Category Archives: Liberal Arts & Sciences – Electives
All Liberal Arts Elective Courses: Quantitative Reasoning, Physical Science OR Life Science, Societies & the Social Sciences, Expressive Culture, General Liberal Arts Electives
Explores a set of principles that have guided Latino/a presence in the United States. These principles can be found in many but not necessarily all of the readings. They include urban/rural life, freedom/ confinement, memoir as source of voice/other sources of voice, generational separation and identity, and loss and healing. The course traces a movement through time from masculinist nationalism to the recognition of variations in gender, sexuality, race, class, region, and national origin. Other principles may be added to this list as the course proceeds.
A broad and interdisciplinary introduction to the field of urban studies, surveying the major approaches deployed to investigate the urban experience in the social space of the modern city. Explores the historical geography of capitalist urbanization with attention to North American and European cities, to colonial and postcolonial cities, and to the global contexts of urban development. Major topics include urban politics and governance; suburban and regional development; urban social movements; urban planning; the gendering of urban space and racial segregation in urban space.
Focuses specifically on the Asian American communities of New York and their histories. Presents filmmaking as a mode of community documentation and filmmakers as historians. Students meet as theorists and field researchers. The first phase is largely historical and theoretical, while the latter mainly deals with hands-on filmmaking. Students document various aspects of Asian/Pacific American communities in New York?sociocultural and political issues surrounding them, histories, personal stories, geodynamics of ethnic localities, domestic lives, professions, ethnic festivals and performances, etc. At the end of the course, students have made at least two collective documentaries (10 to 12 minutes each), which may be interrelated or on entirely different subjects.
Examines the connections between gender, racial ideology and history of medicine to consider the range of ways that reproduction—medically, culturally, and experientially—produces and troubles racial ideology. In this course we will explore issues in the history of race and reproduction, focusing primarily (though not exclusively) on North American contexts. Cross-cultural breadth will help us to consider the relationship between biological experiences (which are often portrayed as universal) and socio-cultural context. While questions about biology will be central to this history, we will also locate biology within a wider set of issues around social reproduction and the practices of motherhood. Through our readings we will consider how different disciplinary orientations (social history, medical anthropology, feminist theory, art history, etc.) help us to illuminate and problematize the connections between technologies and politics of biology and difference.
Yoruba is a language spoken in West Africa by approximately 20 million people. This course is an introduction to Yoruba language, people and culture and is designed for students without prior knowledge. The main goal is to develop elementary communicative competence in the language. It is designed to enable students read, write, listen to and talk about simple concepts, ensuring that they can minimally understand and be understood in the language, while developing a fundamental knowledge of the Yoruba culture. Emphases are on Yoruba as used by contemporary native speakers in the present day West Africa. Skills are developed through intensive interactive conversations, grammar exercises, and classroom activities designed for a learner to use the language in various daily activities.
Consumption of objects, images, and places is central to the culture and economy of metropolitan life. The class will explore how the relationship between consumption and cities has developed by examining three key moments—the late nineteenth century and the invention of urban commodity spectacles, post-war America and the rise of suburban consumer spaces, and contemporary America and the selling of the commodity city. The class addresses three questions: Why do we want things? How does landscape organize our consumer desires? How does place become an object of consumption? We will begin with an examination of classic theoretical works that probe the relationships between people, things, and cities. We will then embed these in discussions of changing forms and practices of consumption and urbanism. The empirical cases we will examine range from the development of the department store, to the fashioning of commodity home, to the work of shopping, and to the emergence of a thriving urban debt industry.
This course is a general introduction to the field of Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS). The course will introduce students to the central questions and debates of NAIS, including but not limited to: Native American hidden histories and oral histories; comparative indigeneities; questions of “discovery” and colonialism; the politics and representations of lands, massacres, and museums; and questions of law, gender and sexuality. It begins by asking students to consider the history of the field and weaves throughout questions about the complicated and contested terrain of the term Indigeneity. It ends with discussions about decolonizing research and indigenous futures, thus preparing students to consider theories and methodologies they will encounter in more advanced courses for the NAIS minor. By the end of the semester, students will have gained both historical and ethnographic perspectives on how museums and other forms of representation help us to know and reproduce ourselves and “others,” and how institutions craft, control, and circulate cultural heritage in various social lives.
