Fall 2023

Please note that the language of instruction is noted at the end of each course title. (ie IN SPANISH or IN ENGLISH). For courses taught IN SPANISH prerequisites are listed above the course description. All Spanish Language courses are taught primarily in Spanish.

All students are required to take a Spanish language course (or course taught in Spanish) for graded credit. This course cannot be taken Pass/Fail.

Courses focusing on Conversation and Spanish Literature can be found under the heading Latin American & Spanish Studies below.

Prerequisites: SPAN-UA 4 or SPAN-UA 20 (or equivalent courses) or qualifying placement test score

For non-native speakers only.

For non-native speakers only. Expands and consolidates students' lexical and grammatical understanding of the language and introduces them to the fundamental principles of expository writing. Utilizes exercises, readings, and intensive practice of various prose techniques and styles.

Advanced Spanish- Sample Syllabus

Prerequisite: Spanish for Spanish Speakers (SPAN-UA 11) or placement/permission of the director of the Spanish language program.

This course, the equivalent of SPAN-UA 9050 for Spanish speakers, requires permission for registration. 

For native and quasi-native speakers of Spanish whose formal training in the language has been incomplete or otherwise irregular.

Advanced Spanish for Spanish Speakers - Sample Syllabus

Prerequisite: SPAN-UA 9050 Advanced Spanish or SPAN-UA 51 Advanced Spanish for Spanish-Speaking Students (or equivalent courses)

Mitos, Íconos y Tradiciones Inventadas seeks to make students familiar with the rich and complex history of Latin America through the study of some of its most known and iconic cultural expressions. It does also work as an introductory map to the most influential and widespread approaches in Latin American social sciences, cultural studies and literary criticism. Thus, students will not only have a first encounter with key historical processes that lie behind some well know cultural icons, but also will be introduced to arguments and ways of writing that help constitute modern Latin American educated Spanish. The course is structured in four topics. The first two weeks work as an introduction, and are devoted to ways of representing political authority in Latin America. The core of the course seeks to study and discuss three issues that are crucial for an understanding of our present: Violence in Latin America, Drugs and the Narco-machine, The Economy of Latin American Passion. Students will study these topics through a variety of cultural materials, including literary texts, film, papers from several disciplines, theater plays, art shows and songs.

Myths Icons & Invented Trad: A Cultural History of Latin America  Sample Syllabus 

Prerequisite: SPAN-UA 50 Advanced Spanish OR SPAN-UA 51 OR  Advanced Spanish for Spanish-Speaking Students (or equivalent courses) OR Qualifying Placement Test Score.

Course can be taken concurrently with SPAN-UA 9050 or SPAN-UA 9051.

The course comprises topics related to culture, cultural identity and cultural and identity politics referred to five cases located in Latin America: 1) indigenous peoples in Argentina (areas of Chaco: Qom/toba- Wichí and Mocoví, and Patagonia-Pampa: Rankülche) and indigenous peoples in Amazon (Achuar) and, 2) Andean farmers (Aymaras) and indigenous workers of Chaco (Toba), 3) popular sectors of the City of Buenos Aires (“villeros” [shanty town residents], pickets, "barras bravas" [soccer hooligans]) and 4) middle class in San Pablo and Buenos Aires. Through this empirical tour students will learn about and analyze different records related to the debate on "culture" that commenced years ago: essentialism and constructivism, redefinition of opposing concepts nature/culture, multiculturalism, domination and resistance, activism, etc.

Culture, Identity and Politics in Latin America - Sample Syllabus

This course will explore how sociocultural and political economic factors in different Latin American countries have affected the development of their health care systems and contributed to marked health disparities. Using a multidisciplinary lens that will draw on and compare public health policy and anthropological perspectives, students will explore sociocultural and political economics factors that have an impact on public health, the organization, financing, and delivery of health care services in Latin America, and individual and community experiences with health care. Students will focus particularly on the Argentinian health care system through lectures and visits with health care users, providers, managers, and policymakers throughout Buenos Aires.

