This course examines aspects of political and social change in France from the end of the French Revolution to the present day. Through an exploration of Paris neighborhoods, monuments and museums, we will look at how the city’s evolution has been inscribed on the urban landscape, and reflect on how history and national identity are imagined, produced and contested through the carving up of urban space. Major dates and events of French political history form the chronological backbone for this course, while class discussions are organized thematically from the perspective of social history and the history of ideas. Classes include walking tours and site visits in and around Paris. Conducted in English. 

Sample Syllabus

This course examines the notion of French culture through an analysis of French cinema. Placing films in their historical and cultural context, we consider how cinema provides a window on French society, while recognizing that they are cultural products specific to a particular historical moment. Social history, cultural archetypes and artistic creation will be some of the topics under consideration. Conducted in English.

Sample Syllabus

To study 'Vichy France' is to grapple with the meanings of French Republicanism, with France's right-wing currents, her treatment of minority groups, the action of her intellectuals, and her relationship with her past. The first half of the course introduces students to the history of the period, beginning in the 1930s and ending with the immediate aftermath of the war. Topics include the political turmoil of the 1930s; the ideology and infrastructure of Vichy; life under the occupation; the Resistance and Collaboration; the fate of the Jews; gender and women; and the responses of the intellectual and artistic worlds. The second half of the course covers the multiple French memories of the dark years since the war. Here we focus on various objects of memory: the defeat of 1940; the resistance and collaboration; German atrocities (Oradour); the Shoah; etc. We also ponder the status of testimony as a historical source. Conducted in English.

Sample Syllabus

In this course, we work closely with students in Acting French and the Visual Art Workshop, to create an original performance based on texts by French-speaking authors. Students work in collaboration with the professor, trained in the experimental methods of the French director Jacques Lecoq, to define their roles and the mise en scène. Conducted in English.

Sample Syllabus

In this course, we will explore the ways in which Paris plays a role in the representation of the subject. Through the study of novels and autobiographies by Breton, Hemingway, Stein, Duras, Modiano, de Beauvoir, and Baldwin, we will ask, what is the role of place in the imagining or invention of the self? How does the experience of a specific city, Paris, influence the formation of identity? How do these authors represent, or subvert, the notion of the ‘real’? Although the focus of this course is literary, we will also engage with major political, cultural, and artistic movements of the period, exploring the ways in which our writers negotiate history through their writings. Conducted in English.

Sample Syllabus

Please note that this course can be counted toward the Media, Culture, & Communication major. Should you choose to enroll in this course, please notify your MCC primary advisor. He or she will make sure this course is accurately reflected in your academic record.

This course provides students an overview of museum practices in France, ranging from the historical impetus for the creation of museums to the contemporary conditions that shape museum practice. Responsible for the collection and preservation of objects deemed valuable, museums shape the way we see history and the contemporary world. In Paris, museums that are central to Paris’s reputation as a city of art and culture are also the result of state intervention in the production, collection, and exhibition of works of art. This course will critically examine this link, looking at the motivations behind state support of artistic culture, and the extraordinary museums that resulted from this intersection of private collectors, public displays, and political agendas in France. Museums studied range from public institutions such as the Louvre to private collections such as the Musée Camondo, to the scientific and/or social role played by such museums as the Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle, and the newer Musee du Quai Branly and Cite Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration. Focusing on critical debates in museum accession policies, provenance research, and repatriation claims, we will highlight the increasingly global ambitions of French museums, and the challenges of situating French culture in this increasingly international context. Conducted in English.

 Prerequisite: FREN-UA 30, or assignment by placement test, or approval of the director.

Assumes a mastery of the fundamental structures of French. May be taken concurrently with FREN-UA9105. Helps the student to develop vocabulary, to improve pronunciation, and to learn new idiomatic expressions. Introduction to corrective phonetics and emphasis on understanding contemporary French through a study of authentic documents; radio and television interviews, advertisements, spontaneous oral productions, etc. Conducted in French.

Sample Syllabus (Coydon)

Sample Syllabus (Guédon)

 Prerequisite: FREN-UA 30, assignment by placement test, or approval of the director.

Designed to improve the student's written French and to provide advanced training in French and in comparative grammar. Students are trained to express themselves in a variety of writing situations (diaries, transcriptions, narration, letters, etc.). Focuses on the distinction between spoken and written styles and the problem of contrastive grammar. Emphasis is on accuracy and fluency of usage in the written language. Conducted in French.

Sample Syllabus 

Prerequisite: FREN-UA 101, or assignment by placement test.

For students with relative fluency in French who wish to further strengthen their pronunciation and command of spoken French. Develops the skills presented in FREN-UA 9101 through an in-depth study of French phonetics (corrective and theoretical), and analysis of the modes of oral discourse in French. Emphasis is on understanding spoken French (modes of argument, persuasion, emotion, etc.) through analysis of authentic documents and development of student discourse in French. Conducted in French.

Sample Syllabus 

Prerequisite: FREN-UA 105 or assignment by placement test.

Aims to refine students' understanding of and ability to manipulate written French. Students practice summarizing and expanding articles from French magazines and papers and learn how to organize reports and reviews in French. Focuses on the distinction between spoken and written styles and the problem of contrastive grammar. Emphasis on accuracy and fluency of usage in the written language. Conducted in French.

Sample Syllabus

Prerequisite: FREN-UA 30 or assignment by placement test.

Use of drama and theatre techniques to help students overcome inhibitions in their oral use of language. Exercises and activities are designed to improve pronunciation, intonation, expression, and body language. Students work in collaboration with the professor, trained in the experimental methods of the French director Jacques Lecoq, to create an original production with music based on the texts of influential French-speaking literary figures for an end of semester performance in a prestigious Paris venue.  Conducted in French.

NYU Art History Students: This course counts for Advanced Modern Credit.

This course examines the rise of realist and impressionist art in Europe within its cultural, historical and social contexts. The novelty of these two important movements is considered in relation to preceding artistic movements, namely neo-classicism and romanticism. Works by artists such as Delacroix, Courbet, Millet, Manet, Monet, Renoir, Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec are studied. The course includes both class lectures with slides and museum visits. Conducted in French.

Sample Syllabus

 Art History students: This course counts for Art History elective credit.

In this course we explore the contemporary arts in France in their historic and social context. Beginning with current trends, we attempt to situate what’s new within a longer tradition of artistic production. Themes studied include the nature of the object, the monochrome, the body, the idea of nature, personal mythologies, the importance of light. The course includes visits to contemporary galleries and museums. Conducted in French. 

This course will examine contemporary and classical French theater from a new perspective. Far from scholarly chronological norms, we will use contemporary writings in order to better study their classical sources and inspirations. Theatre is an artistic discipline that is constantly in communication with its past. Theatre examines its roots in order to reorient and renew itself. Actors and directors reinvent the verses of Corneille, Moliere and Shakespeare so that they can better discover the writings of today. Dramaturgists reflect contemporary society, yet are always nourished by their predecessors so that they can either create a connection or break with them definitively. In this course we will examine great contemporary authors such as Jarry, Cocteau, Giraudoux, Sartre, Camus, Beckett, Ionesco, Koltes, Wajdi Mouawad, etc. As for the great classical figures, we will discuss such various authors as Sophocles, Corneille, Shakespeare and Racine. How did Jean-Paul Sartre use Corneille and Racine to give credence to his theatre? How was Cocteau or Giraudoux inspired by ancient theatre? What did Koltes take from classical tragedy in order to create his own dramas? This course will examine both theatrical writings as well as current productions in order to answer these questions. All the performances seen for the course as well as the works read will be discussed in oral presentations or written summaries. Conducted in French.

This course examines the notion of French culture through an analysis of French cinema. Placing films in their historical and cultural context, we consider how cinema provides a window on French society, while recognizing that they are cultural products specific to a particular historical moment. Social history, cultural archetypes and artistic creation will be some of the topics under consideration. Conducted in French.

Sample Syllabus

NYU Art History Students: This course counts for Urban Design Credit or Art History Elective Credit.

This course starts with a study of Gallo-Roman Paris (52-253 A.D.), highlighting archaeological artifacts, temples, thermal baths and theatres. Paris during the Middle Ages is then discussed, focusing on the problem of fortifications, as well as the rise of power of the absolute monarchy supported by the Church. We study the hôtels particuliers (large private residences) such as the Louvre, the Palace of the Ile de la Cité, etc. The arrival of 16th century Italian architectural styles, as illustrated by the Louvre, and their impact on the Parisian architectural landscapes is also discussed. In the modern period we examine the Parisian Arches (Louis XIV and Napoleon I), the urban works of Haussmann (1853-1870), the Eiffel Tower, the Alexander III Bridge with the Grand & Petit Palais and end with a discussion of 20th century architecture and the development of the Défense district. Conducted in French. 

Sample Syllabus

Introduction to French literature and thought in their historical dimension through a close study of selected masterpieces from the Middle Ages to the 18th century. Special emphasis on the aesthetic and intellectual currents that have shaped French literature. Conducted in French.

Sample Syllabus

Built out of the rubble of World War II, the European Union was hailed in the latter part of the 20th century as a brilliant model of supranational organization, that would ensure both the security and economic prosperity of its member states. Since the turn of the 21st century, however, this vision has given way to a sense of disillusionment and crisis. In this course, we investigate the history of these shifts, with a specific focus on France, in an effort to understand the current crisis. Topics include the history and development of the Union, its structure and current developments, cooperation among member-states and integration policies, the impact on member states of economic and monetary integration, the problem with the euro, European citizenship and its limits, past and future enlargements, and geopolitical strategies and considerations. Conducted in French.

In this course, we will explore the thematic and formal innovations of fiction writing from francophone North and sub-Saharan Africa. Beyond the political dimension that underscores much of this writing, the structures and styles of these novels are often marked by a cultural dimension – the oral tradition. We will see how within the body of the novel the oral and the written traditions meet, clash, or mutually enhance one another, opening the way toward new forms of expression, the fruit of new kinds of intertextual writing. Conducted in French. 

This course approaches the study of French civilization from the medieval period to World War II through an exploration of fine arts, music, philosophy, literature, and history. A study of major trends, personalities, and events, the course seeks the meaning and a definition of what constitutes the cultural heritage of France. Primary sources and documents such as chroniques, mémoires, journaux, revues, and correspondences are used. Conducted in French.

The major French novelists of the 20th century have moved the novel away from the traditional 19th-century concept. Proust and Gide developed a first-person-singular narrative in which the reader is participant. Breton uses the novel for a surrealist exploration. With Céline and Malraux, the novel of violent action becomes a mirror of man’s situation in a chaotic time and leads to the work of Sartre and Camus, encompassing the existentialist viewpoint. Covers Beckett’s sparse, complex narratives and Robbe-Grillet’s “new” novels. Novels are studied with respect to structure, technique, themes, language, and significant passages. Conducted in French. 

In this course we explore the multiple interrelations between art and literature, text and image, legibility and visibility. We consider art as it has been inspired by the written word (the Bible, mythology, epic poetry), art as inspired by and inspirational to literary works (Paul Valéry and Degas, Jean Genet and Alberto Giacometti), art as a response to and initiator of 20th century crises in representation, both written and visual (Cubism, Dada, Surrealism). Drawing on the multiple art resources in and around Paris, the course will urge us to reflect on the meanings and signs of language, in its many forms. Conducted in French. 

Sample Syllabus

The course aims to introduce students to contemporary French society through an examination of particular social groups and categories, with a focus on French youth and notions of gender. Through an exploration of contemporary issues and social movements, we will focus on how these groups have been constructed over time as historical and political categories with significant implications for social practice. Students will be encouraged to draw on resources in and around Paris as well as current events as an integral part of the course. Conducted in French. 

This course begins with an examination of the Algerian War (1954-1962), in order to consider its multiple ramifications for France and the Arab world. A long and terrible conflict, the “events” in Algeria, as they were called at the time, signaled the end of the French Empire. It brought down the 4th Republic and gave rise to one of the largest exoduses in modern history, with the departure of over a million people from Algeria to France following Algeria’s independence. The war has had major implications on French-immigrant relations, on the rise of the extreme right National Front in France, on the constitution of the French Jewish population, and on France’s involvement in other Middle Eastern conflicts. The history of French-Algerian colonial relations will also be examined. Conducted in French.

Enrollment by permission only. Application required. Contact global.academics@nyu.edu for application information. Course includes weekly seminar and minimum of 10 hours fieldwork/ week at approved internship fieldsite.

Sample Syllabus

Open to students who have completed  Critical Approaches (SPAN-UA 200) or equivalent.  Can be taken concurrently with SPAN-UA 9200.

