Core: Colloquium (CCOL-UH)

Conceptions of death and the afterlife not only structure traditional religious beliefs and practices, but they also subtly inform politics, scientific research, and societies more widely. How societies mete out punishment, engage in war, treat animals, distribute funds for scientific research or medical treatment, give legal expression to various moral mandates, etc. all are rooted in their attitudes and beliefs about death and the afterlife. This colloquium takes up a range of literary, political, and philosophical works from different cultures and periods that have framed in memorable, though often contradictory, ways some basic questions about death and immortality. How long should people live? How would immortality impact the planet's resources? And how might these questions inflect our views about recent technological efforts to extend life and ultimately to achieve immortality virtual or otherwise? Students will confront such questions from a variety of moral, scientific, and cultural perspectives and explore the role that death plays in their own lives and in those of other peoples and societies.

Are people born indigenous or do they become indigenous? If the latter, what is the process of becoming, and what opportunities or tensions does it bring? This course explores trajectories of indigeneity, which may be both more and less than the quality of being "native," paying attention to relationships between indigenous peoples and their respective states, and to how legacies of conflict and accommodation raise difficult questions about economic, cultural, and political justice. Readings are drawn from a wide range of fields, including anthropology, history, environmental studies, public policy, and art history, and also include memoirs and personal testimony. Case studies are drawn from many world regions, including the Nahua, Australian Aborigines, Cree, Tuareg, Algonquin, Nasu, Alutiiq, among others.

We live simultaneously in an age of science and an era of great religious faith, when reason and revelation are often depicted as being in inherent and eternal tension. This course traces the history of the relationship of religion and science in Christendom and Islamdom from the Middle Ages to the present day. The course addresses the global challenges of understanding humanity (by paying close attention to how humans in two religious traditions have defined and narrated the relationship between rational and revealed thought) and seeking peace (by attending to how a nineteenth-century narrative of a timeless conflict between science and religion has distorted our understanding of the past and continues to undermine contemporary debates on their compatibility).

What is "global heritage"? Is it simply our collective legacy as human societies - how we want to be remembered by future generations - or must we confront more difficult questions about identity, the ownership of culture, and conflicts between local and global stewardship of the cultural treasures and historical evidence? With time, negligence, and even military conflict working to erase the past, we must ask: Can a better understanding of our shared heritage assist us in addressing cultural differences in the present day? And how can science both help us understand the historic record and work to preserve it? This class examines ways in which scientific methods can help define "global heritage" and protect it for future generations. Students explore the history and the science behind the creation of paintings, frescoes, parchments, sculptures, ancient mummies, historical buildings, musical instruments, and other artifacts. They will also examine the methods used to differentiate between an authentic object and a fake and ask how some objects come to be valued more than others: distinctions that can lead, and have led, to cultural conflict in recent years.

This course introduces students to a wide variety of cultural perspectives on the ways that nature is conceived in its relation to human agency, social organization, and political behavior. As we become increasingly caught up in a new and ever-changing dynamic of climate change that is transforming cultures and societies globally, understanding our relation to nature becomes a pressing global challenge. How are we to confront the environmental changes caused by industrialization and continuing technological change? How have our views of nature and of ourselves been transformed by urbanization and technological change? Does the global character of production inevitably lead to the dilution of individual and local identities together with previous conceptions of nature? Constructed around a series of discrete problems that will be contextualized historically and culturally, the course strives for a unifying, global perspective on the environmental crisis and will address a range of today's most pressing eco-critical dilemmas.

One of the biggest challenges in medicine is to prevent disease and ensure personalized treatment. This is now becoming possible thanks to high-resolution DNA sequencing technology that can decipher our individual information. These developments are already impacting global health, but they raise global challenges such as equality. How will these new technologies blend into healthcare systems? What regulations are needed to ensure that personalized medicine reaches all layers of society? How do we prevent discrimination based on our genes? Through an inquiry-based approach we will examine the science, economics, and politics behind medicine and evaluate the ethical issues that arise in this fast-developing field.

Until very recently much of the world has lived under colonial rule. Major colonial powers shaped social, religious, and institutional life in countries that they controlled. This course explores the legacies of colonial rule. In it, students encounter the markedly different perspectives of the colonizers and the colonized and ask whether these can be reconciled both historically and in the context of more contemporary postcolonial discourse. Asking how colonial practices have shaped the causes of global inequality and have influenced the dynamics of recent conflicts, the class also engages with the notion of justice in postcolonial contexts and asks whether former colonizers might have contemporary obligations toward their former subjects. This is a multidisciplinary course drawing on sources from the social sciences, history, and literature.

How has labor - and our attitude towards it - evolved from subsistence farming and slavery? What happened in the industrial revolution and what further changes have been brought about in the new digital age? What role have institutions and religions played in attitudes toward labor? How does education affect work/life satisfaction, wages, and mobility? Why do so many people choose not to work "in the market," and at the same time, why in happiness surveys is job loss often ranked similar in severity to the death of a close relative or divorce? These are some of the questions students will discuss in this class as they study how the roles of and attitudes towards labor have changed.

How can we best address global challenges such as promoting peace and environmental sustainability? Hardly a week goes by without a major news story concerning the need for cooperation either between countries, political parties, organizations, or individuals. This course explores the topic of cooperation using insights from economics, evolutionary biology, mathematics, social psychology, and anthropology. The main questions to be addressed are: When is cooperation desirable? When should an individual, an organization, or a country expect others to cooperate? Why do some people fail to cooperate even when it would be to their benefit? Which factors undermine cooperation? How can we engineer cooperation to achieve better outcomes?

Why is the present-day extinction crisis an existential threat to the future of humankind? We are living in the age of the Anthropocene, when the human impact on global biodiversity has led to a dramatic increase in the rate of extinction of animals and plants - the so-called "sixth extinction". This course looks at the causes and consequences of extinctions in the modern era, as well as in the past. It takes a multidisciplinary and global perspective, drawing on evidence from earth science, paleontology, archaeology, climate science, genomics, ecology, and conservation biology. It examines what we have learned from the study of major mass extinctions and their proposed causes, including extra-terrestrial impacts, volcanism, and climate change. The course also looks at the factors associated with extinctions in the human fossil record and what role humans have played in past extinctions. It reviews contemporary extinctions across the globe and the steps being taken to conserve biodiversity. The final part of the course explores the possibilities of de-extinction, rewilding, and planned extinction, and the ethical issues that these raise.

Water is the life blood of existence. Across time and place it has sustained society, nourished crops, made war, diffused networks of trade and cultural exchange, delimited political jurisdictions, and powered machines. Whether tranquil, in motion, or in modes of manipulation, water has also inspired many worlds of artistic practice. This course uses examples from the visual and performing arts to highlight the subject of water as element, energy, human right, bridge between cultures, and instrument of war. Films include Drowned Out by Arundhati Roy, Even the Rain by Icíar Bollaín, Water by Deepa Mehta, and Black Water. Performing arts include plays such as Fire on the Water, a fast-paced series of short plays inspired by a pivotal moment in Cleveland's history created by diverse playwrights; Water by the Spoonful by Quiara Alegría Hudes; and The Water Carriers by Michael Williams. These works highlight representations of water, the technologies deployed to shape such representations, and their larger role in illuminating big questions about the human condition.

The desert has been imagined as a barrier, a dry ocean, a bridge, and a hyphen between various ecological and cultural spaces across the globe. Drifting, parched tides of sand and vast, empty landscapes have made it seem uninhabitable and a metaphor for exile, difficult journeys, spiritual reflection, and death. This course explores the ways in which the desert has been depicted and experienced in various historical, cultural, and geographic contexts - from the Sahara to the Mojave, from the origins of Abrahamic religions to Burning Man, from desert oasis to urban food desert. This course will also consider the future of deserts and global challenges posed by climate change, desertification, and resources (water, oil, solar). Students will encounter the desert through diverse sources that include film, literature, soundscapes, musical performances, environmental and social history, artistic production, fieldtrips, and travel writings. So, even while the desert is an environmental reality that makes inhabitation difficult, it is still a space of demographic, cultural, and economic activity and exchange.

How did life form on Earth? How likely is it that life formed elsewhere in the universe? If it did, how can we find these beings? Was the formation of life in the universe a bygone conclusion? Answering these questions requires understanding the basics of biology, chemistry, and physics and has strong bearing on our understanding of the human condition and the sustainability of life on our planet. During this semester, students will discuss current models for how the necessary ingredients for life formed in the universe, the observational and experimental evidence for these theories, attempts by scientists and science fiction writers to imagine life in other parts of the universe, and the many questions which remain.

When looking at paintings of Rubens, pictures of fashion models, prehistoric Venus figurines or Greek sculptures, it is obvious that the appreciation for the human body has changed drastically through space and time. These differences of perception can generate inter-individual and cultural tensions and affect public policy, for example in the context of health care policy and equal opportunity in the work place. This course will examine how our understanding of human physiology, genetics, and development, as well as methods of investigations of human anatomy, have shaped the perception of the human body, through history, and across cultures. Students will examine the function of the body and how the understanding of bodily functions has changed (the working body). The course will also delve into the modifications the human body has experienced evolutionarily and how our own body is changing from a single cell until death (the changing body). Finally, it will examine deviations from the typical body plan and the causes for these deviations (the abnormal body). These topics will be explored using scientific and non-scientific literature, art, and movies.

There are more migrants worldwide today than Brazil has inhabitants. China, India, and the Philippines are sending most migrants; the most important host areas are Europe and the United States; and expats make up more than 60% of the total population in Qatar and the UAE. How has migration been represented in and shaped by literature and art? This course reviews exemplary texts, striking images, and important films. It focuses on the United States from around 1880 to World War II and on Europe in the second half of the twentieth century, then opens up toward students' examination of cultural work by and about contemporary migrants from around the world. Readings include autobiography, reportage, documentary photography and film as well as fiction and creative visual work. Among the topics for discussion are metaphors and theories of migration (from uprooting and bird-of-passage to expatriate and melting-pot); labor arrangements; scenes of departure, voyage, and arrival; vibrant migrant communities and migrant alienation and pain; negotiation between places of origin and of arrival.

What is war? Why do wars exist? What are the differences between wars in the past and those being waged today and how have the conditions of conflict changed throughout history? Is there an art of war? These questions are central to the purview of this course, which examines artistic responses to war across a wide range of historical and cultural contexts from antiquity to the present. The course explores how the arts, particularly music and musical practices, play a critical role in accompanying the sociological rituals of war from the military marches part of deployment, to the laments and requiems that figure centrally in processes of mourning in the aftermath of conflict. Drawing on histories and philosophies of war, students will engage with issues related to propaganda, censorship, detention, internment, torture, heroism, sacrifice, bravery, justice, history, memory, and death and with reference to work by Homer, Thucydides, Sun Tzu, Clausewitz, Tolstoy, Shostakovitch, Britten, Picasso, Dix, Mishima, Wiesel, Tarkovsky, Kubrick, and John Lennon, among others.

The notion of "following nature" as a guide to human conduct is ages-old. So is the opposing contention that humanity should rise (but how?) above what nature has given us in order to grasp some higher destiny (but what?). What lies behind these opposing conceptions of the relationship between humanity and our natural environment? If we are shown to be nothing but animals of a particular sort, then what does that spell for our self-image, societal ideals, and ultimate end? And does our place in the natural order confer upon us some special duties with regard to the rest of nature? Finally, what notion of "natural" is operative behind these discussions, anyway? Is the notion of "human nature" even coherent, or particularly helpful? Students will examine psychology, society, morality, and religion, and approach these topics from the point of view of philosophy, literature, and science. Classical texts and cutting-edge research will deepen an understanding of the problem faced by us all - that of what it means to act naturally, and whether we should.

No organism on Earth lives in isolation! This simple fact underscores the importance of interactions between species. But how do organisms interact? What languages do they use? This course explores how interspecies crosstalk sustains life on Earth and how challenges such as global warming influence such communication. Topics to discuss include the role of chemical communication between bacteria in causing infectious diseases and whether the overuse of antibiotics is sustainable; how communication between ocean algae coupled with global warming lead to recurrent "red tides"; the breakdown of coral-algae symbiosis and implications for coastal fisheries; disruption of the language bees use to maintain colonies and the rise of colony collapse disorder that threatens pollination globally; the potential use of plant language to combat bug infestation in lieu of pesticides; how our gut microbiota influence physical appearance and susceptibility to disease and whether our innate bacteria affect our social interactions; how human communication has influenced civilization and whether modern technological advances, such as social media, have positive or negative effects on us as a species.

What is gender? What has it meant to be male, female, or non-binary across time and space? How have these meanings shaped the lived experiences and power relations of people in different parts of the world down the ages? How can thinking about gender inform the analysis of texts, societies, and politics? This class will explore these questions by drawing on a wide range of sources from religion, science, formal and customary law, psychoanalysis, philosophy, art, history, and literature, that may span the Americas, Africa, Europe, South and East Asia, and the Middle East. Using these sources, we will explore gender through the prisms of cross-cultural encounters, empire, revolutions, social movements, work, marriage and family lives, and media, public and popular cultures. In the process, we will reflect on how gender is constructed and contested in relation to race, class, morality, social justice, and other norms of social behavior in different contexts.

Inequality is a fundamental issue with which every human society, past and present, has had to deal. This course explores why inequality occurs and why it matters, questions which have taken on critical importance in this time of deepening global inequalities. The course will approach these questions by considering inequality in comparative and historical perspective so that students will gain a deeper perspective on today's debates. While the course will focus on the wide-ranging consequences of inequality, particular emphasis will be placed on the relationship between inequality and government. How does governmental action influence inequality, and why? Does the presence of inequality influence what type of government is possible? To answer these questions the course will draw on sources from a range of academic disciplines including political science, history, economics, philosophy, and literature. However, no prior expertise in any of these areas will be required. By the end of the course students will be in a better position to formulate their own normative opinions about inequality while also understanding how it functions in practice.

"Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible" - Maya Angelou. Every society in the world struggles with intergroup prejudice to some degree. This colloquium explores the antecedents and consequences of (and potential remedies for) intergroup prejudice through the lens of multiple disciplines, including history, social science, literature, and the arts. It considers the perspectives of the perpetrators, targets, and observers of prejudice and discrimination and explores the following topics: the origins of prejudice, the different forms of prejudicial expression and their justifications, the conditions under which prejudice is exacerbated (or reduced), and the differential ways explicit and implicit prejudice manifests in individuals and institutions. We also discuss the burden of living in prejudicial societies, the social and psychological obstacles involved in acknowledging and confronting prejudice, and the costs associated with overcoming these obstacles.

This course considers disability as a cultural concept - not simply a medical condition or personal misfortune - that describes how human variation matters in the world. How has disability been understood over time and across cultures? How have disabled bodies been represented and classified? How does disability intersect with other identity formations such as race, class, and gender? Ultimately, we will ask: what new forms of representation might bodily difference produce, and what might the concept of disability teach us about all bodies? Alongside texts that may describe disability as defective or tragic, we will trace other literary possibilities for bodies and minds that resist normative structures, from narratives that theorize ideas of access, cure, and care to fictions that reclaim disability as enlivening identity.

What is evil? We use the term to describe human behavior, political regimes, natural disasters, and epidemic disorder. The idea of evil is as old as humanity, and various religious, legal, political, and social arrangements aim to circumvent it. But definitions vary over time and across cultures, suggesting that evil may be contextual rather than universal. If so, can we say that evil is a constitutive part of the human condition? This colloquium offers a multi-disciplinary investigation into evil's dimensions and its implications for peace, justice, and human understanding. It begins with the theological conundrum all major religions face: how to reconcile the evils of human suffering with the existence of a loving god. Additional topics include the concept of evil as a rationale for colonial and imperial projects; the Nazi use of gas chambers during WWII; and the Aversion Project in South Africa. Students will examine attempts to prevent evil, venturing into the realm of clinical psychology with the psychopathic serial killer and exploring Marx's indictment of capitalism's evils by considering alternatives to corporations' pursuit of profit at the expense of ordinary people.

Do women lead differently than men? What are the implications of women's and men's unequal distribution in leadership across many social domains? This course examines past and present challenges and opportunities related to women and leadership, empowerment, equality, and gender equity from a global perspective. In doing so it seeks to examine critically the historical contexts and conditions within which issues of women and leadership have been embedded. What are the effects of inequality, injustice, and discrimination on women's underrepresentation in leadership across the world? The course will take a variety of disciplinary approaches to the topic, drawing on autobiographies, biographies, novels, films, and TV series, alongside academic literature.

States form the building blocks of our global order, significantly impacting how people from diverse countries, cultures, and regional backgrounds interact with each other. Yet what does the concept of statehood entail and what is its role in a globalized world? The course examines the historical, legal, political, and cultural foundations of the concepts of state and statehood, along with related ideas, such as sovereignty, citizenship, and statelessness. A diverse range of literary, cultural, legal, and government sources will help create the course's conceptual framework as well as case studies of past and present challenges to state-building efforts. Examples will include state-building in the Global South, various forms of regional cooperation (e.g. the GCC, ASEAN, etc.), and the creation of supranational institutions such as the European Union. In addition, the course will examine questions of statehood/statelessness during times of war and conflict, and in relation to topics such as migration and refugees, social movements, gender, race and ethnicity, and civil and human rights.

This colloquium examines the increasingly urgent global challenge posed by radical forms of nationalism. Beginning with the nation-state's origin and logic and extending to contemporary notions of citizenship across the globe, students will draw on disciplines such as history, politics, economics, anthropology, and cultural studies to ask: What makes an individual a citizen? Are nations and states synonymous? Do nations require cultural unity? Focusing on how colonialism and neo-colonialism have shaped the emergence of modern nations, the seminar trains special attention on the Arab world. How did early Arab writers represent other nations before the nation-state? How do Western views of nation-state interact with local understandings of tribe, umma (Muslim people), or community? Historical and theoretical frames range from the Prophet Muhammad's vision for the Islamic umma to Plato's polis, from Benedict Anderson's account of imagined community to Arab socialist adaptations of Marx and Lenin, from oil's impact on notions of citizenship and Arabness in Gulf states to the global refugee crisis that threatens international stability and human rights today.

Can aesthetic forms promote and not just respond to revolutionary social and political change? This Core Colloquium confronts global challenges of peace, justice, and equality by examining the role of music and other art forms in advancing social movements, using the recent history of the Middle East and North Africa as a principal case study. Placing these events in a longer historical context, course materials will explore what role the arts have played in social movements, including 20th-century revolutions in Egypt, the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the Palestinian Intifadas, and the Arab Uprisings. Students will ask how artistic practices not only reflect social changes in these case studies, but also promote them. Drawing on theoretical readings on aesthetics, social movements, and revolution from disciplines including anthropology, musicology, and Middle East Studies, students will develop a critical understanding for the role of art in social change, an analytical grasp of theories of social mobilization, and deeper knowledge of recent historical moments in the Middle East and North Africa region.

