Archives

Spring 2023

Introduction to Psychology and Its Principles (APSY-UE 2)

Introduction to the fundamental principles of psychology, emphasizing both the unity & the diversity of a field that spans major theoretical & research areas, including biological bases of human behavior, learning, development, motivation, & social and abnormal behavior. Links between theory & classic as well as contemporary research are a recurrent theme. Liberal Arts Core/MAP Equivalent – satisfies the requirement for Society & the Social Sciences

Applied Psychology (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Sections (Spring 2023)

APSY-UE 2-000 (11013)01/23/2023 – 05/08/2023 Tue,Thu9:00 AM – 10:00 AM (Morning)at Washington SquareInstructed by Brito, Natalie

APSY-UE 2-000 (12169)01/23/2023 – 05/08/2023 Thu7:00 PM – 7:00 PM (Evening)at Washington SquareInstructed by Collado, Amarfi

APSY-UE 2-000 (12170)01/23/2023 – 05/08/2023 Thu8:00 PM – 8:00 PM (Evening)at Washington SquareInstructed by Collado, Amarfi

APSY-UE 2-000 (12171)at Washington SquareInstructed by

APSY-UE 2-000 (12172)at Washington SquareInstructed by

APSY-UE 2-000 (12337)01/23/2023 – 05/08/2023 Fri10:00 AM – 11:00 AM (Morning)at Washington SquareInstructed by Sanchez, Nathalia

APSY-UE 2-000 (12338)01/23/2023 – 05/08/2023 Fri11:00 AM – 12:00 AM (Morning)at Washington SquareInstructed by Sanchez, Nathalia

APSY-UE 2-000 (21776)at Washington SquareInstructed by

Liberal Arts & Sciences - Electives Societies & the Social Sciences Undergraduate

Concepts of Film and New Media (FILMM-UH 1011)

Credits: 4
Duration: 15 Weeks
Dates:

This course is an introduction to the basic concepts of film and new media studies. The course provides an overview of the historical development of film as an art, technology, and industry and the role of new media as an extension to and reinvention of models for production, distribution, exhibition, and reception. Students are introduced to documentary, experimental, narrative, and new media within different historical and cultural contexts, comparative aesthetics, and the lines of critical enquiry that have been developed for film and new media in dialogue with other fields in the arts and humanities.

Film and New Media (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Expressive Culture Fall 2025 Spring 2026 Undergraduate
Spring 2021

Art and Architecture of the Islamic World (ARTH-UH 1810X)

A broad survey, we will consider works of architecture, ceramics, metalwork, textiles and the arts of the book. Given the span of centuries embraced by the term ’Islamic art’ – from the 7th century up to the present day – and the expanse of geography – from Spain to China and beyond – this course cannot be a complete survey within the constraints of a single semester. Instead, this course will present a select group of materials within a chronological and dynastic framework, with an emphasis on specific case studies. These selections will highlight important internal developments as well as ’points of contact’ between cultural entities. This approach – at once global and local – speaks to the dynamic and fluid qualities of many of the arts produced in the regions under scrutiny.

Art History (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Sections (Spring 2021)

ARTH-UH 1810X-000 (18559)01/17/2021 – 05/03/2021 Tue,Thu9:00 AM – 10:00 AM (Morning)at Abu DhabiInstructed by Teece, Denise

Cultures and Contexts Undergraduate

In With The Old, Out With The New: Debates on “Tradition” in Western Music (IDSEM-UG 1823)

Credits: 4
Duration: 15 Weeks
Dates: Wed

Contests between stalwart custodians of “tradition” and rebels searching for new, untested modes of expression pervade Western music history. This course surveys some of the most contentious debates on music’s past, present, and future waged between music theorists, critics, artists, and audiences, spanning the last five hundred years. Our focus is on the seemingly inevitable tension between what music is, what it should be, and what it can be. Starting with the Greek philosophers of antiquity, we explore debates on the music of Claudio Monteverdi, Ludwig van Beethoven, Richard Wagner, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Carmen Miranda, John Cage, Bob Dylan, and The Slits. We also examine the backlash against and subsequent defense of styles like jazz, rock and roll, punk rock, rap, and 2000s pop. Our goal is to better understand how culture is “made” precisely during these moments of charged debate, where a particular music”s perceived merits or transgressions serve as the pretext for larger often controversial ideological issues. Art in this sense–and music in particular–becomes a platform by which to observe how competing aesthetic value systems reveal deep social and cultural rifts. Each unit within this course has two parts. First, we scrutinize and discuss primary sources related to the debate: letters, scores, newspaper and magazine articles, journal entries, singles, albums, and films. Secondly, we read and discuss secondary sources by scholars, critics, and investigative journalists for context, using this new information as a way to think critically about the primary sources and our own aesthetic judgments. What we will see is that debating music in terms of what’s “good” and “bad,” classical and avant-garde, edifying and dangerous, traditional and innovative, is, in the Western world, a long-standing tradition in its own right.

Interdisciplinary Seminars (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Liberal Arts & Sciences - Electives Spring 2026 Undergraduate

Abrupt Climate Change (OART-UT 1058)

Credits: 4
Duration: 15 Weeks
Dates: Tue

Combining science and the art of storytelling, this course will tackle one of the most pressing issues facing the future of humanity: Abrupt Climate Change. In a unique collaboration with NYU physical climate scientist Professor David Holland, students will research and create work that bridges the divide between science and the public through accurate, creative science-based storytelling. This highly multidisciplinary, hands-on course welcomes students from all backgrounds and fields of study to imagine and invent creative ways of telling stories about this global phenomenon and to investigate solutions. Weekly assignments will lead to a final collaborative project and an exhibition open to the public.

Open Arts Curriculum (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Societies & the Social Sciences Spring 2026 Undergraduate

Sailors, Convicts, and Pilgrims: The Indian Ocean Since 1500 (IDSEM-UG 2067)

Can oceans be the subject of historical inquiry? Maritime spaces help in thinking beyond nations and national borders that dominate modern global histories, leading us into a world of connected pasts. This course investigates the Indian Ocean’s long expanse from the early modern to the modern period from 1500 to the early 20 th century. What changed about movement and exchange across land and sea in the longer transition from empires to nation-states? In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, despite growing European presence in the Indian Ocean littoral, pre-existing networks between East Africa, the Persian Gulf, the Indian sub-continent, and Southeast Asia remained resilient. Yet, by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, new shipping technologies, the monitoring of movement across borders, and the introduction of travel documents like the passport became crucial in the formation of nation-states that emerged from colonial empires. From sailors, moneylenders, and pilgrims to convicts and indentured laborers, cultures of mobility connected vast geographies, often defying the logic of nation-states and colonialism. In examining this history, we will cover themes ranging from encounters in port-cities, commodities, smuggling, piracy, and pilgrimage to documents of identity and travel. Readings may include: Broeze’s Brides of the Seas, Ewald’s Motley Crews: Indian and African Seafarers, Tagliacozzo’s Secret trades, porous borders , and Torpey’s The Invention of the Passport , and translations from Samarqandi’s Account of Calicut and Vijayanagar, Afonso De Albuquerque’s Letter from Aden , Linschoten’s Itinerario , Munshi Rahman Khan’s Autobiography of an Indian Indentured Laborer, and Nawab Sikandar Begam’s A Pilgrimage to Mecca .

Interdisciplinary Seminars (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks

Fall 2025 Liberal Arts & Sciences - Electives Undergraduate
Spring 2022

American Cinema: 1960 to Present (FMTV-UT 324)

Offered in the spring semester only. Course level: Intermediate. 4 points. No prerequisite. Over the last 50 years the American Cinema has produced a remarkably rich abundance of entertaining, exciting, and challenging films. This course is designed to provide a survey of the wealth of styles, forms, purposes, and approaches to filmmaking that developed and emerged in this era. While Hollywood has obviously served as the dominant mode of filmmaking in this country, a significant of other filmmaking practices have continued to operate and sometimes thrive outside of it. Beyond the attention paid to Hollywood narrative cinema as it has changed and evolved over this half-century, we will also consider documentaries, avant-garde and experimental works, independent narraive cinema, and “cult” films. Consequently, we will be screening a variety of films, including works by such notable American filmmakers as Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Quentin Tarantino, George Romero, John Singleton, and Michael Moore.

Undergraduate

Class #
Section #
Meets

Class #: 8182
Section #: 001
Meets: T 6-10p


Class #: 8188
Section #: 002
Meets: R 9:15-10:30a


Class #: 8203
Section #: 003
Meets: R 10:45a-12p

Expressive Culture Liberal Arts & Sciences - Electives Spring 2025 Undergraduate
Summer 2022 Summer 2023 Summer 2024

Traditions in Narrative: Comedy in America (FMTV-UT 1231)

The history of comedy in 20th century America is the history of America itself. Comedians from all walks of life have provided a funhouse mirror as well as a perceptive lens for American society and culture. This course will examine significant periods and players of the 20th century comedic genre and analyze them against their historic context and legacy. Humor will be used as a platform to discuss how comedy was governed by and ultimately responded to the influence of American society. This course will observe how comedians in turn shaped American life, running the gamut from silent movies to Vaudeville; screwball comedies of the 1930s and ‘40s to the Golden Age of Television; from the sitcom to the political comedies of present day. Equally important, this course will analyze the genesis and evolution of the comedic persona in performance: what worked, what did not work, and why. Comprehensive analysis of performances will help this course determine how performers did what they did and why they made the choices they made. This course will assess how the work of the comedian has evolved and grown over the course of a career, what methods have withstood the test of time, and why.

Undergraduate

Class #
Section #
Meets

Class #: 2436
Section #: 001
Meets: TR 6-9:15p


Class #: 2437
Section #: 060
Meets: TR 6-9:15p

Expressive Culture Liberal Arts & Sciences - Electives Summer 2025 Summer 2026 Undergraduate

Traditions in Narrative (FMTV-UT 1031)

This course surveys narrative forms and representative works from literature that employ them, contributing to a familiarity with the literary tradition inherited by film, television, and radio. It examines the various strategies of narrative structure and its principal components (e.g., plot, theme, character, imagery, symbolism, point of view) with an attempt to connect these with contemporary forms of media expression. The course includes extensive readings, which are examined in discussions, and selected from English, American, and world literature. This course may be allocated to either History & Criticism or Gen Ed Humanities for Film & TV majors.

Undergraduate

Class #
Section #
Meets

Class #: 12803
Section #: 001
Meets: W 2-5:10p

Expressive Culture Liberal Arts & Sciences - Electives Spring 2025 Spring 2026 Undergraduate
Spring 2023

Arts & War Seminar: (ASPP-UT 1046)

Art and War: Battle Lines of the Graphic Novel This course explores storytelling about war through the use of the graphic novel. Students will be introduced to both recent and historically significant comics about war. Our goal is to gain a deeper understanding of the interplay between image and text in sequential art, and the ability to critically analyze graphic novels that deal with challenging subject matter. What are the methodological and ethical issues that arise when constructing sequential narratives of war? What are the varying strengths between war narratives that are autobiographical, documentary or fictional? Is there something unique about the format of graphic novels that enables artists to tell a different kind of war story than filmmakers, musicians or performers? How do comic books circulate culturally, and how might this expand or limit their ability to inform our understandings of war? We will explore these questions through close readings, robust discussions and careful written analysis of well-known works by Art Spiegelman, Marjane Satrapi and Joe Sacco, as well as graphic novels by Keiji Nakazawa, Jason Lutes, Gipi, Emmanuel Guibert and others.

Ctr for Art, Society & Pub Pol (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Sections (Spring 2023)

ASPP-UT 1046-000 (22204)01/23/2023 – 05/08/2023 Mon12:00 AM – 3:00 PM (Early afternoon)at Washington SquareInstructed by Hebert, Patrick

Expressive Culture Undergraduate
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.

Open Arts Curriculum (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Expressive Culture General Elective 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 #: 15384
Section #: 001
Meets: R 6-10p


Class #: 15385
Section #: 002
Meets: T 9:15-10:30a


Class #: 15386
Section #: 003
Meets: T 10:45a-12p

Expressive Culture Spring 2025 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