Mitos, íconos y tradiciones inventadas is an advanced conversation course, which seeks to make students familiar with the rich and complex history of Latin America through the study of some of its most known and iconic cultural expressions. It does also work as an introductory map to the most influential and widespread approaches in Latin American social sciences, cultural studies and literary criticism. Thus, students will not only have a first encounter with key historical processes that lie behind some well know cultural icons, but also will be introduced to arguments and ways of writing that help constitute modern Latin American educated Spanish. The course will be structured in seven topics; each topic will be covered in two weeks. During these four classes, students will be exposed to different kinds of cultural materials, including literary texts, film, papers from several disciplines, theater plays, art shows and live concerts.

Sample Syllabus 

Advanced Spanish language skills required. (NYU, SPAN-UA 100 or equivalent)

This course explores Tango as an aesthetic, social and cultural formation that is articulated in interesting and complex ways with the traditions of culture and politics in Argentina and Latin America more generally. During the rapid modernization of the 1920s and 1930s, Tango (like Brazilian Samba), which had been seen as a primitive and exotic dance, began to emerge as a kind of modern primative art form that quickly came to occupy a central space in nationalist discourse. The course explores the way that perceptions of a primative and a modern converge in this unique and exciting art. In addition, the course will consider tango as a global metaphor with deeply embedded connections to urban poverty, social marginalization, and masculine authority.

Sample Syllabus

A practical course in the writing of creative literary texts: prose (short stories as well as literary non-fiction) and poetry. Selected published works will be analyzed in class both to provide inspiration for student writing as well as to represent literary structures and strategies. Writing assignments ranging from spontaneous to long-term projects will promote creative exploration and self-expression. Critical skills are emphasized and enhanced as students respond to each others’ work. Awareness of correct conventional use of the English language will be upheld. Students build up a body of work over the semester. For full credit and in demonstration of a writing “process,” the final portfolios should include both first drafts and subsequent revisions. At least one longer text (or set of poems) will be selected for submission as would be appropriate to publishers or literary contests.

Sample Syllabus

This course may be counted towards the Cultural Specialization and Elective requirement for Comp Lit majors, with prior DUS approval.

This course focuses on literary representations of WWI and WWII. The online course pack includes examples of the political and military rhetoric to which Montale and Hemingway objected, historical essays and images (war photographs, recruitment posters, etc.), as well as the shorter texts we are studying. Central themes in the course are the concepts of political literature and historical fiction and the contrasting approaches and theoretical premises of classical realism and modernism. Among the supplementary sources available in the Villa Ulivi library are two good cultural histories on the subject: James Shehan Where Have All the Soldiers Gone and Mark Mazower Dark Continent. Other recurring issues will be gender, sexuality, religion, class politics, kitsch, psychoanalysis, rhetoric, and power.  

Sample Syllabus

To provide an understanding of the main immigration trends in Britain, France and Germany since 1850 To provide an understanding of the problems attending the social and political integration of immigrants in contemporary Western Europe To compare the experience and understanding of immigration in Europe with the experience and understanding of immigration in the United States To examine the ways in which the memory of immigration is represented in literature and contemporary culture.

Note: Students accepted to this course must indicate on their visa survey that they want a Tier-4 General Student Visa; you will not be permitted to intern (paid or unpaid) in the UK without a Tier-4 visa. A Tier-4 visa costs a minimum of £289 GBP (approximately $500 USD), plus any applicable shipping and expedite fees. (*Does not apply to students traveling on EEA or Swiss passports.)

Enrollment by permission only. Application required.   Application information can be found on the What's Next blog here.

This 4 credit course includes a weekly seminar and minimum of 10 hours fieldwork/week at an approved internship fieldsite. Internship placements are made by EUSA, an organization partnering with NYU London. EUSA provides internship placements in a wide range of organizations. Industry sectors include:

• Business, Finance & Economics
• Healthcare, Social Issues & Education
• Television, Film & Journalism
• Communications
• Arts & Culture
• Politics & NGOs
  

The seminar portion of the course explores many different aspects of your internship site. The goal is to finish the semester with an in-depth understanding of the company or organization, including its approach, its policies, and the context in which it operates. We will also discuss more generally the state of the contemporary workplace and ourselves as workers. Finally, you will use the seminar to reflect critically and analytically on the internship experience and as a way to refine your own personal and professional goals.

Sample Syllabus

This course examines aspects of political and social change in France from the end of the French Revolution to the present day. Through an exploration of Paris neighborhoods, monuments and museums, we will look at how the city’s evolution has been inscribed on the urban landscape, and reflect on how history and national identity are imagined, produced and contested through the carving up of urban space. Major dates and events of French political history form the chronological backbone for this course, while class discussions are organized thematically from the perspective of social history and the history of ideas. Classes include walking tours and site visits in and around Paris. Conducted in English. 

Sample Syllabus

In this course, we will explore the ways in which Paris plays a role in the representation of the subject. Through the study of novels and autobiographies by Breton, Hemingway, Stein, Duras, Modiano, de Beauvoir, and Baldwin, we will ask, what is the role of place in the imagining or invention of the self? How does the experience of a specific city, Paris, influence the formation of identity? How do these authors represent, or subvert, the notion of the ‘real’? Although the focus of this course is literary, we will also engage with major political, cultural, and artistic movements of the period, exploring the ways in which our writers negotiate history through their writings. Conducted in English.

Sample Syllabus

France and the U.S. have a habit of looking at one another as anti-models when it comes to discussions of assimilation and difference, “race,” identity, community and diversity. In this course, we explore this comparison as a productive means for re-considering these terms. Why is the notion of “ethnic community” so problematic in France? And why do Americans insist on the “homogeneity” of the French nation, even as, at various points throughout modern French history, France has received more immigrants to its shores than the United States? Through readings, film screenings, and site visits we explore the movements and encounters that have made Paris a rich, and sometimes controversial, site of cultural exchange. Topics include contemporary polemics on questions such as headscarves, the banlieue, the new Paris museums of immigration and “primitive” art, affirmative action and discrimination positive, historic expressions of exoticism, négritude, and anti-colonialism. Occasional case studies drawn from the American context help provide a comparative framework for these ideas. Conducted in English.

Sample Syllabus 

Open to all NYU Paris students. For NYU Art History students this course counts for Art History Elective Credit.

This course investigates French art of the nineteenth-century, paying particular attention to the way in which historical factors informed artistic production during this period.  Beginning with David, Neo-Classicism and the French Revolution, we will move to the Napoleonic period, Romanticism, the Revolutions of 1830 and 1848, and trace the connection from Realism to Impressionism.  The second half of the course will examine the disparate movements spurred by Impressionism, collectively referred to as Post-Impressionism (including Neo-Impressionism, Synthetism, and Symbolism), and will culminate with the rise of Art Nouveau at the end of the century.  Throughout, we will interrogate how social forces (including politics, gender, race, religion, etc.) influenced the manner in which “Modern” art was produced and understood in nineteenth-century France. Conducted in English.

Sample Syllabus

Civil resistance is not the same as opting out of society or having views that go against the grain. It is fundamentally about deciding not to conform with repressive regimes. It is also about choosing a mode of action that brings with it personal dangers even when, as is usual, it advocates non-violence. This course examines the nature and significance of civil resistance in Central and Eastern Europe in the 20th century. In studying resistance literature (including poetry and song), art and film, we will draw on ideas and arguments from the disciplines of history, political science, literature, art criticism, film studies and psychology.

Sample Syllabus

This interdisciplinary seminar is designed to discuss and question the identity of specific nations in European space, which has always been a fascinating crossroad of ideas and ideologies as well as the birthplace of wars and totalitarian systems. The course will cover masterpieces of Russian, Hungarian, German, Polish and Czech cinematography, focusing on several crucial periods of history, in particular WWII and its aftermath, showing moral dilemmas of individuals and nations under the Nazi regime as well as revealing the bitter truth of the Stalinist years.

Sample Syllabus

Totalitarian ideologies which were used in European political discourse in the twentieth century to explain major historical changes have changed forever the relationship between the state and its citizens. The aspiration of the totalitarian state to acquire total control over individual lives through control of education, employment and health systems succeeded beyond anything perceived possible until then in any political regime after European Enlightenment. Nazism and Communism mobilized irrationally motivated mass support and won power in a very short time. Their success was partially based on a mass propaganda, using fear as primary instinctive argument against a picture of both external and internal enemies. The major focus of the course will be oriented towards topics trying to explain the reasons for mass support for totalitarian ideologies and states on the basis of individual psychology. We will examine psychological explanations of a selfvictimisation, role of a victim and a perpetrator, majority society response to mass human rights abuses and the abusive past. On this background a phenomenon of a political and cultural dissent will be introduced and discussed. The role of electronic mass media, antiglobalisation movements and global terrorism are discussed as possible modern vehicles of totalitarian tendencies and reactions against them.

Sample Syllabus

"A book must be an ax for the frozen sea in us," wrote Franz Kafka (1883-1924), one of the best known but least understood authors of our times. In this course, we will break some of the clichés which are stuck to Kafka's life and work and dive into the fascinating, intricate and profoundly humorous world of his thoughts and emotions. In Prague, the city that determined and held Kafka in its "claws", we will trace the possible sources of the writer's private obsessions which became the general characteristics of modern men: The sense of isolation, the anxiety, the self-irony, the sense of responsibility and guilt, the quest for freedom, the struggle of an individual against the system. We will read selected works of Kafka, but also Meyrink - the author of Prague ghetto - and Milan Kundera. This course aims to bring the students to a point from which they can find their own genuine and intimate understanding of Kafka's writing.

Sample Syllabus

Central Europe is where West meets East. Some writers revel in this geographically liminal space, some long to free themselves from it, and some are conflicted in their feelings. The remarkable diversity of literary representations of the region has helped shape its culture, history and politics. In this course, students will study the work of prominent Czech, Pole, Slovene and Hungarian writers who have influenced people’s understanding of the region. Authors to be studied may include Václav Havel, Franz Kafka, Imre Kertész, Barbara Korun and Czeslaw Milosz. 

Enrollment by permission only. Application required. Application information available here. Course includes weekly seminar and minimum of 10 hours fieldwork/ week at approved internship fieldsite. 

Sample Syllabus

In this class students are encouraged to consider the intersectional environments (natural, urban, cultural, historical etc.) that they interact with and within, and how their sensibilities differ living away from home to contemplate how a sense of place can be conveyed through writing. We will engage with a diverse range of readings – featuring many Australian authors – and discuss technical elements and affective poetics to learn how to ‘read as a writer’. Weeks are devoted to crafting the short story, contemporary indigenous storytelling, creative nonfiction, and poetry. The class emphasizes the importance of embodied interaction with the city through a field trip using ‘The Disappearing’ – a downloadable app featuring over 100 site-specific poems spanning a ‘poetic map’ of Sydney, created by The Red Room Company. Students will think about the possibilities of marrying new technologies with writing as they navigate using poems as landmarks. Students shall workshop their drafts during the course, learning how to effectively communicate critical feedback and how to be receptive to constructive critique.

Sample Syllabus

 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

Can also be counted for SCA-UA Internship credit (government and non-profit placements only)

The seminar is designed to complement the internship fieldwork experience. In it we explore many different aspects of your internship site. The goal is to finish the semester with an in-depth understanding of the company or organization, including its approach, its policies, and the context in which it operates. We will also discuss more generally the state of the contemporary workplace and ourselves as workers. Finally, you will use the seminar to reflect critically and analytically on the internship experience and as a way to refine your own personal and professional goals.

Please note: Students who secure an internship through or with the assistance of NYU Washington, DC must confirm their spot in the program and enroll in the internship class in order to accept the internship. Students are required to pursue 20 hours/ week in their internships to earn course credit. NYU Washington, DC advises that students pursue ~20 hrs/ week in internship committments. If students elect to participate in an internship that exceeds the recommended number of hours, they may be advised to reduce their academic courseload. Students are highly encouraged to consult NYU Washington DC staff for assistance with these decisions.

This course continues your introduction to the language and everyday culture of German-speaking countries. You will expand your understanding of important vocabulary and customs as well as more advanced language structures and idioms. The focus of the course will continue to spoken communication and everyday language use, but there will also be increased attention to reading and writing assignments. Since the goals of communicative and grammatical competence are ultimately inseparable,students are guided towards using German as accurately as possible.

This course covers the second part of a four part German course. Together, these courses (Elementary I and II and Intermediate I and II) should help you develop a level of proficiency in German that would enable you to study abroad in German-speaking countries, to pursue advanced study of German in the US, or to use German for travel, leisure, and work. At the end of Intermediate German II (or Intensive Intermediate German) you will be prepared to successfully take a proficiency exam.

Sample Syllabus

This is an intensive introductory course to the language and culture of German-speaking countries for students with no knowledge of German. The focus of the course will be on communication with emphasis on the use of German in real-life situations, as well as providing knowledge of grammar and vocabulary. At the end of the semester, students will have acquired all the skills usually obtained in the two semesters of Elementary German sequence.

Your engagement with German language will also include learning about Berlin and the Federal Republic of Germany today. In addition to language instruction, the course offers a rich cultural program that includes visits to famous museums and places in Berlin. These visits and field trips are closely related to the subjects taught in class and will help you utilize your knowledge outside the classroom.