How can creativity flourish under crisis? While wars, natural disasters, and disease outbreaks have devastated global communities over the centuries, they have often led to significant advances in the arts and sciences. Why do crisis, calamity, or suffering lead to creativity and innovation? How can we better understand this paradoxical yet intimate relationship between crisis and creative expression? This course considers how the arts have helped us grapple with crisis, conflict, and catastrophe - whether natural or human-made - and shape our responses to them. While tracing different catastrophic events across space and time, from early creation myths to Covid-19, students will ask how artists have responded to crises and what aesthetic strategies they use. Students will also analyze the role the arts play in the scientific, government, and economic debates surrounding natural and human-made disasters and what such forms of creative expression can tell us about ourselves as humans. Students will read primary historical texts and engage with artistic responses to crisis in literature, painting, cinema, music, and theater, supplemented by psychological and scientific texts.

Oil is obviously a matter of huge importance in Abu Dhabi and globally. But what is oil? Is it a mineral formed by long-decayed microorganisms or volcanic activity? Is it a source of power (the fuel derived by cracking it into gasoline) or a source of geopolitical power? Does oil bring wealth - or, as some researchers argue, a "resource curse"? What is oil for Arab states? For the planet? And what happens if or when it runs out? This Core Colloquium addresses these and many related issues from multidisciplinary and global perspectives, drawing on materials and concepts from geology, history, political economy, film, and literature.

What is fair and what is unfair? Is fairness universal? Are equality and fairness synonyms? How can we build a fairer world? Anyone can recall a situation when someone exclaimed, "That's not fair!" Whether arguing with your roommate about the upkeep of common areas, viewing the daily news, or analyzing fiscal policies, people often disagree on what constitutes a fair process or outcome. The plurality of fairness ideals may lead to a breakdown in negotiations, social conflict, or other undesirable outcomes. Social stability is at risk when systems are perceived as unfair. Potential business partners may fail to collaborate if they cannot agree on a compensation system that properly rewards efforts and employees may withhold labor or even sabotage production if they feel treated unfairly. On the upside, a shared sense of fairness may lead to mutually beneficial interactions, social cohesion, and smooth political decision-making processes. This Colloquium draws from disciplines including philosophy, psychology, political science, economics, and organizational behavior to question our own notions and judgments and arrive at a holistic understanding of fairness as a concept.

This colloquium takes as its touchstone the idea that movement, actual and imaginative, has historically generated knowledge and sharpened our ethical sensibilities. Drawing on literature, film, and theory across disciplines, historical periods, and geographic fields, it explores how journeys - and associated experiences such as pilgrimage, nomadism, adventure, slavery, imperialism, migration, exile, commerce, tourism, and climate change - provide narrative frames for human inquiry. What is the difference between travels and journeys? What difference does it make, then, when journeys are chosen vs. forced? How might depictions of journeys enact representational and even physical power and inequality over those they survey? How do journeys transform individual and group senses of self, others, home, and the world? How do encounters with unknown places and others prompt questions about comparison, difference, commensurability, and co-existence? What roles might translation and adaptation play in this process? Such questions suggest that journeys provide much more than the discovery of destinations and may, in fact, facilitate self-discovery in unexpected ways.

Self-tracking. Biohacking. Personal informatics. Quantified self. The contemporary "quantified self" movement makes claims of "self-knowledge through numbers" and improving health and human welfare. There are clearly other elements to self-tracking culture that deserve critical investigation. What does the self become through the lens of data? What is the dark side of data that can be used against us, and without regard for social justice and equality? This multidisciplinary course takes both a theoretical and a practical look at the pressing issue of data aggregation about human beings. It looks to the past for historical forms of self-quantification and to the future of a rapidly expanding globalized landscape of app tracking and wearable technologies. With the question of human data in mind, the course examines the unsure futures of humanity in a variety of domains: medicine and aging, education, the arts, marketing, and the Internet of Things. Students will situate themselves critically within this increasingly dense data landscape by creating data about themselves that can be analyzed and interpreted using a variety of data visualization and storytelling frameworks.

Inspired by the French Enlightenment, "secularism" has come to represent non-religious approaches to morality and socio-political life. This course draws on multiple disciplines - including history, philosophy, fine arts, and political science - to explore secularism's multiple meanings and manifestations. Does secularism have core values and, if so, how do those differ from religious values? What are secularism's origins, and is it fundamentally Western? How do philosophical approaches commonly associated with secularism (e.g., humanism, agnosticism, and atheism) differ, and how have such paradigms influenced knowledge-production and human rights norms? In addition to exploring these far-reaching questions, students will compare the specificities of secular mobilization and governance worldwide: How does secular governance in China and Russia differ from models in the United States, France, India, and Turkey? Is there a positive correlation between secularization and economic development, increased religious diversity, or broader access to education? What interrelationships exist between secularization and democratization? Is any contemporary society truly secular?

Water is fundamental to life and to fundamental human rights such as adequate food and livelihood. Water's availability and quality have shaped civilizations; its place in our contemporary lives bears on global societal issues such as health, food security, gender equality, and economic policy. Despite making up most of the Earth's surface, water remains a precious resource to which billions of people have little or no access. This colloquium takes a multidisciplinary approach to the connections between water and society, including scientific, social, and economic perspectives. How does the availability of safe drinking water relate to health and sanitation? How are water, food, and energy linked? In what ways do human actions affect water-related ecosystems? What role does the water industry play in job creation? What recent advances have been made in water harvesting and desalination? Learning to weigh and synthesize multiple forms of evidence, students will develop the skills needed to address these and other questions and challenges posed with respect to water and society.

Across the globe, political conflict is increasingly defined by the notion of resentment - defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as a "sense of grievance; an indignant sense of injury or insult received or perceived; (a feeling of) ill will, bitterness, or anger against a person or thing." In this Core Colloquium, we will endeavor together to better understand the role of resentment in politics. How should we define resentment, and how universal is this concept across cultures and nations? What tools or approaches can we use to assess its impact on contemporary political events? What are the relationships between resentment and desired end-states like equality, justice, and reconciliation? Course materials will include philosophical explorations, primary sources, conceptual mappings and empirical research on resentment. Students will also engage in basic data analyses exploring the causes and consequences of resentment worldwide.

A handful of languages - English, French, Spanish, and in some regions Russian, Arabic and Mandarin - are becoming 'world languages', used internationally and widely acquired as additional languages. Since human communities always develop some common medium of communication, this reflects the emergence of wider transnational or global communities. But it also reflects and ratifies disparities of power, conferring great privilege to the nations and native speakers of the world languages, and disadvantage to non-speakers. What are the implications of linguistic imperialism for the other six thousand or so human languages, and the billions of people who do not speak a world language? Many minority languages are losing speakers and becoming endangered or extinct. Educational failure and economic exclusion are widespread among those compelled to function in an unfamiliar world language. This course explores the processes and consequences of linguistic imperialism. We discuss issues of language maintenance and shift, language politics, multilingual education, and linguistic human rights. We examine the tension between the utilitarian role of language in enabling communication with an ever-wider community, and its powerful social role as an expression of culture and of community and personal identity.

How does the "benefit of hindsight" shape the stories that define our sense of self? Do these stories change depending on what is important to us at the time of looking back This multidisciplinary colloquium brings together the study of psychology, philosophy, sociology, history, and literary memoir to explore how autobiographical memories may be structured less by weighing evidence than by rules of employment and the need to create a morally comprehensible narrative identity. What roles do dominant narratives constructed within different socio-cultural worlds play in shaping individuals' narrative identities? And what happens when dominant narratives are created globally and no longer the preserve of regional societies? Whose interests might such identity-conferring narratives serve? What happens when globalizing cultures create tension between collective memories of belonging (to communities/nations) and autobiographies that foreground exceptionality, individual achievement, and cosmopolitan engagement? What are the psychological consequences of "looking back" on one's life from a critical moral perspective? And what are the implications for "understanding humanity"?

What distinguishes a luxury from a necessity? How do we know luxury when we see it? Luxury goods range from art and handbags to automobiles, vintage vines and rare animal species, and many others items. Such goods have played important roles in the history of civilizations, triggering wars and financial crises or defining political and religious values. Luxury is also like a pioneer, making important steps for the first time, allowing mankind to develop its capabilities and expressing this development. In fact, the dynamic of "luxury" predates humans and figures in the behavior of mammals. Today, luxury goods are hardly reserved for the wealthiest, which devote nearly 65% of their consumption to such items, since low-income families (the bottom fifth of earners) also spend about 40% on luxuries and 60% on necessities. How does such behavior factor into a pursuit of just societies? How does it play out in everyday decision-making? Students in this multidisciplinary colloquium will examine the history, pricing, cost, and present state of luxury goods across societies and will learn to use scientific methods to envision the roles that luxury goods might play in humanity's future.

Most of us agree that we should be tolerant of the beliefs and practices of others. Often the call for tolerance is grounded in some form of relativism - that is, in the thought that there simply isn't an absolute or objective fact of the matter. After all, on what basis could we insist that others share our beliefs if those beliefs are subjective in some way, a function of our upbringing, our religion, our social norms, our culture, or our own peculiar tastes and concerns? But what reasons do we have to accept some such form of relativism? Can relativism really ground our commitment to tolerance? If not, then how else can we justify that commitment? We will explore these questions as they arise in a number of different philosophical and religious traditions. Readings will be drawn from both classical and contemporary sources and will include the work of anthropologists, literary and political theorists, philosophers, and theologians.

How has the automation of work changed the ways we live? What challenges and opportunities does automation of work pose for the future? This multidisciplinary colloquium draws on materials in social science, science, and the humanities to explore how societies have organized themselves relative to technology in the past, and what changes are currently taking place. As we are now in the midst of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), and dislocated by covid-19, how we live and work is undergoing profound change. New technologies pose new global challenges in the areas of equality, sustainable development, and education. Students will examine the wave of technology-driven transformations occurring on a global scale, including artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and 3D printing. The future of work is explored through literature, policy, and scientific expression, as we anticipate how humans will spend their time as current-day work becomes automated and permanently changed by the impacts of covid-19. They will consider the 4IR as an opportunity to critique theories of technological change and construct their own narratives of change in individual case study analysis assignments.

The body plays a central role in today's global challenges, including in the promotion of justice, equality, health, and human rights. But controversies surrounding these aspirations also reveal the existence of divergent - often opposing - definitions of the body. This course asks how current political struggles over issues such as gender identity, racism, and reproductive and human rights involve conflicting understandings of the body. What relationships do these notions establish or depend upon between the body, identity, power, and truth? How do body politics inform debates about the anti-vaccination movement, "political correctness," or body modifications? To denaturalize our ideas about the body, the course combines the exploration of current trends with the examination of views from diverse time periods and cultures. By identifying and analyzing these contrasting assumptions, the course seeks to better understand the challenges we face today, and how to address them. Major topics will include the problem of embodiment and the limits of our bodies; the role the body plays in the definition of racial and gender identities; bodily disciplines; and the human quest for truth.

What kind of justice matters when political regimes change? How should new democracies handle the legacies of a violent past? Should emerging political actors punish perpetrators? Or, instead, should they encourage victims to reconcile with former aggressors? How do ancient and modern experiences of justice differ? Which is a better condition for peace: knowing or not knowing the past? Is there a trade-off between political stability and full disclosure of the past? Taking up such questions, this course asks what we can learn from the contemporary field of Transitional Justice, as well as from its critics. Investigating ideas and practices of punishment, reconciliation, forgiving, and forgetting, students will examine such cases as Argentina, South Africa, East Timor, Egypt, and Brazil. They will examine how the International Criminal Court manages complex issues surrounding international intervention in domestic affairs. How have diverse national experiences of violence yielded varying concepts of justice, reconciliation, and transition? How does political imagination relate to representations of justice in post-conflict films, documentaries, fiction, and testimonial literature?

What is the relationship between multilingualism and global citizenship? How does learning and speaking multiple languages correlate with changes in identity and perception? This interdisciplinary colloquium integrates theory with practice in looking at the effects of language-learning on education, society, and cultural identity. In addition to developing a basic understanding of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) concepts, students will consider multilingualism from perspectives including educational and social psychology, diplomacy, business, and public policy. Along the way additional questions arise: In what settings does multilingualism thrive? What makes a language easy or difficult to learn? Why do some people succeed at learning new languages while others don't? Can plurilingual citizens boost the economy of their countries? Does language-learning require and/or promote cultural understanding? Are there drugs that can accelerate language learning? Guest experts will address different areas of language education, social behavior, and psycho/neurolinguistics. All students will experiment over the course of the semester with studying a language using the Duolingo application.

How does the ceaseless movement of people - a key feature of our globalized world - impact our sense of the self, of social identity, and indeed of political rights, all of which are anchored in a presumption of "belonging" that is secured by primordial ties of blood and soil. "Migrant," "Refugee," and "Indigenous" are among the most fraught terms in a time when the "Citizen" has been elevated to being the singular legitimacy. Formal citizenship often excludes migrants or those who were born to parents of foreign nationality. What are the tensions between citizenship and mobility? Can one recognize both the "right" to movement and mobility alongside assertions of the preeminence of "local populations"? How are these competing claims conceptualized and rights affirmed? What are the distinct valences of terms like "Neighbor," "Stranger," "Citizen," "Alien," "Guest," and "Resident"? And how do we debate the contrasting conceptual grounds of territorial claims and circulatory flows? In this multidisciplinary colloquium, students will engage these in order to better understand the place of the nation-state and the experience of citizenship in the context of globalization.

How do we understand and make sense of the consequences of what has clearly become a climate emergency? What conditions catalyzed this moment of crisis? Why and how might we consider re-orienting our habits of thought and action to engage this global challenge? What are the limits of anthropomorphism or the anthropomorphic imagination, of assigning human attributes to nonhuman others? Our notions of "development" and "progress," our conception of natural resources, our relationship to the technocratic imagination have all contributed to the making of the Age of the Anthropocene, in which human agency reshapes our environment. This course will engage with a range of approaches that re-conceptualize the relationship of humans with nature. It will study the environmental consequences of urbanization, resource frontiers, extractive industries, the quest for sustainable energy, human-animal conflict, and the politics of conservation. It will conclude by asking what constitutes environmental justice as students explore the need to recalibrate multiple disciplines to generate a "multispecies" perspective on our world.

Concerns about corruption are everywhere, but the way corruption is perceived and interpreted changes from context to context. We tend to use the adjective "corrupt" for private individuals, public officials, and state institutions alike. Phenomena ranging from bribery and nepotism to poor governance and human rights violations are also sometimes bundled under the same umbrella. But what do we mean when we talk about "corruption"? Can we define it in a way that explains its wide and diverse usage? How do we detect it and can we agree on when or how to combat it? This course seeks to provide frameworks for answering these questions. In the first part, students will examine earlier philosophical contributions to the debate about corruption, put them into historical context, and understand how the concept and its applications have changed over time. The second part of the class will turn to contemporary controversies, focusing more specifically on corruption in public institutions and on existing "recipes" for eliminating it.

Throughout human history we have searched for a Panacea, a mythical remedy that can cure all disease and prolong life. In this course students will explore the intriguing origin stories of the life changing drugs which have shaped society and the ethical dilemmas raised by their use. The course will bring multidisciplinary perspectives to question the moral, legal and economic dilemmas posed by the commoditization of life. What happens when how we live and why we die is decided by a price tag? How do you allocate a limited resource? In a free market economy, who profits and who suffers? What are the consequences of government regulation? Have we become reliant on pills to remedy our personal and social ills? We will also investigate the ways in which language and communication are inseparable from the challenges facing modern medicine, from the anthropomorphism of scientific terminology to the power of misinformation. The issues discussed here are not unique, they reflect and inform how we address the global challenges of inequality, justice and sustainability facing society as a result of technological advancement. Except in this case, it may be a matter of life and death.

How does theater reflect upon the global impact of scientific discoveries that can in one turn contribute to the well-being of the planet and by another turn devastate it? The Drama of Science explores that question through the lens of dramatic literature by studying a series of plays that engage with issues of scientific practice and discovery and their consequences. But how do these different agendas come together? How are individual scientists portrayed, and how are scientific communities, sites, and practices evoked and understood? How do playwrights speak to the impact of science, especially nuclear power, genomics, and climate change on society? Relevant plays are read with an eye toward addressing the theater's influence on the perception of science.

Put on your goggles. What if instead of seeing beyond difference we tried to see through it? In this course we will consider caste and race and ask how they have enabled modes of seeing, thinking, being. How have critics, theorists, poets and artists attempted to define, undefine, imagine, deconstruct, historicize, problematize, race and caste? For the Black British critic Stuart Hall, the question was not only of race in and for itself, but of 'the whole social formation, which is racialized.' For B.R. Ambedkar, the father of both the Indian constitution and the untouchable caste - 'Dalit' - movement in India, caste was not 'a wall of bricks, like a line or barbed wire,' but 'a state of mind.' We examine how the varied experiences and discourses of caste and race might intersect, both historically, and in our contemporary moment. We will study a range of narratives of caste and race - that of the migrant and the student, the laborer and the prostitute - in fiction, poetry, film, painting and music. We also examine critical theories of race and caste that have produced new questions, terminologies and categories: fugitivity and humiliation, double consciousness and Dalit love.

This course examines the history and science of fire, including its impact on the evolution of the human species, on human culture, technology, and climate change. Three fires - the natural fire, the fire tamed and controlled by humans in the natural environment, and the industrial fire, i.e., controlled combustion - will ground the discussion of questions typically not envisioned when we think of fire: How did fire provide a strong set of symbols for thinking about what it means to be human, and how has it figured in culture, mythology, arts, and rituals? Did taming fire and learning to cook change the course of human evolution? Is cooked food the hinge on which evolution turned, allowing rapid development of larger brains? How did cooking and the use of fire impact the formation of societies and the advent of a family structure? Did it make us farmers and hunters? What roles has fire played in agriculture, especially in areas inhospitable to farming? The industrial fire and its role in climate change, climate change's impact on natural fire, and conversely the impact of natural fires on climate change, will be deliberated, as will the question: Are we entering the Pyrocene era?

Emotions are an essential aspect of our mental lives. We make significant efforts to express them, or contain and suppress them when this seems the right thing to do. They lead us to make both mundane and life-changing decisions. For some of us, they define who we are. But what precisely is an emotion? Are emotions universal, experienced in the same way everywhere, or are they determined by culture and society? To what degree are they accessible to us, and can we choose which ones to have? How did people experience sentiments, such as love or shame, in other historical periods? And can we expect Artificial Intelligence to be able to feel the kind of emotions that humans do? Such questions will lie at the heart of this Core Colloquium, which will explore the nature and structure of emotions from various perspectives, based on theories from Western, Asian, and African philosophy, historical accounts, and observations from social psychology and sociology. Through this exploration, the colloquium pursues a richer understanding of human experience and aims to throw light on the challenges of living together in a global society and our attempts to bridge cultural differences.

