Some of the most thrilling, momentous, and terrible events of the 1900s occurred in Berlin, which present tales of warning and inspiration to the present century. This four-week interdisciplinary seminar tracks these major events and traces change through the study of primary materials (literature, film, art, buildings, music, political discourse) and secondary readings drawn from a range of disciplines including history, sociology, philosophy, and critical theory. Berlin’s streets, buildings, memorials, and cultural monuments offer cautionary tales about the folly of nationalist ambition; inspiring sagas of intellectual and physical courage; cold testimonials of crime and retribution; lyrical ballads of brutal honesty; personal records of hope and despair. From one perspective, all of these narratives are episodes in an epic whose grand and central scene is World War II; this is the point of view to be adopted in this course. Students will take in many of the sights and sounds of old and contemporary Berlin but will focus on the involvement of twentieth-century, Berlin-based politicians, activists, artists, architects, bohemians, writers, and intellectuals with the causes, experience, and consequences of World War II. Our period of study begins just before the outbreak of World War I and ends during the astonishing building boom of the post-Wall 1990s and early 2000s.
This course provides space and guidance for students to work on self-driven, individual and group projects in art and media. Course content consists of texts, site visits, presentations, workshops, and critiques built around each student’s individual practice. Faculty and guest critics will hold regular studio visits, to help guide students through their process. Students’ material and technical investigations and theoretical inquiries will be addressed in group workshops and demonstrations. This course will culminate in a public presentation of students’ work.
The history of Germany in the twentieth century offers rich material to explore various approaches to organizing modern society. Beginning with Imperial Germany in 1900 and moving forward to today’s reunited Germany, we will look at different ways in which the relationship between the state and the individual, and relationship between politics, economy, and society developed over five different political systems. We will interrogate how these institutional arrangements were envisioned and structured and how they were experienced in everyday negotiations. In this course, principle narratives and events will be situated in a European and global context, allowing us to place the concept of German modernity in a comparative framework. Lectures will provide an overview of Germany in the twentieth century; readings and in-class discussions will explore different approaches to analyzing German history and society. During museum visits and walking tours, we will analyze contestations over the various attempts to integrate – both in concerted efforts to memorialize as well as to forget and erase – Germany’s oft-problematic pasts within the narrative of Germany’s present.
This interdisciplinary course examines the works of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, three German speaking writers who pioneered radically different and influential interpretations of modern life, which continue to shape our contemporary understanding of society and individuality. The seminar not only delves into the origins of these prominent traditions of modern Western thought, but also underscores their relevance in modern social theories and poetics. Hence, the course will also include references to the writings of their contemporaries, as well as explications of the direct and indirect influences of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud on other writers.
With sales of more than 1.3 billion, the German recorded music market is the third largest in the world: it is larger than the UK music market and behind only the USA and Japan. Beyond just numbers, the Berlin music business is unique: it’s home to hundreds of powerful independent and D.I.Y. record labels; it’s historically been ground zero for innovative electronic and dance music; and it’s a burgeoning tech hub for innovative software/hardware companies like Native Instruments, Ableton and Soundcloud. In this colloquium series, students will meet and hear each week from key creative entrepreneurial figures and innovators in the German and European music business. This course has several purposes. First, students will consider how ongoing economic and technological changes might be impacting the worldwide music business, as speakers discuss controversial trends like the rise of cryptocurrency, block chain and cashless systems, customization technologies like 3D printing and developments in robotics, and radical, disruptive approaches to copyright. Second, students will develop a greater understanding of the chief similarities and differences between the traditional European and US music business operations, particularly with regard to label operations, publishing and copyright, touring and festivals, and nightlife promotion. Third, students will become more informed about the D.I.Y. music business in Berlin itself, as they hear from speakers about the promises and challenges one faces in launching innovative music start ups in Germany. And finally, students will get to meet and network with key movers and shakers in the Berlin scene, past and present. In anticipation for a guest class visit, students may be required to investigate websites, read biographical or contextual material, or attend events outside of class time. Students will be expected to ask informed questions of the guests and to develop responses throughout the course of the class. Students should leave the class with a greater understanding of how the European and German music businesses work and how they themselves might make a business or sales impact on a global scale.
How do social movements form in response to environmental concerns? What makes them effective or ineffective? This course analyses the various social movements that organized in response to environmental concerns. Both historical and sociological dimensions of environmental movements are covered, with particular attention given to how issues of environmental protection and social justice intersect. At NYU Berlin, the course includes American (I), European, and in particular German (II), as well as global movements (III).
Composition & Conversation is designed for post-intermediate students of German who have a solid grasp of German grammar and vocabulary and wish to extend their knowledge of the German language, history, and culture through reading, watching films, discussions, and writing. Conversation & Composition is a reading- and writing-intensive course. Emphasis will be placed on refining written expression and developing the ability to express, discuss, and argue opinions.This course will give you an overview of recent German political, social and cultural history after 1945 and onwards. Focus will be placed on moments of social criticism and changes – from the youth cultures in the 50s and 80s to the women’s movement and ecological protests, from love happenings and terrorism to mass demonstrations and the fall of the wall. During the course, we will explore narratives that are related to our topics from a variety of genres: newspaper/magazine articles, TV/radio documentaries, music, film, photography, and other visual material. The class is taught entirely in German and emphasizes the language skills necessary to communicate effectively in a foreign language speaking, reading, viewing, writing, and listening.