This course covers the first two parts of a four part German course. Together these courses (Elementary I and II; Intermediate I and II) should help you develop a level of proficiency in German that would enable you to study abroad in German-speaking countries, to pursue advanced study of German in the US, or to use German for travel, leisure, and work. At the end of Intermediate German II (or Intensive Intermediate German) you will be prepared to successfully take a proficiency exam.

Sample Syllabus

Open to students who have completed the equivalent of one year of elementary language instruction and to others on assignment by placement examination.

The first intermediate course stresses the acquisition and practice of more sophisticated written and spoken German. The focus is on expanding conversational skills, but the course also includes guided composition practice, vocabulary work, and grammar review. 

Sample Syllabus

Prerequisite: GERM-UA 9003, Intermediate German I or equivalent.

Intermediate German II is the second part of a two semester intermediate sequence. You will continue to study grammar, vocabulary and other aspects of language. You will also learn about the cultural and historical context of the German language. The class is taught entirely in German and emphasizes the language skills necessary to communicate effectively in a foreign language – speaking, reading, viewing, writing, and listening. This course intends to create a balance between working with intellectually stimulating subjects and practicing the skills needed to communicate in a foreign language.

This course covers the fourth part of a four part German course. Together, these courses (Elementary I and II and Intermediate I and II) should help you develop a level of proficiency in German that will enable you to study abroad in German-speaking countries, to pursue advanced study of German in the US, or to use German for travel, leisure, and work.

Sample Syllabus

In this intensive intermediate course you will continue to study grammar,vocabulary and other aspects of language. You will also learn about the cultural and historical context of the German language. The class is taught entirely in German and emphasizes the language skills necessary to communicate effectively in a foreign language – speaking, reading, viewing, writing, and listening. This course intends to create a balance between working with intellectually stimulating subjects and practicing the skills needed to communicate in a foreign language.
Throughout your engagement with the German language you will also learn about Berlin and the Federal Republic of Germany today. In addition to language instruction, the course offers a rich cultural program that includes visits to famous museums and places in Berlin. These visits and field trips are closely related to the subjects taught in class and will help you utilize your knowledge outside the classroom.

This course covers the second two parts of a four part German course.Together these courses (Elementary I and II; Intermediate I and II) should help you develop a level of proficiency in German that would enable you to study abroad in German-speaking countries, to pursue advanced study of German in the US, or to use German for travel, leisure, and work. At the end of Intensive Intermediate you will be prepared to successfully take a proficiency exam.

Sample Syllabus

Conducted in German. Postintermediate - 100 level.

In this course, we will give you an impression of newer German history and presence and discuss its political, social and cultural aspects. In this context we will place emphasis on relationships between the people from former Eastern and Western Germany and also focus on multiculturism in Germany.  During the course of the semester, we will explore narratives which are related to our topics from a variety of genres: narrative prose, newspapers/magazine articles, films, and radio plays among others. We will also watch several films and read several stories.

Sample Syllabus

Conducted in German. Postintermediate - 100 level.

The course explores twentieth-century German culture by studying the history of Berlin´s unique and rich theater landscape, for theater is a telling mirror of its time and the society it is created in and performed for. The course starts with a general introduction into German theater history, and then begins its investigation in late-nineteenth century Imperial Germany. Case studies of the actors, authors and theaters that defined each period cover Berlin's theater history from Imperial times to the Weimar Republic, "The Third Reich" the ruins of postwar Berlin, the division of East and West, the collapse of Communism and reunified Berlin. We will use different media, such as articles, excerpts from books, interviews, video recordings and performances, literature, film and images/photos. In addition, we will read parts of or entire theater scripts.

We will also visit the theaters that feature so prominently in Berlin's cultural history and have a look at what they are offering today. We will attend at least four performances. Participation in the theater visits and film screenings is a fixed part of the course program. We will prepare for the performances and discuss them in class afterwards. A weekend theater workshop is also planned.

This course is mainly a conversation course in which we will discuss theater productions and works, as well as analyze and interpret historical and political topics and questions on the social impact of theater.

Sample Syllabus

Conducted in German. Advanced - 300 level.

This seminar focuses on cultural-historical reflections of the 20th century in art and literature and provides an overview, exploring the cultural, literary, and artistic history of Germany. We will examine not only various epochs of modernity such as Naturalism, Dadaism, and New Objectivity, but also look at epoch-making artists and authors, as well as the different ways art and literature have impacted the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic.

From a cultural-historical perspective, we will examine Germany as a country that has undergone many changes from the industrialization at the end of the 19th century to the present day. At the same time, we will analyze the city of Berlin as a center of art and a place where art flourishes - from the late 19th century to the present. How is the city perceived and received as a place? What kind of (symbolic) significance is associated with the city, and what conclusions can be drawn about the cultural self-image of the people? What kind of art develops in Germany and Berlin, and what is its relationship to the city itself?

Three classes will take place in various museums in Berlin (National Gallery, the Hamburger Bahnhof and Berlin City Gallery). These visits are intended not just to acquire a well-founded knowledge of original objects, but also to train students in the proper description and fundamentals of scientific object analysis. The work with originals is also a prerequisite for a sound understanding of the references between literature and visual arts. In this respect, the literary scholar Ulrike Lindemann and the art historian Dr. Heinke Fabritius will lead the course as team-teachers.

Students will gain familiarity with the newest trends and current projects (in galleries, private collections and training institutes) by going on a field trip to Berlin’s art scene after 1989, where an early exchange and communication between NYU students and creative artists is initiated.

Sample Syllabus

From its beginnings, cinema in Germany was embroiled in heated debates about its potentials and shortcomings, its aesthetic, social and political value. At the core of these emphatic debates stands the question where cinema is to be located: is cinema a form of art or mere entertainment for the masses? And what does it mean to be a work of art? What is its significance as popular medium? With these questions, film’s relevance, then, reaches far beyond the worlds it presents on screen. It is intrinsically linked to questions of German identity and self-perception.

This course provides an overview of the different roles of cinema as we follow the medium and the debates that surrounded it at crucial junctions in the turbulent history of the 20th century in Germany. We will shed light on cinema and its aesthetic debates as they reflect on and are entangled with social and political discourses and will see that cinema itself should be understood as contribution to these discussions. The course aims to give some insight into the competing ideas of intellectual histories and evaluate them from the angle of the visual medium and to thus offer a better understanding of German identity.

Note: Students may not register for both this course and Comparative Modern Societies due to content overlap.

Germany’s profound influence on Modern European history and culture is felt nowhere as visibly as in Berlin. This interdisciplinary course analyzes the city’s contributions to culture––in literature, memoir, music, film and painting––and its politics in the wider context of European trends. The course provides a comprehensive survey of Modern Berlin history and examines how artists reflected on those changing times. Special topics include: Christopher Isherwood’s fictionalized memoirs during the Weimar Years, the Nazi Aesthetic during the Berlin 1936 Olympics as constructed by filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, the photo-realist reflections of painter Gerhard Richter on terrorism in Berlin in the 1970s, and Germany’s literary reassessment of guilt and victimhood following reunification. Readings and lectures are supplemented with walking tours of Berlin and its museums, to look at traces of historical, social and cultural change in situ; how memory, history and place interact over time in specific locations.

From its beginnings, cinema in Germany was embroiled in heated debates about its potentials and shortcomings, its aesthetic, social and political value. At the core of these emphatic debates stands the question where cinema is to be located: is cinema a form of art or mere entertainment for the masses? And what does it mean to be a work of art? What is its significance as popular medium? With these questions, film’s relevance, then, reaches far beyond the worlds it presents on screen. It is intrinsically linked to questions of German identity and self-perception.

This course provides an overview of the different roles of cinema as we follow the medium and the debates that surrounded it at crucial junctions in the turbulent history of the 20th century in Germany. We will shed light on cinema and its aesthetic debates as they reflect on and are entangled with social and political discourses and will see that cinema itself should be understood as contribution to these discussions. The course aims to give some insight into the competing ideas of intellectual histories and evaluate them from the angle of the visual medium and to thus offer a better understanding of German identity.

Note: Students may not register for both this course and Comparative Modern Societies due to content overlap.

Germany’s profound influence on Modern European history and culture is felt nowhere as visibly as in Berlin. This interdisciplinary course analyzes the city’s contributions to culture––in literature, memoir, music, film and painting––and its politics in the wider context of European trends. The course provides a comprehensive survey of Modern Berlin history and examines how artists reflected on those changing times. Special topics include: Christopher Isherwood’s fictionalized memoirs during the Weimar Years, the Nazi Aesthetic during the Berlin 1936 Olympics as constructed by filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, the photo-realist reflections of painter Gerhard Richter on terrorism in Berlin in the 1970s, and Germany’s literary reassessment of guilt and victimhood following reunification. Readings and lectures are supplemented with walking tours of Berlin and its museums, to look at traces of historical, social and cultural change in situ; how memory, history and place interact over time in specific locations.

NYU Sociology Students: This course counts as an advanced seminar

This course examines the works of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, three German thinkers who pioneered radically different and influential interpretations of modern life. The aim of the course is to provide an introduction to the central ideas and texts of each author, and construct dialogues on topics such as the modern subject, history, art, interpretation, religion, politics and morality. While taking account of the historical complexities and stylized conventions of each text, the course will highlight the recurrent themes that animate these influential writings and continue to shape our contemporary understanding of society and individual. The seminar not only delves into the origins of these influential traditions of modern Western thought, but also underscores their relevance in contemporary social thought and humanities. 

Sample Syllabus

This course addresses literary and cultural representations of Berlin in the late 19th and the 20th century. Accordingly, students will investigate different aspects of Berlin ranging from its growing to a metropolis during the German Empire and its cultural richness in the Weimar Period to the devastation of the city during World War II; from the division in the postwar period, which also produced two separate literary systems, to polyphonic and transcultural prose after reunification. The course will also focus on Jewish as well as German-Turkish literature. In its theoretical approach, the course offers insights into new paradigms of cultural studies such as "spatial turn" or "urbanism" as well as seeks to enhance academic skills in the reflection of gender aspects.

Sample Syllabus

Prof. J. Ager

Using communicative methodology, this course introduces students to essential linguistic and social conventions of spoken German, with an emphasis on establishing conversational skills.

Sample Syllabus

Prof. J. Ager

Continuation of Elementary German I.

Sample Syllabus

Using communicative methodology, this course introduces more complex features of the language and focuses on building reading and writing skills while continuing to develop conversational ability.

Sample Syllabus

Course description coming soon.

Sample Syllabus

Course description coming soon.

Sample Syllabus

This course is for Global Liberal Studies students only.  Advanced Spanish skills (beyond Intermediate II) recommended.

This course combines a seminar based weekly section together with intensive internships in businesses, NGOs or other organizations. The experiential part will consist of 10 weekly hours of work within a pre-arranged organization. The academic part is meant to assist students in getting the most from this experience and provide theoretical and methodological elements to critically examine their experiences. It weaves together research design and methods with an empirical and theoretical examination of recent social phenomena in Argentina. We will use selected themes and topics to explore theoretical perspectives and selected aspects of contemporary Argentine society. In parallel we will explore how to construct a research project, collect data and analyze its contents.

Sample Syllabus

Experiential Learning introduces GLS students to Berlin with an intensive program of cultural preparation followed by site-dependent research which supports the development of the senior thesis project.
The cultural preparation component, the first half of the semester, discusses what factors have encouraged and impeded Berlin's flourishing as a diverse arts metropolis, tracing developments through 20th-century Berlin to the contemporary arts scene. Sessions largely take place in situ, in locations of contention and debate.
For the remaining sessions, students will be introduced to different aspects and particular problems of participatory field research while engaging in community-based guided observation assignments. These readings, discussions and assignments serve as a preparation for the site-specific projects in the Spring term.

Sample Syllabus

This course is for Global Liberal Studies students only.

Experiential Learning I includes both classroom instruction and community experience (whenever practicable, individual community experience).  the principle goal of Experiential Learning I is immersion in the current and historical character of the site.  Classroom instruction provides an interdisciplinary perspective on local, national and global forces that have shaped the character of life in the Italian city.

Sample Syllabus

Open to LS and GLS students only.

This course focuses on the world’s great traditions in literature, music, and the visual and performing arts from the Enlightenment through Modernity. It familiarizes students with the impact of the colonial and post-colonial eras on global developments in culture. The course covers such literary works as A Grain of Wheat, the poetry of Adrienne Rich, and Crime and Punishment; films like The Battle for Algiers; the art of Picasso and Hokusai; and musical works by Stravinsky and Ali Akbar Khan.

Open to LS and GLS students only.

This course focuses on the world’s great traditions in philosophy, theology, history, and political science from the Enlightenment through Modernity. It familiarizes students with the impact of the colonial and post-colonial eras on major world discourses about the nature of human identity and society through a comparative study of seminal texts. The course includes such works as The Communist Manifesto,The Wretched of the Earth, and Orientalism.

Course description coming soon.

Open to GLS students only.

This course has a strong emphasis on place-based learning methods.  This course consists of two components during the fall semester.  The first part will be an introduction to Spanish society and the second will focus on research methods to facilitate the experiential learning process in both the fall and spring semesters.

Sample Syllabus

Open to GLS Juniors only

This is a full-year course divided over two semesters. The first semester course is designed to give students a broad overview of contemporary French society and its institutions while at the same time provide insight into the actual workings of such institutions on the ground. Topics covered include the institutions of the 5th Republic, the functioning of the welfare state, French cultural policy, the organization of local politics, urban issues, and immigration. Frequent site visits in and around Paris. Conducted in English.

Sample Syllabus

This course is open to Global Liberal Studies students only.

This course aims to complement and enhance the internship experience. Students will learn to critically examine their fieldwork in order to reflect upon what their particular, concrete experience reveals about life in contemporary Shanghai.

Sample Syllabus

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

Sample Syllabus

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

One hundred and fifty years ago all Jews had three things in common: every Jew prayed in Hebrew, he submitted to God‘s commandments and awaited the coming of the Messiah. Today, Jews have only one thing in common – every Jew asks what it means to be a Jew.“ These are words of David ben Gurion after the Second World War. The period of the 18th to the 20th centuries of modern Jewish history in Europe belongs to the most dynamic in the whole Jewish history. What are the reasons for such radical changes? Were there differences between the development in Western, Central and Eastern Europe?  How did the changes affect Jewish religious, cultural, linguistic and national identity? These questions build the core of this course.

Sample Syllabus

The course examines the rise, growth, effects, and the abolition of the Atlantic Slave trade as well as its legacy. The course begins with a discussion of the nature of West African society before the introduction of the Atlantic Slave Trade; and the relations among Asante peoples, other neighboring West African peoples, the indigenous slave trade, and relations with Europeans in the Atlantic Slave Trade. The Atlantic Slave trade itself is analyzed from historical, ethnographic, sociological, economic and political perspectives, focusing on Africa, Europe and the Americas. The immediate and long term effects of the Slave Trade on Africa are considered, as well as the history of the trade's Abolition, and the legacy of the Atlantic Slave trade in African, European and American societies.

Sample Syllabus

NYU Sociology Students: This course counts as an advanced seminar

Examines the development of Europe's and America's images of one another from the 18th century to the present through literary texts and historical documents, with special attention to sources from Germany. The roots of current U.S.-European tensions, both cultural and political, will also be explored. 

Sample Syllabus

Students may not register for both this course and Berlin's History & Culture due to content overlap.

Explores the society, politics and culture of contemporary Germany through lectures, readings and visits to institutions and organizations around Berlin. Examines the historical developments in the 20th century (failed democratization, National Socialism, Communism, postwar reconstruction, reunification) that have shaped today's Federal Republic. Germany's place within a united Europe will also be discussed. 

Sample Syllabus

Note: Students may not register for both this course and Comparative Modern Societies due to content overlap.

Germany’s profound influence on Modern European history and culture is felt nowhere as visibly as in Berlin. This interdisciplinary course analyzes the city’s contributions to culture––in literature, memoir, music, film and painting––and its politics in the wider context of European trends. The course provides a comprehensive survey of Modern Berlin history and examines how artists reflected on those changing times. Special topics include: Christopher Isherwood’s fictionalized memoirs during the Weimar Years, the Nazi Aesthetic during the Berlin 1936 Olympics as constructed by filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl, the photo-realist reflections of painter Gerhard Richter on terrorism in Berlin in the 1970s, and Germany’s literary reassessment of guilt and victimhood following reunification. Readings and lectures are supplemented with walking tours of Berlin and its museums, to look at traces of historical, social and cultural change in situ; how memory, history and place interact over time in specific locations.

This course introduces contemporary Italy in all its complexity and fascination. Reviewing politics, economics, society, and culture over the past two centuries, the course has a primary goal -- to consider how developments since the 1800s have influenced the lives and formed the outlook of today's Italians. In other words, we are engaged in the historical search for something quite elusive: Italian “identity”. Topics will include the unification of the country, national identity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the First World War, and Italian fascism, World War Two and the resistance, the post-war Italian Republic, the economic "miracle", the South, the Mafia, terrorism, popular culture, and the most recent political and social developments, including Italy and the European Union. Lectures combine with readings and films (taking advantage of Italy’s magnificent post-war cinema).

Sample Syllabus 

Next to many archives covering past centuries, Florence also hosts one of the most important archives for the study of contemporary history, namely the archive on the European Union. It is organizationally and academically linked to the European University Institute (EUI), also located in Florence, a top-level interdisciplinary graduate institute and think tank.

An archive on the EU represents a welcome challenge for history students, since it is not completely clear "what the EU is". It is neither a state in the traditional sense, nor is it limited to being an international organization. Whereas most forms of stateness in Europe and in the rest of the democratic world can be considered more or less stable, the EU is still a political actor in the making - and there is evidence that it will remain a moving target for historians, political scientists, law experts and economists for still many years to come. Thus, different from other archives, the archive on the EU does not contain documents and information on a historical process which is already completed, but which is and will still be ongoing.

Sample Syllabus

Public intellectuals have an important role to play in society: they are supposed to speak the
truth. They struggle to direct public debate towards clearer visions of the day’s challenges and to
keep our minds open to wider possibilities and different explanations. They excel at pointing out
the common fallacies of our age. Most often dissenters, in the minority in their own countries,
public intellectuals are deeply committed to independent thinking at (often) considerable
personal sacrifice. Simultaneously observers and participants, “insiders” and “outsiders”,
consensus builders and social critics, thinkers and occasionally active politicians, these public
figures are central to modern democratic dialogue. Not surprisingly, considerable controversy
accompanies the appearance of (many) university-trained professionals in the public sphere, and
the discussions they initiate have been characterized quite often by bitter and personal attacks.

This course examines the work and contributions of several prominent intellectuals in crucial
periods of contemporary European history over the 20th and 21st centuries, and considers
their important roles in public debate, policy-making and the political process. Their writings
focus on the important issues of their time – war and peace, economic instability, dictatorship,
European integration, organized crime, the collapse of European communism and post-industrial
capitalism – concerns that are still very much of relevance and debate today. Finally, the course
also considers the “theory” of public intellectuals by looking at the writings on their own place
in society and on the models of participation that others, like them, have offered in the past.

The class has a seminar format with discussion of the principal works of a number of public
intellectuals and their biographies framing the weekly sessions. We will also explore the
historical context of these works and consider, with the advantage of hindsight, the relative
accuracy of the positions assumed in the past – did they really come close to “telling the
truth” as we understand it today? The reactions of the public, of political leaders, and of other
prominent individuals are also examined to better consider the impact of these intellectuals’
contributions and to appreciate the measure of their commitment to freedom and open
discussion.

Sample Syllabus

What is the role of the family in Italy? Italy is well-known for being a family centered society.
What are the causes and consequences of this phenomenon? Since the 1960s, the family has
undergone a series of changes, due to the women’s movement, decrease of marriages, fall of
birthrate, etc. Is the family loosing its centrality in Italy? According to some scholars, the family
is still one of the few shared values in Italy. The course will investigate the social function of the
family in Italy, from the political unification of the country to the present. We will also analyze
ideas of femininity and masculinity conveyed by the media and their connections to the idea
of Italianness. The imagined Italian community was constructed on the site of the female body
which was meant to epitomize a series of values such as fertility, health, prosperity, purity,
tradition, etc. The course will also map the condition of women and LGBT people in Italy today.

Sample Syllabus

The aim of the course is to follow the evolution of religious ideas and practices throughout the period that goes from early Renaissance to the years of the reorganization of the Catholic Church after the Council of Trent. The geographical area covered will include the countries of southern Europe (mainly Italy, but also Spain, France and Portugal) and the German World. Conducted in English.

Sample Syllabus 

The Renaissance began and reached maturity in Italy between 1350 and 1500. This course closely examines the political, economic, and social situations in Italy during this period, emphasizing the special conditions that produced Renaissance art and literature. The relationship between culture, society, and politics is studied in the case of Florence, in which the hegemony of the Medici house and its patronage brought the city to cultural leadership in the Western world. Conducted in English.

Sample Syllabus

A survey of Europe from 1789 to the present. Investigates the political, social, economic, and cultural developments that shaped and continue to shape the modern age. Emphasis is on the evolution of the nation-state, on industrialization and its impact on society and politics, and on the intellectual responses to the rapid changes these developments inspired. Topics include Europe and the French Revolution; the rise of the nation-state, 1848-1914; and the impact of totalitarian ideologies on 20th-century Europe.

Sample Syllabus

An introductory course dealing with the life of the Prophet Muhammad and the origins of Islam; the beliefs and practices of the Islamic community; differences between Sunni and Shiite Islam; Sufism; the spiritual, intellectual, and artistic life of the Islamic commonwealth; and modern Islamic revival. 

The course examines the growth and importance of London from the Roman invasion of 43 AD to the present day. Students will learn about London's changing economic and political role, and will understand how London grew to dominate the commerce, industry and culture of England. They will find out how London became the biggest city the world has ever known, and how it coped (or failed to cope) with the social and environmental problems created by its enormous size. Each week (unless there is a field trip) there will be a lecture and a discussion in which you will be able to present ideas and information gathered from lectures and from your weekly reading. There will also be four walking tours of parts of London which relate to the period we are studying at a particular time. 

Covers the impact of World War II, the postwar division of Europe, the onset of the cold war, the economic recovery and transformation of Western Europe, Stalinism in Eastern Europe, the 1960s and events of 1968, the origins and development of the European community, and the cultural and intellectual life of European nations in this period. Ends with a discussion of the Eastern European revolutions of 1989 and their significance, together with the reunification of Germany, for the future of the continent. 

This course will focus on a history of Modern Imperialism from the beginning of the nineteenth century to post-Second World War decolonisation: with particular reference to the British Empire.

To provide an understanding of the main immigration trends in Britain, France and Germany since 1850 To provide an understanding of the problems attending the social and political integration of immigrants in contemporary Western Europe To compare the experience and understanding of immigration in Europe with the experience and understanding of immigration in the United States To examine the ways in which the memory of immigration is represented in literature and contemporary culture.

This course examines the place that slavery played in Britain's past and its legacy today. In the eighteenth century, Britain prided itself on the liberty enjoyed by its people, yet it was the largest participant in the Atlantic slave trade, and grew rich on the wealth created by ports such as London, Bristol and Liverpool. In the same period some 15,000 black people lived in English ports and their presence has only recently been properly acknowledged. In the nineteenth century, however, Britain perceived itself as in the forefront of the global battle to end the slave trade and slavery itself. This pioneering campaign contributed to a more positive sense of British national identity. Yet Britain continued to depend on the importation of slave-grown produce and even began to ship hundreds of thousands of Indians as virtual slaves to many parts of the world. The ambivalent legacy of Britain’s past involvement with slavery remains important to Britain's multi-cultural identity and its global role today. 

Sample Syllabus

This course examines aspects of political and social change in France from the end of the French Revolution to the present day. Through an exploration of Paris neighborhoods, monuments and museums, we will look at how the city’s evolution has been inscribed on the urban landscape, and reflect on how history and national identity are imagined, produced and contested through the carving up of urban space. Major dates and events of French political history form the chronological backbone for this course, while class discussions are organized thematically from the perspective of social history and the history of ideas. Classes include walking tours and site visits in and around Paris. Conducted in English. 

Sample Syllabus

A historical and political inquiry into the French system of relations with Francophone Africa from the ‘race to Empire’ in the 19th century to the current day. The main goals of the course are: to describe the historical development of French-African relations from the colonial to the post-independence era; to investigate the political, economic and cultural mechanisms of French influence in contemporary Francophone Africa; to understand the consequences for France of complex developments subsequent to colonialism, such as African immigration in France. Conducted in French.

Sample Syllabus

To study 'Vichy France' is to grapple with the meanings of French Republicanism, with France's right-wing currents, her treatment of minority groups, the action of her intellectuals, and her relationship with her past. The first half of the course introduces students to the history of the period, beginning in the 1930s and ending with the immediate aftermath of the war. Topics include the political turmoil of the 1930s; the ideology and infrastructure of Vichy; life under the occupation; the Resistance and Collaboration; the fate of the Jews; gender and women; and the responses of the intellectual and artistic worlds. The second half of the course covers the multiple French memories of the dark years since the war. Here we focus on various objects of memory: the defeat of 1940; the resistance and collaboration; German atrocities (Oradour); the Shoah; etc. We also ponder the status of testimony as a historical source. Conducted in English.

