Spring 2012 Courses
A course listing by concentration can be found here.
You can also access previous course offerings in the course archive. You can view a summarized schedule here and a course calendar here.
Required Courses
This course continues the exploration of global flows and turns to the contemporary challenges of development, inequality and globalization. It too engages the core processes, concepts, assumptions and explores alternative perspectives and paradigms that define progress, and alternative theories that explain why some countries and people are faring better than others. At the heart of current debates are such questions as: How should progress be defined and measured? What has been the impact of trade liberalization on inequality? Is development about economic growth, modernization or expansion of human freedoms and human rights? Drawing on multidisciplinary traditions, the course covers: (i) development in historical perspective from the 18th through the 21st century; (ii) alternative paradigms and theories of development; (iii) select policy topics; (iv) empirical examination of country trajectories using quantitative indicators. The course aims to introduce conceptual tools to analyze the problems and engage with debates around policies by use of data, case studies, and history.
*Prerequisite: Global Flows, and Economics in International Affairs or the equivalent.
*Sections A and B are recommended for Development concentration students, and coordinated with Development Economics NINT 5251/CRN 3614
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 course provides 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. It 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. PDPM is the first of two courses that make up the Practice Option and is a prerequisite to the course Practicum in International Affairs.
Permission is required. Please contact Andrea Kelsey (kelseya@newschool.edu) for permission.
Thursday 4.00pm - 5.50pm
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).
* Research Methods is a required course for 2012 IFP students.
Training in research methods is critically important for a career in the field of economic development. The two aims of the Research Methods requirement for the development concentration are to give students the skills to engage critically with research in the development field, and to conduct independent research of their own. This requires the learning of four core competencies. First, students examine how empirical research can support, fail to support, or refute particular theoretical claims; and then learn how to determine the best strategies for defining, framing, and pursing different kinds of research questions. Second, students become familiar with a variety of research skills and techniques that can be utilized as appropriate for different research questions. Third, students are encouraged to develop a strong skill set in some form of quantitative research (GIS or statistics), which they can use to conduct impact assessments, program evaluations and policy analysis over the course of their careers. The aim here is to give students a concrete skill set that they will be able to utilize as development practitioners. Fourth, students become critical consumers of other people's research by developing the ability to assess whether a research question is evaluated appropriately and rigorously, and whether the data supports the conclusion derived. All Research Methods courses pay close attention to the advantages and disadvantages of different research strategies, and the kinds of questions that can and cannot be answered through varying methodological approaches.
This course aims to introduce students to basic economic concepts necessary to analyse the workings of the economy and address some of the pressing development issues of today. It covers: (i) the economy -- its scope, its measurement, its institutional structures, its governance, and its evolution in a national and international context; (ii) markets and market failure - the functioning of markets and where markets either fail or do not exist; (iii) competing theories and paradigms - the determinants 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.
*Students must register for NINT 5109 Economics in International Affairs and NINT 5110 Lab- Economics in International Affairs. NINT 5110 Lab section A must be registered along with NINT 5109 section A, and NINT 5110 Lab section B must be registered along with NINT 5109 section B.
*Section B is recommended for Development concentration students.Friday 4.00pm - 5.50pm
Friday 6.00pm - 7.50pm
Lab for Economics in International Affairs.
Students must register for NINT 5109 Economics in International Affairs and NINT 5110 Lab- Economics in International Affairs. NINT 5110 Lab section A must be registered along with NINT 5109 section A, and NINT 5110 Lab section B must be registered along with NINT 5109 section B.
