Fall 2021

NY Social and Cultural Analysis Students: this course counts for the Africana and SCA majors and Africana minor

This course is a critical exploration of humanitarian intervention projects in Africa from the abolition of the slave trade to #Kony2012. Students will learn about the history of antislavery campaigns, missionary Christianity, colonial development, postcolonial conflict interventions, and contemporary projects about human rights. This course will use recent scholarship to discuss these diverse projects and their historical contexts. Additionally students will closely read a set of primary sources—memoirs, newspaper articles, and films –, which collectively articulate a problematic discourse on the "salvation of Africa." Students will subject these different sources to the same questions: what did Africa need to be delivered from? Who were the agents of redemption? What were the effects of the salvation projects? How did Africans react to them? The goal of this course is to deconstruct the prejudices about Africans embedded within salvation projects and to explain how these campaigns have been part of the larger dynamics of power that have defined Africa’s position in the world before, during, and after the European colonization of the continent.

Humanitarianism in Africa: A Critical History - Sample Syllabus.

NY Social and Cultural Analysis Students: this course counts for the Africana and SCA majors and Africana minor

This course introduces students to the major themes of African history through film, literature, and music. Beginning with recordings of oral tradition originating in the early empire of Mali to novels addressing the roles of African colonial intermediaries to music protesting apartheid in South Africa, students will engage with a variety of sources of cultural and artistic nature. The course will focus on historical developments such as the Atlantic and internal slave trades, the process of European colonization, religious practice, decolonization, genocide and migration, urbanization, and AIDS. We will also examine various themes, such as local and imposed notions of race and ethnicity, lived experiences of and Africans’ responses to colonialism on the continent, issues of gender and class, and political resistance. The broad goal of the course is to investigate to what extent long-term historical dynamics determine the present. Course requirements provide students with a language and historical framework for understanding the dynamic history of the continent.

African History through Film and Literature - Sample Syllabus.

NY Social and Cultural Analysis Students: this course counts for the Africana and SCA majors and Africana minor

This course examines the historical foundations, sociocultural contexts, and formal characteristics of twentieth- and twenty-first-century African popular music, covering a range of genres from across the continent. Drawing on a rich corpus of scholarly and popular works by anthropologists, ethnomusicologists, historians, filmmakers, and journalists, it explores African popular music genres as cultural phenomena that are complexly woven into the social fabrics of urban African locales. A major theme is the intersection of popular culture and politics on the continent. By listening to and reading about popular music, students will gain a thorough understanding of the production and mobilization of publics, and the dynamics of nationalism in modern African societies.

Memoir is the best-selling genre in contemporary literature. Indeed, our fascination with all things autobiographical attests to the importance of examining one particular life in order to understand larger issues concerning culture, community, race, gender and even social and global transformations. Narrative Ethnography is also a form of writing which uses the first person pronoun. In this genre, “participant observation” – actually experiencing the beliefs, rituals and life-ways of another culture first hand – is the methodology employed in order to explicitly understand not just the self, but the ‘other’. What are the differences between memoir and ethnography? What kinds of knowledge travel in each? How does writing in the first person challenge other modes of knowledge production? How might memoir and ethnography contribute to our understanding of cultural and cross-cultural dialogue, while providing a post-colonial critique? In this course we examine the rhetorical and aesthetic rules that govern these genres, as well as the way they create social imaginations that go on to live political lives in the world.

Dispossession and forced migration in the contemporary Middle East is often regarded as synonymous with the Palestinian population. At a stretch of the imagination, it might also take in the Kurdish problem. This course, however, situates both the Palestinian and Kurdish migrations of the twentieth century into the wider and pervasive involuntary movement of populations which has indelibly marked the region throughout the last 100 years. It firmly places the dispossession of peoples in the Middle East as part of the policy of empire, carried further by the colonial and neo-colonial and well as neo-conservative political encounters with the East and the West. 

 Sample Syllabus.

Archaeologists ‘read’ information from artifacts, architecture, and the environment to understand people’s lives in the past. Archaeology can tell us about the development of the world’s first cities and empires, the beginnings of farming, ancient exchange networks, and other important changes across human (pre)history. This course offers a rich introduction to the ways archaeologists study the past and what these analyses reveal about pre-Islamic Western Asia. Students will be introduced to new ways of seeing the past through a series of hands-on laboratory sessions and activities. The material records of ancient Western Asia, especially Southern Arabia and Central Asia, will serve as case studies for exploring how scientific methods like high-powered microscopy and neutron activation analysis can answer fundamental questions about the past. The semester’s coursework culminates in the completion of an individual research project and paper.

At the crossroads between Asia, Africa and Europe, the region that Europeans and North Americans labeled “The Middle East” presents a dynamic and heterogeneous landscape of peninsulas and isthmuses, republics and monarchies, oil producing countries, and labor exporting nations. This course examines the recent history of the region from the mid-18th century until the Arab uprisings of 2010–2012. We explore the last Islamic empires, the intrusion of European colonial powers, the modernist, nationalist and Islamic reactions to aggression, the creation of authoritarian systems of power and the multiform protests that have shaken them. The Egyptian, Iranian, Palestinian, and Saudi experiences are examined more closely. 

Islam changed and shaped the Middle East, the Mediterranean world, and South Asia following its emergence in the seventh century. Muslims subsequently developed and expressed their faith in the disciplines of law, theology, and mysticism, even as their religious communities fractured into a variety of Sunni and Shi’a groups. This course focuses on primary sources to examine the richness of Islamicate civilization in the pre-modern world, including inter-religious relations as well as political and economic trends.

How have the inhabitants of the Middle East and Africa conceived of social difference? Beginning in Late Antiquity and then with the spread of Islam into the Middle East and North Africa, this course will explore the social, cultural and political contingencies that gave rise to ethnic and racial identities within and beyond the Muslim world. How did these identities and categories change over time and in which ways were they impacted by the Indian Ocean, Atlantic, and Saharan slave trades, local social and political factors, European colonialism and then de-colonization in the twentieth century? What are the terms and meanings attached to skin color or social difference in the Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Berber, Swahili, Songhai, Amharic, or Turkish speaking worlds? How are these constructed and controlled? Who gave these categories meaning and why? What are the obstacles to discussing and identifying race particular to the histories of these regions, their peoples, and their histories? In order to answer these questions, the course will draw extensively on primary sources, historical research, as well as theoretical writings on race and ethnicity.

Mysticism is an integral aspect of every religious tradition. In recent years, however, Sufism or Islamic mysticism has often been described as somehow separate from Islam itself. In this course we will investigate the historical origins of Sufism and the nature of the long-standing tension between certain Sufi practices and the Muslim legal establishment. We will also chart the evolution of Sufism from personal spiritual practice and experience to the establishment of mystical brotherhoods in which, depending on time and place, a large portion of Muslim society participated. Finally, we will turn to the continued importance that Sufism has played in the Muslim World (including the Arab Gulf) and the United States during a period in which its practices have come under criticism. Sufi authors examined will include Rumi, al-Hallaj and Ibn al-Arabi.

This seminar introduces students to the main theoretical and epistemological trends in the study of the Arab crossroads region, and offers practical examples of the methodologies used by scholars in the humanities and the qualitative social sciences. We begin with the strengths and weaknesses of area studies, and the politics of producing knowledge on a region of global economic and political importance, then turn to specific areas of research that have attracted attention in the fields of history, anthropology, literature, and politics, before exploring the various methodological approaches used by practitioners of these fields. The course culminates in an extended research proposal for a capstone project.

As one of the most influential political ideas that has shaped the modern world nationalism has had a long lasting impact on the history of the modern and contemporary Middle East. Covering the Arab World, Turkey and Iran this course examines nationalist cultures and political experiences across the region in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from the Ottoman and Qajar empires to the world of nation states that emerged after the First World War. The development of nationalism is analyzed from a variety of perspectives: as a state practice and idea of imperial reform and nation building; as a powerful social imaginary that mobilized increasing number of people in time and space; and as an ideological and narrative construction of nations as ‘natural’ entities anchored in mythical pasts. This course places particular emphasis on various ‘entrepreneurs’ of nationalism: imperial, colonial and national governments, bureaucrats, intellectuals, educators, political activists, urban crowds, workers and peasants. 

How do those who live in the Middle East relate to their past(s), and what discourses do they draw on to represent and authorize it today? How is the past recovered, commemorated, embodied, erased, marketed and consumed in the modern Middle East? This course focuses on various thematics of history, heritage, and memory practices: national commemorations and contested sites and events; embodied and gendered memories; invented traditions and structural nostalgia; the problems of writing oral histories; the politics of archaeology; museums and exhibitions; and the construction (and destruction) of tangible, intangible, and world heritage.

What does it mean to identify as a “feminist” or an “Islamist” in the MENA region today, and to what extent are those terms philosophically and politically compatible? Is feminism itself - and movements for gender equality and LGBTQ rights in the region more broadly - a legacy of colonialism and Western influence/ intervention? Or do such movements have local, organic roots expressed through Islamic texts and history, and even Islamist forms of political activism? How can we appraise the track record of so-called Islamist movements (e.g.: Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, Turkey’s AK Parti, Tunisia’s Ennahdha Party, and Morocco’s Freedom and Justice Party and Al-Adl wal Ihsan movement) on promoting women’s rights and gender inclusivity in comparison to states, secularly oriented political movements, and jihadist movements in the region? Students in this course will explore these questions by critically engaging with historical texts and country case studies, in addition to materials produced by and about feminist, Islamic, and Islamist actors.

This course is designed for learners with no prior knowledge of Arabic. Students who have studied Arabic before or who have prior knowledge of Arabic are required to take a placement test. This is a full semester (or equivalent session) course during which students first learn the Arabic alphabet, then move on to work on the sentence and paragraph levels. It is an interactive course designed to build the student’s abilities in listening, speaking, reading, and writing. At the end of the semester students should be able to carry on a short conversation; ask and answer questions; introduce themselves and others; provide simple biographical information; interact in simple daily life situations; ask for assistance; express likes and dislikes; read short texts; and gain a basic understanding of Arab culture. Types of tasks and assignments required for this course include daily homework assignments, periodic quizzes, brief presentations, short essay writing, and a final exam.

This course builds on the knowledge and skills that students acquire in Elementary Arabic 1 which is a prerequisite course for this class. This is a full semester (or equivalent session) course during which students continue learning formal Arabic (MSA), expand their knowledge of the grammar, build on previously learnt vocabulary, and be exposed to a variety of cultural and daily life themes and situations. It is an interactive course designed to build the student’s abilities in listening, speaking, reading, and writing. At the end of the semester students should be able to read texts on familiar topics and understand the main ideas; speak about themselves and their environment; carry out basic daily life transactions; and initiate and sustain conversations on a variety of topics. Types of tasks and assignments required for this course include daily homework assignments, periodic quizzes, brief presentations, short essay writing, and a final exam. Students joining the course from outside NYU Abu Dhabi are required to take a placement test.

This course builds on the knowledge and skills that students acquire in Elementary Arabic 2 which is a prerequisite course for this class. Students joining the course from outside NYU Abu Dhabi are required to take a placement test. This is a full semester (or equivalent session) course during which students continue learning the modern standard form of the language, with limited exposure to phrases and expressions in colloquial. It is a student-centered course where the four language skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking) are integrated along with culture to simulate real life situations. Students continue learning the formal Arabic variety (MSA), occasionally being exposed to phrases and expressions in spoken Arabic. By the end of this course, students should be able to narrate in all verb tenses, describe their daily life, personal relations, and report information. Types of tasks and assignments required include daily homework assignments, periodic quizzes, presentations, essays, and a final exam.

This course builds on the knowledge and skills that students acquire in Intermediate Arabic 1 which is a prerequisite course for this class. Students joining the course from outside NYU Abu Dhabi are required to take a placement test. This is a full semester (or equivalent session) course during which students continue learning the modern standard form of the language, with limited exposure to phrases and expressions in colloquial. It is a student-centered course where the four language skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking) are integrated along with culture to simulate real life situations. At the end of the semester students should be able to read and understand the main ideas of authentic texts written for the general public. They will be able to employ analytical reading and critical thinking skills to understand different types of text. Types of tasks and assignments required for this course include daily homework assignments, periodic quizzes, presentations, short essay writing, and a final exam.

The course is designed to help students reach an advanced level of proficiency through analysis of authentic Arabic texts addressing a wide range of political, social, religious, and literary themes. A prerequisite for this course is Intermediate Arabic 2 or, for students joining from outside NYU Abu Dhabi, an equivalent proficiency level as determined through a placement test. The course emphasizes integrating the four language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. At the end of the course students should be able to understand the main ideas and supporting arguments of authentic oral and written texts; draw conclusions about the author’s attitude; employ analytical reading and critical thinking; analyze various linguistic aspects in a text; and evaluate the content and organizational aspects of a specialized article. Types of tasks and assignments required for this course include daily homework assignments, periodic quizzes, presentations, essay writing, and a final exam.

This is an introductory course in Emirati dialect and culture designed for students who have completed Intermediate Arabic I. In contrast with the MSA sequence, which focuses on traditional literacy, this course adheres to the communicative method and focuses on fluency in conversation, accuracy in pronunciation, and the stimulation of intercultural competence. Through extensive and intensive listening, at-home recording, and in-class role play and interaction, the course creates an immersive environment to help students develop the production skills necessary to function among Emirati speakers in a variety of settings. Students will have the opportunity to interact with guest lecturers from a variety of fields, to work with language partners, and to visit a number of cultural sites in the UAE.

This course complements the student’s knowledge of Standard Arabic to include proficiency in Levantine Arabic, one of the major Arabic dialects, with emphasis on daily life tasks, conversational fluency, and cultural sensibility. A prerequisite for this class is Intermediate Arabic 201 (ARABL-UH 2211) or an equivalent proficiency level determined through a placement test. This is a full semester conversation-based course during which students focus on the communicative skills, and develop automated production skills necessary to function in an Arabic speaking environment. It is designed to build student’s abilities in listening and speaking. At the end of the semester students should be able to use the Shami dialect to participate actively in conversation s by using linguistic and cultural expressions to make requests, express, and describe preferences. Tasks and assignments required for this course include daily homework, periodic quizzes, weekly oral entries, presentation skits, oral film summary, oral interviews, a homestay, and an oral final exam

New York students: this course counts for Art History elective credit.

These courses offer detailed engagements with key works of art—masterpieces to material culture across a range of media from different times and places—to develop the critical apparatus of visual analysis. They introduce the methods and fundamental concepts of art history by taking one work of art and constructing around it a web of diverse objects and practices that allow us to grapple with the meanings of art and its histories within global and trans-historical perspectives. Among the questions we ask throughout the course are: What is art? What is art history? What are the institutions that shape the practice and dissemination of art? How is art affected by histories of cultural exchange? What is the nature of tradition? The course will be conducted through both lecture and discussion. Evaluation will be through written assignments, PowerPoint presentations, and active class participation. No previous knowledge of art history is required.

This course situates artistic production in the late middle ages and early modern period in the maritime cultures of Indian and Atlantic Oceans and the Mediterranean Sea. Informed by approaches from art history, history, economics, and anthropology, it examines the role of cross-cultural exchange, banking, trade, finance, collecting, and patronage in shaping artistic production. Secondly, it explores in turn the ways in which works of art played a role in the evolution of commercial and political culture of the period. It will begin with an examination of the recent scholarship on the connectedness of the early modern world and the formulation of Global Renaissance. While looking from the perspective of Europe and the Islamic world, it will pay particular attention to interactions between the latter and Italy.

New York students: this course counts for Art History elective credit.

In the short span of thirty years art of the Arab World moved from the periphery of international art to the center of global visual art production. This course examines the conditions that prompted this change and the theoretical framework that currently situates Arab art within the global discourse on visual art. Focusing on selected artists from key periods of art production, the course will explore the impact of political, social and market forces on the region’s art. Examining art production in relation to state formation, identity, gender politics, representation and reception, globalization, and activism. The course will also explore the recent discourse on Islamic art and its links to modern and contemporary art of the region.

The course offers an introduction to the theoretical and practical knowledge on the curatorial process, exploring new alternative curatorial strategies that re-examine the role of the curator and the art institution. Using case studies, the course will look at current models in curatorial practice and the relationship of the curator with artists, the art market, and the public, both inside and outside traditional art institutions. Students will work on a collaborative project curating an art exhibition that may be realized virtually or inside a gallery space. Working in teams, students will become familiar with the different aspects of exhibition production from research to writing wall texts, to designing the exhibition, and its educational program. 

The 1960s experienced the emergence of new approaches to the making of art, while the art world became international to an unprecedented degree. Pop art and Minimal art used painting and sculpture as a means to confront contemporary culture with itself. In Fluxus, Video art and Performance artists found ways to involve the viewer. Earth art and Conceptual art were stretching the traditional boundaries of art in order to find a new grounding, while other artists experimented with sound, light, and movement in a way that led to a crossing of boundaries between dance, sculpture, music, and theater. All this happened in many places at the same time. The course will consider in detail many individual works of art while at the same time pursuing a comparative approach to the various outcomes of the new aesthetics. It will make it clear that the art of the 1960s is foundational for almost all further developments of art.

This course situates artistic production in the late middle ages and early modern period in the maritime cultures of Indian and Atlantic Oceans and the Mediterranean Sea. Informed by approaches from art history, history, economics, and anthropology, it examines the role of cross-cultural exchange, banking, trade, finance, collecting, and patronage in shaping artistic production. Secondly, it explores in turn the ways in which works of art played a role in the evolution of commercial and political culture of the period. It will begin with an examination of the recent scholarship on the connectedness of the early modern world and the formulation of Global Renaissance. While looking from the perspective of Europe and the Islamic world, it will pay particular attention to interactions between the latter and Italy.

This course uses fundamental concepts from the Foundations of Science curriculum to examine essential elements of organ physiology, including the nervous system with an emphasis on humans. After an initial introduction to the basic principles of physiology, the course emphasizes normal and pathological functions in humans. It explores how the nervous and the endocrine systems allow communication among cells and organs to enable an organism to maintain homeostasis and to respond to environmental changes. The anatomy of the nervous system is also used to address structure, function, homeostasis and adaptability.

Special Topics in Biology offers high-level courses or seminars on a wide variety of topics in the life sciences. Topics vary from semester to semester.

Synthetic biology aims to use state-of-the-art molecular tools to redesign biological systems by employing the approaches of engineering. The guiding principle in designing synthetic projects is often derived from a systems-level understanding of cellular networks, with metabolic network analyses playing a key role in offering informed hypotheses on how to modify cellular wirings for a desired outcome. This course combines lectures, class discussions, and lab experiments. The course engages students in a guided research project to learn advanced molecular techniques and systems-level analysis. Students become familiar with engineering concepts such as defining biological components as “parts” and cataloging them in synthetic biology parts registries.

This course examines the ethical issues that arise in the context of the rapid development of technology, medical science, and the increasing power of business corporations. In recent years, scientific progress has allowed us to achieve many things, including the cure of fatal diseases and the creation of intelligent machines that can surpass human capabilities. Yet, for all these benefits, the development of science and technology has spawned a host of problems such as: conflict between individual rights and social welfare; clash between respect for personal autonomy and expertise; automation and unemployment; and the replication of human bias by algorithms. Along with scientific progress, the social role of businesses and corporations are also becoming increasingly important. How should corporations, for example, balance the pursuit of profit with respect for employees' rights and liberties? Should the state refuse to enforce unconscionable contracts, even when enforcing those contracts would make both parties better off? What is the social role of corporations in the context of increasing inequality?

New York Students: this course is equivalent to ACCT-UB 1 Principles of Financial Accounting.

This course provides an introduction to the fundamental concepts of financial accounting and focuses on the development, analysis and use of financial reports. It emphasizes accounting as the process through which relevant financial information concerning an economic entity is recorded and communicated to different parties, such as stockholders, creditors, tax authorities, investors, etc. The underlying rationale of accounting principles is discussed, aiming to provide students with a clear understanding of accounting concepts. In this course students learn about the relevance and informativeness of financial statement for decision making, as resource allocation, evaluation and contracting activities. In addition to text-oriented materials, the classes also include cases so that students can discuss applications of basic concepts, actual financial reports, and articles from newspapers.

New York Students: this course is equivalent to FINC-UB 2 Foundations of Finance.

Shanghai Students: this course is equivalent to BUSF-SHU 202 Foundations of Finance.

This course offers a rigorous examination of the basic concepts and tools of modern finance. Students are introduced to cash flow analysis and present value, as well as basic concepts of return and risk, in order to understand how financial markets work and how financial instruments are valued. These instruments, including equities, fixed income securities, options, and other derivative securities, become vehicles for exploring various financial markets and their utilization by managers in different kinds of financial institutions to enhance return and manage risk.

New York Students: this course is equivalent to FINC-UB 7 Corporate Finance.

Shanghai Students: this course is equivalent to BUSF-SHU 303 Corporate Finance.

This course introduces the student to selected problems and issues in financial management and corporate financial policy. Topics include: capital budgeting (strategy and techniques associated with the analysis and selection of capital projects, financial forecasting, and financial planning) and corporate finance (the cost of capital and issues associated with raising capital, mergers and acquisitions decisions, corporate bankruptcy, managerial control, and compensation strategies). Problem sets and case studies are integral parts of this course.

New York Students: this course is equivalent to CHEM-UA 226 Organic Chemistry II and Lab; CHEM-UA 228 Majors Organic Chemistry II and Lab; CHEM-UA 9244-9246 Organic Chemistry II and Lab (London).

Organic Chemistry 2 is a continuation of Organic Chemistry 1, with an emphasis on multifunctional organic compounds and their reactions from both a synthetic as well as a mechanistic viewpoint. The topics include conjugated systems, aromatic compounds, including phenols and aryl halides as well as a thorough discussion of delocalized chemical bonding; aldehydes and ketones; amines; carboxylic acids and their derivatives; and biologically important molecules. The course continues the emphasis on modern analytical methods that are the cornerstone of contemporary organic chemistry.

New York Students: this course is equivalent to CHEM -UA 652 Thermodynamics & Kinetics.

Shanghai Students: this course counts is equivalent to CHEM-SHU 652 Physical Chemistry Thermodynamics and Kinetics.

This course covers two fundamental concepts in physical chemistry: equilibrium thermodynamics and chemical kinetics, which examine the relationship between energy and matter and rates of reactions, respectively. The definition and the interpretation of basic issues in chemistry, including internal energy, transition states, chemical potential, reaction rates, phase transitions and catalysis, are described in detail. This course uses an extensive mathematical apparatus. The course provides a firm theoretical and practical knowledge necessary to resolve typical chemical problems by focusing on the deeper understanding of their physical foundation and meaning.

New York Students: this course is equivalent to  CHEM-UA 661 Physical Chemistry Laboratory.

Shanghai Students: this course counts is equivalent to CHEM-SHU 661 Physical Chemistry Laboratory.

Co-requisite: CHEM-UH 3011: Physical Chemistry: Thermodynamics and Kinetics

his laboratory-based course follows CHEM-UH 3011 and provides students skills required for performing experiments in physical sciences. The course introduces the principles and practices of physicochemical methods in thermodynamics and kinetics, and it continues with introducing more contemporary experimental and computational methods used in analytical, organic, physical, and biological chemistry laboratories. The experiments include thermochemical techniques such as calorimetry to determine the heat exchange during chemical reactions or physical processes, construction and interpretation of phase diagrams of binary and ternary mixtures, measurement and prediction of kinetic rates of chemical reactions, and determination of rate constants. A computational experiment is also included. The experiments are highly focused on the processes of experimentation, data recording, analysis, and interpretation of the observations. After completion of this course, the students will be able to approach a chemical problem, set up a hypothesis, perform accurate measurement, interpret the results, verify the hypothesis, draw conclusions, and communicate effectively orally and in writing.

Shanghai Students: this course counts for Chemistry elective credit.

As one of the major disciplines of chemistry, analytical chemistry is a ‘measurement science’ that describes the separation, identification and quantification of molecules through the use of methods utilized in science, engineering and medicine. This course aims to introduce students to modern concepts in analytical chemistry and quantitative analysis and the application of these concepts in the life sciences and environmental science. In addition, students learn about the components and applications of modern instruments utilized in everyday research laboratories. The course includes a strong laboratory component that demands independence and creativity from students.

This course will provide an introduction to advanced materials science and engineering, and will emphasize the breadth of this interdisciplinary, rapidly growing field. The synthesis, organization, and processing of materials can enable functional performance. The course material will overview the preparation of both organic and inorganic materials, and will later expand on the available methods for their characterization. Special emphasis will be given to the optimization of materials’ performance and the relationship between the structure and properties of materials. The target-oriented design of materials will also be described through the underlying processes, structure, properties, and performance, with particular focus on applications in energy conservation, sustainability and biomedicine. About half of the course will be dedicated to soft materials (polymers, liquid crystals, biomaterials), and the remaining half will focus on hard materials (semiconductors, metals, alloys, and optical materials). Both the science-driven approach (used in materials science, polymer science) and the design-driven approach (used in engineering) will be presented and illustrated with examples from industrial design, aerospace engineering, civil engineering, architecture, manufacturing, eco-design, and sustainability.