Sample Syllabus

Prof. S. North
The process of urbanization in the modern era has reflected the economic differences, the social and aesthetic customs, and the political nuances of the European nations and of Europe as a whole. Students will consider numerous issues of city planning and growth. Topics will include patterns of cultural distinctiveness, the influence of ethnic and religious concerns, and the political implications apparent in architectural design, neighborhood development, housing policies, and public space.

Sample Syllabus

In the 20th Century, three phenomena had fateful consequences for Central and Eastern Europe: (1) the unsuccessful attempt to eliminate, after WWI, national tension by creating new nation-states, and the encounters with both major totalitarian ideologies, (2) Nazism and (3) Communism. The present eruptions of nationalism are rooted in the heritage of these phenomena. Comparative histories of the formation of modern national identities, including the 'national awakening' of non-dominant nations, will be interpreted against the backdrop of national policies of multi-ethnic states, national programs and leaders. The major focus of the course will be oriented toward topics surrounding post-WWI Central and Eastern Europe, Nazism and Communism. We will examine the disintegration of post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe, discuss the ethnic conflicts, policies toward minorities and xenophobia. The bibliography of required and recommended reading will be handed out in class, the abbreviated titles are in the syllabus. The guidelines for mid-term and finals will be available in class two weeks before the scheduled exam.

Sample Syllabus

In this course we will select a number of critical issues in modern Chinese history to examine the political, social and cultural transformations of modern China. Topics of lectures include Confucianism and its modern fate, popular movements, the Great Leap Forward Movement, the role of Shanghai in modern China, Tiananmen Movement and the prospect of Chinese political reforms. The course will be approached through lectures, site visits, class discussions, and research.

Sample Syllabus

From the Warring States period to the present, what have Chinese and others understood to be the meaning of “China,” and what have been the broad implications of this understanding? This course is divided into four chronological periods: Antiquity—from the period of the ‘central kingdoms’ to the formation of the early empire; Middle Period—China Among Equals; Early Modern: 1350-1910—China, Global Trade, and Imperialism; Modern: 1910-present—China Redux

In the 21st century, perhaps no bilateral relationship is more important than that between the People’s Republic of China and the United States. How this relationship between the globe’s sole superpower and a rapidly emerging contender evolves not only will affect their state-to-state interactions but also will affect the daily lives of their citizens, the nations of the Asia-Pacific region, and, inevitably, will have global repercussions. To understand and fully appreciate the current status of US-PRC relations, and in order to envision the possible course this relationship might follow, an examination of their past interactions is necessary. To provide such a foundation, this course will survey major trends, policies, and events that played a role in shaping the Sino-American path to the present and will continue to influence the path to the future.

The format of the course will be discussion. Each week, the class will begin with a general review of the historical context of the period being examined, followed by a student-led discussion of the week’s assigned readings.

Sample Syllabus

Experiential Learning introduces GLS students to Berlin with an intensive program of cultural preparation followed by site-dependent research which supports the development of the senior thesis project.
The cultural preparation component, the first half of the semester, discusses what factors have encouraged and impeded Berlin's flourishing as a diverse arts metropolis, tracing developments through 20th-century Berlin to the contemporary arts scene. Sessions largely take place in situ, in locations of contention and debate.
For the remaining sessions, students will be introduced to different aspects and particular problems of participatory field research while engaging in community-based guided observation assignments. These readings, discussions and assignments serve as a preparation for the site-specific projects in the Spring term.

Sample Syllabus

This course is for Global Liberal Studies students only.  Advanced Spanish skills (beyond Intermediate II) recommended.

This course combines a seminar based weekly section together with intensive internships in businesses, NGOs or other organizations. The experiential part will consist of 10 weekly hours of work within a pre-arranged organization. The academic part is meant to assist students in getting the most from this experience and provide theoretical and methodological elements to critically examine their experiences. It weaves together research design and methods with an empirical and theoretical examination of recent social phenomena in Argentina. We will use selected themes and topics to explore theoretical perspectives and selected aspects of contemporary Argentine society. In parallel we will explore how to construct a research project, collect data and analyze its contents.

Sample Syllabus

Enrollment by permission only. Application required. Contact global.academics@nyu.edu for application information. Course includes weekly seminar and minimum of 10 hours fieldwork/ week at approved internship fieldsite. Space in this course will be limited, and may require advanced Spanish abilities.

Sample Syllabus

Note: Students accepted to this course must indicate on their visa survey that they want a Tier-4 General Student Visa; you will not be permitted to intern (paid or unpaid) in the UK without a Tier-4 visa. A Tier-4 visa costs a minimum of £289 GBP (approximately $500 USD), plus any applicable shipping and expedite fees. (*Does not apply to students traveling on EEA or Swiss passports.)

Enrollment by permission only. Application required.   Application information can be found on the What's Next blog here.

This 4 credit course includes a weekly seminar and minimum of 10 hours fieldwork/week at an approved internship fieldsite. Internship placements are made by EUSA, an organization partnering with NYU London. EUSA provides internship placements in a wide range of organizations. Industry sectors include:

• Business, Finance & Economics
• Healthcare, Social Issues & Education
• Television, Film & Journalism
• Communications
• Arts & Culture
• Politics & NGOs
  

The seminar portion of the course explores many different aspects of your internship site. The goal is to finish the semester with an in-depth understanding of the company or organization, including its approach, its policies, and the context in which it operates. We will also discuss more generally the state of the contemporary workplace and ourselves as workers. Finally, you will use the seminar to reflect critically and analytically on the internship experience and as a way to refine your own personal and professional goals.

Sample Syllabus

Open to GLS Juniors only

This is a full-year course divided over two semesters. The first semester course is designed to give students a broad overview of contemporary French society and its institutions while at the same time provide insight into the actual workings of such institutions on the ground. Topics covered include the institutions of the 5th Republic, the functioning of the welfare state, French cultural policy, the organization of local politics, urban issues, and immigration. Frequent site visits in and around Paris. Conducted in English.

Sample Syllabus

This course is open to Global Liberal Studies students only.

This course aims to complement and enhance the internship experience. Students will learn to critically examine their fieldwork in order to reflect upon what their particular, concrete experience reveals about life in contemporary Shanghai.

Sample Syllabus

Enrollment by permission only. Application required. Application information available here. Course includes weekly seminar and minimum of 10 hours fieldwork/ week at approved internship fieldsite. 

Sample Syllabus

Requires departmental approval prior to registration. Open only to NYU Media, Culture, & Communication students. Interested MCC students should contact Jonathan Martinez jm4599@nyu.edu

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

Sample Syllabus

Can also be counted for SCA-UA Internship credit (government and non-profit placements only)

The seminar is designed to complement the internship fieldwork experience. In it we explore many different aspects of your internship site. The goal is to finish the semester with an in-depth understanding of the company or organization, including its approach, its policies, and the context in which it operates. We will also discuss more generally the state of the contemporary workplace and ourselves as workers. Finally, you will use the seminar to reflect critically and analytically on the internship experience and as a way to refine your own personal and professional goals.

Please note: Students who secure an internship through or with the assistance of NYU Washington, DC must confirm their spot in the program and enroll in the internship class in order to accept the internship. Students are required to pursue 20 hours/ week in their internships to earn course credit. NYU Washington, DC advises that students pursue ~20 hrs/ week in internship committments. If students elect to participate in an internship that exceeds the recommended number of hours, they may be advised to reduce their academic courseload. Students are highly encouraged to consult NYU Washington DC staff for assistance with these decisions.

Students will gain understanding of the basic messages in simple oral and written
communication. They will be able to acquire key information from listening and reading brief, simple, authentic material and have a fair understanding of the meaning of short standard Italian conversation in a limited number of content areas. Students will be able to engage in basic conversation
as well as to initiate communication on familiar topics. Strong emphasis will be given to communicative
situations involving first and second person forms; writing activities with pertinent vocabulary
and structure will include simple autobiographical information, brief messages, simple forms and lists. Linguistic structures : subject pronouns, articles, adjectives, prepositions, present and present perfect indicative.

Sample Syllabus

Prerequisites: Successful completion of Extensive Elem I

Students will gain understanding of oral and written material on a variety of topics, ranging from personal routine to include family, taste and hobbies. Their understanding will include present and past events. Students will be able to engage in conversations on a variety of real-life situations regarding familiar subjects, to respond to open-ended questions and initiate communication on these topics. They will be able to give and follow directions, instructions and commands. Skills in mono-directional oral presentation will begin to emerge. Writing activities will include narration of present and past events, personal experiences, school and work situations, as well as brief messages to family and friends. Linguistic structures: subject and object pronouns, articles, adjectives, present indicative and imperative, the two main past tenses in use in contemporary Italian.

This daily course immerses students in the Italian language. The basic structures and vocabulary of the Italian language are presented. Students are also provided with systematic practice of oral Italian through dialogues, pattern drills, and exercises. Special emphasis is given to correct pronunciation, sound placement, and intonation. Conducted in Italian.

Sample Syllabus

Prerequisites: Successful completion of Extensive Elem I & II or Intensive Elementary Italian

Students will gain understanding of oral and written communication on various topics in the past, present and future in addition to expressions of personal wishes, feelings and hopes.
Students will recognize key information in the reading and listening of authentic material and will understand, to some extent advanced texts featuring narration and description of events.
Students will be able to handle most conversation tasks and standard social situations. Students will be able to write short letters and short paragraphs and show command of simple sentence syntax. Linguistic structures: students will be familiar with increasingly complex grammatical content, such as indirect and combined pronouns, future tense, conditional and subjunctive modes.

Sample Syllabus

Prerequisites: Successful completion of Extensive Interm I

Students will gain understanding of oral and written material ranging from general routine and leisure time activities, to more complex topics such as politics, environmental issues, and work environment. Students will be able to read and appreciate pertinent authentic texts. Students will be able to handle most uncomplicated conversation tasks and standard social situations. Students will be able to debate and argue for opposite viewpoints on a range of topics, to make comparisons and hypothesis. Presentation skills, written and oral, will solidify; skills in narrating in paragraphs begin to emerge and develop in a creative direction. Linguistic structures: students will gain knowledge of increasingly complex verbal forms such as all tenses of the subjunctive mode, past conditional and preterit, as well as several elaborate grammatical structures.

Prerequisites: ITAL-UA 1 & ITAL-UA 2, Elementary Italian I & II; or ITAL-UA 10, Intensive Elementary Italian

This course offers students who are at the intermediate level a daily immersion class. The acquisition and practice of more sophisticated structures of Italian are undertaken. Fundamental oral and written skills are developed, and vocabulary enrichment and conversational ability are emphasized. Conducted in Italian.

Sample Syllabus 

Prerequisites: ITAL-UA 11, ITAL-UA 12, Intermediate Italian I & II; or ITAL-UA 20, Intensive Intermediate Italian

Intensive review of Italian grammar through written and oral exercises, conversations, compositions, translation, and readings from contemporary Italian literature. Conducted in Italian.

Sample Syllabus

Prerequisites: ITAL-UA 30, Advanced Review of Modern Italian

Students entering the course should have mastered the fundamental structure of Italian. The course is designed to help students gain confidence and increase their effectiveness in speaking present-day Italian. Through discussions, oral reports, and readings, students develop vocabulary in a variety of topics, improve pronunciation, and learn an extensive range of idiomatic expressions. Conducted in Italian.

Sample Syllabus 

Prerequisites: ITAL-UA 30, Advanced Review of Modern Italian

Students will view and discuss Italian films to enrich their knowledge of language and culture, including: classic films; contemporary films, which we will compare with the classics; films in current release and available in the theaters of Florence. Through creative activities, students will work to improve their writing, reading and vocabulary, as well as their skills of observation, comprehension and interpretation. Students will discuss the themes presented by the various films and their place within both Italian history and the history of Italian cinema. Students will address the different elements that make up the text of each film: direction, screenplay, sound score, cinematography and editing.

Sample Syllabus 

Prerequisite: successful completion of ITAL-UA 30 Advanced Review of Modern Italian or permission of instructor.

This course is a survey of the basic texts of Italian Early Modernliterature, starting from Classical and Provençal archetypes and tracingthe specific and original way in which these same archetypes wereembedded in Italian literature. Among the main themes that will be takeninto consideration are: the tradition of love poetry, also related to thechivalric world, starting with the Sicilian school and arriving at thelove treatises of the Cinquecento; the issue of Italian (literary) language, starting from the very first examples of literary production in Italian and going through the scholarly discussion started by Dante’sDe vulgari eloquentia and continued with Bembo’s Prose dellaVolgar Lingua; literature and politics, throughthe treatises by Niccolò Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini;literature and philosophy, with the interaction betweenscholastic/Averroistic and Platonic/Neoplatonicphilosophy, together with their interaction with Christian doctrine;women writers and the “other” side/perspective in love phenomenology andpoetry, through the works by Gaspara Stampa, Vittoria Colonna, VeronicaFranco, and Tullia D’Aragona among others, with analysis of social, gender and genres issues.