This course is required for students who have chosen to write a masters thesis as a final project. The thesis is more than a paper-it is a major independent project that requires the best application of your analytical, writing, and research skills. The successful completion of a thesis signals that you have mastered the art of scholarly research, can synthesize complex information, can write clearly and creatively, and can convince others of the power of your ideas through argument and not polemic. This course will help you write a thesis proposal and design your thesis. The course is heavily interactive - we will work primarily with materials provided by you, the students. Using secondary texts and your own work we will cover issues such as formulating a research problem, defining your concepts, situating yourself in the literature, finding, using and presenting data, and the writing process. If you follow the course carefully, by the end of the semester you should be in very good shape to write and complete your thesis. Students are strongly recommended to have a primary thesis advisor (full time GPIA professor), who, prior to attending Thesis Workshop, has already approved of their thesis topic. This course is the prerequisite for registering for Thesis Supervision.
*** Approval of advisor required before registering
Students who are writing a thesis must register for Thesis Supervision under the name of their thesis supervisor. In the same semester, they must also register for Maintaining Status if all other course work has been completed.
The Practicum in International Affairs (PIA) is a capstone course for students who have chosen the practice option. The PIA 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. 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). Permission of the instructor is required.
Elective Courses
This course will comprise of a survey of post-colonial politics in Sub-Saharan African politics, with a particular focus on Southern Africa. Some of the topics covered include colonialism, nationalism, the state, the political legacy of liberation, authoritarianism, civil society, globalization, social movements, youth, cultural politics and the role of mass media.
Contemporary Africa is a prerequisite for the South Africa IFP.
Today millions of children make their way through life impoverished, abandoned, uneducated, malnourished, discriminated against, neglected and vulnerable. For them, life is a daily struggle to survive. 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 Convention on the Rights of the Child and improve significantly children's situation?
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 seem to 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 explore the concept of security as a central organizing principle of modernity.
The goal of this seminar is to give students tools to think critically about the concept of security, about how this concept has changed, and about the various contexts in which security is used as a norm for action in contemporary institutions. It is not, thus, concerned with "theories" of security, or with practical questions in areas such as conflict resolution. Nor does it seek to offer an overview of any academic field concerned with "security" problems. The class will, however, offer students a critical perspective on all of these by developing historical perspectives on - and conceptual orientations to - the broad problem of security.
This course is the foundation class for the Conflict and Security concentration.
This course will introduce students to the fundamental principles of international law. We will examine the history of the contemporary international legal order, before examining the sources of international law, sovereignty and statehood, the United Nations collective security framework, and the law regulating the use of force and self-defense. In the process, we will consider such questions as, what kind of law is international law and what can we expect from it? How is the international legal order changing and what is the impact of emerging forms of complex governance on the system of international law? What is the relationship between international law and hegemony?
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. 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.
For the 2012 Hong Kong IFP, participants must choose as a prerequisitive course either Global Governance or Media Advocacy in the Global Public Sphere.
This course is the foundation class for the Governance and Rights concentration.
This course examines the intersection between art and world politics. We all know that art has been a crucial instrument of politics. This ranges from Beijing's Forbidden City to Beethoven's revolutionary Fifth Symphony to Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will" to Picasso's Guernica to Václav Havel's underground writings for the Czech people when under Soviet occupation. Moreover, art itself is inherently political regardless of whether the artist has a particular political goal or message in mind. For art reflects a vision of the world that necessarily comes from a particular context. And that context is politically informed.
Yet the field of politics, generally, and world politics, in particular, tends to overlook this powerful source of human agency, expression, and change. With globalization, especially, one can argue, in reverse to the usual, that "all politics is global" now.
Accordingly, this course will explore the dual nature of art and world politics: that is, how one informs the other, thereby constructing the other. We will also try to theorize more systematically about this relationship as well as examine some of its practical applications.
This course is designed for students interested in Sino-Indian interactions. We will cover the historical and contemporary exchanges between India and China given their dramatically different cultural, political, and historical experiences. We aim not only to understand the uniqueness of the connections between India and China, but also how the two civilizations have contributed to global exchanges and flows. The course will highlight similarities and differences between the two societies, their mutual perceptions, cultural exchanges and influences, patterns of development, causes of conflict as well as possibilities for cooperation, and their role in world history and the contemporary global economy. In addition to reading primary and second materials, students will also study films and documentaries.
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.
Humanitarian Intervention is the prerequisite for the 2012 Kosovo IFP.
The interconnections between conflict, development and peace are many and profound. One only needs to examine the current global context characterised by high levels of violent protracted conflict and inexcusable and rising levels of poverty and inequality - two phenomena that are often found together and that intermingle in complex ways. For many countries and regions in conflict and transition from war to peace, the role of economics and development cannot be separated from understanding the causes of conflict and forms of peacebuilding that will endure. Where peace and conflict resolution efforts fail to address economic and social development issues - often key drivers or structural sources of conflict - peace is unlikely to sustain. From the other end of the spectrum, development policies and programmes at all levels have historically generated ‘winners' and ‘losers', have often not been designed in ways that serve peace, but rather in ways that cement divisions, and sew seeds for, or exacerbate violent conflict. In post-conflict and transitional settings it is vital to get new policies and programming right - particularly those that can simultaneously serve to address peace and development needs.
This course meets on six Saturdays: 1/28, 2/11, 2/25, 3/10, 3/24; 10AM-12:50PM and 2PM-4:50PM.
This course introduces the core literature of development economics. It centers around theories that explain the sources, processes and consequences of economic growth that are particularly relevant to policy choices. The course covers the following topics: (i) theories of development (ii) ethical foundations, including inequality, poverty, and gender issues (iii) industrial economics (iv) growth economics (v) taxation policies, state formation and poverty alleviation (vi) international trade theory and policy (vii) international capital flows and (viii) the developmental state. For each topic the course explores theoretical approaches, both mainstream and heterodox, along with their associated policy implications. One major aim of the course is to provide students with rigorous analytical foundations to understand key theory and policy issues in development economics.
Development Economics and Comparative Development Experience (CDE) complement one another; CDE focuses on contemporary issues and is multidisciplinary while this course focuses on economics.
Prerequisite: Economics in International Affairs or the equivalent. This course may be taken simultaneously with or following CDE.
Lab/Discussion Sections: Students enrolled in Development Economics are also required to attend weekly Lab/Discussion sections. Students will choose their discussion section in the first class session of Development Economics.
The Lab/Discussion Sections will meet on Thursdays 6:00-7:50pm and Fridays 4:00-5:50pm.
This course is coordinated with Comparative Development Experience NINT 5000/CRN 3610 and NINT 5000/CRN 5132.
This course is the foundation class for the Development concentration.
This course examines the unique position of the United States in the world economy today. That position engages intense and partisan debates across the world. The resulting literature, while immense, contains arguments that embody and reflect three basic economic theories. To understand the US position in the world economy, we will need to be especially attentive to the theoretical differences that shape the contesting understandings and evaluations of that position. Of course, students are free to take whichever theoretical position they find persuasive in presenting their oral and written arguments. However, students should show an awareness of theoretical differences and offer grounds for whatever position they take.
Students will get more from this course if they have some background in International Economics or an equivalent.
Fifty six developing country governments were in debt crises just in 1999-2003 and most are still working out from under them. An effective public sector is crucial, whatever development strategy is followed. This course proposes to study how public finance works and how it should work in developing countries. What principles should guide government budgeting? What processes should they follow? How should developing country governments decide what to spend money on, given limited resources and important development demands that fall on the public sector? How should they raise fiscal revenues efficiently and fairly? When should they borrow, from whom and on what terms? Why are they unusually vulnerable to debt crises? How should crises be resolved quickly and fairly? What is a sustainable public debt? How much can countries do for themselves and what support is offered by the "international community"? Is anything missing in the international financial architecture? Where does justice lie? These are questions that this course will tackle.
