Non-Departmental (NODEP-UA)

This course is designed to help you connect to your story by weaving together an understanding of how you got here, how you can build on where you are, and how you can be the author of your life moving forward. Combining self-reflection, group discussion, and exploration, the course will help you make sense of the lived experiences that have brought you to this point, how you want to use your time at NYU, and the contributions you will make to our community and our world.

What are your dreams in life? Where have you been in your past? What are the habits of your everyday life in the present that account for your past and actualize your dreams for the future? The Back on Track Workshop course is designed to support CAS students facing academic difficulty. This course helps students build skills that can assist with navigating life as a student by reflecting on their past to build habits for the present that create successful futures. Students will engage in learning opportunities about time management, study skills, learning strategies, coping skills, and exploring their interests for majors/careers. Students will engage in activities including self-reflective writing, peer-to-peer support, individualized coaching, and referrals to other resources/services. The workshop course will explore the obstacles that can hinder a student's ability to remain in good academic standing with a focus on individualized support within the group setting of the classroom environment.

What are your dreams in life? Where have you been in your past? What are the habits of your everyday life in the present that account for your past and actualize your dreams for the future? The Back on Track Workshop course is designed to support CAS students facing academic difficulty. This course helps students build skills that can assist with navigating life as a student by reflecting on their past to build habits for the present that create successful futures. Students will engage in learning opportunities about time management, study skills, learning strategies, coping skills, and exploring their interests for majors/careers. Students will engage in activities including self-reflective writing, peer-to-peer support, individualized coaching, and referrals to other resources/services. The workshop course will explore the obstacles that can hinder a student's ability to remain in good academic standing with a focus on individualized support within the group setting of the classroom environment.

This course expands the dialogue around NYU Reads 2020 <https://www.nyu.edu/life/events-traditions/nyu-reads.html> selection, *Just Mercy, *Bryan Stevenson's exploration of the brutality and racial injustices of the American criminal justice system. This course has online and in-person components.

What drives behavior? How can behavior be measured? And how can behavior be changed? This course will examine behavior from the viewpoints of biology, neuroscience, psychology and behavioral economics. We will study a set of behaviors ranging across scales from an individual to group behavior. We will also address how studying animals can help understand human behavior.

This is a course at the intersection of leadership and sports. It draws on the experiences of successful sports industry business leaders, star athletes, and coaches through conversations with Jonathan Tisch, co-owner of the NY Giants of the NFL and other prominent moderators. Champions will cover topics ranging from the importance of team chemistry, the link between winning on the field and success in the executive suite. The course will address questions such as: are athletes the labor or the “product”? Is there a “secret sauce” that winning athletes and organizations embrace? Is it possible to sustain winning by creating an organizational culture? This course is part of the NYU Big Ideas series and will be offered in Fall 2020 only.

This course investigates contemporary Khaleeji Musical heritage with a focus on Kuwaiti Pearl Diving music between roughly 1900 and the present. With influences spanning from Zanzibar to Bombay to Kuwait and the coastal civilizations in between, this hybrid and cosmopolitan music was born of trade and cultural exchange. As a music of the Indian Ocean civilizations trade, it is also extra-Khaleeji and extra-Arabic. It changed with each pearling and trading season as sailors and divers played music with the locals as they waited for monsoon winds to change direction before sailing home, eager to share the new sounds and instruments upon their return. What happens to this tradition as it is appropriated into the realm of heritage performance as static national-capital? How does this music exist today as a dialogic and fluid expression of the pre-national past? How does cosmopolitanism play with national discourse? In addition to textual responses to these questions, this course will also address their ethical and philosophical questions by creating a virtual Modern Khaleeji ensemble where we will collectively and virtually perform one piece of music. (No musical experience is required for this course)."

This course will present critical material regarding the introduction of a “modern spirit” in the visual (as well as literary, musical, and pan-cultural) arts in North and South America and the Caribbean in the 20 th century. Major figures will be discussed in every lecture. Their contributions to art and culture in the first half of the twentieth century will be examined in light of the social and political circumstances of their times. Issues of diversity, equity and inclusion will be a high priority in this course. The choice of topics has been made to include artists of color (Afro-descendant and Asian-American artists play major roles) as well as those who represent communities of the physically differently-abled. Another important focal point is on LGBTQ artists. Each lecture will be amply illustrated with representative works in order to give an ample panorama of the development of modernity in the Americas from c. 1920 to 1980. This course is part of the NYU Big Ideas series and will be offered in Fall 2020 only.

This course is designed to help you connect to your story by weaving together an understanding of how you got here, how you can build on where you are, and how you can be the author of your life moving forward. Combining self-reflection, group discussion, and exploration, the course will help you make sense of the lived experiences that have brought you to this point, how you want to use your time at NYU, and the contributions you will make to our community and our world.

