Undergraduate Semester Program

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ARCH 212: City Frictions, Michael Cohen

This seminar course will examine the political conflicts, material frictions, and social differences that occur within the city. Often urban struggles emerge from the opposing ways in which city planners, government institutions, forces of capital, and the public want the space and land of the city to be used and to develop. At the outset of the semester, students will discuss readings that characterize struggle and discord as fundamental to urban politics. The assigned texts – which will include works by Marshal Berman, Mike Davis, Jane Jacobs, David Harvey, Raquel Polnik, Mimi Sheller, and Samuel Stein – will provide a foundation for analyzing sites in New York City where struggles for affordable housing, racial justice, public land-tenure, social services, cultural spaces, and community-led rezoning have unfolded or are presently taking place. Activists directly involved in these efforts will join the class throughout the semester and students will potentially visit the locations that they are researching. 

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ARCH 325: Workout New York: The Architecture of Health, Ivan L. Munuera

The notions of "Health" and "Well-Being" transcend mere medical concepts: they constitute a thriving and multibillion dollar industry that exerts a profound influence on human and non-human existence, social media, urban fabrics, and vast landscapes. They delineate an idealized state of being, often concurrently excluding what is considered pathological or ill, both within individuals and across environments, thus inadvertently neglecting bodies and ecosystems as a result. This course delves into the domain of design and architecture, focusing on the intricate interplay between health and well-being in the context of New York City. It encompasses a spectrum of architectural elements, ranging from private to public spaces (from gardens to parks), healthcare facilities (from hospitals to gyms), and infrastructural systems. The course will traverse various scales, addressing critical topics such as environmental pollution, aging, the provision of mental healthcare, and green energy sources, among others. In doing so, we will challenge conventional narratives advocating for alternative paradigms that broaden our understanding of well-being, often drawing from eco-radical alternatives, spiritual dimensions, and non-Western genealogies. The students will work in groups, each researching a specific case study focusing on the architecture of well-being in New York City. Throughout the course, the students will work on two different exercises: a mural depicting the spatial entanglement, temporalities and new proposal for an architecture of well-being based on their case-study (including drawings, axonometric, mappings, photographs, and other visual material); and a performance that explains their project. 

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ARTH 340: Seminar in Contemporary Art, Tom Wolf

This class will survey recent developments in the visual arts. We will take advantage of New York’s unparalleled richness of museums and art galleries by having several class meetings at exhibitions of contemporary art, including visits to artists’ studios. Presentations in class will survey the backgrounds of recent artistic developments. These will be supplemented by readings of classic texts about contemporary art, plus articles and reviews about the artists whose exhibitions we will be seeing. Students will give two presentations to the class about selected contemporary artists, and will write a midterm and a final paper, plus short responses to a few of their favorite readings.

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ARTS 311: NYC Art and Civic Power Lab, Noah Fischer and Danielle Jackson

In New York, art stands for the experimental, risk-taking, and socially committed dimensions with which the city prides itself. And yet, in spite of its reputation for glamour and exceptionalism, New York City encapsulates many of the political problems within the United States and big cities globally.  New York’s artists have confronted these issues, from deindustrialization, lack of affordable housing, access to healthcare, to demographic changes, intrusion/rise of technology, treatment of immigrants, climate change, and precarity and indebtedness. In this course, we will paint a panoramic picture of the living city through the experiences of its artists—here examined as citizens as well as makers. Our core focus are those vivid moments where art and politics collide to create complex pictures that stretch our understanding of both. And through this research, we ask: What is the relationship between expression and power? Does art naturally point the way toward individual identities and personal brands, or can we imagine it opening the door to big-tent politics? This question resonates strongly in America’s largest city—a place of deep contradictions, dominated by economic inequality yet rich with an ongoing tradition of grassroots organising.  We think the intensities of New York make a good lens for interacting with contemporary art, while also providing perspective on civic power and responsibility. This course will combine aspects of a studio and seminar course, with a series of modules/themes through the semester, and experiential projects tailored to our areas of focus. Rather than studio-based art making, we introduce multi-media documentation techniques, site specific interventions, and performance as tools to map the city’s social and political geography.