NY Students: this course is equivalent to CHEM-UA 225 Organic Chemistry I and Lab; CHEM-UA 227 Majors Organic Chemistry I and Lab; CHEM-UA 9243-9245 Organic Chemistry I and Lab (London).

Organic chemistry is the study of carbon-containing compounds. Organic Chemistry 1 presents the structure and bonding, conformational analysis, stereochemistry, and spectroscopy of organic materials, subjects that partly trace their roots to the development of quantum theory. The topics covered include basic reaction mechanisms, such as substitution and elimination, and the reactions of aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbons, alcohols, ethers, carbonyl compounds, and carboxylic acids. The course incorporates modern analytical methods that are the cornerstone of contemporary organic chemistry.

New York Students: this course is equivalent to CHEM -UA 881 Biochemistry I.

Shanghai Students: this course counts for Neural Science, Biology, Chemistry, or Neural Science elective credit.

Biochemistry investigates the chemical structures, reactions, and processes that occur in living systems. Indeed, the very principles of chemistry, biology, physics, and math converge in the field of biochemistry, and biochemical concepts provide a focal point for many disciplines, including biology, healthcare, the pharmaceutical industry, environmental studies and ecology, and our understanding of evolution. This course opens the study of biochemistry with a rigorous investigation of biological macromolecules, including the structure and function of proteins, nucleic acids, carbohydrates, and lipids. This discussion then leads to the investigation of enzyme structure, including their mechanism of action and their regulation, moving toward a deep understanding of information flow in cells via detailed biochemical studies of replication, transcription, and translation.

New York Students: This course is equivalent to EAST-UA 201 Elementary Chinese 1.

Open to students with little or no training in Chinese, this course is designed to develop and reinforce language skills in listening, speaking, reading, and writing as Chinese language relates to everyday life situations. The objectives are: to master the Chinese phonetic system (pinyin and tones) with satisfactory pronunciation; to understand the construction of commonly used Chinese characters (both simplified and traditional) and learn to write them correctly; to understand and use correctly basic Chinese grammar and sentence structures; to build up essential vocabulary; to read and write level appropriate passages; to become acquainted with aspects of Chinese culture and society related to the course materials.

New York Students: This course is equivalent to EAST-UA 203 Intermediate Chinese 1.

This course is designed to consolidate overall listening and speaking proficiency, with the focus gradually moving toward semi-formal usage of Chinese language in topic-oriented discussions. The objectives are: to be able to obtain information from extended conversation; to both express and expound on, in relative length, feelings and opinions on common topics; to expand vocabulary and learn to decipher the meaning of compound words; to develop reading comprehension of extended narrative, expository, and simple argumentative passages; to solve non-complex textual problems with the aid of dictionaries; to write in Chinese mid-length personal narratives, informational narratives, comparison and discussion of viewpoints with level appropriate vocabulary and grammatical accuracy, as well as basic syntactical cohesion; to continue being acquainted with aspects of Chinese culture and society related to the course materials.

Shanghai Students: this course counts for the Chinese minor.

This course is designed to further develop proficiency in speaking and writing through readings on and discussions of socio-cultural topics relevant to today’s China. The main focus is the improvement of reading comprehension and writing skills. The objectives are: to further improve oral communicative competence by incorporating semi-formal or formal usages; to acquire vocabulary and patterns necessary for conducting semi-formal or formal discussions of socio-cultural topics; to increase reading speed of texts with more advanced syntax; to learn to make context-based guesses about the meaning of a new word, conduct sentence analysis and solve textual problems with the aid of dictionaries; to write and present more fully developed narratives or reasoned and structured arguments; to learn to employ basic rhetorical methods; to learn to appreciate stylistic usage of Chinese language.

Cities are constantly on the move. Half the world’s population lives in urban areas, with numbers steadily rising. How have cities depended on, and been shaped by, such mobility? What will future systems of movement look like? Can emerging technologies and information networks increase sustainability in urban transport? Can we develop prosperous, safe, and connected cities while also managing impacts on climate and public health? Bringing global and critical perspectives to bear on such questions, the course reckons with the realization that optimal mobility systems are a constantly moving target. Drawing on material from multiple disciplines, students will examine changes and challenges throughout history and across regions as they ask how mobility shapes cities, how physical mobility relates to “upward” social mobility, and how planners and citizens might better address the mobility needs and wellbeing of diverse groups. Students will engage in ongoing debates and will explore different media (e.g. animations, posters, videos, photography, essays) to address such questions.

This course examines the determinants of economic development in the modern world. The course is divided into two parts. The first reviews theories that place factors of production such as labor and technology as the main cause of cross-country differences in economic wealth. The second part of the course investigates the role of institutions, culture, religion, geography, and luck as deeper causes of comparative development. The main questions addressed throughout the course are: Why are there such large differences in income per capita across countries? Why have some countries developed steadily over the past 200 years while many others have not? Why do some governments adopt policies that promote economic development while others set up barriers to economic activity? These questions are analyzed from a theoretical and empirical perspective.

This course provides a global viewpoint on the most theoretical foundations of science, within and across theoretical physics and mathematics. It addresses the concept of the infinite in math but also the (sought after) theory of grand unification in physics. While these subjects are quite daunting, the course will pursue a conceptual approach that is accessible to students. Topics and questions will include: First, what does infinity really mean? This seemingly simple question is one of the deepest in math. The current answers solve many problems but also lead to non-intuitive consequences. Second, is there a unifying theme in mathematics or a set of principles underlying all its branches? If so, would this set be complete? Consistent? Third, seeking a theory of everything in physics would unify all the forces of nature (electromagnetism, weak and strong nuclear forces, and gravity) via combining quantum theory and general relativity. Is this a reasonable or attainable quest? What would its consequences be? Fourth, are the above quests related? Are unifying themes in one aspect of nature (e.g. physics) expected to reflect similar themes in another (e.g. math)?

Why is it so difficult to eliminate some of the greatest causes of human suffering - war, state-failure, poverty, and tyranny? This course examines moral and practical controversies over how we ought to respond to these problems. We will focus in particular on whether, and if so how, the international community is justified in intervening in poor and violent parts of the world. By the end of the course students will be better at analyzing and discerning the plausibility of policy proposals and ideas.

Is law above politics? When lawyers act according to ideological and political preferences, we think they betray the law. But we also often wish to be politically more autonomous, that is to be the authors of the laws we are subjected to. When the law is made only by lawyers and only based on legal technique, we think some important principles of political freedom are lost. This course aims to inquire about this paradox. To do so, the course will begin with a moment, at the end of the 18th century, when realizing political autonomy came by exiting the western legal tradition, but through law, imagining something like a “law without lawyers.” It will then study the reaction to and internalization of this project by eminent Jurists. In what ways has the resulting status quo defined the structure of modern law and legal science? Does raising such a question depend on an ongoing negotiation between law and politics? What narratives might we develop in order to understand the roles played by law and legal science (and their critique) in establishing supposedly politically autonomous societies?

Aristotle famously referred to humans as “political animals,” meaning we develop and live in social contexts. But might political instincts and behavior actually have biological origins? Why are some people more politically active than others? Do conservatives and liberals have different physiologies? Social scientists have traditionally focused on demography, socioeconomic status, mobilization, electoral institutions, parental socialization, and social norms to understand political attitudes and behavior. New research, however, explores the possibility that biological differences may help to explain variations in political beliefs and participation. This course explores the relationship between biology and politics with an emphasis on how the two may be linked. In addition to examining the theoretical arguments used to study the biological basis of political beliefs and behaviors, students will examine concepts from genetics, neuroscience, psychophysiology, psychology, and evolutionary theory. How might the findings reported in this growing interdisciplinary literature help us better account for our own and others’ political dispositions?

Why is data science so influential and popular in business, government and academic research? What are the benefits we gain with expending resources to collect and analyze data, and what is lost when we make decisions about how to classify events? In this class, students will gain a foundational understanding of statistics, data science, and computational data analysis using data sets drawn from real-life problems, primarily with the R statistical software package. They will also be exposed to the philosophical underpinnings of quantitative analysis via scientific inquiry, along with criticism of methods and the way that data-driven analysis can be used to obscure as much as inform. Students will also undertake a group project that will involve independent data analysis on a topic of relevance to world affairs.

How do computers “read” text, and how can computer-assisted analysis of texts give us new access to information about ourselves and the cultural legacies we have inherited? This course explores quantitative methods for discovering and analyzing diverse texts of the human record. It also offers a glimpse into possible futures of reading. Students will both discuss, and put into practice, forms of computer-assisted textual analysis that have revolutionized research in humanities and social science fields in recent years. They will also take a critical look at the “ubiquitous analytics” and the “ubiquitous virtuality” of everyday life. By engaging with the idea of data in the humanities, the course encourages students to reconsider our common-place assumptions about how reading works. Course materials, discussions, and classroom exercises will push students to examine how basic ideas about a text such as author, subject, setting, character or even style might look different when a non-human is involved in the interpretation. The course assumes no prior computer or coding skills, but a willingness to explore new technologies is essential for success.

When was science invented or discovered? And is this issue still relevant to our interpretation and use of the scientific method? Because of the great wealth of scientific results obtained in the Hellenistic period of ancient Greece, the course will take up such questions starting from that period. We will analyze the works of Euclid and Archimedes and others in Mathematics, Physics, Astronomy, and Geography, with a particular focus on very modern, and maybe still undiscovered, contents. The achievements of Hellenistic science and the issues it raised will be compared with some of those appearing in other golden ages of science, such as ancient Babylonia, the Islamic Golden Age, the Renaissance, and our times. The course will not consist of a review of established facts, but rather the exploration of sometimes controversial interpretations.

Societies have traditionally used maps to represent, even construct, the spaces in which we live as well as the territories over which we assert control. But what has become of the map in the (post-)digital age? Has our relationship to human space changed in our data-rich world? Are we unknowingly map-makers by virtue of walking around with our devices? This course explores the specific role that technology can play in our understanding of both historical and contemporary map making. Through regional and global examples of urban culture mapping, the course’s focus on data discovery extends beyond working with official data to creating our own data within familiar environments. In addition to seminar discussion of readings and audiovisual materials, the course will host guest speakers. It also has a lab component with two main assignments. First, we focus on the larger Arabian Gulf region through the eyes of historical cartographers and colonial geographers. Second, we will turn to the city of Abu Dhabi itself to see how (and why) we might map some of its spaces of human culture using simple technology. The course assumes no prior computer skills, but a willingness to explore new technologies is essential for success.

The study of temperature and of heat, as formulated in the laws of thermodynamics, will be used as a unifying guide to examine a variety of phenomena in our natural world. In the physical world, course topics will encompass the cooling of the Universe in its early minutes as well as the dramatic expansion in the first seconds after the Big Bang and the role that temperature fluctuations have played in the Earth’s history. In the animal world, the course covers the surprising discovery of heat-loving bacteria and the techniques mammals, including humans, have adopted for temperature regulation. Readings will include materials from various scientific realms such as cosmology, biology, and geology.

This course will investigate two fundamental concepts: Identity (“Who am I?”) and Diversity (“How am I different from other human beings?”). These questions will be addressed from cultural, environmental, and biological perspectives. We will examine the origin of human diversity, how human diversity is measured and analyzed, and how our perception of diversity has changed through history. Emphasis will be placed on recent progress in genetics and evolution and how this progress affects our daily life and identity. Students will learn how genes can inform us about human history, ancestry, and evolution. The laboratory component of the course will demonstrate how data are generated and analyzed, and will explore the difficulty encountered by scientists in inferring processes from observations and experiments. Students will have the option to collect and analyze genetic data from their own genome.

“In the year of 1657 I discovered very small living creatures in rain water.” This quote is attributed to Anton van Leeuwenhoek, a Dutch merchant whose skillful use of glass lenses allowed him to peer into a world of microorganisms that would otherwise be invisible to the naked eye. His careful observations gave way to advances in microscopy that have allowed scientists to observe detailed structures of plants, viruses invading cells, intricate crystal lattices, and the seemingly chaotic motion of small particles. In this course, microscopy is explored, first by examining the fundamental optical systems used to magnify objects, and eventually by using sophisticated microscopes to make observations. We explore seven wonders of the invisible world - natural animate and inanimate phenomena that include micro-animals, plant and animal cells, bacteria and viruses, fungi, proteins, and naturally occurring crystals.

This course explores definitions and theories of the mind and how it may work. Students will learn how philosophers, psychologists, computer scientists, and neuroscientists have studied the mind and will consider several demanding but stimulating questions about thought, memory, and behavior. Readings and discussions will review the historical and scientific developments that led to contemporary understandings of the mind and the challenges and answers that these views pose to our common-sense understanding of, for instance, the unconscious mind, the irrational mind, and the subjective nature of memories.

What’s out there? For centuries, curious astronomers peered up into the night sky and saw stars, planets, and the occasional comet. Nowadays, astronomers have a suite of tools at their disposal to observe objects in space and help to answer the fundamental questions about the intricate workings of the Universe. From arrays of radio dishes spanning continents to gamma-ray detectors on satellites orbiting the Earth, astronomy is now truly Multi-Wavelength. This course is a journey of discovery, where students peer at objects such as quasars, stellar nurseries, galaxy clusters, supernovae, black holes, extrasolar planets, neutron stars, molecular clouds and gamma-ray bursts through various telescopes. Research and presentation will form a core part of the course, and experimental and quantitative methods will be brought to bear on our understanding of other worlds. How these results can be communicated to the scientific community and the public will be discussed, along with the relevance to society, including spin-off technologies. Data & Discovery Core courses develop the ability to use experimental and quantitative methods to understand the world - and in this course - other worlds!

Concerns about corruption are everywhere, but the way corruption is perceived and interpreted changes from context to context. We tend to use the adjective "corrupt" for private individuals, public officials, and state institutions alike. Phenomena ranging from bribery and nepotism to poor governance and human rights violations are also sometimes bundled under the same umbrella. But what do we mean when we talk about "corruption"? Can we define it in a way that explains its wide and diverse usage? How do we detect it and can we agree on when or how to combat it? This course seeks to provide frameworks for answering these questions. In the first part, students will examine earlier philosophical contributions to the debate about corruption, put them into historical context, and understand how the concept and its applications have changed over time. The second part of the class will turn to contemporary controversies, focusing more specifically on corruption in public institutions and on existing "recipes" for eliminating it.

The global refugee crisis reminds us of translation’s original meaning: to bear across, to move from one place to another. How does translation mediate the lives of those who settle in new cultures? Migrants have differing degrees of access and agency. How are experience and meaning rendered across linguistic barriers? How can migrants avoid misunderstanding and the loss of language? In what ways might they also test language and ideas in new contexts that allow for innovation? What might be gained in translation? This multidisciplinary colloquium draws on diverse accounts of migration and translation to reflect on experiences and experiments across borders and languages, including those of interpreters, journalists, historians, activists and authors of science fiction. Students keep a translator’s journal to reflect upon their discoveries and author an essay contextualizing their translations.

What am I? Possible answers include: I am a person, a mind, an animal, a soul, a brain, and more. Various religious traditions define the self as a soul that enjoys an afterlife. The Buddhist tradition famously asserts a theory of no-self. Science has its own answers. Yet in the analytic tradition, philosophers are attracted to a materialistic personal ontology. Is physicalism compatible with the idea of rebirth? To answer this question, personal identity is equated with the necessary and sufficient conditions for our persistence. This course investigates the basic structure of our experience. Asking whether we exist by virtue of being able to feel or whether culture and society construct the self, course materials draw on classical and contemporary theories of the self, subjectivity, and personal identity to facilitate a multidisciplinary inquiry into the relationship between ideas about the self and ideals of justice, equality, and a peaceful society. Topics include the relation between the self and its environment, the basis of (non)egoistic future concerns, social responsibilities, and how we should live.

How do we understand and make sense of the consequences of what has clearly become a climate emergency? What conditions catalyzed this moment of crisis? Why and how might we consider re-orienting our habits of thought and action to engage this global challenge? What are the limits of anthropomorphism or the anthropomorphic imagination, of assigning human attributes to nonhuman others? Our notions of "development" and "progress," our conception of natural resources, our relationship to the technocratic imagination have all contributed to the making of the Age of the Anthropocene, in which human agency reshapes our environment. This course will engage with a range of approaches that re-conceptualize the relationship of humans with nature. It will study the environmental consequences of urbanization, resource frontiers, extractive industries, the quest for sustainable energy, human-animal conflict, and the politics of conservation. It will conclude by asking what constitutes environmental justice as students explore the need to recalibrate multiple disciplines to generate a "multispecies" perspective on our world.

How does the ceaseless movement of people - a key feature of our globalized world - impact our sense of the self, of social identity, and indeed of political rights, all of which are anchored in a presumption of "belonging" that is secured by primordial ties of blood and soil. "Migrant," "Refugee," and "Indigenous" are among the most fraught terms in a time when the "Citizen" has been elevated to being the singular legitimacy. Formal citizenship often excludes migrants or those who were born to parents of foreign nationality. What are the tensions between citizenship and mobility? Can one recognize both the “right” to movement and mobility alongside assertions of the preeminence of "local populations"? How are these competing claims conceptualized and rights affirmed? What are the distinct valences of terms like "Neighbor," "Stranger," "Citizen," "Alien," "Guest," and "Resident"? And how do we debate the contrasting conceptual grounds of territorial claims and circulatory flows? In this multidisciplinary colloquium, students will engage these in order to understand better the place of the nation-state and the experience of citizenship in the context of globalization.

What is the relationship between multilingualism and global society? Does learning new languages correlate with a disposition toward global citizenship? This interdisciplinary colloquium integrates theory with practice in looking at the effects of language-learning on education, society, and cultural identity. In addition to developing a basic understanding of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) concepts, students will consider multilingualism from perspectives including educational and social psychology, diplomacy, business, and public policy. Along the way additional questions arise: In what settings does multilingualism thrive? What makes a language easy or difficult to learn? Why do some people succeed at learning new languages while others don't? Can plurilingual citizens boost the economy of their countries? Does language-learning require and/or promote cultural understanding? Are there drugs that can accelerate language learning? Guest experts will address different areas of language education, social behavior, and psycho/neurolinguistics. All students will experiment over the course of the semester with acquiring a new language using the Duolinguo application.

What kind of justice matters when political regimes change? How should new democracies handle the legacies of a violent past? Should emerging political actors punish perpetrators? Or, instead, should they encourage victims to reconcile with former aggressors? How do ancient and modern experiences of justice differ? Which is a better condition for peace: knowing or not knowing the past? Is there a trade-off between political stability and full disclosure of the past? Taking up such questions, this course asks what we can learn from the contemporary field of Transitional Justice, as well as from its critics. Investigating ideas and practices of punishment, reconciliation, forgiving, and forgetting, students will examine such cases as Argentina, South Africa, East Timor, Egypt, and Brazil. They will examine how the International Criminal Court manages complex issues surrounding international intervention in domestic affairs. How have diverse national experiences of violence yielded varying concepts of justice, reconciliation, and transition? How does political imagination relate to representations of justice in postconflict films, documentaries, fiction, and testimonial literature?

How has the automation economy changed the ways we live and work? What challenges and opportunities does automation pose for the future? This multidisciplinary colloquium draws on materials in social science, science, and the humanities to explore how societies have organized themselves relative to technology in the past, and what changes are currently taking place. As we are now in the midst of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, what lessons can be learned from its predecessors? What consequences might new technologies pose for global challenges such as peace, education, equality, or sustainable development? How does the very definition of the "human" stand to be affected? Students will examine the wave of technology-driven transformations occurring on a global scale, including artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and virtual reality. They will consider the Fourth Industrial Revolution as an opportunity to critique theories of technological change and construct their own narratives of change in individual case study analysis assignments.

How does the “benefit of hindsight” shape the stories that define our sense of self? Do these stories change depending on what is important to us at the time of looking back This multidisciplinary colloquium brings together the study of psychology, philosophy, sociology, history, and literary memoir to explore how autobiographical memories may be structured less by weighing evidence than by rules of employment and the need to create a morally comprehensible narrative identity. What roles do dominant narratives constructed within different socio-cultural worlds play in shaping individuals’ narrative identities? And what happens when dominant narratives are created globally and no longer the preserve of regional societies? Whose interests might such identity-conferring narratives serve? What happens when globalizing cultures create tension between collective memories of belonging (to communities/nations) and autobiographies that foreground exceptionality, individual achievement, and cosmopolitan engagement? What are the psychological consequences of “looking back” on one’s life from a critical moral perspective? And what are the implications for “understanding humanity”?

Water is fundamental to life and to fundamental human rights such as adequate food and livelihood. Water's availability and quality have shaped civilizations; its place in our contemporary lives bears on global societal issues such as health, food security, gender equality, and economic policy. Despite making up most of the Earth's surface, water remains a precious resource to which billions of people have little or no access. This colloquium takes a multidisciplinary approach to the connections between water and society, including scientific, social, and economic perspectives. How does the availability of safe drinking water relate to health and sanitation? How are water, food, and energy linked? In what ways do human actions affect water-related ecosystems? What role does the water industry play in job creation? What recent advances have been made in water harvesting and desalination? Learning to weigh and synthesize multiple forms of evidence, students will develop the skills needed to address these and other questions and challenges posed with respect to water and society.

Inspired by the French Enlightenment, "secularism" has come to represent non-religious approaches to morality and socio-political life. This course draws on multiple disciplines - including history, philosophy, fine arts, and political science - to explore secularism’s multiple meanings and manifestations. Does secularism have core values and, if so, how do those differ from religious values? What are secularism’s origins, and is it fundamentally Western? How do philosophical approaches commonly associated with secularism (e.g., humanism, agnosticism, and atheism) differ, and how have such paradigms influenced knowledge-production and human rights norms? In addition to exploring these far-reaching questions, students will compare the specificities of secular mobilization and governance worldwide: How does secular governance in China and Russia differ from models in the United States, France, India, and Turkey? Is there a positive correlation between secularization and economic development, increased religious diversity, or broader access to education? What interrelationships exist between secularization and democratization? Is any contemporary society truly secular?

Oil is obviously a matter of huge importance in Abu Dhabi and globally. But what is oil? Is it a mineral formed by long-decayed microorganisms or volcanic activity? Is it a source of power (the fuel derived by cracking it into gasoline) or a source of geopolitical power? Does oil bring wealth - or, as some researchers argue, a "resource curse"? What is oil for Arab states? For the planet? And what happens if or when it runs out? This Core Colloquium addresses these and many related issues from multidisciplinary and global perspectives, drawing on materials and concepts from geology, history, political economy, film, and literature.

Can aesthetic forms promote and not just respond to revolutionary social and political change? This Core Colloquium confronts global challenges of peace, justice, and equality by examining the role of music and other art forms in advancing social movements, using the recent history of the Middle East and North Africa as a principal case study. Placing these events in a longer historical context, course materials will explore what role the arts have played in social movements, including 20th-century revolutions in Egypt, the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the Palestinian Intifadas, and the Arab Uprisings. Students will ask how artistic practices not only reflect social changes in these case studies, but also promote them. Drawing on theoretical readings on aesthetics, social movements, and revolution from disciplines including anthropology, musicology, and Middle East Studies, students will develop a critical understanding for the role of art in social change, an analytical grasp of theories of social mobilization, and deeper knowledge of recent historical moments in the Middle East and North Africa region.

States form the building blocks of our global order, significantly impacting how people from diverse countries, cultures, and regional backgrounds interact with each other. Yet what does the concept of statehood entail and what is its role in a globalized world? The course examines the historical, legal, political, and cultural foundations of the concepts of state and statehood, along with related ideas, such as sovereignty, citizenship, and statelessness. A diverse range of literary, cultural, legal, and government sources will help create the course's conceptual framework as well as case studies of past and present challenges to state-building efforts. Examples will include state-building in the Global South, various forms of regional cooperation (e.g. the GCC, ASEAN, etc.), and the creation of supranational institutions such as the European Union. In addition, the course will examine questions of statehood/statelessness during times of war and conflict, and in relation to topics such as migration and refugees, social movements, gender, race and ethnicity, and civil and human rights.

What are possibilities for feminist solidarity across borders, given deep and abiding divisions (such as class, race, sexuality, geography, and history) among women? How do transnational frameworks recast our understanding of feminism(s), and of the forces that shape women’s lives "here" and "elsewhere"? How are histories of capitalism, colonialism, and slavery important for understanding contemporary connections among women across national and other borders? This course explores these and other questions, with a focus on the intersecting transnational forces that produce gendered and sexualized bodies, practices, and discourses. It examines the ways the politics of gender and sexuality intersect with the politics of nationalism, neoliberalism, empire, the role of the United Nations, and religious radicalism in its various forms. Course material will include both empirical and theoretical texts from a range of disciplines and geographical areas. Throughout, students will assess possibilities for reconciling scholarship with activism, given the distinctly different responses of activists and scholars to concepts such as cultural relativism, liberal rights regimes, and female agency.

Do women lead differently than men? What are the implications of women's and men's unequal distribution in leadership across many social domains? This course examines past and present challenges and opportunities related to women and leadership, empowerment, equality, and gender equity from a global perspective. In doing so it seeks to examine critically the historical contexts and conditions within which issues of women and leadership have been embedded. What are the effects of inequality, injustice, and discrimination on women's underrepresentation in leadership across the world? The course will take a variety of disciplinary approaches to the topic, drawing on autobiographies, biographies, novels, films, and TV series, alongside academic literature.