"What does it mean to say "You be you"? What is an identity? Does everyone have one? Is it strictly a human phenomenon, or do other entities have them? Where does an identity come from, how is it formed, how permanent is it? A gathering of notable thinkers, taking varied approaches, will address many aspects of identity. Among other issues to be addressed will be whether identities differ across time and/or space; how broad social formations such as nation, religion, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality might contribute to identity; how identity relates to family and kinship; and how different identities, perhaps in the same individual, relate to one another. And turning to current events: how can we think about identity in relation to global and personal experiences of the pandemic? How can different identities relate to anti-racist movements? Each week students enrolled in this course will participate in two sessions on a specific approach to such questions about identity. Each session will consist of a forty-five minute pre-recorded lecture that may be viewed at any time followed by a moderated discussion on a platform such as Slack. In order to contribute to these sessions, each student will be expected to contribute a one paragraph question/response statement to eight of the total of fourteen lectures."

Music is a central part of our emotional and social lives, and a rich vehicle for understanding the cultures and societies that bring it into being. The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed all of these contexts, thereby transforming the ways in which we create and experience music. This course will investigate the practical effects of these changes, but also ask: What can we learn about the coronavirus from music? And, what can these changes teach us about music itself? We will investigate the way music has been used as inspiration, solace, resistance, drug, distraction, and source of energy from the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, as well as the devastating ways the coronavirus has impacted the music industry, from classical orchestras to street musicians. The end of the course may coincide with the end of the crisis, and with any luck we will be able to consider musical responses to Covid’s demise as well as its onset. This course is part of the NYU Big Ideas Series.

Big Data and Artificial Intelligence are transforming our world today. This course will bring together eminent thinkers in seven separate week-long modules to talk about how these new technologies are transforming the relationship between humans and the machines we create. Students will hear from prominent specialists who are developing ever more powerful algorithms, experts who are researching the promises and pitfalls of AI in practice, as well as those who can speak to broad questions about how all this affects our view of human consciousness while also addressing the question of whether we should even think of mind and machine as separate categories. Finally, we will also ask whether the past history of human technology can suggest what the future holds for AI and our society. This course is part of the NYU Big Ideas series and will be offered in Fall 2020 only.

With Covid-19 not yet in our rearview mirrors, with climate change looming as a longstanding global threat without promise of a vaccine, now is the time to imagine, forge, and inhabit new ways of living. Veganism is a philosophy of life that confronts and destabilizes longstanding societal structures of race, gender, class, speciesism, and ableism and, maybe most radically, capitalism. In this class we will hear from some of the leading activists, writers, and voices of veganism and have the unique opportunity to engage with their work and ask them about it – this is a once-in-a lifetime opportunity. Vegan fashion, vegan food, vegan athletes, vegan meat, vegan cinema: what does that look like? We will explore topics ranging from scientific denialism, to climate change, to animal ethics, to food security, to racial justice, to how it is that the language we use to describe dilemmas implicitly reinforces their existence. This class is offered once a week as both short pre-recorded modules and live interaction with them. Each class will have a short guest lecture followed by a Q&A. Attendance is required in real time and you will be asked to do readings in advance of lectures. Readings will include fiction and nonfiction (Jonathan Safran Foer, Syl and Aph Ko, Eric Schlosser), excerpted critical essays, op-eds, and required films including: Cowspiracy, and Blackfish. This course is part of the NYU Big Ideas series and will be offered in Fall 2020 only.

Our aim in this course is to explore one of the many strands of thinking about religion in North Atlantic intellectual life since the late nineteenth century. We’ll begin with Edward Tylor, Max Weber and Emile Durkheim. Tylor was the first professor of anthropology at Oxford University in England and a dominant figure in shaping academic thinking about religion and culture in the English-speaking world in the late nineteenth-century and into the twentieth. Weber and Durkheim are towering figures in the creation of the field of sociology, and questions about religion were central to the work of them both. Then we’ll look at some more recent anthropology and evolutionary psychology of religion. Finally, we’ll consider briefly how some aspects of the cultural backgrounds of these theorists played a role in shaping the theories they proposed. This course is part of the NYU Big Ideas series and will be offered in Fall 2020 only.

The historical gaze has profoundly determined the image of African Americans in contemporary society. This interdisciplinary two-credit seven week course explore the range of ideas and methods used by critical thinkers, activists, and artists in addressing topics on intersectionality, #Black Lives Matter and anti-black racism. This course is designed with two objectives: to introduce students to the theory and practice of the field of black visual studies, journalism, and literature and to familiarize them with the work of activists, scholars and artists working in this area. Photographers, filmmakers and citizen journalists play a crucial role in advocating for change in our society. Photographs and film of injustices and protests during the American civil rights movement in the 1960s and more recently during the #Black Lives Matter movement illuminate a long history of black peoples fight against racism. The mélange of causes melded into a cry for humanity in recent protests is the core focus for our discussions as we explore activism and social movement protests. We will draw on a range of texts, primary sources and guest speakers in order to grapple with key questions, concerns and problems (i.e. representation, image-reception, agency, resistance, culture, structure, etc.) that have preoccupied scholars and artists alike.