Should societies confront the legacies of past human rights abuse or atrocity? If so, how? What policy options are open to successor regimes during a post-transition or post-conflict period? How do these policy options relate to broader goals, such as peace, stability, or democracy? This course seeks to answer these questions. The course begins with an exploration of why, or even if, societies should confront past human rights abuse and atrocity. Drawing on film and literature, as well as accounts by victims and arguments by victim movements, the course examines arguments about justice and democracy-building that have been advanced to support the field of transitional justice. The course then examines the main strategies that have emerged for an engagement with the past. The theme of "reconciliation" will also be discussed throughout the course.
This seminar takes a two part approach to learning about environmental dynamics as they relate to cities. Each week we will be discussing readings that relate to ecology and urban design frameworks. These classes are supplemented and reinforced with local and global examples. We are interested in how different frameworks are used to describe the complexity of our urban ecosystems. Our goal in this class is not only to become literate in the frameworks but to become sophisticated in our ability to integrate, given urban potentialities, ecology and urban design frameworks as tangible, spectacular and operational. Assignments will include two written papers plus the use of fieldwork, simple drawings and online tools to observe and engage change in a New York/New Jersey neighborhood.
In this course, 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.
For the 2012 Brazil IFP, a student must choose as a prerequisite course either Global Youth Media or Poetics of Witnessing.
This course focuses on the assessment of the development impact of public policies and international assistance affecting slums, education, micro-credit, institutions, and the environment in developing countries. This course is intended to prepare students for the International Field Program in Buenos Aires in the summer of 2012. Therefore, the majority of the course will focus on the past and current situation in Buenos Aires in relation to the Matanza-Riachuelo River Basin clean-up effort. Students will be introduced to the policy and analytic issues involved in Buenos Aires, as well as to some other relevant comparative analytic data and country experiences.
In preparation for the fieldwork, part of the course will be focus on the development of student's skills on quantitative and qualitative methods of social research. Students will be involved in a semester long research assignment, utilizing those research tools. Students will additionally be expected to develop a final research paper comparing the issue of the Matanza-Riachuelo in Buenos Aires to other international concerns of the same nature. Students not participating in the IFP to Buenos Aires are also permitted to take this course, but must be aware that this class concentrates heavily on historical, political, and environmental issues in Buenos Aires.
Evaluating Development Impact is the prerequisite for the 2012 Buenos Aires IFP.
This course will offer students the opportunity to gain an understanding of key concepts and skills essential to become global consultants for projects and small business enterprises focusing on social innovation, empowerment, and community development through design. The course will prepare students to work with marginalized populations (indigenous groups, rural communities, grassroots initiatives) by developing sustainable projects through needs/asset-based capacity building, project and product design and development, and by establishing networks of collaboration.
During the first half of the Spring semester we will examine and practice skills in the areas of sustainable development, social innovation, social entrepreneurship, business, marketing, media communication and documentation, design of products as well as community development models, and workshop facilitation in informal settings. We will also look at case studies exploring the possibilities of using market-based approaches involving innovative design and media as tools for development.
In the second half of the semester students will prototype a community development model in which they put into practice everything they have learned - testing and enacting the thoughts, assumptions, and ideas that have been generated in the first half of the semester. The course ends with students translating their proposals into collaborative workshops for implementation. Students who take this course will be eligible to participate in potential fieldwork opportunities with DEED (http://deed.parsons.edu) either during Spring break or in the summer.
This unique, interdisciplinary course will bring together graduate and undergraduate students from the divisions of NSPE and Parsons under the premise that there is not a single expert but different knowledges that complement each other and can be exchanged through collaborations.
Registration for this course is by permission only. Please email Fabiola Berdiel berdielf@newschool.edu to schedule an interview.
This course provides an overview of the history and current status of sexual and reproductive health and rights using a global perspective. Students will be exposed to reproductive health within current development frameworks and will explore how multilateral organizations and donors have approached its global management. We will analyze the dichotomy between medical relief and sustainable development that arises when implementing reproductive health interventions. Students will be introduced to health research tools and methodologies in sexual and reproductive health through practical examples and applications. Contemporary issues of reproductive health including maternal mortality and morbidity, adolescent sexual health, family planning services, gender based violence, sexually transmitted diseases and stigmatization, and harmful practices will be explored.