A historical and political inquiry into the French system of relations with Francophone Africa from the ‘race to Empire’ in the 19th century to the current day. The main goals of the course are: to describe the historical development of French-African relations from the colonial to the post-independence era; to investigate the political, economic and cultural mechanisms of French influence in contemporary Francophone Africa; to understand the consequences for France of complex developments subsequent to colonialism, such as African immigration in France. Conducted in French.
Empowerment is defined as those processes, mechanisms, strategies, and tactics through which people, as well as organizations and communities, gain mastery over their lives. It is personal as well as institutional and organizational. Addresses these issues in a wide variety of community settings. Designed to be challenging and rewarding to those students interested in helping people work together to improve their lives.
An advanced-level language and culture course following Elementary Cantonese. At this level, when the basic skills and working vocabulary have been mastered, emphasis is placed on the linguistic rules to enable students to communicate with more competence. The lessons focus not only on language, but also use a holistic approach and incorporate discussions on history, current events, literature, pop culture, and native values. Because language is key to connecting with community concerns, the course also includes field trips to Chinatown and to other Cantonese-speaking neighborhoods.
Examines how the American legal system decided constitutional challenges affecting the empowerment of African, Latino, and Asian American communities from the 19th century to the present. Topics include the denial of citizenship and naturalization to slaves and immigrants, government-sanctioned segregation, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, the prison industry, police brutality, post-9/11 detention issues, and voting rights. Course requirements include attendance at a community function involving constitutional issues, a midterm, and an interactive oral and written final project comparing a present-day issue affecting racial minorities in New York City and proposing measures to collectively address the issue.
At this level, when the basic skills and working vocabulary have been mastered, emphasis can be placed on the linguistic rules to enable the student to communicate with more competence. There is also a focus on translation. Lessons use a holistic approach and incorporate discussions on history, current events, literature, pop culture, and native values. To observe and experience the language at work, the course includes field trips to Filipino centers in the New York/ New Jersey area, as well as invited guests who converse with students in Filipino about their life and work.
America is not always the answer. This class offers an introduction to the many and varied fictions that have been produced by diasporic South Asians across the globe over the last 150 years: in Australia, Africa, Europe, Caribbean. Our exploration of the poetics and politics of immigration will attend to different types of traveller (inc. soldiers, students, athletes, medics, cosmonauts) and draw on a wide range of media (inc. literature, cinema and music). Particular attention will be paid to the diverse geographies of Asian migration – be they plantations, dance Floors, restaurants, call centres. Themes to be addressed include coolietude, globalization, the impact of 9/11 and techno-servitude.
Provides students with an elementary understanding of Swahili, a Bantu language with a rich oral and written tradition that is spoken by about 100 million people from Somalia to Mozambique and Zanzibar. After a short presentation of Swahili?s history, codification, and relation to other languages, students are drilled in phonetics and grammar. They are also introduced to poems, songs, and oral narratives.
Few cities boast as rich a cultural life as New York City, with its plethora of neighborhoods, museums, galleries, theatres, concert halls, and alternative spaces. Through walking tours, attendance at cultural events, and visits to local cultural institutions, students explore the definition of urban culture. Sites include the familiar and the unfamiliar, the Village and the outer boroughs. Students examine the attributes that constitute culture and community from an interdisciplinary perspective.
Designed to interest and challenge both the student new to the study of gender and sexuality and the student who has taken departmental courses focusing on women, gender, and/or sexuality. Through a focus on particular issues and topics, explores the construction of sex, gender, and sexuality; gender asymmetry in society; sexual normativity and violations of norms; and the interactions of sex, gender, sexuality, race, class, and nation. This interdisciplinary course engages materials and methodologies from a range of media and disciplines, such as literature, the visual arts, history, sociology, psychology, and anthropology. Examines both feminist and nonfeminist arguments from a variety of critical perspectives.