This course examines fashion as both a product and expression of globalization. It explores fashion’s contested histories; its modes of production, consumption, and address; its relationship to colonial enterprises; its system of meaning-making. In this course, we will tackle such issues as the social uses of fashion; the fashion cycle (use, reuse, discard); the relationship between dress and the body; feminist critiques of fashion; the politicization of clothing (from ethnic dressing to green clothing); and the links between style consumption and garment production–and the relationship of all of these to the processes of globalization.
Explores environmental issues in urban centers, their causes and impacts, and the rise of a movement that considers the “environment” not just as the term we use to describe the natural world from which most urban residents feel dissociated, but rather as the array of places where we live, work and play. Considers the relationship between society and public policy in the context of environmentalism. Introduces students to public policy analysis, with a focus on policy implementation and decision-making in New York City. Examines the powers of the NYC Council and explains the role of agencies, the private sector, and interest groups as critical parts of a bureaucracy through which environmental issues are shaped, managed and negotiated. Through a variety of case studies, increases students’ understanding of the political, legal, economic and technical and scientific constraints of the policy decision-making process and explores the path towards managing, using and protecting environmental resources in urban centers.
Historically, education has been the most accessible and effective means for groups to achieve social mobility in American society. However, access to public education has never been equal for all segments of society, and there continues to be considerable variability in the quality of education provided to students. As a result of both explicit and subtle discrimination, racialized minority groups have at various times been denied access to education or been relegated to inferior schools or classrooms. Yet education has also been the arena where the greatest advances in social justice and racial equality have been achieved. Understanding the contradictions created by the hope and unfulfilled promise of American education is a central theme of this course.
What are the diverse ways in which New York City has been imagined on the silver screen? How does a cinematic perspective shape our understanding of urban spaces? This course analyzes films that portray New York as a site of local encounter and global exchange in both commercial and documentary films since the 1960s. We will investigate the dramatic mapping and remapping of urban space through works that articulate questions of gentrification, immigrant labor, organized crime, and sexual subcultures. In turn, we will examine how these stories have helped shape and contest the city’s image of itself–as a space of struggle, belonging, illegality, emancipation, and transformation. The goal is to see how each particular film captures a distinct moment both in the city’s history over the past fifty years as well as in the history of filmmaking. In so doing, we will blend the perspectives of urban studies, ethnic studies, and visual culture, placing films within their aesthetic, political, and historical context.
Introduces theories, methods, and political trajectories central to the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis (SCA). SCA 101 addresses how individuals and populations structure their worlds and navigate the resulting social, cultural, and political terrain. It privileges scholarly work with an intersectional approach, drawing on theoretical insights from such fields as social geography, feminism and queer studies, ethnic studies, urban and metropolitan studies, critical race theory, labor studies, and cultural studies.
The notion of cannibalism is a recurring concern in the history of ideas regarding the primitive, the animalistic, the monstrous, or any of the other classifications frequently invoked to mark others, regardless of their actual culinary preferences. Reflection upon cannibalism as an intellectual phenomenon suggests how people eating people, or at least the possibility of it, says a great deal about those that do not. In some regions of the Caribbean and Brazil, ideas regarding cannibalism have made an important turn, such that the cannibal has become a provocative affirmation of self. The aim of this course is to think about cannibalism, not, as it often is, as a theme for anthropologists and ethnographers, but rather as an intellectual problem that has enjoyed a very long life in the history of ideas about self. In this course, we shall revisit a selection of texts regarding cannibalism from Columbus’ diaries to the present, and including works by, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Oswald de Andrade, Nelson Pereira dos Santos, and Suely Rolnik, in the company of some key notions involving postcolonial theory. Readings will be made available in Portuguese, Spanish, and English, and course papers may be carried out in any of the three languages according to student interest and ability.
Concentrates on those socialist schools?Christian socialism, utopian socialism, Marxism, Fabianism, and anarchism?that have proved to be the most successful. Presents their major theories and examines the usefulness of such theories in helping us to understand and, in some cases, alter the world in which we live.
This course offers an introduction to contemporary African politics. Our goal is to introduce students to the most pressing problems African countries have faced since independence. Questions motivating the course include: (1) Why state institutions weaker in African than in other developing regions? (2) What explains Africa’s slow economic growth? (3) What can be done to improve political accountability on the continent? (4) Why have some African countries been plagued by high levels of political violence while others have not? (5) Can or should the West attempt to “save” Africa?
Offered every other year. 4 points. Examines legal, political, and economic issues in government regulation. Covers such classic debates and issues as the historical origins of regulation, the legal philosophy of administrative regulation, the relationship between courts and agencies, the political and social conflicts surrounding regulatory politics, and the role of law in state formation.
Provides an understanding of election processes in the United States through different theoretical approaches to the study of campaigns and elections and the testing of empirical hypotheses. Analyzes campaign strategies of political candidates, the use of polls and media in campaigns, and the effects of issues and personalities on election outcomes. Evaluates the role of presidential primaries and elections in the functioning of a democracy.
Offered every semester. 4 points. Interpretation of the Bill of Rights, the Civil War amendments, and other rights in the U.S. Constitution through the reading of Supreme Court opinions. Topics include freedom of speech and press; free exercise of religion and separation of church and state; the right of privacy; rights of the criminally accused; equal protection of the law against race, gender, and other discrimination; and the rights of franchise and citizenship. Cases are read and discussed closely for their legal and philosophical content.
This course is about using logic to think about issues of public policy and evidence to do the same thing. One way to think about this course is it is sabermetrics (logic and evidence applied to baseball, and in Moneyball) applied to vastly more important topics than baseball: making schools better, designing health policy and dealing with climate change (with tons of other policy applications possible, but we will focus on these three).
Why do we participate in politics? Who tends to participate? When are we most likely to participate? Political scientists have traditionally focused on factors such as demography, socioeconomic status, mobilization, electoral institutions, and social norms to answer these questions. However, scholars have recently begun to explore the possibility that genetic differences may, at least in part, help to explain individual differences in political participation.
Offered every year. 4 points. Theories of political strategy with emphasis on the theory of games. Uses of strategy in defense and deterrence policies of nations, guerrilla warfare of revolutionaries and terrorists, bargaining and negotiation processes, coalitions and the enforcement of collective action, and voting in committees and elections. Secrecy and deception as political strategies and uses of power, with some applications outside political science.
Detailed study of the nature, historical development, and basic principles of international organization. Emphasizes the structure and actual operation of the United Nations.
Comparative study of terrorism as a domestic political phenomenon. Examines foundational issues, economic, psychological, strategic, and social theories of terrorism as well as theories of the cessation of terrorist violence, government negotiation with terrorists, the relationship between terrorists and nonviolent political actors, and the internal political economy of terrorist organizations. Considers terror in the Middle East (especially emphasizing Hamas), nationalist terror (ETA and the IRA), and Maoist revolutionary terror (with emphasis on the Shining Path).
Prerequisite: V53.0300. Offered in the spring. 4 points. Poverty and welfare problems in the United States and the controversies aroused by them. Concentrates on the causes of poverty and dependency among the controversial working-age poor, the history of programs and policies meant to help them, and the enormous impact these issues have had on national politics.
Introduces the comparative politics of South Asia. Analyzes the politics of South Asian countries, including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal, individually and in a comparative framework. Readings are chosen from across disciplines, including political science, anthropology, economics, and history. The course also uses novels and films on South Asia to illustrate themes highlighted in the readings.