Today, many documentarians consider themselves working within a well-defined human rights framework where images and film are used to raise awareness and critical consciousness about social injustice. On the far edge of this movement, however, there are photographers and filmmakers whose work calls attention to the traditional documentary ethics of bearing witness but whose images and modes of representation blur the lines between fact and fiction. This body of work is more open-ended to interpretation and multiple readings than traditional documentary representation. And while their themes are just as serious as straight documentarians, their work engages different audiences in a variety of venues. Beginning with a theoretical base of Roland Barthes's Camera Lucida and Susan Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others, the course will study several underlying themes in visual poetics such loss, memory, longing, nostalgia, melancholy, the ephemeral nature of time. We will also study how poetical images move between the moral community and the ethical community.
For the 2012 Brazil IFP, a student must choose as a prerequisite course either Global Youth Media or Poetics of Witnessing.
As technology reduces transportation costs and lowers barriers to globalized production, international trade policy grows in importance for all countries, rich and poor alike. This course will begin with a critical examination of economic theories of international trade. The course will also look at the economic history of trade flows, as well as the evolution and development of institutions affecting trade between nations. These explorations will give the background necessary for a discussion of contemporary trade policy debates regarding agriculture, intellectual property rights, industrial policy, and trade in services, as well issues such as the gender implications of trade policy, trade and the environment, and the rise of multinational corporations. The course will also develop the empirical skills needed to assess competing claims.
Students must have previously completed either NINT 5109 Economics in International Affairs, NINT 5119 Economics in International Affairs - Intensive, or the equivalent as a prerequisite for this course.
This course focuses on the assessment of the development impact of public policies and international assistance affecting urban development processes in developing countries and particularly Africa. Attention will be given to issues relating to urban governance, slum development, health and micro-credit issues. The course is intended to prepare students for the International Field Programs in which they will be working on programs and projects intended to improve living conditions in slums, health programs, the provision of micro-credit, and/or statistical analyses of development processes in Uganda. These analytic tasks will be the core of student field work in a number of locations in Uganda during the summer of 2011. The course will therefore introduce students to some of the policy and analytic issues involved in these sectors as well as some of the relevant comparative analytic data and country experience. While the course will be required for students participating in these programs, students not intending to participate in these IFPs are also permitted to take the course.
Urban Development Policy in Africa is the prerequisite for the 2012 African Cities IFP.
This course examines the changing views and roles of the state and the market in the evolution of development policy in Latin America since World War II. The course reviews the changing rationales for import substitution policies, dependency theory, developmentalism, neo-liberal policies, and heterodox policies adopted by Latin American governments. Special attention will devoted to understanding the shifting role and performance of state institutions in formulating and implementing national projects for development, particularly in relation to economic management, reduction of poverty and inequality, and support for innovation in the productive and social sectors. Readings will include works by Raul Prebisch, Albert Hirschman, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Peter Evans, John Williamson, Sebastian Edwards, Nancy Birdsall, Robert Wade, Alice Amsden, Javier Santiso, and many others. The course will include case studies of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, and Mexico.
This workshop-oriented class teaches the practical skills of a human rights investigator: how to identify and design a research project, how to conduct the research, and how to present findings to the public, media and advocacy targets. Covered topics include interviewing victims and witnesses, interviewing government officials, corroborating evidence, using experts, security concerns, and using new technologies. Students will hone their writing skills to present human rights findings in a clear, concise and compelling manner, whether in internal memos, press releases, or detailed public reports. Guest speakers from diverse parts of the global human rights movement will present their experiences and advice.
