2019-2020

IDSEM-UG 1381 Creative Democracy: The Pragmatist Tradition

09/03/2019 - 12/13/2019 Wed 3.30 PM - 6.10 PM at 1WP 432 with Caspary, William

From Emerson, through William James, to John Dewey, and beyond, Pragmatism has been a uniquely American contribution to political theory and philosophy. The pragmatists are concerned with action in the world, to address “the problems of men and women.” They construct a philosophy for understanding and guiding that action. That philosophy values imaginative vision and exploratory experimentation. It looks forward to the new rather than dwelling on explaining, justifying, or condemning what exists. Pragmatism, like classical political theory, is concerned with politics as a way of achieving a good society, in which people can lead good lives. It does not view politics narrowly in terms only of elections and governments. Reading pragmatism as philosophy, in the first half of the course we will consider ethics, theory of knowledge, theory of science and social science, and put these in the service of democratic theory. Through the lens of the “Dewey-Lippmann controversy” we will consider the capacity of citizens for informed responsible participation. In the second half of the course we will consider democratic experiments: economic democracy, civic journalism, progressive education, participatory action research, and conflict resolution. Possible readings include Emerson’s “The American Scholar;” James’s “Moral Equivalent of War;” Dewey’s The Public and Its Problems, “Creative Democracy,” and “The Economic Basis of the New Society;” Walter Lippmann's Public Opinion, Jay Rosen's. What Are Journalists For, William & Katherine Whyte's, Making Mondragon, and so on.

IDSEM-UG 1767 Crime in the USA

09/03/2019 - 12/13/2019 Tue,Thu 9.30 AM - 10.45 AM at 60FA 125 with Chiteji, Ngina Soyini

The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world. This course examines the way that the United States punishes offenders, including the costs borne at the state and federal levels of government to administer prisons and the criminal justice system more broadly. It also examines the causes and consequences of the rising incarceration rates that the nation witnessed during the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, such as the role that politics has played, the labor market effects of having a prison record, and the spill-over effects that incarceration has on formerly incarcerated persons' communities and families. While grounded in the social sciences, the course explores its subject matter from an interdisciplinary perspective, connecting scholarship from history, economics, philosophy, political science, sociology and law. It will combine conceptual and statistical approaches to analysis. It is not a class about policing nor is it about protests or political advocacy, but understanding empirical evidence related to trends in incarceration is a skill that may be useful to students interested in such issues. Possible texts include Bruce Western, Punishment and Inequality in America; Garland, David, Punishment and Modern Society; Mary Pattillo, David Weiman and Bruce Western, eds., Imprisoning America: The Social Effects of Mass Incarceration; Norval Morris and David Rothman, The Oxford History of the Prison; and Jeff Manza and Christopher Uggen, Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy.

IDSEM-UG 1827 Justice, Tragedy and Philosophy: Politics in Ancient Greece

09/03/2019 - 12/13/2019 Thu 3.30 PM - 6.10 PM at 60FA C03 with Han, Irene

This course is an introduction to the tragedy and philosophy of ancient Athens. We are especially interested in exploring concepts of guilt, justice, and the good, as these are developed in diverging ways by tragedians and philosophers. What role does free will play in politics? What does the invention of philosophy tell us about changing attitudes toward politics? Can justice be decided by a political body or must humans conform to an eternal standard? What is the correct way to educate the young? Is the good attainable and what is its relationship to happiness and pleasure? Is democracy possible or must we be ruled by the virtuous and the wise? What place does divinity and revelation have in politics? Does philosophy have a unique vantage point to discuss political questions? Is the emphasis in tragedy on imperfect knowledge a legitimate political concern? These issues will be considered by reading the following works: Aeschylus' Oresteia, Sophocles' Three Theban Plays, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, and Plato's Republic.

IDSEM-UG 1885 Literature and/of Human Rights

09/03/2019 - 12/13/2019 Mon,Wed 9.30 AM - 10.45 AM at GCASL 261 with Murphy, Sara

Notes: This course may be combined with a 2-credit, competitive internship arranged by Gallatin. Internship information will be forthcoming.