The course will explore these and other important themes in Medieval andRenaissance Italian literature, focusing on how to read primary sourcescritically, which in turn will serve as the basis for class discussion,an essential component of the course. Conducted in Italian. 

Obiettivo principale del corso è lo studio del panorama letterario dell’Italia del XIX e del  XX secolo con particolare attenzione alla lettura e all’analisi di alcune opere che rivestono un ruolo di particolare rilievo nella storia della letteratura italiana.  Il corso, condotto interamente in lingua italiana, prevede  lo studio dei principali scrittori e poeti della letteratura italiana dell’Ottocento e del Novecento e del contesto storico-culturale in cui sono inseriti.  Conducted in Italian.

Italian instruction will be offered for Italian Immersion students.

This course analyzes Dante's poetry in itself and as an object of translation and adaptation. The text of the Divine Comedy, a 14,000-line journey through the afterlife, will be studied in terms of its transmission and reception in contemporary culture. Emphasis will be put on Dante's influence on literature, art, music, media and film. The text is read in translation with references to the original Italian facing text. Conducted in English. 

Sample Syllabus

Italian instruction will be offered for Italian Immersion students.

Presents a study of post-World War II Italian politics and society in comparative and historical perspective. Seeks explanations of Italian political development in specific historical factors such as the 19th century patterns of state formation and the experience of fascism. Comparative analysis seeks to show how the social structure, political culture, and party systems have shaped Italy's distinct development. Current and recurrent political issues include the problem of integrating the south into the national economy and state response to social movements, particularly terrorism. Conducted in English.

Sample Syllabus 

This course introduces contemporary Italy in all its complexity and fascination. Reviewing politics, economics, society, and culture over the past two centuries, the course has a primary goal -- to consider how developments since the 1800s have influenced the lives and formed the outlook of today's Italians. In other words, we are engaged in the historical search for something quite elusive: Italian “identity”. Topics will include the unification of the country, national identity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the First World War, and Italian fascism, World War Two and the resistance, the post-war Italian Republic, the economic "miracle", the South, the Mafia, terrorism, popular culture, and the most recent political and social developments, including Italy and the European Union. Lectures combine with readings and films (taking advantage of Italy’s magnificent post-war cinema).

Sample Syllabus 

Urban culture is complex, fantastic, frightening, and a part of daily life, encompassing everything from the opera to street musicians, the public library to the piazza, the theater to local cafes and social clubs. This course, where cities are considered to be sources of cultural invention, explores through literature, history, social science and student experience, the evolution of high and popular culture, both modernist and post-modern. Emphasis will be placed on how cultures create bonds between specific interest groups, and how culture becomes the arena for acting out or resolving group conflict. This course will focus on Italian cities, including Florence. Conducted in English.

Sample Syllabus

The course covers the evolution of Italian opera from its beginnings in Florence to the early 20th century with special emphasis on Monteverdi, Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi and Puccini. The approach is multidisciplinary and aims at a comprehensive survey of the music theatre in the context of the Italian cultural heritage. Literary sources, musico-dramatic features, vocal styles are studied in connection with major works that best represent trends and genres in the Italian operatic tradition. Students are expected to master the distinctive characteristics of such genres as favola in musica, intermezzo, opera seria, opera buffa, grand opera, dramma lirico, and the basic elements of Italian versification. Students listen to and watch recorded operas and attend performances in Florence or other Italian cities. Conducted in English

Sample Syllabus

Starting from Villa La Pietra, this course explores the connection between the history of the Italian villa and the economy, architecture, art, and landscape. Historical and economic reasons have contributed to the unique typology of the Florentine landscape and the relationship between the villa, the farmer house and the "podere." The course examines the original development of the villa and the ideology of country life in Florentine culture and society. Conducted in English.

Sample Syllabus 

This course presents an investigation on the transformations of political communications in period between the so-called Italian "Second Republic", dominated by the larger-than-life and ubiquitous presence of media tycoon and sports entrepreneur Silvio Berlusconi, and the recent emergence
of Internet-based political movement Movimento Cinque Stelle (Five Stars Movement), led by former stand-up comedian and prominent blogger Beppe Grillo. In the course, students will be introduced to the main political and cultural features of this period, spanning two decades, that has witnessed a high level of interpenetration between the political sphere and the media sphere, with a constant interchange of cultural, financial and institutional dynamics. 

NYU Media, Culture, & Communication students can take this course for major/minor credit.

In this course students will develop, pitch, research, report, write, edit and present original articles of various kinds on several subjects throughout the semester. Using the city and people of Buenos Aires as their focus, students will work in teams for some projects and individually for others to hone their skills as observers, interviewers, reporters and writers.

Sample Syllabus

The class will explore the sociocultural and philosophical context of the media industry and the practice of mass communication in Africa in general, and Ghana in particular. This broad perspective will be examined against the background notion that the media do not function in a vacuum. Thus, students will examine how these contexts, informed by the dominant philosophies and macro-institutional practices of society, mitigate or even dictate the operations of the media. As a special focus, we will examine the significance of the liberalization of the airwaves in emerging democracies such as Ghana.

Sample Syllabus

Students in this course must also register for the Methods and Practice Theatre visit on Thursday evenings.

This course carries an additional fee of £180 to cover the cost of theatre tickets.Students should also be prepared to pay up to £120 for extra tickets while in London as part of the Methods & Practice course.

Using the cultural life of London as its focus, this course aims to enable students to report on the diversity of cultural and artistic activity in the British capital in eight main areas - film, photography, literature, architecture, music, visual arts, travel, and London in literature. Several forms and techniques will be explored through lecture, discussion and assignments, including: news reports, interviews, reviews (film, literature, theater), feature stories, essays, and commentaries. During the course, students will learn not only about London's cultural landscape but they will be encouraged to examine it in various journalistic and literary forms. Weekly theatre visits are a key component of this course.

Sample Syllabus

Designed to interrogate the impact of various forms of media on "society" and various notions of society on "media." Students consider conventional and unconventional media in Britain - from the London Times to movies to fashion magazines - in an effort to interpret British culture. The key question is not "Is this text 'good'?" but "What does this text mean?"

Sample Syllabus 

Using the cultural life of Prague as its focus, this course aims to enable students to report on the diversity of cultural and artistic activity in the Czech capital in eight main areas—film, photography, literature, architecture, music, visual arts, travel, and Prague in literature. Several forms and techniques will be explored through lecture, discussion and assignments, including: news reports, interviews, reviews (film, literature, theater), feature stories, essays, and commentaries. During the course, students will learn not only about Prague's cultural landscape but they will be encouraged to examine it in various journalistic and literary forms. One of the leading aims of this courses is also to introduce to them six extraordinary persons, whose work in their respective areas reached international attention. 

Sample Syllabus

This course will focus on foreign reporting in US and British newspapers and journals, looking at the history of foreign reporting, the different kinds of media in which it appears, the topics it covers and the skills necessary to perform it. Students will read and discuss contemporary reporting and famous reportage from the past, listen to foreign correspondents and write their own stories. By the end of the course students should have a good understanding of foreign reporting and will be well equipped with some of the practical skills necessary to follow it as a career. 

Sample Syllabus

The course focuses on combining certain techniques of fiction with the rigor of journalistic travel reporting to produce stories that move beyond the constraints of the news and feature story: stories that engage, resonate with readers, provide insight – stories which “produce the emotion”. The course proceeds by the reading and analysis of contemporary journalism and classic travel pieces: careful examination of the narrative; fictional and literary devices used in travel writing; examination of and practice with various information gathering strategies; consideration of the ethics of representation. Students will continually develop stories from their own travel experiences for presentation and in-depth critique in class. These regular assignments will prepare students for their final project: a substantial travel narrative of their own. Participants must meet deadlines set for assignments. Participants may not submit previously published or completed work for the assignments. 

Sample Syllabus

This course aims to give students a strong grounding in radio journalism and radio production, and unlock the secrets of being a successful freelance stringer. Topics include: organization of a radio station, stringers and the industry, cultivating sources, writing the radio news dispatch, on-air voice and delivery, the technology of radio reporting, conducting the interview, press conferences, covering a news event, sound editing, producing the radio feature. During the semester students will write several news dispatches; record and edit a ten-minute interview; and write, edit, record and produce a radio feature story.

Sample Syllabus

Only open to students who have received special permission.  Email sylvan.solloway@nyu.edu to apply.

Note: Students majoring in Journalism & Mass Communication (CAS) or Media, Culture and Communication (Steinhardt) may take this course in conjunction with MCC-UE 1400 Communication and Cultural Contexts for credit in the major. 

The course offers an interpretation of mass media and their real - as well as desired or feared - role in society, with a focus on media in Europe and the Czech Republic. The participants will get a survey of theoretical and normative perspectives on the relationship between media and their content on one hand and society and individuals on the other hand. The focus will be on what enables people to relate so many expectations, fears and prejudices to the media and their performance. Specifically, we will discuss (1) the typology of media as communication means, organizations and institutions, (2) media products, (3) types of audiences, (4) the (possible and probable) media effects, as well as positive or negative expectations and (5) the specific role of media in various cultures (with an indepth insight in Czech society).

Sample Syllabus

The idea of the course is to inform students about European media in general, and about transformation of the Czech media after the Velvet revolution in 1989 in particular. Czech developments will be presented on the background of a wider European perspective in order to make students acquainted with the basic features of European landscape of print and electronic media. Due to the lack of literature and printed sources in English language on the subject, the course will extensively exploit internet sources related to the topics.

Sample Syllabus

This course provides an introduction to the work of the reporter, with particular focus on covering China, and offers students a chance to learn and practice basic journalism skills, including news writing and descriptive/feature writing. Visiting speakers will also offer insights into the role of the journalist and the challenges faced, and provide additional feedback on students’ work and ideas.

Sample Syllabus

In this hybrid reading / writing class, we will explore environmental journalism from an Australian perspective. Each week we will read and discuss work that explores this journalistic tradition, its forms and its themes and the place it takes in the new media world. Drawing our inspiration from great writers, we will find our own stories, our own voices and learn to tell our own tales. We will grapple with the debates around environmental advocacy, ethics and objectivity and develop techniques to help us wade through the quicksand of scientific proof and funding agendas. Big local issues in the environmental conversation in Australia include water scarcity and the battle over inland rivers, damage caused by intensive agriculture such as spreading dryland salinity, land clearing, the felling of old-growth forests, combating exotic animals and plants, preserving the Wild, marine conservation and the Reef, protecting our primarily coastal homes from rising sea-levels, our economic reliance on uranium, coal and other mining, urban encroachment into agricultural land and the tension between indigenous rights and environmental aims. As a big coal and uranium miner, Australia also plays an important part in global debates around nuclear issues and ocean and air quality.

Sample Syllabus

This will be a hands-on course examining the idea of truth and spin in Washington D.C., politics, governance, journalism, science and society. It will be part overview and lecture on topics central to the course and part active reporting and writing. Spin is the Washington art of taking something and making it seem truth-y even when it’s not quite factual. This is a user’s guide for reporters and non-journalists alike. How to spot and dodge the misleading, the incomplete truth, along with the history and reasoning behind manipulation of facts. Advice from those who practice spin and those who successfully avoid it and what it’s like to be stuck as a victim of spin. To take advantage of the unique Washington location and distinct attitude in the city, students will participate in press conferences and go to public hearings on Capitol Hill in reporting roles and then write news-style articles. Invited guest speakers are from NASA, NOAA, the White House Office of Science Technology and Policy, environmental activist groups, energy lobbyists and Washington media. The intersection of the media with science, politics and economics on the issue of global warming will be a focal point of this course and how it is all spun.

Sample Syllabus

This course provides a thorough introduction to the international system for the protection of human rights and the preconditions under which it functions at international and national levels. The course aims to develop the students' interest in, and knowledge of, international human rights; to explore human rights theory and practice; to introduce various human rights conventions and mechanisms, particularly the United Nations system; and to provide advanced instruction in several key aspects of international human rights, including the effects of globalisation on human rights, the question of the universality / cultural-specificity of human rights, and the so-called 'interdependence' of various human rights.

Sample Syllabus

This course will begin by reviewing the nature and sources of law. Yet it will do so not as part of a purely academic exercise but in order to answer some very practical philosophical questions, such as: Why isn't law the same thing as justice? Where does legality end and revolution begin? Why does the Anglo-American legal system make legal resolution into a game? Are war crimes tribunals legal proceedings or merely victor's revenge dressed up in procedural garb? Why doesn't law which is considered divinely inspired (i.e. the Old and New Testaments) serve as a legitimate basis of law in the West? The aim of this course is to show how understanding the nature and sources of law can help us understand real-world events and issues. By the end of the course students will have an appreciation of the limits of law and how law fits into the fabric of society alongside other norms, such as morality and religion. Students should also learn to identify interconnections and relationships between ideas in seemingly disparate areas of thought.

Syllabus

This course will study China’s governance in the context of America’s own governance system. We will consider how to compare American and Chinese governance systems, and whether and how concepts can be translated between them—so that the countries, and their citizens can learn from, and cooperate with, one another. In the process, we hope to learn about China, but also to reflect—in the light of 9/11 and Iraq-- more deeply on our own understanding of how American governance works—and how it is seen by the world.

Sample Syllabus

Introduces the language behavior of African Americans. Discusses African American Vernacular English in terms of its linguistic and cultural distinctiveness, both intrasystemically and in comparison with other dialects of American English. Relates the English vernacular spoken by African Americans in urban settings to creole languages spoken on the South Carolina Sea Islands (Gullah), in the Caribbean, and in West Africa. Also approaches the subject from the perspective of the history of the expressive uses of African American Vernacular English, and the educational, attitudinal, and social implications connected with the language.

Prerequisites: Completion of Algebra and Calculus with a grade of C or higher or passing placement exam.

This course is only open to Economics Policy Majors and prospective majors.

Elements of calculus and linear algebra are important to the study of economics. This class is designed to provide the appropriate tools for study in the policy concentration. Examples and motivation are drawn from important topics in economics. Topics covered include derivatives of functions of one and several variables; interpretations of the derivatives; convexity; constrained and unconstrained optimization; series, including geometric and Taylor series; ordinary differential equations; matrix algebra; eigenvalues; and (possibly) dynamic optimization and multivariable integration.

Prerequisite: A grade of C or better in MATH-UA 121 Calculus I or the equivalent.

Systems of linear equations. Gaussian elimination, matrices, determinants, and Cramer's rule. Vectors, vector spaces, basis and dimension, linear transformations. Eigenvalues, eigenvectors, quadratic forms.

Sample Syllabus

Prerequisite: A grade of C or better in MATH-UA 122/Calculus II and MATH-UA 123/Calculus III or the equivalent.  Not open to students who have taken MATH-UA 235/Probability and Statistics.

An introduction to the mathematical treatment of random phenomena occurring in the natural, physical, and social sciences. Axioms of mathematical probability, combinatorial analysis, binomial distribution, Poisson and normal approximation, random variables and probability distributions, generating functions, Markov chains applications. 

Sample Syllabus

Prerequisite: A grade of C or better in MATH-UA 121 Calculus I or the equivalent.

Systems of linear equations. Gaussian elimination, matrices, determinants, and Cramer’s rule. Vectors, vector spaces, basis and dimension, linear transformations. Eigenvalues, eigenvectors, quadratic forms. 

Prerequisite: Passing MATH-UA 122 Calculus II a grade of C or higher or passing placement test (BC of 5 for students entering NYU in Fall 2012 or later).

Functions of several variables. Vectors in the plane and space. Partial derivatives with applications, especially Lagrange multipliers. Double and triple integrals. Spherical and cylindrical coordinates. Surface and line integrals. Divergence, gradient, and curl. Theorem of Gauss and Stokes.

This course proposes a historical and cultural approach to the development of the popular press, cinema, radio, television and the contemporary processes of the new media. There is a central question for the course: Is there any singularity in Latin American media? The answer assumes that there is a specific relation between tradition and modernity in Latin American societies with many consequences for mass culture and media. The constitution of mass audiences in societies where literacy was not a universal value, made significant the development of audiovisual media. The course will focus on melodrama as a configuration that made possible the emergence of specific genres in Latin American cinema, radio and television. Particularly, the “telenovela” is simultaneously an aesthetic, industrial and audience phenomenon with local and global circulation. Finally, the course will discuss the role of media in dictatorship and democratic processes. Censorship and alternative media enabled many different practices for radio journalists, filmmakers or contemporary bloggers.

Sample Syllabus

This course presents an investigation on the transformations of political communications in period between the so-called Italian "Second Republic", dominated by the larger-than-life and ubiquitous presence of media tycoon and sports entrepreneur Silvio Berlusconi, and the recent emergence
of Internet-based political movement Movimento Cinque Stelle (Five Stars Movement), led by former stand-up comedian and prominent blogger Beppe Grillo. In the course, students will be introduced to the main political and cultural features of this period, spanning two decades, that has witnessed a high level of interpenetration between the political sphere and the media sphere, with a constant interchange of cultural, financial and institutional dynamics. 

A review of theories and evidence of cultural and political transformations in culture underway in the era of media proliferation, multinational conglomerates, and cyberspace. The role of international flows and national differences.

Sample Syllabus

This course introduces students to the basic structures and practices of media in Europe and their relationship to everyday social life. It pays special attention to the common models and idioms of media in Europe, with an emphasis on national and regional variations. Specific case studies highlight current trends in the production, distribution, consumption, and regulation of media. Topics may include: national or regional idioms in a range of media genres, from entertainment, to advertising and publicity, to news and information; legal norms regarding content and freedom of expression; pirate and independent media; and innovations and emerging practices in digital media. Conducted in English.

Sample Syllabus 

The course examines the role of advertising not only as an economic force but also as a form of cultural representation with a focus on the social implications of the role of consumerism in contemporary society by following its various forms around the world. Students will read, watch, analyze and discuss a variety of text specific commercials. Attention will be devoted also to the impact of advertising on the post-communist world and to the ways by which cultural issues are framed and kept in mind in the media discourse. The main objective is to provide an introductory course that is meaningful and of practical importance to students. The course examines Advertising not only as an academic discipline, but also a way of perceiving and understanding our society. 

Sample Syllabus

This course will examine “social media” from a cultural perspective, with a focus on how media technologies figure in practices of everyday life and in the construction of social relationships and identities. Although many of our readings will deal with Social Network Sites (SNSs), we will attempt to form an expansive definition of what constitutes “social media.” We will also work from an expansive definition of “technology,” considering the term in a cultural sense to include various practices and tools used to communicate in everyday life.

Sample Syllabus

An introduction to the theoretical approaches and practices used to analyze the content, structure, and context of media in society. Students will explore factors shaping modern media texts, including: politics, economics, technology, and cultural traditions. The dominant critical perspectives that contribute to our understanding of media will be read, discussed, and employed. The course has three broad objectives: Develop a critical awareness of media environments, develop a familiarity with concepts, themes and theoretical approaches of media criticism, and the terms associated with these approaches, and develop an ability to adopt and adapt these frameworks in your own analyses of mediated communication. Students' active class participation is vital to this process. Active participation includes listening, building on what others say, asking questions, advancing reasoned arguments, identifying theories that are relevant to the discussion, and working collaboratively with others. Missing class and/or a record of lateness will negatively affect the final grade. An absence will be excused only in case of a medical emergency (or other extraordinary circumstance) which is justified with appropriate documentation.

Sample Syllabus

Only open to students who have received special departmental permission. Please contact Jonathan Martinez (jm4599@nyu.edu).

NOTE: Students majoring in Journalism and Mass Communication (CAS) or Communication Studies (Steinhardt) may take this course in conjunction with JOUR-UA 9298, Media and Society, for credit in the major.

A veritable buzzword, globalization refers to several newly emerged phenomena. To study it means to delve into several areas in which it manifests itself. These are, to name just the three most visible ones, the economy, culture and politics. In any of these dimensions globalization, as it is discussed in the last twenty years, functions through the media. Media does not portray globalization, but it is its important part. A study of globalization is inherently diverse and eclectic. So is this course. Students will read, watch films, analyze and discuss them. In class discussions and short papers they are expected to engage questions, issues, themes and topics connected to globalization, culture and the media. Special attention will be devoted to the impact of globalization on the late communist and post-communist world, and also to the ways by which the globalization issues are framed and discussed in the media discourse. All assigned texts and films are mandatory. Students are required to follow current events in the media (cable TV, newspapers, Internet). Class participation is expected as it is part of the final grade.

Sample Syllabus

The idea of the course is to inform students about European media in general, and about transformation of the Czech media after the Velvet revolution in 1989 in particular. Czech developments will be presented on the background of a wider European perspective in order to make students acquainted with the basic features of European landscape of print and electronic media. Due to the lack of literature and printed sources in English language on the subject, the course will extensively exploit internet sources related to the topics.

Sample Syllabus

This course introduces the philosophy of cybernetic machines with reference to the technological trends affecting contemporary China. Topics will include: Chinese cyberspace and the Great Fire Wall; the revolutionary potential of microblogs; hacking; gaming; the ICT economy, maker innovations and machine intelligence.

This course is designed to introduce contemporary media industries in China, involving print, broadcasting, film, PR, advertising, and new media. This course reviews the structures, functions, and influences of various forms of media industries. Practical media work is emphasized. Additionally, it analyzes existing issues on these media industries from historical, regulatory, social, and technological perspectives.

Sample Syllabus

Requires departmental approval prior to registration. Open only to NYU Media, Culture, & Communication students. Interested MCC students should contact Jonathan Martinez jm4599@nyu.edu

This course brings together diverse issues and perspectives in rapidly evolving areas of international/global communication. Historical and theoretical frameworks will be provided to help students to approach the scope, disparity and complexity of current developments in our media landscape.

Students will be encouraged to critically assess shifts in national, regional, and international media patterns of production, distribution, and consumption over time, leading to analysis of the tumultuous contemporary global communication environment. Key concepts associated with international communication will be examined, including a focus on trends in national and global media consolidation, cultural implications of globalisation, international broadcasting, information flows, international communication law and regulation, and trends in communication and information technologies. The focus of the course will be international, with a particular emphasis on Australia.

Ultimately, we will examine the ways in which global communication is undergoing a fundamental paradigm shift, as demonstrated by the Arab spring, the Olympics coverage, and the creeping dominance of Google, Facebook and Twitter.

Sample Syllabus

The aim of the course is to follow the evolution of religious ideas and practices throughout the period that goes from early Renaissance to the years of the reorganization of the Catholic Church after the Council of Trent. The geographical area covered will include the countries of southern Europe (mainly Italy, but also Spain, France and Portugal) and the German World. Conducted in English.

Sample Syllabus 

The Renaissance began and reached maturity in Italy between 1350 and 1500. This course closely examines the political, economic, and social situations in Italy during this period, emphasizing the special conditions that produced Renaissance art and literature. The relationship between culture, society, and politics is studied in the case of Florence, in which the hegemony of the Medici house and its patronage brought the city to cultural leadership in the Western world. Conducted in English.

Sample Syllabus

Enrollment by permission only. Application required. Contact global.academics@nyu.edu for application information. Course includes weekly seminar and minimum of 10 hours fieldwork/ week at approved internship fieldsite.

Sample Syllabus

This interdisciplinary course combines ethnographic readings, representations, and interpretations of city and urban cultures with a video production component in which students create short documentaries on the city of Accra. The interpretative classes will run concurrently with production management, sights and sound, and post-production workshops. The course will have three objectives: (1) teach students the documentary tradition from Flaherty to Rouch; (2) use critical Cinema theory to define a document with a camera; and (3) create a short documentary film.

Sample Syllabus

Counter to the prevailing view of a rural African living in traditional communities, the majority of Africans are rapidly becoming urban dwellers. African cities are fast joining the ranks of mega-cities, global market hubs and centers for political and cultural exchange. This phenomenon raises important questions that form the basis for this course. Are these cities merely the products of globalization, or do their roots lie in pre-colonial tradition? Are global cities a new phenomenon in Africa, or can we find traces of earlier international links? What factors define the spatial geography and political economy of urban Africa? What challenges do African governments face in managing the city? How has the architecture and the arts of the African city been influenced by external connections?

This course examines those factors that have shaped Accra throughout history. While the emphasis of the course is on Accra, the course also introduces the main theoretical debates across disciplinary fields in the comparative study of the city. Students will be challenged to utilize primary resources such as national archives and special collection libraries, maps, and various cultural resources to address some of the questions being posed.

Sample Syllabus

With the focus on urban ecology this course examines Berlin’s urban planning approaches and their history, asking whether and how, the city’s built form, biophysical processes, and social life are intertwined and ‘sustainable’. The course offers an extensive survey of theory and method drawn from the fields of ‘urban’ ecology, geography, and anthropology, as well as site visits to several facets of Berlin’s ‘green’ past and present. By combining the experience of site visits with a careful study of contemporary urban ecology, we will consider how contests over environmental knowledge, socio-cultural ideology, and discourse shape human engagement with urban nature. The main questions are: how have Berlin’s ‘green’ features developed in relation to economic, socio-cultural, and political processes? How do sustainable projects change Berlin, and how are they experienced and shaped by different social groups? This is a reading-intensive 6-credit course that meets for 3,5 hours per week.

Sample Syllabus

This course examines diverse current urban trends in Berlin and their connections to worldwide phenomena. It focuses on the way that different social groups (according to class, milieu, origin, gender or sexuality) appropriate urban space and constitute place-­‐‑specific identities.

