Construction of Authenticity in Contemporary Art (INTM-SHU 201T)

The possibility of truth telling has been challenged and debated throughout the history of art and across various genres. What does it mean to tell the truth in art? How does art cross the boundaries between the real and the fake, truthfulness and misrepresentation? This course will examine social engagement in art and the construction of authenticity in creating works based on trust rather than the truth and will investigate a variety of artistic sources and genres including, but not limited to, propaganda, documentary, video art, public art, and installation art. Students are expected to develop projects demonstrating a comprehensive understanding of the subject. Prerequisite: Interactive Lab, Communication Lab, Application Lab or permission of instructor Fulfillment: IMA/IMB elective.

Interactive Media Arts (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Artificial Intelligence (CSCI-UA 9472)

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

There are many cognitive tasks that people can do easily and almost unconsciously but that have proven extremely difficult to program on a computer. Artificial intelligence is the problem of developing computer systems that can carry out these tasks. We will focus on three central areas in AI: representation and reasoning, machine learning, and natural language processing.

Computer Science (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks

Design Projects (PHTI-UT 1020)

Prerequisite: Photography & Imaging: Multimedia or permission by the department. This is an intense design class for the crossover creature who yearns to design their own exhibit, create a street poster, develop an ad campaign, design titles for a film, invent a visual identity for a musical score, etc. This will be a hands-on process-driven class that will push you to imagine, create, and produce. Students must know InDesign.

Photography and Imaging (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks

Sections (Fall 2025)


PHTI-UT 1020-000 (16107)09/02/2025 – 12/11/2025 Mon2:00 PM – 5:00 PM (Early afternoon)at Washington SquareInstructed by Cuomo, Yolanda

Race, Football and American Culture (SCA-UA 153)

This interdisciplinary course explores the evolution of American football into a mirror of black life and politics and a reflection of race relations in American culture. Students will examine the growth of black players since the NFL was integrated in the late Sixties. Student writing and research will explore the growth of football as a vehicle and model for black protest and support for movements such as Black Lives Matter. Students will go to two football games this semester. The focus will also include a study of the segregated American Football League and its integration of the NFL.

Social and Cultural Analysis (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Queer NYC (SCA-UA 421)

How queer is New York City? How do queerness and the city shape each other? This course crosses time and space, examining the history, politics and culture of the Big Apple. Ranging from Harlem to Times Square to Greenwich Village to Park Avenue, and beyond Manhattan to Queens, Brooklyn and Fire Island outposts, we follow people and money, high and underground culture, protests and politics. Materials include fiction and poetry, music, theater and performance, photography and film, and works of urban studies, history and ethnography. Assignments may include archival research and digital cartographic work.

Social and Cultural Analysis (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Approaches to Latinx Studies (SCA-UA 501)

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.

Social and Cultural Analysis (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Approaches to Metropolitan Studies (SCA-UA 601)

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.

Social and Cultural Analysis (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Filming Asian America: Documenting Community (SCA-UA 361)

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.

Social and Cultural Analysis (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Race & Reproduction (SCA-UA 158)

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.

Social and Cultural Analysis (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Elementary Yoruba I (SCA-UA 182)

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.

Social and Cultural Analysis (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Sections (Fall 2021)


SCA-UA 182-000 (9690)09/02/2021 – 12/14/2021 Mon,Wed,Fri9:00 AM – 10:00 AM (Morning)at Washington SquareInstructed by Mabayoje, Moses

Landcapes of Consumption (SCA-UA 625)

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.

Social and Cultural Analysis (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Introduction to Native American and Indigenous Studies: The Politics of Indigeneity (SCA-UA 747)

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.

Social and Cultural Analysis (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

French/African Relations (SCA-UA 9914)

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.

Social and Cultural Analysis (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks

Sections (Fall 2025)


SCA-UA 9914-000 (11448)09/01/2025 – 12/09/2025 Mon3:00 PM – 6:00 PM (Late afternoon)at NYU Paris (Global)Instructed by Taraud, Christelle

Community Empowerment (SCA-UA 613)

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.

Social and Cultural Analysis (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Elementary Cantonese I (SCA-UA 331)

An introduction to Cantonese with an emphasis on the spoken and written language and conversational proficiency as a primary goal. Emphasizes grammar, listening comprehension, and oral expressions. Designed to give beginning students a practical command of the language. Upon completion of the course, students can expect to converse in simple sentences and recognize An introduction to Cantonese with an emphasis on the spoken and written language and conversational proficiency as a primary goal. Emphasizes grammar, listening comprehension, and oral expressions. Designed to give beginning students a practical command of the language. Upon completion of the course, students can expect to converse in simple sentences and recognize and write about 350 Chinese characters. Students with passable conversational ability or native speakers from Cantonese-speaking communities should not enroll in this course.

Social and Cultural Analysis (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Intermediate Cantonese I (SCA-UA 333)

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.

Social and Cultural Analysis (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Sections (Fall 2022)


SCA-UA 333-000 (8389)

Constitution and People of Color (SCA-UA 366)

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.

Social and Cultural Analysis (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks