Spotlighted Event
Fall 2008 Courses
Required Courses
This is an introductory course to the study of development, a field that is characterized by diverse theoretical perspectives. Controversies about essential ends and means as well as empirical trends are a constant feature of academic policy and debates. At the heart of these debates are questions such as: Is development about economic growth, modernization or expansion of human freedoms and social justice? Is poverty rising or falling? How should poverty be defined and measured? Is there a trade off between equity and growth? Is there a trade off between democracy and development? How important is macroeconomic stability? What is the appropriate role of the state? Is development a linear process? The course is intended to prepare students to approach these questions in an informed and analytical fashion, by introducing them to the concepts, measures and policy considerations that are the currency of these debates.
Economics in International Affairs (NINT 5109), or its equivalent, is a pre-requisite for taking this course.
This course engages the core assumptions, systems, and logics that give rise to the global and provides a historically and theoretically informed basis for the further study and practice of international affairs. The terms "global" and "globalization" are relative linguistic newcomers for signifying interrelated processes that span cultures and scales. Though all movement of peoples from the earliest times can be construed as having a global effect in the most literal sense, and empires have spanned distances and brought peoples into contact, the most common referent of the term globalization concerns late 20th and early 21st century socio-economic processes. Our task in this class is to explore the key trajectories of state and market formation from which our present era has emerged, replete with paradoxes and promises. We trace how the global today unfolds from the legacies of colonialism, the nation-state system, and capitalism and manifests itself in our changing relation to space and time. These legacies are our ineluctable inheritance, our daily reality, and the material we must work with and confront, especially for students and practitioners of international affairs.
This is a prerequisite course to the Practicum in International Affairs that will provide students with the opportunity to gain a systematic and comprehensive understanding of the key concepts and skills essential to effective program development and project management in international affairs. The course will focus on skills that practitioners need to be effective in a range of professional contexts and will provide a forum for exploring the trends, tensions, ethical dilemmas, and opportunities facing practitioners in the field of international affairs. Students must complete a minimum of 18 credits and declare their concentration before they begin the practice track in GPIA.
By examining key aspects of a project-cycle and case studies from a wide range of fields, students will learn the techniques and tools used in formulating and managing projects and programs for desired impact. At the end of the course, students will have developed skills in the following areas of program development and project management - strategic design, needs assessment, implementation, proposal and report writing, budgeting, monitoring and evaluation, advocacy and dissemination. At the same time, the course will also give students the opportunity to develop insights into what it takes to be a "reflective practitioner" in an increasingly diverse global context.
The aim of the course is two-fold: first, to familiarize students with the basic methodologies, theories, and practices of the social sciences, and second, to help students develop the ability to frame research questions. In general the course introduces students to fundamental issues, concepts, and techniques of social science research. The course examines various instruments (e.g., models, narratives) used in the social sciences, provides basic instruction on selected research methods, and discusses the design and implementation of research. The course will particularly focus on underlying principles of analysis and critical thinking. It also explores popular debates surrounding concept formation. In this latter area the course introduces students to continuities and discontinuities between the natural and social sciences, providing guidance through deductive nomological and/or contextual or indigenous models of explanation, and fact-value distinctions and neutrality issues in the social sciences. Finally, this course explores rival methods and concepts in the social science (including quantitative, qualitative, comparative, case study methods, and the increasingly abundant use of narratives in research).
This course aims to provide a working knowledge of the global economy and the conceptual toolkit necessary to address some of the pressing economic issues of today. In the first part of the course, we will focus on the economy itself -- its scope, its measurement, its institutional structures, its governance, and its evolution in a national and international context. In the second part of the course, we will examine the competing analytical theories of the determination of economic activity, international trade and growth, and how these have informed modern policy debates at home and abroad. Throughout the course, we will address the various specific challenges that national governments and international organizations face at every turn, and evaluate the arguments and methods by which they have proposed to resolve them.
The Practicum in International Affairs (PIA) is a capstone course for students who have chosen the practice option that provides students with the opportunity to apply what they have learned from their course work, internships, summer programs, and past experience to consulting assignments with a wide range of organizations, as clients, in international affairs. Organized into teams of 4-6 people, as young professionals, students will work on discrete assignments of several months duration for client organizations from the not-for-profit, public and private sector, and multilateral agencies (e.g. UN).
PIA will be a faculty-supervised and client-driven learning process. To the extent possible, PIA will simulate the professional context, including its emphasis on deadlines and professional standards for work products, as well as the imperative to make decisions and recommendations based on imperfect information. It will recognize the importance of working closely with teammates and being responsive to clients in achieving the desired objectives of their assignments.
This course is a requirement for those who have chosen the GPIA research option. The course is designed to assist students in generating a viable thesis topic idea, preparing a bibliography, researching and writing a thesis proposal, and consequently producing the thesis itself. It is intended for this course to be taken the semester before the thesis will be completed.