Music and sound play a formidable role in rebellions and moments of liberation and, often unexpectedly, in the oppression of individual and collective freedoms. This course investigates the multiple roles music and sound have played in political, economic, and creative oppression and struggle throughout history, and in the present. Responding in real time to the political landscape of 2020, the faculty poses basic questions: What does it mean to say that music is political? What is it about music that makes it such a powerful tool of both political oppression and various forms of resistance to that oppression? What do music and sound teach us about the political struggles of the past? Contrarily, what do those political struggles teach us about the music that remains so central to political struggles in the present? This course is part of the NYU Big Ideas Series.

This course investigates contemporary Khaleeji musical heritage with a focus on Kuwaiti pearl diving music between roughly 1900 and the present. With influences spanning from Zanzibar to Bombay to Kuwait and the coastal civilizations in between, this hybrid and cosmopolitan music was born of trade and cultural exchange. As a music of the Indian Ocean civilizations trade, it is also extra-Khaleeji and extra-Arabic. It changed with each pearling and trading season as sailors and divers played music with the locals as they waited for monsoon winds to change direction before sailing home, eager to share the new sounds and instruments upon their return. In addition to historical, cultural, ethical, and philosophical topics, we create a virtual Modern Khaleeji ensemble to collectively and virtually perform music. This course is part of the NYU Big Ideas series.

The terms "fascism" and "culture" frequently resonate as opposites. We think immediately of sterile, bunker-like architecture, book burnings, and reactionary archaisms. Much fascist culture certainly entailed these. Yet we ignore the centrality of advanced culture to fascist ideas – both in the early twentieth century and beyond – at our own peril. This course examines the nuances of that centrality, through particular instances in historical context: Mussolini's Italy (home of the first fascist revolution and regime), Nazi Germany, Popular Front and Vichy France, and international anti-fascist activity up through World War Two. We will also pay close attention to efforts to combat fascism's rise and hegemony in a variety of contexts. Through particular cases we will tackle various questions: May we speak of a general fascist theory of culture or representation? How did fascist regimes use aesthetics to respond to modernity, or to create a modernism of their own? Was the concept of an avant-garde alien to fascist culture, or useful to it? To what extent was there a movement of international anti-fascist resistance? How did it play out? How do culture and propaganda work in tandem, or in resistance to dominant discourses? This course is part of the NYU Big Ideas Series.

Climate change is the biggest trend in history, and cities are on the front lines. In this course, we explore the science of climate change and learn how cities will fare, we learn about the great human urbanization project that is transforming us from a rural species to a species of city dwellers, and we explore the many exciting projects and ideas that can drive down emissions in cities and protect cities from extreme events.

The year 2024 is an important one for democracy. Citizens in sixty-four countries–including of course in the United States–will go to the polls to decide who should govern. They will do this in an environment where there are concerns that democracy itself is in retreat across the globe. To better understand where we are today, in this course we will begin by taking a step back. We will ask what is democracy in the first place? We will see how it has evolved over time, where it is today, and how it might need to evolve in the future. As we do so, we will see that yes, there are major challenges, but we will also learn that democracy is a common invention of humanity and a near universal aspiration. This course presumes neither previous experience in the study of politics nor an extensive knowledge of history. We welcome broad participation from students across NYU’s many departments and schools.

Offered every spring.

Offered periodically.

Course cannot be repeated for credit.

The Action Research Internship (ARI) is based on active partnerships between CAS and LS students, faculty, and client organizations. The clients bring specific challenges or concerns for which they need help; the students provide that help, with faculty guidance. The overall goal is to teach students how to use their academic training to assess and diagnose real-world problems, and how to propose feasible solutions that fit host organization needs. There is a mix of academic research/writing and fieldwork. Students do not have to find an internship on their own; the positions are already set up and ready to be filled. Students from any major are welcome to enroll. *May be repeated once for credit if content/topic of the course changes; CAS students cannot take more than 12 points of internship and/or independent study, with no more than 8 points in any one department. *For permission to register contact Professor Robin Nagle at rn1@nyu.edu.

The opportunity for students to engage in independent inquiry is central to the mission of NYU. NYU endeavours to convey knowledge, to produce it and to teach others how to be lifelong learners.This seminar affords undergraduate students an opportunity to conduct research while studying away under the direction of faculty from the study away location. Students might spend time working with teams of scientists in laboratories, picking through boxes in archival libraries, or interviewing eyewitnesses to cultural and historical events in the host countries.

This course, which is required for all students undertaking an internship for credit at NYU’s study away sites, has two goals: to integrate an internship experience with relevant academic study; and to help students learn and enhance professional skills needed for future work experiences and academic study. The course helps students reflect critically on their internships as a way to further their individual academic and professional goals. Students will be challenged to think analytically about their internships and host organizations and to connect their experiences to past and present academic work. Students will be graded on the academic work produced in this course. | Co-requisite: Internship placement.

The seminar portion of the course explores many different aspects of your internship site. The goal is to finish the semester with an in-depth understanding of the company or organization, including its approach, its policies, and the context in which it operates. We will also discuss more generally the state of the contemporary workplace and ourselves as workers. Finally, you will use the seminar to reflect critically and analytically on the internship experience and as a way to refine your own personal and professional goals.