Special Topics: Latin American Health Care Systems in Cultural Context - Sample Syllabus coming soon

The course will examine key aspects of Latin American art from the colonial period to the early decades of the twentieth century. Through the analysis of artistic images of Mexico, Peru, Brazil and Argentina, will discuss the role of visual representation in the process of conquest and colonization of the territory in Latin America, and later in the construction and consolidation of national states and regional identities. With the alternation of guided visits to museums in Buenos Aires and classes, students will have the opportunity to learn about artistic languages​​, techniques, iconography, production systems, and some aspects of Latin American history.

Visual Cultures in Colonial and 19th Century Latin America - Sample Syllabus

Students conceive, produce, direct, and edit a short film exploring the Buenos Aires experience with smartphone technology. A survey of cellphone cinema history leads to the study of visual storytelling principles and techniques, which students apply through practical exercises. Choosing among available short film genres (experimental, documentary, portrait, essay, fiction), students are trained through every stage of the movie making process: pitching the idea, scripting and storyboarding, shooting, and editing. Each student finishes the course with a facility in smartphone video technology as well as a coherent film record of his or her particular vision of Buenos Aires.

Texts and Ideas introduces students to the ideals of liberal education and the central role of humanistic study in the liberal arts and fosters appreciation of the importance of humanistic learning for society at large. Students become acquainted with some of the literary and philosophical works that have been most influential in shaping the contemporary world and with significant instances in which the ideas in these works have been debated, developed, appropriated, or rejected. Texts and Ideas is not a survey but, rather, an examination of how texts influence subsequent thinking, create traditions, and reflect societal ideals. Texts and Ideas thus aims to provide a richer understanding of how cultures are constructed, modified, and represented.

Aimed at fostering a lasting engagement with both film culture and Latin America, this course is an overview of Argentine cinema and culture from the 1950s to the present. It offers tools and guidance for discussing and writing about film and culture, and encourages a personal engagement with the topics and issues raised by the films and their contexts: debates about film as art, political weapon, and/or entertainment, complicity and resistance under conditions of political repression, filmic forms of remembrance and of activism, and the complex relationship between aesthetics and politics, among others.  

Expressive Culture: Film - Sample Syllabus

Enrollment by permission only. Application required. Please visit the NYU Buenos Aires Internships Page for application information. Intermediate Spanish or above is strongly recommended.

This course requires a 90-minute weekly seminar and a minimum of 10 hours fieldwork a week at an approved internship field site. The seminar is designed to complement your internship fieldwork, exploring many different aspects of your organization and of Argentine Civil Society. Your goal is to finish the semester with an in-depth understanding of your agency. The course provides you with tools to analyze your organization’s approach, its policies, its programs, and the political, legal, social, economic and cultural contexts in which it operates. Guest-speakers are invited to the seminar and case studies on Argentina civil society are discussed.  You will also spend time reflecting on the internship experience itself as a way to better understand your academic, personal, and career goals.

Experiential Learning Seminar - Sample Syllabus

Enrollment by permission only. Application required. Please visit the NYU Buenos Aires Internships Page for application information. Intermediate Spanish or above is strongly recommended.

This course requires a 90-minute weekly seminar and a minimum of 10 hours fieldwork a week at an approved internship field site. The seminar is designed to complement your internship fieldwork, exploring many different aspects of your organization and of Argentine Civil Society. Your goal is to finish the semester with an in-depth understanding of your agency. The course provides you with tools to analyze your organization’s approach, its policies, its programs, and the political, legal, social, economic and cultural contexts in which it operates. Guest-speakers are invited to the seminar and case studies on Argentina civil society are discussed.  You will also spend time reflecting on the internship experience itself as a way to better understand your academic, personal, and career goals.