How do we respond to news that some among us are ill, and that the illness is, perhaps, contagious? Are the healthy ethically obliged to tend to the sick? What are the relationships between "communicable" disease and verbal communication: rumors, medical information, stories about the dying and the dead? How has illness literally and metaphorically participated in the reimagination of community, kinship, and sexuality in different times and places? This multidisciplinary course examines the intersections of contagious disorder and storytelling in a range of cultures, settings, and forms, from ancient Greece to contemporary South Africa, from the Black Death, influenza, and AIDS to the proliferation of zombies and vampires in global popular culture today.

Inequality is a fundamental issue with which every human society, past and present, has had to deal. This course explores why inequality occurs and why it matters, questions which have taken on critical importance in this time of deepening global inequalities. The course will approach these questions by considering inequality in comparative and historical perspective so that students will gain a deeper perspective on today’s debates. While the course will focus on the wide-ranging consequences of inequality, particular emphasis will be placed on the relationship between inequality and government. How does governmental action influence inequality, and why? Does the presence of inequality influence what type of government is possible? To answer these questions the course will draw on sources from a range of academic disciplines including political science, history, economics, philosophy, and literature. However, no prior expertise in any of these areas will be required. By the end of the course students will be in a better position to formulate their own normative opinions about inequality while also understanding how it functions in practice.

E=mc2: One simple equation encapsulates the power to grant life and death in equal measure - life associated with fusion in the sun, radiation therapy, and nuclear energy; death via nuclear bombs and nuclear disasters. This course uses nuclear physics as a prism for exploring science as a human endeavor, focusing on the physics of the atomic nucleus and its technological applications. Arguments for and against nuclear power plants are analyzed, while the power and threat of nuclear weapons are assessed. The international treaties designed to limit the spread of nuclear weapons are scrutinized, emphasizing the challenges that lawmakers and citizens face in determining and guiding the uses of nuclear power and grappling with the moral responsibility that all of us - scientists, politicians, and citizens - must bear for ourselves, our nations, and ultimately, for humanity.

Most democracies in the world are multi-ethnic. But the jury is still out on the question of what ethnic diversity means for democratic stability and governance. This course combines materials from across many disciplines, including political science, political philosophy, economics, mathematics, anthropology, history, and the humanities to address questions including the following: Does ethnic diversity - based on race, color, nationality, language, tribe, caste, religion, sect and region - constitute an obstacle or an asset for successful democracy? What are the goals of individuals who mobilize politically on the basis of one or more of these identities? What are the principles that democratic systems should employ in responding to identity-based claims? And how should we evaluate public policies designed to respond to such claims, including affirmative action, federalism, cultural rights, educational policies, and electoral systems? The aim is to train students to think critically and comparatively about the global and local challenges faced by multi-ethnic democracies, using a combination of primary and secondary materials and real-world examples drawn from across several countries.

No organism on Earth lives in isolation! This simple fact underscores the importance of interactions between species. But how do organisms interact? What languages do they use? This course explores how interspecies crosstalk sustains life on Earth and how challenges such as global warming influence such communication. Topics to discuss include the role of chemical communication between bacteria in causing infectious diseases and whether the overuse of antibiotics is sustainable; how communication between ocean algae coupled with global warming lead to recurrent "red tides"; the breakdown of coral-algae symbiosis and implications for coastal fisheries; disruption of the language bees use to maintain colonies and the rise of colony collapse disorder that threatens pollination globally; the potential use of plant language to combat bug infestation in lieu of pesticides; how our gut microbiota influence physical appearance and susceptibility to disease and whether our innate bacteria affect our social interactions; how human communication has influenced civilization and whether modern technological advances, such as social media, have positive or negative effects on us as a species.

Is creativity a gift or a skill? Can creativity be learned? Because creativity is deeply personal, this course will address these questions through individual and collective experiences. The heart of this course is the Personal Creativity Project - an opportunity for students to practice creativity by designing and executing a project of their choice. The project may be on any topic, from art and music to computer programs and business model development. The project will be complemented by reading assignments (completed prior to class), class discussions, and one-on-one meetings with the instructor. Students will leave the course with a completed project and a personal philosophy of creativity, based on the fusion of readings, study, discussion, and experience. The course provides a great deal of freedom for learning and does not provide step-by-step instructions. As a result, the successful completion of this course will require a significant amount of self-motivation.

This course explores how technology and machines have influenced human life across the ages. It further explores how technology has influenced the fields of arts and design and investigates this inspirational source for new technological developments. Lecture and discussion will be the breeding ground for concept development of new machines: Every student will realize a prototype of a machine executing a certain task. This hands-on project will be complemented by case studies, reading assignments, workshops, excursions, and one-on-one meetings with the professor. The course builds knowledge about futuristic developments and their use and influence from past to present, including questions concerning ethics and values. Students will leave the course with a completed project to be displayed in an exhibition and a personal philosophy of Arts, Design, and Technology.

Giorgio Vasari defined Mannerism in terms still used today in Art History: in the wake of the Renaissance masters, copying became the standard way to learn. But what do we really learn by copying? Would a contemporary mannerism fit in today’s world, dominated by visual information? How then does creativity work? How does change happen? Why did we wait half a century before having personal computers in colors other than beige? Why do we seem oblivious to the manufactured filters mediating our observation of nature itself? What are the trade-offs when we delegate creative choices to Google’s algorithms? What separates the artists of the past and the brand consultants of today? This course addresses the role and limits of copying as students explore many facets of graphic design, visual communication, and artistic value. The vibrant visual culture-in-the-making of Abu Dhabi and the UAE provide an ideal background for such explorations. Students will elaborate on the tension (real or perceived) among today’s artists, designers, and scientists, while discussing why a multidisciplinary mind is fundamental for contemporary attempts to re-design the world around us.

This course introduces students to the basics of how computers “think” and some of the inherent limitations of computers. How do programs (software applications) make computers behave intelligently and allow them to solve problems effectively for a wide range of applications and fields, from art and other media to education, medicine, and the core sciences? How do we use computer programs to process, structure, and manage information, create and manipulate digital media, and search and gather information relevant to any particular topic? How do computer programs operate virtually, creating the World Wide Web of the modern digital age, and how does all of this affect issues related to security and privacy in the wired world we live in today? Students are asked to create innovative programming solutions to a set of problems and develop applications focused on the social good for their final project. The programming language of choice is Python, a relatively easy programming language with powerful visual, text processing, and graphics capabilities. No prior programming experience is required.

This course analyzes what we understand as "music." Drawing on music of different styles from all over the world, seminar members will explore what constitutes musical meaning, how it is produced, and how music expresses feelings. Taking advantage of the multicultural nature of NYU Abu Dhabi, students will explore the cultural and universal mechanisms at play when we listen to and understand music. A lab portion of the class guides students through basic musical elements such as notation systems, scales, and simple compositional techniques.

What is the relationship between documents and identity? Do documents record, create, influence, mask, and/or shift identity? The course considers different types of identities (immigrant, criminal, racial, gender, normative, artistic) and documents (police records, personal and state archives, art objects). The course tracks the dynamic relationships among documents and identities through time and across cultures. We will study the history behind the creation and development of documents such as the passport or mug shot and weigh in on contemporary debates around racial profiling and immigration bans. At the same time, we will also study a diverse range of artistic attempts at documenting identity in print and visual media. For the final project each student will produce both an artistic project and a reflective essay that engage the intersections of documents and identity.

How do we feel about robots? With technological developments in capability, performance, autonomy, ease of use, and cost-effectiveness, robots have arrived in everyday life. This course considers the history and ethics of human-robot interaction and explores unsolved hurdles we face as robots assume a ubiquitous presence in our lives. How are robots currently integrating into human-centered, civic industries such as education, heath, and smart cities? What roles might robots play in the future of these industries? What are the economic and labor implications associated with robotic integration? How will consumers respond to the increased use of robots in daily life? How have popular media representations over the last century influenced the way we experience these changes? Topics will also include the miniaturization of robots and their use in situations such as focused drug delivery within the human body, save-and-rescue missions, or military combat. Students will assemble and program several Lego Mindstorm robots capable of carrying prefabricated objects and will also assemble a small house.

The wheel's origins remain a mystery. Did it evolve in the Mesopotamian city of Uruk, humanity's first urban society, around 3500-3375 BCE? Or did a Boleraz copper miner in the Carpathian Mountains, around 4000 BCE, invent a pair of wheels connected by an axle in order to move a heavy ore basket? Why, despite having the potter's wheel and trade with Mesopotamia, did the Nile valley not use wheels until the pharaohs adopted war chariots around 1600 BCE? Why did the wheel, which came into use in 3 BCE, disappear in the Middle East a few centuries later, even though the arid climate kept roads clean for most of the year? Why was wheeled transport absent in pre-Columbian America, considering that ancient Mexicans had invented wheeled toys on axles? Did the wheel spread across regions as an idea or a technology? What can its historical evolution teach us about innovation and durability, about why some technologies adapt and others fail or are lost? Students will tackle such questions as they explore how the wheel's applications were shaped by religion, war, social hierarchies, gender bias, economic efficiency, and the local terrain - all while developing projects of their own.

Photo albums are meaningful, unique creations. Infused with intangible memories, they tangibly show specific, select moments of the past - some mundane, others poignant. Highly personal, photo albums also reveal shared encounters and assert human universals. How and by what means do our personal photo albums thus compile collective identities and histories? What stories lie behind their making? What narratives arise - formulaic or unexpected - when related or disparate photographs are organized or randomly displayed in the unifying context of photo albums? This course employs art practice and theory to investigate the curation of vernacular photography in family photo albums. Looking at the global history and contemporary manifestations of these practices, and drawing on NYUAD's Akkasah Center of Photography, it asks: What are the motivations, challenges, and implications of commissioning or taking, collecting, or curating photographs of one's family or oneself? How do we approach such collections as viewers? Who makes, owns, and passes down albums - to whom, for whom, and why? Students will also create photo albums as a generative means of engaging in and understanding this practice.

How has our relationship with building materials shaped human civilization, and in return, how does our use of materials actively reshape the planet we live on? Materials have played a major role throughout human history, from providing basic clothing and shelter in prehistoric times, to fueling the industrial revolution, and enabling today's global consumer culture. In the process, material use and discovery have given rise to many branches of science and commerce, resulting in even greater demand for more material. The consequences on society and the environment haven't always been positive. This course explores our relationship with material as engineers, scientists, consumers, and traders. Basic laboratory sessions on material characterization will explore material processing techniques ranging from simple resin casting to advanced 3D printing.

How can artistic online collaboration and performance be used to close gaps in space, time, and in physical and cultural distance? How can the internet be an effective medium for multidisciplinary intercultural artistic expression? The current pandemic has created a strong reemergence of online performances. The recent explosion of freely-available content in social media platforms (literally) from around the world has created an unprecedented opportunity to (re)evaluate online performance as a medium and as a means for intercultural artistic collaboration. In this course we will address live online performance and will explore its possibilities for intercultural artistic collaboration. This will be achieved by creating a series of live online performances, by viewing similar work by other artists, through seminal readings in the field, and talks by selected guests.

There is no life without law. Nature has its laws. Religions have theirs, societies theirs, families theirs. Business has its rules and contracts. How do people understand the laws that are as much a part of life as the weather? Literature - the work of the imagination - guides our great journey towards understanding. Writers dramatize the relations among law, justice, and freedom. Writers also show the effect of law on the fates, fortunes, and feelings of people. The course explores the power of literature to show us what the law is, what it should not be, and what it might be.

What does art do to us? This course centers on the concept of “Art and Agency,” coined by anthropologist Alfred Gell, which holds that art works carry an agency factor that affects human beings - their mode of thinking, their emotions, their actions, their aesthetic experience. This concept has impacted the way art historians, in academia and the professional museum world, think about and display works of art. Through class discussions and visits to the Louvre Abu Dhabi Museum, the course will examine a host of related ideas: the rhetorical concept of “energeia,” camouflage, iconoclasm, “animism” in prehistoric rock art, Western and Asian landscape imagery, medieval relics and miracle imagery, anthropomorphism and witchcraft in the early modern period, and the idea of “living presence” in abstract expressionism.

This course focuses on questions of religious and cultural difference through the 1001 Nights, the corpus of tales that has served as a point of encounter between Middle Eastern literary traditions and the politics of Western culture, including “Sinbad,” Aladdin” and “Ali Baba.” Jewish, Christian, Zoroastrian, Muslim and ‘pagan’ realms co-exist uneasily in the original cycle of tales that often confront protagonists with such differences as a problem. Cultural difference peaked the interest of the Arab storytellers and European translators who brought the Nights to Europe and pioneered travelogues respectively of Europe and the Middle East. Their writings would serve as points of departure for seminal works on the engagement with cultural difference and its representation, Appiah’s Cosmopolitanism and Said’s Orientalism.

This course explores ways of listening, and of being a listener, in human experience, with attention to the role of the ear in the constitution of subjects, communities, and societies of different times and places. Topics include debates about the listening subject in Western philosophy and media studies; the role of the “ethnographic ear” in cultural anthropology and ethnomusicology; theories and methods of “soundscape research” and “acoustemology”; and aurality as an aspect of culture, explored through case studies ranging from the development of sound reproduction technologies, to deaf culture, to the ethics of sounding and listening in religious practice. Course readings, drawn from a wide range of disciplines, include foundational texts in the emerging interdisciplinary field of “sound studies.” In addition to engaging critically with a range of ideas and debates through discussion, presentations, and writing, students will try their ears at specialized modes of training and data collection developed by sound-oriented researchers and artists.

We all think about wanting to live in the perfect world, but what happens when definitions of “perfect” conflict with one another? Drawing on written and cinematic texts from around the world, this course explores ways in which writers and artists have wrestled with the question of “utopia” and, more particularly, the ways in which utopias always seem to fall short of their ideal. As we examine these failed utopias, we will consider how these texts explore the increasingly fraught relationship between humanity and technology, and between the community and the individual. Is any attempt at utopia doomed, given the human proclivity for violence and xenophobia? Why, in recent years, have dystopian worlds become the mainstay of pop culture, from novels to video games and movies? The course may include contemporary work by Hiyao Miyazaki, Chan Koonchung, and Vladimir Sorokin, as well as such classics as Thomas More’s Utopia, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland, and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.

What does it mean to be a hero? Can one still be “heroic” in times marked by intense and jarring forms of violence? How does heroism travel across diverse places and beyond the frontline to intersect with mundane questions of survival as well as more severe issues of racial, class, and gender differences? And why do tales of heroism remain so persistently appealing to us today? In this course, we will examine the concept of the hero in world literature from ancient epic to postmodern fiction and film. We will investigate how the ideals of heroism, types of heroes/heroines and antiheroes, as well as modes of heroic action change through time, across literary genres and cultural traditions. Texts may include the Epic of Gilgamesh, Sophocles’ Antigone, Sīrat 'Antar, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Pynchon’s Crying of Lot 49, graphic novels, selections from the Bible, the Qur’an, and the One Thousand and One Nights, and films such as Birdman, Lord of the Rings, and 300.

To what extent can "Shakespeare" serve as the focal point for a cultural heritage that belongs to the entire globe? This course offers a comparative, interdisciplinary approach to Shakespeare's plays, considering them both as exemplary of Western literature and also as world literature, influential in many cultures. Three sets of questions ground the course: 1) In what ways was Shakespeare a "global" author in his own day, adopting a "worldly" approach that transcends his English context? 2) How do the publication, performance, and critical histories of his plays transform "Shakespeare" into a global commodity? 3) What cultural legacy has Shakespeare's work left for a variety of global media forms, including plays, films, novels, operas, and works of visual art? The course begins with two plays, Othello and The Tempest, that have inspired adaptations in a variety of contexts and genres. It then pays close attention to the global spread of Shakespeare’s most famous play, Hamlet, from 1603 to the present. The course concludes with a creative project inspired by Shakespeare's lost play, Cardenio.

What is memory? We tend to think it will be activated when the right moment comes, but our experiences may belie our thinking, such as when we forget a name just when we need it. A variety of disciplines and theories approach the phenomenon of memory: cognitive science, computer science, biology, psychology, sociology, media theory, theory of perception, philosophy, history, cultural history and art history, trauma theory, heritage studies. And we can observe a huge variety of attempts to preserve memories: monuments, memorials, museums, libraries, archives, rituals, writing, film, and even ephemeral forms such as blog posts or status updates (nothing gets lost in the Web!). The course allows students to sample these various approaches without being restricted to any one of them as they explore fundamental questions about the relationship between memory and human identity: Is memory everything we can remember, or everything we can forget? How can we know memories from dreams or fantasies? Do we remember things as they really were or as they never were? Is memory what we take for granted and thus an impediment to creative thinking, or is it the prerequisite of creative activity?

Virtually unknown outside of academic discourse until very recently, the term cultural appropriation has become a commonplace in social and popular media, as activists and public intellectuals have highlighted what they see as problematic uses (or abuses) of cultural symbols, artifacts, or expressive modes connected to marginalized groups. But what exactly is cultural appropriation, and under what circumstances can it be said to constitute a form of exploitation or violence? This course approaches these questions both philosophically and empirically, asking, on the one hand: What is culture, and how can it be “owned” or “stolen”? and on the other: How have practices of adopting or using culture been implicated in processes of social subjugation or marginalization? Course readings are drawn from a range of disciplines across the humanities and social sciences, including cultural anthropology, art theory, music studies, and philosophy. By engaging with a rich corpus of ideas through in-class discussions, oral presentations, and written reflections, students will develop critical perspectives on cultural appropriation as well as the broader concepts of culture, race, and ethnicity.

Stories about migrants and the politics of migration have been told across media forms, platforms and genres. Depending on the registers used and the location from where narrated, migration is increasingly perceived as a national or global crisis, a humanitarian emergency, or as economic opportunity. Questions of mediation profoundly shape the circulation and the contours of the narrative. The course will 1) review some key themes about global migration in diverse contexts, 2) examine the role of media and mediation in constructing the migrant experience; 3) engage and critique digital archives of migration. The course will culminate in a media project where students produce their own digital media narratives of migration.

Conceptions of death and the afterlife not only structure traditional religious beliefs and practices, but they also subtly inform politics, scientific research, and societies more widely. How societies mete out punishment, engage in war, treat animals, distribute funds for scientific research or medical treatment, give legal expression to various moral mandates, etc. all are rooted in their attitudes and beliefs about death and the afterlife. This colloquium takes up a range of literary, political, and philosophical works from different cultures and periods that have framed in memorable, though often contradictory, ways some basic questions about death and immortality. How long should people live? How would immortality impact the planet’s resources? And how might these questions inflect our views about recent technological efforts to extend life and ultimately to achieve immortality virtual or otherwise? Students will confront such questions from a variety of moral, scientific, and cultural perspectives and explore the role that death plays in their own lives and in those of other peoples and societies.

Dignity, a concept elaborated for its emancipatory potential, has come to serve varied ends. Beginning with contemporary evocations of the notion of dignity within international institutions (the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), bioethics (stem-cell research and end-of-life care), and socio-economics (the Indignants Movement and the Vatican’s “Dignity of Labor”), this class traces distinct and often conflicting conceptions of the term “dignity.” It investigates the ways in which the notion and experience of human dignity have come under assault in the modern world system, with its corresponding economic, social, and cultural practices. A series of historical investigations into philosophical definitions, visual and literary expressions, key official documents, and personal narratives will lead the class to ask whether the contemporary period may recover or conserve the liberating potential of dignity in our evolving world system.

Are social outcomes primarily shaped by prominent individuals or deterministic structural forces? Some claim leadership is a mere label used to justify social change stemming from structural forces of nature and culture. Others assert history can be found in the biographies of a few prominent men and women. In this course we examine this old and unsettled debate. Considering political, social, artistic, and business perspectives, we dissect the concept of leadership. Students will learn to elaborate on the interplay between culture and leadership and to what extent societies create their own leaders. The course draws on the work of classic and modern thinkers. We will also explore the life of prominent individuals, such as Mandela, Mother Teresa, Jobs, Soros, Churchill, Thatcher, Sheikh Zayed, among many others. Students will develop a conceptual framework to link leadership and some of our most pressing global challenges, such as inequality, sustainability, peace, and understanding humanity.

One of the biggest challenges in medicine is to prevent disease and ensure personalized treatment. This is now becoming possible thanks to high-resolution DNA sequencing technology that can decipher our individual information. These developments are already impacting global health, but they raise global challenges such as equality. How will these new technologies blend into healthcare systems? What regulations are needed to ensure that personalized medicine reaches all layers of society? How do we prevent discrimination based on our genes? Through an inquiry-based approach we will examine the science, economics, and politics behind medicine and evaluate the ethical issues that arise in this fast-developing field.

From space, there is no view of Earth without blue - water is everywhere. From the ground however, there are many places - and many times - where there isn’t enough to go around. Water is critical to our bodies, to the growth of our food, and to flushing away the wastes of human, economic, and industrial development. However, as the number of human feet on the planet increases and their economic footprints grow, the sliver of Earth’s water that is available to us is spread thinner, and the distinction between water as a human need and right, and water as a scarce and precious resource, is blurred. To understand how to manage water in a way that respects both its scarcity (managing for efficiency) and the needs of those who use it (managing for equity), it is important to understand the myriad modes and scales through which water shapes the world we live in.

How do speculative genres speak to their own times, even as they imagine faraway futures? This course considers the metaphors and parables science fiction films create about present societies and the future of the human condition to explore such works negotiate the anxieties and fears of the present in imagined space and/or time. It focuses specifically on film - an art form that has had dramatic reach across global audiences, with technological advances allowing us to visualize increasingly complex alternative worlds. Drawing on films and television from the USA, Germany, India, Korea, the Middle East and elsewhere, many inspired by literature, the course allows students to consider what universal values these filmic narratives project and what solutions they offer to social, psychological, and environmental dilemmas. The course puts film in context with earlier forms of speculation about the future. Through the course, students will also consider what the science fiction of the future may look like by creating short narratives from which they will develop a podcast episode, short story or a treatment for a science fiction film or series.

What is "global heritage"? Is it simply our collective legacy as human societies - how we want to be remembered by future generations - or must we confront more difficult questions about identity, the ownership of culture, and conflicts between local and global stewardship of the cultural treasures and historical evidence? With time, negligence, and even military conflict working to erase the past, we must ask: Can a better understanding of our shared heritage assist us in addressing cultural differences in the present day? And how can science both help us understand the historic record and work to preserve it? This class examines ways in which scientific methods can help define "global heritage" and protect it for future generations. Students explore the history and the science behind the creation of paintings, frescoes, parchments, sculptures, ancient mummies, historical buildings, musical instruments, and other artifacts. They will also examine the methods used to differentiate between an authentic object and a fake and ask how some objects come to be valued more than others: distinctions that can lead, and have led, to cultural conflict in recent years.

Tragic dramas from different cultures and periods have framed in memorable, though often contradictory, ways some basic questions about how human beings face suffering, violence, and death. Drawing on these broad traditions, students will explore the dramatic forms, social contexts, and rhetorical and political goals of tragedies in an attempt to understand how drama can turn catastrophe into art - and why. By what means does tragedy take horrific and often degrading experiences and transform them into artistic experiences that are (sometimes) intelligible, pleasurable, or beautiful? Should witnessing the misery of others ever be pleasurable or beautiful? Can we presume to make sense of another's suffering? How, more generally, can tragic drama help us come to terms with the violence and brutality of the human condition - or does it sometimes hinder this attempt?

How does the ceaseless movement of people - a key feature of our globalized world - impact our sense of the self, of social identity, and indeed of political rights, all of which are anchored in a presumption of "belonging" that is secured by primordial ties of blood and soil. "Migrant," "Refugee," and "Indigenous" are among the most fraught terms in a time when the "Citizen" has been elevated to being the singular legitimacy. Formal citizenship often excludes migrants or those who were born to parents of foreign nationality. What are the tensions between citizenship and mobility? Can one recognize both the “right” to movement and mobility alongside assertions of the preeminence of "local populations"? How are these competing claims conceptualized and rights affirmed? What are the distinct valences of terms like "Neighbor," "Stranger," "Citizen," "Alien," "Guest," and "Resident"? And how do we debate the contrasting conceptual grounds of territorial claims and circulatory flows? In this multidisciplinary colloquium, students will engage these in order to understand better the place of the nation-state and the experience of citizenship in the context of globalization.

How has the creation of structures and norms of global governance reshaped historical efforts at pacifying international relations, fostering economic development, and providing global public goods? Today, an expansive network of inter-governmental institutions exists, but global attempts to engage with poor, conflict-affected countries often struggle to meet local needs. This course examines global governance's origins, logic, and varying impact in local contexts. Students will explore and debate different perspectives on global governance and develop a better understanding of how power, institutions, and cultural norms shape interactions between global and local actors. Case studies include successes and failures of international attempts at 1) post-conflict peacebuilding in Namibia, Somalia, and Afghanistan; 2) facilitating transitional justice in Liberia and Yugoslavia; and 3) addressing refugee crises in Mozambique and Syria. The course will help students to grapple with the complex political and ethical dilemmas of global governance and devise more effective and context-sensitive strategies for resolving some of the most pressing challenges of our time.

How did life form on Earth? How likely is it that life formed elsewhere in the universe? If it did, how can we find these beings? Was the formation of life in the universe a bygone conclusion? Answering these questions requires understanding the basics of biology, chemistry, and physics and has strong bearing on our understanding of the human condition and the sustainability of life on our planet. During this semester, students will discuss current models for how the necessary ingredients for life formed in the universe, the observational and experimental evidence for these theories, attempts by scientists and science fiction writers to imagine life in other parts of the universe, and the many questions which remain.

This course explores the craft of and the market for literary translation. Why do some translators aim for familiarity and others for estrangement? What is lost, and perhaps even gained, in a text’s cultural relocation? What can be accessed in translation and what are the limits of translation? Translation, and translation projects such as NYUAD’s Library of Arabic Literature, play a pivotal role in shaping intercultural exchange and globalizing literary markets and canons. The course familiarizes students with practices and theories of translation from different literary traditions. Case studies include comparative examples drawn from distinct genres such as the epic, forms of lyric poetry, drama, and modern prose fiction. Not available to students who have taken LITCW-UH 1140.

What motivates human beings to form collections? How do we select, order, preserve and display information and objects? And, what intellectual processes are involved in these activities? What does the content of these collections say about those who created them? And what kind of narratives can be traced within the display of these collections? This course surveys the phenomenon of collecting, focusing on key moments in its history, from antiquity up to contemporary times. The first section of the class explores collections of "thought," that is, how knowledge has been stored, organized and retrieved - and some of the tools we have developed to do so - including mnemonic devices, writing, codices, libraries, information architecture, and digital technologies. The second section concerns physical objects and their collection, classification, organization, and display. Finally, the course turns to the work of modern and contemporary artists who incorporate concepts of assemblage and curation. In response to the readings and to the materials covered in class, students will conceive, create, describe and display a collection of their own making.

New York Students: this course counts towards the Life Science requirement.

Over half of the human population lives within 100 km of a coast and coastlines contain more than two-thirds of the world’s largest cities. As a result, the world’s natural coastal environments have been substantially modified to suit human needs. This course uses the built and natural environments of coastal cities as laboratories to examine the environmental and ecological implications of urban development in coastal areas. Using data from multiple coastal cities, student teams use fieldbased studies and Geographic Information System (GIS) data to examine patterns and processes operating in coastal cities. This course uses the local terrestrial, marine, and built environments as a laboratory to address these issues, and team projects requiring field work form a core component of the learning experience. As part of the NYU Global Network University initiative this course is being offered simultaneously in several NYU sites globally and students are collaborating extensively with students from their sister campuses through the duration of this course.

New York Students: this course is equivalent to CSCI-UA 101 Introduction to Computer Science.

Shanghai Students: this course is equivalent to CSCI-SHU 101 Introduction to Computer Science.

Computer Science is an innovative and exciting field that focuses on producing efficient solutions for solving problems in any field. This course introduces students to the foundations of computer science. Students learn how to design algorithms to solve problems and how to translate these algorithms into working computer programs using a high-level programming language. The course covers core programming concepts including basic computation, data structures, decision structures, iterative structures, file input/output, and recursion. Students also learn the elements of Object Oriented Programming (OOP), such as objects, classes, inheritance, abstraction, and polymorphism. A final project allows students to combine these concepts to produce a large program of their design.

Introduction to Computer Science - Sample Syllabus.

New York Students: this course is equivalent to MATH-UA 120 Discrete Mathematics.

Shanghai Students: this course is equivalent to CSCI-SHU 2134 Discrete Math.

Discrete mathematics concerns the study of mathematical structures that are discrete rather than continuous, and provides a powerful language for investigating many areas of computer science. Discrete structures are characterized by distinct elements, which are often represented by integers. Continuous mathematics on the other hand deals with real numbers. Topics in this course include: sets, counting techniques, logic, proof techniques, solving recurrence relations, number theory, probability, statistics, graph theory, and discrete geometry. These mathematical tools are illustrated with applications in computer science.

Discrete Mathematics - Sample Syllabus.

Organizing and managing large quantities of data using computer programs is increasingly essential to all scientific and engineering disciplines. This course teaches students the principles of data organization in a computer, and how to work efficiently with large quantities of data. Students learn how to design data structures for representing information in computer memory, emphasizing abstract data types and their implementation, and designing algorithms using these representations. This course is taught using the C++ programming language.

Data Structures - sample Syllabus.

Shanghai Students: this course counts for the Computer Science major and the domain area course for the Data Science concentration.

Algorithms lie at the very heart of computer science. An algorithm is an effective procedure, expressed as a finite list of precisely defined instructions, for solving problems that arise in applications in any domain of knowledge. All computer programs are translations of algorithms into some programming language. Often the most difficult parts of designing an algorithm are to make sure that when it is programmed in a computer, it runs as fast as possible and does what it was designed to do. This course covers the fundamentals of algorithms, focusing on designing efficient algorithms, proving their correctness, and analyzing their computational complexity. The algorithms studied are taken from a variety of applications such as robotics, artificial intelligence, searching, pattern recognition, machine learning, music, bioinformatics, arithmetic, algebra, and geometry.

The course focuses on understanding lower-level issues in computer design and programming. The course starts with the C++ programming language, moves down to assembly and machine-level code, and concludes with basic operating systems and architectural concepts. Students learn to read assembly code and reverse-engineer programs in binary. Topics in this course include the C++ programming language, data representation, machine-level code, memory organization and management, performance evaluation and optimization, and concurrency.

New York Students: this course is equivalent to CSCI-UA 480 Advanced CS elective credit.

Shanghai Students: this course counts for Computer Science elective credit.

This course is an intensive, hands-on study of practical techniques and methods of software engineering. Topics include design patterns, refactoring, code optimization, universal modeling language, threading, advanced object-oriented design, user interface design, web and mobile development, and enterprise application development tools. All topics are integrated and applied through intensive homework and a small group project. The aim of the course is to prepare students for dynamics in a real workplace.

New York Students: this course is equivalent to CSCI-UA 480 elective credit or counts for advanced Computer Science elective credit. 

Shanghai Students: this course counts for Computer Science elective credit.

Have you ever wondered how the internet or Facebook is able to support a billion simultaneous users? This course teaches students the design and implementation of such Internet-scale networks and networked systems. Students learn about the principles and techniques used to construct large-scale networks and systems. Topics in this course include routing protocols, network congestion control, wireless networking, network security, and peer-to-peer systems. Upon completing this course students are able to initiate and critique research ideas, implement their own working systems, and evaluate such systems. To make the issues more concrete, the class includes several multi-week projects requiring significant design and implementation. The goal is for students to learn not only what computer networks are and how they work today, but also why they are designed the way they are and how they are likely to evolve in the future. Examples are drawn primarily from the internet.

New York Students: this course is equivalent to CSCI-UA 202 Operating Systems.

Shanghai Students: this course counts for the Computer Science major.

The operating system is a computer’s chief manager overseeing interactions between users, applications, shared software and hardware resources. This course covers the fundamentals of operating system design and implementation. Lectures present the central ideas and concepts such as synchronization, deadlock, process management, storage and memory management, file systems, security, protection, and networking. Assigned readings and programming assignments illustrate the manifestation of these concepts in real operating systems.

Special Topics in Computer Science offers high-level courses on a wide variety of topics, including computer vision; computational geometry; cryptography; game programming; machine learning; wireless networks; information retrieval; and user interfaces.

New York Students: this course is equivalent to CSCI-UA 480 elective credit or counts for advanced Computer Science elective credit.

Shanghai Students: this course counts as a Computer Science elective and for the Data Science major. 

This course introduces students to the foundations of database systems, focusing on basics such as data models, especially the relational data model, query languages, query optimization and processing, indices and other specialized data structures, as well as transactions and concurrency control. Students build components of a database system and through research readings understand the design complexities of transactional and big data analytical systems.

Every serious writer at some point asks: What is form? What is style? And how do I form my own style? In this course we will write our way towards answering each of those questions. Part laboratory, workshop, playground, and bootcamp, we’ll examine exemplars from modern literature, but more importantly we’ll write a lot: short pieces of narrative prose (micro stories, under 200 words), allowing for more focused experimentation, discussion, and revision towards acquisition of vital skills such as crafting the perfect sentence, writing humor, choosing the right perspective, knowing what to edit and when to cut, and understanding literary mechanisms in order to sharpen your techniques in wielding them. Because writers should be limited only by attempting the impossible, never by the bluntness of our tools. This course will prepare you for advanced creative writing electives, and the capstone, by helping you speak more clearly on the page. For style, according to the novelist Ali Smith, “is what happens when voice and form meet and fuse into something more than both.” Through the alchemy of creative writing we’ll find out what that something is.

New York Students: this course is equivalent to CRWRI-UA 825.001 Intermediate Creative Nonfiction Workshop or counts for Creative Writing elective credit toward 16-credit minor; please note that typically only one course offered outside of CAS is approved to count toward these 16 credits.

This course aims to develop students skills in feature writing for print and online magazines and trade journals. Emphasis will be placed on all stages of development, from a feature's conception and research to its drafting, revision, and publication. Particular attention will be paid to research and reporting techniques as well as to the demands of writing compelling pieces of varied lengths, from short-form to longer features. The course objective is to prepare students to pitch and publish material written for this course, whether in an NYUAD student publication or other venue.

(Formerly LITCW-AD 321) This course focuses on writing poetry by experimenting with a variety of poetic forms and writing prompts, including 20th-century and contemporary poetry and statements and essays written by poets. Students will write poetry as well as learn terms for critical analysis. Some of the threads of inquiry and inspiration that will run through the workshop include: What is poetry? What does it do? What is the state of poetry now? What does it mean to write and read poems in English if it is not your home or only language? In addition to workshopping peers’ poetry, participants will learn about the chapbook tradition, make their own small books of between 15 and 25 pages, and organize readings to experiment with various performance-based approaches to poetry

New York Students: this course is equivalent to CRWRI-UA 815 Creative Writing: Intro to Fiction & Poetry. 

Shanghai Students: this course counts as a Humanities topic.

This workshop introduces the basic elements of poetry, fiction, and personal narrative with in-class writing, take-home reading and writing assignments, and substantive discussions of craft. The course is structured as a workshop, which means that students receive feedback from their instructor and their fellow writers in a roundtable setting, and that they should be prepared to offer their classmates responses to their work.

Travel is a form of knowledge. “The traveler,” wrote the British travel writer Robert Byron, “can know the world, in fact, only when he sees, hears, and smells it.” This course offers a unique opportunity to further expand and deepen the knowledge you’ll gain from the respective learning institutions you’re traveling to this semester, by making students venture beyond the confines of campus, and engage with the everyday people and proceedings of the places in which those institutions are situated. From their observations, reporting, interviews and research about what they’ve encountered, students will compose a feature-length narrative in the form of a classic “Letter From….” piece in The New Yorker magazine. NOTES: The course is open ONLY to NYUAD students and ONLY to those who are studying abroad this semester. The course is NOT open to students studying in Accra or London due to legal visa restrictions. Students studying in Madrid may ONLY take the section offered in Madrid. The course is NOT open to students from NYU New York and NYU Shanghai

An advanced fiction workshop that offers students the opportunity to hone their writing through peer critique and in-depth craft discussions. Extensive outside reading deepens students’ understanding of fiction and broadens their knowledge of the evolution of literary forms and techniques. The thematic focus of these courses will vary depending on the instructor. There may be multiple sections of this course running in the same semester, each of which may have a different topic. 

The role of women in the economy changed drastically in the 20th century. Many women around the world enjoy unprecedented freedom to decide what to study, where to work, and when to have a family, nowadays. These changes coupled with the evidence of a persistent gap in the earnings of men and women around the world raise important questions about family planning, female participation in the labor force, and public policy. These questions are at the center of this course. That is, we will explore how men and women make decisions about work and family that have a long-lasting impact on their lives. Using insights from economic theory and empirical data - predominantly from Europe, the USA and the UAE- the course covers topics such as the different incentives for men and women to study and participate in the labor market, as well as explore the reasons behind gender differences in earnings and employment. Students will learn about trends in fertility and marriage rates, and discuss recent government policies aimed at combating discrimination, encouraging women to participate in the labor force, and achieving a better work-life balance.

NY Students: This course is equivalent to ECON-UA 10 Intermediate Microeconomics (Policy track). 

SH Students: This course is equivalent to ECON-SHU 10 Intermediate Microeconomics.

This course introduces the major concepts and tools of modern microeconomic analysis. Students will study the manner in which consumers, producers and resource owners, acting through markets, determine the prices and output of goods and the allocation of productive resources. Consumers and producers are viewed as agents with well-defined objectives, choosing optimally under constraints on their resources. The price mechanism is viewed as an institution that disseminates information to decision makers—firms and consumers—and coordinates their behavior. Students will study circumstances under which markets promote an efficient allocation of resources, as well as sources of market failure where the price mechanism can lead to inefficient outcomes.

Social scientists and policy analysts rely heavily on research drawing on observational data. Students learn to manage and analyze such data and to deploy statistical techniques that are common in these applications, with an emphasis on how to translate social science theory into empirical research. Topics include review of basic regression analysis, building multivariate analytical models, and regression analysis with limited dependent variables. The course emphasizes practical training in these skills as well as evaluation, replication, and critical analysis of research conducted in the social science literature. 

NY Students: This course is equivalent to ECON-UA 12 Intermediate Macroeconomics (Policy track).

SH Students: This course is equivalent to ECON-SHU 202 Intermediate Macroeconomics.

This course introduces the major concepts and tools of modern microeconomic analysis. Students will study the manner in which consumers, producers and resource owners, acting through markets, determine the prices and output of goods and the allocation of productive resources. Consumers and producers are viewed as agents with well-defined objectives, choosing optimally under constraints on their resources. The price mechanism is viewed as an institution that disseminates information to decision makers—firms and consumers—and coordinates their behavior. Students will study circumstances under which markets promote an efficient allocation of resources, as well as sources of market failure where the price mechanism can lead to inefficient outcomes.

New York Students: This course is equivalent to ECON-UA 342 Behavioral Economics.

Shanghai Students: this course counts as an Economics elective.

This course introduces students to the field of behavioral economics, which seeks to combine standard economic thinking with more psychologically-plausible assumptions about human behavior. This is accomplished by making nonstandard assumptions about human preferences, exploring nonstandard beliefs, and emphasizing the limitations of our decision-making faculties. Predictions about individual behavior are more accurate and the policies of governments are more effective when these more-realistic models are effectively used. The topics covered include, but are not restricted to, choice under uncertainty, overconfidence and competitiveness, stereotypes and discrimination, moral and social norms, and procrastination and intertemporal choice. Each topic is approached by examining evidence that is not easily explained by the canonical economic model and then asking how and why it can be better explained by making specific deviations from the standard rationality assumptions. Specific policy interventions that can be used to help people make better decisions will also be discussed. 

New York Students: This course is equivalent to ECON-UA 323 Economics Development.

Shanghai Students: this course counts as an Economics elective.

This course covers the roles of factor accumulation, technology, human capital and ideas in the growth process; the political economy of growth; the role of openness to international trade versus international trade barriers; and growth and income inequality. The course provides an overview of foreign aid in the economic development process and the policies of international institutions like the IMF and World Bank. The course also includes: the study of randomized experiments in evaluating aid projects and development interventions; rural land markets; credit markets in imperfect and fragmented capital markets; the household migration decision; and nutrition and fertility decisions.

Development Economics - Sample Syllabus.

This course offers a rigorous examination of the basic concepts and tools of modern finance. Students are introduced to cash flow analysis and present value, as well as basic concepts of return and risk, in order to understand how financial markets work and how financial instruments are valued. These instruments, including equities, fixed income securities, options, and other derivative securities, become vehicles for exploring various financial markets and their utilization by managers in different kinds of financial institutions to enhance return and manage risk.

The Middle East was the cradle of civilization and one of the most vibrant regions of the world for thousands of years. Since the Middle Ages, however, it has been surpassed by Europe in economic performance. This course explores this reversal in fortune. Was it due to culture, religion, law, geography, agrarian structure, globalization, or state policy? What attempts have been made to catch up with the West? Which have been successful? How has the history of the Near East compared to that of other parts of the world and what light do those comparisons shed on the region’s experience?

Economic History of the Middle East - Sample Syllabus.

This course studies causes, consequences, and remedies for market failures. Causes of market failure include insufficient competition (e.g., monopoly or oligopoly), consumption externalities, the presence of public goods, or the presence of information asymmetries (e.g., adverse selection or moral hazard).

This course introduces the students to the modern analysis of economic growth by addressing questions such as: What explains the considerable growth in incomes per capita that advanced economies have experienced since the late eighteen century? Why are some countries so much richer than others? Will poor countries close the gap with rich countries? What is the driving force of growth in the long run? Are the benefits of growth equally shared between different social classes? How does government policy affect growth? How do the underlying characteristics of an economy - such as its institutions, skill distribution, and demographic trends - affect its growth rate?

This course provides a foundational understanding of the principles of Islamic economics and mode, products and procedures of Islamic finance. This course familiarizes students with the roles and functionalities of Islamic finance in the context of the financial services industry today.

This course analyzes the drivers of asset prices and explains how they impact the investment decision process in diversified global multi-asset portfolios. The students will learn to distinguish between macro-economic fundamentals, technical parameters and valuation parameters and how the overall assessment of these indicators impacts the investment decisions. The course will cover portfolio optimization as well as techniques of risk management based on the utilization of derivative instruments. The students will subsequently analyze how specific macro-economic drivers have historically had differentiated impacts across advanced, emerging and GCC markets, observing market movements across risk-on- and risk-off moments (financial crises). Equipped with the tools of asset allocation in global multi-asset portfolios, students will finally use this historical empirical analysis as a basis for identifying global and local risk factors in today’s market context, and discuss ways of how to protect portfolios accordingly. This will be done with a special focus on GCC and Emerging Markets.

Economic policy may be seen as the ultimate goal of economic analysis. How to choose between alternative economic courses in some specific area or at the macroeconomic level? How to tradeoff one policy objective, e.g. equity, versus another, e. g, efficiency? How to take into account political constraints while looking for socially optimal policies? Such is the nature of the questions to be handled in this course, which may be taken as the natural culmination of an economic curriculum. Its aim is to make students familiar with the main contemporary issues in economic policy at national level and to equip them with the analytical instruments to understand what is at stake in policy debates around the world and, ultimately, to form one's opinion about what should be done in particular areas. The course will deal with economic policy issues as applicable to any country, even though special attention will be given to emerging and developing countries. As far as possible, it will also systematically emphasize the distributional consequences of policies and consequent political economy dimension? It will not deal with multilateral issues like trade, migration or environment.

Our opportunities and our choices are shaped by our connections. The awareness that connections matter leads us to invest in them. And these investments give rise to networks of friendship, the World Wide Web, supply chains, research alliances, transport links, and many other networks which we see around us. These observations have inspired an exciting new research program which examines the origins and the implications of networks. The lectures in this course provide a rigorous introduction to this research.

This course will focus on the application of economic principles to examine issues in health economics. The first part of the course will focus on theoretical models of supply and demand for health and health care, and the transformation of health care into health. We will then apply these models to understand how health insurance markets work, the importance of externalities in health and health care, the interaction between markets for health and labor, and the role of government intervention in health care provision. We will also discuss key characteristics of current health care programs in the United States and elsewhere. Overall, this course will be a combination of discussion of important issues in health care, learning models that are helpful in explaining various aspects of health care and understanding what is known empirically. By the end of the course, students should be able to use economic reasoning to think critically about health-related policy issues.

NY Students: this course is equivalent to ECON-UA 266 Econometrics.

SH Students: this course is equivalent to ECON-SHU 301 Econometrics.

Application of statistics and economic theory to problems of formulating and estimating models of economic behavior. Matrix algebra is developed as the main tool of analysis in regression. Acquaints students with basic estimation theory and techniques in the regression framework and covers extensions such as specification error tests, heteroskedasticity, errors in variables, and simple time series models. An introduction to simultaneous equation modes and the concept of identification is also provided.

Econometrics - Sample Syllabus.

Conservation laws play a fundamental role in the analysis of engineering problems by providing a framework to derive relationships between various physical properties of closed systems and control volumes. This course aims to introduce the students to these laws, namely the conservation of mass, conservation of force and linear momentum, conservation of torque and angular momentum, conservation of energy, conservation of chemical species, and conservation of charge — derived in integral forms. Selected case studies are used to demonstrate the application of these laws for the simplification of complex engineering problems. In addition, this course also helps the students develop a deeper understanding of the concepts of work, heat and thermodynamic properties of pure substances.

This course introduces students to the various manufacturing processes and their basic principles. Topics in this course include overview of different manufacturing processes and their applications, metal-casting fundamentals and processes, metal-forming processes including rolling, forging, extrusion, drawing, sheet-metal and powder-metal processes, fundamentals and types of machining processes, welding and other joining processes. The last part of this course will cover non-conventional manufacturing processes such as electrochemical machining, electrical-discharge machining, and abrasive jet machining and additive manufacturing (3D printing). Lab tours, experimental demonstrations and one 3D printing lab session will be part of the course.

An important goal of artificial intelligence (AI) is to equip computers with the capability of interpreting visual inputs. Computer vision is an area in AI that deals with the construction of explicit, meaningful descriptions of physical objects from images. It includes the techniques for image processing, pattern recognition, geometric modeling, and cognitive processing. This course introduces students to the fundamental concepts and techniques used in computer vision, which includes image representation, image pre-processing, edge detection, image segmentation, object recognition and detection, and neural networks and deep learning. In addition to learning about the most effective machine learning techniques, students will gain the practical implementation of applying these techniques to real engineering problems.

This course introduces soil mechanics and foundation engineering, including origin of soils; phase relationships; classification of soils; permeability; effective stress; seepage; consolidation; shear strength; slope stability; and bearing capacity. Design in geotechnical engineering is introduced and parameters affecting design are discussed.

This course introduces students to developing a framework that allows them to build computational models to quantitatively describe physiology. Selected concepts from prerequisite courses are used to examine essential elements of physiology at various resolutions. We first begin by using the endocrine system to demonstrate hormone mediated cell-to-cell communication, following that is the examination on regulation of blood glucose-insulin levels achieved by the pancreas and the liver. Modeling methodologies will be imparted through studio-based learning and projects. Participants will additionally hone their skillsets in experimental planning, data interpretation and presentation of results.

This course covers the principles, technologies, methods and applications of biosensors and bioinstrumentation beginning with an examination of the ethical, legal, cultural, religious, and social implications of nanotechnologies. The objective of this course is to link engineering principles to understanding of biosystems in sensors and bioelectronics. The course provides students with detail of methods and procedures used in the design, fabrication, and application of biosensors and bioelectronic devices. The fundamentals of measurement science are applied to optical, electrochemical, mass, and pressure signal transduction. Upon successful completion of this course, students are expected to be able to explain biosensing and transducing techniques; design and construct biosensors instrumentation.

Desalination is an important process in the management of water resources and it has a large societal, economic and environmental impact. This course will give engineering students a solid grounding in desalination and related separation processes. It presents thermal desalination and reverse osmosis as well as other emerging techniques used on both small and large scales to desalt brackish water and seawater. The course introduces to the students a design concept of desalination processes. This will prove invaluable for a future career in many areas of engineering.

Description will be made available soon.

The objective of the course is for students to acquire the fundamental knowledge of computer programming, develop transferable programming skills, and learn to solve engineering problems via programming. The course is primarily based on the C++ programming language and an introduction to another programming language such as MATLAB (to demonstrate transferring programming knowledge from one language to another). The course explores the application of engineering computation in various engineering domains including mechanical, civil, computer, and electrical engineering. The following topics are covered: introduction to computer systems, standard input/output, file input/output, decision structures, loop structures, functions, arrays, addressing, dynamically allocated memory, structures, introduction to object oriented programming, problem solving via programming algorithm design, and applications in another programming language such as MATLAB. 

This course may be replaced with MATH-UH 1003Q (MATH-AD 107) or MATH-UH 2011Q (MATH-AD 150). Introductory course in probability and statistics with an emphasis on how these topics are relevant in engineering disciplines. Topics in probability theory include sample spaces, and counting, random variables (discrete and continuous), probability distributions, cumulative density functions, rules and theorems of probability, expectation, and variance. Topics in statistics include hypothesis testing, error types, confidence intervals, correlation, and linear regression. The course emphasizes correct application of probability and statistics and highlights the limitations of each method presented.

This course introduces students to the field of mechanics through study of rigid bodies in static equilibrium. Knowledge and understanding of static equilibrium is essential for future study of topics as diverse as dynamics, solid mechanics, structures, robotics, and fluid mechanics. The methods, techniques, theory, and application of equilibrium in the solution of engineering problems are presented for two-dimensional systems. Topics covered include collinear forces, coincident forces, general equilibrium, moments and torques, structural analysis using the method of joints, the method of sections, the method of joints, trusses, frames and machines, Coulomb friction, centroid, center of mass, and moments of inertia.

This introductory course is designed to give freshmen and sophomores a glimpse of a broad selection of bioengineering topics that are currently underway in the field of biomechanics, biomaterials, bioimaging, and bioinstrumentation as well as in mechanobiology and biophysics. Students will become familiar with bioengineering applications in the various areas and see how engineering principles can be applied to solve a variety of biological and biomedical problems. This seminar-style lectures will also give students perspectives about the possibilities of working as bioengineers in academia and industry.

This module provides a rigorous introduction to topics in digital logic design mostly focusing on combinational circuits but also touching upon basic concepts in sequential circuits. Introductory topics include: classification of digital systems, number systems and binary arithmetic, error detection and correction, and switching algebra. Combinational design analysis and synthesis topics include: logic function optimization, arithmetic units such as adders and subtractors, and control units such as decoders and multiplexers. A brief overview of sequential circuits by introducing basic memory elements such as flip-flops, and state diagrams concludes the module.

Experimental methods course is presented as a process of investigation starting with an observation, leading to one or more hypotheses tested by experiments involving measurements, collection of results, analysis and conclusion. Students are first introduced to the historical significance of experimental discoveries, the importance of experimental design and measurement. Key examples are discussed. The importance of measurements, errors, uncertainty and its justification will be discussed in detail and students will learn how to estimate, use and report uncertainties. Techniques to compare, analyze and report different measurements are studied. Students are introduced to error propagation rules, random and systematic errors and standard deviation as the uncertainty in a single measurement. The measurement system in an engineering context and practical examples of measurement systems and how they work will be discussed, as will be professional ethics within this context. Students will be introduced to the basic concepts in dynamic measurements, first order systems, rejection of data and Chauvenet’s criterion. 

This course provides an introduction to the methods, techniques, theory, and application of numerical methods in the solution of engineering problems. Topics to be covered include the following: finding roots of equations, numerical differentiation and integration, time marching methods in solving ordinary differential equations, and optimization. MATLAB software is the primary computing environment.

This course provides an introduction to electrical circuits. The topics covered include DC circuits, passive DC circuit elements, Kirchoff’s laws, electric power calculations, analysis of DC circuits, nodal and loop analysis techniques, voltage and current division, Thevenin’s and Norton’s theorems, and source free and forced responses of RL, RC and RLC circuits. The labs cover various electric circuits concepts such as demonstrating current and voltage division laws, Thevenin’s and Norton’s equivalent circuit, and RL, RC, and RLC circuits analysis.

The course focuses on electrical circuits and components, passive and active filtering for signal conditioning, dynamic measurement system response characteristics, analog signal processing, digital representation, data acquisition, sensors, actuators and actuator characteristics. Studies of measurement systems via computer simulation also are discussed. The laboratory experiments draw upon examples from all disciplines of engineering such as data acquisition, operational amplifiers, temperature measurement, and motion and force measurements.

Designed as a first course in materials, this course introduces students to engineering properties of materials, applying basic principles of the atomic and crystal structure of solids to the study of properties as well as to the selection and use of engineering materials. The course content includes examination of engineering materials such as metals, plastics, and composites with an emphasis on material selection. Through an immersive laboratory component, the course has an emphasis on experiential learning of the basic structure and properties of metallic, polymeric, semiconducting, ceramic, and composite materials.

The course introduces students to the fundamentals of structural components analysis thus enabling them to employ that knowledge for structural analysis and for design of structural members. Topics include: three-dimensional analysis of stress; torsion of thin-walled sections; inelastic torsion; analysis of composite and unsymmetric beams; inelastic bending; beam deflections; elastic buckling of columns; and strength failure criteria.

The course provides an in-depth coverage of structural analysis techniques. Topics in this course include: analysis of statically determinate beams, frames and trusses; influence lines for determinate beams and trusses; deflection calculations using geometrical and energy methods; analysis of statically indeterminate structures using superposition; slope deflection; moment distribution; and matrix analysis of structures. The course includes computer assignments using commercial structural analysis software.

This course introduces water and wastewater treatment; stream assimilation and public health; introduction to air pollution and solid waste management; and laboratory analysis of water and wastewater samples and treatment process tests. Students gain an understanding of the interrelatedness of environmental problems around the world and how different socioeconomic, technological, ethical, and other factors can impact both the environment and the approach to solving environmental problems. Factors and parameters affecting design of environmental systems are discussed and design in environmental engineering is introduced. 

The course introduces students to fundamental concepts that underlie highway design, traffic operations, and transportation systems planning and operations. The course begins with vehicle performance and the role it has to play in the design of highways. Vehicle cornering, highway superelevation, and horizontal and vertical design of highways are introduced. The topics covered related to traffic operations include individual vehicle motion, elementary traffic characteristic relations, traffic dynamics, and traffic control. Topics related to transportation systems include routing, dynamic programming and shortest path algorithms, network traffic management, and route choice

This course examines structural steel design principles and techniques based on the Load Resistance Factor Design (LRFD). A detailed treatment of material properties and design based on American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) codes is provided. Topics include: design of tension and compression members; design of beams and beam-columns; design for serviceability limit states; and design of simple bolted and welded connections. The course includes a design project in which students work in groups to simulate and solve specific design problems using structural analysis and design software.

This course offers a detailed treatment of the design of reinforced concrete members. Topics include: material properties of reinforced concrete, American Concrete Institute (ACI) load and resistance factors; flexural design of beams and one-way slabs; shear and diagonal tension in beams; serviceability and reinforcement detailing; and design of reinforced concrete columns. The course includes a design project in which students work in groups to simulate and solve specific design problems using structural analysis and design software. 

This course presents an overview of fundamental data structures, which are commonplace in programming, as well as associated basic algorithms. Complexity analysis, linked lists, stacks, queues, trees, hashing, sorting, and basic graphs algorithms are covered. Core topics such as Floyd’s algorithm, minimum spanning tree algorithms, and branch and bound techniques are also covered. Practical lab exercises complement the lectures. The students further specialize and consolidate their knowledge through lab projects to demonstrate the operation and applications of various data structures.

The course introduces the principles of computer organization and basic architecture concepts. It discusses the basic structure of a digital computer and study in details formal descriptions, machine instruction sets design, formats and data representation, addressing structures, mechanization of procedure calls, memory management, arithmetic and logical unit, virtual and cache memory organization, I/O processing and interrupts, fundamental of reliability aspects. The course also covers performance and distributed system models. The labs emphasize experiential learning of computer organization and architecture concepts, and require students to use learned knowledge to create and build prototypes and evaluate their performance. 

This course presents an overview of embedded systems, covering a selection of topics including microcontroller architecture, assembler programming, interrupts, peripheral interfacing, embedded system design, higher-level languages on embedded systems, as well as a brief introduction to real-time operating systems. Practical lab exercises complement the lectures. The students further specialize and consolidate their knowledge through semester-long hands-on projects.

This module covers analytical techniques for analyzing, characterizing and synthesizing engineering systems. Systems approaches where the entire system or each of the sub-systems is considered as single units are introduced. Introductory topics in this course include: sinusoids, phase and time shift, and complex exponentials. Operations on sinusoidal signals include addition of signals with the same frequency via the phasor addition rule, conversion between time-shift and phase, and addition of signals with different frequencies via the introduction of the frequency spectrum concept. Topics on discrete time systems include: FIR and IIR filtering, impulse response, causality, linearity, time invariance, and convolution. Time and frequency domain representations of systems and conversions between these representations are also studied. Z-transform domain, the concept of poles and zeros, stability and their relevance to the time and frequency domains are also covered. Topics on continuous time systems include continuous-time convolution, the Laplace transform, Fourier analysis for continuous-time signals, and the Sampling theorem. 

This course focuses on fundamentals of electronics theory and design. The topics covered include semiconductor physics, diodes, diode circuits such as limiters, clamps; bipolar junction transistors; small-signal models; cut-off, saturation, and active regions; common emitter, common base and emitter-follower amplifier configurations; field-effect transistors (MOSFET and JFET); biasing; small-signal models; common-source and common gate amplifiers; and integrated circuit MOS amplifiers. The laboratory experiments include the design, building and testing of diode circuits, including rectifiers, BJT biasing, large signal operation and FET characteristics, providing hands-on experience of design, theory and applications, with emphasis on small signal analysis and amplifier design. The course also covers the design and analysis of small-signal bipolar junction transistor and field-effect transistor amplifiers; and, diode circuits. The students are introduced to designing and analyzing circuits using the LTPSpice or Cadence simulation tool.

This course introduces students to the basic concepts of thermodynamics and their applications to engineering problems. The following topics are covered in this course: properties of pure substances; concepts of work and heat; closed and open systems; the fundamental laws of thermodynamics; Carnot and Clausius statements of the 2nd law; entropy and entropy production; heat engines, refrigerators, heat pumps; efficiencies, coefficients of performance. 

This course introduces students to the fundamentals of machine elements thus enabling them to employ the knowledge gained to design machine elements for various engineering applications. The course is divided into two parts. In the first part, fundamental topics such as materials, stress, strain, deflection and failure are reviewed. In the second part, basic machine elements such as screws, springs, shafts are analyzed. Bearings, gears, belts, clutches and brakes are also discussed.

This course provides an introduction to computer-aided design (CAD) using solid modeling. Students learn to create solid object models using extrusions, revolutions, and swept paths, and learn to modify parts using cutting, patterns, fillets, chamfers, and other techniques. Assemblies of multiple parts are used to demonstrate the need for geometric tolerances, and students spend a large portion of class in hands-on use of software tools. The labs emphasize experiential learning of CAD concepts and applications using software tools.

This course introduces students to vibrations of rigid bodies supported by an elastic component (i.e. simple spring-mass systems). The course covers response of systems subjected to free, transient, and forced vibration situations. Starting with single-degree-of-freedom systems, the course progresses to modeling and analyzing the response of multiple-degree-of-freedom systems using analytical methods. Practical applications of this material include vibration isolation, suspension systems, and active vibration control. The lab component includes vibration testing and modal analysis of structures subjected to impulse or harmonic excitation, and involves concepts such as digital acquisition of signals from accelerometers, signal conditioning and frequency spectrum analysis to determine the natural frequencies of the structure.

This course introduces students to the basic principles and engineering applications of heat transfer. Fundamental concepts and principles of conduction, convection, and radiation heat transfer are introduced and the pertinent governing equations are developed. This is followed by the application of these equations in analysis of heat transfer systems such as fins and heat exchangers. The following topics are covered in this course: introduction to conduction, convection, and radiation; one-dimensional, steady-state conduction; multi-dimensional, steady-state conduction; lumped capacitance method in transient conduction; one-dimensional transient conduction; introduction to convection; internal and external forced convection; and principles of radiative heat transfer.

This course introduces students to the multi-disciplinary and exciting field of Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technology. It covers several cases of existing MEMS devices, their applications and limitations. The course also covers fundamentals of micromachining and micro-fabrication techniques that are central to the production of MEMS devices. Furthermore, the course introduces the design and analysis principles of several MEMS devices such as capacitive, piezoelectric, electrostatic sensors and actuators, MEMS-based medical and surgical devices, and biomedical lab-on-a-chip device. The course includes several lectures on the concepts of MEMS design processes, assembly, and packaging. Several types of assignments are included during this course, such as analytical problems, simulation and design assignments, and seminars given by the students. Also, a project that involves design, simulation, and analysis of MEMS devices is a vital component of this course.

Western media tends to produce a one-dimensional view of Middle Eastern cultures. The reality of the people is often very different. How do Middle Eastern writers represent themselves and their societies in fiction? How have they reacted to the dramatic changes in the Middle East from the early twentieth century on? In this course, students will consider the continuities and diversities of North African and Middle Eastern cultures by analyzing modern and contemporary novels and poetry, as well as films, from or about Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon and Palestine. The following issues will be tackled: how do novelists translate the changes of their cultures into literary form? What literary traditions do they draw on? How do these reflect the different movements in Islam, and the other religions of the region? What kinds of worldly and personal representations emerge? How have these been changing recently, notably since the Arab Revolutions? How different are novels written in English or French for a global audience from those written in Arabic? What are the effects of reading them in translation? Do the conventions of Western literary criticism work for all literatures?

New York Students: this course is equivalent to ENGL-UA 101: Introduction to the Study of Literature; if a student takes LITCW-UH 1002 then this course counts as an elective.

This course introduces students to fundamental terms and critical methods employed by literary scholars through an examination of two case studies: lyric poetry and the novel. Topics to be investigated include: the relationship between text and context; close versus distant reading; the nature of authorship, genre, the interplay of local, national, regional, and world modes of categorization; translation, book history, and the relationship between literature and other forms of art. Each unit of the course is constructed around an anchoring text or texts that will be contextualized both historically and generically through a wide range of primary and secondary readings.

How do works of literature capture, hold, and train our attention? We live in a time when attention and attention disorders have captured both the scientific and the popular imagination. Turning their "attention to attention," like never before, scientists are identifying the rich variety of attentional modes our brain is capable of, as well as a contemporary addiction to, "narrow-focus attention." This course plumbs the rich offerings of literature describing a wide spectrum of attentional modes, as well as training, enriching and potentially even healing its reader’s attention. Indeed, long before modern science, modernist literature excelled at both describing human attention and complexly engaging it through its novel experiments. Modernism has long been seen as a Western European interwar phenomenon, with current scholarship vigorously expanding our understanding of these limits. This course will include close examinations of some of the best-known Western European classics, but will also explore some of the long-overlooked origins, expressions, and subsequent migrations of modernism elsewhere, from Europe’s Eastern margins, to the Harlem Renaissance and modern Chinese literature. Primary works by Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, Zora Neal Hurston, Franz Kafka, Boris Pasternak, Lu Xun, and others. Critical, theoretical, and historical readings range from new criticism, reader response theory, structuralism, post-structuralism, to cognitive literary studies.

Pidgins, creoles, patois and slang: there are so many Englishes! From Jamaica and Ireland, to America and India, from Spanglish and Hinglish to Londonstani slang and Black English, these languages have been wrought via complex colonial histories and shaped national languages and canons. This course is a broad exploration of writing produced in recent decades by Anglophone writers from the Americas, Africa and South Asia and the theoretical questions raised by such writing. The course will consider fiction and film that ranges from traditionally realist to formally experimentalist, short stories variously characterized as anti-colonial and Afro-pessimist, fiction by new writers and also by Nobel laureates, poetry about immigrant women and also the land-owning elite, and fiction that has been well-canonized as well as important writing that has been more or less forgotten. The course will consider questions of empire, postcoloniality, authenticity, voice and the role of vernacular languages in the writing we characterize as “Anglophone”. Writers to be discussed include Langston Hughes, Salman Rushdie, Shani Mootoo, Arundhati Roy, Zadie Smith, June Jordan, Irvine Welsh, and Junot Diaz. Not available to students who have taken WRIT-AD 149.

This course explores a selection of canonical and non-canonical works of literature from pre-Islamic Arabia to the so-called 19th-century Arab Renaissance. Through this course students will examine poetic and prosaic texts, while revising their understanding of literary genres and categories, especially in relation to the tradition of Arabic literature. Students will also learn about the major approaches to the study of this literary tradition, while immersing themselves in its rich language, imagery and historical moment. Readings include selections from: pre-Islamic heroic poetry; Umayyad love poetry; Abbasid courtly poetry and its influence on the Andalus; libertine poetry in all its registers from the early Abbasid to the Mamluk period. Prose literature will include the Qur'an; hadith; apocrypha of the prophets; picaresque maqāmāt; The Arabian Nights; and proto-novels from the 19th century.

In postcolonial texts, representation and revolution intersect, as authors, filmmakers, and theorists re-invent literary and cinematic forms and seek to reconceive colonialism, nationalism, and modernity. Through this course, students will compare British, Caribbean, Latin American, South Asian, and African texts, including novels by Conrad, Rushdie, and Salih; films by Pontecorvo and Sembene; and selections from the critical writings of Anderson, Fanon, Said, and Spivak. Students will examine contradictions between Enlightenment concepts of reason, universal freedom, and rights, which established a common humanity of mankind while simultaneously justifying European sovereignty over non-Western peoples. The course examines how tradition and modernity; savagery and civilization; religiosity and secularism; self and other; subjectivity and collectivity; and violence and non-violence played a role in empire and decolonization while challenging received understandings of universalism. Finally, students examine how postcolonial studies is being re-shaped and in turn re-shaping understandings of the "Arab Spring" and the Anthropocene.

NY Students: this course is equivalent to ENGL-UA 712 Major Texts in Critical Theory.

This course develops students’ understanding of the central questions and problems that drive literary studies, and examines these questions from both scholarly and creative vantage points. Drawing on the long history of poetics, philosophy, and critical practice, the course considers such questions as: What is literature? What is a text? What does it mean to read and/or write literature in translation? How does language shape meaning? How do we construct meaning from a text and why does that meaning matter? And, crucially: what is at stake in why we ask and how we answer these questions? Students will read widely, from primary and secondary texts, and will explore a range creative and scholarly practices in order to develop their own critical and/or creative skills.

New York Tisch Film Students: this course counts for a Core Production course.

An intensive and practical production workshop introducing the fundamental principles of storytelling through sound, image (stills and video), and visual sequencing. Students learn the essentials of cinematic language from composition to editing by integrating theory and practice. Themes of Sense of Place, Portrait, and Memoir are explored in the context of projects assigned. Diegetic and non-diegetic sound, and/or voiceover supplement the visual storytelling. Students work individually and in collaboration. Goals of the course include an understanding of professional protocol and the dialogue of critique. Four mandatory lab sessions are scheduled outside of the scheduled lecture time.

NY Tisch Film Students: this course is equivalent to FMTV-UT 4 The Language of Film or count for the History/Criticism requirement.

This course is an introduction to the basic concepts of film and new media studies. The course provides an overview of the historical development of film as an art, technology, and industry and the role of new media as an extension to and reinvention of models for production, distribution, exhibition, and reception. Students are introduced to documentary, experimental, and narratives modes within different historical and cultural contexts, comparative aesthetics, and the lines of critical enquiry that have been developed for film and new media in dialogue with other fields in the arts and humanities.

Whether narrative or non-narrative, the visceral, emotional, and intellectual power of film depends on understanding the elements that make for engaging and effective screenwriting across forms and genres. This course analyzes and puts into practice principles of different forms of dramatic and dynamic writing: narrative and documentary films as well as various non-dramatic forms, including music videos, video art, and experimental films. No single style or genre is prescribed. Writing assignments include both critical analyses and creative exercises. 

New York Tisch Film Students: this course counts for History/Criticism requirement.

SH Students: this course counts as Humanities (survey).

This course introduces students to the rich and diverse history of film within the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia as a context for understanding some of the complexities of contemporary film and new media in the United Arab Emirates. By examining pre-cinematic artistic practices, aesthetic traditions, cinematic styles, political economies of media, and social change, the course provides a context for understanding productions from major industries in Cairo, Chennai, Istanbul, Mumbai, and Tehran alongside work by independent filmmakers and new media collectives from throughout the regions. Students are encouraged to attend film festivals and engage in original research with the NYUAD Library special collection of MENASA film.

Filmmaking is collaboration between highly specialized crafts. Students will learn how to operate equipment and direct crew safely in multiple hands-on production scenarios. With these skills at their disposal, students will learn methods for executing creative choices from a technical perspective. By the end of the course, students will have abilities that not only allow them to operate safely and productively, but also allow for artistic growth and flexibility.

A practical and hands-on introductory course focusing on both the art and craft of cinematography and digital image-making. The course begins with the essential foundations of video and film, covering various video formats, codecs, compression types, and camera sensors and then moves into practical applied use of camera and lens choices, camera types, waveforms monitors, histograms and light meters. Both the technical and artistic aspects of film lighting will be covered, with numerous lighting exercises on the sound stage and locations – including specialized situations such as shooting at night, on locations, and green screen work. The class will move on to intermediate skills such as breaking down screenplays visually, multi-camera shooting, live event shooting, and techniques of how to move a camera using handheld, cranes, jibs and dollies. Students will be expected to crew and rotate as DP/Manager of a working film set during class times. This class is ideal for any student with an interest in becoming a cinematographer or camera operator on film and video projects and will provide you with material for a personal show reel. 

This course focuses on the duties of a producer throughout a film’s life cycle; from development to execution. An intensive seven-week course, ‘Producing the Short Film,’ acquaints students with industry positions, set protocols and gives them critical skills in scheduling and budgeting across digital platforms, including narrative and documentary filmmaking. After completing the course, students will be empowered, as producers, to manage film productions and strategically bring creative ideas to fruition.

New York Tisch Film Students: this course counts for a Core credit, equivalent to FMTV-UT 43 Sight & Sound Filmmaking.

This course is designed to develop techniques and skills in generating ideas for short films that are shot on digital video and edited on nonlinear editing software. It will focus on strong visualization of story and camera techniques, as opposed to dialogue-based work. Students will develop skills in the elements of visual storytelling through the process of storyboarding and creating shot lists, then working in small crews to direct and shoot the projects. Students will gain knowledge of new photographic techniques, moving the camera dynamically, and the ways in which the craft of editing and sound design can be used to support story.

Intermediate Filmmaking - Sample Syllabus.

Principals of Post Production focuses on techniques for editing, color grading, and compositing motion pictures. Using industry standard software, students will explore continuity editing techniques and theory, color grading and picture finishing, and compositing effects such as green screen and set extensions. Students will also engage new media technologies such as post for 360 Video, and VR Cinema. The course is designed to give hands-on experience that enable students to work across the production pipeline to meet international standards in the creation of entertainment products and communications media. 

The importance of quality sound in film and new media cannot be overstated - it is often said that “sound is seventy-percent of what you see.” Production Sound for Film and New Media explores a variety of recording techniques, emphasizing dialogue and capturing the nature and aesthetics of sound on location. This course aims to give students high quality training in the theory and practice of sound recording using state-of-the-art 4K multi-camera. as well boom training. Additional topics include basic sound editing, microphone characteristics, the sound recording chain, and discerning what can be fixed in post versus what can only be done during production.

This course focuses on practice-led research and research-led practice as methodologies for thinking about art and media in relation to archives and screens. Its central argument is that making and studying are not separate activities that corrupt one another but instead entwined and mutually constitutive activities that augment creativity and curiosity. Assignments encourages students to understand differences between making and studying in non-hierarchical and non-sequential ways. By emphasizing feminist postcolonial transnational indigenous and posthuman approaches the course shifts attention from dominant modes such as flat-on-the-screen time-based commercial films as entertainment to immersive interactive locative auto-generative mobile nonlinear and tactical modes for producing research through arts practice and producing arts practice through research.

NY Social and Cultural Analysis Students: this course counts for the Gender and Sexuality Studies and SCA majors and Gender and Sexuality Studies minor

In every society, whether one is born male or female affects how one is expected to behave and the opportunities one confronts. However, how gender is organized varies between societies and across time. This course draws upon research from sociology, economics, psychology, and anthropology to examine gender, providing information on how gender is organized in various parts of the world. Topics include how male and female children are socialized, women’s and men’s roles in the family, trends in women’s education and employment, the sex gap in pay, and how gender is affected by public policies.

Gender and Society - Sample Syllabus.

What is "World Heritage," how is it nominated, and by whom? The heritage field has become a complex industry that involves (inter)national prestige, conservation, site management, and museum development. Heritage sites of "Outstanding Universal Value" and prestigious museums with "universal" collections are booming tourist destinations worldwide. Multi-faceted perspectives of heritage underline the proposition that heritage doesn't just represent a static link with the past, but is part of a dynamic social process that includes an evolving interpretation of "the past" for the use in the present. In this course, students explore and test theoretical conceptions of heritage using case studies and fieldwork on heritage sites and collections in Abu Dhabi and the UAE. These investigations will provide context for understanding cultural heritage's multi-layered and multi-vocal aspects. The focus for our discussions will be sites and practices that are considered "shared cultural heritage" for their Outstanding Universal Value. But what do these values mean, and for whom? Do they imply that universal human values exist? And what if these values are contested?

This course examines the interconnected histories, cultures, and societies of Central Asia and the Middle East. It will begin with an overview of the Mongol empire and its legacies in Central Asia and the broader Muslim world. The course will compare the emerging post-Mongol Eurasian and Ottoman states through the lenses of law, political legitimacy, succession, and ruling institutions. The course will then compare Russian and Ottoman civilizing missions, imperial nationalisms, treatments of sectarianism and ethnic minorities, constitutionalism, public health policies, responses to Islamic modernism, Marxist and other radical leftist ideas, and women’s emancipation. The course will conclude by considering how post-imperial modernization projects transformed identity, gender, and religion in Central Asia and the Middle East.

Scholars across academic disciplines have begun to "think big" in new ways about the Ancient World. By recasting ideas and events that seem historically remote, the deep past becomes more relevant than ever to understanding our present. Did globalization begin in the ancient world? Was there an early anthropocene? Can our current crisis of global sustainable development be traced back to the origins of agriculture? Are there ancient world origins to the forms of social inequality we struggle to overcome today, and can our struggles succeed if we overlook what came first? Finally, what can we learn from studying the collapse of ancient civilizations, as we contemplate the possibility of our own? Incorporating readings and materials from across the disciplines, this class will explore foundational questions about continuities between the ancient and modern worlds.

