Category Archives: Undergraduate

Courses for All IMA Students

Spring 2023

Film: A Transformative Process, a Vision Beyond Technology (OART-UT 140)

This course emphasizes the content, the aesthetics, and the purpose of cinema as a truly distinctive and dynamic art form uncovering the inner vision of the filmmaker, and the organic and transformative process where filmmakers projects their original truth, not compromising or borrowing ideas and themes from other films. Students explore the use of technology as a valuable tool that enhances the vision of the filmmaker without diminishing the organic texture of the work by its overwhelming presence. The course brings to light the stagnant and repetitious formulae of commercial cinema, resulting in diluted mainstream films. The works of iconic filmmakers who embrace and use film as an original, vibrant and reflective art form are reviewed throughout the course. Extracts and readings from relevant filmmakers are given throughout the course.

Undergraduate

Class #
Section #
Meets

Class #: 13451
Section #: 001
Meets: R 4:55-7:35p

Expressive Culture Fall 2026 General Elective Spring 2027 Undergraduate
Spring 2023

International Cinema: 1960 to Present (CINE-UT 56)

This course surveys key historical movements and production moments in international cinema since 1960. Through close readings of exemplary films, the course will familiarize students with significant aesthetic, industrial, and technological developments that have occurred internationally over the past half-century. Emphasis will be placed on how social, political, economic, and cultural factors impact modes of production as well as film form and style in various contexts. Studies of historically innovative movements in particular national cinemas will be complemented with transnational perspectives that seek to trace lines of influence across borders. Students will encounter works from a diverse spectrum of filmmakers, including Agnès Varda, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Andrey Tarkovsky, Stephen Frears, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Jane Campion, and Alejandro González Iñárritu.

Undergraduate

Class #
Section #
Meets

Class #: 15469
Section #: 001
Meets: T 6-10p


Class #: 15470
Section #: 002
Meets: R 9:15-10:30a


Class #: 15471
Section #: 003
Meets: R 10:45a-12p

Expressive Culture Spring 2025 Spring 2027 Undergraduate

Computational Approaches to Music and Audio I (MUSIC-UH 2419)

Credits: 4
Duration: 15 Weeks
Dates: Mon,Wed

The Computational Approaches to Music and Audio I will introduce students to programming for the development of applications of generative music and audio, ranging from standalone musical compositions to fun and engaging musical games or intelligent musical instruments. These applications will be developed mostly in Max, a widely used and very popular graphical programming environment for electronic music and interactive media. By the end of this course students will have become familiar with current approaches to audio and music programming namely in the Max programming environment, plug-in creation for Ableton Live, as well as have acquired a strong foundation in the field that will prepare them for the second course in the sequence.

Music (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

IMA Electives Spring 2026 Undergraduate

Manus et Machina (CADT-UH 1001)

Credits: 4
Duration: 15 Weeks
Dates:

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.

Core: Arts, Design and Technology (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

IMA Electives Spring 2026 Undergraduate
Spring 2023

Anthropology of and as Media (ANTH-UH 1102)

How do media representations reflect and affect communities? How do people exploit old and new forms of communication? How do technological mediation channel and reshape social relations? This course reviews ethnographic literature on a wide range of media including print, photography, film, television, radio, cell phones, and internet-based social networks. Each week, we explore how media use redefines a central anthropological concern, such as kinship, colonialism, mobility, religion, or violence. We continuously interrogate the diverse effects of technology, infrastructure, reception, sensation, and interaction. Engaging with both “live” and “virtual” communities, we revisit the methods and ethics of studying mediated relations. Students deliver an initial critical auto-ethnography of their own media consumption, a detailed assessment of a debate in the field, and a final project investigating a specific media community using original ethnographic research. Throughout the course, we collaboratively develop our own experimental virtual community based on the priorities and interests of the class participants. Innovative integrations of art and interactivity will be encouraged.