Experiential Learning Seminar - Sample Syllabus

Prerequisite: SPAN-UA 9050 Advanced Spanish or SPAN-UA 51 Advanced Spanish for Spanish-Speaking Students (or equivalent courses)

Mitos, Íconos y Tradiciones Inventadas seeks to make students familiar with the rich and complex history of Latin America through the study of some of its most known and iconic cultural expressions. It does also work as an introductory map to the most influential and widespread approaches in Latin American social sciences, cultural studies and literary criticism. Thus, students will not only have a first encounter with key historical processes that lie behind some well know cultural icons, but also will be introduced to arguments and ways of writing that help constitute modern Latin American educated Spanish. The course is structured in four topics. The first two weeks work as an introduction, and are devoted to ways of representing political authority in Latin America. The core of the course seeks to study and discuss three issues that are crucial for an understanding of our present: Violence in Latin America, Drugs and the Narco-machine, The Economy of Latin American Passion. Students will study these topics through a variety of cultural materials, including literary texts, film, papers from several disciplines, theater plays, art shows and songs.

Myths Icons & Invented Trad: A Cultural History of Latin America  Sample Syllabus 

This course, the first part of a two-semester sequence*, uses enhanced videoconferencing to bring students in New York and Buenos Aires together to examine how urban arts and politics intersect in the Americas: How are art and politics understood and expressed differently and similarly in these two American metropolises and why? How do shared aesthetic features of public art in the city reflect the global circulation of urban creative modes? What do we learn about local politics from looking at the art and writing on a city’s public spaces? In the fall, teams of students in both cities will conduct field work in selected neighborhoods to help create a coded database of murals, graffiti, performances, and installations. Then, drawing on readings in the history, culture, and politics of each city, as well as on theoretical work in art criticism and urban studies, we will analyze how social and political processes like gentrification, inequality, and planning generate and reflect creative political expression as captured in our database. In the spring, students will learn to use and to interpret Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology and data, drawing on publicly available census, electoral, and planning records from each city, to generate digital maps finding links between art, politics, and demographics as drawn from the systematic analysis of our database of urban arts. The year will culminate with the online publication of transnational, collaborative projects that explore what the art and writing of city streets reveals about urban life in 21st century America.

* Students are expected to enroll in both semesters of the course, with at least one of the semesters spent in NYU Washington Square and the other in NYU Buenos Aires.

Art and Politics in the City: Conceptual Landscapes - Sample Syllabus

Open to Global Liberal Studies students only.

"City as Text” is a rigorous, 4-credit seminar designed to introduce students to the study away environment through an intensive academic program of cultural preparation and local immersion. Through scholarly and journalistic readings from interdisciplinary perspectives, students develop a nuanced understanding of the local, regional, national, and global forces that bring shape to the character of the city. Multiple class sessions take place in locations around the city, such as ports, markets, industrial centers, parks, pedestrian zones, and other points of interest, where students apply direct observation to examine critically formed questions of place, space and identity. Students draw on the city as a primary resource for academic research and critical inquiry and they produce innovative research projects (digital or print) that reflect on the city at the crossroads of local and global identity.

City as Text - Sample Syllabus

Registration priority for Global Public Health (GPH) courses will be given to NYU GPH majors. Other students will be able to register as space remains available. Please pay close attention to course notes displayed in Albert.

GPH majors and minors interested in fulfilling the Experiential Learning requirement, may apply to participate in the academic internship program.

This course will explore how sociocultural and political economic factors in different Latin American countries have affected the development of their health care systems and contributed to marked health disparities. Using a multidisciplinary lens that will draw on and compare public health policy and anthropological perspectives, students will explore sociocultural and political economics factors that have an impact on public health, the organization, financing, and delivery of health care services in Latin America, and individual and community experiences with health care. Students will focus particularly on the Argentinian health care system through lectures and visits with health care users, providers, managers, and policymakers throughout Buenos Aires.

Special Topics: Latin American Health Care Systems in Cultural Context - Sample Syllabus coming soon

In 2010, WikiLeaks, a non-profit organization that publishes submissions from anonymous whistleblowers, in a partnership with some of the most important news publications, began releasing thousands of classified diplomatic cables sent between the U.S. State Department and consulates and embassies around the world. Three years later, former National Security Agency subcontractor Edward Snowden leaked top secret information about surveillance activities by the NSA. More recently, the Panama Papers became the biggest data leak in the history of journalism: over 11 million documents containing financial information about offshore entities were revealed.