The rapid expansion of urban areas is the major driving force of global environmental change. As most urban landscapes expand in number and size, their inhabitants place increasing demands on resources and energy. These demands pose great challenges for ensuring human welfare and protecting biodiversity. Urban land use change has always been a question for urban planners and researchers, but understanding contemporary competition for urban land and associated resources is perhaps more urgent than ever. The inflow of large numbers of migrants, not only from the rural counterparts of larger cities but also from all over the world, poses new challenges to environmental processes and the functioning of urban systems. A critical question emerges: how can we sustainably integrate new migrants into large urban areas without compromising the environmental wellbeing and livelihood of existing local populations? Urban development concepts like smart growth, eco-cities and sponge cities have previously grappled with this question; through them, researchers, urban planners, architects, and other professionals have imagined new forms and functions for buildings, material infrastructure, and open or vegetated spaces. The central challenge is to improve the resilience capacity of urban landscapes. Here, the notion that cities themselves may be reinvented in more ecologically vital ways portends to offer solutions to the dire environmental stresses that climate change, natural resource scarcity, and geopolitical instability promise. There is an important interdisciplinary dimension to this challenge: different stakeholders speak different scientific and functional languages. This course emphasizes inter- and trans-disciplinary approaches in an effort to highlight the multiple and distinct knowledge forms and data types relevant to understanding linkages between landscape structure, landscape function, and urban socio-natural transformation.
Berlin is a unique modern Metropolis. Its alternating history with often drastic changes offers a comprehensive background to explore and investigate the nature of architecture in correlation to the various developmental processes of urban life and culture. Architecture is embedded in the urban fabric in which place and time serve as the main threads, constantly changing their multifaceted and layered relationships. This urban fabric provides the fertile soil for urban life and culture, which literally takes place in various scales between the public and the private realm, two further threads intertwined in the urban fabric. Experiencing the city through walking is essential for learning how to observe, see and read “Place, Building and Time” in Berlin. Tours will alternate with classroom discussions and workshops.
After its reunification, Berlin gained a well-deserved reputation as an ‘anything-goes’ cultural playground. But just as radical cultural experimentation was leading to the city’s techno Renaissance, the same urban frontier was quietly transforming into a hotbed for new business ideas around tech. Companies like Ableton, Native Instruments, and SoundCloud started in the city and grew from headquarters there into leaders in the field of music technology. They join other world leaders in music tech around Europe, like Spotify, Deezer, Mixcloud, Focusrite/Novation, and Propellerhead. Berlin is quickly becoming known as a world-class hub for innovative tech start-ups and progressive developments in emergent media. This class, open to all students, shines a light on key Berlin-based entrepreneurial figures and innovators in music technology, with a focus on those successful individuals who have launched recognized or profitable music-focused startups. The idea is for students, many of whom are aspiring entrepreneurs, to hear directly from, and ask questions directly to, established Berlin based tech entrepreneurs, in moderated conversation. In anticipation for a guest class visit, students may be required to investigate websites, read biographical or contextual material, or attend events outside of class time. Students will be expected to ask informed questions of the guests and to develop responses throughout the course of the class. All events and speakers are subject to change.
This unique course introduces students to innovative and cutting-edge technologies sound, video, and interfaces that are changing the way music is performed, produced and received. Music and creative technologies have shifted in the last years from preset-focused black-box devices to open and hackable hard- and software. Examples are MaxMSP (Ableton), the Kinect Motion sensor, VR Platforms or open source music instruments like Korg’s Mono series, little bits or bastl. This shift enables artists today to understand the inner workings of instruments better and engage a very different working process: these days, devices can more easily be created and manipulated, forming future tools and creating a rich variety of different media. The course consists of both a theoretical and a hands-on part, and has a workshop component. No special knowledge like programming or electronic skills is presupposed. As this course is intended for students from different disciplines, the content will flexibly be adapted to the level of knowledge of the students, especially for students with little or no technical background.
This interdisciplinary course examines the works of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, three German-speaking writers who pioneered radically different and influential interpretations of modern life, which continue to shape our contemporary understanding of society and individuality. The seminar not only delves into the origins of these prominent traditions of modern Western thought, but also underscores their relevance in modern social theories and poetics. Hence, the course will also include references to the writings of their contemporaries, as well as explications of the direct and indirect influences of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud on other writers.
The contemporary art world is a convoluted interplay of aesthetics & economics; ego & idealism. How can an emerging artist navigate its layers & idiosyncrasies? Through readings of theory & criticism, lectures, discussions, site visits, guest speakers, & student responses in the form of multimedia projects and art writing, this course explores contemporary art’s mechanisms & current discourse, always keeping Berlin’s local context in mind.
Wall labels, audio guides and informative maps are just some of the ways galleries and museums convey additional information about an art collection. How can we utilize new interactive mixed reality tools to design and deliver immersive experiences that breathe new life into an exhibit. Augmented and virtual reality are powerful tools for new media production and storytelling, but how can these tools serve to enhance our Wall labels, audio guides and informative maps are just some of the ways galleries and museums convey additional information about an art collection. How can we utilize new interactive mixed reality tools to design and deliver immersive experiences that breathe new life into an exhibit. Augmented and virtual reality are powerful tools for new media production and storytelling, but how can these tools serve to enhance our gallery experience without distracting from the power and importance of a pre-existing collection? This production course seeks to experiment with new ways to experience a museum collection through mixed reality. Topics covered include exhibition installation and curation, mixed reality production in Unity, mobile development for Augmented Reality.
A site for IMA NY Students to find equivalent courses outside of IMA NY
For most students joining IMA in Fall 2022 and beyond, our new program structure affects the categorization of courses on this site.
Classes listed in the "IMA Major Electives" categories refer to the old IMA program structure. If you're under the new IMA program structure, these courses count as general IMA Electives.
You can still search the Interchange for most of your courses. You can find "IMA Major Distribution" courses listed here: