New Undergraduate Courses: 2019-20

Today's technology enables us to collect massive amounts of data, such as images of distant planets, the ups and downs of the economy, and the patterns of our tweets and online behavior. How do we use data to discover new insights about our world? This course introduces ideas and techniques in modern data analysis, including statistical inference, machine learning models, and computer programming. The course is hands-on and data-centric; students will analyze a variety of datasets, including those from the internet and New York City. By the end of the course, students will be able to (1) apply quantitative thinking to data sets; (2) critically evaluate the conclusions of data analyses; and (3) use computing tools to explore, analyze, and visualize data. Throughout the course, we will also examine issues such as data privacy and ethics.

This course examines the historical and contemporary implications of inequality that have persisted especially in the United States and other key industrialized countries around the world. In addition, this course will provide an overview of the causes and consequences of economic and social inequality and how it is reproduced throughout society. Using an intersectional perspective to better understand how various inequalities impact individuals, communities, and systems, this course uses a multi-disciplinary lens to explore complexities of inequality how it continues to be reproduced in society. Students will be challenged to analyze core tenants of systemic inequality and critically develop strategies to reduce inequality. Finally, students will gain the knowledge to analyze social, political, and economic inequalities within a holistic and historical context, while closely examining issues as that relate to the impact of systems based on race, gender, class, and sexuality.

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.

This course, the second 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.

How are children and childhood viewed in different texts from different cultures and centuries? To whom do children really belong—the parents, the state, the world? Whose responsibility is it to educate, feed, and care for children? Is a child a “blank slate” or a prepackaged set of emotions, intellectual abilities, and behaviors? Emphasizing historical, medical, and cultural perspectives on childhood, we explore common themes and cultural variations, as reflected in literary texts and artistic representations in America, Europe, and China: Confucian analects, Song dynasty poetry, Ming ceramics, Italian European Renaissance painting, Persian and Mughal miniatures, Montaigne’s essays, John Locke’s philosophy, Rousseau’s educational ideals, English Romantic poetry, German Romantic Lieder, Freud on the dynamics of childhood, parenting advice texts from classical Chinese pediatrics to Dr. Spock, and children’s literature texts from Puritan tracts to Dr. Seuss. We consider the history, medicine, and sociology of childhood, including issues of infant and child mortality, education and pedagogy, child labor, children in cities, children and war, and the changing historical nature of the family in China, America, the Middle East, and Europe with a particular focus on Italy, with field trips to local Italian schools, progressive education centers, and the Ospedale degli Innocenti (one of Europe’s first foundling homes).

Description forthcoming

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.

This course is designed as a general introduction to the principles, techniques and modern functions of equity. Disputes which commonly arise in commercial and family contexts are increasingly resolved by recourse to equitable concepts and principles. There is therefore a corresponding need to understand the relevant and developing law, to analyse critically the functions and approaches of equity and to evaluate its impact. This course aims to provide an elementary treatment of these matters. It concentrates on the social and legal contexts in which equity is currently important. Traditional analysis of equity, in terms of its historical development and its maxims, is also a feature of this course.

The course involves a detailed examination of equity's central concept, the trust. Its functions range from the preservation of family wealth and the acquisition of interests in the family home 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.

This course is designed to provide students 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.

Use and design of data structures, which organize information in computer memory. Stacks, queues, linked lists, binary trees: how to implement them in a high-level language, how to analyze their effect on algorithm efficiency, and how to modify them.

Pre-Requisites: MATH-UA 121 Calculus I with grade of C or higher OR MATH-UA 211 Math for Economics I with grade of C or higher OR MATH-UH 1012 Calculus with Applications to Science and Engineering OR MATH-UH 1013 Calculus with Applications to Economics OR MATH-SHU 121 Calculus OR MATH-SHU 201 Honors Calculus

Linear algebra is an area of mathematics devoted to the study of structure-preserving operators on special sets (linear operators on vector spaces). Linear algebra is a cornerstone of any mathematics curriculum for two very important (and related) reasons: 1) The theory of linear algebra is well understood and so a first step in many areas of applied mathematics is to reduce the problem into one in linear algebra. 2) The spaces and operations studied in the subject are commonplace in many different areas of mathematics, science, and engineering.

Description forthcoming

This course explores the scientific foundations of current environmental issues and the impact of this knowledge on public policy. One goal of the course is to examine several topics of pressing importance and lively debate in our society – e.g., global warming, the quest for clean air and water, atmospheric ozone depletion, and the continuing search for viable sources of energy. A parallel goal is to develop the chemical, physical, and quantitative principles that are necessary for a deeper understanding of these environmental issues. The relevant topics include the structure of atoms and molecules, the interaction of light with matter, energy relationships in chemical reactions, and the properties of acids and bases. Throughout the course we also examine how scientific studies of the environment are connected to political, economic and policy concerns. The laboratory experiments are closely integrated with the lecture topics and provide hands-on explorations of central course themes. Overall, this course will provide you with the foundation to carefully evaluate environmental issues and make informed decisions about them.

This course examines filmic representations of race, ethnicity, gender, class, and ideology. Our aim will be to understand dominant and subversive storytelling techniques in films that focus on racialized subjects, sexual identity and class privilege in the US. The goal is to illuminate how meanings of race are constructed and can be read through filmic aspects, such as narrative, style, aesthetics, and mise-en-scène. We will focus on contemporary films by African American, Asian American, Latinx, and Native American filmmakers paying particular attention to matters of film authorship, narrative and rhetorical strategy, and technologies of cinema. Our analysis will illuminate how operations of power function filmically to produce both conventional and transgressive gazes. Students will have the opportunity to visit archives to research filmmakers who emerged from the “LA Rebellion,” as well as consider how and why new cinematic traditions have been birthed in Los Angeles more recently. Screenings include work by Patricia Cardoso, Ryan Coogler, Julie Dash, Ava DuVernay, Jordan Peele, Bradford Young and Kira Kelly. Readings will include work by Donald Bogle, Daniel Bernardi, Robin Means Coleman, Angela Davis, bell hooks, among others. 