Despite the rise of science and secularism, why, and to what extent, do people still believe in supernatural phenomena? Even when cultures or individuals disavow such beliefs, how does the history of belief in the supernatural affect contemporary life? Belief in ghosts, magic, and other mystical phenomena is widespread across cultures and history. This interdisciplinary Colloquium asks how the connection between humanity and the prospect of mysterious phenomena - from spirit entities and the mysteries of nature to the challenging futuristic world of artificial intelligence - has shaped human history and still impacts current critical global issues: forced migration, poverty, the Anthropocene, social injustice, and xenophobia. Aiming to enhance our ability to understand the boundary between everyday life and another order of reality, the course asks what happens when that barrier eases or breaks apart for some. The goal is not to promote or debunk specific beliefs or practices, but rather to understand them using approaches from anthropology, sociology, social psychology, philosophy, and history, seeing beliefs and practices in their cultural, social, and political contexts.

What can different notions of the sacred teach us about human relations throughout the world, throughout time? How do sacred sites, artworks, and practices illuminate the deepest possibilities for human connection, healing, and reconciliation? And how do they represent what we stand to lose through environmental extraction and degradation? Historically and today, the sacred has been located within nature, within built environments and material culture, and within the dynamic actions of the human body. As ancient myths reveal, the sacred is a precious - and sometimes tragic - contact zone between gods, peoples, and animals, and it is also a contested place of ideologies and identities. Sacred art and culture also present ethical tensions for research and collecting practices of museums and ethnographers. This colloquium explores case studies from Africa, the Americas, Europe, and Asia, and draws on religious studies, sociology, art and architectural history, film, literature, historic preservation, museum theory, and performance to help us understand the global implications of endangered, thriving, and ever-evolving worlds of the sacred today.

With dramatically rising rates of loneliness, isolation, alienation, and suicide around the world, the most pressing questions we can ask include: What is at the root of what is now called a global "crisis of connection"? How do we effectively address this crisis? The science of human connection, which incorporates a wide range of disciplines including developmental and social psychology, neuroscience, primatology, and the health sciences, approaches both questions by telling a five-part story that underscores: 1) the social and emotional nature of humans; 2) how cultural ideologies clash with our social and emotional natures and lead to a crisis of connection and; 3) how we can effectively address the crisis by creating a culture that better nurtures our nature rather than gets in the way.

Negotiation is an essential part of our professional, academic, and personal lives, and is also increasingly relevant to tackling global questions such as climate change, social inequalities, and biodiversity loss. How can we evaluate the need for - and impact of - negotiation? Is negotiation innate or can we develop skills to become more strategic and effective negotiators? What changes when we negotiate for ourselves or on behalf of someone else? What are the links between negotiation and justice, fairness, and ethics? This colloquium aims to understand the theory and practice of negotiation, including conflict resolution and consensus building. Exploring concepts in negotiation, interpersonal effectiveness, and organizational behavior, students will encounter various types of negotiations including integrative (win/win approach), distributive (win/lose approach), and various iterations of these two extremes. Topics include communication, emotion, perception, team negotiations, international negotiations, and cultural differences. Theory and practice will be integrated to improve students' conceptual understanding and cultivate negotiation, conflict resolution, and strategic skills.

Does anyone deserve to be unfree? What does captivity tell us about freedom? Does incarceration evidence a move away from cruel punishment in modern times? Is confinement always about punishment? Is punishment a universal component of justice? This course tracks the history of captivity, confinement and incarceration. We examine laws and literatures of captivity in ancient Rome and the medieval Islamic world through to humanitarian debates around slavery and modern prisons and the political economy of successive wars on Crime, Poverty, Drugs, and Terror in the Americas. Our protagonists range from anti-colonial nationalists in Kenya and Chinese indentured laborers, to prisoners of the Russo-Ottoman wars and convict laborers in Australia. Through the writings of captives, lawmakers, architects, and activists we explore the personal and political consequences of incarceration in sites such as prisons, ships, penal colonies, POW camps, asylums and detention centers. We interrogate how class, gender and race co-determine who ends up in these sites, and how different carceral regimes shaped local environments and global relations of power, production, trade, mobility and culture.

What is the relationship between language and identity in societies that are multicultural, rapidly changing as a result of population flows, or seeking to differentiate themselves from other countries? Every country has a national language that encapsulates its unique history and culture. While many have more than one national language, others give pride of place to only one "national" language. Exploring interactions between languages spoken within countries (e.g., national, co-official, indigenous, minority, foreign languages) this course asks how individuals and societies preserve and promote linguistic identities while aiming to maintain social cohesion and national identity. Questions driving this inquiry include: What is the right balance between linguistic diversity and national unity? What are the challenges of multilingualism? Of global English? How should governments approach these issues from a policy standpoint? Can education systems handle the mandate to protect and promote linguistic identities? Students will reflect upon their own language trajectories and will research how a country or region of their choosing has tackled these challenges.

Scientific knowledge production is fundamentally based on observation and data. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines, this course examines systematic gaps in what information is gathered about whom. What are the consequences of ignoring such gaps for human development and well-being? From medical diagnosis and treatment, seat belt design, and disaster relief, to snow removal, public toilets, and the construction of academic merit and economic performance, what is seen and how it is seen is intimately connected to maintaining structural disadvantages for women, Black people, people of color, indigenous populations, people of determination, and others. Regulatory and intellectual frameworks that aim to reduce such data gaps are also addressed.

What has globalization meant to different people and who has benefited and who has been harmed from globalization? This course will investigate the lived experience of globalization for individuals and communities around the world in order to better understand different manifestations of globalization that have been criticized by scholars and activists. These critiques include the McDonaldization of production, the precarity of international labor migration flows, the concentration of wealth and poverty in global cities, and the economic instability often linked to global capitalism and finance. At the same time, students will also investigate the global social movements that have grown in strength in response to corporate globalization’s challenges, and explore possible post-globalized worlds. Students will apply their new knowledge on a global object of their own choosing, and explore if their particular object exacerbates, perpetuates or ameliorates issues of global inequality and social injustice in the present day.

Why do we sometimes make decisions that we come to regret and, hence, fail to reach a certain level of happiness and well-being? What is well-being? What are the biases that influence our decisions? If we cannot make the right decisions for ourselves, who can? How can cognitive and behavioral science, with the help of nudges, inform policy-making? What philosophical and legal issues may arise from governmental interventions in decision-making in general? Scientific research has demonstrated that decisions are often a result of heuristics, mental shortcuts, and irrational influences that lead us to make suboptimal choices. As a result, governments and scientists have intervened to enhance individuals' and societies' well-being through nudge interventions. This course offers an interdisciplinary and thoughtful look at the topics of well-being, cognitive bias, and the role of institutions in societies. It brings together scholars from different fields to analyze issues ranging from sustainable development, health, and interpersonal relationship, to the need for government intervention and policy-making.

The human mind can engage in sophisticated representation that allows us to plan far into the future, think about circumstances light-years away, imagine scenarios that are possible but not actual (what if I started eating healthy?), speak multiple languages, and understand the goals of other creatures. But... where does the mind come from? This course examines historical and contemporary answers from a range of cultural perspectives, drawing on academic research as well as literature. For thousands of years, minds, a.k.a. souls, were thought to be imbued into human flesh by gods or other supernatural goings-on. Recent science favors a more reductive physicalist conception, according to which all of reality is just matter, appropriately arranged. But... how do you arrange particles into a mind? One answer is that minds are, put bluntly, meat computers. The course examines the breakthroughs in mathematics, philosophy, and the foundations of computer science that (allegedly) solved this long-standing mystery, as well as further questions about artificial intelligence and whether the computational revolution in theory of mind left out a core element of mental life: consciousness.

Home, which might have been a simple rock shelter in prehistoric times, now includes constructions in extravagant skyscrapers, inner-city slums, endless suburbs, and many more manifestations. Access to adequate shelter is a universally accepted human right, yet few people live in countries where this right is guaranteed. This course looks at our relationship with shelter, the physical structure that protects us from the elements. In particular, the course highlights the social and environmental impacts of how we build our homes, how we pay for them, and what happens when we cannot afford one. Two billion new homes need to be built before the end of this century just to meet the needs of a growing human population, all while meeting the need to reduce the impact of their construction on the environment. The course includes hands-on workshops that introduce students to building with reinforced concrete, the most commonly used material in home construction today, as well as other building materials used to create human shelter.

The legend has it that around 520 BC, the Greek philosopher Hippasus was drowned at the sea after suggesting that some numbers are irrational. The Greek’s rejection of irrational numbers was just part of a general rejection of infinite processes, and the concept of infinity was forced upon them from the physical world. Mathematicians have long followed philosophers in avoiding the concept of infinity, because of its paradoxical nature and the inconsistencies it introduces. It was only until the late 1800s, that the German mathematician Georg Cantor finally created a consistent theory of the actual infinite. Before being largely accepted, Cantor’s unorthodox ideas and monumental work were first controversial among mathematicians and philosophers. Cantor’s mentor, Leopold Kronecker, claimed: ‘I don't know what predominates in Cantor's theory – philosophy or theology, but I am sure that there is no mathematics there’, whereas David Hilbert, another famous German mathematician, said: ‘No one shall expel us from the paradise which Cantor has created for us.’ In this course, we will explore the evolution of the concept of infinity from ancient civilizations to the modern era, shedding light on its influence on philosophy, art and mathematics. Throughout readings and short videos, paradoxes and rather counterintuitive statements will be discussed, inviting students to rethink infinity in an attempt to tackle the question: (how) does the infinite exist?

Questions about identity dominate public discourse as well as political and intellectual debate in many parts of the world. This course explores the following questions as entry points into these global conversations: How are personal and social identity related? Is identity something fundamental about us as human beings? How is identity formed? Do we have one identity or many? What is the role of identity in history? What is the relation between identity and economic activity? How does identity relate to politics and the nature of the state? What is the relation between identity and religion? How do firms, societies, and states use identity? How is identity related to conflict and war? Readings and assignments will allow students to take up perspectives from philosophy, politics, sociology, history, and economics to examine these and related questions.

“Our dream: a world free of poverty”, the motto of the World Bank, is of universal significance. What would it take to make this dream possible? We are all reminded everyday, in the news or otherwise, of the poverty that strikes a large part of the population in developing and emerging countries, often due to some natural disaster or conflict. We are also told of millions of people who are poor in so-called ‘advanced’ countries. Or is it a different kind of poverty? Poverty encompasses many other dimensions than a low level of monetary income, including the comparison of poor people with the rest of society, which comes under another key social concept, inequality. This course considers the measurements and definitions required to effectively fight poverty. We will evaluate the poverty and inequality trends, and their socio-demographic structure, in individual countries and in the world. We also reflect on the root causes of poverty at the individual, country, and global levels. Finally, the course focuses on available policy instruments in advanced and developing countries, and internationally, to lower poverty and inequality around the world.

What is happening in our brain right now? Whether we are awake or asleep, our brain works around the clock to manage our daily life. When we are moving our bodies, navigating a new city, having a conversation, making decisions, or resting, our brain is continuously working behind the scenes. But how does it manage all of these activities, sometimes simultaneously? This course will start with a brief introduction of the principal structure and function of the human brain. You will go on a brief tour of the different cell types and their unique features in the brain. Then the course will progress through “24-hours” of recognizable real-world examples of brain activity where we will discuss the underlying activities and biological processes that are behind day-to-day activities. In doing so, we will discover the biological principles of our intelligent behaviors such as learning, representations and decision-making. We will also consider how some of these processes are influenced not just by our genes, but also through culture, technology, and human evolution.

Are humans making the natural environment unsuitable for their own existence as advanced, civilized societies? Humans are interacting with the environment at an unprecedented scale. Human activities may change the global climate, wipe out entire ecosystems, and exhaust natural resources. But our societies may not be robust enough to withstand the change. This course addresses the question in two stages: the first part establishes a solid foundation based on the science of the Earth system. This is an interdisciplinary subject that brings together mathematics, physics, chemistry and ecology. The second part examines the interaction between human societies and the Earth system. This interplay is initially framed in the language of ecology, and humanity is presented as part of the system, rather than as separated from it. Later, the perspective is broadened, to include engineering and economics, and then flipped, examining the problem from the viewpoint of media and politics. This course was not designed from a climate activist perspective. The course requires that students engage in rigorous mathematical and quantitative thinking before drawing any conclusions.

What is Nature? Does it even exist? And if so, how and why is it that we humans have increasingly come to think of ourselves as beings excluded from it? Beings ever in search of various forms of reunion with Nature? Are consciousness and the singular ability to name the inhabitants of the "natural" world the very things that distance and separate us from that world? Can we come to appreciate how simultaneously significant and small our place in that world is? The fact that we are at once a mighty force and a mere mote on the very biology that begat us and all life? What do we, "the namers", do about our seemingly singular place in Nature? Such questions are as old as consciousness itself but now more urgent than ever, and in this course, we will be looking at the multivarious ways in which human beings across time and different cultures have addressed them. Have tried - be it through mythology, religion, philosophy, poetry, music, the visual arts, fiction, or non-fiction - to "encompass nature", and thus reunite with something we know ourselves, deep down, to be a part.

This is a class that examines the self as a problem. We will explore the historically specific conditions under which the modern notion of selfhood came to be and how ideas about self-knowledge, self-definition, and fulfillment exposed individuals to persistent existential questions such as: who am I? what am I? who do I want to be? how do I know? The point of this class is to interrogate deeply held, taken-for-granted ideas about ourselves and try to make sense of where they came from, how we use them, and where it all might be going. The aims of the class are threefold: (1) historicize, disaggregate, and sociologically explain different dimensions of selfhood (self-definition, self-knowledge, self-fulfillment, relationship of individual and society; (2) learn how we use concepts to make sense of and narrate human experience; (3) make visible the taken for granted assumptions we have about identity and meaning.

The boundaries between “nature” and “culture” might once have seemed clearly defined: they underlay, for example, the distinction between the objects of the natural sciences and those of the humanities and social sciences. Today, however, these boundaries appear more unstable than ever. Claims about biological determinism and cultural construction are increasingly complex and contested. At the same time, ecological and planetary events foreground our interconnectedness with our environment, and with the various species that inhabit the Earth. Structured around fundamental problems that challenge the nature-culture divide, this course explores how we need to move beyond this dualism to better understand the contemporary world, through case-studies located at the crossroads between anthropology, biology, ethology, and philosophy. We will first address how the nature-culture dualism plays a crucial role in relationships of domination, by assigning racial or gendered “others” to the realm of nature. In the second part of the class, we will explore how our relationship with animals and landscapes is both informed by, and challenges, the nature-culture dualism.

Smoke signals, torch signaling, flashing mirrors, and semaphore flags can be considered as the early means of wireless communication. The discovery of invisible electromagnetic waves laid the foundation for contemporary wireless communication systems, profoundly altering the fabric of our daily lives—redefining work, study, and social interactions. In this course, we will take a global view of wireless technologies, examining their multifaceted impact on society: What are the direct and indirect consequences of deploying wireless technologies on society, from the early days of radio to contemporary cellular networks? What is the transformative influence of wireless across diverse industries? How can we leverage wireless connectivity to address the digital divide and contribute to the sustainable development goals set by the United Nation? Beyond daily applications, we will ponder the extraordinary potential of wireless communications in exploring previously inaccessible realms, such as deep space and the ocean's depths. The course will also delve into government regulations and techno-politics that shape wireless standards beyond technical requirements, exploring the ethical, societal, and regulatory dimensions.

What did slavery and freedom mean across time and place from the 16th century to the present? The emergence of the modern world was shaped by the blood and toil of people in varying degrees of bondage, who helped knit distant shores into transnational networks of trade and empire, and fueled a global public square of debate over the concept of human rights. This course explores the archives, texts and images that these historical figures produced or inspired, to enter the slaving paths, plantations, palaces and parliaments of Africa, Europe, the Americas, the Middle East and South Asia. Within these settings lie the answers to the questions that we will consider: how did political economy, law, culture, as well as power relations and tropes of difference, such as race, caste, class, religion, gender, and sex, produce variant forms slavery and ideas about freedom in various parts of the world? We will examine enslaved cultures, communities, and resistance within comparative frames of reference, reflect on their relationship with diaspora, and consider the legacies of these pasts in the worlds that we inhabit.

In this course, we will examine human fertility as a socially situated phenomenon, emphasizing the ways in which history, tradition, technology, politics and economics affect people’s ideas and actions concerning having (or not having) children; and how people carve out their own life courses and fertility choices despite these constraints. The course will explore reproductive politics, technologies, and trends from a global perspective. What are reproductive politics? How do reproductive technologies, from IUDs and birth control pills to IVF and abortion, become tools of personal freedom in some contexts and tools of coercion in other contexts? What are the politics of alternative paths to parenthood, such as adoption, and the politics of opting out of reproduction, no matter its basis, as seen in childfree movements? What are the emotional, political, and economic gains and costs of fertility management and reproduction?

No technology emerges without changing the fabric of society around it. We cannot isolate its impact to a single design solution or benefit. This is true of all technology - think of fire, paper, wheel, engine, the printing press, etc. - but as the rate of technological development and reach accelerates, we are hardly afforded the time to take a step back and evaluate its implications. If it does any good, humanity will buy into it. Even when the good is questionable, the fear of being left behind in a competitive global wealth race, forces adoption at global scale. The goal of this course is to examine technology with an emphasis on AI and software technology in particular to answer the following questions: What side-effects do we not consider when examining technology through the narrow lens of what it purports to achieve?; Is it net-positive when we consider all side-effects including both beneficial and harmful ones?; How can we empower ourselves to mitigate the impact of technological advancements on our societies, or at least control how they influence our lives?

How does technology change what it means to be human? Brain-computer interface chips are altering how humans think and connect. Cybernetically augmented humans, with both organic and biomechatronic body parts, are emerging. Technology now allows humans to control devices with their thoughts through brain interface chips. Have we created a new kind of human? Understanding cyborg humans requires a deep grasp of humanity and biology. This course merges brain biology with a practical exploration of the historical, social, and moral implications of enhanced humans among non-enhanced humans. We begin by examining the human brain's vulnerability to aging, injury, and neurodegenerative diseases. We will debate the societal trade-offs of technological solutions to brain vulnerability in the age of cyber-physical systems. Students will engage with science, literature, history, science fiction, and artistic representations of human-machine interactions across time and cultures. Together, students, faculty, and expert guest speakers will explore humanity in the age of cyborgs and artificial intelligence.

This course takes an interdisciplinary look at violence and social suffering, focusing first on how societies produce and define violence and then on the consequences of violence for those who suffer injuries, those who commit them, and those who have neither directly committed or suffered violence, but are still implicated in its occurrence. Topics to be covered include animal violence, the climate crisis, colonial violence, gender, trauma, torture, pain, punishment, and non-violence. Our overall concern will be how violence encompasses more than bodily harm and becomes a long-term process that is part of everyday life: in other words, why and how societies accept or sanction or leave visible certain forms of violence, but castigate, denounce, or make invisible others?

Choices affect human life in all its dimensions and have critical implications at individual and societal level. Understanding how individuals take decision, what affects these decisions, and what are their consequences, allow each individual to choose their own journey, and collectively to build a better world, healthier, wealthier, happier, more sustainable, more equitable, more efficient. This course will introduce students to the fascinating world of decision process and will guide them to explore and understand the complexity of the decision process, the factors that affect human decision and its impact in our personal life and collectively in the society. Through a combination of theoretical perspectives, case studies, group discussions and practical exercises, students will explore the complexities of the decision process in different contexts and the link between individual decision process and societal development. The goal is to provide critical knowledge that can be used in a variety of professions to help building a better world.

In this course we use a variety of lenses to collectively explore the diversity of languages across the globe and the cultures and societies of which they are an integral part. How do the world's languages differ and what do they have in common? What does the answer to this reveal about the nature of the human experience and how we navigate the world in all its complexity? In addition to looking deeply at the languages themselves, we examine these questions at the levels of the individual, community, society, and culture. We look at the ways in which diverse linguistic communities coexist in society and how societal and cultural structures are both reflected in and instantiated through language. Course themes include language as meaningful communicative social action, language dynamism, language and identity, language and environment (cultural, social, physical), and at the center of it all, the linguistic structures that reflect, enable, and enact all of the above. The class draws in part from students' own linguistic histories and their experiences as participants in our multilingual global society.

What is beauty? Is beauty an inherent truth or a social construct? Is beauty universal or culturally constructed, objective or subjective, divine or human-made? This course explores how beauty has been praised, policed, marketed, and made meaningful across cultures and centuries. Why do some features become desirable while others are erased? How do race, gender, power, and profit shape what we find beautiful? From ancient philosophies and sacred art to TikTok filters, plastic surgery, and protest aesthetics, students will examine how beauty operates as both a deeply personal experience and a global force. Mixing disciplines from philosophy, anthropology, literature, science, and marketing with art, fiction, mathematics and pop culture, we’ll ask: who gets to be beautiful, what does it cost - and how do these ideas shape the world we live in

An Ocean Voyage: How can we effectively explore, understand, and communicate the critical role of oceans amid climate change and its impact on marine ecosystems? Despite their significance, oceans remain largely uncharted, with only 5% having been explored. They host diverse life forms, from tiny phytoplankton that generate half the oxygen we breathe to coral reefs that sustain a quarter of global fisheries. Yet, they are also the most impacted by climate change. Scientists undertake voyages aboard research vessels to sample, document and study the mysteries of this hidden world. However, since most of the oceans are hidden, communicating the oceans' importance and how climate change is impacting them remains a major challenge. This course will take students on a voyage aboard the state-of-the-art scientific vessel, OceanXplorer, to discover how physics, chemistry, biology, engineering and media influence our perception of the ocean. Students will engage with crew members and work on projects exploring such topics as ocean physics circulation, the chemical patterns of the ocean water column, marine biodiversity, and media strategies to enhance ocean communication.

Just Cash: The Politics, Economics, and Philosophy of Cash Transfer Programs: The world has never been so wealthy, and it has also never been so unequal. Could the simplest solution to eradicating poverty also be the most fair and effective? At the local, national, and international levels, various groups are studying, experimenting, and advocating for direct cash transfer payments as a solution to both poverty and growing inequalities. Unconditional cash transfers have become established as development tools for both national policy and international aid. Universal Basic Income (UBI), an unconditional and universal cash payment, has gained ground in wealthy countries too. What explains this wave of interest in cash transfers? What ethical values underpin these programs? What are some of the most significant objections and challenges facing these programs? This class will take students on a global, interdisciplinary study of unconditional cash, covering the international aid revolution through Give Directly, South Africa's Social Grants, the Alaskan Permanent Fund Dividend, Silicon Valley's UBI initiatives, the US mayor-led basic income support, and the global resources dividend proposal.

Mande Music and the Black Experience: Oral History, Folklore and Contemporary Connections: How do stories, songs, and proverbs serve as vessels for cultural identity, communal values, and historical memory? In many West African societies, griots (also called jalis) serve as oral custodians and historians. What are the responsibilities of these historians, storytellers, singers, poets, dancers and musicians in preserving and transmitting traditions in Mande society? How are their diverse and important roles mirrored in African diasporic cultures worldwide today? How did those hereditary skills serve the descendants of these communities facing oppression and erasure of culture and language? This experiential seminar offers students an in-depth exploration of Mande music and its integral role in shaping the Black experience today. Guided by Yahael Camara Onono, bandleader of the acclaimed Balimaya Project, and his team of expert musicians and dancers, students will immerse themselves in the rich traditions of Mande oral history, folklore, and contemporary performance practice through engaging in singing, dance, and music workshops, attending musical performances, and visiting local Mande communities and cultural hotspots in the UAE. As a result, students will emerge with a rich understanding of the enduring legacy of Mande music and its vital role in shaping cultural identities worldwide.

Sand: It is a material most of us barely think about but can’t live without. How has sand come to form the very foundation of modern civilization? What can sand teach us about human history, ingenuity and culture and what does our dependence on it mean for the planet and our future? After water, sand is the most used resource on Earth. It is the core ingredient in concrete and glass and is used in everything from toothpaste to paint. Sand transforms sunlight into electricity through crystalline silicon solar panels and is essential in the production of the microchips that power our digital lives. The story of sand also has a dark side, one that is polluting rivers, wreaking havoc on the ocean floor, and giving rise to a violent black market. This course takes up William Blake's challenge to see the world in a grain of sand. By tracing the footsteps of our ancestors to the present through folklore, architecture, art, and industrial design, sand will offer students a unique window into human history, invention, and culture. Classroom sessions will be complemented with studio workshops in art and design and a study trip to Al-Ula and the Hegra sandstone archeological site in Saudi Arabia.

Art / Environment / Attention: How does our attention give shape to the world around us? Why do some works of art appear to “call out” to us, and others leave us unmoved? Is our accelerating world of new technologies altering our attention spans? What cultural resources do you bring to the acts of listening, looking, and reading? How can you deepen your creative and critical engagement with the world of which you are a part? This course will help you reflect upon and expand your powers of attention. We will give primary focus to (a) works of music and visual art and (b) your lived environment, experimenting with different modes of bodily engagement with them, and asking what modes of attention they enable and require of us. We will listen repeatedly to a single piece of music until it becomes as familiar as our own inner voices. We will spend a crazy amount of time looking at a single painting at the Louvre. We will spend an evening at the water's edge and a day on a sand dune, practicing radical modes of attention to our surroundings. If you take this course seriously, you will emerge with a powerful set of conceptual tools; a new appreciation for the profound depth, complexity, and expressive richness of artworks and environments; and a refreshed and revitalized attention span that will enrich your scholarly life and the broader world you create, inhabit, and share.

Common Sense: What is common sense and what are its cognitive origins? This course interrogates commonsense notions we have about people, places, and things, notions that support our knowledge and reasoning in everyday life. For example, from infancy, we know that objects are solid, places are navigable, and people act in ways consistent with their goals. Yet, such common sense eludes today’s best artificial intelligence. How does our human common sense allow us to be the best knowers and learners on earth? In this course, students will unravel the cognitive origins of human common sense through the lens of behavioral experiments with infants and children, with close readings of primary research articles, analysis of experimental stimuli and tasks, and interaction with open datasets. By staging experiments in the NYU New York professor’s exclusive “round room” and in the National Museum of Mathematics in New York, students will participate in both science and scientific outreach. By the end of the course, students will have designed a creative and novel experiment that empowers them as learners and motivates them with the excitement of scientific discovery.

The Science of Color and Art: What is the scientific basis of color? What are the origins of different pigments and the roles they play in nature, in our food and in the palettes of artists across history? Color is a vital part of our lives. The bright red of blood, the shades of green in leaves, the variety of flowers, plants and bird plumage (not to mention carrots, beet or M&Ms!) are examples of color in nature or on our plates. But it is in the breadth and depth of art across the ages that color sees a most significant impact on human culture. The availability of different pigments and the choice of colors through history has influenced both the beauty of the work and the direction of art itself. Using principles of chemistry and physics we will connect molecular structure to absorption properties and color. Students will explore the pigments of nature, those in our food and especially investigate the colors that have been used in art from the cave paintings of early humans through antiquity and the Renaissance to modernity. Through lectures, visits to the local museums, fieldwork, and individual research, students will explore how science has influenced art and how art has driven developments in science.

What is Life? Is it a substance, a structure, a process? Is a living organism merely a complex machine? What is the "language" of life, the information that underlies the acquisition of forms, movement and growth in the living? This course will seek to provide some answers to these fundamental questions. It will look into the past through the lens of the history and philosophy of science to outline the main conceptual frameworks that characterize life. The course will trace how biology became an autonomous discipline within the natural sciences at the beginning of the 19th century, how it moved away from vitalism and became increasingly grounded in physics and chemistry, and how it now investigates the emergence of complexity with the help of computational sciences. We will dive into the origins of life, its organization, dynamics, persistence, adaptation and evolution. Designed for those without extensive technical backgrounds, the course features interactive classes, readings, films, and a field trip to showcase the beauty, diversity and complexity of life. Ultimately, its aim is to foster a deep sense of wonder about the living world.

The Sensorial City: Food Studies and Urban Ethnography: How does food reflect and influence broader patterns of cultural identity, historical memory, and social transformation in cities? Cities are both repositories of memory and material networks that feed cycles of production, consumption and waste. Cities invite us to explore foodways as an outlook into the plurality of human experience. At the crossroads of global connections, labor migration and cultural exchange, Abu Dhabi is a uniquely diverse city consisting of more than 20 ethnicities. If the city assembles the tangible and intangible heritage of its residents, food embodies a profound sensory dimension. Against this dynamic context how are urban communities defining their culinary identities? How do foodscapes in Abu Dhabi reflect local histories and current transformations? This course approaches Abu Dhabi as an ethnographic fieldsite for the students to develop their skills in the field of urban food studies. Exploring the smellscapes of the city, drawing food maps, following commodities in markets, documenting urban rhythms and filming seasonal festivals, the course highlights the ways in which the senses can generate new understandings of how people live together in cities.

Disability and Development: How is disability understood across cultures and how does the understanding of this disability inhibit or influence development for persons with disabilities? This course will explore the way in which disability is created in developing countries and the extent to which the prevalence and pattern of impairments is a function of poverty. Attention will be given to the ways in which impairments are perceived and responded to across cultural contexts. Models and definitions of disability which underlie policy and practice will be critically reviewed, with particular reference to definitions developed by the WHO and organization of persons with disabilities (OPDs). The way in which the incidence of impairment and the experience of disability vary by gender will be assessed. The role of governments, carers and of the wider community in facilitating capabilities of PWDS being fully realized or inhibited will be considered, as will the experience of PWDS within the educational system and the wider economy. Finally, the impact of policy and the contribution of donors, NGOs and OPDS to a fuller claim on the rights and responsibilities of citizenship will be addressed. This course includes a regional academic seminar to Zimbabwe. This course will be offered in June-Term 2025.

Commercial Determinants of Health: A Focus on Globalization: Globalization has propelled multinational companies in shaping economies and societies worldwide. They heavily influence cultural norms around food and redefine consumer behaviors. The course examines the pivotal role of these commercial actors, particularly in the food and alcohol industries, in determining population health outcomes. Based in Florence, known for the mediterranean diet patterns and locally produced foods, the course is designed to provide depth into the food and beverage industry and its role in the population health with a comparative analysis to the US and UAE. The course discusses how large corporations and their strategies impact local food systems, food security and common chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer. Students will visit local markets, wine and olive orchards, dairy farms and hear from experts from local hospitals, universities and health departments and conduct brief interviews with these stakeholders. They will critically analyze strategies, policies, and practices of the food industries and their impact on research sponsorship, public health, health equity, social justice issues and population-level disease risk. Through relevant case studies in-country, students will gain insights into the complex relationships between commercial actors that impact health, while exploring strategies to promote healthier societies.

Wayfinding: Graphic Design in the Built Environment: What is it to find one's way? Wayfinding encompasses the ways in which people orient themselves via the organization of sensory cues from the environment. As a noun, it refers to the use of design elements (text, pictograms, signage, color, etc.) to assist in navigating a physical space. It also pertains to the planning and decision-making we engage in when aiming for destinations outside our immediate sensory field. As a discipline, informed by the demand for sustainability and inputs from cognitive studies, it has grown into a field of research in its own right, closely tied with architecture and urban planning. The course elucidates the foundational design components of wayfinding and its theoretical, social, and political ramifications, with a dual focus on inclusive and cross-cultural design. Students in the class will investigate how we cope with the feeling of disorientation and what we can learn from millennia-old analog practices before GPS. The course's experiential learning will include a disorientation walk in the Forest of Fontainebleau and hands-on workshops on the Paris Metro signage system - led by the people who designed it! - where students will conceive, design, and test their own maps. Please note: this course may not be taken by students who have already taken CADT-UH 1020 Wayfinding.

Debt and Society: Why do governments in the Global South decide to borrow, and how are debt crises resolved? In this course, we will study the economics and politics of sovereign debt in emerging markets, with an emphasis on Argentina. From 2008, many Global South states borrowed cheaply from private creditors and official creditors such as China. Contractions in financing, the pandemic, and commodity price shocks left more than fifty countries in, or at risk of, debt crises. In crisis, governments often impose austerity measures, which worsen poverty and inequality, and postpone urgent spending. The Argentine default of 2001 led to large shifts in the domestic politics -- the rise of the Kirchner era, marked by populism, nationalization and more; the current default in 2020 (Argentina’s ninth) has also resulted in a political shift to the conservative right. In addition to studying social science theory and evidence, we will engage with key stakeholders such as the Ministry of Finance and Central Bank; representatives from the IMF, World Bank; labor unions, anti-poverty activists and other civil society groups. Students’ projects will assess various elements of the emerging market debt restructuring process.

Being Here: How have spiritual guides and devotees in various religious traditions conceptualized presence and mindfulness, nature of the soul, purpose of life, suffering and joy? This course provides students with an experience of the daily life of mystics and monks committed to a spiritual path and ascetic ways of being. It will include daily reflective journaling, reading, and a final paper. To optimize the experience, each student will commit to a series of conditions of intentional living across religious traditions, which include modifications in technology, verbal communication, attire, and food. Students will study poetry and other writings, meditations, and prayers to provide insight into the metaphysical reality experienced by those who have committed themselves to lifelong contemplative living. Through experiential inquiry and intercultural encounters, students enter an intentional way of life to discover the mysteries and depths of these questions and have the rare opportunity to embody the timeless spiritual maxim, "be in the world but not of it".

Colorism Across Global Lines: Focus Study in the UAE: This course examines colorism as a pervasive form of discrimination that privileges lighter skin tones across and within communities. Students will learn about its historical origins, structural dimensions, and cultural expressions across a range of global contexts. They will explore how colorism operates alongside racism in shaping systems of inequality; how it shapes access to power, economic opportunity, education, and social mobility; and how it intersects with racism, classism, gender discrimination, and nationalism. Students will engage in fieldwork in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Sharjah, interviewing shop owners and community members who engage in skin-lightening practices. They will also conduct site visits to high-end luxury beauty markets and interview service providers about their perceptions of colorism and beauty standards. Students will engage in conversations with community members working on issues of race, labor, and beauty culture in the UAE. For their final project, students will apply their insights to analyze the luxury beauty market, design a counter–colorism advertising campaign, or propose actionable responses to color-based discrimination at local or global levels.

Sensing (Sensitive) Archives: How can archives be understood as dynamic spaces that preserve personal and communal memories, shape narratives, and reflect broader universal concerns? Traditionally, archives have been seen as repositories for storing and classifying historical records. Beyond the physicality of the documents themselves, however, archives contain deeper layers of meaning. This course examines how archives serve as sanctuaries for memories and narratives, highlighting universal issues such as intolerance, exile, and migration. How can we address archives as subjects in their own right and as constructs of our recollections? Inspired by the contributions of curators, researchers, and artists in Berlin, students will engage with archives of Jewish histories, such as the Jewish Museum and the city itself as living entities. They will explore sensitive questions of remembrance and memorial through photography, writing, and reflection. The course will culminate in a journal of their experiences and a final paper examining how archives serve as sites for addressing sensitive and significant issues.

African Perspectives on Data and Technology: Why do digital technologies entrench global inequalities, and how might they also offer opportunities for alternative futures, local creativity and appropriation? This class shifts the focus from the usual narratives on data and technology, which tend to revolve around Silicon Valley and its renowned tech innovators, to African contexts. It aims to understand, conceptualize, and analyze data and digital technologies through an African lens. We will rethink the temporality of the digital revolution by looking at the history of fiber optic undersea cables in Africa. We will consider how people consume data differently in rural contexts where access to the Internet is expensive. And we will discuss who is a tech worker in Africa, from software engineers and tech start-up entrepreneurs to gig economy workers, content moderators, and data annotators. The course involves readings by anthropologists, communication scholars, STS scholars, and political analysts; site visits; and encounters with technologists, social entrepreneurs, and community organisers in Rwanda. This course is taught fully abroad in Rwanda.

Message in a Bottle: From ancient storytelling and oral traditions to literature, speeches, and comedy reels, people have always sought to convey messages that matter. If you could share one message with the world, what would it be, and how would you ensure it resonates? This course explores the theory and practice of effective messaging in the context of digital and global communication. It equips students with the rhetorical, performative, and media literacy skills necessary to communicate meaningfully across diverse platforms and audiences. Students will examine strategies in written communication, public speaking, and digital media, with particular attention to message clarity, audience engagement, the ethics of persuasion, reputational risk, and damage control. The course focuses on identifying a personally significant message and perfecting the skills needed to present it publicly in an engaging and accessible manner through an original seven-minute talk. Through mock interviews, panel discussions, interactive and hands-on experience–and a splash of comedy–students will refine their ability to craft messages that are impactful, authentic, and responsive to the demands of today’s interconnected world.

