This course explores the origins of Islam and the development of its rituals and doctrines to the 21st century. It assumes no previous background in Islamic studies. Students will learn about topics such as the Koran and the Prophet, Islamic law, the encounter of East and West during the Crusades, and Islam in Britain. They will find out how Muslims in different regions have interpreted and lived their religion in past and present. Readings will include not only scholarly works but also material from primary sources, for example the Koran, biographies and chronicles. The course consists of a combination of lectures, seminar discussions, field trips and includes other media, such as film.
How do children come to know right from wrong? Do we enter the world as blank moral slates who must learn right and wrong, or are we born with an innate moral sense? How do parents, peers, school, culture, and the media influence and shape our moral development? To answer these questions, this course explores the science of morality, a burgeoning field that has emerged at the intersection of developmental, social, and evolutionary psychology, philosophy, and neuroscience, and now forms a core component of the scientific study of human nature. In this course, we first define morality and learn about how it is studied scientifically. We then talk about babies, beasts, and brains, and what research with each of these can tell us about morality, where it comes from, and how it develops during childhood. Next, we consider in more detail the role of parents, peers, school, and society in shaping moral development from infancy to adulthood. We will consider how today’s youth negotiate the challenges of the modern world, including bullying in school and on the Internet, the influence of the media and popular culture, and hate and prejudice.
This course investigates current transformations in the food systems and cultures of London under conditions of globalization. A people’s diet is dependent on their geography, although no people on earth eat everything edible in their environment, and they seek distant stimulants that their locales cannot support. Through lectures, readings, field trips students will master established facts and concepts about contemporary urban food cultures and produce new knowledge of the same.
Children and adolescents suffer worldwide from significant mental health stressors, but how mental health and illness are perceived and addressed varies greatly around the world. The first part of the course will provide a brief overview of human rights, child development, social determinants of mental health, trauma and resilience, and the global public health significance of mental illness. Using this framework, the impact of selected salient cross-cultural factors affecting mental health (i.e. poverty, war and conflict, and gender-based exploitation) on children’s development and wellbeing will be studied. Throughout the course, various perspectives will be considered, while dominant paradigms will be recognized and critically examined. Lastly, the course will conclude on a pragmatic level—deliberating specific settings, available resources, barriers, and preventative proposals. Selected case studies from the Americas, Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East will be used to illustrate key concepts. Through lectures, readings, documentaries, and active discussion this course will provide an engaging forum to consider and debate child and adolescent mental health issues globally.
This course bridges scholarly and professional training by providing students with an intensive introduction to the world of contemporary literature: its writers, its communities, and its organizations and institutions. Built around the English Department’s Contemporary Literature Series (CLS), which brings noted authors who are on course syllabi that semester to the NYU campus, the focus of the CLS Lab varies each semester depending on the featured authors. Some of the topics to be explored include: literary publishing, forums for literary discussion and criticism, literary organizations and institutions, and the possibilities and challenges of writing scholarly literary criticism about contemporary literature. By the end of the CLS Lab, students will have a firm grasp of the contemporary literary landscape and they will be better prepared to translate their interests and skills as English majors into the intellectual and professional contexts of the literary world.
This course is designed to work in three ways. First, it is an opportunity to learn about London’s architecture and history by physically exploring the city’s historic and modern built environment. Second, this class is an introduction to sketching and keeping a travel notebook, a fulfilling skill that any liberal arts student should experience. Third, and perhaps most important, this course teaches students how to ‘read’ a building and a town or city. The ability to visually make sense of the built environment of this major capital should help in understanding the architecture of New York City and other towns and cities throughout the world. Our course is formed of a series of site visits through London’s extraordinary and diverse environment, considering significant architectural developments from many periods, while learning to record and describe what we see. We will study the architectural vocabulary of London and learn how to accurately and elegantly depict buildings and places in both word and image. Please note that it is very important that students attend the first class, which covers the introductory information, lecture and drawing session.
