Practicum (PRACT-UG)

Learn skills to produce visual narratives that get audiences to pay attention, giving crucial voice to people and situations that need to be seen and heard. This lab teaches how to create powerful visual journalism, from conception of a photo project idea, through execution of the final product, to how to professionally pitch for distribution. This year, the thematic focus is on the people who make NYC tick. This is the most populous city in the US, where 8 million people reside, over 200 languages are spoken, and a baby is born every 4.5 minutes. Who are the colorful, eclectic, amazing, celebrated, forgotten, or ordinary individuals of this city? What are their stories, and how can they be told in pictures? This intensive, hands-on lab, led by Professor Walsh and award-winning photojournalist Ron Haviv, incorporates photo critiques as well as critical discussion of responsible, ethical documentary practice. Skills taught include how to write and promote a project proposal for professional publication; developing a better eye for stronger pictures; how to think like a media editor; and developing a personal project that has resonance with larger social matters. The culminating photo projects might focus on topics such as individual NYers, the jobs they have, family, immigrant communities, marginalized groups, and alternative identities, among others. Ultimately, each student uses photography to illuminate and communicate an aspect of what it means to be a New Yorker. This course will appeal to students interested in photojournalism, journalism, documentary photography, social justice, sociology, the arts, and media & urban studies. This lab is open to all NYU students, recent Gallatin alumni, and students from other schools who must enroll as NYU summer students. Upon completion of the lab, students will have the option of displaying their work in one of the Gallatin Galleries. Email Prof. Walsh (lmw242@nyu.edu) with any questions.

Application: http://gallatin.nyu.edu/utilities/forms/fashion-practicum.html Description: The fashion industry’s need to navigate the complex demands of globalization and technology requires a creative approach that connects business, design, innovation and the customer. This course is designed to provide students interested in the fashion industry an understanding between the essential connections of brand development; creativity and innovation; competition and how to effectively navigate; changing customer expectations/needs and evolving spending habits; and cultural movements and customer trends. We will also explore fashion’s role in history, the arts and popular culture, and how each interfaces with current trends and business cycles; strength of digital and social media footprint; and entrepreneurship and how to take a business idea through all stages of development from conceptualization to realization.

Application: https://forms.gallatin.nyu.edu/?q=node/638 Description: The speed with which global changes continue to restructure the fashion business demands a deeper appreciation of the many factors that shape the marketplace. The Advanced Practicum in Fashion Business will entail in-depth case study analysis of key brands and business strategies in today’s fashion industry. Each study will include the examination of key historical, economic, cultural, social, and artistic events that impacted and influenced the business' origins and development, and address issues that impact their current status in the industry—such as design integrity, brand strategy, consumer engagement, and sustainability. Through readings and responses, projects, guest lecturers, cross-course collaborations, on-site visits, and discussions addressing the evolution of the fashion business as well as historical and current notions of beauty, style, and design, the Advanced Practicum in Fashion Business will provide students with an understanding of how brands and new business strategies evolve in conjunction with social and technological change, and what this evolution can tell us about their current status and future potential.

How do you make a film—or any piece of art, with a succinct point of view and an original voice? How does the artist take his or her individual, private vision and transform it into a finished work of art that best expresses these ideas? This practicum will look at the method and practice of filmmaking as a case study for the artistic process more generally. It will offer students a sense of how to move from initial inspiration to finished product: a look at the way that the creative process develops in this most collective of artistic forms. It will also provide a space for students to share work in progress and to think together about the ways in which art is made. Students will workshop their material through a series of multidisciplinary exercises (i.e. painting the emotions that they wish to express with their words, photographing the central themes of their work, writing tangential stories in their characters' lives) with the aim of clarifying their ideas and expanding the prism through which they approach their work. Special sessions will introduce students to fine artists and others in the filmmaking industry, including filmmakers, actors, agents, and photographers.

New generations of writers assume that they will make use of new media in some capacity. Some have made their names as astute social critics on Twitter, developing large followings for their extremely short-form commentary. Others write in traditional print media and see new media almost exclusively as a tool of promotion. Most writers are some hybrid, working to produce meaningful writing that is, simultaneously, "link bait." This course will examine the new media environment for writing from all angles. It will consider how new media changes who can be heard and who gets elevated from microfame into mainstream media, how the responsiveness allowed by new media shapes how writers do their work and respond to criticism, how a panoply of forms (everything from video to Tweets to .gifs) affect how writers communicate ideas. We will also consider how access to a range of voices outside of established social and professional circles changes the job of "editor" by requiring editors to sort these new voices and integrate them into publications' pre-established personalities. The course will begin with a historical component to help students think about how magazine writing has changed with the evolution of the form, up through the 90s and aughts when nearly every magazine launched an online component. Students will then learn to parse the influence of new media in political writing, cultural criticism, and journalism by engaging with major debates in each of these fields. For example, debates between critics like Evgeny Morozov, Zynep Tufekci, and Micah Sifry have shaped how we think about social media in relation to the content and reach of political writing. Students will become fluent in the rich intellectual discourse already surrounding the role of the writer in the new media landscape.

This course will examine the communication of ideas online, and how that communication is shaped by commerce and surveillance. We will begin by considering the role of the public sphere in a democratic society, and then turn to the early anonymous days of the internet, the rise of social media platforms, and finally the Snowden revelations, debates over digital free speech, and new technologies like TikTok and virtual reality. We will experiment with simple counter-surveillance techniques like encrypted texts that are increasingly fundamental to the sensible practice of modern journalism and media work. The course will feature occasional guests. Students will finish the course with an understanding of the relationship between modern media forms and the expression of ideas in the public sphere.

