Archives

Fall 2023 Spring 2020

Animal Minds (ANST-UA 410)

This course examines the philosophy of cognitive ethology and comparative psychology. We begin by discussing the nature of animal minds. Are animals conscious? Do they experience pain? Do they have beliefs? Do they use language? Are they self-conscious? How can we know? This involves applying concepts from metaphysics and epistemology to research in cognitive ethology and comparative psychology. We then discuss more general questions like: Are animals agents? Do they have free will? Do they live meaningful lives? Do they have moral rights? This involves applying concepts from ethics, existentialism, and other areas of philosophy to our conclusions about animal minds. Finally, we also ask, along the way, how research on animal minds can affect our philosophical theories. For example, should we revise our theories of consciousness, language, agency, morality, and so on if they seem to have implausible implications about animals?

Animal Studies (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks

Sections (Fall 2023)

ANST-UA 410-000 (23049)09/05/2023 – 12/15/2023 Wed4:00 PM – 7:00 PM (Late afternoon)at Washington SquareInstructed by Franks, Becca

Liberal Arts & Sciences - Electives Societies & the Social Sciences Undergraduate
Spring 2019

History and the Novel (AHSEM-UA 235)

What can novels based on historic events tell us? What sorts of insights can they provide that journalism and works of pure history cannot? How much imaginative leeway should the author of a historic novel be allowed – and how closely should she stick to “true” events? In this course we’ll read a wide range of novels-looking at them both as literature and as keys to history-on topics that include slavery in the U.S., post-apartheid South Africa, McCarthyism, the 9/11 terror attacks, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Advanced Honors Seminars (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Sections (Spring 2019)

AHSEM-UA 235-000 (24462)01/28/2019 – 05/13/2019 Wed3:00 PM – 6:00 PM (Late afternoon)at Washington SquareInstructed by

Liberal Arts & Sciences - Electives Undergraduate
Fall 2022

Advanced Lab: Web Page to Web Space (INTM-SHU 304)

Web Page to Web Space is a course that explores virtual interactive experience in the context of Virtual Embodiment, Virtual Space, Telepresence, and Metaverse. Students will investigate new possible ways of using the Web to create new immersive environments in a web platform, by utilizing algorithmic 3D animation and server-side programming. This is an advanced course with technically challenging concepts with three.js and node.js and suitable for students with prior knowledge in visual programming. Prerequisite: Nature of Code or Machine Learning for New Interfaces or Critical Data and Visualization or ABC Browser Circus or Kinetic Interfaces or Machine Learning for Artists and Designers or Expanded Web or Movement Practices and Computing. Fulfillment: IMA/IMB Elective, Advanced IMA Elective.

Interactive Media Arts (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Sections (Fall 2022)

INTM-SHU 304-000 (17318)09/05/2022 – 12/16/2022 Tue4:00 PM – 7:00 PM (Late afternoon)at ShanghaiInstructed by Moon, Jung Hyun

IMA Electives IMA Electives (Legacy Structure - Programming & Data) Undergraduate
Fall 2021

Food Management Theory (NUTR-UE 91)

Organization and management of commercial and institutional food service facilities in hotels, restaurants, and educational and community program sites.

Nutrition & Dietetics (Undergraduate)
3 credits – 15 Weeks

Sections (Fall 2021)

NUTR-UE 91-000 (13048)09/02/2021 – 12/14/2021 Tue,Thu9:00 AM – 10:00 AM (Morning)at Washington SquareInstructed by Zagor, Stephen

NUTR-UE 91-000 (13196)09/02/2021 – 12/14/2021 Tue4:00 PM – 7:00 PM (Late afternoon)at Washington SquareInstructed by Zagor, Stephen

Liberal Arts & Sciences - Electives Undergraduate

Jazz History (MPAJZ-UE 1121)

Credits: 2
Duration: 15 Weeks
Dates: Tue
Credits: 2
Duration: 15 Weeks
Dates: Tue,Thu

This course surveys the history and development of jazz music in America from the mid 1800s to current trends in popular music. Through a historical timeline, student will study jazz music’s range of styles as informed by social, regional, cultural, technological, and political trends. Realizing that all music is a reflection of historical events and the cultures they are informed by, students will analyze the close connection between jazz music and why it is known as America’s true original artform.