This course charts the multiple transformations brought about by the twin processes of globalization and urbanization in the global south. In particular, we will focus on cities as crucial locations in which questions of globalization are managed, negotiated and contested. Drawing on an interdisciplinary set of readings, this class examines the specifically urban aspects of global economic, political, social and cultural processes. Topics to be discussed will include the rise of "global" and "mega-cities", transformations in urban governance and planning, migration and belonging, urban violence and conflict, the politics of basic provisions, such as water and housing, and contemporary debates about the "right to the city". We will read case studies from around the world, including, debates about decentralization and participatory budgeting in Brazil, neoliberal reforms in South Africa, transnational slum and shack dwellers' movements, and the more recent waves of protests across cities in North Africa, Europe and the US.
This course provides an introduction to desktop and web-based GIS software via real-world scenarios and research questions in humanitarian relief, international development, and environmental issues. In particular, students will learn to analyze, map, and publish spatial information using powerful GIS tools. Students will develop skills in web and paper-based cartography, collaborative online mapping, spatial data analysis, mobile phone data collection, and using and manipulating satellite and aerial imagery. By the end of this course, students will be able to:
This course will focus on media representations (and their policy implications) of the rapidly evolving new Middle East social order including the rebellions in Egypt, Libya and Syria; Turkey's emergence as a key power center independent of (and often at odds with) more established players such as the U.S. and Iran; and the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian "peace process" and the challenges and parameters of the post-peace process.
This course will explore the short, but decisive history of representations and media images of Africa in the West (i.e. in popular literature, travel books, print media, television, and more recently, online), and examine how such images have shaped and continue to shape or impact both the outcomes and responses to political and economic developments on the continent.
This course will serve as a general introduction to human rights through the lens of what's happening now in the early 21st century, since the enormous global social, economic, and political shifts that have taken place since the modern human rights movement first emerged in the aftermath of WWII. The course will cover the history of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the international consensus on the importance of common standards, and the subsequent development of the UN human rights systems, treaties, courts and monitoring and enforcement processes. Students will consider how Cold War geopolitics shaped the human rights movement, with the split into a focus on civil and political rights in the West and economic and social rights in the Soviet Bloc, and also how that affected the struggle for racial justice in the United States and the separation of civil rights and human rights. Finally, students will reflect on how the human rights movement has changed in the post-Cold War world. We will look at the growth of indigenous human rights movements and small specifically focused human rights groups (for example on disability rights, LGBT rights, the right to housing, the right to health) and the re-connecting of civil, political, economic and social rights. Students will consider the rise of human rights challenges from powerful non-state actors such as corporations and terrorist groups not covered by traditional human rights law and standards. The focus of the course will be how activists and policymakers have responded to all these changes, and what might lie ahead for the human rights movement in a multilateral, globalized world.
Most of human history has been lived in rural areas. Though it has only been within the last few years that more than 50% of humans are located in urban settings, were an extraterrestrial to learn about us solely through mass media representation of our lives, it would probably think we live in patches of concrete occasionally disrupted by majestic natural settings devoid of humans but occupied by a variety of cute and/or dangerous animals. This course will work against the pervasive disregard of the rural and explore how our fates are still tied to how we address its social, economic and environmental conditions. The course will begin with a consideration of analytical themes and policy issues that are common across the Americas (rurality, youth and mass media, aging, agriculture in global political economy, urban bias in national development planning, tourism, etc). We will then move into a series of regional case studies in North, Central and South America (Appalachia, the Inter-Montane West, Southern Mexico, Colombia's coffee country, and others) through which we will explore the intersections of geography, culture, policy and political economy in the construction of rural lives and livelihoods. The semester will end by examining the place of the rural in hemispheric integration through the combined and contradictory processes of trade and migration. For their term papers students will build their own regional case studies through which they will explore course themes leading to policy recommendations on how to address rural and regional development problems.
Rural and Regional Development in the Americas is the prerequisite for the 2012 Colombia IFP.
Since the 19th century, but especially in the post Cold War era, "non-governmental organizations" have become a key vehicle for addressing a wide range of issues confronting peoples across the globe. Such organizations can act counterpoints to, but also extensions of, government and the market as loci for the exercise of power in the world. Exactly how people organize, or are organized, varies tremendously. What is called an "NGO" can range from tiny community based organizations to massive international agencies. Whichever their form or function may be, NGOs now play a significant role in shaping the ways in which people have and exercise rights, access and consume goods, secure basic livelihoods, and design and manage physical environments. This course will examine 1) the historical conditions that have lead to the emergence of NGOs as a major player in global politics, 2) the key arenas of political contestation in which NGOs play a significant role, 3) specific instances of struggle around themes such as the environment, rights, development and others, and 4) the potential for consolidation of non-governmental organization as a third sector for directing social life alongside government and the market. Student research papers will focus on evaluating the structure, function and adequacy of specific organizations chosen by the student.
Wednesday 6.00pm - 7.50pm
Wednesday 6.00pm - 7.50pm
Wednesday 6.00pm - 7.50pm
Wednesday 6.00pm - 7.50pm
Wednesday 6.00pm - 7.50pm
Wednesday 6.00pm - 7.50pm
Wednesday 6.00pm - 7.50pm
This course is the introductory course for the summer International Field Program (IFP). The IFP provides practical field experiences through work/research with NGOs, international organizations, government and local agencies, as well as builds a unique link between classroom curriculum and ongoing research in the world of practice. Students are placed in-country and engage in an internship or conduct applied research, where they explore specific questions and problems from a theoretical standpoint. The program offers students the opportunity to develop a set of foundational tools and critical thinking skills for conducting fieldwork, applied research, and contextual analysis. Students will also evaluate institutions, identify forces affecting specific problems, and competently assess local issues in light of comparative experiences. The goal of the IFP is to prepare students to become critical, innovative practitioners in the field of international affairs through a substantive, transformative experience.
Media advocacy is the strategic use of mass communication channels for the purpose of influencing public policy. It is a means to an end - policy change - and not the goal in itself. Media advocacy targets the broad, social environment to promote systemic change, rather than focusing on individual, human behaviors that occur further downstream in the change process. Technological innovation, particularly the digitization of content, is forcing structural changes in mass media that encourage the rise of more specialized community and ethnic media outlets. At the same time, the theoretical space in which people debate and exchange ideas, termed the ‘public sphere' by Jurgen Habermas, has become global, expanding to include many more voices in dialogues that transcend national boundaries. These changes open up new lines of thinking and new influence opportunities for activists. This course examines various media theories and their application to social change strategies as practiced by groups around the world. It employs a global, cross-cultural perspective to look particularly at so-called alternative media, which are generally more accessible and multi-faceted than are mainstream, corporate-controlled outlets. Course content will also cover some of the ethical dilemmas that arise when government agencies engage in issues advocacy and when commercial marketing and media techniques are applied to complex issues of social and public policy.
For the 2012 Hong Kong IFP, a student must choose as a prerequisitive course either Global Governance or Media Advocacy in the Global Public Sphere.
Documentary films can humanize subjects who are often objectified and exploited and give voice to communities whose perspectives and opinions have been historically excluded from mainstream discourses. This medium can also perpetuate dominant narratives about different communities and remedies for social problems that present specific challenges for organizations working on the ground in a variety of domestic and international contexts. This course explores how some of the most well-known and often cited films in advocacy and arts organizations about labor organizing, race, globalization, environmental justice, education, feminism and sexuality can and cannot serve NGO's working for social justice. Through their research, students will discover how the paradigms for community representation and activism supported by these works, which can have global implications, differ from the realities confronted by community members and activists.
The course will take an international as well historical perspective on city development. It will consider the effect that historical factors, policies, and various inventions have on the structure of cities and the way people in cities interact with those in other cities. It will consider how various inventions -- skyscrapers, various ways of commuting, "smart" cities, and communications technology -- have affected and are affecting the development and sustainability of cities. It will compare so-called global cities of today with those of earlier periods, stressing the role of policy in the long term growth and viability of specific places. Finally, attention will be given to cities experiencing contraction and financial stress and critically evaluate the policy options for these cities relative to the options available for more vibrant cities. The course will emphasize the underlying economic factors involved.
