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Undergraduate Semester
Program

“Living in New York City has opened my eyes to experiences beyond the classroom and workplace, enriching my education in ways that go far beyond textbooks.”
—Batool, Fall 2024

Bard NYC offers small, seminar-style classes (12–18 students) that take advantage of the incomparable resources available in New York City. Through full-time study (three to four 4-credit courses) and the hands-on internship experience, students build critical links between theory and practice that go beyond the traditional liberal arts classroom.
Academic FAQs

Explore the Pathways

Advocacy and Social Justice Economics and Finance
International Affairs Media and Publishing
Performing Arts Sustainability and Climate Action
Technology and Society Urbanism and the Changing City
Visual Arts
When applying, students choose one of our nine interdisciplinary pathways—combining elements of academic majors and related professional fields—based on their academic interests and career goals.
Students usually take one or two courses in their pathway, along with a required core seminar. They can also select additional courses from the full range of offerings.

Click on each link to
explore our pathways →

Advocacy and Social Justice

What are the complex causes of today’s most pressing problems, and how should social action be focused to most effectively address them? Our world is rife with inequalities that keep many people from living a life defined by dignity and equality. Yet in the face of these oppressive forces, social movements have brought people together to advocate for policies that support equality and social justice, and in doing so have transformed society. This pathway equips students with the skills and experiences necessary to prepare them to be changemakers in their communities and to build a more just collective future.

Economics and Finance

What is the role of finance in a modern economy? Should the mechanisms that govern economics be reformed, and if so, how? The 2008 Financial Crisis and the resulting Great Recession made clear the importance of financial markets and instruments to the overall health of the economy. Understanding how these systems function—both in theory and in practice—is critical not only for those pursuing careers in finance, but for anyone seeking an understanding of today’s global economic landscape. This pathway gives students firsthand exposure to how markets operate and how economic policy plays out on the ground in the financial capital of the world.

International Affairs

How effective are international institutions in managing the 21st century’s most pressing challenges? As the world has grown more interconnected, so too have the problems that the international community faces. From climate change to forced migration to global pandemics, threats are increasingly transnational in nature, requiring a coordinated global response to manage. At the same time, the traditional geopolitical challenges of diplomacy, interstate war, and great power competition remain and threaten the stability of the international order. This pathway draws on the unique opportunities afforded by New York City—the world’s premier global city—to prepare students for a career in global affairs.

Media and Publishing

How have new forms of digital media changed the media and publishing landscape, and what responsibility does the media and publishing industry have to society? With the rise of new forms of digital media comes a range of new and easily accessible platforms, which many believe have democratized the media landscape. Students in the Media and Publishing pathway study the complex relationship between democracy and communication and how our increasingly networked world is shaped by new forms of media. This pathway is designed for students seeking careers in journalism, writing, digital media, and publishing.

Performing Arts

How do the performing arts reflect and influence culture and society, and what is involved in the creation and production of a successful performance? An effective performance can show us the diversity of the human experience, serve as a medium for social and political economy, and foster a sense of community and social cohesion. From Broadway to Carnegie Hall, New York City holds a particularly important place in the world of performing arts. This pathway cultivates a critical appreciation for art as a social phenomenon and gives students practical insights into the industry.

Sustainability and Climate Action

How can societies meet the needs of the present without endangering the future, and what prevents meaningful climate action on the local, national, and global levels? The last decade saw the warmest global temperatures in recorded history, lending increased urgency to the global call for climate action and the need to build resilience in the face of ever-more-frequent climate disasters. Despite these realities, the climate crisis has continued unabated. This pathway equips students with the tools and experiences necessary to become leaders in building climate resilience in their communities and realizing a sustainable future.

Technology and Society

How does technology shape—and how is it shaped by—social, political, and economic factors? Whether on our social media feeds, at our workplaces, in our doctors’ offices, or in the halls of government, technology has assumed a ubiquitous presence in our public and private lives. Leveraging the benefits of technology while minimizing its challenges will be one of the most important issues shaping the trajectory of the 21st century. New York City offers an unparalleled setting to analyze how technological systems evolve and affect society in real time—thus, this pathway equips students with the skills needed to think critically about the role of technology in combating societal challenges.

Urbanism and the Changing City

How can we reimagine urban life to meet the demands of a changing world? It is estimated that more than two-thirds of the world’s population will reside in urban areas by 2050, and with increasing urbanization comes an array of challenges. Rapid urbanization can strain infrastructure, deplete essential resources like water, degrade the environment, and magnify economic inequalities. The future of the city depends on meeting these challenges while also preserving the many benefits of urban life. This pathway uses the city as a laboratory to equip students with the experiences and knowledge needed to confront the challenges of urban life in the 21st century.

Visual Arts

How does art reflect, challenge, or expand our thinking about the world around us? Whether it be an advertisement on a subway car, a public sculpture passed by on a morning walk, or a celebrated painting in a museum, the visual arts are a ubiquitous part of the human experience. As a form of expression, art can offer a window into our history, a comment on our economy, politics, and society, and a means of understanding and then mobilizing against injustice. As a creative practice, visual art requires cultivating the appropriate techniques, methods, and environment to nourish creativity. This pathway utilizes the resources of New York City to equip students with the critical, analytical, and conceptual tools to build a career in the arts.

Several students laughing.

Core Seminar

As a mandatory element of the program, core seminars are designed to contextualize the internship experience within the scholarly discussions of relevant academic fields. Faculty create a dynamic learning environment in which students are encouraged to think critically about potential career paths, and to put insights from their internship experience in dialogue with their academic work. While credits are not awarded for internships, they are earned through the completion of the core seminar as students learn with and from each other’s experiences during classroom discussions over the course of the semester. Together, the core seminar and internship help prepare students to make more informed decisions about life after graduation and future employment.
A group of students posing for a photo in front of the Tenement Museum.

Cocurricular Programming

Exciting and thought-provoking cocurricular offerings are held throughout each semester to further enhance the student experience. Public programming includes guest lecturers, panel discussions, film screenings, and book launches, as well as excursions to relevant sites and events across the city. Examples of cocurricular programming include a screening of OJ: Made in America led by Oscar-winning producer Tamara Rosenberg, a tour of United Nations Headquarters, a site visit to the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, a panel discussion on the changing New York City theater scene, the lecture The Real Estate State and the Right to the City: The View from Williamsburg by urban planner Samuel Stein, a presentation by renowned photographer An-My Lê on her exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art Between Two Rivers, and more!

Upcoming Courses

Fall 2026 Courses (subject to change)
  • Climate Justice and Storytelling: Shaping Narratives for Our Planetary Future
    (Pathways: Advocacy & Social Justice, Media & Publishing, Sustainability & Climate Action)
  • Core Seminar: Arts & Humanities
    This course examines core concepts in art and aesthetics from three different angles. First, there is the historical development of an idea of beauty from perceptive cognition and its integrated discourses into a proper field of study and philosophical realm, following a long and erratic trajectory from Ancient Greece to post-modernity. Second, there is the internal layering of art into a couple of main interpretive facets, such as the anthropological vocabulary of symbols, the sociological categories of taste, and the psychological speculations of imagination, all of which enhance the very notion of aesthetic object into a constellation of meanings. Third, there are the more contemporary debates, particularly in New York and since the 1950s, around the status of art as an external form of technology, and industry, itself profoundly shaped by the material conditions of intersectional identities and a new openness to affective dispositions.  Through these three approaches, supported as they will be by punctual examples and case studies from a variety of artforms, genres, and geographies, this course aims at allowing students to develop their own sensibility into a more imaginative and critical faculty, as well as gather a wider range of references, a richer palette for expressing their experiences, and a more diverse and robust reserve of tools to face the abundance of art. We will read thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Baudrillard, Danto, Bourdieu, Greenberg, Benjamin, Virilio, Moten, Sontag, Ngai, and Bishop, among others, to answer questions such as: what is beauty? What makes good or bad taste? Are judgements about art always subjective? Can art (or must it) be politically and morally relevant? What is the avant-garde? How can we re-think the status of art today, and its future?
  • Core Seminar: International Affairs and Social Change
    How do we address global social injustices and inequalities? There are many different avenues – joining social movements, careers in government or law, working for nonprofits or international development groups, and more. This course starts from the premise that before taking action, one must be aware of the ways that any intervention, and especially an international one, can inadvertently reproduce rather than shift structures of power. Our inquiry is rooted in social science literature on organizations, human rights, and humanitarianism. As part of this, we reflect on our own status and how this impacts the consequences of our actions. In the second part of the course, we look at the controversies and dilemmas that humanitarian action creates and think through how individuals, groups and organizations can minimize or counteract these problems. Through case studies and conversations, students will leave the course with a critical yet proactive understanding of routes they might pursue to work for change.
  • Core Seminar: Social Sciences
    This core seminar is designed to connect ethical and social theory to the contemporary American workplace. As the world becomes more interconnected with the rise of AI, globalization, and the impacts of the pandemic, how has the workplace developed and changed? What role does ethics play in the workplace on the individual, organization, and societal level? We will apply ethical theories to specific workplace cases as well as examine our own ethical values.  On a practical level, we will also consider what it means to be a working adult in the 21st century with a liberal arts education. What is fundamental to what I am looking for in a career? How am I growing in my internship? How do I navigate work culture and proper work etiquette? How can one be ethical in the workplace?
  • Food as Place
    (Pathways: Advocacy & Social Justice, Urbanism & the Changing City)
  • Generation Equality: Gender in International Affairs
    (Pathways: International Affairs, Advocacy & Social Justice)
  • Knowing New York: Perspectives on Gotham's Past, Present, and Future
    (Pathways: Urbanism & the Changing City)
  • Literature in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
    (Pathways: Media & Publishing, Technology & Society)
  • Theater in New York City
    (Pathways: Performing Arts)
  • New York On Location
    (Pathways: Visual Arts; Urbanism and the Changing City) This course will serve as an introduction to New York
    City, via the cinema that has developed within its boroughs. We begin with the 1896 Edison reel of Herald Square,
    and conclude with a just-released portrait of community and climate infrastructure in the Rockaways. In between, we will visit more than a dozen neighborhoods—the Coney Island of Morris Engel’s The Little Fugitive, the Bed-Stuy of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, and the Chinatown of Christine Choy’s From Spikes to Spindles, to name but a few. We will also visit them quite literally, analyzing the experimental form of Shirley Clarke’s Bridges-Go-Round after walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, or gathering in Central Park to discuss William Greaves’s Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One. Most of our meetings will be on location, as it were, because the locations here are more than a photogenic backdrop for great films. Instead, we will also consider them as sites with complex histories of their own, and toward this end the class will also highlight relevant aspects of, for instance, architecture, urban design, and ecology, as well as local political struggles. The fundamental questions before us: How does the image make the city, and how the city make the image?
  • Programming for Social Change
    (Pathways: Advocacy & Social Justice, Technology & Society)
  • The Contemporary Arts through New York City
    (Pathways: Visual Arts)
  • The Practice of Diplomacy
    (Pathways: International Affairs)

Course Archive

Bard NYC courses emphasize interdisciplinary study and experiential learning, often taking advantage of the incomparable resources available to students in one of the world’s great metropolises. From world-famous museums and art collections, libraries and archives, from Broadway theaters to the United Nations, Wall Street, and throughout the city’s diverse patchwork of neighborhoods, New York City is a laboratory for students to explore.

Information about summer course offerings can be found here. 
 
Download Course Archive Here