These events signal the beginning of the big leak era, which this course will focus on. We will analyze the role of media concentration and technological innovation as twin driving forces in the inception of this big leak era over recent years. We will study the consequences of these changes at three different levels: (i) the legal consequences for whistleblowers; (ii) the resulting birth of global networks and partnerships that expose technical, cultural and economic limitations in the traditional media; and (iii) the geopolitical implications, as a breach in one government´s security apparatus is a victory for that government´s opponents. Finally, we will confront one larger question: whether the big leak era means that transparency will (could?) replace fairness as journalism´s main paradigm.
 

Journalism & Society: Leaks and Whistleblowers - Sample Syllabus

Prerequisite: SPAN-UA 50 Advanced Spanish (or equivalent courses) OR Qualifying Placement Test Score. For non-native Spanish speakers only.

Course can be taken concurrently with SPAN-UA 9050.

La lengua de Buenos Aires is an advanced conversation course, which seeks to make students familiar with the most outstanding features of the Spanish of the Rio de la Plata area. It does also work as a map of the local effects of well known global processes. Buenos Aires is justly regarded as a cosmopolitan city, unique in Latin America for its multicultural mélange of European and American cultural influences. Yet Buenos Aires is cosmopolitan in another, deeper sense: as a city, it has been defined by the same global forces that affect and shape London, New York and Shanghai. The course will focus on six problems that can be studied in any major city in the world: tensions around immigration; poverty, social exclusion and its impact in urban life; discrimination and violence in connection to racial, sexual and class difference; drugs and the narco-machine; violence against women and femicide; religious tensions in a modern society. All these social, cultural and political problems are present everywhere, and global in their character. However, they assume peculiar and specific forms in Buenos Aires and Argentina. This tension between a global process and its local forms is what we will explore in the course.

La Lengua De Buenos Aires - Sample Syllabus

Prerequisite: SPAN-UA 9050 Advanced Spanish or SPAN-UA 51 Advanced Spanish for Spanish-Speaking Students (or equivalent courses)

Mitos, Íconos y Tradiciones Inventadas seeks to make students familiar with the rich and complex history of Latin America through the study of some of its most known and iconic cultural expressions. It does also work as an introductory map to the most influential and widespread approaches in Latin American social sciences, cultural studies and literary criticism. Thus, students will not only have a first encounter with key historical processes that lie behind some well know cultural icons, but also will be introduced to arguments and ways of writing that help constitute modern Latin American educated Spanish. The course is structured in four topics. The first two weeks work as an introduction, and are devoted to ways of representing political authority in Latin America. The core of the course seeks to study and discuss three issues that are crucial for an understanding of our present: Violence in Latin America, Drugs and the Narco-machine, The Economy of Latin American Passion. Students will study these topics through a variety of cultural materials, including literary texts, film, papers from several disciplines, theater plays, art shows and songs.

Myths Icons & Invented Trad: A Cultural History of Latin America  Sample Syllabus 

Prerequisite: SPAN-UA 50 Advanced Spanish OR SPAN-UA 51 OR  Advanced Spanish for Spanish-Speaking Students (or equivalent courses) OR Qualifying Placement Test Score.

Course can be taken concurrently with SPAN-UA 9050 or SPAN-UA 9051.

The course comprises topics related to culture, cultural identity and cultural and identity politics referred to five cases located in Latin America: 1) indigenous peoples in Argentina (areas of Chaco: Qom/toba- Wichí and Mocoví, and Patagonia-Pampa: Rankülche) and indigenous peoples in Amazon (Achuar) and, 2) Andean farmers (Aymaras) and indigenous workers of Chaco (Toba), 3) popular sectors of the City of Buenos Aires (“villeros” [shanty town residents], pickets, "barras bravas" [soccer hooligans]) and 4) middle class in San Pablo and Buenos Aires. Through this empirical tour students will learn about and analyze different records related to the debate on "culture" that commenced years ago: essentialism and constructivism, redefinition of opposing concepts nature/culture, multiculturalism, domination and resistance, activism, etc.

Culture, Identity and Politics in Latin America - Sample Syllabus

Prerequisite: SPAN-UA 9050 Advanced Spanish or SPAN-UA 51 Advanced Spanish for Spanish-Speaking Students (or equivalent courses)

Can be taken concurrently with SPAN-UA 9050 or 9051.

The course is designed to introduce students to the work of Jorge Luis Borges, one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century. Through reading, analysis, and discussion of short fiction or poems and critical bibliography, the students will examine the dichotomy civilization-barbarism in Borges works (in connection to the Argentine cultural tradition since nineteenth century); some key topics in his texts such as tigers, labyrinths and libraries; the relationship between writing and translation (specifically in the English translations of his fictions); the political aspects of the literature produced by Borges and other contemporary Argentine writers on Eva Perón. The course will also develop the connections between Borges and other contemporary Argentine writers.

Topics in Latin American Literature and Culture: Borges Y Cultura Argentina Sample Syllabus 

Prerequisite: SPAN-UA 50 Advanced Spanish or SPAN-UA 51 Advanced Spanish for Spanish-Speaking Students (or equivalent courses)

Can be taken concurrently with SPAN-UA 9050 or 9051.

Buenos Aires como ciudad global is a 4-credit topics course in Spanish, which counts towards the Spanish minor and major. This class seeks to offer a map of the local effects of well-known global processes. Buenos Aires is justly regarded as a cosmopolitan city, unique in Latin America for its multicultural mélange of European and American cultural influences. Yet Buenos Aires is cosmopolitan in another, deeper sense: as a city, it has been defined by the same global forces that affect and shape London, New York and Shanghai. The course will focus on six problems that can be studied in any major city in the world: tensions around immigration; poverty, social exclusion and its impact in urban life; discrimination and violence in connection to racial, sexual and class difference; drugs and the narco-machine; violence against women and femicide; religious tensions in a modern society. All these social, cultural and political problems are present everywhere, and global in their character. However, they assume peculiar and specific forms in Buenos Aires and Argentina. This tension between global processes and local inflections is what we will explore in the course.

Culturally as well as economically and politically charged ideas of space and place have been key to the mapping of the New World since the beginnings of Western colonial expansion. The ‘New World’, from this point of view, has in fact often functioned as a heterotopia of the Old. Heterotopias, in Michel Foucault’s coinage, are counter-sites that exist within the fabric of social or even natural space but that also contest, challenge and invert it. Museums, gardens and  hospitals but also boats and colonies are examples of such places that stand out from the surrounding spatial order, thus also making the latter ‘readable’ from a marginal point of view. In  the Americas, the colonial organization of space also triggered a proliferation of ‘heterotopic’ sites: from the ‘frontiers’ crossing cities and regions that render transparent the violent and contradictory foundations of American societies, to slave cemeteries and prison islands, to clandestine torture camps and strip-mined mountains. Yet heterotopias are also sites of radical  experimentation and freedom, from Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond to urban hangouts of  counterculture and sexual dissidence from Tango to Camp. The methodology of this course is highly participative, encouraging students to explore physical as well as virtual places and to contribute to the production of a dynamic, online-based archive of locations under analysis.

Mapping the Americas - Sample Syllabus  

In 2010, WikiLeaks, a non-profit organization that publishes submissions from anonymous whistleblowers, in a partnership with some of the most important news publications, began releasing thousands of classified diplomatic cables sent between the U.S. State Department and consulates and embassies around the world. Three years later, former National Security Agency subcontractor Edward Snowden leaked top secret information about surveillance activities by the NSA. More recently, the Panama Papers became the biggest data leak in the history of journalism: over 11 million documents containing financial information about offshore entities were revealed.

These events signal the beginning of the big leak era, which this course will focus on. We will analyze the role of media concentration and technological innovation as twin driving forces in the inception of this big leak era over recent years. We will study the consequences of these changes at three different levels: (i) the legal consequences for whistleblowers; (ii) the resulting birth of global networks and partnerships that expose technical, cultural and economic limitations in the traditional media; and (iii) the geopolitical implications, as a breach in one government´s security apparatus is a victory for that government´s opponents. Finally, we will confront one larger question: whether the big leak era means that transparency will (could?) replace fairness as journalism´s main paradigm.
 

Journalism & Society: Leaks and Whistleblowers - Sample Syllabus