The extent and the manner in which we can think of literary or cinematic genres as linked with human rights raises many questions. The historian Lynn Hunt has argued that the emergence of the novel as a genre in the eighteenth century is the site of the emergence of human rights: the novel invited its readers to engage with an individual's story, to sympathize and empathize with a character whose situation might be quite different from the reader's own. Literary works might even be understood as participating in the construction of the rights-bearing individual and designating the boundaries of the human. However, as Samuel Moyn points out, human rights, as a concept associated with legal frameworks and political claims, is a product of the mid-twentieth century. Testimony, autobiography, plays, essays, and film have been recruited to expose violations of what we might call human rights, inciting awareness and sympathy--and sometimes action. We will begin by sketching a microhistory of the emergence of human rights, testing--and complicating--Hunt's claims for the novel. Then we will move on to look at specific sites and issues. What are some different ways in which literary genres and discourses represent, render visible, and perhaps even constitute human rights violations? How do the techniques of representation associated with the literary communicate? What are the stakes of these forms of representation? How have writers negotiated the limits of genre and language to engage with that which cannot be readily represented? To what extent do the norms of some forms of literary representation serve, paradoxically, to silence or occlude certain voices? Do certain kinds of literary discourse implicitly sustain a problematic opposition between the humanitarian and the political? Authors and texts discussed may include Mary Hays, Olympe De Gouges, anti-gallows literature, Hannah Arendt, Costas Douzinas, Jane Taylor, J. M. Coetzee, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Rigoberta Menchu, among others.

IDSEM-UG 1971 Causes Beyond Borders: Human Rights Activism, Humanitarian Reason and Global

09/03/2019 - 10/22/2019 Wed 6.20 PM - 9.00 PM at 1WP 601 with Nesiah, Vasuki

Notes: This 2-unit course meets during the first seven weeks only. First Class: Sept. 4; Last Class: Oct. 16.

One distinctive dimension of globalization is the flourishing of transnational activism in the register of human rights and humanitarian goals. Causes, organizations and activist networks have crossed borders alongside capital, goods and labor to reshape the terrain of political engagement. With attention to the dynamics of racial capitalism and the politics of empire, this class examines the intended and unintended consequences of this turn to transnational activism in relation to the political subjectivities it calls forth, the political horizons it shapes and the global governance regimes it legitimizes. From 18th and 19th century campaigns to end the slave trade to 20th and 21st century anti-trafficking campaigns, we will study a constellations of international institutions (such as donor agencies and international courts) and civil society organizations that have come together in the name of agendas such as ‘women’s rights’ or the prosecution of ‘crimes against humanity’. This includes organizations such as the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, The International Committee for the Red Cross and Amnesty International. The class will collectively analyze how different approaches mobilize and challenge different actors, causes and alternative imaginings of 'the global' in the realm of human rights and humanitarian goals. Readings are likely to draw from scholars such as Lori Allen, Didier Fassin, Jenny Martinez, Sally Merry, Joseph Slaughter, Mahmoud Mamdani, Kamari Clark, Walter Johnson and Jessica Whyte.

IDSEM-UG 1801 Minds and Bodies: A History of Neuroscience

09/03/2019 - 12/13/2019 Wed 6.20 PM - 9.00 PM at 25W4 C-5 with Matz, Brendan

This course examines the history of the sciences of the mind and brain from the end of the eighteenth century to the present. Ranging from mesmerism and phrenology to physiology, genetics, and neuroscience, it will consider the development over time of knowledge about the brain and its relationship to the body. The course will also analyze the ways in which this knowledge has been applied in medicine, law, economics, government policy, and religion. Some of the topics we will look at include the following: mind-body dualism, neuron theory, psychoanalysis and biology, brain imaging, the molecular and plastic brain, and psychotropic drugs. The course takes a primarily historical approach to this topic, but work from other academic disciplines that engage with related questions will also be addressed. The last third of the course will focus on recent history and contemporary issues surrounding the “century of the brain.” One of our challenges will be to examine what history and science and technology studies more broadly might contribute to ongoing conversations about minds and bodies. Texts we will consider include Ann Fabian's The Skull Collectors and Ray Kurzweil's How to Create a Mind.