This is a course that explores the relationship between ideas, the body and the way that fashion can be understood to mediate between the two. Through a range of disciplines and media this course considers the body as an aspect of not only medical and scientific exploration, but crucially as a vital element of culture and society. Bodies affect the ways in which the social world and power relations are organized, and they even arguably condition the way that we understand reality itself. Our physical form is constantly shaped according to both philosophies and fashions. Body ideals and broader ideals often interrelate strongly through bodily practices and with what we wear. There are meanings and fashions in all bodily forms (skinny, buxom, muscular, ideas of ’whiteness’) and body practices (dieting, hair management, cleansing rituals, plastic surgery and genital cutting). Over the sessions, we will take a conceptual approach to fashion, as a strident condition of modern life, that incorporates politics, science and aesthetics and we will closely read a number of cultural texts against a number of theoretical models. Attitudes towards the body can vary widely according to historical period, and this course will explore how, in different moments, and via different media, we have been preoccupied with the aesthetics of different body zones, with displaying identity (gender, class and ethnicity), and also with power. Different cultural forms (literary, visual, material etc) will provide the focus of our discussions as they all engage with the different ways that we make meaning out of our bodies. Students will be invited to investigate in their written work set texts from class in addition to primary material of their own choice.
THIS COURSE TAKES PLACE AT NYU-LONDON: The Global Fashion Industry and British Fashion aims to introduce fashion history and theory in its contemporary social and cultural context. The course will examine various aspects of the fashion industry and offer an understanding of critical concepts such as social identity, consumer culture and globalization. Students will explore aspects of the British fashion industry, including fashion media, retail environments, fashion exhibitions and the impact of sub and counter culture.
Gateway course to the major that introduces students to the demands and pleasures of university-level investigation of English literature. Develops the tools necessary for advanced criticism: close-reading skills, knowledge of generic conventions, mastery of critical terminology, and skill at a variety of modes of analysis, from the formal to the historical. Also emphasizes frequent writing.
This course will study a variety of texts written at particular times in the history of London. The aims of the course are to encourage the student to think historically, in terms of the way London and representations of the city have changed and developed over time; and theoretically, in terms of the way the city is mediated through different forms and genres (e.g. poetry, novels, essays, film; satire, detective and crime fiction), and the interrelationship of literary and material spaces. We will also examine the significance of gender, the definition of the modern metropolis as a labyrinthine city of Babylon, the influence of metropolitan culture on Modernism and Modernity, assimilation versus multiculturalism, immigration, and the effects of new modern spaces on individuals.
With an emphasis on British and European news and journalism, this course explores globalization from a wide range of theoretical frameworks including political economy, cultural analysis, theories of representation, and critical race and postcolonial studies. It considers how technologies, diasporic and transnational communities, and international institutions impact global communications, and how these networks and organizations are challenging, re-imagining and re-shaping social, cultural and geographic boundaries via mediated discourse.
This course evaluates marketing as a system for the satisfaction of human wants and a catalyst of business activity. It presents a comprehensive framework that includes a) researching and analyzing customers, company, competition, and the marketing environment, b) identifying and targeting attractive segments with strategic positioning, and c) making product, pricing, communication, and distribution decisions. Cases and examples are utilized to develop problem-solving abilities.
This course provides an introduction to the dramatic work of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Students read and attend representative comedies, tragedies, and histories, their selection to be determined by the plays actually in production in and around London, particularly at the Barbican, New Globe, and Stratford to which at least one excursion will be made. Special attention will be given to the playhouses and the influence they had on the art of the theatre, actors’ companies, and modes of production and performance. Lectures and discussions will focus on the aesthetic quality of the plays, their relationship with the audiences (then and now), the application of the diverse attitudes and assumptions of modern critical theory to the Elizabethan stage, the contrasting structures of Shakespearean and non-Shakespearean drama, the new emphasis on selfhood and individuality, and the major themes of hierarchy, order, and justice, the conflict of Nature and Fortune, the role of Providence, the ideals of love, and the norms of social accord. Opportunities will be given to investigate the interrelations of the plays and other arts, including film, opera, and ballet.
The principal aim of this course is to familiarize students with the history of British art from the Stuarts to the early Victorian era. Teaching will be conducted entirely on sites in London or its immediate vicinity. The course will begin with the elite patronage of the Stuart court and end with the development of public institutions of art from the mid-eighteenth century. The social significance of portraiture, the cult of antiquity, the art market and the rise of landscape will all be studied as themes. There will be a strong emphasis on the European sources of British visual culture and the emergence of a distinctive national tradition of painting from Hogarth through to Turner.
To provide an understanding of the main immigration trends in Britain, France and Germany since 1850 To provide an understanding of the problems attending the social and political integration of immigrants in contemporary Western Europe To compare the experience and understanding of immigration in Europe with the experience and understanding of immigration in the United States To examine the ways in which the memory of immigration is represented in literature and contemporary culture.
The course will begin with an examination of the background to and condition of Europe in 1945. The outbreak of the Cold War and the division of Europe will be discussed as will the promotion of European unity, the establishment of NATO and the emergence of COMECON and the Warsaw Pact. The pressures leading to the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC) will be considered together with the firm establishment of the democratic principle in Western Europe. The Suez Crisis and Decolonisation in Britain and France will be explored together with the corollary, the first application by Britain for membership of the EEC. The effect of President de Gaulle’s presidency on France, NATO and the EEC will be considered. The end of Stalinism in the USSR will be examined as will the first cracks in the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe in Hungary and Poland. This will be followed by a discussion of the merits and demerits of Khrushchev’s period in power, the U2 crisis and the construction of the Berlin Wall. The Prague Spring off 1968 will be discussed. The continued integration of Europe will be analyzed together with the impact of Ostpolitik in Germany. Brezhnev’s domination of the USSR and Détente in the 1970s will be examined. Following this, the forces that led to the triumph of Neo-Liberalism in Britain will be considered, as will the return of conservatism in Germany and the cohabitation of Mitterrand’s France. The re-launch of the European Community in the 1980s will be analysed. In Eastern Europe the Gorbachev era and the rise of Solidarność will be explored and the course will conclude with an examination of the disintegration of the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe, the reunification of Germany, the collapse of the Soviet state and the conclusion of the Maastricht Treaty.
The kinds, dynamics, causes, and treatment of psychopathology. Topics include early concepts of abnormal behavior; affective disorders, anxiety disorders, psychosis, and personality disorders; the nature and effectiveness of traditional and modern methods of psychotherapy; and viewpoints of major psychologists past and present.
Study of the politics of Britain, Ireland, France, and Germany. Compares the historical origins of these systems and analyzes their institutions as manifestations of their social and political culture and traditions. Treats each country’s current politics and political trends. Attempts to introduce the basic concepts of comparative political analysis in developing cross-cultural theory.
The course description for this Topics in Politics course varies depending on the topic taught. Please view the course descriptions in the course notes section below.
This course examines the growth and importance of London from the Roman invasion of 43 AD to the present day. Students will learn about London’s changing economic and political role, and will understand how London grew to dominate the commerce, industry and culture of England. They will find out how London became the biggest city the world had ever known, and how it coped (or failed to cope) with the social and environmental problems created by its enormous size. The classroom sessions will be divided between a lecture and a class discussion. From week two onwards the class will begin with a discussion of the topic or period covered in the previous week‚s lecture, in which students will be expected to use knowledge and ideas gathered from lectures and from their weekly reading. There will also be four walking tours of parts of London which relate to the period we are studying at a particular time.
The nineteenth century was the great age of the English novel. This course charts the evolution of the form during this period, exploring texts by major authors including Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, George Eliot and Thomas Hardy. Close attention to narrative, questions of mimesis and publishing practices will combine with the exploration of a range of significant contemporary discourses relating to shifting conceptions of gender, sexuality, religion, science, class, and race. These varied contexts will help us to consider formal, stylistic and thematic continuities as well as discontinuities and innovations. Taking advantage of our local surroundings, we will also explore changing representations of London and trace the enduring legacy of this period in the twenty-first-century city.
