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Conversations in the Global Music Business: Learning from the Past and Forging the Future (REMU-UT 9810)

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.

Recorded Music (Undergraduate)
2 credits – 14 Weeks

Sections (Fall 2025)

REMU-UT 9810-000 (10716)
08/28/2025 – 12/04/2025 Wed
5:00 PM – 7:00 PM (Late afternoon)
at NYU Berlin (Global)
Instructed by Gonsher, Aaron

Fall 2025 Undergraduate

Berlin’s Modern History & Culture: A European Perspective (GERM-UA 9225)

Credits: 4
Duration: 14 Weeks
Dates: Mon

Power and culture are intimately interwoven in the social history and the material substance of modern Berlin. This interdisciplinary course explores the changing historical contours of the keywords of Kultur (culture), Geist (spirit), Technik (technology), Bildung (education), Arbeit (work) and Macht (power) and contestations over their meanings. Through applying an interdisciplinary approach that integrates literature, film, art, architecture, and philosophy, we interrogate how meaning is made individually and collectively. We will look at how relationships between individual identities, state power, and social norms were shaped in the context of recurrent political and economic crisis and rupture and ask how changing local, national, supranational, and global contexts influence how meanings are made. Paying attention to possibilities and constraints for negotiating the terms of everyday life and for conforming or resisting, we will trace how Berliners made and make sense of their lives and the world they participate in shaping.

German (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks

Spring 2026 Undergraduate
Summer 2024

Berlin: Capital of Modernity (IDSEM-UG 9104)

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.

Interdisciplinary Seminars (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 6 Weeks

Sections (Summer 2024)

IDSEM-UG 9104-000 (3987)
at NYU Berlin (Global)
Instructed by Hornick, Karen · Smoler, Fredric

Cultures and Contexts Undergraduate

Interdisciplinary Projects: Guided Practice (ART-UE 9921)

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.

Studio Art (Undergraduate)
3 credits – 14 Weeks

Sections (Fall 2025)

ART-UE 9921-000 (10702)
08/28/2025 – 12/04/2025 Wed
2:00 PM – 5:00 PM (Early afternoon)
at NYU Berlin (Global)
Instructed by Komarov, Aleksander

Fall 2025 IMA Electives Undergraduate