Elective Courses
This course will survey the field of International Relations (IR) through its key theoretical debates, from classical to contemporary times. We will cover how different theorists conceptualize the "international" as well as the "relational" in what constitutes our world politics today. Students should leave the course with a better understanding of why certain camps in IR think and act the way they do, as well as their own location within the discipline.
Children represent more than one third of the world¹s total population and nearly half of the population in the least developed countries (LDC). To protect them, in 1924, the League of Nations adopted the 'Declaration of the Rights of the Child' and in 1989 the 'Convention on the Rights of the Child' (CRC). The CRC has nearly universal ratification. Together with its Optional Protocols, the Convention ensures the rights of children¹s survival, development and protection. Governments, leaders and international
organizations are committed to these objectives. However, today ³Millions of children make their way through life impoverished, abandoned, uneducated, malnourished, discriminated against, neglected and vulnerable. For them, life is a daily struggle to survive² (UNICEF 2005). In the developing world most of the poor are children and most of the children are poor. They are massive victims of war, social and family violence. They are orphaned by HIV/AIDS, sexually exploited and raped. They do not have any way of protecting and exerting their basic rights. They are left uneducated, hungry and living in the streets. They are made to work, often in hazardous conditions, with no access to sanitation or health services. How can democracy and peace expand under these circumstances? What are the problems of development? What are the main relevant policies and programs that are currently being implemented and how effective are they? Are poverty reduction programs addressing children's needs? What are the possibilities and alternatives to implement the CRC and improve significantly children¹s situation?
The objective of the course is to analyze and discuss different programmatic approaches that are presently being implemented around the world. Human Rights and the Convention will be discussed and used as a paradigm and benchmark for analyzing programs. The present development agenda and trends will be debated in light of children¹s situation and the human rights-based
approach. Some UNICEF senior experts will provide their experience and vision as guest speakers in the course. The course will be a combination of lectures, debates and student-led presentations on 'child programs' case studies. Active participation and debate will be promoted. Students enrolled in this class will derive practical learning on children¹s issues, poverty and globalization, as well as on policies and programs to deal with these issues. This knowledge can be applied in their future work and careers in the public, nonprofit, or private sector.
Are we secure yet? Or does our increasing investment in security discourses result from a gnawing and growing sense of insecurity? Lives and livelihoods, elections, economies, industries, institutions and international relations revolve around issues of security. The concept is dramatic enough to warrant the use of military force and declare states of emergency, and malleable enough for political rhetoric and fashion marketing. This course will critically explore the concept of security as a central organizing principle of the modern social order and its contemporary trajectory.
This course concerns critical thinking about security-the active analysis, synthesis, and application of information in ways that interrogate and elucidate established ideas. This is not a course on security policy or threats per se, but about understanding security as a dynamic organizing category with (very) real world effects. Topics include the fundamental interrelation between security and social order, including classic political, sociological and psychological approaches that conceive of security as the underlying logic of modern society and the contemporary international system, critical assessments of conventional security frameworks, and current trajectories of security, such as technologies of control and surveillance, networked organizational forms, privatization and commodification, and the shifting nature of emergencies and intervention.
This course is the foundation class for the Conflict and Security concentration.
This seminar explores the structures, actors and processes of global governance through a focus on international organizations. The first part of the course introduces key debates in global governance and examines the origin and development of international organizations. The second part of the course investigates different theoretical and analytical approaches to studying global governance and international organizations - including rationalist, sociological, domestic and critical approaches - and the ways they give rise to different puzzles and research strategies. The third part of the course applies these theoretical perspectives to the study of the role of international organizations in areas related to global security and global political economy. We examine relevant international organizations (including the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, the World Trade Organization, and the IMF/World Bank), their strength vis-à-vis different actors (including states and non-governmental organizations), and different processes and outcomes in different issue areas. The final part of the course examines emerging issues of global governance, including the rise of private authority, the role of global civil society, the European Union as a "model" for global governance, and the role of the United States and international organizations. By the end of the course participants should gain a deeper analytical understanding of recent theoretical and empirical developments in the field of global governance and international organizations. Participants are expected to read the assigned texts carefully to prepare for active seminar discussions. "Further reading" is encouraged, but not required.
This course is the foundation class for the Governance and Rights concentration.
Poor people have limited if any access to financial services from the usual financial institutions, especially in developing countries. And yet small-scale financial services - safe savings, appropriate credit, personal insurance, and the ability to make and receive payments at moderate cost (such as receiving remittances from relatives working abroad) - are important for poor households trying to manage their affairs and wishing to take advantage of small business opportunities. While institutions set up by governments (e.g., postal savings banks) and community institutions (e.g., savings and loan cooperatives) have traditionally provided whatever formal financial services the poor could access, an international movement of non-governmental organizations, government donors, foundations and private investors has sought over the past 25 years to introduce and spread "microfinance" services to the poor worldwide. This course will examine microfinance in the context of building "inclusive" financial sectors. It will look at issues of demand, supply, and public policy in microfinance. It will ask students to debate controversial issues, of which there are many in this field, which some people hold up as the key to fighting poverty and gender discrimination, and others consider a distraction from more crucial policy changes.
This course introduces the multiple dimensions and theoretical perspectives involved in understanding cities and the process of urbanization. It will demonstrate how the intersection and integration of multiple perspectives is needed to understand how urban processes operate. The course will introduce urban demography, economy and institutions, infrastructure, architecture and visual representation, physical space, social relations, and culture. Students will undertake individual and group assignments in a dynamic seminar format in which these perspectives will be illustrated through a sample of cities from different regions of the world.
This course is the foundation class for the Cities and Urbanization concentration.
This course will examine the research literature on the inter-relationships between organized, and mostly transnational, violent conflict - inter-state war, civil war, terrorism, organized crime - and socioeconomic development, primarily in developing countries. Among the issues discussed will be the role of economic agendas in civil wars, the social, political, economic and other sources of conflict, whether cross country economic linkages reduce the incentives for, and prevalence of, armed conflict, whether having representative political institutions reduces a country's propensity for conflict, economic causes and effects of international terrorism, and links between transnational crime and other forms of conflict. Aspects of conflict resolution and post-conflict transformations will be discussed.
Literature from the World Bank, the International Peace Academy, and academic and think tank researchers will be assigned. Country and regional case studies will be examined. Students will be expected to participate regularly in class discussions, make oral presentations on individual readings, and submit a research paper.
This course is designed to help international affairs students to intelligently handle the fundamental issues of today's complicated world. Placing a strong emphasis on the media and its culture, the course will introduce patterns of global and local cultural changes in the post-Cold-War world and the assertion of national, ethnic and cultural identities. The study of journalistic methods, interests and ethics from various countries will teach students to approach international affairs issues from a sociological and anthropological perspective. Assigned to follow current events in newspapers and on the Internet, students will discover how the media defines and controls the content of its reporting, which in turn affects what people learn about their own lives as well as other places.
This course is the foundation class for the Media and Culture concentration.
This course addresses the legal, political and ethical questions that arise from humanitarian intervention. Contemporary events and the growing internationalization of human rights legislation can pose a serious challenge to existing legal and political notions of state sovereignty and war, as the debate on the 1999 NATO bombing campaign against the Former Republic Yugoslavia (today Serbia and Montenegro) amply demonstrates. In that case, NATO's intervention and its aftermath tested the post-Cold War world's growing consensus on human rights as a normative framework for both the claims and obligations of individuals and states. We will give particular attention to those issues, among others drawn from recent conflicts, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda and Iraq.
The course starts with a survey of the main norm-setting documents, as well as the political and intellectual arguments that lay out the justification and limits of humanitarian intervention. As the concept (and the policy) of intervention develops, both theoretically and in policy terms, the notion of the use of force to build peace takes new turns after September 11. In the theory of preemptive/preventive war the primary goal is to stop rogue states from threatening the lives of democracies, but the ‘realist' perspective of international politics rests also on a normative base that includes a humanitarian component. As the theory of the just war is stretched to accommodate a wider range of particular cases, today, as in the 1990s, the questions remain the same. When and how is it just to intervene? What are the outcomes of intervention or the lack of it? How does intervention deal with democratic governance in post-conflict societies? Answering questions on the concrete consequences of intervention might also help redefine its foundation and purposes.
The purpose of this course is to build familiarity with the core theory and empirical findings on the economic processes that underpin the development process. The course will cover theory and empirical literature on: (i) economics of growth; (ii) structural transformation; (iii) distribution and poverty; (iv) macroeconomic issues including trade, finance and globalisation; (v) demography and population growth; (vi) education and health; (v) sustainability and environment; (vi) ethical foundations. For each topic the course explores theoretical approaches, both mainstream and heterodox, along with their associated policy implications. In addition, the course will introduce basic empirical tools in order to apply the concepts to contemporary development issues.
Prerequisite: Economics in International Affairs I or the equivalent.
This course is the foundation class for the Development concentration.
This course is a rigorous immersion into the theory and practice of memorialization, with an emphasis on the relationship between memorials and transitional justice. Topics will include WWI and Holocaust memorials, as well as history wars, "dark tourism," and the World Trade Center site, as well as cases from South Africa, Argentina and Chile, Cambodia, Bosnia and the former Yugoslavia, and Rwanda.
This class will examine a range of issues relating to refugees, asylum and displacement. The class will use the current, and rapidly growing, Iraq refugee crisis as a window into refugee, asylum and displacement issues, while also examining these issues in other geographic contexts as well, including in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America . The course will address the principle of "non-refoulement," the institution of asylum, the definition of a "refugee," internal displacement, Palestinian refugees, exclusion from protection, the impact of counter-terrorism policies, the rights of refugees, including the right to work and access to education, detention, the impact of migration control measures, interdiction, the role of UN agencies, NGOs and other actors, and xenophobia and discrimination.
Why is media important to conflict prevention and post-conflict capacity and nation building? This course will address the role of media, both in the fomenting of violent conflict and the ways in which it may be used to facilitate its resolution. It will explain what is meant by the terms "peacebuilding/nation building/capacity building" broadly in a post-conflict environment and go in depth with respect to the role of the United Nations in such activities (DPKO and DPI, the new Peacebuilding Commission), and to the role of other important actors such as the EU, OSCE, NATO and other NGOs. It will address the challenges to public information in a post-conflict society, at an individual level - that is, to joe public who either distrusts the media as government propaganda or is a believing supporter of its incendiary messages - and at an institutional level - where media institutions must either be rebuilt after conflict or recreated virtually from scratch. The course will discuss the role of public information produced and disseminated by international actors; and the ways in which indigenous public broadcasters and "independent" media are built and supported. The instructors will discuss the tension between "censorship" and "freedom of expression" in a post-conflict society, and utilize their own experiences working with the media in conflict and post-conflict environments to elucidate various issues.
This course will explore the multiple constructions of gender in development and political discourse; the intersection of gender with other social categories and with economic and political trends; and the reflection of gender norms and goals in development policies and interventions. Through the course readings and discussions, we will consider how different gender norms inform local, national, regional and global politics of development, and how they shape the strategies and activities of civil society organizations, state institutions and international actors. We will interrogate stated and implied models of feminism and masculinity in state and development discourses, and their sociocultural as well as policy implications. We will also critically examine current practices for integrating gender concerns in development policies, programs and projects.
Africa's efforts to secure peace and development for Africans are persistently challenged by the prevalence of conflict and the demands of social, political and economic change. As African scholars have underscored, statemaking in Europe took centuries, while violent conflict and the practice of protectionist oriented economic models prevailed. And yet, Africa is too often assumed to be the "hopeless" continent, somehow an anomaly in global development and politics. This course seeks to unpack such assumptions, providing a rich contextual analysis of critical issues of conflict and social change in Africa, from the colonial era to the present. Analysis of thematic issues will compliment the use of conflict analysis and social change frameworks, to ensure that knowledge for practical application is gained.
By the end of the course students should:
- Be conversant in the conceptual debates of conflict analysis and social change; and,
- Understand the key challenges of conflict and change in Africa, and the social, political, economic contexts underpinning them.
New media - blogs, wikis and other interactive technologies - are increasingly important to the work of organizations engaged in global affairs. This course surveys current developments in new media - collaborative filtering, open source software, users as producers, virtual communities - and their implications for non-profit organizations, the private sector, government and international organizations. How are these technologies reshaping the mass media, and thereby changing global affairs by altering the way we see ourselves or the way we perceive other cultures? What are the best practices in terms of applying these technologies for social, political and economic change?
What are the sources and consequences of urban environmental degradation? What is the role of cities in broader patterns of environmental degradation? How do different social groups interpret this process and tackle (or ignore) its challenges? This course takes a political economy approach to environmental dynamics as they relate to the city, paying special attention to the role of globalization. Topics include the culture of consumption, movements for environmental justice, and the growing role of cities as political actors within transnational environmental politics. We will draw on (and build upon) case studies taken from New York - including an oil spill in Brooklyn and a sewage treatment plant in Harlem - as well as from urban Brazil, India and China. Assignments will include the use of mapping techniques to explore the spatial dimensions of urban environmental politics and to
better understand the challenges of "designing the livable city."
This course will review the recent history of development thinking on urban development and on employment creation and explore the policy options available to cities, local governments and international development assistance organizations to support urban job creation. The course will draw heavily on case studies from the International Labour Office, the World Bank, the Cities Alliance and other international development agencies to help prepare students to work at both the policy and operational level in this field in public service, non-governmental organizations or the private sector.
The course will explore different forms of employment in the formal and informal sectors, self-employment and livelihoods. In order to ground the subsequent analysis, different national and international mandates on job creation will be discussed, including the "right to work" in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), "full, productive and freely chosen employment" stated in the ILO's Employment Policy Convention, youth employment in the Millennium Declaration and Decent Work in the 2005 World Summit. These employment centered mandates will be discussed in the light of the different international mandates on cities and urban development, including the Habitat Agenda (outcome of the Second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements, Istanbul, 1996), the Millennium Development Goal of Cities without Slums (2000) and the work of the Cities Alliance, UN-Habitat and other development assistance organizations.
The course will link the conventional wisdom on urban development - based largely on analyzing urbanization in terms of either physical and spatial development or of demographic trends - with recent literature and practical examples of how job creation strategies support sustainable urban growth. Drawing on case studies of City Development Strategies, Slum Upgrading Strategies and Programmes, Local Economic Development Programmes, Municipal Investment Programmes and financing options, the course will prepare students to critically assess the work of international development organizations in the fields of job creation, urban development and municipal capacity building.
The course will be structured according to the following thematic areas:
- International mandates and trends in urbanization, employment and decent work
- Regulations, growth and the informal economy
- Infrastructure, investment policies and financing options
- Direct job creation programmes, workfare and employment guarantee policies
- Participation, urban governance and job creation
What is the meaning of security on an increasingly crowded planet, with humanity confronting unprecedented environmental and resource challenges? Traditional definitions and concepts increasingly fail to capture or explain the complex problems of the 21st century. With the help of specific examples and cases, this course will explore the connections between environment, resources, security, conflict, and peacemaking-factors that are heavily mediated by social and economic factors including poverty and inequality. The literature has widened beyond traditional national security precepts to include notions of global security as well as security within nations. Terms like "human security" and "environmental security" have become shorthand for a range of non-traditional security concerns-including incidents of violent conflict as well as broader issues of human safety, livelihoods, and wellbeing. Among other aspects, the course will focus on the following dimensions: 1) the impact of environmental degradation and depletion on conflict formation; 2) conflicts arising out of a context of contested resource wealth; 3) environmental impacts of armed conflicts and the war system; 4) opportunities for "environmental peacemaking" among different communities and countries based on a recognition of shared interests and vulnerabilities. The aim is to familiarize students with relevant issues and connections, and to enhance their ability to think in interdisciplinary ways.
This course will discuss how sports exemplify most of the contemporary phenomena associated with globalization. The course will deal with six main areas: sporting events between the inter-national and the global; athletes as stars, migrants and guest workers; the distinction between professionals and amateurs; the politics of international sports organizations; the impact of mega events such as the Olympics on cities; the relation between sports and development. Students will learn to analyze sports as social phenomena that illuminate contemporary situations and problems in the international arena. This course will appeal to students interested in urban studies, contemporary debates about nationality, double citizenship and naturalization, North-South immigration, and issues of commodification and commercialization. The course will focus on the power structures behind sports events, the organizations that make the decisions, the financial situation, the rules for transfers and the requirements to determine who plays as a national and the political, and the urban effects of sport mega events.
The course explores the security and foreign policy potential of Europe. On the polity level, we will examine how individual member states or the institutions of the European Union use their influence to promote policy; with regard to the latter, students will address intra-European developments, such as future EU enlargement, the external borders of a widening Europe, Europe's contribution to global security, European energy and climate policy, European trade policy, challenges for transatlantic relations, the EU's ‘neighborhood' and Middle East policy, Europe' s relationship with Russia, Turkey and Islam, as well as migration and immigration issues.
What can Europe's contribution to global security be? How has the community in the past used its (soft or hard power) instruments to promote stability in the region and abroad? How well has the union been able to speak with one common voice? And, how can we characterize the geo-political reach of a continent whose countries, in growing numbers, belong to both, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the European Union (EU)?
This course will propose a critical approach to the category of the "informal economy" in Africa.. It will do so in a specific way: through the prism of both literal and figurative "border economies." The latter include trans-border trade as well as war economies, mercenary economies, enclave economies, and offshore entities. We will review the various forms these "border economies" take and will debate the various manners of describing and conceptualizing them. A few founding or classical texts will be read and contrasted to recent monographs or ethnographies of these economic spaces in Africa. The aim of this course is to develop critical analytical skills for appraising central concepts in the analysis of both the economy and political economy. This critical approach to the very notion of the informal economy entails inquiry into the ways in which such a concept serves to bracket out certain categories, rendering them residual to theorizations. Through the readings, students will be brought to raise questions about the ways in which supposedly "peripheral" phenomena are critical to the very constitution of "the center." Their answers to these questions are significant insofar as current academic and policy debates about informality and illegality are most often confined to issues of morality, thus slighting central questions about economic redistribution.
Human rights are most often than not associated with violations of civil and political freedoms such as torture or arbitrary detension. Yet according to Louise Arbour, the High Commissioner on Human Rights, it is poverty that is the greatest human rights facing the global community. This course will develop case studies in key challenges of human rights and global poverty such as child labor, human trafficking, resettlement, access to medicines. After a few sessions reviewing basic principles and theories of human rights as they relate to poverty, each student will select a case to research and develop case study material. The objective will be to develop publishable case studies.
Pre-requisite: The course is for students with some background in areas of human rights, and development. Enrollment is limited to 12 students. Permission of the instructor is required.
