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Course Criteria
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4.00 Credits
In the history of the interactions among Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, the Crusades, which began at the end of the 11th century, form one of the most important chapters, if not the most important chapter. The Crusades began as religious wars to recover the holy places venerated by Christians in the city of Jerusalem. For 200 years, the Crusaders managed to hold on to their possessions, losing more of them with every passing decade, until at last the Muslims triumphed and the kingdom in the East was lost to Western Christendom. This seminar covers the Crusades themselves, but focuses on the relations among the three great religions and how it came about that they all claim Jerusalem for their own. We study the differences among the religions, as well as their many similarities. Most of all, we address some of the problems crucial to an understanding of the world we live in: the nature of a holy war, the issue of whether the Crusades were the first manifestation of European imperialism in the Middle East, and the legacy of the crusading era. Readings include Muslim, Jewish, and Christian writings of the era in translation, as well as secondary works. Latin America at the Start of the 21st Century:
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4.00 Credits
Focuses on several aspects of Latin America's problems in the past and their possible solutions today. The seminar takes up such topics as the absence of orderly, peaceful, and steady democratic rule during the first 160 or 170 years of independence from colonial rule and the consolidation of representative democracy today; the absence of economic growth during the last 20 years and the possibility of a new economic takeoff today; the widespread persistence of violence in Latin America and the growing respect for human rights today; and the weakness of civil society in Latin America in the past and the growing strength and vigor of civil society today. For each topic, readings deal with its political, economic, and cultural dimensions in both past and present.
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4.00 Credits
Explores the subject matter, history, and theoretical discourses surrounding the global occurrence of contemporary theatre of the real, also popularly known as documentary theatre. By analyzing the content, structure, and dramatic devices of a number of plays, we will look at the problems and possibilities of the ways in which theatre that cites reality portrays a range of human behavior from everyday life to important political events in the attempt to create and recreate personal, political, and historical realities. Documentary theatre both acknowledges a positivist faith in empirical reality and underscores an epistemological crisis in knowing truth. We read plays about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, terrorism, the Holocaust, racial clashes, the deposition of Cardinal Law, Oscar Wilde, the murder of Matthew Shepard, Lebanese suicide bombers, the open murder of demonstrators in Greensboro, the cover-up of industrial accidents in Poland, honor killings in Holland, and accompanying theoretical essays, as well as look at some performances on video. The questions we will consider include: Can theatre effectively critique social and moral values? What are the implications of the blurring of art and life? Are fiction and nonfiction adequate terms for considering the idea of truth? How might we consider theatre of the real from the vantage point of the contemporary collapse of the distinction between the real, the simulated, and the virtual?
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4.00 Credits
Students in this seminar read a selection of essays from major thinkers about literature, mainly from the latter half of the 20th century, to learn to consider different approaches to literature. They complete the course by preparing a discussion of a work of literature using one or more of the conceptual approaches they have studied. Emphasis is placed on learning how to analyze theoretical problems and improvise in applying them to new situations. Recommended for students interested in any area of the humanities.
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4.00 Credits
Starting college can be exhilarating-and terrifying. A chance for intellectual enlightenment-or intense loneliness. An escape from a stultifying small town of narrow-minded people-or a riot of alcohol, sex, and drugs. In this course, we read a selection of college novels from different historical periods, ranging from F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise (about life at Princeton just before World War I) to Tom Wolfe's recent bestseller I Am Charlotte Simmons (about the corruption of a brilliant and innocent country girl at a contemporary Ivy university). We discuss these novels from a variety of perspectives: literary, historical, and journalistic. In addition to presenting biographical and historical/cultural reports on at least two of the authors and their novels, students write about their own experiences as first-year students at NYU in several genres, including fiction and nonfiction. Together, we explore this important life passage, examining life as we live it.