IDSEM-UG 1752 This Mediated Life: An Introduction to the Study of Mass Media

09/03/2019 - 12/13/2019 Fri 2.00 PM - 4.45 PM at 194M 204 with Cornell, Julian

This interdisciplinary seminar will provide an intensive introduction to the study of mass media. Utilizing wide ranging critical and theoretical methodologies, the course will consider how media alternately reflects and forms our sense of politics, economics, race, gender, sexuality and citizenship. The course will be concerned with questions such as: What function does mass media serve for society? How does a media saturated cultural environment shape our identity? How do mass media forms delineate and naturalize prevailing ideologies and ways of being in the world? Can media provide a means to challenge cultural and political hegemony? Readings will be drawn from Berger’s Media Analysis Techniques and Jenkins’ Convergence Culture as well as the anthologies The Media Studies Reader and Gender, Race and Class in the Media and the course will include excerpts from the films The Dark Knight Rises, The Matrix, The Truman Show, Network, and Idiocracy, television shows 60 Minutes, Family Guy, The Simpsons, South Park and The X-Files, as well as a selection of other media forms, including blogs, podcasts, radio programs, graphic novels, newspapers, magazines, music videos, television commercials, social media sites and video games.

IDSEM-UG 1740 Bridging Culture and Nature: An Introduction to Conservation Science

09/03/2019 - 12/13/2019 Mon 3.30 PM - 6.10 PM at 25W4 C-1 with Tolisano, James

Notes: Section 001 not open to environmental studies majors. This course may be combined with a 2-credit, competitive internship arranged by Gallatin.

This course is designed for those who wish to deepen our relationship to nature and then learn how to apply this understanding to the challenging work of conservation biology. The art and science of conservation biology brings together leading practitioners from biology, economics, anthropology, psychology, literature, art, and communications to conserve the diversity of life found on our planet. The fieldwork of the natural sciences is integrated with the applied work of the social sciences, education, business, humanities and arts to provide the tools we need to manage ourselves and create a relationship with nature that is mutually supportive. In this class we will discover how scientists, business leaders, financial institutions, entrepreneurs, social workers, and artists all play an integral role in creating and delivering practical conservation solutions. We will begin with an exploration of our own relationship to the natural world in the 21st Century. We then examine the diversity of life on earth, the principal threats to biological and climate systems, and specific actions that are being taken to reverse these threats, manage our own behavior and choices, and protect life on earth. Students will be required to research and share lessons learned through a weekly blog on a range of conservation topics, and complete a practical project that demonstrates how each of us can make a difference in strengthening our relationship to nature. Course research will include extensive readings and viewings from a wide variety of peer reviewed science journals and popular publications. At the course conclusion, students from all disciplines should see a role for themselves in the conservation work that is an essential focus of this century.

IDSEM-UG 1592 : American Narratives I: American Literature, Race and Politics

09/03/2019 - 12/13/2019 Tue 6.20 PM - 9.00 PM at 1WP 527 with Shulman, George

Notes: Open to sophomores only.

The premise of this course is that profound thinking about politics occurs in American literary art. Indeed, formally "political” writers, like Madison and Hamilton in The Federalist Papers, present a world that seems antithetical to the world presented by, say, Melville and Morrison: one depicts rational, self-interested bargaining among men in markets and legislatures, whereas the literature depicts genocide, slavery, and sexual violence, domestic life and frontier encounters. One depicts rationality and narrates progress, the other depicts madness and tragedy. The literature makes visible what political rhetoric and canonical political thought typically make invisible - the centrality of race and gender in the formation of nationhood, the operation of politics, and the deep narratives of "America." By comparing American literary art to prevailing forms of political speech and dominant theories of American politics, we ask: How do literary artists narrate nationhood? How do they retell the stories that Americans tell themselves about themselves? What is the difference between a fiction that dramatizes a world, and a treatise that makes an argument about it? What can literary art do that theory cannot? How can that art re-orient people toward the assumptions, practices, and tropes that rule their world? To pursue these questions we read Herman Melville’s Moby Dick and Toni Morrison’s Beloved, while surrounding each text with historical context, typical political speech, and canonical political theory.

SCA-UA 755 Amer Dilemmas: Race, Ineq, Unful Prm Pub Educ

09/03/2019 - 12/13/2019 Mon,Wed 9.30 AM - 10.45 AM at 45W4 B02 with D'Andrea Martinez, Pamela

Requires Department Consent

Notes: For description see Teaching and Learning. SAME AS TCHL-UE 41.001(Counts as cross listed elective for these majors/minors: AFRI, LAST, MET and for AMST & SCA majors not minors) ACCESS CODES RQD, reserved for SCA & Wagner Public Policy major and Social and Public Policy minor the first week of registration. Contact krystal.roberts@nyu.edu if SCA major/minor and adrienne.smith@nyu.edu if Wagner major/minor.

Historically, education has been the most accessible and effective means for groups to achieve social mobility in American society. However, access to public education has never been equal for all segments of society, and there continues to be considerable variability in the quality of education provided to students. As a result of both explicit and subtle discrimination, racialized minority groups have at various times been denied access to education or been relegated to inferior schools or classrooms. Yet education has also been the arena where the greatest advances in social justice and racial equality have been achieved. Understanding the contradictions created by the hope and unfulfilled promise of American education is a central theme of this course.

SCA-UA 613 Community Empowerment

09/03/2019 - 12/13/2019 Tue,Thu 6.20 PM - 7.35 PM at 25W4 C-13 with Brettschneider, Eric

Notes: Counts as SCA faculty elective for these majors/minors: AMST, MET, SCA. Spaces reserved for majors/minors in the 7 SCA programs the first week of registration. If spaces are open, others will be enrolled via the wait-list week two.

Empowerment is defined as those processes, mechanisms, strategies, and tactics through which people, as well as organizations and communities, gain mastery over their lives. It is personal as well as institutional and organizational. Addresses these issues in a wide variety of community settings. Designed to be challenging and rewarding to those students interested in helping people work together to improve their lives.

POL-UA 300 Power & Politics in America

09/03/2019 - 12/13/2019 Tue,Thu 11.00 AM - 12.15 PM at CANT 102 with Payson, Julia

Notes: STUDENTS MUST ALSO REGISTER FOR RCT SEC 002 - 007.

A survey of national political institutions and behavior in the United States, which introduces students to a variety of analytical concepts and approaches useful for the study of domestic politics. Concepts typically covered include public goods and collective action; preference aggregation and the median voter theorem; delegation, representation, and accountability; agenda control; inter-branch bargaining; and the mechanisms of private influence on public policy.

POL-UA 330 American Constitution

09/03/2019 - 12/13/2019 Mon 5.00 PM - 7.30 PM at MEYR 121 with Rajsingh, Peter; Pankow, Jacob

Offered every semester. 4 points. Interpretation of the U.S. Constitution through the reading of Supreme Court opinions. Distribution of constitutional power among Congress, the president, and the federal courts; between the national government and the states; and among the states. Constitutional law and American political and economic development. Cases are read and discussed closely for their legal and philosophical content.

POL-UA 336 Gender in Law

09/03/2019 - 12/13/2019 Mon,Wed 3.30 PM - 4.45 PM at SILV 414 with Harrington, Christine; Easterling, Zachary

Examines the relationship between gender politics, legal theory, and social policy. Studies the role that the legal arena and certain historical conditions have played in creating, revising, and protecting particular gender identities and not others and examines the political effects of those legal constructions. Analyzes the major debates in feminist legal theory, including theories of equality, the problem of essentialism, and the relevance of standpoint epistemology. In addition to examining how the law understands sex discrimination in the workplace and the feminization of the legal profession, also addresses to what extent understandings of the gender affect how law regulates the physical body by looking at the regulation of reproduction and of consensual sexual activity. In light of all of the above, considers to what extent law is or is not an effective political resource in reforming notions of gender in law and society.

SCA-UA 366 Constitution and People of Color

09/03/2019 - 12/13/2019 Tue,Thu 4.55 PM - 6.10 PM at 20CS 4CONF with Ouyang, Elizabeth

Notes: SAME AS LWSOC-UA 327. Counts as SCA faculty elective for these majors/minors: AFRI, AMST, APA, LAT, SCA. Spaces reserved for majors/minors in the 7 SCA programs the first week of registration. If spaces are open, others will be enrolled via the wait-list week two.

Examines how the American legal system decided constitutional challenges affecting the empowerment of African, Latino, and Asian American communities from the 19th century to the present. Topics include the denial of citizenship and naturalization to slaves and immigrants, government-sanctioned segregation, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, the prison industry, police brutality, post-9/11 detention issues, and voting rights. Course requirements include attendance at a community function involving constitutional issues, a midterm, and an interactive oral and written final.

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