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ARTS 316: Public Art in NYC: Histories and Practice, DW Fitzpatrick

This class will examine public art now in New York City and the history of important examples, both controversial: Richard Serra's Tilted Arc 1981 and beloved - Balto 1925 in Central Park. Examining readings in the history, culture, and politics of NYC and theoretical work in art criticism, we will analyze how social and political processes like gentrification and inequality generate and result in creative political expression in the form of public art. One question we address is whether we can learn more about local politics from looking at NYC’s public art and writing in public spaces. During the course students will meet artists in class who have completed public commissions and learn about the process and the politics involved, in some cases in cooperation with local artist cooperatives. Students will work teams and complete a final project consisting of a complete proposal for a public work for six distinct sites in the Williamsburg community in Brooklyn.

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ARTS 320: Machine Media: A Hands On Introduction to Machine Learning and Generative Art, Aarati Akkapeddi

Recent developments in Machine Learning platforms like Dall-E and Midjourney have created a frenzy around 'AI art'. While media outlets question whether AI will replace artists, this interdisciplinary course focuses instead on situating Machine Learning within a larger history of generative art. In this introductory course, we will unpack some of the commonly used terms surrounding Machine Learning and consider the historical relationship between machines and creativity. We will also learn about networks of human labor, ecological resources, and funding structures behind Machine Learning. In addition to readings, students will think through these issues by working with Machine Learning in a hands-on way. Students will spend the semester working slowly and intentionally to prepare a dataset of images that will be used to create their own Machine Learning model. No prior coding experience is required and students will not be evaluated on their technical ability. Instead, we will use the process of designing a dataset and building a model as a catalyst for discussing more ethical and nuanced approaches to thinking with and about machines and how these approaches might translate across disciplines.

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ARTS 323: Social Media and Activism, Fahmid Haq

Social media has transformed into profit-driven platforms that monetize user data by selling it to the marketers. Despite this, many individuals have attempted to leverage these platforms for social change. In recent years, social and political movements have effectively utilized social media as a tool for advancement. This course will explore the various aspects of social media activism. Theoretical concepts by Manuel Castells, Christian Fuchs, and Zeynep Tufekci will be explored. Following a contextual exploration of movements in pre-social media eras, the class will analyze major movements such as the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, #MeToo, and #BlackLivesMatter. Discussion will also focus on issues and challenges related to digital activism, including platform capitalism, disinformation, alt-right populism, censorship in digital media and the collaboration between platforms and governments. Additionally, the course will delve into the future of social media activism. The work will include several minute papers as well as a research project.

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BIO 102: Food Microbiology, Gabriel Perron

In this course designed for non-majors, we will study the microorganisms that inhabit, create, or contaminate food. The first half of the course will introduce students to topics in food safety such as food spoilage, food borne infections, and antibiotic resistance. In the second half of the course, students will learn how to harness the capabilities of the many microbes present in our environment to turn rotting vegetables or spoiling milk into delicious food. Students will also learn how next-generation technologies are revealing the important ecological dynamics shaping microbial communities in transforming food with possible beneficial effects on human health. Throughout the course, students will learn how to design, conduct, and analyze simple experiments while working with microbiology techniques, including DNA sequencing.

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ECON 316: Automation, Artificial Intelligence, and the Labor Market, Michael Martell

Labor markets are always in states of change.  Change of late includes the rise in computerization, automation, the gig economy, and artificial intelligence.  This course will interrogate the potentially transformative ways through which AI and automation can affect labor markets, employment, wages, and well-being in the short, medium, and long term.  We will explore the ways through which AI and automation can change the nature of work and the implications for economic security and outsourcing. We will pay special attention to the impact of these possible changes on pre-existing socioeconomic disparities (by class, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender identity), social cohesion, job quality, and the role of work in contributing to well-being.  Throughout, we will consider the appropriate role of policy such as universal basic income, unemployment insurance, education subsidies, and job creation in promoting an equitable future.

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ECON 391: Corporate Finance: Theory and Practice, Arezo Kohistany

This course will provide students with practical experience in solving finance issues typically encountered in investment banking and the CFO’s office through lecture, case study and excel-based lessons. On successful completion of this course, students should understand corporate policies and actions, such as capital structure, firm valuation, and mergers and acquisitions.  Specifically, students will demonstrate an understanding of the impact of leverage on the cost of capital, payout policy, the impact of taxes and agency costs on firm value, and issues related to control of the firm. Lastly, students should demonstrate ethical awareness and the ability to think critically and deal successfully with unstructured problems. The course will consist of lectures, homework assignments, case studies, guest speakers and exams. Lectures will introduce specific finance concepts. Homework and exams will reinforce understanding of concepts. Case studies will apply concepts to real world situations. Guest speakers will highlight personal experience with concepts and application.

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FILM 354: Cinema Curating and Exhibition, Ed Halter

This course explores the history, theory and practical concerns of film exhibition, with a special focus on the century-long traditions and current ecosystem of cinema programming in New York City . As a way of investigating the range of possibilities for film presentation, the course will look at pre-cinematic technologies of the projected image; various models employed in the pre-sound era; early alternatives to the Hollywood system, including ciné-clubs, “small cinemas,” road shows, and exploitation; later examples such as cinematheques, film societies, film festivals, and microcinemas; expanded cinema and projection performance; attempts to introduce film and video into spaces traditionally devoted to visual art; the role of collections and archives; the practice of repertory programming; and models for online moving-image exhibition. Individual case studies will include the Museum of Modern Art’s Film Library, Amos Vogel’s Cinema 16, Anthology Film Archives, and the Collective for Living Cinema, as well as site visits with contemporary venues and curators. Student work will include a set of program notes for an imagined film series and a final research project, which can take the form of either a written essay, a video essay, or a curated exhibition.

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FILM 377: Film Criticism, Ed Halter

A workshop focusing on the weekly writing of short film criticism, on strict deadline. The course is designed for students who wish to engage with cinema in its widest variety of styles and forms, and to practice and discuss what it means to translate the experience of an essentially audio-visual medium into the written word. Students will be encouraged to write about films screening at theaters in New York City, and will meet with working film critics as guest speakers. In addition, we will read and discuss exemplary pieces of published film criticism, from the era of silent film to our own, in order to widen our understanding of how film has been written about and strengthen our sense for essential characteristics of engaging and intelligent writing. Please note that participants will need to be comfortable with sharing their writing with others in a seminar setting.

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HEAL 319: Issues in Global Public Health, Theresa Castillo and Scott Rosenstein

This course provides a general overview of determinants of health in the developing world and principles within the field of global public health. It will include a review of some current and historical public health problems, such as tuberculosis, malaria, AIDS, small pox, maternal and address them. Students will also examine the roles of a range of international organizations involved in global public health efforts, including local and international non-governmental organizations, multilateral agencies such as the WHO, UNAIDS, bilateral organizations like the CDC and USAID, governments and donor organizations. The course aims to convey an understanding of the complexity of health problems in developing countries, the impact of health on social and economic development, the contributions of various disciplines and analytical perspectives in decision-making about public health priorities, and the range of players that contribute to developing and implementing the programs to address them. The course will be structured primarily around a series of case studies of public health policies and practices around which there has been controversy or debate about the appropriate course of action. The case studies will include a major focus on HIV/AIDS and sexual and reproductive health, and will examine such issues as quarantine, testing of new technologies on vulnerable populations, commitment of resources to treatment versus prevention, and the influence of conflicting "moralities" on public health program approaches. These debates will examine the tensions that sometimes arise between efforts to ensure public health and safety, while promoting health equity and rights. It will incorporate perspectives of stakeholders in the developing world, as well as scientists, policy makers and activists. The analysis and readings will draw from various disciplines, including epidemiology and medical anthropology.

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HIST 2014: History Of New York City, Cecile Kuznitz

This course will survey the history of New York City from its earliest settlement by Native Americans to the aftermath of Covid-19 pandemic. We will examine the city’s transformation from a Dutch and British colony to a global cultural and economic capital. Special attention will be paid to the development and use of distinct types of urban space such as housing, parks, and skyscrapers. We will also consider how throughout its history New York’s population has been transformed through immigration and the resulting divisions of ethnicity, race, religion and socioeconomic class.  One recurrent theme will be the various, often controversial solutions proposed to the problems of a modern metropolis such as the need for infrastructure (water management, transportation), political and social reform (Tammany Hall,  Jacob Riis), and urban planning (the contrasting approaches of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs). The course will incorporate visits to sites studied in the course such as Central Park, the Lower East Side, and the site of the World Trade Center.

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HR 308: Deconstructing the Data Industrial Complex, Cynthia Conti-Cook ’03

This course will introduce students to the analytical tools required to fully understand the opportunities and harms of algorithmic governance. From identifying how bias and other social values become embedded in discrete datasets to mapping the sale of data and government procurement of data-driven technologies, this course will teach students how to critically dissect a discrete point of data as well as the institutional dynamics of those involved in deploying data-driven technologies. The course material will draw from technical introductions to data and database infrastructures, political philosophy, critical data studies scholarship, investigative journalism, and sci-fi film. Students will collaborate in small groups to focus on one type of algorithmic governance system and produce research about the reliability of the data used in that system, as well as the philanthropic, government, academic, and corporate institutions that support and oppose it.

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LIT 389: What They Say About New York City, Elizabeth Frank

From the late seventeenth century to the present day, New York (aka Mannahatta, New Amsterdam and Gotham) has attracted writers of talent, ambition, and achievement who explore the city’s surging energies, ceaseless movement and constant change. Writing about New York-- its boroughs and neighborhoods, rivers, architecture, subways, street life, waterfront, museums, stadiums and parks—offers us dazzling tales of success and failure, wealth and poverty, life both high and low. In novels, short stories, poems, plays, essays, memoirs, and works of journalism, New York authors have continued across centuries to cast a curious, ironic and rhapsodic eye over the intersecting worlds of finance, commerce, the arts, politics, law, crime, scandal, and the media--in short, the New York experience in all its infinitude. The works covered in this course offer countless perspectives on celebrity and obscurity, the tragic and the comic, the upper, middle, and working classes, changes in fortune and victories and defeats. Many delve into the struggles of immigrants and refugees, the routes to assimilation and economic survival, and the struggle to “make it,” observing the City as incubator and nurturer of the hope of creating new individual identities and pursuing as many American dreams as there are American deamers. We’ll be reading assigned anthology selections as well as self-selected complete single works by such authors as Washington Irving, Charles Dickens, Henry David Thoreau; Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Henry James, José Marti, Jacob Riis, Stephen Crane, Maxim Gorky, James Weldon Johnson, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Claude McKay, Marianne Moore, Edmund Wilson, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Hart Crane, Lincoln Steffens, Dawn Powell, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edith Wharton, Damon Runyon, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Anzia Yezierska, William Carlos Williams, Alfred Kazin, Joseph Mitchell, Frank O’Hara, Robert Moses, James Baldwin, Joan Didion, Isaac Bashevis Singer, John Cheever, Allen Ginsberg, Ralph Ellison, Oscar Hijuelos, Vivian Gornick, Ha Jin, Colson Whitehead, and many others. Several field trips will be scheduled to literary landmarks as well as The Museum of the City of New York. Written work: a midterm paper and a term paper, and a semester-long reading journal to accompany class discussion.

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PHOT 338: New York Street Photography: The City Flâneur, DW Fitzpatrick

This course offers students working in all disciplines the opportunity to engage with city life in a profound way. Making pictures on the streets of New York is a commitment to looking and learning from life itself moving at a clip with 8 million other people. There are uncountable ways of making pictures in the city, as there are uncountable inspirations - be those people, architecture, history, light, movement, trash, sounds, sights and smells! Our project is picturing the human experience, via our own artistic voice, and a camera. Lectures and class discussions make close readings of the “masters“ of street photography, and continuously look at the work of current practitioners. The course requires weekly critiques and working sessions.

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PS 251: Civil Society in an Anarchic Era, Richard Harrill

In this seminar students will explore the theory of civil society, its origins, as well as legal and constitutional protections that permit freedom of association, speech and religion and provide the space for the exercise of individual liberty. We will grapple with the nature of power, the importance of separation of powers, the rule of law, regular elections. Students will scrutinize how networks of institutions around the world known as the Third Sector (or non-profit sector) help citizens organize the space between the state and the market, what incentives are given for this to happen, what challenges the sector is facing. Does civil society always strengthen democracy and a free-market economy? Is it a bulwark against totalitarianism? We will explore concepts of social capital as it has been popularized by Robert Putnam and will grapple with how it can both strengthen and destabilize democratic societies, not just in the famous example of the Weimar Republic but in contemporary US and UK. We will discuss whether the movement toward an open society, as defined by Karl Popper, is “inevitable,” whether or not it is linear, and what new threats such as surveillance capitalism and social media algorithms pose to it.

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PS 314: Globalization, Finance, and Marginalization, Aniruddha Mitra

The objective of this course is to explore the reconstitution of local structures of marginalization by the increasing economic integration of the global economy over the last three and a half decades. We place particular emphasis on the increasing dominance of finance in both advanced and developing societies and explore the impact of this process of financialization and the associated financial integration of the world on marginalized constituencies identified on the basis of class, gender, and ethnic identity. We further explore the interplay of the global ascendance of finance capitalism with transnational flows of human beings and commodities that together comprise the economic face of globalization and question the neoliberal assertion that globalization will necessarily empower the marginalized, basing our exploration on both theoretical insights drawn from multiple disciplines and documented evidence. There are no prerequisites for this course; students do not need a background in Economics or quantitative analysis. 

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PS 321: Intelligence, Risk, and Decision Making, Giles Alston

This course is essentially about the relationship between information, analysis, risk and decision makers. On one level, this means that it is about something you do yourself all the time -- but we will be looking specifically at how analysis is produced for those who work in both the public and the private sectors and face critical political, investment, or even humanitarian decisions. Concentrating on three crucial components – collection, analysis and communications – the goal is understand processes behind the production of good analysis and the ways in which it can be conveyed to decision makers. At the same time as studying some of the instances in which intelligence analysis has resulted in success -- and, because it tends to be more revealing, those where it has not -- we will be trying out some of the techniques involved in professional analysis, including writing, presentations, and team work, and looking at analysts working in the government, financial, and non-profit sectors. The intention is to offer an appreciation of what professional analysts do in an intelligence and political risk context, and how their work can feed into the conduct of international relations and international business. 

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PS 330: Writing on International Affairs, Adam Shatz

This course will put a heavy emphasis on reporting, writing and developing the sensibilities needed for success as an international news correspondent. We will focus heavily on the techniques of the craft, always in the context of contemporary world events and the realities of modern English-language media. A series of lecturers, and a visit to one of New York City's great newsrooms, will be included during the semester. This is not a course for purists, but rather a broad look at a varied, complex discipline. We will examine briefly many of the topics an international journalist will confront today. We also will touch upon the broadcast and Internet skills that no journalist who strives to be in interesting places at interesting times can afford to ignore in this modern world.

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PS 335: Foreign Policy in the Age of the Internet, Elmira Bayrasli

Foreign policy is among the things that the Internet has revolutionized. No longer is diplomacy confined to oak-paneled rooms and gilded corridors. This change, as New York Times reporter Mark Landler noted, "happened so fast that it left the foreign policy establishment gasping to catch up." This course examines how foreign policy and international affairs are being shaped in the age of the Internet. Topics include democracy versus censorship, conflict, climate change and the environment, big data and privacy, global economics and the movement of capital. Among the questions we will explore are: • What is the changing nature of power? Are there actors? • How is the concept of the nation-state changing? • What constitutes world order in this new era? • How have the Internet, the mobile phone, and other technologies changed the conduct of foreign affairs?

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PS 359: Generation Equality: Gender in International Affairs, Elisa Slattery

As part of the United Nations Decade for Gender Equality, UN Women and partners launched the Global Equality Forum in 2021 which seeks to be an inflection point in the path to global gender equality. But what do we mean by “gender equality” and why are still so far from achieving the unmet potential of the groundbreaking international articulations of women’s rights and gender equality from the 1990s? This course will critically assess the concepts of gender equality, gender mainstreaming, and gender justice and their application to international policy questions. Through case studies, we will explore a range of issues including how the bodies of women and gender non-conforming people are used to advance authoritarian agendas; the neglected role of the care economy; sexual and reproductive rights and justice; and often contested definitions of feminist foreign policy.

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PS 363: Peace Building: Concepts, Cases, Critiques, Tatiana Carayannis

Peacebuilding is a term widely cited as the objective of external assistance to fragile and/or conflict affected states as well as of civil society actors and political leaders in a broader range of countries. Widespread use applied to disparate countries and circumstances and by many different actors raises numerous core questions: What does peacebuilding mean, what does it entail, and who is involved? Can militaries be peacebuilders? Political leaders, civil society organizations, religious leaders, international organizations? Is peacebuilding the exclusive purview of local and national actors or can external actors play a role? The answers depend upon how one defines the concept. As more and more entities claim to be peacebuilders, with accompanying demands for scarce resources and status, understanding peacebuilding and its historical record is far from an academic exercise. The course will begin with a discussion of what Peacebuilding is: its objective(s), components, and actors, both domestic and foreign. To sharpen our understanding, foundational sessions will include consideration of whether peacebuilding is distinct from peacekeeping, peacemaking, conflict resolution, reconciliation, stabilization and reconstruction, statebuilding and strengthening fragile states, or if they are all essentially the same with slightly different nomenclature and emphases. We will pursue answers to these and other questions through a deep analysis of case studies.

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SCI 119: Statistics in Action: From Clinical Trial to Social Justice, Gabriel Perron

Statistics play a pivotal role in illuminating complex issues, from public health crises to the data mining of social media. Through real-life case studies, students will delve into how these mathematical tools uncover the root causes of significant events, even when masked by societal constructs. The primary aim of this course is to impart a broad statistical literacy relevant to fields ranging from the life sciences, data science, economics, and social sciences. By adopting a problem-solving approach, students will become adept at employing advanced statistical modeling, such as analysis of variance and multiple regression, to apply hypothesis testing to diverse real-world situations. A significant component of this instruction includes using the R-programming environment, allowing students to compute and visually represent their analysis outcomes using open-access software. Furthermore, students will engage in critical discussions about the controversies that have molded contemporary statistics, understanding its power and limitations, especially in big data and social justice. Prior knowledge of statistics or programming is not necessary.

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WRIT 368: Craft of Fiction: Writing a Life, Jonas Hassen Khemiri

In this course, we will move chronologically through a life, from childhood to old age, with the help of sixteen different writers. We will read broadly (novels, plays, short stories) and focus on one key question at every life stage. As kids, we will investigate imperfect narrative voices and strategic silences. As teenagers, we will practice writing about politics with humor, and about violence with heart. When we are in our twenties, we will focus on forbidden love and jealousy, friendship and revenge. In our middle age, we will explore if it’s possible to write fiction about family and economics, without turning into accountants or demagogues. Towards the end of the class, we will focus on memory: the importance of testifying, the value of forgetting, and the art of dying. When our class/life is over, we will have thirteen literary tools that we can use in the future to create our most authentic work. Writers will include Svetlana Alexievich, James Baldwin, Caryl Churchill, Marguerite Duras, Édouard Louis, Ghassan Kanafani, Selma Lagerlöf, and Leo Tolstoy.