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Course Criteria
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4.00 Credits
Do we see the world the way we do because we are the way we are or because the world is the way it is? The ease with which we comprehend the visual world and recognize objects and events makes it tempting to think that the world is just the way we see it and to take our perceptual capabilities for granted. But when we comprehend that we cannot process all the information available in the environment, when we try to build machines that can see, or when we encounter people who have lost some specific visual capability-for example, those who can no longer recognize faces-we realize how extraordinary and intricate are the machinery and mechanisms of sight. This course looks at what we know about vision from multiple scientific perspectives. Perceptual psychology tells us about the process of seeing and provides important insights into the workings of visual mechanisms; neuropsychology shows us what happens to perception when these mechanisms malfunction; and neuroscience tells us about processes at the level of cells and neural systems. At the same time, we discuss modes and techniques of scientific inquiry from these different perspectives. How do vision scientists learn? What kinds of experiments do they conduct? How has the development of new neuroimaging techniques (fMRI, for example) shaped the field?
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4.00 Credits
Science is often portrayed as following a very clearly defined set of procedures: start with a hypothesis, do an experiment, and, based on the results, reject the hypothesis or adopt it as a working assumption. The actual process, however, is rarely so straightforward. In addition, the stories as usually told or recorded may differ from what really happened. We study some famous and infamous experiments, mainly in the physical sciences, selected to illustrate intellectual tours de force, cases of error, cases of fraud, and the murky boundaries between them. Along the way, issues such as the discarding of "faulty data," theoretical bias, and probabilistic tools for hypothesis acceptance and rejection are discussed. To take this course, students should have had high school chemistry, physics, and calculus.
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4.00 Credits
In this seminar, students explore, read, and write about-and develop a deep understanding of-New York City from diverse perspectives and by means of various media. We venture into different neighborhoods, ethnic areas, all five boroughs, out on the Hudson and East rivers, restaurants, parks, and the like. We examine New York history and how the city has changed over the decades, writing several pieces on what we see and read and what people tell us. In the end, all should have an understanding of how New York City began, how it has changed over time, what remains from the old days, what new things are happening, and what the future might be. This is, in short, a course in urban America that takes New York City as its laboratory. The seminar turns to reading the splendid books or sections from the splendid books that deal with important aspects of the history and life of New York City, among them The Island at the Center of the World; Divided Loyalties; Forgotten Patriots; The Devil's Own Work: The Civil War Draft Riots and the Fight to Reconstruct America; Five Points; Positively 4th Street; and A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties. It also considers how the image of New York City in the movies has changed over the decades, drawing in part on the book Celluloid Skyline. In addition, it uses parts of the Ken Burns's PBS documentary series New York City.
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4.00 Credits
From the 16th century to the present, "Russia" has been an empire-a state that spread its power over different peoples, with different religious commitments, different laws and customs, and different histories. This seminar explores the qualities of Russia's kind of empire. What held the vast territories and populations, ruled by tsars and later by communists, together? Why has Russia not disintegrated or been torn apart by multiple wars among its many ethnic groups since 1991? (Chechnya is an exception to the quite peaceful breakup of the USSR into 15 states, all of them multiethnic.) We take a historical look at these questions, examining both how Russian leaders ruled their many populations and how people living on the terrain of a succession of Russian empires-the Grand Princedom of Muscovy, imperial Russia, the Soviet Union, and the Russian Federation-have imagined their relations with each other and with these states. Our sources include historians' studies, literature, and documents of many types: games, maps, laws, and films. Each student has the chance to investigate a particular imperial situation, and we work together to understand the origins, habits, and effects of Russia's empires of difference.
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4.00 Credits
As with any art, literature's form determines what is possible. In this course, we challenge the boundaries of the form through a series of "impossible" exercises-that is, pieces of writing that are asked to do what writing cannot do. For example, one assignment challenges literature's unique portability by generating "site-specific" stories around campus. Another assignment focuses on the lack of explicit tonality and atmosphere in writing by generating oral stories. In our discussions about the work produced, we explore the ways that these radical techniques can be brought into more traditional writing. The course focuses on the production of work, and students are expected to produce a piece of writing every week, usually between two paragraphs and four pages. Facing Fascism: The Spanish Civil War and U.S. Culture COSEM-UA 119 Fernández. 4 points The Great Depression. Liberal democracy in crisis. On the rise: a spectrum of ideologies ranging from anarchism to fascism, offering solutions to the afflictions of people all over the planet. July 1936: a right-wing military coup attempts to overthrow a democratically elected left-wing coalition government. All eyes turn toward Spain. This seminar is centered on NYU's Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA), a vast collection of materials that chronicles the lives of the 2,800 Americans who, between 1936 and 1939, volunteered to fight fascism in Spain. We explore the place occupied by Spain and the Spanish Civil War in American culture from the 1930s forward; how journalists, writers, artists, and citizens reacted to the war in Spain; and how the legacy of the war has affected U.S. culture over the last 70 years. Each student completes a major research project based on the holdings of ALBA.
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4.00 Credits
The utopian impulse is the drive to create the perfect world; the apocalypse is the global cataclysm that is often considered utopia's prerequisite. In this seminar, we examine the development of the utopian tradition, as both literary genre and philosophical thought experiment. Among the questions to be considered: What is the relationship between utopia and the novel? How do we get from "here" (the imperfect world) to "there" (the perfect one), and how is this journey enacted in fiction? Why are the family, gender, and sexuality so central to the utopian tradition? What is the utopian conception of pleasure? Utopia is often seen as the culmination of historical progress, the goal toward which humanity has been striving. Later utopian (and anti-utopian) fictions often place their "perfect" societies in a postapocalyptic framework, adding particular moral and temporal dimensions to utopia: not only does utopia become the endpoint of history, but the perfection of the coming world can be invoked to justify the cataclysm that precedes it. Course materials consist of fiction, scripture, philosophy, film, and graphic novels, including the works of Bacon, Campanella, Dostoevsky, LeGuin, Marx and Engels, More, Moore and Gibbons, and Plato.
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4.00 Credits
Modern societies have long sought to reconcile the conflict between self-development and caring for others by dividing women and men into different moral categories. Structural arrangements (such as the separation of home and work) and cultural pressures (such as the norms of intensive motherhood and good-providing fatherhood) expect women to find personal fulfillment in caring for others and men to care for others by sharing the rewards of their independent pursuits. Yet the rise of fluid families and post-industrial workplaces has severely undermined this gender division of "moral labor." As women take on increasing economic responsibilities and men face a dwindling pool of stable jobs, rigid moral categories have given way to new moral dilemmas. In crafting an identity, how do women and men balance work commitments with a personal life? In forming adult relationships, how do they weigh the need for autonomy with the desire for enduring commitment? In caring for children, how do they trade off earning a living with family time? This course examines the link between blurring gender boundaries and the rise of new moral dilemmas of work and care. We examine the institutional roots of these dilemmas, explore the new strategies people are developing to resolve them, and consider the social and political consequences of these revolutionary shifts.
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4.00 Credits
Did you ever wonder how whales navigate flawlessly over thousands of miles? Why songbirds sing? This course provides an in-depth look at a variety of organisms that have evolved particular, special behavioral adaptations as solutions to environmental challenges. Each neural system to be studied highlights a unique combination of behavioral skill and environmental problem to be solved. For example, echolocation in bats is a navigation device and an adaptive hunting system that allows them to successfully hunt on the wing; infrared sensing in snakes is an effective prey localization and defense mechanism, enhancing their survival in the absence of limbs. Students learn basic principles of sensory, motor, and cognitive neuroscience and study the mechanisms underlying the natural behavior of organisms. Students independently identify unique, species-specific behavioral adaptations and explore the neural mechanisms related to those adaptations. The resulting investigation forms the basis for a term paper and an oral presentation to the class. A high degree of student participation is expected. A textbook as well as primary research articles will comprise the readings. Students should have a strong background in biology, animal behavior, or psychology.
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4.00 Credits
While critics debate the origins of detective fiction, no one questions the central place this literary genre holds in contemporary arts production-not only in novels but also in television, computer games, and film. In France alone, detective (or mystery) fiction accounts for 20 percent of all novels purchased during the year. The French, in fact, have inflected the genre in very particular ways: For example, thanks to the fascination of the great 19th-century writers Balzac and Hugo with the real-life police detective Vidocq, the "ambiguous and obsessed" fictional investigator has become a staple of both French and American detective fiction. The Franco-American connection also inspired author Edgar Allan Poe to situate his mysteries on Paris's Rue Morgue. In turn, his stories prompted a major output of detective fiction during France's Second Empire, many located in the "City of Lights." From Gaston Leroux's and Eugène Sue's urban thrillers of the late 19th century to Daniel Pennac's hilarious multi-cultural adventures in Belleville, the hippest neighborhood of the 21st century, Paris has thus become a site to be decoded and observed, the crucible for questions basic to detective fiction the world over: Why do people commit crimes? What are the consequences for the individual and for society? What is the nature of evil? And what kind of human being dedicates himself or herself to finding out the answers? In this seminar, we analyze what constitutes a detective or mystery novel (and discuss the potential differences between "detective" and "mystery"), trace the development of the genre in France, and examine why it is that reading such works is so compelling. We focus primarily on novels in which Paris plays a major role, studying how the city has been used to give shape to the underlying questions of the novel. We see, perhaps unsurprisingly, that French-language detective fiction has been as involved in imagining a mysterious Paris as in solving Paris's mysteries.
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4.00 Credits
Material culture and consumption in China from imperial times to the present. This course explores some of the ways in which commerce and consumerism have flourished in China despite various potentially countervailing factors, including Confucians' presumed aversion to trade, Buddhist and Daoist renunciations of material things, wartime deprivations under the Republic, rising egalitarianism, and Communist Party denunciations of bourgeois ideals of consumption. We will investigate such aspects as clothing and cosmetics; houses and gardens; art collecting and connoisseurship; books and publishing; food and narcotics; opera and theatre. While illuminating Chinese social and cultural life, including aspects of continuity or change over several centuries, the course also introduces students to theoretical concepts about modernity's relationship to the world of goods and consumption, and considers whether and to what extent those concepts, formulated in a largely western context, may or may not be applicable to China.
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