This course will focus on key concepts in human rights, and examine their analytical value in the context of varying approaches towards the promotion and protection of internationally recognized human rights norms. In particular, the course will examine these concepts in light of (a) the growing convergence between international human rights law and international humanitarian law and; (b) the recent debates in international relations theory on the role of ideas and norms. It will assess the impact of normative considerations, as well as the role of the relevant state and non-state actors on a whole set of critical issue areas including discrimination, accountability, human security, political membership, human development, and legal empowerment. The course will conclude with an evaluation of recent initiatives in UN-led human rights reform.
International humanitarian crises include acute situations affecting large civilian populations, usually involving a natural disaster, war or civil strife, food shortages, collapse of health and other basic services, as well as massive population displacement, and tend to result in excess mortality. This course will work on the skills a practitioner needs to work in an international crises, learning the techniques and tools to formulate and manage programs from humanitarian emergencies to transitional 'post-emergency' situations.
The 2004 Tsunami, the 2005 Pakistan earthquake, wars in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and Iraq illustrate clearly the suffering of civilians. According to UNHCR there are approximately 33 million uprooted people. The first part of the course will explore initial response to a crisis how it happens, how it is organized and how it affects humanitarian workers. Staff safety, logistical challenges and communication issues will be investigated. Next, the course will address which organizations tend to respond to crisis, and sectors into which this response is usually organized. The course will furthermore introduce analytical frameworks in identifying and responding to different sub-sections of the displaced populations, including female-headed households, children, the disabled and others. The second half of the course will focus on minimum standards set for emergency response. The actual tools used for response will be key reading for this section of the course. After a general introduction, the course will explore the following sectors: health, including epidemiology; communicable disease; environmental health (water and sanitation); shelter and site planning; nutrition and protection. The prevention and management of HIV/AIDS and gender-based violence are two important aspects of emergency response. The course will explain how these are addressed comprehensively in the emergency phase. After this broad overview of humanitarian response, the course will look at overall coordination of humanitarian response.
This class will meet from 1:00 to 3:50 pm.
In this graduate seminar, students will study the international youth media movement and its relationship to human rights, visual inclusion, and transformative pedagogy. Beginning with a base in critical pedagogy and the theories of Paulo Freire, we will study how transformative education has influenced non-formal and popular education movements. The second block of the course will examine the history of community-based media from an activist perspective and through the politics of representation. Closely related is the emergence of indigenous media, digital and visual inclusion projects, and the trickle down of these rights into youth media programs. The central section of the course will cover the contemporary landscape of youth media from a holistic perspective involving video production, kids with camera projects, and youth journalism. The forth section of the class will study how ones sets up and designs a youth media project with a broad focus on new media documentary practice involving film, photography and sound design. The final part of the class will consider how one packages youth media through online media environments, progressive outreach, and through human rights education.
Matriculated graduate students registered for fewer than the minimum number of credits necessary for full- or part-time status but who are engaged in approved "equivalent activities" may register for equivalency credit in order to maintain full or part-time status. This is intended for students who are completing their Master's Projects or for rare equivalency activities that are an integral part of the student's program and must be verified by an appropriate advisor or faculty member. Approval is not automatic.
Registration for equivalency credit takes place during the registration period. Students must obtain their advisor's and Director's approval. Full-time status for New School graduate students is defined as enrollment for nine degree credits per semester. Half-time status requires a minimum of six degree credits per semester. Some financial aid agencies and programs require that students register for twelve credits per academic semester; please check with Financial Aid. Also, international students with certain types of visas are required to register for full-time status (nine graduate credits per academic semester for graduate students). Please check with International Student Services.
*** Approval of advisor required before registering.
Students in good standing who have completed their first semester may register for up to three (3) credits through an approved internship. To qualify for credit, a student must work a minimum of 150 hours (10 hours/week during the regular semester or 20 hours per week during the summer session). Students may undertake non-for-credit internships at any time.
Students who wish to register for a credit-bearing internships should take the following steps:
- First, identify the organization, secure the internship, and obtain written confirmation of the internship.
- Second, choose a faculty advisor and write a proposal that includes:
1. name and contact information for the organization
2. name and contact information for an on-site internship supervisor
3. period of internship, including number of hours
4. proposed tasks the intern will undertake
5. nature of a written report that the student will submit to the faculty advisor at the completion of the internship.
- Third, submit the proposal to the advisor and the Program Director. Applications must be submitted with enough time for full evaluation prior to registration, no later than two weeks prior to the start of the registration period.
Upon approval by the Program, the students registers following the standard procedure using the internship course number. An additional signed Internship Approval Form is required by the Registrationr office and is available at the GPIA office.
During the internship, the students is tmeet at least once with their faculty advisor to discuss progress. Upon successful completion of the internship, faculty advisors assign grades of P/pass or F/fail, based jointly on the the written reports of the student and written evaluations of the student's performance made by the the internship supervisor.