Sample Syllabus coming soon

This class is an examination of the creative, organizational, and managerial roles of the producer in narrative motion pictures and television. Topics include how a production company is formed, functions, creates and obtains properties, financing and distribution. The course gives specific attention to the issues that will be faced by students as future producers and/or production and studio executives.

This class is primarily a creative producing class—and it will focus on the Los Angeles entertainment industry. And it will examine both feature film development and production and the television industry.

This class will provide students a roadmap of how the Los Angeles film and television industry works. It will also help students decide what kinds of projects to develop and acquire, how to assemble the necessary elements, such as director, writer, cast, etc., and to construct a realistic overall producing plan. Today’s producer must be an entrepreneur, navigating and setting his/her own course in a dynamically changing world, as well as someone who can find and create content.

The aim of this class is to explore, analyze and understand the elements and approaches to screenplay writing.  In order to accomplish this goal we will examine how a screenwriter utilizes structure, character, plot, theme, and symbolism to create a screen story well told.

Fame—celebrity, notoriety, renown—confers both recognition and immortality. It is the most enduring and desirable form of social power; a uniquely human ambition and a central force in social life. Culture, commerce, politics, and religion all proffer promises of fame, whether for fifteen minutes or fifteen centuries. Drawing on texts from history, anthropology, sociology, literature,  philosophy, and contemporary media, this course will reflect on the ethics, erotics, pragmatics and pathologies of fame. We will compare fame to other forms of recognition (reputation, honor, charisma, infamy, etc.), and look at how fame operates in various social and historical circumstances, from small agricultural communities to enormous, hyper-mediated societies such as our own. How does the fame of the oral epic differ from the fame of the printed book or the fame of the photograph? We’ll consider the enduring question of fame as it transforms across space, time, social boundaries, and technological conditions.

Fame- Sample Syllabus

In the world of digital and networked media, the technology industries that provide the infrastructure for the entertainment and media industries have become important. In particular, platform- mediated networks have become very important. This course will cover platforms from a strategy and marketing perspective. The objectives will be to understand how platforms function, the unique challenges they face, and how platform oriented companies can leverage their strengths and achieve success in the marketplace. These objectives will be achieved through a combination of readings, class discussions, case analysis and a group project.

The course is designed to provide you with a framework for understanding the entertainment, media and technology industries and their intersecting points. The course covers recent activities in key sectors of the entertainment universe including: movies, home video, television, cable, OTT, social media, publishing and music. We will explore the sweeping trends that are affecting these industries: digitization,globalization, audience fragmentation and shifting models of monetization. We’ll also look at the strategies and models that are (and aren’t) succeeding in this ever-evolving landscape.

Movie marketing is a fast paced, highly interactive course designed to give students a basic overview and understanding of all aspects of a domestic movie marketing campaign, focusing  on business decisions with the goal of developing a competitive advantage for a film’s theatrical life and beyond. The course will examine a range of movies, from low-budget independent to  tent pole film franchises, and explore concepts, processes and different strategic approaches used by today’s distributors.

Communication and media scholars have long concerned themselves with the relationship between various media/technologies and ‘the audience.’  Different intentions and perspectives inform the discourse and research on how media and communication technologies and their audiences/users interact.  This course will examine the history, theories, and methodologies of audience research, always questioning the construction of audiences and media users -- constructions that are shaped by commercial, academic, political and cultural interests. Students will examine different approaches to audience research that inform the concerns, questions, methods, findings, and implications of audience/user research.

This course will survey American broadcasting from the wireless through digital television. We will examine how historically specific economic and political forces, regulation, technological innovation, advertisers, creative producers, and audiences have interacted to shape the development of commercial broadcasting and how these cultural products, narratives and processes have become part of our social history.

This course examines the U.S. system of copyright and intellectual property to explore its impact on the creation, distribution, and consumption of media and related cultural products both domestically and abroad. We will consider the theory, history, goals, and tensions surrounding intellectual property law as it has grown and changed in relation to innovations in media and communication technology. We will explore efforts by the contemporary culture industries to build and protect their intellectual property, including issues of online piracy, trademark protection disputes, domestic and global licensing agreements and industrial synergies. We will consider questions of ownership and appropriation, including parody and remix.

The course will provide a background study of all related areas of the multibillion-dollar music industry, including the evolution and operations of the record company, music publishing, artist management, live entertainment, copyright, business and consumer-facing digital services.

Music supervision and music licensing are two of the hottest topics in the music business. This class will introduce you to the creative, financial, legal, and technical sides of music supervision as well as teach you the nuts and bolts of music clearance and licensing. We will look at the many different facets of a music supervisor’s job, and the services they provide for all types of media projects, including film, television, advertising, video games, online/apps, and more. If you aspire to have a career as a music supervisor, licensor, publisher, artist, songwriter, composer, producer, and/or creative entrepreneur, this course is for you. Some of the topics include: breaking into the field, opportunities for music placement, how to pitch and get your music placed, different parties involved in all sides of the licensing transaction. You will be exposed to complex business challenges that music supervisors face and learn the mindset and strategies needed to successfully overcome. Through readings, discussions, lab assignments, and case studies like Straight Outta Compton and Broad City, as well interactions with special guests, you will gain a real-world understanding of the music supervision field as well as the many opportunities that music creators, and rights owners can leverage to take their career to the next level by understanding music licensing.