Network Theory and Social Interactions: The explosive changes in our abilities to communicate over distances—spurred on by the evolution of communication technologies, coupled with the increased capabilities of the internet and social media—have made peer relationships and social structures very salient. Inequality, social immobility, and political polarization are only a few crucial phenomena driven by the inevitability of social structures. Social structures determine who has power and influence, account for why people fail to assimilate basic facts, and enlarge our understanding of patterns of contagion—from the spread of disease to financial crises. This course introduces the importance of social structures, peers, and networks with an emphasis on real-world applications, including crime, education, labour, development economics, industrial organization, political economy, and financial economics that will engage students with UAE organizations like the Abu Dhabi Police, the Gender Balance Council, NYUAD's Human Resources, and more.

NOTE: This class takes place in BELIZE and is a June-Term 2025 away course. Ribbons of Blue: Urbanization on the Coastal Fringe: How can we reconcile rapid coastal urbanization with the need to preserve our planet's coastal ecosystems and environments? Over half of global populations reside within 100 km of a coast, a trend most evident in the Caribbean where 84% live within 25 km of the coast, a third within low-elevation zones. Such affinity for coasts leads to extensive development, frequently incurring significant environmental costs and putting our infrastructure, economies, and societies at risk. Using global coastal cities as case studies and Belize as an immersive experiential learning environment, we explore the challenges and opportunities for sustainable coastal development. Students will gain an interdisciplinary understanding of the balance required between urban growth, economic development and environmental sustainability. Using GIS, remote sensing, and other environmental data, complemented by immersive field studies and guest lectures, students will engage with critical questions around coastal development. We will explore how Belize balances the intense pressure of being one of the most rapidly growing populations in the region with sustaining its natural assets for the future. This is an J-Term away course in BELIZE. This course will be offered in June-Term 2025.

The Silk Road: Ancient and Modern Globalizations: To what extent has the Silk Road been one of the most pivotal networks in human history, and can we reassess its global impact? This course explores the Silk Road's historical significance by examining its social, cultural, and economic roles across more than three thousand years, extending to contemporary initiatives like China's Belt and Road. We will analyze primary sources such as period maps and travelogues to understand the experiences of Silk Road travelers and the geographical, cultural, religious, and/or social contexts they traversed. The course includes a study trip to Uzbekistan to explore key Silk Road sites and critically engage with prevalent views on Central Asia. Students will produce a research paper and presentation as part of this seminar. This course includes a regional academic seminar to Uzbekistan. This course will be offered in June-Term 2025.

New Capitals of Contemporary Art: Sharjah, Abu Dhabi and Amman: Over the past decade, Sharjah and Abu Dhabi have emerged as major cultural capitals, redirecting the artistic compass away from the global North by becoming regional hubs for artists seeking alternative ecosystems. In contrast, Amman has been a stable home for artists from neighboring Palestine, Iraq, and Syria since the early 1990s, offering a cultural counterpoint to the UAE's rapid artistic development. How do artists respond to the these socio-political exigencies? How has the proliferation of arts institutions in cities shaped regional and global cultural expression? And what role does cultural production play in a nation's image? This course involves in-depth engagement with key institutions in these dynamic cities to explore regional art histories, artist responses to socio-political issues, and the impact of arts institutions on cultural expressions in the Arab world and beyond. Through visits to Sharjah Art Foundation, Louvre Abu Dhabi, 421 Arts Campus, Darat al Funun and MMAG Foundation, amongst others, students will investigate how cultural production shapes national images and develop interdisciplinary research to map new perspectives in contemporary art. This course includes a regional academic seminar to Jordan. This course will be offered in June-Term 2025.

Endangered Languages: As the development of a global culture continues to accelerate, some linguists estimate that about half of the world's languages may be lost this century. But what is a "language" and what does it mean for a language to be endangered? What are the local and global factors that cause a community of speakers to shift away from their native tongue? Does language loss matter? If so, why and to whom? How do communities feel about language loss and how have they revitalized languages? What does it take for such efforts to be successful; indeed, how does one define "success"? Through readings, films, and discussions with guest speakers, this course will explore such questions globally, but will bring a special lens to Nepal, a linguistically complex country with 124 indigenous languages, most endangered to some degree. The class will travel to Kathmandu to engage directly with members of diverse ethnic groups. Students will use field notes to contribute to a class wiki, and to reflect on their own heritage and experiences as they linguistically navigate our changing world. This course includes a regional academic seminar to Nepal. This course will be offered in June-Term 2025.

Global Africa and China: How are recent demographic shifts impacting cultures and societies worldwide? Using African migration to China and Chinese migration to Africa as case studies, this course explores how historic migration patterns intersect with the current demographic renaissance in Africa and the declining populations in economically advantaged countries. After reviewing theories of migration and immigrant integration, the course turns to the lived experiences of African migrants in China, Chinese migrants in Africa, and the reception and perception of these migrants by citizens of the host countries. We shall discuss China’s long history of receiving “Black” migrants, from South Asians during the Cold War to recent African migrants, and the influence of China's enlarged presence and Belt and Roads initiatives on African societies. Through readings and qualitative research, including observations and interviews with African migrants in Shanghai and Yiwu, students will explore international student mobility, the impact of global racial hierarchies on migrant experiences, and cultural and societal exchanges between Africa and Asia. The course will place particular emphasis on the experiences of African female migrants, addressing the gap in existing research that predominantly focuses on male migrants.

Social media platforms shape how we understand the world, express ourselves, and navigate both personal and political realities. However, what we see online is only a fraction of the content generated, as platforms actively moderate, filter, and amplify speech through complex algorithmic systems. This course critically examines content moderation mechanisms, AI-driven governance, and legal frameworks shaping digital communication. It explores decision-making algorithms, generative AI, predictive surveillance, and the intersection of human-machine interaction in moderating online discourse. Through case studies of platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, X, and Snapchat, students will analyze global regulatory models, corporate policies, and the socio-political implications of automated moderation. The course incorporates community fieldwork, site visits, and hands-on experimentation to examine how content governance operates in practice, with a particular focus on digital regulation and platform oversight in the UAE. This course will be offered in June-Term 2025 in Abu Dhabi.

Technology for Sustainable Development: Can technology be leveraged to address and solve critical issues related to the 2030 UN Agenda for Sustainable Development? This course explores this central question by examining whether (or to what degree) technological innovations can tackle global challenges such as health, climate change, education, refugee crises, and poverty. Students will investigate how technology can be harnessed to create impactful solutions tailored to their local communities. The course teaches students to develop and analyze high-impact, interdisciplinary projects through hands-on collaboration with experts and organizations dedicated to achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including the UN SDG Lab, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), health and refugee NGOs, startups, and civil society groups. Through this course, students will acquire the tools and pedagogy needed to design and implement technology-driven projects that address specific SDG-related issues. They will work in small teams to produce local use cases that not only meet the needs of partner organizations but also inspire meaningful action and foster pathways toward sustainable technology solutions.

Unequal Childhoods: How and why does childhood unfold so differently across societies? This course explores patterns, drivers, and consequences of child development and emerging adolescence comparatively across high- and low-income societies, drawing upon multidisciplinary sources spanning sociology, economics, international development, anthropology, psychology, fiction, and literature. We first consider the kinds of inequalities that children and adolescents experience at multiple stages of the life course, alongside their drivers and some of the policies enacted to target them. We then turn to case studies from and field experiences in the UAE and rural Rwanda. Emphasis will be placed on axes of inequality such as poverty, race/ethnicity, migration status, gender, and disability, as well as on manifestations of unequal trajectories such as low human capital, child malnutrition, demographic factors (e.g., household sizes), teen pregnancy, and sexually transmitted diseases. Students will be able to think critically about the linkages between research, policymaking, and practice in improving child development and successful transitions to adulthood in various contexts, including rural sub-Saharan Africa. This course includes a regional academic seminar to Rwanda. This course will be offered in June-Term 2025.

Music, Migration, and Memory: When people migrate, what travels with them? What stays behind? What elements of their cultures do they actively remember, and what do they hope to forget? How do migrants create or recreate a sense of home in conditions of displacement, and what stories do they tell about themselves? How do these stories confirm or contradict standard narratives of migration in mainstream journalism and scholarship? This experiential seminar will explore these questions through engagement with the dynamics of music-making among Syrian migrants in the UAE and Turkey. Students will learn the basics of Syrian Arab music performance and then engage in field research with Syrian musicians in Abu Dhabi and Istanbul, where students will inquire how Syrian musicians navigate life in a new land using both old and new sounds. To investigate how Syrian musicians “sound” home in new contexts, students will take field notes, document performance practice, interview artists and audiences, create sound maps, and compose multimedia presentations based on their field research. Class seminar discussions and experiential learning will be supplemented with guest lectures and performances. This course includes a regional academic seminar to Turkey. This course will be offered in June-Term 2025.

The Californian Ideology: How has contemporary American tech culture led to radical reconfigurations of work, social structure, and even definitions of what it means to be "human"? In 1995, Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron defined the "Californian Ideology" animating American culture during the dot-com bubble as "the freewheeling spirit of the hippies" combined with "the entrepreneurial zeal of the yuppies." The next three decades have seen the amplification of Silicon Valley's influence far beyond the proverbial "California" of their original essay. Through a chronological survey of fiction texts, theoretical interventions, and films, we will trace the evolution of this ideology from its origins in fin-de-siècle utopianism, through its development in postwar American technocracy, to its current manifestation in international platform capitalism. We will also engage with the "Californian Ideology" experientially by visiting some of its key sites in and around Los Angeles and through examining phenomena such as posthumanism and generative AI. We will also consider the ideology's political dimensions, from human capital theory and the gig economy, to the spread of far-right thought among Silicon Valley elites. This course will be offered in June-Term 2025 in Los Angeles, California, USA.

What is Fair in University Admissions?: Around the world, more students than ever are seeking a university education. When admissions is competitive, how does a society and its universities answer the question: who should get in? This question is complicated by the recognition of educational disparities in the primary and secondary systems that prepare students for university. Today, about one-fourth of all countries have some sort of affirmative action programs—also known as reservations, quotas, or preferential admissions—and eligibility criteria range from race, caste, gender, ethnicity, and ruralness to educational and socioeconomic disadvantage. This course analyzes the development and impact of affirmative action policies within broader debates about equity and fairness in higher education. Case studies and guest speakers will be drawn from South Africa, Brazil, India, and the United States. Special focus will be given to South Africa, which developed its affirmative action policies under the country’s post-Apartheid Constitution of 1996. Site visits to universities, as well as historical and cultural sites in Cape Town and Pretoria will provide experiential learning opportunities. This course is taught fully abroad in South Africa.

Strategies for Civic Inclusion: How can governments and civil society organizations—including sports, arts, and cultural groups—enhance civic inclusion for marginalized communities? Political rights, public programs, and civic opportunities offer valuable material and symbolic benefits, yet many eligible individuals face barriers to access. These take-up gaps are often most pronounced among groups marginalized by gender, class, ability, age, race, or immigration status. This course explores how such disparities can be addressed by examining strategies that promote civic inclusion across multiple dimensions of exclusion. Through collaboration with local UAE and international organizations—such as sports clubs, religious institutions, cultural groups, and government agencies—students will investigate and assess existing and innovative approaches to reducing access gaps. Emphasis will be placed on identifying effective strategies to foster a more inclusive society.

Governing Tropical Forests and Blue Carbon in the Climate Crisis: This course examines how institutions and incentive-based mechanisms can protect and expand carbon-rich ecosystems—tropical forests and coastal “blue carbon” systems, such as mangroves—to address the climate crisis. Deforestation and mangrove destruction contribute significantly to global greenhouse gas emissions, while these ecosystems provide critical services for climate mitigation, biodiversity, and livelihoods. Despite global frameworks such as REDD+ and emerging carbon credit markets, conservation efforts face a credibility crisis. How can we scale and sustain solutions in ways that benefit both ecosystems and the communities who depend on them? Students will explore the global public goods nature of ecosystem protection, local incentives that drive ecosystem loss, climate finance and other strategies for promoting conservation and restoration, and methods for evaluating them. They will also visit mangrove expansion and restoration projects in the UAE and meet with UAE-based experts to study blue carbon initiatives. Using insights from class and the field visits, students will develop team-based research projects that attempt to applying the lessons from the UAE's blue carbon experience to other contexts globally. This course will be offered in June-Term 2025 in Accra.

Immersive Experiences: Why have human beings long been driven to push the boundaries of reality and spectacle through immersive experiences? Do immersive environments provide sensorial experiences that extend human perception? What is the impact of immersive technologies on entertainment, education, and communication in the first quarter of the 21st century? Ultimately, how do these environments and technologies condition/enhance/distort our perception of reality? This course will address these questions by organizing discussions about relevant literature and audiovisual media, complemented by fieldwork consisting of various immersive experiences in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, including visits to amusement parks, places of worship, experiences with Virtual Reality, and a behind-the-scenes look at the technologies powering these experiences. The classes will also host talks by notable guest speakers.

A Cultural History of Falconry: In what ways have the interactions between humans and birds shaped cultural practices and societal values? Falconry, recognized as a UNESCO Intangible Heritage of Humanity, offers far more than a hunting story; it allows us to explore fundamental human questions. This course uses the art of falconry as a lens to illuminate our collective past and present. We will explore how falconry has influenced and reflected human societies over various historical periods and cultural contexts. Through its examination of the intricate relationship between humans and birds, the course sheds light on how our modern societies, and we as individuals, owe a debt of gratitude to the falcons - our hunting companions - with the help of whom we forged some of the most fundamental ideas of our civilizations. It delves not only into its implications for our historical connections with nature but also into falconry's role in shaping social and gender dynamics, religious beliefs, and cultural identities. By examining texts, images, and films from diverse cultural backgrounds, we will uncover falconry's profound influence across 5000 years of global history, gaining a deeper understanding of the enduring relationship between humans and their feathered companions. This course may not be taken by students who have taken CCEA-UH 1083(J) Falconry.

Creative Robotics: What will the future of human-robot interaction look like? How does embodied movement shape the way we design, understand, and collaborate with machines? This course explores how technology and movement intersect to fuel research and creative practice. As Einstein said, “Play is the highest form of research.” Students will gain hands-on experience integrating robotics and emerging tech into artistic exploration—no prior experience required. We'll go behind the scenes of cutting-edge robotic filming tools, examine current human-robot collaborations, and view a performance by the Nice Opera Ballet at La Seine Musicale in Paris, and examine the latest robot ballet project.

Tone Meister: The Pursuit of Perfect Sound: In an era where technology has exponentially increased our capacity to manipulate sounds, pursuing the 'perfect' sound has become a central concern for musicians, sound engineers, producers, and audiophiles. Who gets to define perfect sound? How do individual tastes and preferences play into the idea of perfect sound? How have cultural and historical contexts shaped the evolution of our understanding of sonic perfection? Students will explore these questions in the classroom, in Rome’s world-renowned recording studios, and at archaeological landmarks such as the Roman Forum, Circo Massimo, and Terme di Caracalla, examining how sound interacts with space and history. From the state-of-the-art Loa District Studio, The Temple of Sound- Forum Studios, students will work alongside musicians of the caliber of Ennio Morricone's orchestra and collaborate with Grammy Award-winning music makers. Through guided projects, they will create a collection of recorded works, analyses, and documentation, developing both technical proficiency and a deeper understanding of the elusive nature of sonic perfection. These hands-on experiences will introduce students to the real-world application of making music, leaving them with a deeper understanding of the intangible nature of sonic perfection. This course is taught fully abroad in Rome.

Culture as a Collective Achievement: Explorations in Italy and UAE: Individual celebrities are the public face of contemporary culture industries. But in reality, cultural creation is a collective achievement involving a wide range of people and organizations working under increasingly precarious conditions transformed by rapid technological and economic changes. If we care about and want to support cultural excellence, we need to better understand how culture is actually made. Italy and the UAE serve as our case studies. Both nations are integrated into global markets but construct unique hubs of cultural creativity as part of their 'nation-branding'. A regional seminar in Italy will focus on the making of culture in Rome, Bologna, and Milan, with Abu Dhabi as a reference point. This course will go behind the scenes to meet the people who make, curate, and circulate contemporary art, fashion influencing, photography, movies and TV dramas, and digital news. Who are these people and what motivates and shapes their best work? We will be especially attentive to dynamics of power, popularity, prestige, and purpose, as these are situated historically and in relation to both the local and the global. Students will write short papers analyzing site visits that demonstrate their ability to conduct research, ask probing questions, and draw comparisons to identify and explain salient differences in ways of making culture. This course includes a regional academic seminar to Italy. This course will be offered in June-Term 2025.

How to Build a City: What makes a city special? What gives it energy, economic dynamism, cultural appeal and a particular feel or buzz? Is it top-down planning by civic leaders and architects, a mix of peoples and cultures, or some combination of strategies, peoples, and happenstance? As more of the global population moves into cities the question of how to create community in urban contexts has become increasingly urgent for policymakers, urban designers and everyday people. More than ever neighborhoods are becoming tethered with geographies beyond their city borders, prompting some to ask if there is an emerging global commons. This course will explore the dynamism of New York City through the emerging framework of placemaking: collaborative efforts to shape the places we inhabit in order to foster the conditions for community. Placemaking can vary in scope and scale from a small local park to a major tourist destination. We address the challenges of sustainable development and of creating a commons in an era of climate change. Students will engage in the critical study of New York City, culminating in a placemaking proposal. This course will be offered in June-Term 2025 in New York City, New York, USA.

The Shaping of Identity: Past and Future of Egyptological Collections: Museum collections are often perceived as static entities hidden away in storerooms or trapped behind showcases. By focusing on the dynamic histories of museum collections, new research reveals their pivotal role in shaping a wide range of social relations. Over time and across space the interactions between these artefacts and the people and institutions who made, traded, collected and exhibited them have generated complex networks of material and social agency. This class will draw on a broad range of source materials to explore the cross-cultural interactions which have created museum collections. As European nation-states came of age in the nineteenth century, museums and archaeology played critical roles in constructing each nation’s ideas of its distinctive heritage and identity. A theoretical overview of those historical elements will be at the basis of a more conscious reflection on the role of contemporary museums, both in Europe and in the Gulf area. How museums deal with their history? How to define their identity? What is their future? How should a museum tackle ethical issues?

The Science and Art of Building Peace after Conflict: Violent conflicts erode the fabric of communities by diminishing social bonds and trust. What is the impact of violence on societies, and how can groups learn to live and work together in peace? This course will tackle this question by exploring the science and art of building peace in the aftermath of violence. We will examine how conflict affects individuals, communities, institutions, and socio-political culture. Then, we will investigate the promise and shortcomings of various peacebuilding strategies including intergroup contact, peace education, transitional justice, and mass media campaigns. The course will be held in a regional site where students will learn about the impact of intergroup conflict on communities and examine peacebuilding activities. Students will interact with practitioners to critically assess the challenges of peacebuilding. Assignments will ask students to reflect on these experiences, and apply this knowledge to other contexts of their interest. This course is taught fully abroad in Bosnia.

International Peacebuilding and the Role of Education: This course explores the politics of conflict, peacebuilding, humanitarianism and the role of education in promoting violence or peace. We ask, what causes conflict and how is peace built? How do education, civil society, peacekeeping, and humanitarian aid factor in? What role do young people have in this process? Preliminary case studies include Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, the US. We will meet with local and international organizations supporting peacebuilding (e.g., Human Rights Watch, LEGO, UNHCR, USAID) as well as activists in exile. We will consider conflict-affected populations' access to quality education during conflict or displacement, refugee migration, reconstruction, and peacebuilding. The class includes a regional seminar in Greece, in collaboration with the class Reporting on Migration, to meet with displaced populations and work in partnership with a local organization that trains refugee youth in media arts and migration reporting. Students will work closely with local collaborators to learn firsthand about refugee life and to write a short research article based on data collected while in Greece. This course includes a regional academic seminar to Greece. This course will be offered in January-Term 2025.

Arts for Transformation: The Case of Cambodia: How can arts and culture drive transformation and healing in post-conflict societies? And how can they contribute to heritage preservation, historical narrative shaping, and contemporary expression in such settings? This course explores the role of the arts in reconstruction, revitalization, reconciliation and peacebuilding. We will examine the methods and tools that prove successful and consider why other approaches fail. Using Cambodia's complex history as a case study, we will investigate how shifting narratives, cultural governance, social welfare, and the cultural economy intersect to shape the arts ecosystem. Through meetings with local artists in Phnom Penh and Siem Reap; site visits from the World Heritage site of Angkor temple complex to the Tuol Sleng Genocide museum, students will gain insight into the social, cultural, economic, and political factors that shape and drive Cambodia's dynamic and transformative arts scene. This course is taught fully abroad in Cambodia.

Behind the Nobel Peace Prize: First-Hand Explorations of Conflict Resolution: How can the world’s thorniest, most intractable conflicts be resolved? How can autocracies become democracies, or war crimes and ethnic cleansing give way to justice and peaceful coexistence? Does gender contribute to conflict resolution, and what is the role of psychology in peacebuilding? Questions like these have long been debated by scholars, conflict analysts, and peace practitioners. This course offers a rare opportunity to hear responses to these and related questions from dozens of renowned peace practitioners mediating the world's largest conflicts. Guided by a key participant in the peace negotiations post-Tunisia's Jasmine Revolution of 2011, students will acquire many first-hand practical insights into the dimensions and challenges of peace mediation. Through class discussions, role-playing, interactions with peace practitioners, and conflict mediation exercises, students learn the importance of deep listening, dialogue, and storytelling as critical tools for creating spaces conducive to conflict resolution and peacemaking.

Abu Dhabi as a City of Music: A Cultural Ecosystem in Motion: How can music and creativity drive sustainable urban development? And what does it take for a city to become a globally recognized cultural hub? This course explores these questions through the lens of Abu Dhabi’s designation as a “UNESCO Creative City of Music” in 2021. Students will develop a comprehensive understanding of Abu Dhabi’s music ecosystem, exploring how the city balances the preservation of local traditions with the promotion of musical diversity and innovation. Through readings, listening sessions, field visits, and guest lectures with UAE musicians, curators, and industry professionals, students will examine how artistic expression, institutional frameworks, and community participation shape the city’s music scene. They will also consider how questions of education, diversity, and access influence the success and sustainability of cultural initiatives. While Abu Dhabi serves as the primary case study, the course situates the city within the wider network of UNESCO Creative Cities of Music, encouraging students to draw global comparisons and reflect on how culture and creativity contribute to shaping urban identity, inclusion, and sustainable futures.

How does urban geography mediate the relationship between gender and religion? How is that relationship, in turn, embodied? What types of citizens and subjects are produced by different configurations of space, religion, and gender? This course will examine these questions through the lens of Muslim societies across the Middle East. Students will read foundational theories on gender, religion, and embodiment as well as cutting edge research on gender in contemporary Muslim societies, with a focus on the role of urban environments. Comparing Muslim communities across time and space, we will ask the degree to which Islam can explain different configurations of public piety and moral governance. We will closely examine how religion is used and molded by the state, capitalism, and other social institutions to produce gendered regimes and gendered subjectivities. Through fieldwork in the urban landscapes of Egypt, students will observe how configurations of the "Islamic city" have evolved. We will visit mosques, community organizations and enclaves, examining how religion and gender interact in spaces of home, work, play and governance. This course is taught fully abroad in Egypt.

Reporting (on) Migration: How does media coverage shape migrant experience, representation, and policy development? What are the ethics of reporting on displaced populations? What critical frameworks shape our understanding of how populations in host countries understand the influx of migrants? What roles are played by media and social media in influencing policies and acceptance or rejection of migrant populations? This course on migration reporting takes as central case studies the so-called refugee crisis of Syrians in 2015 and compares it with the Ukrainian migration crisis of 2022, examining how media discourse may have impacted the way populations fleeing wars were viewed and responded to. Students will learn techniques of journalism writing and discuss journalism ethics. The class includes a seminar in Greece, along with the class International Peace-building and Education with Prof. Dana Burde, to meet with displaced populations and work in partnership with Refocus Media Labs, an organization that specializes in training refugees in migration reporting. Students will produce a written story and do several writing and news drills. This course is taught fully abroad in Greece.

Beyond Bigness: The Everyday City: How is one to evaluate which urban design ideology to subscribe to, and thus design better environments? What are the different urban design ideals informing the design of cities? How can urban design facilitate everyday encounters? These questions underscore Jane Jacobs' warning of a global "dark age" in community life. Our neighborhoods are experiencing a collapse in everyday social interactions, sparking a debate about the decay of social life. Planners and designers criticize the excessive over-scaled urbanism seen in post-1990s developments, characterized by grand designs, fragmentation, vast expanses of glass and metal, and a loss of spontaneity within cities. In contrast to the traditional neighborhoods of the pre-1990s era, many new developments lack simplicity and dense physical layouts, which hampers neighborliness. To address this decline, understanding the factors that enable everyday urbanism, a product of good urbanism, is essential. The course draws perspectives on everyday urbanism from Abu Dhabi and Dubai. The course materials and engagement with sites are structured to unravel the complexities of urban design and promote vibrant, interconnected communities.

Ancient Emirati Monasteries: Exploring Christian Heritage in a Muslim Nation: Nobody expected to discover a Christian monastery in a Muslim country thirty years ago. The archaeologists working on the site, located on the remote desert island of Sir Bani Yas in the western region of Abu Dhabi, assumed it was pre-Islamic. But, as work progressed, it became clear that the primary occupation lay between the mid-seventh and mid-eighth centuries CE. This raised more questions than it answered. Why would a Christian monastery be established in the Arabian Peninsula during the first century of Islam, and what does this reveal about the relationship between different cultures and religions in the region at that time? For some, this was a clear indication of the tolerant nature of Islam and was embraced as a model for modern societies. And yet the complexities of the site continue to intrigue. This course will explore the archaeology of Sir Bani Yas and the wider phenomenon of Gulf monasticism, including the newly discovered monastery on Siniya Island in Umm al-Quwain. It will further examine our relationship with the past and its many and varied uses in the present, considering ultimately the place of the Christian monasteries in the national history of the UAE. This course will take place off campus on Sir Bani Yas Island, UAE for the entirety of the J-Term, including the weekend. This course will take place off campus on Sir Bani Yas island in the UAE for the entirety of the J-Term, including the weekend.

Global Business Strategy: The main objective of this course is to enrich students’ understanding of variations in the institutional, and resource contexts of nations and the impact of these variations on national economic growth, globalization and the strategic management of multinational firms. After taking this course, students can expect to become familiar with these basic areas: (1) underlying theories of international business, (2) environmental factors affecting international activities, (3) the management of business functional operations in an international context, and (4) analyzing international situations and developing international growth strategies. These goals will be accomplished through lectures, readings, case analysis, an international trip, and a group project. The course will also include a visit to Cairo, Egypt, during which students will be able to observe directly how the institutions and resources there impact how business is done there compared to in other countries. While in Egypt, students will have an opportunity to explore the host country and participate in presentations and discussions with local experts. They will also conduct market research to help them formulate a strategy for their project report. This course is taught fully abroad in Egypt.

From Abraham the Patriarch to the Abraham Accord: How can we understand the complexities of Israeli society in light of recent events and political developments? Few people in the world are unfamiliar with Israel, and many hold strong opinions about it, whether positive or negative. This course aims to deepen understanding of the complications surrounding this small but significant country through two main areas of focus: historical and ideological. First, we will explore the history of the Jewish people and Israeli society, starting from ancient times and moving towards a more detailed analysis of contemporary issues including its relationship with the region and it people as well as the Geo Political positioning of Israel. Next, we will examine the challenges and divides within Israeli society, offering insights into the party-political ideologies that shape its public systems and policies. The course will conclude with an exploration of Israeli strategy and its broader implications.

Practicing Politics in the Age of Disruption: The first two decades of the 21st century have been a period of rapid change and disruption. Seismic events, principally 9/11 (2001), the Iraq war (2003), the financial crisis (2008), the Syrian conflict (2011), Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (2014, 2022), and the Coronavirus pandemic (2020), have created an era of economic insecurity and turbulence in international affairs while helping to fuel the rise of populism in domestic politics. In this politics and international affairs course, students will investigate the causes and consequences of this turbulent period, focusing on the challenges and choices that world leaders had to face. Using original source material, contemporary political and historical commentary, and the instructor’s own extensive experience and insights, students will analyse a series of case studies and events. Students will also interview a range of expert witnesses who lived through these events – advisors, civil servants, politicians and journalists – to add context. Each topic will have an “in the room” exercise, where students will consider what choices they would have made as they analyze and re-live some of the key decisions of this important era.

The Age of New Nationalisms: In what ways does the resurgence of nationalism in the 21st century signify a new age, and how is this shaping global political dynamics, cultural identities, economic policies, and international relations? This course introduces students to text-as-data methods as one way to examine the nature, causes and policy implications of these new nationalisms. The course combines the data analysis with a body of interdisciplinary readings, examples from the MENA region, South Asia, European and the U.S, and field visits to monuments and museums in Abu Dhabi and Dubai to help us distinguish between different types of nationalism. Students will learn how to construct concepts and typologies of nationalism, link these to data, generate original measures and use these measures to map the trends, cause and consequences of contemporary nationalisms.

Global Perspectives on Inequality: Why is inequality such a common and persistent characteristic across drastically different societies? We will approach this question from both theoretical and empirical perspectives to better understand inequalities by gender, race/ethnicity, immigration/migration status, nationality, sexuality, and the intersection of these lenses. A particular focus will be placed on inequality in China and the US, with examples from many other contexts. Through site visits to migrant schools, community-based organizations, and cultural centers and meetings with local experts in Shanghai, students will learn to compare, contrast, and analyze different forms of inequality and inequities critically.

Space Economy and Sustainability: Are you ready to leave Earth and work in space within your lifetime? How can you help accelerate global socio-economic sustainable development through the adoption of space technologies? The space economy is projected to reach $1.8 trillion by 2035, and “made in space” may soon become a reality. How will the space economy shape our future economies and daily lives? What competencies will be needed to participate in the space economy and outer space affairs? With the rise of space technologies and emerging technologies such as generative AI and robotics—and the growing need to develop related skills—how do we understand “space for space” and “space for Earth” as the two main pillars for integrating frontier technologies? Students will meet external space experts, visit amazing locations and enrich their understanding of the impact of the space economy on our daily lives. The impact of climate change and how space can help mitigating and adapting to its consequences will be at the core of the group assignment. They will also explore how the democratization of space brings with it the need to maintain the safety, security, and sustainability of outer space activities, in order to ensure a commercially viable, sustainable, green, and safe space environment for the future of humanity.

Ethnography and Experience: How do we understand another culture? This course takes students to Los Angeles for an immersive experience. Ethnography, a method emphasizing firsthand experience, helps interpret social life by "standing in others' shoes". The class has two main goals. First, by exploring diverse LA settings, students will overcome shyness and inertia to uncover society's often-invisible aspects. We'll use neighborhoods and public spaces like the "Farmer's Market", The Grove, and Koreatown to practice key methodological skills. Second, students will learn to write an ethnographic paper, a skill applicable to larger projects like capstones. We'll cover topics like ethnographic writing, social theory, feminist methodologies, and ethnography's role in public policy. Finally, students will grasp difficult concepts: generalizability, reflexivity, variation, the ethnographic fallacy, triangulation, standpoint theory, and connecting field sites to broader structural factors (gender, class, citizenship, religion). Through projects, students will use ethnography to illuminate contemporary social forces, including labor markets, migrant exclusion, capitalism, and globalization.

Language, Religion, and Ethnicity: What is language? Where is language? What are religion and ethnicity and how are they connected to language? The seminar offers a linguistic view of religion and ethnicity, investigating some snapshots of the sociolinguistic history, society, and culture of the United States and the Arab world. We will consider the great diversity of communicative systems we encounter both as a source of enrichment for individuals and for the nation as a whole. Students will be introduced to basic concepts of linguistics with an emphasis on descriptive linguistics and sociolinguistics, examining the relationship between language and religion, language and nationalism, language and power, language and ethnicity, language and gender, language and space (with emphasis on Linguistic Landscape), and language and education. In the course we will conduct several faculty-guided fieldworks and some Community-based Learning (CBL) Engagement that explore local dialects, language and heritage, Linguistic Landscape study of selected local neighborhoods; in-depth guided visit of religions in the UAE and their sociolinguistic significance; deep discussions and interactions with “Half Emiratis,” and more.

Law in Entrepreneurship: Law in Entrepreneurship equips students with the legal insight needed to navigate today’s global startup ecosystem. The course introduces entrepreneurial strategy through the lens of law, emphasizing its role as both a framework and a tool for competitive advantage. Students gain practical knowledge of the legal landscape shaping early-stage ventures, and fluency in challenges faced by founders, investors, and executives. Core topics include entity formation, founder agreements, intellectual property, financing, employment, compliance, and exit strategies, explored through case studies and real-world applications. Students act as decision-makers or strategic advisors, solving legal and business problems that affect growth, operations, and investor readiness. While founders often focus on product and market, legal structure and compliance are essential to scaling a venture. Law defines the environment in which a business operates and offers tools to codify internal standards. Legal fluency helps leaders avoid pitfalls, manage risk, and build stronger, more resilient startups.

Sports In Cities: Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Impact: Abu Dhabi has taken a lead role among cities in the Gulf region and Middle East that are rapidly rising as global centers for sports events and sports-led development. Driven by its Vision 2030 strategy, the emirate is promoting sport to spur economic and social innovation in ways that make a positive impact within neighborhoods, between communities, and among nations. This course recognizes Abu Dhabi as a “home ground” for asking the question: How are the cities of today harnessing the power of sport to make the world of tomorrow? The course uses sport as a starting point for identifying, analyzing, and drawing lessons from a range of people, organizations, and institutions in the business, government, and non-profit sectors that influence our larger world. An emphasis is placed on understanding the thoughts, decisions, actions, relationships, and contexts that propel innovators and entrepreneurs who have shaped the modern global sport ecosystem and the changes it brings to its wider communities. Learning is focused on interlacing current events, historical examples, and industry cases to explore, examine, and interpret patterns and principles of innovation and entrepreneurship.

The Global Bible: The Bible – in different versions – is sacred to Jews and Christians and plays an important role in Islam. It is similarly influential in modern politics, philosophy, literature, and art. Because of its sacred status, religious communities have constantly interpreted the Bible in order to renew its meaning for new and diverse settings. Non-religious communities read and interpret the Bible stripped of its sacred status, but with an awareness of its significance for so much of the world population. The central question we address in this course is how groups and individuals interpret and reinterpret an authoritative text in order to adapt it to new social and cultural circumstances. We explore this central question through our examination of the reception of the Bible among diverse communities of Jews, Christians, Muslims and other ancient and modern groups. There are no prerequisites. The course invites students with and without prior knowledge about the Bible to reflect critically on its origins and how its reinterpretations have varied in time and place. Co-curricular opportunities allow students to engage with biblical interpretation in unique settings.

Environmental Governance: Human activities are having an unprecedented impact on the planet. Is it still possible to govern our way out of the most serious environmental threats facing humanity - or are we already beyond the point of control? This course examines how environmental crises such as climate change, ozone depletion, and biodiversity loss are (or are not) being managed. Students will critically analyze the interplay between knowledge, policy formulation, and stakeholder roles - exploring, for example, how scientific uncertainty influences policy development, how responsibility for action is allocated, and the competing interests of actors ranging from businesses to indigenous groups. Fieldwork will enable students to experience the governance process firsthand: from exploring the challenges of biodiversity protection with conservation managers at the Mangrove National Park, to the promise (or pitfalls) of new energy technologies with start-ups and multinationals at the World Future Energy Summit, to the nuances of national climate strategies with policymakers at the Ministry of Climate Change and the Environment. A final project will ask students to be environmental policy entrepreneurs: applying insights from class to make the case for a new governance approach to an environmental challenge.

Researching Peace: What is peace and how can we study it? This course investigates (1) what peace means to people around the world and key approaches to measuring it; and (2) the varied methods, opportunities, and challenges of researching peacebuilding. With an approach rooted in experiential learning, students critically engage with the concept of peace. Students get hands-on practice with research techniques by participating in an ongoing study that explores if, how, and to what effect community leaders and ordinary people use cultural spaces like food, arts, and sports to bring people and groups together across divides. Throughout the course, students will participate in field-based research exploring these ideas around Paris, learn how to collect and analyze quantitative and/or qualitative data, hone their abilities to ask and answer important global questions, and practice communicating scholarly work to effect positive social change.

Philanthropy Today: How Organized Money Fuels Innovation, Institutions and Movements: Why do people give? What does philanthropy engender? Philanthropy is one of the most powerful sectors in the world, shaping health systems, arts and culture, higher education, human rights, and numerous other public and private institutions and goods in many countries. But to many, these influential institutions and donors, like George Soros, Bill Gates, and a growing number of newly philanthropic tech billionaires, seem opaque and often unaccountable. This course will explore the ancient roots of philanthropy, its grounding in national and religious traditions, the creation of foundations in the modern era, their social impact, and their local context, including the legal and tax regimes that give rise to them. It will also delve into emerging trends, debates, practices and controversies, illuminated by case studies, talks with philanthropic leaders, site visits and an intensive, ongoing exercise that will enable students to identify an area of philanthropic interest and need, choose an organization, and design a process for making an actual grant.