Anthropology (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

IMA Electives Undergraduate
Spring 2023

Transgender Youth (CAMS-UA 154)

Transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC) youth are quickly becoming more visible in society. Parents of gender non-conforming children are coming to mental health providers in increasing numbers and are often met with stigma and bias and a lack of education on TGNC health. TGNC youth are turned out of their homes at disproportionate rates and harassed and bullied in school at higher rates than their gender conforming peers. They have higher rates of suicide, depression and substance abuse and face unique medical, legal and social barriers. They also have produced their own cultures and communities to face these challenges. This course will examine the scientific research on TGNC youth in the context of the practical challenges faced by these individuals and their families. Students will hear from experts in the field, receive personal accounts from TGNC teens and transgender adults, and take field trips to social services agencies and events produced by TGNC teens themselves.

Child/Adoles Mental Hlth Stds (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Sections (Spring 2023)

CAMS-UA 154-000 (8893)01/23/2023 – 05/08/2023 Tue,Thu8:00 AM – 9:00 AM (Morning)at Washington SquareInstructed by Glaeser, Elizabeth

Societies & the Social Sciences Undergraduate

What is Technology (IDSEM-UG 9353)

Credits: 4
Duration: 14 Weeks
Dates: Wed

It would be a misnomer to assume that technology is something we “use.” Rather, the human appears as embedded in a matrix of the socio-techno-material. In this sense, there is something quite non-technical about technology which has an intrinsically social nature and can take the form of bodily and socializing techniques, the canalization of creative powers, becomings of all sorts, and of course the mechanical and material manipulation of ourselves and our life-worlds. We must thus speak of a biological and technical habitus of dependency and over-coming, one constituted by everything from creating art, to language, to ideological persuasion, to human enhancement and post-humanism, and various forms of convergence. What is the relationship between these various techniques and technologies and their respective effects (ethical, cultural, aesthetic) on the category of the human? Social transformation and technology cannot be theorized in isolation. The technological, mediological, and digital have to be unearthed as constitutive of our shared “material culture” and milieu. Within such a milieu, which is both internal and external to actors and agents implicated within it, the “essence” of the human is not only potentially redefined, but indeed dissolved. In such a potential redefinition and dissolution, one finds a radically new ethical and political threshold that has yet to be adequately theorized. This course attempts to reveal this threshold through developing a critical heuristic which maps the topoi of the socio-eco-techno system. Drawing on mediology, ethics, and the French school of the anthropology of techniques, we explore such topoi in terms as both “deep” historical sediment and also futurology with a view to illuminating how our values are negotiated and transformed in our rapport with the technological.

Interdisciplinary Seminars (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks

IMA Electives IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Seminar/Studies) Spring 2026 Undergraduate
Spring 2019

Reading in French Lit: The Modern Era (In French) (FREN-UA 9121)

In this course students read masterpieces of French literature from the French Revolution to the end of the twentieth century. Works are considered from various historical, aesthetic and theoretical perspectives. Texts include: Le Père Goriot (Balzac); Madame Bovary (Flaubert); Les Faux-Monnayeurs (Gide); La Nausée (Sartre); Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein (Duras), and Du côté de chez Swan I (Proust), which will be the subject of a final essay. Conducted in French.

French (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks

Sections (Spring 2019)

FREN-UA 9121-000 (10584)02/04/2019 – 05/16/2019 Tue,Thu1:00 PM – 2:00 PM (Early afternoon)at NYU Paris (Global)Instructed by

Expressive Culture Undergraduate

France and Islam (FREN-UA 9806)

Credits: 4
Duration: 14 Weeks
Dates: Wed

Islam is the second most important religion in France (after Roman Catholicism) and France has the highest Muslim population in Europe. Complex events from the mid-20th century forward have led to continuous heated debate and controversy about the place of Muslim citizens within the secular Republic. France’s interwoven history with Islam dates back, however, to the first Umayyad conquests of the Iberian peninsula in the 8th century and then to the period of the Crusades. Through the use of primary sources, literary and filmic texts, and critical readings (notably in history, sociology and cultural studies), this course traces the complexity and heterogeneity of French perceptions of Islam within a broad historical perspective beginning with these early encounters and continuing up to the present day.

French (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks

Cultures and Contexts Fall 2025 Spring 2026 Undergraduate

Studies in Prose Genres: Postcolonial Readings of Classic Texts (FREN-UA 9833)

Credits: 4
Duration: 14 Weeks
Dates: Tue,Thu

In this course we focus on four contemporary novels in which the world of the character, the narrator, or the author, is read through the lens of a literary classic. In each case, the reading and rewriting of the primary text involves temporal and spatial displacements (from the 18th to the 20th century, from Europe to the Caribbean and to the South Pacific) that generate shifting perspectives and a constant reshuffling of center and periphery. Between a reverential affiliation to the past and a creative misreading and rewriting of it, these intertextual encounters with « great » Western literary works insistently raise the questions of identity, originality, and “writing back”. Exploring these questions will therefore also involve drawing on comparative, translation, and postcolonial studies.

French (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks

Expressive Culture Fall 2025 Spring 2026 Undergraduate
Spring 2023

Poverty and Inequality Around the Globe (SOCS-SHU 326)

This seminar examines the causes and consequences of poverty and rising inequality around the globe. Students will study the ways in which poverty and inequality are shaped by multifaceted contexts; understand the theories underlying strategies and programs which address key poverty and inequality issues faced by many developed, developing and least developed countries; and learn about different countries’ experiences addressing their own poverty and inequality issues. We consider philosophies of global justice and the ethics of global citizenship, and students are expected to critically reflect upon their own engagements with poverty relief activities and aspirations for social changes. Students should be prepared to tackle advanced social science readings, analysis, and writing. Open to seniors, and to other students with instructor’s permission. Prerequisite: Sophomore standing or above. Fulfillment: Social Science Focus Political Economy/Sociology 300 level.

Social Science (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Sections (Spring 2023)

SOCS-SHU 326-000 (20242)01/30/2023 – 05/12/2023 Wed8:00 PM – 9:00 PM (Evening)at ShanghaiInstructed by Zelleke, Almaz

Societies & the Social Sciences Undergraduate
Spring 2023

Contemporary Art and Theory in North America and Europe (HUMN-SHU 231)

Contemporary art can seem perplexing, yet when viewed as a progression of ideas and aesthetic strategies that respond to societal shifts, a certain logic emerges. This course traces movements in North American and European art from 1945 to the present through a study of primary and secondary texts, artwork examples, and historic context. In lectures, discussion and activities, we will investigate how artists went beyond primarily object-based works to explore expanded notions of what art can be and the interaction between the artwork and the viewer. The ways institutional frameworks, media and technology, politics, and social relations, informed contemporary art practice will also be examined. At the end of this course, students should be able to identify contemporary art movements, key artists, and relevant artworks and create compelling arguments around these works. They will also be able to articulate the conceptual and visual strategies employed in these pieces, recognize connections and differences across movements and have a basic knowledge of the milieu in which they were produced. Prerequisite: None. Fulfillment: Humanities Introductory course (18-19: survey).

Humanities (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Sections (Spring 2023)

HUMN-SHU 231-000 (20180)01/30/2023 – 05/12/2023 Fri1:00 PM – 4:00 PM (Early afternoon)at ShanghaiInstructed by Kramer, Maya

Expressive Culture Liberal Arts & Sciences - Electives Undergraduate
Spring 2023

Gender and Sexuality in Modern Visual Culture (HUMN-SHU 181)

This course examines how ideas of gender and sexuality have shaped the production and consumption of visual culture from the late nineteenth century. We will examine a variety of visual and material texts that shape, criticize, and/or negotiate with contemporaneous gender and sexual norms. Focusing on these expressions’ cultural and historical specificities, the students will assess gender and sexuality—and as an extension, the notions of normality, healthfulness, and self—as ideas that continuously evolve in response to social discourses. The course proceeds roughly chronologically. It starts with the nineteenth-century Euro-American context, in which modern ideas of gender and sexuality began to circulate authoritatively in medical and legal terms. It then moves onto more globalized contemporary perspectives that critique and/or expand the pronouncedly “Western” conceptions of identity and identity categories. Prerequisite: None.