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 requires using existing skills and talents and learning new ones. Assignments include an internship journal.Films include Ethics in America and Waiting for Superman.

There are approximately 67 worker-owned cooperatives currently operating in New York City, as well as numerous collective housing projects, intentional communities, community gardens, urban farms, and participatory budgeting initiatives. These represent a fast growing trend in New York, and nationally. What ethical principles or ideological positions do such projects hold in common, if any? What desires, needs and aspirations do they attempt to address? Do they form a challenge to capitalism, do they see themselves as operating outside of it, or both? Upon what kinds of possibility do such projects and initiatives ultimately insist? In this class, students will examine the social, political and historical trajectories of which these projects and initiatives are a part, through weekly reading and writing assignments, group presentations, and vigorous conversation. As community- engaged learners and participant-researchers, students will be asked to engage directly and deeply with a specific ongoing new/alternative economy project in the city, selected from a long and growing list. Students will prepare reports to present to the class as their participation-research unfolds. The culminating project of the course will be a research-based paper, presentation or art project of the students’ design. Collaboration will be encouraged.

This course introduces students to community-based research, its fundamental tools, and the potentials and limitations of particular methodologies.This kind of research may draw on philosophy of science, feminist scholarship, and critical social sciences, but it is ultimately research based in communities and driven by the needs of those communities. As such, it may not always meet reigning scientific or scholarly standards, and is prone to criticisms of bias or particularism. At the same time, it has the potential be more salient and meaningful to community members and to advocates of social change. In this class, we will explore these tensions around community-based research, addressing questions like: Do its potentials outweigh its limits? "And what are the best ways to determine community need and to conduct this kind of research as a response to that need? Much of the course time, however, will be dedicated to carrying out projects based with three community-based groups in the New York City area. "By the middle of the semester, the course will have moved entirely out of the classroom and participants should be willing to travel to different locations in the city."

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.

Introduction to Ancient Greek Language. Philosophy, theatre, politics, erotics, ethics, economics // Philosophia, theatron, polis, eros, ethos, oikos. Ancient Greek thought is at the heart of much of our thought (and many of our predicaments). Studying the language opens up new horizons for both antiquity and our contemporary moment. Sophocles, Euripides, Plato, Aristotle – and more: this course will introduce students to the language of classical Athens, laying the groundwork for reading these authors (and their contemporaries) in the original Greek. The course will be oriented to authors and texts regularly taught in Gallatin Interdisciplinary Seminars.

In this online course, you will learn how to create a dynamic, digital portfolio website using WordPress. You will learn how to customize your portfolio in order to document your Gallatin-related experiences, including internships, study abroad, and extracurricular activities, synthesizing experiential, performative, and classroom learning. You will be encouraged to use this digital space to articulate and share your research interests, and identify thematic correspondence between your various areas of study, building toward a stronger understanding of your concentration. We will explore the current landscape of digital tools, including basic website design platforms, and social media technologies, and we will consider the various use cases for portfolios, and debate their efficacy. This course will also ask you to consider the social context of digital identity as you engage with your portfolio. Content and Readings for this course may include: Laurel Ptak’s Wages for Facebook; Rob Horning’s “Sharing” Economy and Self-Exploitation; Andrew Smith’s How PowerPoint is killing critical thought; Scott Berkun’s How To Write A Good Bio; and Morten Rand-Hendriksen’s WordPress Essential Training.

What does it mean to advocate for social justice in the city? Ultimately, what does a just city look like? In this course we will explore these questions as they reveal themselves both in scholarship and in practice. Focusing on some of the methods of inquiry that constitute the academic researcher’s toolkit -- participant observation, ethnography, archival research, survey design, interviewing, mapping -- you will develop a set of concrete skills to take with you as you prepare to work with urban social justice organizations in Chicago, Oakland, New York City, and Madrid. At the same time, we will reflect as a group on broader, animating concepts such as the “right to the city,” urbanization, democracy, gentrification, urban planning, resilience, and preservation. The course will culminate in a scholarly, actionable, and flexible research plan that will help ground you for your summer research. Readings for this course may include David Harvey’s “The Right to the City,” Ananya Roy’s “The 21st Century Metropolis: New Geographies of Theory,” Pierre Bourdieu’s “Understanding,” Robert Emerson, et al. Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes and Rebecca Solnit & Joshua Jelly-Schapiro’s Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas.

THIS COURSE TAKES PLACE AT NYU-FLORENCE. Global Fashion Industry: Italy will provide students with a deep understanding of the contemporary fashion industry in Italy, as well as of Italy's position in the global fashion arena. The course will drive students through the entire lifecycle of the fashion business, from forecasting trends to retailing, through design, sourcing, product development and production. Particular attention will be dedicated to different marketing aspects of the process, such as: identity building, brand positioning, merchandising, buying, costing, communication. All levels of retail, from luxury to mass market will be covered. The course will end with an analysis of the new challenges, such as sourcing globalization, emerging markets, sustainability and growing significance of technology. A strong effort will be put into organizing site visits to studios, showrooms and factories, as well as meeting with professional players. Each session will be structured to give students an overview of a particular stage of the Industry, through a mix of lectures from the course leader and visiting professionals, studio and showroom visits, walking tours, reading assignments and practical projects. Conducted in English.

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.