Disability, Technology, and Media: Starting from the premise that disability is a social phenomenon, rather than an individual and medical one, this course asks: How does the built environment shape disability? And how might disability studies inform better design? In our seminar discussions, we will consider the significance of media and technology to the definition and experience of disability in a cross-cultural perspective. Topics include: universal and critical design; “assistive technology”; visual rhetorics of disability in photography and film; and disability aesthetics. Following the principle “nothing about us without us,” we will host lecturers with a range of disability expertise. We will also practice access techniques such as captioning, alt text, plain language, and video description. An overarching question for this course will be how to shift access from a retrofit and compliance issue to a creative practice. An important component of the course are our partnerships with Mawaheb and with Zayed National Museum: each student will complete 12 hours of community-based fieldwork to help these organizations make their exhibitions accessible and visitor experience welcoming.

Paris Noir: The African American Presence in Paris: This seminar analyzes the experience of African American artists and intellectuals in Paris, from the late 19th century until today. Students will explore the conditions that precipitated the migration of African American artists to France and analyze the cultural impact they had on Paris, and of Paris on their art. We will also examine how African American expatriates reconciled their newfound status with that of migrants from France’s former colonies in Africa and the Caribbean. Through readings, films, and visits to museums, monuments and other cultural sites, we will explore the indelible mark African American artists left on their adopted city, and on global visual, literary and intellectual culture.

Paper Art: History & Practice: How does the production of a material influence the art forms developed from it? How does a material’s accessibility determine who its artisans are? How does a material’s affordability influence the traditions formed around it? This course addresses these questions through a practice-based focus on the materiality and production of paper and paper crafting as a global art form. Beginning with the invention of paper, the papercraft movement has traditions and roots on all continents that have been openly shared and handed down through generations. This course is divided into several subject areas: the history of paper and paper making, paper folding, paper cutting, paper engineering, paper automata, and contemporary DIY electronics, fabrication, and paper craft movements. It will also include field trips to local artist studios and paper mills. Each subject area has associated readings, hands-on exercises, and a final creative work that addresses the forms explored.

“Black like me?” A Global Exploration of Race, Colorism, and Racial Identity: The question, who am I? is universal across human societies, but it is intimately shaped by sociohistorical and political contexts. In this course, we explore identity questions related to race and Blackness, such as: What is race and how was it constructed? Who is Black and what does it mean to be Black across time and place? How do we learn about ourselves in relation to Blackness (and anti-Blackness)? Students will engage with multiple texts and materials that explore the subjectivities of racial identity within sociocultural, political, and historical contexts. Through class discussions and activities, journal prompts and qualitative interviewing, we will reflect on racial structures of a global society “as is” as well as Afro-futurism and “figured worlds” to collectively reimagine who and what we are beyond structures of anti-Black racism. Methodologically, students will practice asking real questions and use critical qualitative methods to design an interview protocol, conduct their own identity-focused interview, and analyze and interpret their data to come to new ways of knowing about themselves, each other, and the world.

Can Art Save Lives? The Health Benefits of the Arts and Arts Therapies: In what ways can participating in the arts enhance mental, physical, social, civic, and public health? This course offers a dynamic, interdisciplinary exploration of how the arts and arts therapies are used in healthcare, cultural institutions, rehabilitation centers, schools, and communities to support health and wellbeing. Drawing on local examples of practice in Abu Dhabi and across the UAE, together with insights from advocates for the arts and wellbeing from other countries, students examine the transformative potential of the arts in supporting and improving lives in practice and policy. Through both individual and group creative activities in class and in the city, students will gain firsthand experience with the arts as a vital tool for fostering health, care, and well-being. Activities include arts-based activities in the class, lectures from local practitioners, and visits to cultural and health centers that have had a longstanding commitment to uniting the arts and wellbeing.

Camera as a Tool for Drama: What role does the movie camera play in the art of storytelling? The earliest prehistoric cave paintings portray events as a series of images, implicating space and time. The movie camera has the capacity to corral space and capture time. Is this the source of film’s disarming power as a medium for visual storytelling? What are specific attributes of the camera’s action that exploit this power? Why is one shot more dramatic than another? How does a choice of camera style inform the story’s pace? Students will explore these questions, and more, comparing the effects created by the variety of ways a camera corrals space into narrative meaning. For students interested in telling stories visually, the course will encourage more authority in their camera choices. At each stage of our exploration, students will be assigned exercises (1-3 min videos shot with a Smartphone) to provide the first-hand experience in creating some of the effects we explore in class. Our source material will include essays, interviews, podcasts, full-length feature films, and select film clips, past and present, from every region of the world.

Make Art Here: How does location provoke an art action? What about the locations we carry with us? Does the view out your window instigate how depth perception is represented in your work, or color palette? MAKE ART HERE in London will center a consideration of Live Art, archival practices and publics as we encounter and invent contemporary art making practices. We will visit parks and gardens, performances, museums, neighborhoods of interest and arts institutions generating contemporary work across all mediums. Students may switch mediums between projects, and are invited to explore time based art (music, performance, etc.) as well as fine arts (painting, drawing, collage, etc.). Students enrolled in this class can expect to walk a great deal and to attend evening and morning events. This course offers a curated, immersive experience in art-making, woven inextricably into the city of London.

Emirati Foodways: Food, Culture, Sustainability: A cup of fragrant coffee, a platter of luqaimat and dates, and servings of aromatic biryani and savory machboos are common examples of Emirati hospitality through cuisine. Beyond these traditional staples, the UAE has become a haven for everything from foodie culture, to high-tech agriculture, and even the global phenomenon of Dubai Chocolate. What are the features of Emirati foodways today? How does Emirati food relate to cultural memory and national heritage, on one hand, and visions for the future, on the other? How is the UAE meeting the challenges of climate change to promote food security and sustainability as well as culinary variety and excellence? In this course students will explore the interrelationships of food and culture in the UAE with a focus on current efforts at producing sustainable food systems in the context of climate change. Excursions to food markets, farms, research institutes, and culinary academies in and around Abu Dhabi will enable students to appreciate the multiple and contradictory ways culinary traditions are created and recreated in a globalized UAE. Students should come with a healthy appetite for learning – and experiencing – Emirati foodways!

Does Liberal Democracy Have A Future?: A generation ago, political thinkers widely agreed that liberal democracy was becoming the world's default governing system. The post-Soviet nations chose liberal democracy; so, increasingly, did many developing nations emerging from dictatorship. That moment now looks like mass delusion. In 2016 the United States elected a president who openly scorned democratic norms; he may have been elected once again by the time class meets. India and Israel have descended into illiberal nationalism. The number of liberal democracies declines almost every year. Our class will ask, and seek to answer, fundamental questions: Is liberal democracy worth caring about? If so, what has caused its erosion? How, if at all, can it be preserved and fortified? We will explore these issues not only through careful reading but through conversations with scholars and political leaders in France - a country which itself is teetering on the brink of populist nationalism.

Democracy in Crisis? The Case of Britain in an Age of Uncertainty: Democracy in Britain is creaking under the strain of unprecedented challenges. From Scottish nationalism to Brexit; from Covid to economic crisis; from a welfare state in decline to populism on the rise; from anger about illegal immigration to a renewed focus on the legacy of Britain’s imperial past – the constitution, political fabric & social contract of the UK is being tested as never before. This course will look at the state of British democracy: its constitutional coherence, the changing role of its main political institutions, debates about Britain in the world after Brexit, the rise of new issues and new social movements, and the ongoing revolution in citizens’ attitudes towards politics. Through classes, guest speakers from a range of institutions & views, field visits to Parliament, think tanks and other parts of the British political establishment - and by examining both politics under Keir Starmer’s new Labour Government & developments in contemporary British culture – the course asks: How is democratic life in the UK coping under pressure? How is it changing? And what are the central debates about reform to the framework of British democracy over the next decade?

News. Evidence. Truth?: In a post-truth world, we wrestle with questions such as, “What is evidence?” “What is enough evidence?” “Is objectivity irrelevant or even impossible?” And, most basically, “What is news anyway?” News. Evidence. Truth? will explore the strategies and social dynamics of one of the media’s most revelatory forms: investigative journalism. Through case histories and by interviewing highly regarded journalists, the class will analyze how media organizations executed text, aural and visual investigations. We will also explore critical issues facing journalism, including hyper-partisanship and disinformation, through rich community-based learning experiences. Students will put theory into practice by assuming the roles of reporters in a newsroom. They will collaboratively produce news stories and undergo the news editing process. They will develop reporter-to-editor memos that summarize research on an investigative project and propose strategies for further reporting. They will gain heightened understanding of the media, deepened insights into the interplay of fact and rhetoric, and sharpened capacities to synthesize and convey information.

Art Markets: This class explores the production, sale, display and exchange of works of art, and the patrons, artists and collectors who participate in this economic, social and political form of cultural production and aesthetic valuation. While students will learn about global art patrons, our focus will be on the creation of art markets in Europe beginning in the sixteenth century and expanding globally to the present day. Case studies will explore patterns of transportation, exchange and trade; interactions of collectors, critics and curators; contexts of contemporary collections; new museum architecture; auction houses and commercial galleries; and cultural heritage theft and restitution. Special attention will be paid to the emergence of the contemporary art markets globally via trade routes, migration, cultural revolution, technological innovation, political conflict, energy markets and global competition. Global art markets in Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and the Americas will be discussed alongside institutions such as art fairs, art foundations, artists’ collectives, and museums.

Citizen, Writer: Prague: It’s said the pen is mightier than the sword; this course will introduce skills needed to make that true. In our world of tangled problems, writing confidently, creatively, and persuasively can empower your participation as a citizen concerned with finding solutions toward equality, justice, and the civic discourse essential to bettering humanity. Drawing from a multidisciplinary perspective, focused on global issues but rooted in the historical context of Czechia, students in this J-term course at NYU Prague will study and practice multiple formats, experience the value of discourse and debate, and think strategically to engage via traditional or social media. Prague’s rich history will offer many lessons from its quest for freedom, from Vaclav Havel’s creative writings and the Velvet Revolution, to the role of rock and roll music and the subversive graffiti of the Lennon Wall, and much more. In addition to site visits and guest speakers, our class will draft personal manifestos, craft opinion pieces, and build a collaborative project focused on foundational civic issues that can empower you and other would-be citizen-writers.

Dressing the Nation: What can national dress reveal about identity, belonging, and power? How is it shaped, preserved, or reimagined—and is it fashion or something else entirely? While centered on the Emirati National Dress, the course explores how national dress emerges, becomes standardized, and adapts to shifting urban, environmental, and social conditions. Special attention is given to the crafts that underpin Emirati dress—embroidery, weaving, scenting—and their cultural and symbolic significance across men’s and women’s attire. We also examine the contemporary economies of craft, from local artisanal practices to global fashion systems, considering how tradition is preserved, commodified, or reinterpreted—and the tensions that may arise, including appropriation, dilution, or loss of meaning. Through debates, design experiments, and fieldwork with local organizations, designers, and artisans, students will produce a final exhibition and develop a nuanced understanding of the evolving relationship between Emirati dress, craft, design, and fashion.

Guns, an American Tragedy: Guns are the leading cause of death for children and teens in the U.S., and account for more than half of all suicides. In fact, the U.S. experiences significantly higher rates of gun violence than any other developed nation, including other high-income countries. What makes gun-related deaths a distinctly American tragedy? In this course, we review the role of the Second Amendment and explore the root causes behind the country’s exceptionally high rates. We examine how local communities, including law enforcement and community-based organizations, are addressing the crisis, and evaluate the role of state and federal policies. Is gun violence primarily a public health crisis, a political crisis, a crime crisis, or all three? Drawing on current research, we assess evidence-based interventions and discuss what works. In-person meetings with practitioners and policymakers in New York City, including police, prosecutors, and community violence intervention organizations, help us gain a better understanding of the challenges and potential solutions to this urgent issue. Students will work in groups to develop proposed solutions to one specific type of gun violence.

Music, Race, and Nation in Italy: For centuries, Italy has been revered for its rich musical traditions. Today, however, it is also marked by fraught racial politics, shaped by its colonial history in Africa, contentious immigration debates, and citizenship laws grounded in ancestry. What role has music played in shaping Italian ideas of race, belonging, and national identity? Can music and sound challenge the boundaries of who counts as Italian—or do they sometimes reinforce them? This course explores how music has been used both to uphold and resist dominant narratives of race and nation. We will draw from a broad chronology of Italian music, including the music of Black enslaved persons in 17th-century Florence, 19th-century opera featuring racialized characters, anti/fascist song during World War II, and contemporary hip-hop by Afro-Italians. Students will visit local museums, attend live musical performances, and engage with musicians and artist-activists working in Florence. Ultimately, this course will encourage students to reflect more deeply on how race and citizenship shape how one moves through the world, and how the arts can disrupt the political status quo.

Decoding AI Power Through Real-World Investigation: As AI systems approach and surpass human-level capabilities on many tasks, how do we ensure that this new industrial revolution benefits humanity while respecting diverse human values and rights? This course tackles today's most urgent socio-technical question. Students examine pressing ethical dilemmas, including the massive energy consumption of AI training, hidden labour costs, and the trade-off between transparency and competitive advantage. Fieldwork activities and guest speakers from MGX (funding global AI infrastructure), the global network of AI Safety (or Security) Institutes, and MBZUAI's K2-65B team (pioneering open AI development) help students move beyond theory to practice. We’ll witness ethics and safety reviews, interview engineers about daily trade-offs, learn to map stakeholder conflicts, and evaluate current governance frameworks. The course leverages Abu Dhabi's unique position, where rapid AI investment meets diverse cultural values, offering unmatched insight into global AI development tensions. No technical prerequisites required. Suitable for students from all disciplines interested in fundamentally reshaping their understanding of AI's societal impact.

Saadiyat Studio: Can making be a form of thinking? What kinds of knowledge can only be generated in the studio? And how can the world itself function as an extended studio space? Saadiyat Studio is an intensive masterclass in studio-based research, open to students working in and across arts disciplines. It is a philosophy course with its sleeves rolled up: part artist residency, part writing retreat, part creative laboratory. The course posits that art rarely arrives fully formed. It takes shape through experimentation, drafts, trials, false starts, and unexpected turns. The studio is approached not only as a physical space, but as a mode of attention, a set of habits, and as a way of moving through the world. Rather than treating creative practice as executing ideas, it invites students to approach making as a way of generating knowledge. Students gain momentum on capstones or independent projects through sustained studio time, one-on-one mentoring, and the focus that comes from stepping outside daily academic routines. Alongside hands-on work, the course fosters reflection, peer exchange, and critical engagement with the UAE's arts community through field visits, guest lectures, and critiques.

Heat, Light, and the Universe: How did the Universe transform from a formless beginning into one rich with galaxies, worlds, and living systems? Understanding the workings of our Universe requires an in-depth understanding of heat, temperature, and light. This course will explore how the understanding of these concepts developed and how they evolved to become key ingredients in the scientific toolbox, thereby allowing us to examine a wide class of phenomena in our natural world. Phenomena explored range from the cooling of the Universe in the first instants after the Big Bang, the formation of everything from galaxies, stars and planets, to the role that temperature fluctuations have played in the emergence of varied life forms throughout Earth’s history. Readings will be in the history and practice of science and in astronomy, biology, geology and physics. Classes are a mixture of lectures and problem-solving sessions utilizing concepts learned during the course culminating in student presentations on astrophysical phenomena. Classwork will be supplemented with field visits to the Sharjah Planetarium and the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center.

Encountering Art Live: How is artistic work transformed through its encounter with an audience, and how can we create art in innovative forms with the audience’s journey in mind? Live Art, an umbrella term for various art mediums centered on the live encounter with the audience, originated with working-class artists of color who found themselves unrepresented in the predominantly white, gallery-based performance art world. This innovative art form resists definition, functioning as a research engine that constantly reinvents itself and operates outside mainstream aesthetics and the art economy. This course explores Live Art in the UK—a key center for its development and recognition—introducing students through site visits and artists meetings to iconic spaces such as Shunt, BAC, and Forest Fringe, as well as influential works in one-on-one performance, instruction-based pieces, auto-teatro, sound walks, and more. Students will create their own live art works (in small groups) experimenting with unusual forms and spaces, while interacting with “liveness.” Thinking with Live Art leads us to consider the political responsibility inherent in inviting people to bear witness to an artistic or political action.

Code as Craft: How can the rich tapestry of craftsmanship endure in a rapidly evolving digital world—not just as a skill, but as a mindset? And how can emerging technologies help preserve and transmit this legacy to future generations while inspiring new forms of creativity and innovation? “Code as Craft” at H-Farm College outside of Venice explores these questions by merging artisanal heritage, fashion, and cutting-edge technology. Immersive visits to Venice's key artisanal sites offer insight into centuries of craftsmanship. The course traces the city-state’s rise as a Renaissance trade hub, its 18th-century decline, and the city’s 20th-century re-emergence as a textile innovator. Centered on experiential learning, it highlights the art of making and the profound wisdom encoded in traditional craftsmanship. Students will engage in workshops and masterclasses, such as textile weaving using Missoni yarns, that foster direct, embodied transmission of traditional knowledge. Drawing inspiration from this artisanal history and their hands-on experience of craft-as-code, students will use advanced AI tools to generate innovative fashion imagery, blending tradition with emerging technologies to envision the future of design. This course is taught fully abroad in Treviso and Venice, Italy.

From Rags to K-pop: The Korean Human Resource Story: How did one of the poorest post-war nations transform into a leading economic and soft power, home to K-pop and K-dramas? This course explores the answer by focusing on South Korea’s most vital resource: its people. Through readings, videos, and an immersive learning experience in Seoul, students will gain a deep understanding of the relationship between a nation's people, culture, and progress. The course begins at the War Memorial of Korea to trace the nation's rise from post-war devastation. Corporate site visits and guest lectures will provide first-hand experience of early and current Korean human resource (HR) policies, which fueled growth through labor-intensive manufacturing and exports, creating the powerful chaebols (family-controlled conglomerates). Students will assess how these principles were applied to the entertainment industry and culture, contributing to the rise of K-pop, through site visits and analyses of their favorite artists. Finally, the class will examine Korea’s plunging birth rate, a direct threat to its human resources. Students will interview local Koreans to discuss the social impact of K-pop and evaluate the generalizability of the K-pop model to their home culture. This course is taught fully abroad in Korea.