Music Instrumental: Jazz (Undergraduate)
2 credits – 15 Weeks

Fall 2025 Liberal Arts & Sciences - Electives Spring 2026 Undergraduate
Fall 2021

Writing the Fantastic (WRTNG-UG 1260)

Tzvetan Todorov defines the fantastic as a “subgenre of literary works characterized by the ambiguous presentation of supernatural forces.” Donald Antrim, on the other hand, regards the fantastic not as a genre, but as a condition shared between author and reader: “a potential state” in which “everything is vivid, yet nothing is clearly defined,” where “the fantastical and the real are equally questionable, equally challenged by one another.” Frankenstein’s monster comes to life. Alice goes down the rabbit hole. How can [an] author make these events seem not only uncannily plausible, but even expectable—the sudden eruption of some carefully encrypted logic operating beneath our conscious awareness? How do we ground the fantastic in enough realism to sustain the reader’s suspension of disbelief? This class will explore the fantastic as the strangest and most explicit demonstration of what literary technique can achieve in any genre. We will focus on various kinds of world-making, from magical realms to dystopias to refracted versions of “realism.” Special attention will be devoted to how writers use altered states of consciousness like trauma, intoxication, and psychosis to create a hallucinatory space between the supernatural and the deeply improbable. Readings will also span a wide spectrum of cultures and historical periods, from canonical works like Frankenstein to Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities to contemporary novels like Ben Okri’s The Famished Road, Joy Williams’ The Changeling, and Donald Antrim’s The Hundred Brothers. Assignments will include several creative writing prompts and longer pieces of original fiction for workshop.

Advanced Writing Courses (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Sections (Fall 2021)

WRTNG-UG 1260-000 (14201)09/02/2021 – 12/14/2021 Wed3:00 PM – 6:00 PM (Late afternoon)at Washington SquareInstructed by Gladstone, Bret

Liberal Arts & Sciences - Electives Undergraduate
Fall 2021 Fall 2023

Writing Cross-Culturally (WRTNG-UG 1230)

In this course, students will create writing that traverses identities, borders and cultures, as well as genres, as they explore and deepen their understanding of issues of form, craft and ethics. The class will read and discuss a variety of texts that center around various modes of culture crossing, such as travel and study abroad; third culture and diaspora identities; immigration and escape, and historical and/or political clashes and conflicts. Through an ongoing examination of structural and craft issues in the exemplary texts, students will make creative decisions to help write three main assignments dealing with themes of Memory, Identity and Conflict. We’ll use our discussions of Memory to help focus on expository and reflective rhetorical strategies, Identity as a way to experiment with point of view and character development, and Conflict as a method for exploring structure and dramatic tension. In order to write cross-culturally about personal experiences, students will be encouraged to create texts along the spectrum between creative nonfiction and autobiographical fiction. Theoretical essays will help inform how we ethically position ourselves as writers observing cultures not (necessarily) our own in order to inform audiences and to challenge our own prejudices. Through it all, we’ll consider how formal experiments across genres may help illuminate experiences and confront perceptions. Authors to be read include Gloria Anzaldua, Edwidge Danticat, Randa Jarrar, Salman Rushdie, Amy Tan, and Ocean Vuong.

Advanced Writing Courses (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks

Sections (Fall 2023)

WRTNG-UG 1230-000 (19855)09/05/2023 – 12/15/2023 Mon3:00 PM – 6:00 PM (Late afternoon)at Washington SquareInstructed by Agabian, Nancy

Liberal Arts & Sciences - Electives Undergraduate

Policy, Community, and Self (PRACT-UG 1475)

Credits: 4
Duration: 15 Weeks
Dates: Mon

Intended to introduce policy, this course includes an internship at a policy and/or advocacy organization. Community building, family well-being, early childhood education, health, juvenile justice reform, service integration and child welfare are featured in readings, discussion, and internships. Through examples such as ethnic-matching placements in foster care, zero-tolerance approaches to drug abuse, or public financing of political campaigns, students come to understand how government, schools, gangs, religious institutions and families can, with varying degrees of explicitness and formality, all make policy. Students at the course conclusion are able to: identify policies within their lives; argue all sides of a policy question; appreciate the importance of qualitative and quantitative evidence; and distinguish implementation from formulation. Readings include Bowling Alone, by Robert Putnam, The Lost Children of Wilder, by Nina Bernstein; The Oath and the Office; by Corey Brettschneider (Donated Copies) and Not a Crime to Be Poor by Peter Edelman . Students will be helped to connect meetings they attend and the policy concepts taught and discussed in class. The goal is to leave no student unaware of the importance of policy in their own and their community’s life. Policies that are empowering are emphasized, techniques doe for oral and written advocacy, persuasion and attitude change are embedded in a final project that r e quires using existing skills and talents and learning new ones. Assignments include an internship journal. “Films include Ethics in America and Waiting for Superman.

Practicum (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Liberal Arts & Sciences - Electives Spring 2026 Undergraduate
Spring 2022 Spring 2023 Spring 2024 Spring 2025

Conservation Biology in Practice: Solutions for People and Nature (PRACT-UG 1550)

The past century of exponential population growth, infrastructure development, and inequitable resource uses has stressed nature”s systems to dangerous levels. We are losing cultural and biological diversity at unprecedented rates, and these threats are compounded by the associated challenges from severely disrupted climate systems. This Gallatin practicum will provide students with a forum to develop a cross-disciplinary 21st Century nature conservation toolkit – one that can create cutting-edge strategies to reduce the risks to species and ecosystem, adapt to a changing climate, and produce a healthier relationship to nature. Students will work in teams to select a site-based project from a menu of real-world options, and then design practical and achievable solutions to these risks and challenges.We will use tools from biology, earth sciences, anthropology, social psychology, economics, and business to determine the cause, magnitude, and urgency of risks. Each student team will then combine the results from these scientific and financial assessments with the skills, power, and insights from the arts and communication media to plan and implement practical conservation solutions, tell the story of conservation needs, and build commitment to get the work done.

Practicum (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Sections (Spring 2025)

PRACT-UG 1550-000 (10413)01/21/2025 – 05/06/2025 Mon3:00 PM – 6:00 PM (Late afternoon)at Washington SquareInstructed by Tolisano, James

Liberal Arts & Sciences - Electives Undergraduate
Fall 2022

Cultures & Contexts: Russia Since 1917 (CORE-UA 528)

Major periods, developments, and interpretative issues in Russian politics, history, and society, from the 1917 revolution to the present. The emphasis is on the Soviet experience, though the Tsarist past and post-Soviet developments are also considered. Special attention is given to the role of historical traditions, leadership, ideology, ramifying events, and socioeconomic factors.

College Core Curriculum (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Sections (Fall 2022)

CORE-UA 528-000 (19720)09/01/2022 – 12/14/2022 Tue,Thu9:00 AM – 10:00 AM (Morning)at Washington SquareInstructed by O’Donnell, Anne

CORE-UA 528-000 (19721)09/01/2022 – 12/14/2022 Wed8:00 AM – 9:00 AM (Morning)at Washington SquareInstructed by

CORE-UA 528-000 (19722)09/01/2022 – 12/14/2022 Wed9:00 AM – 10:00 AM (Morning)at Washington SquareInstructed by

CORE-UA 528-000 (19723)09/01/2022 – 12/14/2022 Wed8:00 AM – 9:00 AM (Morning)at Washington SquareInstructed by

CORE-UA 528-000 (19724)09/01/2022 – 12/14/2022 Wed9:00 AM – 10:00 AM (Morning)at Washington SquareInstructed by

CORE-UA 528-000 (19725)09/01/2022 – 12/14/2022 Wed3:00 PM – 4:00 PM (Late afternoon)at Washington SquareInstructed by

CORE-UA 528-000 (19726)09/01/2022 – 12/14/2022 Wed4:00 PM – 6:00 PM (Late afternoon)at Washington SquareInstructed by

Cultures and Contexts Undergraduate

The Poetics and Politics of Mourning (IDSEM-UG 1835)

Credits: 4
Duration: 15 Weeks
Dates: Wed

If “the past is never dead,” as Faulkner wrote, how does it continue to live on? How do its ghosts continue to haunt the political present? Can these ghosts be exorcised or does one have to learn to live with them? These questions become especially urgent and consequential in the aftermath of war and catastrophe, as writers and artists confront the legacy of violence and try to memorialize annihilated bodies and spaces. The aesthetic modes they choose to address both the dead and the living and the ways in which they narrate the past have political consequences for the future. We will explore and try to answer these questions by reading a selection of texts (fiction, poetry, film, and visual art) as sites and acts of mourning. We will read and view works from and about Armenia, South Africa, Palestine, Iraq, Lebanon, and the US. Readings will include Benjamin, Boulus, Butler, Darwish, Derrida, Freud, Khoury, Morrison, and Youssef.

Interdisciplinary Seminars (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Liberal Arts & Sciences - Electives Spring 2026 Undergraduate
Summer 2021 Summer 2023 Summer 2024

Classic Texts and Contemporary Life (IDSEM-UG 1239)

This course examines several ’classic’ texts to understand both their own intrinsic merit and their influence on society from their inception until our own time. Our emphasis, indeed, is on using these texts to understand our lives and world now. We explore classic texts in relation to contemporary life’s dilemmas of consumerism and spiritualism, individual rights and community rights, vocation and career, God and the afterlife, rebellion and escape from freedom. Readings may include Aeschylus’ The Oresteia, Sappho’s Poems, Plato’s Republic, Lucretius’ On the Nature of the Universe, Ovid’s Metamorphoses or Cicero’s On the Laws, Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales or Cervantes’s Don Quixote.

Interdisciplinary Seminars (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 6 Weeks

Sections (Summer 2024)

IDSEM-UG 1239-000 (3086)05/20/2024 – 07/02/2024 Tue,Thu5:00 PM – 9:00 PM (Late afternoon)at Washington SquareInstructed by Rutigliano, Antonio

Liberal Arts & Sciences - Electives Undergraduate
Spring 2023 Summer 2021

The Sublime (IDSEM-UG 1788)

The “sublime” evades simple definition. In everyday conversation, it is often synonymous with the wonderful or the excellent. But, in the arts, humanities and aesthetic theory, the “sublime” is a topic of deep and extensive writing and reflection amongst poets, artists, theorists, and philosophers. The sublime, in this context, goes back to classical times and forward to the present. Common examples of the sublime included natural or artistic representations mountains, avalanches, waterfalls, stormy seas, human ruins, or the infinite vault of the starry sky. This course examines theoretical and creative representations of the sublime in writers and artists from ancient to postmodern, including Aristotle, Longinus, Sappho, Kant, Schiller, Wordsworth, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Newman, Rosenblum, Du Bois, Lyotard, Battersby, Chopin, Freeman, Malick, Wagner, Viola, and von Trier.

Interdisciplinary Seminars (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Sections (Spring 2023)

IDSEM-UG 1788-000 (22039)01/23/2023 – 05/08/2023 Tue4:00 PM – 7:00 PM (Late afternoon)at Washington SquareInstructed by Lewis, Bradley

Liberal Arts & Sciences - Electives Undergraduate

Environmental Racism and Environmental Injustice: Rights, Citizenship, and Activism (IDSEM-UG 2114)

Credits: 4
Duration: 15 Weeks
Dates: Mon

How are environmental racism and environmental injustice related to belonging in”and exclusion from”local, national, and international communities? “How do questions about citizenship, rights, and rightlessness relate to environmental racism and environmental injustice? This course addresses questions about how numerous forms of environmental racism and environmental injustice impact people”s access to their human rights”universally guaranteed in principle but so frequently inaccessible in reality. These questions have newfound urgency amid the COVID-19 pandemic, as marginalized communities already subjected to environmental repression have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. Drawing on works from the realms of political theory, international law, literature, activism, and others, we will address relationships between race, class, gender, and environmental injustice. We will discuss fence-line communities. There are powerful connections between so-called “local” environmental injustice and the climate crisis”how are these connections overlooked by international law? We will focus on how communities of color, Indigenous communities, and stateless people are affected by and resist pollution inequity and differential access to healthcare. Historical and contemporary cases include denial of water access (e.g. Flint and Detroit, Michigan; the Palestinian West Bank and Gaza; and Cape Town, South Africa); forced exposure to toxins in armed conflict zones (ranging from the WWII bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to the Vietnam War, and the Iraq War); poisoning from industrial pollution (such as in Minamata, Japan in the 20th century); and international examples of lead poisoning. Scholars, novelists, poets, theorists, and practitioners whose work will be read and discussed may include: Robert D. Bullard, Rachel Carson, Steve Lerner, Harriet A. Washington, Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, Seyla Benhabib, Benedict Anderson, Antony Anghie, Tōge Sankichi, Ghassan Kanafani, and Yoko Tawada.

Interdisciplinary Seminars (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Liberal Arts & Sciences - Electives Societies & the Social Sciences Spring 2026 Undergraduate

Sexualities of the Middle East: A Cultural History (IDSEM-UG 9550)

Credits: 4
Duration: 15 Weeks
Dates: Thu

The course will tackle questions of sexuality in the Middle East from a historical perspective. Applying methodologies of queer theory, it will discuss the complex history of sexuality in the Middle East, and sketch the genealogy of Western attitudes towards both Arab and Jewish sexuality. Relying on theorists and historians like Michel Foucault, Robert Aldrich, Khaled El-Rouayheb, Samar Habib, and Joseph Massad, we will explore the essential role that the queer issue plays in the contemporary politics of the region.

Interdisciplinary Seminars (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Liberal Arts & Sciences - Electives Spring 2026 Undergraduate

History of Italian Fashion (IDSEM-UG 9200)

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

THIS COURSE TAKES PLACE AT NYU-FLORENCE. The aim of this course is to explore the history of Italian fashion with an interdisciplinary approach focused on social, cultural, economic and political aspects. By focusing on select topics of key interest students will acquire a basic knowledge of the history of Italian fashion from the Renaissance to the present, understand the complex and multivalent clothing codes that help to order social interaction and learn to decode it. These abilities will provide students with a useful basis for understanding the capital role of the fashion of the past both as the origin of a ‘language’ of clothes still in use and as a boundless source of inspiration for contemporary designers. Conducted in English.

Interdisciplinary Seminars (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 14 Weeks

Fall 2025 Liberal Arts & Sciences - Electives Spring 2026 Undergraduate
Fall 2024 Spring 2022 Spring 2025

The Modern Arabic Novel (IDSEM-UG 1478)

Colonialism left indelible marks on the cultures and societies of its colonized subjects. While nation-states have emerged, the colonial legacy and its various effects continue to haunt post-colonial societies and the modes in which they represent their history and subjectivity. The novel is a particularly privileged site to explore this problem. This course will focus on the post-colonial Arabic novel. After a brief historical introduction to the context and specific conditions of its emergence as a genre, we will read a number of representative novels. Discussions will focus on the following questions: How do writers problematize the perceived tension between tradition and modernity? Can form itself become an expression of sociopolitical resistance? How is the imaginary boundary between “West” and “East” blurred and/or solidified? How is the nation troped and can novels become sites for rewriting official history? What role do gender and sexuality play in all of the above? In addition to films, readings (all in English) may include Edward Said, Frantz Fanon, Naguib Mahfuz, al-Tayyib Salih, Abdelrahman Munif, Ghassan Kanafani, Elias Khoury, Sun`allah Ibrahim, Huda Barakat, Assia Djebbar, and Muhammad Shukri.

Interdisciplinary Seminars (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Sections (Spring 2025)

IDSEM-UG 1478-000 (10038)01/21/2025 – 05/06/2025 Tue3:00 PM – 6:00 PM (Late afternoon)at Washington SquareInstructed by Antoon, Sinan

Liberal Arts & Sciences - Electives Undergraduate
Spring 2022

The Contemporary Broadway Musical: Rent to Hamilton (and Beyond) (ARTS-UG 1058)

Located at the intersection of songwriting, storytelling, creativity, and commerce, the Broadway musical is one of New York City’s most significant and singular cultural artifacts. While this art form has a long and storied history, it continues to evolve dramatically in terms of aesthetics, audiences, content, and economics. In this arts workshop (open to artists, producers, and fans), we will take a look at some of the most influential shows to play the Great White Way over the last twenty-five years, with a focus on both how they are constructed and how they have impacted the field (and society). How does a musical get made? How do librettists, composers, and lyricists synthetize their visions to speak with one creative voice? How does a show like Hamilton become a worldwide phenomenon, and what keeps a hot property like Spider-Man from reaching its potential? Shows examined will include: Rent and The Lion King (shows that serve as the unofficial gateway to this new generation); Passing Strange and In the Heights (and the ground-breaking 2008 season); The Book of Mormon (and its film precursor South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut); Spider-Man; Fun Home; and yes, Hamilton. Weekly responses will include original scenes (or songs), casting breakdowns, design proposals, and other creative output, as well as some traditional essays.

Arts Workshops (Undergraduate)
4 credits – 15 Weeks

Sections (Spring 2022)

ARTS-UG 1058-000 (23280)01/24/2022 – 05/09/2022 Wed3:00 PM – 6:00 PM (Late afternoon)at Washington SquareInstructed by Diaz, Kristoffer

Liberal Arts & Sciences - Electives Undergraduate

Topics in Recorded Music: David Bowie (REMU-UT 1143)

David Bowie’s life and work offer a template for how to survive and continue to evolve as a musical artist. David Bowie has kept the music industry, his fans and the world guessing throughout a career that spans over four decades. Bowie himself put his secret best in his prophetic 1972 song, “Ch-ch-ch-ch Changes”; a multi-talented performer, writer and visual artist, Bowie has played his career like an instrument, selecting trends of every generation to process, absorb and adapt into successive phases of his ever-evolving chameleon persona. In this day of ceaseless multiple media, Bowie’s most recent, and typically perverse, coup was keeping secret the recording of his 2013 album, The Next Day, over a two-year recording period. The manipulative bravado of knowing when and how to keep a star’s inaccessibility and mystery, or to expose oneself, as Bowie did on TV in his own darkest days, has given David Bowie a singular, enduring mystique, glamour and respect. Examining the arc of his work is a window into significant scenes of every decade since the 1950s, and offers insight into: the British Blues scene that produced the Beatles and the Rolling Stones; the hippy free festival counter-culture; r’n’b; futurism; electronica;glam and gender games, improvisation; soul; funk; dance; disco; minimalism; ambient; avant-garde theater; and above all, the endlessly evolving sound of US and UK young clubland, including recent jungle and garage, to which Bowie consistently returns to recharge and find a new direction to make his own.

Recorded Music (Undergraduate)
2 credits – 7 Weeks

Sections (Fall 2025)

REMU-UT 1143-000 (18004)10/22/2025 – 12/11/2025 Tue5:00 PM – 8:00 PM (Late afternoon)at Brooklyn CampusInstructed by Goldman, Vivien

Fall 2025 Liberal Arts & Sciences - Electives Undergraduate