Global Asia defines Asia as a space of perpetual globalization and explores Asian societies, cultures, and political economies as they have been shaped by dynamic historical processes which expand human connectivity and transform territorial formations of power and authority. Pre-modern Global Asia embraced regions all around the old Silk Roads and Indian Ocean, from ancient times. In this course, we study the evolution of Asian worlds of mobility that Europeans sought to join in the fifteenth century and Asia’s spatial subsequent expansion in worlds of empire up to the onset of industrial capitalism. This course thus provides students with a long-term view of History and a broadly transnational understanding of Asian History in the development of the modern world.

The key events you read about in your morning twitter feed or on your favorite news sites are usually not unique in world affairs. They have a background, a context, that makes them more understandable and often more interesting. History is about everything that happened before you started reading this course description. And thinking historically means trying to make sense of the new in the context of what human beings have done before. In this lecture series, historians and scholars employing a historical perspective in their work will take you on a behind the scenes tour of current events you thought you knew, with the goal of making you a better observer and analyst of the world around you. This is a two-credit course designed to show students how thinking historically can help them understand better the key issues in the world around them. The weekly 90-minute meeting begins with a lecture by a specialist with the remaining portion of the session devoted to Q&A and discussion. Course can be repeated one-time for a maximum of four credits.

Shanghai Students: this course counts as Humanities (survey) credit.

History offers a unique perspective on the process of globalization, by virtue of its insistence that human experience be understood in its spatial and temporal contexts. Rigorous global history questions and even supplants common understandings of globalization as Westernization. But how does history do this, and can a global historical framework enhance all forms of historical, humanistic, and social scientific inquiry? Following an assessment of foundational modern Western frameworks for understanding world history, including those of Marx and Hegel, students examine how and why people around the world have variously embraced and rejected such foundational accounts. Readings address all world regions, including Asia, Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Oceania, and familiarize students with state-of-the-art knowledge about globalization.

History and Globalization - Sample Syllabus.

This course offers an opportunity for in-depth study of the history and culture of the South Asians who comprise the majority population of the United Arab Emirates. Situated at the center of the Indian Ocean world, the Indian subcontinent is currently home to over a billion people, and is the site of richly interconnected histories with regions around the wider Indian Ocean, including the Gulf. The course explores these histories, with a focus on understanding major cultural, political, economic, and environmental connections and changes as they affected ordinary people (including migrant laborers) and shaped the nature of collective identities (ethnic, national, religious, caste, class, gender, regional, and linguistic) over time. In developing an understanding of how collective identities were produced historically, students ultimately acquire valuable tools for appraising and navigating competing models of nationalism, cosmopolitanism, and universalism in the wider Indian Ocean world today.

This course is a broad survey of African history. The course will explore the African past in its diversity. Students will explore the continent’s political complexity and social creativity across a period of several millennia. The class will consider the impact of gender, religion, healing practices, trade, mobility, and the environment on major historical developments in Africa before the continent’s colonization by European imperialistic powers, through the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and up to the contemporary period. The course will also introduce students to African history’s methodology and to the use of linguistic, material, and oral sources in the writing of history. 

Africa in the World - Sample Syllabus.

NYU Tandon Students: this course counts for Integrated Digital Media credit. 

Shanghai Students: this course counts for IMA Core: Interactive Lab.

With the advent of digital computation, humans have found a variety of new tools for self-expression and communication. Thinking about how we interface with these tools beyond the mouse and keyboard, we can approach software and electronics as artists and designers and explore new interactions with machines and each other. This introductory course will provide students hands-on experience with screen and physical interaction design through programming and electronics using microcontrollers, electronics, and writing our own software. Weekly exercises encourage students to experiment freely, creating their own novel interfaces and controls for working with machines.

Introduction to Interactive Media - Sample Syllabus.

Shanghai Students: this course counts for IMA Core: Experimental Interfaces and Physical Computing.

NYU Tandon Students: this course counts for Integrated Digital Media credit. 

Through the use of readily accessible open source technologies, such as sensors and computer vision, it is possible to create interactive art that leverages the full potential of the human body. Directly injecting "people-sensing" into an art work via wearables, cameras and code, generates a unique feedback loop, or dialogue-like relationship, where a person and a computer are continuously reacting to each other's senses. This course will examine this feedback loop, specifically how a person is directly integrated into the artistic expression of the work. Ultimately, students will create interactive installations and performances where the human body is the central component of the art work. No experience is necessary but having taken Introduction to Interactive Media or a course equivalent is highly encouraged.

Sensors, Body, & Motion - Sample Syllabus.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms affect many aspects of our lives whether we realize it or not: banking transactions, healthcare treatments and diagnoses, entertainment recommendations, smart car functionality, customer service agents, financial trading… the list goes on and on. The power of these algorithms lies in their ability to leverage computers to "study" and "learn". Instead of programming a computer to do a specific task, we program the computer to train and teach itself how to do any number of tasks. As artists, how can we harness the power of these algorithms and apply them towards creative endeavors? This class will explore that basic question. Through a combination of high level applied machine learning techniques, speculative design of artificial intelligence, and some basic understanding of how these algorithms work at a low level, students will explore this rich new field. With their machine counterparts, they will create images, sounds, text, intuitive interactions, chatbots, and more.

In this course we will take a tour of the materials and techniques utilized by artists in the emerging field of biological art - that is art which uses life itself as a medium. This hybrid art and science class will introduce concepts in genetic engineering, personal genomics, the microbiome, epigenetics, microscopic imaging, tissue culture/bioprinting, biopolitics, and bioethics as sites for artistic exploration. Organized in thematic modules students will learn basic lab techniques while studying the work of artists in this interdisciplinary field. The three core areas are: Input/Output (imaging and printing with biology, tissue culture), identity after the genome (genetics, personal genomics, microbiome, epigenetics, portraiture), and final projects. Weekly readings and written responses will supplement lab activities. The course will culminate in the creation of original biological artworks by each student, which will be exhibited in the Interactive Media Showcase at the end of the semester.

Shanghai Students: this course counts for IMA Core: Computation & Data.

NYU Tandon Students: this course counts for Integrated Digital Media credit.

How can we capture the unpredictable evolutionary and emergent properties of nature in software? How can understanding the mathematical principles behind our physical world help us to create digital worlds? And how can implementing these code-based simulations offer insight and perspective on both environmental and human behaviors. This course attempts to address these questions by focusing on the programming strategies and techniques behind computer simulations of natural systems using p5.js (a JavaScript library in the spirit of Java's Processing framework). We will explore a variety of forces and behaviors that occur naturally in our physical world. This includes properties of movement, physics, genetics, and neural networks. For each topic, we will write code to simulate those occurrences in a digital environment. The results will usually be visual in nature and manifested in the form of interactive animated coding sketches.

Decoding Nature - Sample Syllabus.

NYU Tandon Students: this course counts for Integrated Digital Media credit. 

Shanghai Students: this course counts for IMA Elective: New Media & Entertainment.

Circuit Breakers! - Sample Syllabus.

Circuit Breakers! is a course designed to introduce students to the world of hardware hacking and circuit bending for artistic and mainly sonic ends. By literally opening up common battery powered objects such as toys and finding their circuit boards, one can change the behavior of the object by interrupting the flow of electricity, creating novel, unexpected, outcomes. This technique has both predictable and unpredictable outcomes, but it is almost always satisfying. In addition to hacking off-the-shelf toys, students will also build their own circuits with a minimum amount of components. Many of the projects in this course center on common integrated circuits, which students will cajole, trick, and abuse in order to create art.

Circuit Breakers! is a course designed to introduce students to the world of hardware hacking and circuit bending for artistic and mainly sonic ends. By literally opening up common battery powered objects such as toys and finding their circuit boards, one can change the behavior of the object by interrupting the flow of electricity, creating novel, unexpected, outcomes. This technique has both predictable and unpredictable outcomes, but it is almost always satisfying. In addition to hacking off-the-shelf toys, students will also build their own circuits with a minimum amount of components. Many of the projects in this course center on common integrated circuits, which students will cajole, trick, and abuse in order to create art.

From early alphabets to modern virtual reality experiences, this course will explore the development, reaction, and impact of some of humankind’s most transformative innovations - its forms of communication. How have these inventions, such as writing, printing, the telegraph, television, radio, the internet and beyond, influenced human behavior throughout the course of history. How have humans shaped their development and direction? And what role are they playing in shaping our lives both today and tomorrow? Toward the end of the course, students will speculate on the future of communication technologies in a connected world by proposing their own transformative innovation. Readings and discussion will cover communication theory, technical processes, creative applications, and critical investigation. Writing assignments will be paired with practical assignments where students will be challenged to bring their analysis and ideas to life. The web will also be utilized as a test bed for experiencing and experimenting with various forms of communication both old and new.

Shanghai Students: this course counts for IMA Core: Communications Lab.

Not recommended for Integrated Digital Media majors. 

With the advent of digital computation, humans have found a variety of new tools for self-expression and communication. Thinking about how we interface with these tools beyond the mouse and keyboard, we can approach software and electronics as artists and designers and explore new interactions with machines and each other. This introductory course will provide students hands-on experience with screen and physical interaction design through programming and electronics using microcontrollers, electronics, and writing our own software. Weekly exercises encourage students to experiment freely, creating their own novel interfaces and controls for working with machines.

Communications Lab - Sample Syllabus.

NYU Tandon Students: this course counts for Integrated Digital Media credit. 

Intelligent robots living amongst ordinary people used to be a storyline relegated to the world of science-fiction. However, the 21st century has witnessed a rapid adoption of automated machinery in many aspects of daily life. In this course, students will explore the significance of today's robots through the context of art by learning about and building experimental robots for theatrical performance. Robots will be defined broadly, incorporating a wide range of machines both autonomous and remote-controlled. Students will be exposed to critical analysis regarding the historical and contemporary use of machines in art and theatrical performance. In parallel, students will also learn about electronics, programming, robotics and mechanical construction techniques. Over the course of the semester, students will iterate through multiple projects exploring how robots can convey meaning and emotion. The course will culminate with a final public performance by the robots. Experience with physical computing through Introduction to Interactive Media or a course equivalent is highly encouraged.

Performing Robots - Sample Syllabus.

This course presents the basic principles of calculus by examining functions and their derivatives and integrals with a special emphasis placed on the utilitarian nature of the subject material. Since the derivative measures the instantaneous rate of change of a function and the definite integral measures the total accumulation of a function over an interval, these two ideas form the basis for nearly all mathematical formulas in science, engineering, economics, and other fields. This course also provides instruction in how to model situations in order to solve problems. Applications include graphing, and maximizing and minimizing functions. In addition to two weekly lectures, students attend a weekly recitation focused on applications. Placement into Calculus with Applications is decided by discussion with mentors and the results of a mathematics placement examination. This course focuses on the needs of students in science and engineering.

This course presents the foundations of calculus by examining functions and their derivatives and integrals with a special emphasis placed on the utilitarian nature of the subject material. Since the derivative measures the instantaneous rate of change of a function and the definite integral measures the total accumulation of a function over an interval, these two ideas form the basis for nearly all mathematical formulas in science, engineering, economics, and other fields. This course also provides instruction in how to model situations in order to solve problems. Applications include graphing, and maximizing and minimizing functions. In addition to two weekly lectures, students attend a weekly recitations focused on applications. Placement into Calculus with Applications is decided by discussion with mentors and the results of a mathematics placement examination. This course focuses on the needs of students in economics.

This course explores functions of several variables and has applications to science and engineering. Specific topics include: vectors in the plane and space; partial derivatives with applications; double and triple integrals; spherical and cylindrical coordinates; surface and line integrals; and divergence, gradient, and curl. In addition, the theorems of Gauss and Stokes are rigorously introduced.

This course explores functions of several variables and has applications to science and engineering as well as economics. This special course for those majoring in economics includes: vectors in the plane and space; partial derivatives with applications; Lagrange multipliers; constrained and unconstrained optimization; double and triple integrals; spherical and cylindrical coordinates; surface and line integrals.

NY Students: this course is equivalent to MATH-UA 140 Linear Algebra.

Shanghai Students: this course counts for the Data Science Linear Algebra requirement.

In many applications of mathematics, a response of some systems is nearly a linear function of the input. These linear systems, which arise in elasticity, in electrical engineering, and in economics for example, involve linear equations in many unknowns. The associated matrix algebra is a rich and beautiful field of mathematics. It is also central to the analysis of linear ordinary and partial differential equations. The material in this course places emphasis on theorems and proofs, and includes systems of linear equations, Gaussian elimination, matrices, determinants, Cramer’s rule, vectors, vector spaces, basis and dimension, linear transformations, eigenvalues, eigenvectors, and quadratic forms.

Linear Algebra - Sample Syllabus.

Shanghai Students: this course is equivalent to MATH-SHU 235 Probability and Statistics.

This course is a first introduction to probabilistic and statistical procedures for data analysis and their applications. The procedures used to summarize and describe the important characteristics of a set of measurements are studied. The course provides students with an overview of descriptive and inferential statistics, introducing at the same time some probability distributions that are useful in the applied sciences. Statistics is inherently applied; the course emphasizes solutions to problems in a variety of settings. Measures of location and variability, graphical summaries of data, discrete and continuous distributions, sampling and sampling distributions, hypothesis testing and estimation with confidence intervals, correlation and regression are explored. The course gives also a brief introduction to Bayesian estimation.

Probability and Statistics - Sample Syllabus.

New York Students: this course is equivalent to MATH-UA 262 Ordinary Differential Equations. 

Shanghai Students: this course is equivalent to MATH-SHU 262 Ordinary Differential Equations.

Ordinary differential equations arise in virtually all fields of applied mathematics. Newton’s equations of motion, the rate equations of chemical reactions, the currents flowing in electric circuits, all can be expressed as ordinary differential equations. The solutions of these equations usually evolve a combination of analytic and numerical methods. The course studies first- and second-order equations, solutions using infinite series, Laplace transforms, linear systems, numerical methods.

Ordinary Differential Equations - Sample Syllabus.

New York Students: this course is equivalent to MATH-UA 343 Algebra.  

Shanghai Students: this course counts towards the Mathematics major.

Algebra is a part of every field of mathematics, and has applications in the discrete systems of computer science. Fractions, together with their familiar laws of addition, multiplication, and division, provide an example of algebra. The complex numbers form another. This course introduces more general algebras and their properties and applications. Topics considered in this course include groups, homomorphisms, automorphisms and permutation groups. Rings, ideals and quotient rings, Euclidean rings, and polynomial rings are also considered.

Abstract Algebra 1 - Sample Syllabus.

Shanghai Students: this course counts as a Math/Honor Math elective.

Real Analysis builds a more rigorous foundation for calculus and prepares the way for more advanced courses. The emphasis is on the careful formulation of the concepts of calculus, and the formulation and proof of key theorems. The goal is to understand the need for and the nature of a mathematical proof. The course studies the real number system, the convergence of sequences and series, functions of one real variable, continuity, connectedness, compactness, and metric spaces.

Analysis 1 - Sample Syllabus.

New York Steinhardt Music Students: this course is equivalent to MPATA-UE 4035 Music Theory I and MPATC-UE 6 Aural Comprehension I.

This course provides an intensive introduction to music theory: the study of common elements and organizing principles in music, supported by analysis of specific musical examples. This includes constructs that are utilized every day by practicing musicians: intervals, keys, scales, modes, chord progressions, rhythms, meters, and forms, among others. Aural skills and fluency with musical notation are developed throughout the course. Modal practices are examined through diverse traditions including the Arab Maqam system, modal jazz/pop/rock, and choral music of the European Renaissance, leading to a detailed study of melody, harmony, and counterpoint in diatonic tonal music. The repertoire is drawn from both “classical” (Common Practice Period) music and more recent examples of tonality, including popular music. Regular projects in directed composition and analysis provide hands-on engagement with theoretical concepts, while frequent reading and listening assignments place techniques in historical context, introducing significant composers and performers. Weekly lab sections are devoted to skills in musicianship: listening, sight-singing, dictation, and basic keyboard skills.

Music Theory & Analysis I - Sample Syllabus.

New York Steinhardt Music Students: this course is equivalent to MPATE-UE 1801 Fundamentals of Music Technology.

Shanghai Students: this course counts for IMA New Media and Entertainment credit.

This course is designed for anyone interested in producing music on computer using virtual instruments, samples and microphones. Regardless of style, this course provides an overview of the wide range of tools available to the modern music production. This is an “all-in-one” course for (almost) everything related to music technology, the basics of digital audio, physic of sound, music recording, binaural audio, musical acoustics, signal flow, sound synthesis, music production, game audio, post- production and mixing. Students will also study the elements of production design, composition, song form, and how to arrange, edit, build and shape a song using different D.A.Ws. In this course students will also learn the fundamentals of digital audio, studio and location recording, mixing, MIDI sequencing using Logic Pro X, Pro Tools 12, Ableton Live, music production, and audio programming using Max. Students will be briefly introduced to a wide-range of applications (and careers) in music technology.

Music Technology Fundamentals - Sample Syllabus.

Arab music culture, understood as an assemblage of ideas, practices, instruments, and traditions of sounding and listening, flourishes across the Arab world and in other places where Arabs have settled. This course provides a thorough overview of Arab music culture in the contemporary world, by investigating a number of its iterations within and beyond the Middle East and North Africa. Course materials, including sound recordings and films as well as written works, utilize music as a prism to view other aspects of society, such as religion, nationalism, and diaspora. By engaging critically with these materials, students cultivate ways of speaking and writing about music and culture in Arab and other contexts. The course thus prepares students for further work in ethnomusicology, the study of music as culture. 

Arab Music Cultures - Sample Syllabus.

This course focuses on the art and practice of singing. Through a framework of practical approaches (individual instruction and ensemble practice labs), and weekly lectures, students will explore the practical and theoretical evolution of vocal repertoire and performance in relation to their own vocal development. This will lead to the application of a critically informed understanding of the development of vocal music to their own performances, reflecting stylistic changes, both temporal and global.

This intensive course is designed to develop skills in sound synthesis techniques and procedural music, with a focus on their specific application in composition, sound design, New Instruments of Musical Expression (NIME), and games. The course will consist of extensive exploration of analog modular synthesis, Max, and SuperCollider, in recreating algorithms used by synthesis and computer music pioneers (Xenakis, Chowning, Risset) as well as new talents in electronic music such as Agostino Di Scipio, Alessandro Cortini or Richard Devine. Previous knowledge of working with Max and/or SuperCollider is required for this course or students may have to take a complementary lab in order to be able to follow the class.

This course provides students with a deeper understanding of mixing and mastering tools and techniques that can be applied to a wide variety of styles, from Hollywood soundtrack orchestras, to big bands, to rock, pop, EDM, R&B, metal and more. This course has an in-depth, hands-on examination of several mix techniques. It explores the many creative and technical considerations necessary to mix in today's music production environment, regardless of platform or format. It also teaches the different steps of the mixing process, including equalization, panning, dynamic processing (compressors, gates, expanders, and limiters), reverb and delays, as well as automation techniques. For mixing and mastering deliverables students will acquire and advance knowledge on how to mix on an SSL console and will work with analog equipment, combining it with the potentials of the digital domain using Pro Tools HD software. Through weekly critical listening training, analysis of classic recordings, and comparative studies of different styles of mixing, students will learn to identify width and depth, frequency range, dynamics and the different mix approaches used in various musical genres. 

Mixing and Mastering Techniques - Sample Syllabus.

This course exposes students to the art of music production, engineering and recording, as well as fundamentals of audio theory and engineering, audio production technique in both the studio environment and location specific recording, playback, post-production applications, and musical acoustics. Students will learn to multitrack record, overdub, edit, and mix music using Pro Tools HD. This is a very "hands-on" and practical course. Students build on concepts learned in the Music Technology Fundamentals course, from working in a digital environment to an analog based recording studio (NYUAD Studio A). They learn how to master the SSL mixing board as well patchbay routing, signal flow, recording ticks, microphones techniques/ placements, and how to work with different outboard processors with their music production (1176 compressor, LA2A, Manley VariMu Stereo compressor, API, maselec mla-2 mastering equalizer and more) to enhance their sound. Students gain analytical and professional skills needed for a variety of music production-focused careers including music producer, recording engineer, mix engineer, mastering engineer, live sound engineer, sound technician, and more. 

Recording and Producing Techniques - Sample Syllabus.

Beginning Group Music Instruction - Clarinet is designed to introduce students to a new musical instrument. The course focuses on establishing basic technical competencies, along with musical literacy skills, which will serve as the basis for developing performance skill and increasing musical mastery.

Beginning Group Music Instruction - Flute is designed to introduce students to a new musical instrument. The course focuses on establishing basic technical competencies, along with musical literacy skills, which will serve as the basis for developing performance skill and increasing musical mastery.

Beginning Group Music Instruction - designed to introduce students to an instrument. The course focuses on establishing a basic foundation at the instrument that will become the basis for developing a comfortable posture and beautiful tone.  Instruments include cello, clarinet, flute, oud, piano, saxophone, trumpet, and arabic percussion.

Beginning Group Music Instruction - Sample Syllabus.

Beginning Group Music Instruction - Saxophone is designed to introduce students to a new musical instrument. The course focuses on establishing basic technical competencies, along with musical literacy skills, which will serve as the basis for developing performance skill and increasing musical mastery.

A diverse array of ensembles is offered each semester. Participants develop skills in active musicianship: performance, listening, communication, and collaboration. Ensembles are offered at beginner, intermediate, and advanced performance levels. Ensemble formations include, for example, NYUAD Vocal Ensemble, A Capella group, or chamber music ensembles. Please contact the instructor or Head of the Music Program for details.

Individual Instruction in Music is designed for students willing to develop their skills in one or more musical instruments, vocal performance, or wanting to learn compositional techniques and strategies to help them create musical work under supervision.

This section of Group Instruction is designed for students who already have a basic level of competency with the instrument. The focus of this course is to build upon established musical skills, while working toward mastering more challenging musical repertoire.

This course introduces the study of music as culture, variously called the anthropology of music or ethnomusicology. The first part of the course will look broadly at the anthropological study of music and musicological study of humanity, delving into scholarly writings from the early twentieth century to the present. Students will examine how music has been conceptualized as a human endeavor, and how anthropological thinking on music has shaped scholarly and public conversations on culture, race, and ethnicity. The second part of the course will focus on the key anthropological method of ethnography, the recording and analysis of human practice, and its use in music studies. Students will read three full-length ethnographic books on musical topics to examine the utility of ethnographic research methods in music studies and explore the insights and dilemmas these methods present. Students will also try their own hands at ethnographic research and writing on music.

This course introduces the study of music as culture, variously called the anthropology of music or ethnomusicology. The first part of the course will look broadly at the anthropological study of music and musicological study of humanity, delving into scholarly writings from the early twentieth century to the present. Students will examine how music has been conceptualized as a human endeavor, and how anthropological thinking on music has shaped scholarly and public conversations on culture, race, and ethnicity. The second part of the course will focus on the key anthropological method of ethnography, the recording and analysis of human practice, and its use in music studies. Students will read three full-length ethnographic books on musical topics to examine the utility of ethnographic research methods in music studies and explore the insights and dilemmas these methods present. Students will also try their own hands at ethnographic research and writing on music. Engaging with additional readings beyond that of MUSIC-UH 1005, this seminar provides students with a framework for the development of their own research within the field of music studies.

This course surveys a broad range of theoretical perspectives in psychology that are relevant to peace within individuals, between individuals, and between groups. Topics include the neuropsychological and physiological effects of meditation, morality and moral development, helping and aggression, prejudice and the forces that encourage it, terrorism, justice, and conflict resolution strategies. The course ends with practical sessions on negotiations and negotiations training. In general, students will be able to integrate a range of perspectives to evaluate the current state of the science of peace psychology, including its strengths and shortcomings.

It is often thought that knowledge is inherently valuable and that “truth” is an objective notion independent of social considerations. This course examines various reasons we might have for holding these views and various challenges that have been raised against them. Why should we care about knowledge as long as our beliefs prove useful and efficacious? Is truth and thus knowledge more accurately understood as a culturally relative notion, so that what’s true for you might not be true for me?

This course examines the intellectual development of early Chinese philosophical thought by focusing on four major schools: Confucianism, Mohism, Daoism, and Legalism. Through the translated writings of various representative thinkers, including Confucius, Mozi, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Xunzi, Han Feizi, and Mencius, we will explore questions about human nature, ethics, moral psychology, and self-cultivation.We will read translations of major texts with commentaries and interpretations.

This course is an advanced investigation of various aspects of symbolic logic and reasoning, with an emphasis on subjects of philosophical relevance. Specific topics vary by semester, but are generally drawn from the following: modal logic (the study of reasoning about necessity, possibility, counterfactuals, and tense); metalogic (the study of provability, completeness, and other higher-order properties of logical systems); nonclassical logic (the study of three-valued logical systems, free logics, and the logic of relevance); and mathematical logic (the study of logical systems intended to model arithmetic reasoning).

Images depict, words describe. A picture of the cat of the mat depicts the cat as being on the mat. The sentence 'the cat is on the mat' describes the cat as being on the mat. Both represent the world as being in a certain state, but they do so in different ways. What is the difference in these ways of representing? What does it take for an image to depict? This course covers most major theories of depiction, including resemblance, experience, recognition, pretense, and structural
theories. We then expand the scope of inquiry to include topics such as systems of depiction, analog vs. digital representation, maps, film, comics, maps, mental imagery, and relations to the cognitive science of vision.

Prerequisite: one Introductory Elective in Philosophy (PHIL-UH 1101-1120).

What are our most basic values? What are the ethical principles by which we should judge our actions, ourselves, and our lives? What is involved in living a good human life? How can we reconcile the demands of morality with the personal obligations that spring from friendships and other relationships? Do the ends ever justify the means? This course will grapple with these and other questions through exploration of three of the most influential theories in Western ethical philosophy: Aristotle’s ethics of virtue, Immanuel Kant’s moral rationalism, and John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianism. Students will also encounter one of modern morality’s harshest critics: Friedrich Nietzsche.

New York Students: this course is equivalent to PHIL-UA 70 Logic.

Shanghai Students: this course counts toward Humanities (survey).

All philosophers are wise, and Socrates is a philosopher. Therefore, Socrates is wise. The topic of this course is the nature of this “therefore.” Logic is the science of reasoning—the study of the ways in which statements support or contradict one another. In this course, we will investigate and expose the logical structure of everyday language and see how the correctness or incorrectness of reasoning depends on this structure. To aid discussion, we will develop a formal language that makes this underlying structure more perspicuous. With this formal language as a tool, we will be able to construct elaborate proofs and explore the logical relations among the various steps of complex arguments.

Introduction to Logic - Sample Syllabus.

New York Students: this course is equivalent to PHIL-UA 1 Central Problems in Philosophy.

Shanghai Students: this course is equivalent to PHIL-SHU 150 Central Problems in Philosophy.

An introduction to the discipline of philosophy by way of several central philosophical problems. Topics may include free will, the nature of the self, skepticism and the possibility of knowledge, the ethics of punishment, the existence of God, the requirements of justice, the relation between our minds and our bodies, the nature of moral principles, and various logical paradoxes.

Central Problems in Philosophy - Sample Syllabus.

Shanghai Students: this course counts for the Quantum Mechanics requirement for the Physics major.

This course provides a rigorous mathematical introduction to quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics is both a fundamental departure from the classical understanding of the universe and one of the foundational theories on which modern physics is based. Topics include the Schrödinger and Heisenberg description of quantum systems, application to basic atomic structure and simple boundary condition problems, quantum statistics, perturbation theory, and scattering.

Quantum Mechanics - Sample Syllabus.

This course is intended to give students a deeper understanding of electricity and magnetism at the introductory level. It provides a necessary bridge between Foundations of Science 3–4 and the intermediate level course Electricity and Magnetism. The topics include derivations of divergence, gradient and curl, Stokes' Theorem, the Vector Potential, and origin of magnetic fields. The connection between electricity, magnetism, and special relativity is also explained, including time dilation, length contraction and other bizarre phenomena that occur when charges and other matter travel at velocities close to that of light.

Electromagnetism and Special Relativity - Sample Syllabus.

Shanghai Students: this course counts for the Electricity and Magnetism requirement for the Physics major.

This course covers electromagnetism at the intermediate level. Electromagnetism is one of the fundamental forces underlying almost any kind of device that we use on a daily basis. Understanding electromagnetism is an indispensable element of a physicist’s knowledge. The course introduces Maxwell’s equations and their applications to physical problems. Topics in the couse include electrostatics, magnetostatics, currents, and the propagation of electromagnetic waves.

Electricity and Magnetism - Sample Syllabus.

New York Students: this course is equivalent to POL-UA 500 Comparative Politics.

This course introduces students to the study of comparative politics and the study of domestic political institutions around the world. The course emphasizes the use of theory and evidence to generate and test hypotheses about both the causes and the consequences of the observed variation in domestic political institutions. For example, the course investigates the factors that lead some countries to democratize, and others to institute authoritarian governments, as well as the consequences of those institutional choices for policy outcomes. The course also looks at the variations in institutional arrangements within both democratic and non-democratic governments.

Introduction to Comparative Politics - Sample Syllabus.

New York Students: this course is equivalent to POL-UA 700 International Politics.

The goal of this course is to introduce the basic analytical concepts and techniques that are essential for understanding international politics. The course is especially concerned with analytically exploring major issues in international politics, such as the causes of war, the emergence of cooperative trade relations between states, the origins and functioning of international organizations such as the United Nations, and the political determinants of financial crises. The focus of the course is neither historical nor descriptive; rather, it requires students to exercise skills in logic and to think of imaginative ways to apply subtle techniques to gain a clearer grasp of the above political issues.

Introduction to International Politics - Sample Sylllabus.

New York Students: this course counts for the Politics Quantitative Requirement for the Honors Politics Major.

Social scientists and policy analysts rely heavily on research drawing on observational data. Students learn to manage and analyze such data and to deploy statistical techniques that are common in these applications, with an emphasis on how to translate social science theory into empirical research. Topics include review of basic regression analysis, building multivariate analytical models, and regression analysis with limited dependent variables. The course emphasizes practical training in these skills as well as evaluation, replication, and critical analysis of research conducted in the social science literature. The course is designed as alternative for students in the social sciences who are not taking Introduction to Econometrics. 

Data Analysis - Sample Syllabus.

This course addresses key theoretical and empirical topics in political psychology, drawing on both the experimental tradition of social psychology and the survey-based tradition of political science. Consideration is given to the political psychology of collective public behavior, including issues of social identity, intergroup relations, and group interaction, as well as individual political attitude formation and decision-making. Social and psychological antecedents and consequences of political orientation and ideological opinions are also addressed.

The goal of this course is to introduce participants to the study of African politics from multiple methodological approaches and in a number of African contexts. The course begins with the historical roots of contemporary African politics, exploring how pre-colonial institutions and colonialism shaped African politics at independence. Next the course will survey the political and economic strategies of leaders post-independence and the factors shaping those strategies. The course includes an examination of the causes and consequences of poor governance, and evaluates the recent patterns of redemocratization on the continent. The course closes with a discussion of present-day challenges: electoral malfeasance, public health crises, the “new” populism, and China in Africa.

Shanghai Students: this course counts for Social Science (focus)

A focus on the “Arab Middle East” presupposes that regional culture is a significant factor in explaining political outcomes in the region. For decades the Arab Middle East has been largely impervious to the process of democratization. This imperviousness had led to a widespread academic and journalistic perception of “Arab exceptionalism”. This course explores the dynamics of authoritarianism and democracy in the Arab region, the weight of its professional and entrepreneurial middle classes, and the role of youth and the unemployed in maintaining or challenging the regime. Students will examine the organization of the state, including the military and the intelligence services, the interrelation of political organization with economic change, and the distribution of wealth. The course seeks to link the Arab Middle East to broader questions of political organization and accountability. 

Comparative Politics of the Middle East - Sample Syllabus.

How did the borders of South Asian countries come to be formed? What explains the variation in the types of regimes—democratic and authoritarian—across South Asia? To what extent do these countries vary in the structure of their states as well as regimes? How does ethnic diversity affect the politics of South Asian countries? What is the pattern of economic growth across these countries, and their human development record and why? What explains the high levels of violence in some South Asian countries and patterns of variation across these countries? These are some of the questions that this course addresses, with a primary focus on India and a secondary focus on Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Burma, and Bhutan. Although students learn a vast number of facts about the history and politics of the region, the primary purpose of the course is to identify overarching patterns that characterize the politics of these regions—and to teach students to think analytically and comparatively about these patterns.

Civil war continues to be one of the most vexing problems in comparative and international politics. Why do civil wars break out? Aside from the obvious physical destruction caused by civil conflict what are the effects of civil conflict on society? How can the international community help end civil conflicts? This course will address these questions. It is broken into five substantive blocks, starting with an introduction to the concepts and patterns of war-related conflict around the globe, the factors that bring about civil wars, the dynamics of civil conflicts, followed by its consequences, and then moving on to what, if anything, countries and the international community can do to ameliorate this problem. The inter-disciplinary course draws on political science, behavioral economics, social psychology, history and anthropology, along with some research in natural sciences.

This course uses fundamental concepts from the Foundations of Science curriculum to examine essential elements of organ physiology, including the nervous system with an emphasis on humans. After an initial introduction to the basic principles of physiology, the course emphasizes normal and pathological functions in humans. It explores how the nervous and the endocrine systems allow communication among cells and organs to enable an organism to maintain homeostasis and to respond to environmental changes. The anatomy of the nervous system is also used to address structure, function, homeostasis and adaptability.

Shanghai students: this course counts for Neural Science upper-level Biology course or a Biology major elective.

Can we understand how the brain works at the level of individual cells, genes and even molecules? This seminar course provides students with broad exposure to current questions and experimental approaches in molecular and cellular neuroscience. Classes are organized into three modules: the control of neuronal cell form and its developmental determinants; neuronal cell function; and the mechanisms underlying neuronal signaling and synaptic plasticity. 

Shanghai students: this course counts for Biology major elective credit.

A typical cell expresses thousands of gene products and synthesizes nearly as many metabolites. How do these components interact with each other and what are the rules governing such interactions? Systems biology attempts first to define what the cell’s parts list is, then through establishing how these elements interact, define the emergent properties of such interactions. This course combines lecture, class discussions, and lab experiments to explore key elements of systems biology while exploring the genetic basis of disorders with complex inheritance pattern, such as autism and schizophrenia. Students will carry out high-throughput transcriptome sequencing of human brain RNA samples to measure the expression of gene products implicated in complex neurological disorders such as autism or schizophrenia. Clustering, gene-set enrichment, and network reconstruction will be carried out to explore the relationship between gene expression and gene function. Last, students will be introduced to yeast two-hybrid (Y2H) technology through carrying out pairwise interaction assays; reconstruction of networks based on existing Y2H datasets, particularly those relevant to autism, will also be carried out and studied. 

Many problems can arise in the design of a new process or in the analysis of an existing process. This course introduces basic concepts and methods to solve problems in chemical and biological processes. We will focus on using the principle of mass conservation to determine the amount of products when given amounts of raw materials and vice versa. We will also apply the principle of energy conservation to analyze processes involving reactive and non-reactive systems. This course will prepare students for their subsequent courses in the chemical and biological engineering major such as transport phenomenon, kinetics, and process separations.

Students majoring in life sciences and bioengineering require hands-on experience with variety of biotechnology techniques to better prepare them for a graduate degree or industry. Students will be trained to master biochemical techniques for the manipulate of macromolecules and build a firm understanding of how research is conducted in postgraduate institutions. Inquiry based learning will drive students to learn biophysical tools for the characterization of proteins’ structures and functions. Discussions on fundamental biochemical principles and experimental techniques will assist the students to design and conduct a research project. Students in groups of two will propose a project, run experiments, present data to their peers, and write a final report. First, a protein will be expressed in E. coli, purified using column chromatography on a Fast Protein Liquid Chromatography (FPLC) system. The amount of protein will be quantitated then run it on protein gel to determine its purity and molecular weight. Analysis will include kinetic and enzyme mechanistic characterization, structural characterization using circular dichroism (CD) and fluorescence spectroscopy, and thermodynamic stability using Differential Scanning Fluorimetry (DSF) and Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC).

New York Students: this course is equivalent to CHEM-UA 226 Organic Chemistry II and Lab; CHEM-UA 228 Majors Organic Chemistry II and Lab; CHEM-UA 9244-9246 Organic Chemistry II and Lab (London).

Organic Chemistry 2 is a continuation of Organic Chemistry 1, with an emphasis on multifunctional organic compounds and their reactions from both a synthetic as well as a mechanistic viewpoint. The topics include conjugated systems, aromatic compounds, including phenols and aryl halides as well as a thorough discussion of delocalized chemical bonding; aldehydes and ketones; amines; carboxylic acids and their derivatives; and biologically important molecules. The course continues the emphasis on modern analytical methods that are the cornerstone of contemporary organic chemistry.

New York Students: this course is equivalent to CHEM -UA 652 Thermodynamics & Kinetics.

Shanghai Students: this course counts is equivalent to CHEM-SHU 652 Physical Chemistry Thermodynamics and Kinetics.

This course covers two fundamental concepts in physical chemistry: equilibrium thermodynamics and chemical kinetics, which examine the relationship between energy and matter and rates of reactions, respectively. The definition and the interpretation of basic issues in chemistry, including internal energy, transition states, chemical potential, reaction rates, phase transitions and catalysis, are described in detail. This course uses an extensive mathematical apparatus. The course provides a firm theoretical and practical knowledge necessary to resolve typical chemical problems by focusing on the deeper understanding of their physical foundation and meaning.

Shanghai Students: this course counts for Chemistry elective credit.

As one of the major disciplines of chemistry, analytical chemistry is a ‘measurement science’ that describes the separation, identification and quantification of molecules through the use of methods utilized in science, engineering and medicine. This course aims to introduce students to modern concepts in analytical chemistry and quantitative analysis and the application of these concepts in the life sciences and environmental science. In addition, students learn about the components and applications of modern instruments utilized in everyday research laboratories. The course includes a strong laboratory component that demands independence and creativity from students.

New York Students: this course counts towards the Societies and Social Sciences requirement.

Introduction to the fundamental principles of psychology, emphasizing both the unity and diversity of a field that spans major theoretical and research areas, including biological bases of human behavior, learning, cognition, perception, language, development, motivation, as well as social and abnormal behavior. Opportunities to apply knowledge gained in lectures and readings are available through computer-based demonstrations, in-class exercises, and required field experiences.

Introduction to Psychology - Sample Syllabus.

New York Students: this course counts for Psychology elective credit.

Biopsychology is the study of the biological basis of behavior. In this course, students discover connections among psychology and biology, pharmacology, and endocrinology. Lectures cover the structure, function, and development of the human nervous system and how this system can give rise to basic sensory, motor, cognitive, and regulatory processes that characterize human behavior. This course uses examples of the effects of brain damage and nervous system disorders to provide insight into how pathological thoughts and behaviors are rooted in physiological causes. Additionally, students develop a basic understanding of the methods used in biopsychology and evaluate the contributions as well as limitations of these approaches.

Biopsychology - Sample Syllabus.

Abnormal psychology is the study of mental disorders from a psychological perspective. The central rational for this course is to provide students with a better understanding of how different mental health disorders may be caused, how they manifest themselves, and how they may be treated. Abnormal psychology constitutes a very controversial and contested field of study and clinical practice, as the manifestation of mental health issues and when they may or may not be diagnosed as abnormal invariably come up against socially and culturally acceptable standards as to what constitutes normal, and how persistent deviation from the norm should be labelled and treated. Hence an important purpose of the course is to introduce students to different perspectives on what it means to have a mental health disorder and how such disorders should be treated by mental health services, families and the wider community. Finally, this course also aims to introduce students to elements of clinical practice in the diagnosis and treatment of mental health disorders.

Introduction to the field of biomaterials used in applications for the challenging field of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Confined to discussions on synthetic or naturally derived biopolymers, the course will touch on bulk properties, degradation mechanisms, cell-material interactions and biocompatibility, material and immune response, techniques for biomaterials assessments, methods of processability and special considerations for in situ regeneration.

This course will provide an introduction to advanced materials science and engineering, and will emphasize the breadth of this interdisciplinary, rapidly growing field. The synthesis, organization, and processing of materials can enable functional performance. The course material will overview the preparation of both organic and inorganic materials, and will later expand on the available methods for their characterization. Special emphasis will be given to the optimization of materials’ performance and the relationship between the structure and properties of materials. The target-oriented design of materials will also be described through the underlying processes, structure, properties, and performance, with particular focus on applications in energy conservation, sustainability and biomedicine. About half of the course will be dedicated to soft materials (polymers, liquid crystals, biomaterials), and the remaining half will focus on hard materials (semiconductors, metals, alloys, and optical materials). Both the science-driven approach (used in materials science, polymer science) and the design-driven approach (used in engineering) will be presented and illustrated with examples from industrial design, aerospace engineering, civil engineering, architecture, manufacturing, eco-design, and sustainability.

This course introduces students to the basic principles and engineering applications of heat transfer. Fundamental concepts and principles of conduction, convection, and radiation heat transfer are introduced and the pertinent governing equations are developed. This is followed by the application of these equations in analysis of heat transfer systems such as fins and heat exchangers. The following topics are covered in this course: introduction to conduction, convection, and radiation; one-dimensional, steady-state conduction; multi-dimensional, steady-state conduction; lumped capacitance method in transient conduction; one-dimensional transient conduction; introduction to convection; internal and external forced convection; and principles of radiative heat transfer.

This course introduces students to developing a framework that allows them to build computational models to quantitatively describe physiology. Selected concepts from prerequisite courses are used to examine essential elements of physiology at various resolutions. We first begin by using the endocrine system to demonstrate hormone mediated cell-to-cell communication, following that is the examination on regulation of blood glucose-insulin levels achieved by the pancreas and the liver. Modeling methodologies will be imparted through studio-based learning and projects. Participants will additionally hone their skillsets in experimental planning, data interpretation and presentation of results.

This course introduces students to the multi-disciplinary and exciting field of Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technology. It covers several cases of existing MEMS devices, their applications and limitations. The course also covers fundamentals of micromachining and micro-fabrication techniques that are central to the production of MEMS devices. Furthermore, the course introduces the design and analysis principles of several MEMS devices such as capacitive, piezoelectric, electrostatic sensors and actuators, MEMS-based medical and surgical devices, and biomedical lab-on-a-chip device. The course includes several lectures on the concepts of MEMS design processes, assembly, and packaging. Several types of assignments are included during this course, such as analytical problems, simulation and design assignments, and seminars given by the students. Also, a project that involves design, simulation, and analysis of MEMS devices is a vital component of this course.

This course poses the fundamental questions: “What is law?”; “What is a legal system?"; and “What is the rule of law?” Appreciating that law reflects different cultural and historical facts, the course employs a comparative methodology in order to explore the fundamental questions from the perspective of various legal traditions. This comparative methodology considers jurisprudence from African, Chinese, Hindu, Marxist, Islamic, Southeast Asian, and Western legal traditions. In relation to these diverse legal traditions, the course examines the topics of natural law, legal positivism, interpretivism, legal realism, justice, human rights, critical legal studies, feminist jurisprudence, critical race theory, and post-modernist jurisprudence.

This course provides an introduction to sources of law, legal research, legal reasoning, and interpretative methodologies. The course discusses the sources and techniques for basic legal research. It develops and hones students’ ability to write about complex legal issues in a variety of settings and for a variety of audiences. The course focuses on the interpretation of texts, developing clear and persuasive arguments, and the use of available library resources including technologically available legal materials. It also treats the drafting of legal briefs, memorandum, and other legal documents. A central feature of the course is to lay the groundwork for working with various law-related texts as a foundation for legal studies and for the eventual senior capstone thesis.

The history of Western law is that of the two Romes, of the Papacy and law—papatus and imperiatus. It is a narrative of codification and the books of law, of scriptural texts and the casuistry that they generate. The first moment of legal study is that of inaugural texts and collections, of sovereignty, its representation and its textual delegation. The course will introduce the hierarchy of sources of law, the process of enacting law, the concepts of norm and rule, and then the plural regime of legal interpretation of sources, the hermeneutics of practice. Beginning with the concept of the code, the course will proceed to the topics of statutory interpretation, systems of precedent, and forensic rhetoric in distinct substantive legal disciplines. As the English legal sage Sir Edward Coke put it, inevitably in Latin, nemo nascitur artifex—no one is born a lawyer. To this end, the methods course will also entail and be supported by a vigorous legal writing and research program.

This course is designed to provide you with the basic building blocks, the knowledge and skills, to deal confidently with company law. It is an area of law that many students expect to be dry, technical and difficult. It is certainly challenging and as a largely statute-based area of law, potentially dry. But the reality of company law is very different. The course does not slavishly follow the structure of the Companies Act 2006 - the largest piece of legislation ever produced by Parliament. That would be an impossible project and an ineffective way of studying company law. Focusing upon underlying fundamentals, contemporary debates and transferable skills this module enables you to explore the basic principles and concepts central to company law in their social setting. The course treats the role of company law in the regulation of business organizations, introduction to legal forms of business organization; incorporation; separation of ownership and control, corporate governance, directors' duties, and remedies.

This course examines the ethical issues raised by the function of law and lawyers in protecting individual rights and advancing the common good. The increasing globalization and transnational practice of law warrants a comparative perspective with regard to specific issues in legal ethics. Legal materials are drawn from a variety of jurisdictions, such as Australia, China, the European Union, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Russia, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States, in order to elucidate the relevant issues in legal ethics. Among the issues addressed are the legal profession and professional identity, trust, truth telling, confidentiality, conflict, client autonomy, access to legal services, cause lawyering, ethical breaches, and malpractice. These ethical issues in law are considered from a range of philosophical, cultural, social, economic, political, and religious perspectives.

The course in Contracts will provide an international and comparative introduction to the law of volitional obligations. The course will familiarize students with the basic concepts of promise, consideration, offer and acceptance, vitiating factors, terms and conditions, interpretation, performance, breach, and remedies. Comparing the international regulation of sale of goods and the Roman principles underpinning European contract law, the course will then develop the key features of the common law of contract and trace its roots and future in European law.

This course examines the relationship between government and religion in the United States. We concentrate on the interpretation, meaning, application, and wisdom of 16 words from the American Constitution: “Government shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Using the opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court, the highest Court in the nation and final authority on constitutional interpretation, we explore how these words broadly prohibit the government’s entanglement with religion while also bestowing the responsibility to protect religious freedom. Prior knowledge is not required. Students must, however, participate in an orientation session, four introductory classes with Professor Sexton, and four recitations during the Fall II term in Abu Dhabi prior to the J-term meetings in NYC and Washington, D.C. Through this course, students learn the foundation of a liberal arts education: reading complex texts, deconstructing sophisticated arguments, constructing their own reasoned opinions, and valuing differences in opinion. Further, students examine frameworks for thinking, social organization, and behavior. This course is available only to NYUAD students studying in Abu Dhabi during the fall semester.

The growing trend of globalization in nearly every field of human endeavor demands legal experts to acquire an awareness of legal traditions and systems that operate beyond their borders. This course will invite students to explore various legal systems from a comparative perspective. Primarily this course will focus on essential characteristics of the three major legal systems: Civil, Common, and Islamic (Shari’a). The class will also examine diverse legal systems, inspired by various political, social, and religious doctrines. This course will pay special attention to legal traditions explicitly functioning in the United States of America and the United Arab Emirates. This class will offer historical and cultural backgrounds related to the development of legal structures and substantive rules in both territories. Students will study existing judicial systems and essential rules dealing with legal education and practice in the United States and the United Arab Emirates. The class will benefit from guests' lectures and field trips in order to gain a deeper understanding of the procedural and substantive aspects of law.

This course introduces the principles and rules that govern the relations between States, and their interactions with other international actors on the global stage. It is designed to give students an understanding of the rules governing international relations, their historic development, and their application in the modern world. The course will focus on doctrinal aspects of international law and their critical application, including how politics and power inform the negotiation and enforcement of international agreements. The course will cover a range of topics including: sources of international law, subjects of international law, the use of force in international law, the operation of the United Nations system, settlement of disputes in international law (including the role of the International Court of Justice), international human rights, and international environmental law. It offers a rigorous foundation for further study in this field.

Students attend weekly sessions that entail delivering speeches, debating and/or mooting. The sessions are intended to foster clear analysis, the development of persuasive arguments, and effective oral presentation. Students who fulfill the course requirements (as stipulated in the course syllabus) receive 1 credit hour per semester up to a maximum of 4 credit hours over the course of four academic semesters. First year students are not eligible to enroll in this course during their first semester.

This course analyzes the legal foundations, global politics and history of the conception, protection, and violation of human rights law. It presents analytical frameworks, concepts, facts, legal theories, and empirical methods used in the study of the politics of human rights law. It examines how democracy and democratization, international law and institutions, the activities of powerful democracies, and global civil society each influence human rights law around the world. It incorporates perspectives from the disciplines of law, political science, economics, history and sociology.

How have the concepts of religion and politics been understood in Islamic legal traditions? How have those understandings changed in response to colonialism and the emergence of the modern state? What is “secularism” today, and how does it relate to Islamic legal thinking in the contemporary world? This course works from the assumption that these three questions can no longer be separated from one another. We draw from recent work in ethnography that shows the everyday reality of Islamic law, in addition to texts in politics, history, and comparative legal theory. We will interrogate dimensions of secularism, sovereignty, and political authority as they intersect with the daily lives of contemporary Muslims in Malaysia, Egypt, Britain and elsewhere. The course begins with a brief, foundational introduction to Islamic law, then proceeds to study the impact of European colonialism in the Middle East and South Asia, the apostasy case against Nasr Abu Zayd, Imam Khomeini’s fatwas on sex reassignment, and several cases of religious conversion; the course concludes with studies of how Muslims navigate the landscape of legal pluralism in contemporary Europe.