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** Approval of advisor required before registering.
After their first semester all students in good academic standing may register during pre-registration for one independent study. The Students must start with a problem or specific area of interest to investigate in detail, and then design a project with the approval of an interested faculty member who serves as the course advisor. Permission of both the project course advisor and the Director is required before a student can register for independent study.
NOTE: Independent study can only be registered for during pre-registration. All Students planning to register for independent study must submit an application in the form of a proposal that contains:
1. the specific subject or problem to be investigated
2. the proposed method for investigating the topic
3. a preliminary bibliography.
These materials must be submitted to and approved by the course advisor and the Program Director prior to registration. Applications must be submitted with enough time for full evaluation no later than two weeks prior to the start of the term registration period. Upon approval, the student registers following the standard procedure using the independent study course number provided by the program. Upon successful completion of the independent study project, the project supervisor assigns a letter grade.
All matriculated students who are not planning to take courses in a given fall or spring semester must register to maintain status for all semesters in which they do not take courses (does not apply to summer semester), unless they are on a leave of absence. Students registering to maintain status pay the Maintenance of Status fee, as well as the University Services and Divisional Fees, each semester. Students who maintain status are considered active students, even though they are not enrolled in courses. They retain access to academic advising, library resources, and University email. Students who register to maintain status after the deadline (for Fall 2006, August 10th) will be charged the late registration fee. Students who do not register to maintain status by the Add deadline (September 18th) will need permission to do so. Students who fail to register for the Fall 2008 semester, and who have not been granted a leave of absence, must petition to re-enroll to continue their studies.
We are in the midst of the second great global expansion of modern capitalism, very different from the first. Today's globalization concerns culture and politics as well as economics; but economics provides the driving force, and the new technologies the means. The world is being transformed, and productivity is expanding. But inequality is increasing at a rapid pace worldwide, and so is instability. We have to ask if this is sustainable.
By the time the Qajar dynasty established itself in Iran in 1779, Shi'ism had already well established its religious hegemony over Iran and the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw further evidence of its consolidation and institutionalization. How does the religious architecture of Shi‘ism help explain the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1911 and the success of the Islamic revolution in 1979 in the absence of a strong Islamic movement? And why did Iranians, clerical and lay, and in the heyday of colonialism, turn to a Western-inspired ideology in the early decades of the twentieth century, and then turn completely against Westernization some seventy years later? This course studies social change in Iran during the past two centuries, focusing on the interaction of political thought with religious authority and cultural transformation, to suggest that the Islamic revolution of 1979 is better explained in the lexicon of revolutionary transformation than in that of religious resurgence or a revival of the past. Readings will include Bayat, Bulliet, Goldstone, Khomeini, Moaddel, Mottahedeh, Owen & Skocpol.
This course examines the politics of modern South Asia, an increasingly significant yet still understudied region of the world, which addresses many classic theories of comparative politics. Taking a comparative historical approach, with a relative focus on India, we analyze the legacies of imperial rule and anti-colonial movements on nationalist imaginaries and the formation of post-colonial states; the vicissitudes of state-led and market-oriented strategies of development; and struggles to establish, consolidate and expand democratic regimes, institutions and practices. The course assesses how these processes both transformed, and were shaped by, conflicts along lines of caste, class, gender, language and religion, as well as patterns of convergence and difference across the region.
This course provides students with a broad overview of social psychological research. Central to the course is the idea that human beings are not isolated entities who process information like computers, but social animals engaged in a complicated network of social relations, both real and imagined. Constrained by our cognitive capacities and guided by many different motives and fundamental needs, we attempt to make sense of the social world in which we live and of ourselves in relation to it. We see how this influences perceptions of the self, perceptions of other individuals and groups, beliefs and attitudes, group processes, and intergroup relations. Readings emphasize how various theories of human behavior are translated into focused research questions and rigorously tested via laboratory experiments and field studies.
This course will study the relationship between the rise of the modern city and the development of photography and cinema. We will explore how the experience of life in the modern metropolis led to the need for new forms of media, ones based on shock and reproducibility. Central to this thesis will be a reading of Walter Benjamin's study of Paris as the capital of the nineteenth century, as his notion of the flaneur. Indeed, it is impossible to imagine the development of the cinema without the city, and cities themselves have been shaped by cinematic form. What is the relation between cityscape and screenspace? How has the modern city been represented in cinema? As utopian? Dystopian? We will examine the role played by cities and urban space in the cinema: Berlin, Moscow, Rome, Tokyo, Hong Kong and others. We will explore the protrayal of these cities by particular filmmakers and study their role in shaping national urban space: Dziga Vertov, Jacques Tati, Roberto Rossellini, Michelangelo Antonioni, F.W. Murnau, and Wong Kar-Wai, among others.