It uses the city of Berlin with its multiple layers of history as a laboratory for contemporary urban research with historical, empirical and theoretical material. We will study key debates on urban developments, partly as field visits, in regard to housing, migration, gentrification, and we will search for the creative and the sustainable city. You will be introduced to the contemporary discourses on those trends and to new ways of reading and seeing a city.

Sample Syllabus

Urban culture is complex, fantastic, frightening, and a part of daily life, encompassing everything from the opera to street musicians, the public library to the piazza, the theater to local cafes and social clubs. This course, where cities are considered to be sources of cultural invention, explores through literature, history, social science and student experience, the evolution of high and popular culture, both modernist and post-modern. Emphasis will be placed on how cultures create bonds between specific interest groups, and how culture becomes the arena for acting out or resolving group conflict. This course will focus on Italian cities, including Florence. Conducted in English.

Sample Syllabus

An urban centre for nearly two millennia, London has both shaped and been shaped by processes stretching over ever widening geographical scales, to claim its place within a select network of cities that are said to command contemporary globalisation. This course explores London’s evolving global reach, examining its role in key economic, social, political, cultural and spatial processes and identifying the effects that these have in turn had in its own urban life and landscape. The course briefly documents London’s establishment as an outpost of the Roman Empire in early history to its rise as the politico-administrative heart of the British Empire, to focus on London’s emergence as a global city. Largely oriented by the work of Human Geography scholars, the course examines the unravelling of London’s global connections through concepts such as urban space and place, globalisation, spatial division of labour, networks and flows, migration, transnationalism and multiculturalism.

The course is based on a mix of lectures and student-led seminars, and also includes a guided city walk and a museum visit. Lectures by the course convenor address the key themes of the weekly programme. Students are required to read designated texts for the week ahead. In seminars, students present and discuss their findings from different learning activities (readings, field walk, museum visit, their personal experience of London, lectures). Students are expected to participate actively in learning activities, especially seminars, and their participation constitutes one assessment component. 

Sample Syllabus

Enrollment by permission only. Application required. Application information available here. Course includes weekly seminar and minimum of 10 hours fieldwork/ week at approved internship fieldsite. 

Sample Syllabus

The main aim of this course is to facilitate a rich engagement with Shanghai. The underlying premise is that the city is a critical site of globalization. Rather than view globalization as an external force acting on Shanghai, this course aims instead to show how globalization is inherent in the city and that an investigation of the distinctive features of Shanghai -- from the abandoned factories now revived as creative clusters, to the lilong architecture, luxury malls and street peddlers -- sheds light on both the past and future of globalization.

Sample Syllabus

 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

For the first time in world history, the number of people living in urban areas exceeds the number of people living in rural areas. In acknowledging the urgent demands of our urban present and future, this course examines the social, economic, and environmental dimensions of contemporary cities. Because projections show that most population growth will continue to take place in and around cities, this course makes the case for sustainable development as a way to mitigate the impacts of human growth. We will explore what is, and what could be, by discussing these themes: urban sprawl, slums and slum typology, green urban planning, air and water quality, new paradigms for energy/water/waste infrastructure, green building, sustainable materials, and whole systems design. We will consider how to measure sustainability and discuss the effectiveness of sustainability indicators. We will examine governance structures, social entrepreneurship, and the power of information technology and social networks in promoting sustainable development and the diffusion of ideas. We will also highlight the transformative role of art and culture in our sustainable urban future.

An introductory course dealing with the life of the Prophet Muhammad and the origins of Islam; the beliefs and practices of the Islamic community; differences between Sunni and Shiite Islam; Sufism; the spiritual, intellectual, and artistic life of the Islamic commonwealth; and modern Islamic revival. 

Historical-political background of the Middle East and its contemporary social and political problems, including the impact of the West; religious and liberal reactions; conflict of nationalisms (Arab, Iranian, Turkish, and Zionist); and revolutionary socialism. Specific social, political, and economic problems - using a few selected countries for comparison and analysis - including the role of the military, the intelligentsia, the religious classes, the legitimation of power, urban-rural cleavages, bureaucracy, and political parties.

Prerequisite of SPAN-UA 100 or to be taken concurrently with SPAN-UA 9100 with permission of the director.

From the 8th century until the 17th century, Islam played a crucial role in the history of the Iberian Peninsula. Today this period is often portrayed as one of inter-religious harmony, while al-Andalus is simultaneously mourned in contemporary Islamist discourse as a lost paradise. While we look at the history of Al-Andalus and assess the importance of the contributions of Al-Andalus to Europe and America, we evaluate the significance of its legacy in modern Spain. Furthermore, we will study the protagonist role that Spain has played in relations between Europe and the Mediterranean Islamic countries during the Modern Age. Students will gain further understanding and contextualization of current Arab-Muslim geopolitics. As a case study, we will address the Spanish Protectorate in Morocco, as well as its ensuing process of decolonization and the consequences that shape the current international relations between the two neighboring countries, Spain and Morocco.

Note:  Students MUST acquire a multi-entry visa in order to participate on the trip to Morocco.

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.

Builds on the skills acquired in Elementary Arabic, with increased emphasis on writing and reading from modern sources in addition to aural/oral proficiency. 

Professor Ali Al-Azhari
Course description coming soon.

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

Both an English and Spanish section of this course will be offered.
For Spanish section: Advanced Spanish language skills required. (NYU, SPAN-UA 100 or equivalent)

This course is a journey through the different styles of Latin American Folk and Popular Music (LAFM), particularly those coming from Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. Their roots, influences and characteristics. Their social and historical context. Their uniqueness and similarities. Emphasis in the rhythmic aspect of folk music as a foundation for dance and as a resource of cultural identity. The irruption of Latin American rhythms in the music market through the World Musicâphenomenon. Even though there is no musical prerequisite, the course is recommended for students with any kind and/or level of musical experience.

Sample Syllabus (English)

Sample Syllabus (Spanish)

The course covers the evolution of Italian opera from its beginnings in Florence to the early 20th century with special emphasis on Monteverdi, Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi and Puccini. The approach is multidisciplinary and aims at a comprehensive survey of the music theatre in the context of the Italian cultural heritage. Literary sources, musico-dramatic features, vocal styles are studied in connection with major works that best represent trends and genres in the Italian operatic tradition. Students are expected to master the distinctive characteristics of such genres as favola in musica, intermezzo, opera seria, opera buffa, grand opera, dramma lirico, and the basic elements of Italian versification. Students listen to and watch recorded operas and attend performances in Florence or other Italian cities. Conducted in English

Sample Syllabus

Open to Steinhardt Music students only. 

For NYU Music & Performing Arts students only; permission of Steinhardt music faculty required. Contact Catherine Fitterman cmf5@nyu.edu 

No prerequisite.

One hour per week. (Includes Classical and Jazz styles).

No prerequisite.

One hour per week. (Includes classical and jazz styles). 

Course description coming soon.

No prerequisite.

One hour per week. (Includes all string orchestral instruments and guitar, classical and jazz styles).

Prerequisite: MPATC-UE 7, Aural Comprehension II, or success in placement exam
Corequisite: MPATC-UE 9037, Music Theory III

Training in intermediate musicianship skills emphasizing sight-singing and dictation. Course activities are correlated with the materials of harmony and counterpoint for the diatonic, chromatic, and post-tonal repertories.

No prerequisite.

One hour per week. (Includes traditional, music theatre, film scoring and jazz).

Prerequisite:  MPATC-UE 36, Music Theory II, or success in placement exam
Corequisite: MPATC-UE 9008, Aural Comprehension in Music III

Hands-on work with the materials of chromatic tonality and an introduction to complex forms. 

The history of musical styles in the nineteenth century. 

Open to Steinhardt Music students only. 

The basic concepts of 20th and 21st century musical composition - signal processing, extended notation, human computer interaction, studio as instrument, etc. are taught both theoretically and practically. The course is divided into two coordinated weekly classes, the first focusing on theory / listening activities (Rosenzveig), the second, actual composition in the world of electroacoustic music / sound art (Rataj).

In class one students are introduced to different perspectives and aesthetic paradigms for analyzing electroacoustic composition, including the broader contexts of contemporary art and New Media practices and are required to write two short papers. In the second class students compose their own works - the central output of the class.

Prerequisities: Basic knowledge of any software for digital audio practice (Pro Tools, Logic, Cubase, Audacity etc.) with software installed on your own laptop. Facilities:A small production studio is available for students (Pro Tools, Logic, Finale, Max/MSP, small mixer, near-field monitors, microphones, portable digital field recorders)

Note: This is not a 'software class'. Tools are secondary to concepts, history, philosophy and compositional methods.

Open to NYU Music Technology students only. 

No prerequisite.

One hour per week. (Includes all woodwind, brass and percussion instruments, classical and jazz styles).

No prerequisite.

One hour per week. (Includes classical, music theatre and jazz styles).

Religion is without doubt one of the most important elements that shaped the history and contemporary face of Central Europe. Religion played an important role in the political and cultural development of this part of the world. The history of the mutual interaction between religion and politics is evident in the cultural richness of this part of the world, particularly in Bohemia and Prague.

This course explores various religious phenomena that formed political ideas and cultural values of this region indifferent historical periods. We examine particularly those religious characteristics and figures that remarkably influenced the world's history and enriched human thinking. First, we study the Christianization of Central European society and the prominent role of religion in the political and cultural transformation of the medieval period. Then we follow the religious reformation process and development of the relationship between Judeo-Christian tradition and the secular world in the early modern period. Finally, we explore the policies of communist regimes in the spheres of religion and culture and study the struggle of Christian churches against communist totalitarianism. The transformation of Catholicism in the 1960s is also examined together with the role of religion in post-communist society.

Excursions to significant historical and religious sights are an important part of the course.

Sample Syllabus

The course is designed to enhance students’ awarenessof the multifaceted nature of nutrition problems across the globe and the needfor holistic approaches to methods to address them including research. Thecourse will review the UNICEF malnutrition structure within the context oflivelihood frameworks to demonstrate the linkages between health, nutrition andagriculture. Food security issues and impacts on nutrition and developmentalissues will be discussed. The course will also discuss the trends ofglobalization and the nutritional implications. The fact that the intensity andeffects of globalization are experienced differently across different nations,social classes, cultures, and genders will be stressed. The course will furtherreview key concepts and debates regarding nutrition transition, infant andyoung child feeding, women, aging and health.  

Sample Syllabus

This is an introduction to some central questions, perplexities and concepts within the main areas of philosophy, introducing themes from metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. Some extracts from some classic texts will be engaged – Plato, Descartes and John Stuart Mill, for example – and contemporary approaches will be addressed. Questions include: What am I? Is free will an illusion? What is knowledge? Is belief in God rational? and Whom ought I to save? In discussing these questions, important distinctions will be introduced and there will be attention to rigorous argument, including the nature of deductively sound argument.

The classes will involve informal instruction and discussion, with a focus upon clarity and argument over a range of topics, though also, it is hoped, with a lightness of touch.

Sample Syllabus

Examines fundamental questions of moral philosophy. What are our most basic values and which of them are specifically moral values? What are the ethical principles, if any, by which we should judge our actions, ourselves, and our lives?

Sample Syllabus

City, territory and architecture have been, from the beginning of photography, privileged objects for its practice. Photography has become a tool to strengthen the understanding of architecture, to highlight aesthetic and design ideas and to critically interpret space. This class focuses on architectural photography and the photography of urban space, both in relation to their historical roots and contemporary practice, covering the theoretical connections between architecture and photography. Through course assignments students will learn to confront a variety of challenges presented by photographing different architectural styles. By the end of the course, each student will have produced a portfolio of architectural photography.

This is an intermediate photography course. Each student must have basic knowledge of digital photographic techniques and their own digital camera with manually adjustable aperture and shutter speed. The course is a combination of lectures and labs for a total of six hours per week.

Students registering for this course must also register for the Laboratory and Recitation Sections. Students should note that the Physics lab takes place at King's College in Waterloo. This is roughly a 30 minute bus journey from the academic centre.

This course begins a two-semester introduction to physics (lecture and laboratory-recitation) intended primarily for preprofessional students and for those majoring in a science other than physics. Topics include kinematics and dynamics of particles; momentum, work, and energy; gravitation; circular, angular, and harmonic motion; mechanical and thermal properties of solids, liquids, and gases; heat and thermodynamics. 

Students should note that the Physics lab takes place at King's College in Waterloo. This is roughly a 30 minute bus journey from the academic centre.

Taken in conjunction with the General Physics I Lecture and Recitation. 

Taken in conjunction with the General Physics I Lecture and Lab. 

Taken with PHYS-UA 9093
The first of two introductory-level laboratory courses. Introduces essential experimental techniques, including setup and operation of basic laboratory equipment, elementary experimental design, statistics and inference, and computational data analysis. Experimental techniques are introduced in the context of classic physics experiments.

Continuation of PHYS-UA 91. Topics include electrostatics; dielectrics; currents and circuits; the magnetic field and magnetic materials; induction; AC circuits; Maxwell's equations.