Contemporary Geopolitics - From a Practitioner's View: How do nations choose between justice and stability? What do you do when the rules and procedures in international organizations no longer reflect the real division of power in the world? How can global governance adapt to such 21st-century global challenges? When, if at all, should diplomacy yield to force? In this course students will not just study diplomacy, they will practice it. Under the guidance of a seasoned global political leader, students will engage in an authentic simulation of the election of UN Secretary General when the real election will be taking place in New York, collaborate with peers from the Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy, and participate in field experiences in the UAE that bring political theory to life. Through strategic historical analysis and hands-on negotiation, students will explore how diplomatic tools can serve concepts like peace building, alliance-formation, and reconciliation. They will also write and present policy memos, craft recommendations for top authorities, identify unsound arguments and balance political context. Career mentorship will help students connect geopolitical insights to their professional aspirations and life goals.

Building Inclusive Learning Environments: Research in Action: What does it take to create truly inclusive learning environments? This course explores six core themes from the Special Olympics Global Center for Inclusion in Education’s Research Agenda for Building Inclusive Learning Environments: educator capacity, inclusive mindsets, learners in refugee settings, families & communities, measurement, and the role of AI in advancing inclusion. Guest experts from Yale, Harvard, AIR, Brookings, and Special Olympics will share real-world insights and research. Students will work in teams to design research projects aligned with one of the themes. Fieldwork is central, with 12 hours of hands-on engagement to inform each team’s inquiry. Possible experiences include partnering with Special Olympics athletes to co-create inclusive spaces, working with a local school implementing Special Olympics Unified Sports programming that brings together students with and without disability, or engaging with a community-based inclusive education program. Grounded in the UAE’s global leadership, this course highlights the vital link between research, policy, and practice—and the role of evidence in advancing more inclusive education systems.

From Lab to Life: The Art and Impact of Science Communication: In an era of information overload and AI-generated content, how do we recognize scientific truth and communicate it effectively? First, be curious and ask questions; use the scientific method to investigate reality; and finally, use critical thinking to interpret the data. Only then does understanding arise, allowing you to communicate it to others. But communication alone isn't enough—how to do it well? How to stay accurate without being boring? How to make complex ideas accessible? How to engage diverse audiences? Can creativity flourish alongside generative AI? We'll explore how these challenges shift across cultures and languages, examining universal principles and local contexts. Through hands-on projects and visits to schools and research centers in Abu Dhabi, you'll develop skills in presentation, visual storytelling, and digital media. Guided by scientists and communication experts, you'll create original science communication pieces that bridge cultural perspectives while maintaining scientific integrity. You'll explore how science communication shapes public understanding and decision-making—demonstrating that effective communication teaches, engages, and influences.

The Mindful Brain: Current Neuroscience and Ancient Wisdom: How can we cultivate calm and focus in an age of constant digital stimulation? And how and why do various forms of mindfulness training impact mental health, wellbeing, and resilience? Traditionally, Western neuroscientific studies have investigated the mind from the “outside in”, seeking to quantify an objective truth about the nature of the mind, while centuries-old meditative practices explore the mind from the “inside out”. In this course, we explore our own minds through methods from both approaches. The course will begin from “the outside”, with discussions of assigned readings on meditation and on the neuroscientific study of brain states, culminating in measuring our brain activity and our cognitive abilities at the Neuroscience Center in Bangkok. We will then embark on a 10-day meditation practice retreat, visiting ancient temples and conversing with Buddhist monks about their experiences. We will again measure our cognitive performance and resting brain activity and will analyze this data to test our initial hypotheses about the influences of meditation on the brain. Finally, we will consider how to implement what we have learned in our daily lives. This course is taught fully abroad in Thailand.

Fascism and Anti-fascism in Twentieth-Century European Culture: This course examines the prominent role of cultural production in relationship to both fascism and anti-fascism in early twentieth-century Europe. How did fascist regimes use culture to respond to modernity, or to create a modernism of their own? Was the avant-garde alien to fascist culture, or useful to it? To what extent was there a movement of international anti-fascist resistance? How do culture and propaganda work in tandem? Site-specific guest lectures and fieldwork excursions to monuments, museums, and other institutions will anchor our considerations of the culture’s significance for fascist rule and its popular resistance: The Reina Sofia’s Spanish Civil War collection and Picasso’s Guernica; the Valley of the Fallen and Franco-era architecture; the Virtual Museum of the Spanish Civil War. Along the way, students will develop a working grasp of larger political economies (communism, anarchism, fascism), avant-garde phenomena (Cubism and Surrealism, propaganda, Socialist Realism), and their interrelationship in art, architecture, literature, and other forms of expression.

Concrete: From Roman to 3D Printing: Concrete is the most consumed material on Earth after water, yet it is also a major contributor to global CO2 emissions. Despite modern advancements in cement and concrete technologies, the remarkable durability of ancient Roman concrete—used in structures like the Pantheon and Colosseum, which have lasted millennia—continues to outperform today's material. Can lessons from Roman concrete help us balance durability with the urgent need for sustainability in modern construction, including innovations like 3D concrete printing? Through field visits to cement and prefabricated concrete factories in Abu Dhabi, along with hands-on experience in 3D concrete printing, students will examine the engineering, environmental, and economic implications of concrete production. They will also explore contemporary efforts to create more sustainable alternatives, including the use of recycled materials, low-carbon binders, and bio-based solutions. For their final projects, students will design and print concrete prototypes and will be asked to demonstrate how this technology can accelerate construction and reduce waste and carbon footprint of concrete structures.

Shanghai Walks: Tracing the City’s Stories: Inspired by the rising trend of Chinese Citywalks—a social media phenomenon where young urbanites document slow-paced, observational walks through their cities—this course invites students to explore Shanghai on foot. We'll use the city as our classroom, asking how walking can help us better understand its complexity: what does a street-level view reveal about the city’s histories, rapid changes, and the role of its residents in its story? Guided by local experts and lecturers, we'll complement our walks by studying theories of urban space and walking, Shanghai's colonial history, and its immigrant groups. As students gain a critical vocabulary for assessing urban issues, they will not only build a deeper understanding of Shanghai but also learn to apply these concepts to their own urban experiences. Students will document their walks through notes, photos, videos, and sound recordings, which will form the basis of a daily social media diary. Alongside an essay based on an interview with a city resident, this assignment is designed to sharpen students' observation and storytelling skills, helping them see how individual stories form the very fabric of the city itself.

Re-Inventions of Love: Engaging Theater as an inherently interdisciplinary and innovative art form, this class proposes the investigation of love and art as a means to develop a richer understanding of what it is to be human. The course explores how the mythology, poetics, imagery, and even emotion associated with romantic love have varied dramatically over time and in different cultures. Spanning several millennia and many continents, our material will challenge us to look at gender, biology, identity, and faith as potent guides in reconciling our limitless potential for love and our inherent humanity. We will work with ancient texts like the Ramayana, the Upanishads and the Song of Songs, as well as the poetry of James Baldwin, Rumi, and Lorca; we will look at theatrical works by Zeami, Shakespeare, and Sarah Kane; the course will explore the music of Björk, Patti Smith, Anohni & The Johnsons, FKA Twigs, and Radiohead/Thom Yorke, the photography of Cindy Sherman, the paintings of Frida Kahlo and the films of David Lynch—as well as a range of other artists. Responding to artistic distillations of this rich subject with embodied imagination and curiosity, we will move towards creating our own authentic theatrical articulations and inventions, employing a range of artistic forms, including generative writing, physical work, ensemble performance, and photography.

Transnational Heritage: Investigating UAE’s Modern Architecture and Contemporary Landmarks: How do landmarks and built heritage shed light on larger social, political, and cultural dynamics? How do the national symbols of a diverse country, such as the UAE, reflect its transnational origins, current functioning, and future development trajectories? This course examines modern heritage buildings and contemporary landmarks in cities such as Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Sharjah to uncover their global connections. We will investigate how specific buildings and sites were planned, constructed, and are used by different local and international communities. In doing so, students will learn to trace the complex networks of decision-making, design, finance, labor, and tourism that shape Gulf cities. Through site visits, engagement with local scholars and practitioners, and interdisciplinary research assignments, students will explore how architectural projects, experts, and construction materials “travel,” land, and are used locally—just to take off and influence their next destinations. By treating the built environment as a dynamic laboratory, students will learn to map how heritage connects across borders and how architecture helps shape the global identity of UAE cities.

Contextual Innovation in Society: What is innovation? Can such a concept be meaningful without understanding the contexts in which it arises? Certain innovations, such as cars, have shaped social development and the evolution of human cultures. Others are more discrete. Why is a plastic bottle’s diameter standardized to a specific value? What is the ideal height for a door handle, or a stair? Such micro-innovations hide in plain sight yet are instrumental in our lives. This course will help students define and explore 'contextual innovation,' especially in science and technology. Undertaking practical fieldwork in Abu Dhabi, students will leverage the city’s unique cultures to generate empathetic, culturally-competent, and context-specific innovations across industries and fields. Readings will include theoretical approaches from design and engineering, sociology, and anthropology. Case studies will include historical examples such as cars and electricity, as well as contemporary examples from global corporations such as Apple and Uber. By the end of this course, students will have co-developed a framework for empathetic, contextual innovation translatable to other projects in their careers.

On the Road Again: The Causes and Consequences of Domestic Migration: When we think about migration, it is usually in an international context. But in geographically vast nations like the United States, millions of citizens have moved and continue to move within national borders. Whether motivated by economic challenges, racial/ethnic discrimination or expulsion, or other factors, this sorting of humans has tremendous ramifications for the political, social, and economic fabric of communities—both at origin and destination. In this course, we will explore these consequences through two major domestic migration episodes in American history: the Trail of Tears and the Dust Bowl. Both profoundly shaped America in general and Oklahoma in particular, with the former leading to the forced resettlement of Native Americans to Oklahoma and the latter causing Oklahoma to lose hundreds of thousands of residents due to natural disasters. We will study these events through narrative accounts, history, literature, and music, leveraging Tulsa’s network of museums documenting their societal impact. Throughout the course, students will use our study of these migrations to explore the ramifications of contemporary geographic sorting in America and beyond.

The Music Business Today: Navigating the Intersection of Art and Commerce: How do artists and companies succeed in today’s evolving global music industry? This course explores the structure and evolution of the international music business from both company and artist perspectives. First, we trace the history and growth of the multinational music business and the re-emergence of local repertoire in the age of streaming. We ask: how is the industry shifting, and how can it adapt to new challenges? Next, we turn to the artist’s career, examining income streams, brand building, and the roles of managers, agents, lawyers, and publicists. Finally, we analyze the UAE’s emerging music sector, focusing on Music Nation Copyright Management, a Dubai-based collective management organization, and Dubai Global Music City, which is developing a “Music City” in Abu Dhabi with Universal Music Group. Students will assess these ventures and create plans to position them as regional industry leaders. The course features guest speakers, potential site visits, and interactive student group discussions seeking to advance the business approach of artists emerging from the UAE and MENA region.

Maritimity and Global Societies: What does it mean to be maritime? How have oceans and seafaring shaped the ways people, ideas, and cultures have connected across time and space? This course investigates ocean interconnectedness and early globalization within the framework of the Islamic maritime realm. We explore how maritime history from the Bronze Age to the present shaped the modern world and investigate how “maritimity”—the ways in which human societies engage with the sea—was the catalyst and facilitator for social change. We study how Arabian seafarers spread ideas, religions, technologies, goods, and ways of life, and discover global identities and cultures made possible by connectivity and fragmentation. Through fieldwork in Abu Dhabi, we will learn celestial navigation and analyze ancient star maps to reflect on how sailors conceptualized the seas and coasts around them. Finally, using traditional recording methods and photogrammetry, we will document ship structure to understand the technologies that made a globalized world possible, and appreciate how each vessel embodies the “maritimity” of five millennia. This course includes at least four days of doing field work on an island in the Arabian Gulf. Students willl not be staying on campus during this time.

Tango: Art, History, and Physics - Tracing the Evolution of a National Culture: What can dance say about national culture? How does a dance emerge, change and how do we know? This interdisciplinary course on tango explores both its artistic and physical sides, tracing its roots in the port cities of Buenos Aires and Montevideo, its fusion of African, European, and local influences, and its growth into a global symbol of national identity. We examine tango’s shifting status--from cultural opposition to Argentine national emblem-- and its global reach through music, cinema, and performance. In tandem, we study the physical principles embedded in tango’s movement: balance, parsimony, and coordination. Students will analyze historical and cinematic records of tango and will experiment with a virtual choreographic robot. Fieldwork includes visits to a professional tango show, a tango dance hall, and museum; interviews with dancers; and hands-on tango instruction (optionally without touch); culminating in student-created choreographies performed by a robot. This course invites students to ask: What physical principles define a dance? How does a national culture influence a dance and how does that dance redefine a nation? And how do culture and motion shape one another?

Rupture and Repair: Leading across divides in a polarizing world: How do we move from rupture to reconciliation—within ourselves, our communities, and our world? This course explores conflict not only as a site of pain but as a possibility for transformation. Rooted in lived experience, it examines reconciliation as both personal journey and communal practice, with attention to story, memory, power, and identity. Students consider: What does it mean to repair? What practices allow us to restore relationships across deep divides? Drawing from interfaith dialogue, conflict transformation, and trauma-informed practice, the course blends classroom learning with embodied experiences: dialogue groups, fieldwork, and creative expression, and reflective writing. Students engage in community-based exercises in Abu Dhabi using tools like the PIN Tool and Photovoice, visit the Abrahamic Family House and other faith partners, and participate in encounters across divided communities, focusing on what makes us different rather than only on shared commonalities. For their final project, students design and present a collaborative action project specific to their cultural and religious context.

Learning Empathy: What is empathy? Is it a universal capacity or culturally conditioned? (Is it comparable, for example, to “compassion” or “sympathetic joy” in Buddhist practice?) Can empathy be taught? Socially engineered? Does it make you a better student or citizen? What is empathetic design? Can AI empathize? Does or should empathy have limits? Drawing on scientific, social scientific, and humanistic disciplines and comparative cultural traditions and historical situations, this Colloquium allows students to examine the components and outcomes of NYUAD’s own academic programs, including the Core. Can universities like ours confront global challenges without actively fostering an empathetic imagination? Can curricular design really change the world? Should faculty have more empathy for students’ experience—and what would that mean? Do the arts make us more empathetic? When might empathy devolve into condescension or “othering”? Why have far-right political actors taken to attacking empathy as “toxic”? These and other questions will be addressed through readings, classroom exercises, and fieldwork, culminating in individual student manifestoes and collaborative podcast conversations.

Singing Revolution: This course explores singing as a powerful medium for engaging with the histories of decolonization, revolution, and feminism. Focusing on the politics of song and the contribution of female vocalists to Arab culture, the course examines the cross-cultural significance of four iconic singers: Umm Kulthum, Fairuz, Asmahan, and Warda al-Jazairia. We will investigate how these artists shaped modern Arab identities and diasporic understandings of belonging, particularly within the historical context of the British Empire and its metropole. From Asmahan’s alleged involvement in British espionage, to Fairuz’s performances at the Royal Albert Hall, to recent West End musicals about Umm Kulthum and Asmahan, London is a living archive of Arab cultural memory. Through a combination of academic inquiry and performance-based exploration at concerts, musical theatre, and participatory workshops such as Sing at the Royal Opera House, students will ask: In what ways does song transcend time and space to leave a lasting global impact? Building on this, they will produce a group presentation or performance that examines the political role of song and its power as a tool for communication, propaganda, resistance and social change.

Blueprint for Ocean Conservation: How can scientific research help protect our oceans? As climate change intensifies, marine ecosystems face growing threats, and conventional conservation approaches often fall short. This field course explores how targeted, data-driven research can support effective marine conservation with tangible short- and long-term outcomes. Aboard the research vessel Triton, students will work alongside the Archipelagos Institute of Marine Conservation, a Greek NGO committed to protecting Mediterranean biodiversity through science and local engagement. Traveling between five Aegean islands, students will use scientific tools to monitor dolphin and whale populations, map seagrass meadows and coralligenous reefs, assess microplastic pollution, and measure carbon sequestration. Fieldwork will be paired with discussions with island communities on biodiversity and traditional sustainability practices. Set in one of Europe’s last marine biodiversity hotspots, this course offers an immersive blueprint for linking ocean science with community-driven conservation. The course will take place mostly on a ship and sea sickness is something to consider before choosing the course. This course is taught fully abroad in Greece.

The City and the Writer: Buenos Aires: How does a city shape the form of writing and language? How has literature challenged certain theories of space, or constructed narratives around urban identities? This course offers the occasion and inspiration to produce new works—poems, visual essays, or short stories, plays, or films—inspired by Buenos Aires. Readings and workshops will serve as maps for cross-disciplinary and cross-border examinations of urban life, journeys through imaginative spaces, and debates on immigration, identity, culture, and literature. Discussions will revolve around private and public spaces, ruins and constructions, traditions and modernity, memory and hyphenated identities, literature and society. Students will have the unique opportunity to meet numerous residents of Buenos Aires, from theater makers, designers, architects, artists, filmmakers, feminists, actors, comedians and chefs.

The Politics of Climate Change and Corruption Through Film: Why do countries least responsible for climate change—like the Maldives—face the greatest risks, and how do politics and corruption deepen this injustice? This course explores the politics of climate change through the lens of film, examining how visual storytelling can expose the complex relationship between power, corruption, and climate vulnerability. Through coursework and field visits in and around Male, the capital of the Maldives, students will learn about the politics of climate change and how this is impacting this low-lying archipelago nation. They will meet and film interviews with local activists, politicians, eco-resort operators, and conservation scientists to understand the environmental, economic, and political challenges they face. Fieldwork across multiple islands will deepen their insight into the risks of climate change to the economy, to the Maldivian people, and to the environment. The course culminates in student-produced short films that explore the interplay between politics and climate; following the film screenings, students will assess which are most useful for their ability to inform audiences and shift their beliefs. This course is taught fully abroad in the Maldives.

Nollywood: Africa’s Popular Film Industry: How has Nollywood, Africa’s popular film industry, grown into a global cinema while preserving its local cultural distinctiveness? What can it teach us about the relationship between cinema, culture, and the peripheral media of the postcolonial world? Born in the boisterous city of Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital and the quintessential postcolonial African metropolis, Nollywood is now recognized as the world’s third largest film industry, after Hollywood and Bollywood. Yet, even as it reaches global audiences through platforms like Netflix, Nollywood retains its distinctly local flavor. This course explores Nollywood’s journey from grassroots “video cinema” to its current global cinema status. So, what makes Nollywood a compelling form of “third cinema?” How does its practices both challenge and adapt to global media norms? Home to a vibrant Nollywood fanbase, London allows students to learn about and watch a range of Nollywood films, and engage directly with prominent UK-based Nollywood filmmakers. Formal paper presentations, lectures and reflections will guide students to a nuanced understanding of Nollywood’s evolving global role and its continued resonance in African diasporic communities.