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4.00 Credits
The mythic figure of Medea has held our imagination for nearly 2,500 years. What kind of woman is capable of casting such an enduring spell? Best known as the partner of Jason and the murderer of her own children, Medea has been the name of an exploration into the passion and violence, the devastation and vengeance, the complex relations and modes of betrayal that so often punctuate our everyday existence. She has demanded that we think about the relations between the sexes, the meaning of home and exile, the experience of the foreigner, the ethical and moral dimensions of agency and decisions, and the meaning of motherhood. Because these issues have remained vital, her popularity has outlived the ancient Greek texts in which she was born and has found new expressions in various forms-including tragic drama, poetry, novels, painting, cinema, and music. This course seeks to understand the reasons for her longevity in the rich complexity of her character and actions and to explore the ways in which her story has been revised and recontextualized across the ages for new and different ends. We will consider a range of texts from antiquity to the present to think about how they understand the tensions, contradictions, and conflicting desires embodied and enacted in this mesmerizing figure.
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4.00 Credits
Computational technology and methods lie at the core of modern science, commerce, entertainment, and, regrettably, war. Very powerful ideas underlie the field, with roots in mathematics, linguistics, engineering, and even philosophy. Some of its greatest inventions were born in cafés or as responses to a puzzle. Some recent algorithmic methods come from studying ants and evolution. This course introduces computational thinking as it builds on logic, linguistics, heuristics, artificial intelligence, and biological computing. The learning style combines straight lecture, interactive discussions of puzzles and games, and short computer programs (in the programming language Python). Students make a few presentations during the semester about topics such as the solutions to computationally motivated puzzles, the relative power of linguistic descriptions, and their very own simulations of a Rogerian psychiatrist. The goal is for students to learn to think about computation from multiple perspectives and to synthesize those perspectives when faced with unsolved challenges.
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4.00 Credits
The purpose of this seminar is to explore the nature of comfort and suffering as a human experience. We examine related readings through the lens of the health care system paradigm and use case studies to explore the wellness-illness continuum of human experiences. Students become familiar with conceptual frameworks used by nurses, physicians, and social workers as they assist patients through the illness experience, which is continually balanced between comfort and suffering. Our discussions on the nature of comfort and suffering focus on writings from the Bible, which are contrasted with contemporary editorials and publications, in order to examine historical changes in the way individuals think about these important dimensions of the human experience. Scientific advances create heretofore unimaginable opportunities, choices, and dilemmas for all of us as we seek to discern how to cope with disease, human suffering, and the psychological consequences that are inevitable when illness and care needs create complexity in our lives. We debate the notion of "self-care," now very popular in the health care literature, and contrast it with the concept of "patient abandonment."
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4.00 Credits
The last hundred years have seen radical changes in classical music, not only in the sound world but also in aesthetic and technique-ranging from the breakdown of tonality and the use of electronic and computer resources in performance to questions of the relationship of composer and performer, of the place of noise, and even of what music is or could be. This course presents outstanding works by a range of composers (among them, Stravinsky, Carter, and Messiaen) both because of their importance and as illustrations of ideas about music. Each composition is explored for itself and also as a stimulus to discussion about one or more of these issues. Each composition is one that has stood the test of time and been hailed as a major work-and those criteria also need discussion. The course involves considerable listening alongside readings. It requires a willingness to reassess conventional views about music and to accept unconventional solutions.
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4.00 Credits
Alexis de Tocqueville published Democracy in America in two volumes, in 1835 and 1840. Those volumes have come to be widely regarded as a masterpiece twice over, the most incisive portrait of the American national character ever written, and a profound reflection on the meaning of democracy itself. Democracy in America is also a beautiful work of literature. This seminar studies Democracy in America in depth. It looks at some of Tocqueville's writings on his own country, France, and glances briefly at his predecessor and kinsman, René de Chateaubriand, who visited America in the 1790s. By reading and discussing Tocqueville and Chateaubriand, students sharpen their ability to think philosophically about democracy, America, France, and other themes and increase their ability to recognize and appreciate the art of good writing.
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