THIS COURSE TAKES PLACE AT NYU-LONDON. This course offers a survey of key aspects of British fashion from 1500 to the present day, including womenswear, menswear, accessories, and more. We will examine selected features of producing, consuming, and representing dress, relating important shifts in fashion to historical developments in areas such as trade, economics, politics, and visual culture. Students will study examples of historical clothing as well as depictions of it, and become familiar with a variety of methodological approaches to its study. The majority of classes will take place in Bedford Square, London, and be formed of illustrative lectures, class activities, discussion of set readings, and student presentations. Each lecture is described in the syllabus and includes discussion questions, required as well as recommended readings, and recommended films. Several classes will take place on location, at museums and archives, and will explore important collections of British dress and of British everyday life and fashionable consumption.
The Black Atlantic considered as a socio-cultural and economic space from the 15th-century first arrival of Africans in the ’New World,’ through the rise of slavery in the Americas, continuing on to slave emancipation and decolonization in the 19th and 20th centuries, and concluding with contemporary black life in the Atlantic world. Traces the origins and importance of the concept of the Black Atlantic in the context of European imperial expansion and the transformation of indigenous structures of governance in the Americas, paying special attention to shifting social relations that shaped community formation among people of African descent and laid the foundations for political and economic institutions. Topics include: civilization, slavery, colonialism, capitalism, freedom, and justice, approached through focused engagement with African enslavement and settlement in Africa and the Americas; the development of transatlantic racial capitalism; variations in politics and culture between empires in the Atlantic world; creolization, plantation slavery, and slave society; the politics and culture of the enslaved; the Haitian Revolution; slave emancipation; and contemporary black Atlantic politics and racial capitalism.
The course description for this Topics in CORE course varies depending on where the course is taught. Please view the course descriptions in the course notes section below.
Contemporary Art in Britian. Contemporary art raises vigorous debate and criticism. But what is contemporary about contemporary art? We consider some key issues in dealing critically with contemporary art with a focus on work on display in exhibitions in London, both major national collections and private galleries, exploring art produced since the late 1950s through case studies of the work of individual artists and through themes which include photography, representations of the body, gallery display, video practice, and installation art. Topics include how contemporary art came to look as it does, with a focus on British art; the different forms of material and presentation artists have employed; why and how diverse audiences are addressed; and how markets, national prizes, and private collections shape the kinds of art produced and inform public taste. We also look at the collection and display of contemporary art, on a private and a public scale; dealer galleries, and issues of curation. Critical and historical writings by artists and theorists will be considered.
Introduces students to the study of media, culture, and communication. The course surveys models, theories, and analytical perspectives that form the basis of study in the major. Topics include dialogue, discourse, mass and interpersonal communication, political economy, language, subject-formation, critical theory, experience, and reception. Liberal Arts Core/CORE Equivalent for Societies and the Social Sciences.
A veritable buzzword globalization refers to several newly emerged trends. To name the three most visible ones these are the economy, culture and politics. Media do not only describe and interpret globalization but also are its important part. A study of globalization is inherently diverse and eclectic. So is this course. Students will read, watch, analyze and discuss. In class discussions and writings they are expected to engage questions connected to globalization, culture and the media. Through a series of lectures and discussions the course explores how the process of globalization transforms the media and examines the impact of new technologies on global communications. Emphasizing the transnational context of media and culture the course approaches global media and cultural production from a wide range of theoretical frameworks relevant to contemporary condition.
A site to help IMA NY students find equivalent courses
For 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 for you. Your program structure is noted on your academic advising spreadsheet.
Students on the new program structure can search the Interchange for courses. If you’re looking for “IMA Major Distribution” courses, you'll find them listed here: