Research Workshops (RSRCH-UG)

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

How and why does a community record, preserve, research, and narrate its own history and study its own history? In this advanced research seminar, we will address those questions by exploring and telling the history of our own community: the Gallatin School, which celebrates its 55th anniversary in 2027. To that end, this class is primarily a workshop in historical research and writing. Working in the new Gallatin Archives, other special collections, and by collecting oral histories, students will place Gallatin's history in the overlapping contexts of the history of NYU, New York City, and American higher education. This research will serve as a prompt for critical thinking about the university (both this one, and the institution in general) and our place within it. Over the course of the semester, students will research and write their own historical scholarship on our community, which we will publish as a history of the School.

How can we combat disinformation? How do we address the personal isolation that social media engenders? What is the impact of the monopolization of media ownership and what can be done about it? These are just a few of the problems that we face in our ever-expanding media landscape. In this course we start from the premise that one of the functions of the university is to address problems like these, and through collaborative research arrive at solutions. Over the course of the semester students will identify problems, create research groups, develop research questions, assemble relevant literature, conduct original research, and publicly present their research findings. Central to this approach will be creating and sustaining a space for exploration, experimentation, and, importantly, failure and learning through our failures.

History, as most of us are taught it in school, has long been written by, and for, the powerful. Oral history, while it has long been practiced informally, was developed as a formal academic approach and research method by scholars and activists in the mid-20th century in order to infuse and nuance history with the voices and histories of disempowered groups including people of color, women, indigenous communities, differently-abled people, political radicals, laborers and the working poor, and the LGBTQ+ community. In this course, we'll form a foundational understanding of the practice of oral history, explore the context of its origins and uses, and examine its undergirding ethics and principles that shape it as a mode of research. We'll read, listen to, and practice analyzing existing oral histories by developing deep listening skills, attending carefully to what is being said (and by whom) and what is omitted. As the capstone experience of the course, students will design, carry out, and analyze oral history projects of their own.

This applied research course provides undergraduates with the opportunity to participate in faculty-guided research at the Marron Institute of Urban Management at NYU. Students will work in teams on applied research projects that address real-world challenges, drawing on the interdisciplinary expertise of Marron faculty members. Options for research projects include: evaluating how cities expand over time, examining proposed transportation plans, and addressing environmental risks through policy actions. Students will gain practical research skills while exploring the interplay between scientific research and public decision-making. No prior research experience is required. In addition to work on applied research projects, students will meet weekly to share updates, discuss challenges, and reflect on their learning experiences. Students demonstrating strong performance may be invited to continue on Marron research projects in future semesters.

Sometimes it can be difficult to remember that beneath the concrete and buildings and tunnels, cities are lands and waters. It can be even harder to remember that these are lands and waters that Indigenous peoples have been in relation to for millenia. This course attends to urban Indigenous life in US cities, including New York City. By engaging in key readings at the intersection of the fields of Indigenous Studies, history, and education, we will learn about the (attempted) erasures of Indigenous land and life in cities, and specific processes of reclamation through land back and art practice. This course offers different perspectives on how and why this forgetting is produced in cities, and how Indigenous communities work in creative ways to prompt us to remember. Students will learn about the imperatives of research in relation to the field of Indigenous Studies, and engage in a final assignment that brings together creative inquiry with sound recordings and place-based research techniques.