Over half of the world's population now lives in cities, this share has been forecast to increase to close to 70% by 2050. With growing urbanization, cities and their residents have become major consumers of natural resources. However, if urban growth is managed properly, cities also have the potential to be efficient and sustainable users of natural resources, especially in this era of advanced technology that allows for remote monitoring and control of resource use. Recognizing the challenges that cities face and their potential, one of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals is to "make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable" by 2030. This seminar will analyze innovative sustainability policies implemented in leading cities around the world and examine the opportunities - and potential drawbacks - to allowing global cities to play an increasingly significant role in environmental regulation. The seminar will feature in-depth case studies of seven mega-cities (Abu Dhabi, Beijing, Berlin, London, New Delhi, New York, and Shanghai) in an attempt to find common features to cities' environmental initiatives.

This course will give you the opportunity to develop a broad and coherent understanding of the key aspects of land law, and a critical awareness of the significance of contemporary research and debates about the subject. The following topics are covered in the course: (1) Thing or Process including Estates and Interests, Adverse Possession, Equitable Interests, Actual Occupation, Proprietary Estoppel; (2) Qualities of Ownership including Joint Tenancy and Tenancy in Common, Express and Resulting Trusts Acquiring and Quantifying Constructive Trusts; (3) Mortgages; (4) Freehold Covenants; (5) Easements; (6) Prescription; (7) Leases; and (8) Lease/License. This course proffers a coherent understanding of key aspects of land law and a critical awareness of the significance of contemporary research and debates about the subject. It fosters the ability to read, review, consolidate and assess critically cases, statutes and scholarly publications in the field. It exemplifies a practical understanding of how established techniques of research and enquiry are used to create and interpret knowledge in law and some originality in the application of that knowledge to legal problems and debate.

How do people, states, and organizations articulate their rights in diplomacy and dispute settlement? What roles do codified law, precedent, and politics play in the resolution of disputes arising from public, commercial, and civil interactions? How do courts and tribunals shape these practices, and how have they created doctrine on jurisdiction, admissibility, interpretation, responsibility, liability, defenses, and evidence? How do lawyers develop legal strategies when law is emerging, fragmented, and precedents are non-binding? This course guides students to answers to these questions through mooting: researching, writing, and presenting legal arguments for hypothetical cases in standardized competitions. The course first introduces dispute settlement and/or prosecution in the international context; legal research techniques, briefing, and argumentation; and sources relevant for a mooting competition. Students then research, write, and practice legal arguments. Qualified students may form a team to compete in international mooting competitions in Dubai, Washington, The Hague, Nuremburg, Hong Kong, or Vienna.

The purpose of this course is to equip you with a thorough understanding of the key features of the European Union (EU) and its legal order. Given the significant impact of EU law and policies on the Member States and beyond, understanding this area of law is vital for any legal practitioner. The study of EU law is also extremely rewarding from a more academic perspective, as it teaches us important lessons about the interaction between different legal orders, the limits of State sovereignty and the role of international institutions. In recent years, the EU has become a source of continual political conflict: both over the content of its measures and the legitimacy of its institutions. We will consider these questions throughout the course and in particular in the context of two major crises that the EU is currently facing: the refugee crisis and Brexit. The first part of the course will focus primarily on the institutional and procedural law of the EU, while the second part of the course will be concerned with the rules governing two key substantive policy areas, the internal market and the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ).

This course is an introduction to the principles, techniques and functions of equity. Disputes which arise in commercial and family contexts are increasingly resolved by recourse to equitable principles. There is therefore a corresponding need to understand the relevant and developing law, to analyze critically the functions and approaches of equity and to evaluate its impact. This course provide an elementary treatment of these matters. It concentrates on the social and legal contexts in which equity is important. Traditional analysis of equity, in terms of its historical development and its maxims, is also a feature of this course. The course involves an examination of equity's central concept, the trust. Its functions range from the preservation of family wealth to its use as a medium for collective investment trusts and superannuation and pension funds. We also consider the private purpose trust and the use of the trust in charitable provision. The course moves on to engage with issues around breach of trust, including the duties of trustees, the remedies obtainable and new frontiers in the law, such as restitution.

Climate change will be a foremost theme that will influence financial activities, and policy and legal framework for years to come. In a noticeably short time span, climate change has become a global challenge calling for collective action. Climate change law is emerging as a new legal discipline. Students in this course will explore how climate change law relates to other areas of law and how climate change has elicited rulemaking process at the international, regional, national and local levels. The class will be invited to study the negotiation process, implementation and current status of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Kyoto Protocol, and the Paris Agreement. The class will then proceed to evaluate the various legal tools that are available at national and international level to address climate change, including cap-and-trade, carbon taxation, command-and-control regulation, litigation, securities disclosures, and voluntary actions.

Shanghai Students: this course counts for Social Science (foundation)

Public policy affects our lives in profound ways even when we are not aware of them. What we eat, how we recycle, or when we disclose personal information on the internet are all examples of choices largely determined by public policies. This course is an introduction to public policy, why it is important, and how it involves simultaneous ethical, political, and problem-solving processes. The course introduces students to the ways in which a variety of actors and institutions at the national and transnational levels interactively contribute to public policy. The course is divided into two parts. The first part provides an overview of the basic concepts underlying the public policy process and the second part provides critical perspectives on public policy-making in theory and practice.

Introduction to Public Policy - Sample Syllabus.

In a world where interests and values often conflict, how should societies be governed? Which form of government is best? Have we reached what Francis Fukuyama famously termed ‘The End of History’—the notion that there are no serious contenders to liberal democracy? Subjects in this course include ancient and modern theorists such as Aristotle, Machiavelli, Montesquieu, and Burke as well as contemporary Chinese critics of Western liberal democracy.

New York Students: this course is equivalent to PSYCH-UA 1 Introduction to Psychology.

Shanghai Students: this course counts for Core: Experimental Discovery in the Natural World credit.

Introduction to the fundamental principles of psychology, emphasizing both the unity and diversity of a field that spans major theoretical and research areas, including biological bases of human behavior, learning, cognition, perception, language, development, motivation, as well as social and abnormal behavior. Opportunities to apply knowledge gained in lectures and readings are available through computer-based demonstrations, in-class exercises, and required field experiences.

Introduction to Psychology -Sample Syllabus.

This course provides students with a broad understanding of the connections between mind, brain, and behavior. Students learn dominant theories of the neural basis of a variety of cognitive processes and the research that led to those theories. Topics are organized into modules on sensation, perception, and action; attention and memory; and other aspects of high-level cognition and behavior. Lectures are complemented by practical lab demonstrations of cutting-edge cognitive neuroscience techniques and discussions of journal articles.

This course examines how psychodynamic, phenomenological, narrative, and cognitive psychology have informed therapy and counselling. Students will study how these alternative explanations for the mind and human behavior have contributed to the creation of different kinds of therapeutic intervention. Students will also have the opportunity to familiarize themselves with fundamental communication and interpersonal skills that counsellors/therapists have to be able to apply and to learn about ethical issues that need to be taken into account when working with vulnerable individuals. Finally, the course will include a critical examination of the extent to which the different approaches to counselling are informed by empirical research and been evaluated in terms of their effectiveness.

New York Students: this course is equivalent to PSYCH-UA 34 Developmental Psychology.

The course considers current theoretical issues and research in developmental psychology in an effort to understand how we develop as perceiving, thinking, and feeling beings. Throughout the semester, theories, methods and interdisciplinary findings are explored, covering physical/biological foundations of development, cognitive processes, social and emotional development. The course explores how various systems and contexts shape an individual’s development, with a focus on risk and resilience. Attention is given to applying current research findings to trends in policy and intervention. Moreover, the course links conceptual frameworks to applied areas in the field of developmental psychology. The course also considers dynamics of culture, society, and social change on human development.

Developmental Psychology - Sample Syllabus.

The course provides an overview of the major theories and findings in research on motivation and volition. It addresses the history of research on motivation and volition, classic phenomena of being motivated versus lacking motivation and willpower, the psychology of goals, disorders of self-regulation, and cognitive-neuropsychological research as well as the perspective of economics on motivation and volition.

This course provides a detailed overview of multiple regression (MR) analyses as a data-analytic method. Theory and practice of the General Linear Model will be reviewed in order to show how MR can be used to carry out analyses of quantitative and categorical data. Practical problems in estimating and testing regression models will be emphasized. Students will gain experience in carrying out MR analyses using computer software.

New York Students: this course is equivalent to PSYCH-UA 10 Statistical Reasoning for the Behavioral Sciences.

Shanghai Students: this course counts for Social Science Methods.

Statistics form a critical component of research, and this course is designed to introduce students to the foundations of statistical principles in psychological science. This course covers basic-level statistics concepts such as central tendency and variability; the theory and logic underlying hypothesis testing and statistical decision-making; and the basic principles behind linear models commonly used in psychology, including correlations, t-tests, analysis of variance, and basic regression. The course also introduces students to basic statistical computer programs.

Statistics for Psychology - Sample Syllabus.

New York Students: this course counts for Psychology elective credit.

Biopsychology is the study of the biological basis of behavior. In this course, students discover connections among psychology and biology, pharmacology, and endocrinology. Lectures cover the structure, function, and development of the human nervous system and how this system can give rise to basic sensory, motor, cognitive, and regulatory processes that characterize human behavior. This course uses examples of the effects of brain damage and nervous system disorders to provide insight into how pathological thoughts and behaviors are rooted in physiological causes. Additionally, students develop a basic understanding of the methods used in biopsychology and evaluate the contributions as well as limitations of these approaches.

Biopsychology - Sample Syllabus.

New York Students: this course counts for Psychology elective credit.

Shanghai Students: this course counts for Social Science Methods.

Knowledge acquired through scientific research is bounded by the conditions under which the research is carried out. Consequently, informed consumers of information must understand how scientific research is carried out in order to decide what is true. This course provides an introduction to scientific research methods in psychological science, experimental design, and data interpretation. Students develop an appreciation for the methods involved in carrying out research on issues in psychology and, hopefully, become critical—but not cynical—consumers of scientific results, learning to distinguish sound conclusions from those based on faulty reasoning or flawed studies. Students in this course gain real experience by designing and conducting an experiment of their own, and presenting and reporting their results.

Research Methods in Psychology - Sample Syllabus.

NY Social and Cultural Analysis Students: this course counts for the Gender and Sexuality Studies and SCA majors and Gender and Sexuality Studies minor

In every society, whether one is born male or female affects how one is expected to behave and the opportunities one confronts. However, how gender is organized varies between societies and across time. This course draws upon research from sociology, economics, psychology, and anthropology to examine gender, providing information on how gender is organized in various parts of the world. Topics include how male and female children are socialized, women’s and men’s roles in the family, trends in women’s education and employment, the sex gap in pay, and how gender is affected by public policies.

Gender and Society - Sample Syllabus.

Building on Calculus or Mathematics for Social Sciences I, this course provides a further reaching study of mathematics immediately relevant for social science majors. Beginning with a review of univariate calculus and optimization, the discussion moves to the basics of linear algebra, multivariate calculus and tools related to the constrained optimization of functions. The last set of topics includes introductions to comparative statics and discrete-time dynamic optimization. The course focuses on employing mathematics to formulate and communicate theories within the social sciences, and illustrates the usefulness of mathematical results directly in terms of applications to models of optimizing agents.

How is social order possible? How does it emerge, how is it maintained, and how does it transform? This course will approach these questions with an examination of various ways in which people form social relations, and how those relationships condition the way they act. The first part of the course is about how social roles and social status are constituted by social relations in everyday life. Second, we will study how groups and the boundaries between groups are constructed and maintained, and how group membership structures individuals’ life chances and wellbeing. Third, we turn we turn our focus to mechanisms – robust processes by which individual level actions cumulate into the macro-level structures in which we are embedded. Finally, we examine some of the resulting characteristics of contemporary societies, as well as how and why social change occurs.

This course focuses on major works that take a critical position vis-à-vis the Western canon. It will explore themes of power, identity, inequality, and social order in the context of modern nationalism, capitalism, and imperialism. To provide context, the course will begin with core thinkers from the Western canon, ranging from John Locke to Sigmund Freud. Then it will focus on the response of their critics, including feminists and postcolonial writers from across the globe such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Mao Zedong, Frantz Fanon, Mohandas K. Gandhi, and Edward Said.

This course will provide students with the “foundations” to undertake research in social science. You will learn how to identify an interesting research question. You will be introduced to different approaches that social scientists take to answer these questions. And because many of the questions we are interested in are causal (What leads to Y? What is the impact of X?), you will learn about different strategies to get at causality. We will also discuss other key issues related to good research like transparency and ethics. This class is hands on. During the course you will create your own research design. Furthermore, we will make use of examples to critically evaluate existing research. This class is highly recommended to students who plan to write a capstone or a research paper.

Entrepreneurship is the principal source of economic development, technological innovation, and creation of wealth and jobs in market economies. This course is concern with entrepreneurship, with a special emphasis on the recent work by sociologists and sociologically-oriented organizational theorist that investigates central questions in entrepreneurship. Throughout the semester, we will understand various ways in which the social sciences have provided theoretical insights into entrepreneurial behavior in its broader social, institutional, technological and cross-national contexts. Furthermore, we will also understand entrepreneurship from more practical view by utilizing case studies. Additionally, we will explore timely important topics related to entrepreneurship, and identify sources of data / information during the last few classes.

New York Students: this course counts for Sociology elective credit.

The course offers a practical introduction to the theoretical and methodological issues of ethnographic field research. The course offers students hands-on experience to carry out ethnographic field research, conduct in-depth interviews and carry out participant observations.

Ethnographic Field Research - Sample Syllabus.

The course offers an overview of the causes and consequences of social inequality. Topics in this course include: the concepts, theories, and measures of inequality; race, gender, and other caste systems; social mobility and social change; institutional support for stratification, including family, schooling, and work; political power and role of elites; and comparative patterns of inequality, including capitalist, socialist, and post-socialist societies.

Wealth and Inequality - Sample Syllabus.

This course provides an introduction to topics in mathematics immediately relevant for social scientists beginning their studies in Economics, Political Science, or Social Research and Public Policy. Beginning with a review of sets and functions, the course covers key topics in univariate and integral calculus, optimization, and it introduces the notation associated with basic linear algebra. The course provides an introduction to mathematics as the lingua franca of modern social sciences, and focuses on employing mathematics to formulate and communicate theories within the social sciences.

Our goal is to understand the role of education in society. We will explore educational processes and educational systems and consider the following questions including: the organization of education across time and place, how they institutionalize inequality, factors that shape educational development, contributions of education to the economy, culture, and social integration. We will analyze these questions from an international, comparative perspective and discuss issues including social reproduction, the achievement gap and meritocracy. The role of ethnicity, socioeconomic class and status, gender and upbringing will inform our investigation. You will learn how to analyze and debate these issues by applying different sociological theories of education.

We live in a society of organizations. We are born inside organizations, we are educated inside organizations, we work inside organizations, and when we die, we may be buried by organizations. Hence, we cannot really understand what drives economic, technological, social, and political change without reference to organizations. In this course, students will endeavor to understand the organizations that comprise society by looking at how they are shaped by their environment and propose solutions to organizational problems arising from external challenges and internal dynamics. This course has two primary units. First, students will learn the organizational decision-making process and organizational structures to understand the concept of organization as an independent entity. Then, students will explore the major organizational theories that guide contemporary understandings of the relationships between organizations and their environments, such as institutional norms, social capital (or networks), and organizational learning and cognition.

Commonly (and wrongly) people take for granted the existence of such political and cultural units as France and Germany, or Japan and India. But in the Middle East, states and national cultures are at the same time ancient and recently created. Here the complex processes of state-formation are still current, and the United Arab Emirates, which is barely forty years old, serves as a rich and richly varied example for the comparative understanding of state-building, cultural imagination, and economic development.

State Formation: The Case of the United Arab Emirates - Sample Syllabus.

The spectacular development of Gulf cities in the second half of the 20th century was accompanied by great demographic and social change. This course, conceived as an introduction to the field of Gulf studies, explores the transformations of Gulf urban societies in the modern and contemporary periods, as well as their social, political, and economic outcomes. Departing from dominant paradigms such as the rentier state theory, we will rely on social history and anthropology in order to explore these processes at the level of urban societies themselves. We will first probe the materiality of Gulf cities, exploring the power relations which govern the production of space, from the role of State-mandated experts in urban planning to the multiple appropriations of urban space by city-dwellers. We will then turn our attention to the diversity of populations resulting from historical and contemporary migrations to the Gulf, looking at the complex questions they raise in terms of belonging and citizenship. From there, we will examine how social change has affected relations between generations and gendered roles, and how these are embodied in daily urban life through language or clothes.

Why did some countries industrialize before others? Why was it Europeans that conquered the world? How can we explain the great divergence in per capita income across countries? What are the social and political impacts of economic growth? What is the role of political institutions in underpinning economic progress? This course addresses these and other similar questions using simple tools from across the social sciences. Particular emphasis is placed on understanding the role of economic incentives and political institutions in underpinning economic and social development.

New York Students: this course counts towards Society and the Social Sciences requirement.

This course offers students an introduction to how economists look at the world and approach problems. It focuses on individual economic decision-makers (households, business firms, and government agencies) and explores how they are linked together and how their decisions shape our economic life. Applications of supply and demand analysis and the role of prices in a market system are explored. Students are also exposed to game theory, the theory of the competitive firm, the idea of market failure, and policy responses. The course relies on cases and examples and incorporates readings from classical and contemporary sources to shed light on modern economic principles and their application to solving the problems that face the global economy.

In a world where interests and values often conflict, how should societies be governed? Which form of government is best? Have we reached what Francis Fukuyama famously termed ‘The End of History’—the notion that there are no serious contenders to liberal democracy? Subjects in this course include ancient and modern theorists such as Aristotle, Machiavelli, Montesquieu, and Burke as well as contemporary Chinese critics of Western liberal democracy.

The “Arab World” is often lumped into one homogeneous category, which conceals the diversity found within this broad region. Keeping this in mind, this course will examine the unfolding of the “development project” in the postcolonial period and up to our present day in various Arab nation states. Beginning with an excerpt from the Arab Human Development Report, students will take a critical look at how development is defined and measured. Culture and religion have often been invoked as the major obstacles to development in the Arab World. This course will engage with this discourse as through exploring faces of modern day colonialism. What are the new tools and institutions of this new colonialism? How has this affected development and social struggle? The class will be organized around themes and corresponding case studies. Students will engage the idea of “development” in areas of education, economics, natural resources, women’s rights, and social welfare. Students will also examine home-grown counter movements, focusing on youth efforts of organizing. 

Social Change and Development in the Arab World - Sample Syllabus.

New York Students: this course counts for Sociology elective credit.

This course will teach students how to design and implement a survey, and what to do once the data is in. The course is practice oriented: the course will use a lot of examples and students will create their own survey design. Students will spend more than a quarter of the course learning Stata. At the end of this course students will be able to design and implement their own, high quality survey. Moreover, students will question much of the data that is collected by others because they know all the things that can go wrong in the process.

Survey Research - Sample Syllabus.

This course introduces students to the use of statistical methods in social science research. Topics include: descriptive statistics; introduction to probability; sampling; statistical inference concerning means, standard deviations, and proportions; correlation; analysis of variance; linear regressions. Applications to empirical situations in the Social Sciences are an integral part of the course.

This course introduces students to 2D media (e.g., painting, drawing, printmaking, calligraphy), materials and design. Areas of study include plane, figure/ground relationships, scale and proportional transformation, patterning, composition, value, color, methods for conveying time, and spatial illusion. Using a wide variety of traditional and nontraditional materials and methods, the course emphasizes content issues and the historical and cultural context in which works of art are produced.

Foundations of 2D - Sample Syllabus.

This course explores the medium of sculpture and other 3D forms through the principles of three-dimensional design and the concepts that drive developments in contemporary art. Projects may include mold making, ceramics, and the use of wood working tools, as well as the use of sculpture as costume, performance, environment, or kinetic form. Students use a variety of materials from wood and cardboard to metal, plaster, paper, cloth and found objects to expand their understanding of form and space.

Foundations of 3D - Sample Syllabus.

This immersive studio course combines practice and reflection through a project-based approach to graphic design. Lectures and readings address Western graphic design history and visual communication in the 20th and 21st century, and contemporary Arabic graphic design. Students are exposed to the multiple facets of visual communication and understand its importance in cross-cultural contexts. The theoretical component of the class will focus on the role of the graphic designer today, in his/her constantly shifting role as artist/problem solver/skilled executant, with readings from Munari, Shaughnessy, Spiekermann. Students will receive first-hand experience grappling with the practical issues faced by design professionals worldwide. Exercises in visual communication, creative methodologies, cross-cultural design, and branding will allow them to develop creative and collaborative design skills for problem solving. Students will develop key design skills in research, gathering, analysis, decision making, brainstorming and teamwork.

This course will address many of the processes and techniques that inform how one “paints.” The intelligence of painting is rooted in our relationship to the visual and the paradox of “seeing” versus “knowing.” For our purposes all painting, from the earliest caves to present day Art Galleries, will be seen as “contemporary.” It is legitimate to be influenced by any and all painting be it Ancient Egyptian, Da Vinci, Picasso, Warhol, etc. Therefore all styles and techniques that emerge from student projects will be addressed. Our goal is to help students develop the skills of painting and experience painting as an art form rich in possibilities for the direct expression of feelings, perceptions and ideas.

Projects in Painting: Painting by Seeing - Sample Syllabus.

Advanced Projects in 2D focuses on the development, execution, and presentation of an independent project, as well as the development of an art practice. One of the most challenging aspects of artmaking is seeing highly detailed, laborious works through to their completion. Students enter the class with an idea they are dedicated to spending 50 or more hours physically making. Though this artwork may span multiple canvases or media, it is conceived of as single work. The course begins with students designing art studio spaces to suit their needs. Studios might be the span of a desk, a portable art-in-a-cart, or occupy a whole room. This conscientious mindset of studio design is carried over into the ritualized formulation of an art practice. Various methods of organizing, researching, archiving, etc. are introduced. The culmination of the semester-long course is a highly evolved artwork and the empowered experience of an autonomous art practice.

New York Tisch Drama Students: this course counts for Theater Studies B credit.

This seminar offers an overview of theatre and its intersections with other disciplines in the arts, sciences, and humanities. The course introduces key terms and methodologies for understanding performance as an object of analysis and a means of expressive behavior. The students will explore how particular theories of drama emerge at historical moments and why; students will look at those theories embodiment on the stage, in dramatic literature, in public, and in everyday life. The aim of this class is to provide a performance vocabulary that will serve as a foundation and framework for advanced studies. Although this is not a survey of theatre history, the course will draw from a wide variety of historical plays and performances to elucidate the critical concerns of the field.

Thinking Theater - Sample Syllabus.

Students begin to build a performance vocabulary by using a range of techniques for translating the actor’s imagination into stage action. Students are introduced to the internal and external demands of turning psychology into behavior and explore acting fundamentals, such as investing oneself in the moment; responding fully to one’s acting partner; personalizing fictional material; and exploring the role of actor-as-creator via games, improvisations, and exercises; scene work; ensemble techniques;, and solo performance.

Fundamentals of Acting - Sample Syllabus.

New York Tisch Drama Students: this course counts for Theater elective credit (OR with 1 additional approved course =APT)

Shanghai Students: this course counts for the Creative Writing minor- intermediate workshop course.

This course engages the basic principles of the craft of play writing with strong emphasis on characterization, dialogue, and structure, including identification of the major dramatic incident and turning points. Classes will focus on both analysis of dramatic texts from contemporary play writes and student scripts. The professor will give notes on all final projects. Coursework includes reading and writing assignments. The final required project is a completed full-length play.

Fundamentals of Playwriting - Sample Syllabus.

In this course students learn to create visceral, theatrical experiences that tell clear stories through deep investigation of what comprises aesthetic experience and the fundamental tenants of design and stage composition. Students will acquire tools to: identify, externalize, and develop aesthetic impulses; actualize the world of a text through simple, powerful choices; facilitate collaborations with a design team; synthesize script analysis and point of view with rich, textured design worlds; develop an empathetic imagination; and build work with generosity toward the audience’s experience.

New York Tisch Drama Students: this course counts for Drama elective credit.

Students learn the fundamentals of voice, vocal production, and vocal expression. The course is designed to help students discover their vocal potential, to reduce obstructive physical habits and tensions and to move towards free, full-range voices. This course is built to cultivate vocal-physical development and sensorial acuteness. Students will begin to understand, in themselves, the connection between thought/impulse/idea, voice, communication and audience.

Voice, Speech, and Text - Sample Syllabus.

New York Tisch Drama Students: this course counts for Theater Studies Track B credit; equivalent to THEAT-UT 676 Directing Practicum (Non-Western)

What brings a play to life?
What story do you most want to tell?
Who is your audience, and why?
What is the collaborative environment you seek?
This course explores conceptual and practical approaches to directing a play. In addition to script discovery and analysis, emphasis is placed on the development of each student’s unique and subjective point of view on the material at hand. Students will journal regularly, share work in-progress with the class, create image banks, and engage in vigorous experimentation and conversation centered around the nature and art of directing theater.

Directing - Sample Syllabus.