Humanities (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Sections (Spring 2023)

HUMN-SHU 181-000 (23103)01/30/2023 – 05/12/2023 Mon,Wed11:00 AM – 12:00 AM (Morning)at ShanghaiInstructed by Kong, Hyoungee

Liberal Arts & Sciences - Electives Undergraduate
Spring 2023

Human Genetics: Genes in Human Health & Disease (CCEX-SHU 136)

The goal of the first half of the course is to build a basic understanding of how information about traits is encoded in our genes, how this “blueprint” is interpreted by cellular machinery to build a complex human being, and how our heredity has resulted in our evolution. In the senond half of the course, we will continue the exploration of how environment, experience and random errors affect the process of building our traits, what happens when these processes fail, and the promise and possible peril of genetic technologies for human life. Fulfillment: CORE ED (with CCEX-SHU 137)

Exper Discovery in Nat World (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Sections (Spring 2023)

CCEX-SHU 136-000 (21479)01/30/2023 – 05/12/2023 Tue,Thu11:00 AM – 12:00 AM (Morning)at ShanghaiInstructed by Yu, Danyang

CCEX-SHU 136-000 (21480)01/30/2023 – 05/12/2023 Tue2:00 PM – 3:00 PM (Early afternoon)at ShanghaiInstructed by Yu, Danyang

Physical Science OR Life Science Undergraduate
Spring 2023

Foundations: What is Philosophy? (PHIL-SHU 101)

This course is an introduction to the problems and methods of contemporary philosophy. Topics may include: 1. What is the relationship between mind and body? 2. Can belief in the existence of the external world be justified? 3. Are there any good arguments for the existence of God? 4. Can we act freely if everything that we do is determined by laws of nature? 5. Is there a theory of how we ought to live? Prerequisite: None. Fulfillment: Humanities Foundational/Introductory Courses (18-19: Critical Concepts).

Philosophy (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Sections (Spring 2023)

PHIL-SHU 101-000 (20186)01/30/2023 – 05/12/2023 Tue,Thu3:00 PM – 4:00 PM (Late afternoon)at ShanghaiInstructed by Yuan, Yuan

Texts and Ideas Undergraduate
Spring 2022

Youth and Consumer Culture in China (GCHN-SHU 246)

How can a hamburger symbolize progress, an animated character provide comfort, and rock music define one’s identity? In this course we will study the role of consumer culture in the lives of Chinese youth, both today and in the past. By examining popular commodities including sneakers, coffee, backpacking, and celebrity idols, we will think about how young people use these things to find friendship and love, to seek success and happiness, and to define who they are. As we consider why people like particular commodities, we will learn about class, gender, ethnicity, and modernity in China. Reading about the history of commodities in China, we will consider what is new about consumer culture, and why people’s tastes change over time. Alongside studies of specific commodities, we will read key theoretical texts about shopping, advertising, media, identity, and fantasy: these texts will help us understand how commodities can be imbued with tremendous power to shape our desires and create our identities. During the semester, each student will conduct qualitative research about a commodity, including online research and offline interviews with people who buy and sell this commodity. At the end of the semester, we will gather your research together to produce a handbook of Chinese youth and consumer culture. Prerequisite: Sophomore standing. Fulfillment: CORE SSPC/IPC; GCS Elective: The Politics, Economy, and Environment of China; Social Science focus Anthropology 200 level.

Global China Studies (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks

Cultures and Contexts Societies & the Social Sciences Undergraduate
Spring 2022

Printmaking in an Expanded Field (ART-SHU 255)

This Praxis course is an exploration of contemporary and traditional artistic printmaking practices, with an emphasis on expanding notions of conventional printmaking techniques and forms. Students will be introduced to various printmaking techniques, and experiment with traditional and non-traditional forms, in conjunction with their histories and consider what constitutes a hand-made print in an artistic framework. Students will gain an understanding of printmaking – its history based in China, development across the globe and inventive contemporary practices which include sculptural forms. They will learn techniques, modes, forms, and applications of printmaking – with an emphasis on relief prints (stamps and wood cuts) – in a conceptual framework of contemporary printmaking practices and global visual culture. Note: attendance in the first class meeting is mandatory, otherwise you will be dropped from the course. Prerequisite: None. Fulfillment: This course satisfies IMA/IMB elective.

Art (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks

Sections (Spring 2022)

ART-SHU 255-000 (19570)02/07/2022 – 05/13/2022 Tue,Thu9:00 AM – 10:00 AM (Morning)at ShanghaiInstructed by Lin, Monika

General Elective Undergraduate
Fall 2024 Spring 2023 Spring 2024 Spring 2025 Summer 2023

Intro to 3D Character Design using Zbrush (FMTV-UT 1071)

This course explores the Art of Character Creation using the powerful digital sculpting program ZBRUSH. Students will learn the ins and outs of the program to create their own 3d characters from scratch. Sculpting, detailing, Polypainting, rendering and compositing in Photoshop will all be covered. The class will encourage learning while doing as I find it’s the best way to learn a new art. Zbrush is a unique program that allows users to manipulate 3D shapes in a quick fashion without having to model polygons like other 3D programs such as Maya. In effect you are using “digital clay” in Zbrush to push and pull primitive forms into fantastic creatures and characters. Zbrush is the perfect tool for traditional artists to transition to artmaking in the digital realm. Zbrush is an extremely feature-rich piece of software, with a unique interface unlike any other computer graphics program. While the interface may seem quite intimidating at first, rest assured we will explore the interface together and learn all the most important tools to get started and having fun with organic character creation! Some benefits of using Zbrush for Character and Creature Design over other computer design software: -The ability to quickly create concepts as if you were manipulating real clay -Great for rough character concepts or more finished painted renders -Transition is much smoother from practical to digital art using Zbrush because it feels like you are using an artistic tool rather than a technical tool – Zbrush offers such a deep diverse toolset, you can create stylized cartoon-like characters, realistic animals and humans! The possibilities are endless. You can use it for everything from organic characters to hard surface robots and props! -Once you learn the interface and tools, you can simply sculpt without worrying as much about technical aspects like polygons, faces, points and edges like other traditional polygon modelling programs

Undergrad Film & TV (Undergraduate)
3 credits – 15 Weeks

IMA Electives Undergraduate
Spring 2023

Philosophy of Technology: Thinking Machines (PHIL-SHU 130)

This course aims to train students to think philosophically about our rapidly changing—and ever more intimate—relationship with machines. We focus in particular on the following subjects: artificial intelligence, robots, cyborgs, automation and science fiction speculation. Prerequisite: Global Perspectives on Society (GPS) Fulfillment: CORE STS; Humanities Interdisciplinary or Advanced course; IMA/IMB elective.

Philosophy (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Sections (Spring 2023)

PHIL-SHU 130-000 (20189)01/30/2023 – 05/12/2023 Wed5:00 PM – 7:00 PM (Late afternoon)at ShanghaiInstructed by Weslake, Brad · Greenspan, Anna

Societies & the Social Sciences Undergraduate
Fall 2022 Spring 2020

Electronic Rituals, Oracles and Fortune-Telling (IMNY-UT 289)

According to anthropologists Filip de Boeck and René Devisch, divination “constitutes a space in which cognitive structures are transformed and new relations are generated in and between the human body, the social body and the cosmos.” In this class, students will learn the history of divination, engage in the practice of divination, and speculate on what forms divination might take in a world where the human body, the social body, and even the cosmos(!) are digitally mediated. Starting with an understanding of ritual and folk culture, we will track the history of fortune-telling from the casting of lots to computer-generated randomness to the contemporary revival of Tarot; from reading entrails to astrology to data science; from glossolalia to surrealist writing practices to the “ghost in the machine” of artificial intelligence. Weekly readings and assignments culminate in a final project.

Interactive Media Arts (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Sections (Fall 2022)

IMNY-UT 289-000 (21942)09/07/2022 – 12/14/2022 Mon,Wed5:00 PM – 6:00 PM (Late afternoon)at Brooklyn CampusInstructed by Parrish, Allison

Graduate IMA Electives IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Art & Design) IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Programming & Data) IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Seminar/Studies) Undergraduate