Emergent media forms and technologies (podcasting, locative media, video-blogging, broadband video, internet radio, cellphone audio and video, online social networks, collaborative online productions) both unsettle and extend concepts and assumptions at the heart of "documentary" as a practice and as an idea. New media technologies allow documentary makers to collect and present stories in new ways, personalize and democratize media production, create and involve nontraditional audiences through innovative forms of distribution and exhibition. In this course, we explore how emerging media technologies are shaping new documentary practices as well as how new production, distribution, and reception practices are shaping emerging documentary forms ("small stories," "micro-documentaries," interactive documentaries, collaborative documentaries, etc.). In particular, we will consider how new digital media make it possible not only to re-present events as they happened, but also to release modes of social interaction and relationality that become potential while events are in the midst of unfolding. We will consider how digital media present documentary makers with ways to catalyze surprising, as yet unlived forms of social relationality and cultural expression through media production practices that respond to events as they are in-the-making. We will ask: What forms of social relationality and cultural expression do new documentary practices make thinkable and possible?
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This course intends to offer a critical survey of the major issues and debates structuring media and communication policy primarily in the United States. We will start by debunking the assumption that policy-making is a neutral endeavor by examining the interests and arguments involved in the implementation of the U.S. commercial broadcasting system in the first half of the twentieth century. We will follow the logic of commercial model throughout the century and to present day as it intersects with a shifting political landscape influenced by neo-liberal values promoting media consolidation, and as it confronts emerging technologies that promote alternative possibilities for cultural production and media distribution. Some of the key issues and concepts we will explore include: normative questions concerning media policy, democracy, and civil society; FCC law and the telecom industries; technology and convergence; copyright and fair use; Internet governance; alternative media; media activism and reform; and, cultural citizenship as a framework for advocacy that forwards citizen rights to cultural difference and progressive policy change. Students will be expected to contribute to the discussion by investigating a case study of their choosing withing the concerns of the course and presenting it to the class.
This is an ONLINE Media Studies course worth one (1) credit that runs from September 2 through October 3.
This short course introduces students to principles and pracitices of interviewing, a significant technique used in qualitative research. Course readings explore basic concepts pertaining to nature and design of interviews, ethical concerns, validity, and the role of the interviewer. Students will gain hands-on experience as they design, implement, and write up results from a 5-week-long research project, either academic, production-oriented, or creative.
This is an ONLINE Media Studies course worth one (1) credit that runs from October 6 through November 7.
This short course introduces students to principles and practices of focus group research, a tool that has become increasingly popular in social-scientific inquiry. Students will read and discuss different approaches to focus groups, and explore key concepts regarding design and implementation, role of the moderator, group size, comparison between individual interviews, and group discussions. Students will gain hands-on experience as they design, implement and write up results from a 5-week-long research project, either academic, production-oriented, or creative.
This is an ONLINE Media Studies course worth one (1) credit that runs from November 10 through December 19.
This short course is designed to familiarize students with the grantseeking process. Students will learn how to search and identify funding resources, prepare applications, develop objectives, and write grant proposals for academic and creative projects.
This is an ONLINE Media Studies course worth one (1) credit that runs from September 2 until October 3.
This course looks at 'sampling' for research, and examines its principal approaches, benefits and potential limitations. We will study the steps involved in constructing samples; discuss key terms associated with sampling methods (such as target/accessible population, random/systematic/stratified/cluster sampling, and inferences); and understand how to minimize 'errors' or 'biases' in order to produce valid, verifiable and reliable results from our research. Since sampling sometimes involves quantitative models we will also discuss some of the statistical terms used in sampling.
Sampling as a scientific research method enables us to 'generalize' about a population or area of study. You may find sampling to be an appropriate research method if your research refers to a large group; if you want to evaluate and measure impact; or if you want to apply your results to groups in other places or times, among other possible research agendas Sampling is often used in different research applications, including academic theory development, public and private sector policy making and market research on audiences/users. This course will prepare students to conduct independent research using sampling methods and critically evaluate findings from sampling-based research papers.
This is an ONLINE Media Studies course worth two (2) credits that runs from October 6 through December 19.
This course looks at the principle approaches of discourse analysis as a research method. Two main areas of discourse research - meaning making and social-cultural relations - will be examined using 'socio-cognitive' and 'critical' discourse traditions. We will consider different objects of discourse analysis (texts, speech acts, conversations, and communicative events) to understand the social use of language. Students will learn methods of conducting independent discourse analysis with different types of research data, including official documents, conversations, interviews, and political talks/debates/speeches. Discourse analysis is widely used across academic disciplines (including anthropology, sociology, international relations, and communication studies) and is increasingly being used in other contexts such as market research, media analysis, and interpersonal communication training for corporate use, policy research and public relations. Students will be encouraged to critically assess research findings that rely on discourse analysis and develop discourse analytical frameworks for independent research.