Looking back at Solanas' and Getino's seminal manifesto Towards a Third Cinema (1969) as a touchstone, this seminar will provide an in-depth analysis of the construction(s) of race, ethnicity and class through images in contemporary media. Starting with the notion of a racialization of the imagination itself, we critically re-define an open and inclusive practice of representation. The course highlights the diverse nature of images from social and political perspectives, as well as their production and distributions systems within cultural and economic contexts. Both contemporary and classic works are screened to examine dominant images of the working class and people of color portrayed in mainstream media. The course also analyzes international cinemas, including films and videos made to oppose the dominant system, along with TV sit-coms and music videos.
Some of the questions we investigate include:
- What are the aesthetics of representation?
- What is chosen to be represented and what are the underlying assumptions behind the images?
- What social and economic function might these media portrayals serve?
- What has been the influence of media produced from within ethnic communities and DIY filmmaking on Hollywood and independent industries?
- What would the cinema of liberation look like, given the social media and digital filmmaking tools so easily available to us today?
Cross-listed from Media Studies.
The aim of this course is to conceptualize and explore the role of media in the process of globalization. We will seek to clarify the ambiguities surrounding the issues of globalization, such as media and cultural imperialism, globalization, regionalization, homogenization and hybridization, the changing relevance of time, place and space, and the role of new media technologies. We will also explore and debate the impact of the media on globalization in terms of coverage of international events and how these affect and constitute global, national and local audiences. Some attention will also be devoted to transnational cultural forms like Hollywood and Bollywood and how they construct new communities of meaning. This course will introduce students to the relevant literature and theories of globalization and the media. As the course is seminar based, students are required to actively participate in class discussions and individual or group presentations based on the weekly reading assignments.
Cross-listed from Media Studies.
Political communication can include any media or communication exchange having to do with the allocation of power and resources. In this seminar we will look at the nature and role of political communication in political campaigns, social movements, advertising, literature, and popular culture. We will study alternative forms of political discourse such as theatre, music, and direct action. We will take a close look at contemporary media politics. While the course will focus on U.S. political communication, it is expected that international students in the class will contribute a global perspective. Students will be required to keep political media journals with regular entries and commentary, complete readings as assigned, participate in class discussions both onsite and online, and write three 5-7 page papers during the course of the semester: one paper on a political speaker, one paper analyzing the one or two key media sources, and one paper or media project on a course-related topic of your choice.
Cross-listed from Media Studies.
Internship
*** 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 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: a) the name and contact information for the organization; b) the name and contact information for an on-site supervisor; c) the period of the internship, including number of hours; d) the proposed tasks the intern will undertake; and e) the nature of a written report the student will submit to the faculty supervisor 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 Registration office and is available at the GPIA office. During the internship, students meet 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.
Independent Study
After their first semester all students in good academic standing may register during pre-registration for one independent study. The student 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.
Advanced Registration Option
*** Approval of advisor required before registering.
Matriculated graduate students registered for fewer less 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. There is no tuition charge associated with Equivalency credit, and no grade is given.
Registration for equivalency credit takes place during the normal registration period. Students must obtain their advisor's and the Director's approval. Full-time status for New School graduate students is defined as enrollment in 9 degree credits per semester. Half-time status requires a minimum of 6 degree credits per semester. Some financial aid agencies and programs require that students register for 12 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 (9 graduate credits per academic semester for graduate students). Please check with an International Student Services Advisor at the International Student Services office.All matriculated students must register to maintain status for all fall and spring 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 do not register to maintain status by the Add deadline will need permission to do so. Students who fail to register for the Spring 2012 semester, and who have not been granted a leave of absence, must petition to re-enroll to continue their studies.