Fall 2021
FALL 2021 CORE-UA 9400, Texts and Ideas: Topics—Children and Childhood
Prof. Wolff (History) & Prof. Klass School of Medicine & Journalism) (NYU Florence)
How are children and childhood viewed in different texts from different cultures and centuries? To whom do children really belong—the parents, the state, the world? Whose responsibility is it to educate, feed, and care for children? Is a child a “blank slate” or a prepackaged set of emotions, intellectual abilities, and behaviors? Emphasizing historical, medical, and cultural perspectives on childhood, we explore common themes and cultural variations, as reflected in literary texts and artistic representations in America, Europe, and China: Confucian analects, Song dynasty poetry, Ming ceramics, Italian European Renaissance painting, Persian and Mughal miniatures, Montaigne’s essays, John Locke’s philosophy, Rousseau’s educational ideals, English Romantic poetry, German Romantic Lieder, Freud on the dynamics of childhood, parenting advice texts from classical Chinese pediatrics to Dr. Spock, and children’s literature texts from Puritan tracts to Dr. Seuss. We consider the history, medicine, and sociology of childhood, including issues of infant and child mortality, education and pedagogy, child labor, children in cities, children and war, and the changing historical nature of the family in China, America, the Middle East, and Europe with a particular focus on Italy, with field trips to local Italian schools, progressive education centers, and the Ospedale degli Innocenti (one of Europe’s first foundling homes).
FALL 2021 CORE-UA 9400, Texts and Ideas: Topics—Time and Truth in Western Thought
Profs. Barzilay (NYU Shanghai)
At the heart of Western philosophy stands the unique relationship between truth and time, evident in the fact that both Western metaphysics and the writing of history in the West emerged in the same period in ancient Greece. But how are the two connected? We attempt to answer this question by exploring the unique relationship between historicity and truth as it developed in the history of the West, from Greek antiquity all the way to the development of the modern philosophy of history in the nineteenth century. We examine different perceptions of time that emerged in European philosophy, Christianity, and Judaism over different periods, and discuss the way in which these perceptions contributed to the development of science and political visions in modernity. In so doing, we try to define the relationship between history and truth that underlies the Western philosophy of history and observe how different conceptions of time ultimately shaped history itself. Reading from: Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Descartes, Spinoza, Vico, Kant, Rousseau, Dilthey, Marx and Engels, Nietzsche, Bergson, Koyré, Scholem, Husserl, Heidegger, Horkheiner and Adorno, Voegelin, Foucault.
FALL 2021 CORE-UA 9400, Texts and Ideas: Topics—What is a Good Human Life?
Prof. Perry (NYU Shanghai)
Two of the most fundamental questions that are addressed, more or less explicitly, in many of the arts, humanities, and sciences are what it means to be human, and how to live a good human life. Indeed, these questions arise naturally for everyone of us who approaches life in a reflective way and thinks about how to make the best of it; and they guide us as we read and discuss important works of literature and philosophy from the ancient world up to the present that speak to them in some way or another. In some of these works, our questions are tackled in a fairly straightforward manner; in others, they are addressed more indirectly, through the presentation of a particular way of life or individual lived experiences. Examining these writings with the goal of broadening and deepening our understanding of possible answers to our questions may bring us closer to answering them for ourselves. Reading include works by Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Marx and Engels, Frederick Douglass, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Kurt Vonnegut, Camus, Kafka, and more.
FALL 2021 CORE-UA 9400, Texts and Ideas: Topics—Power, Political Leadership, and the Renaissance
Prof. Dickinson (NYU London) [Syllabus]
Human societies involve structure, organization, and leadership. But what do these really entail, and how can we decide who is best placed to lead and to hold power over the lives of other people? History provides us with multiple examples of different kinds of leaders, suggesting patterns of behaviour and parallels as well as points of difference. Power and authority can never be assumed, but are constructed and maintained within systems of politics, governance, and influence. We focus on a series of core texts and images from antiquity to the Renaissance, several of them interconnected, exerting influence and sharing ideas across time and differing cultures. Engaging critically with these examples, we enhance our appreciation of the ways in which power is manifested within society, the exertion and ethical dimensions of leadership, and the relationship between these ideas to those who hold power, as well as those who are subordinated to it. Studying the idea of power within these historical contexts will also help us to understand the limits of power and also to interrogate why and how things go wrong and where power is diminished or lost. Readings: Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Sophocles’ Antigone, Plato’s Republic, Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, Christine de Pizan's Book of the City of Ladies, Machiavelli’s Prince, Erasmus’ Education of a Christian Prince, More’s Utopia, Shakespeare’s Richard II and Tempest, Hobbes’s Leviathan, Elizabeth’s Tilbury speech, James’ True Law of Free Monarchies.
FALL 2021 CORE-UA 9400, Texts and Ideas: Topics—Meaning
Prof. L. Zhang (NYU Shanghai)
A supreme aspect of human life is that we seek and create meaning. Our tongue touches some chemical compounds, and we interpret them as, say, orange-flavored popsicles. We see color blocks and lines, and interpret them as landscapes. We hear sound waves of different frequencies, amplitudes, and timbers, and interpret them as music, talking, laughter, or traffic. Among these interpretive activities, the most human-specific is the use of language. We explore how humans use language to encode meaning, create meaning, interpret meaning, do with meaning, and reflect on meaning, and then how humans’ meaning-related activities go beyond language. We study how philosophers and linguists approach this topic, introducing influential ideas on language and meaning developed by Aristotle, Montague, Hume, Frege, Saussure, Wittgenstein, David Lewis, and Paul Grice. We also look at how various kinds of media, from pictures and comics to computer programs, provide new ways of encoding and interpreting meaning as well as new perspectives on studying meaning. Along the way, we discuss the implications of deep learning and neural networks and whether machines can achieve human-like intelligence and deprive humans of the monopoly on meaning-related activities.
FALL 2021 CORE-UA 9400, Texts and Ideas: Topics—Capitalism and Communism
Prof. Schechter (NYU Shanghai)
Some of the major texts that helped define capitalism and communism as well as some cultural artifacts created by these cultures. We begin with foundational texts of the Enlightenment, studying the soil from which these ideas sprouted. From there we examine the industrial revolution, reactions to the massive shifts it engendered, and how the First World War shook the foundation of the world, giving rise to the first state dedicated to realizing Marx’s vision. Later topics include the rise of mass culture, and a close examination of the 1930s-1950s, a period that defined how communist principles were put into practice and also provided the greatest challenge to capitalism, significantly reshaping it. This period also saw the establishment of a bipolar communist/capitalist world that would define the rest of the century and continues to haunt us today. We also look at the rise of socialist and capitalist consumer cultures, decolonization, and the ascendency of neoliberalism and the end of the Cold War, which some claim was “the end of history.” Includes readings from: Kant, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Robespierre, Smith, Marx, Engels, Weber, Lenin, Fanon, Francis Fukuyama, Betty Friedan, Angela Davis, Martin Luther King Jr., Kwame Nkrumah, Ho Chi-Minh, Deng Xiaoping.
FALL 2021 CORE-UA 9500, Cultures and Contexts: Topics—Mental Illness in Global Perspective
Prof. Hampel (NYU Shanghai)
We travel around the world, meeting people who have very different ideas about who is mentally ill, what is wrong with them, and how to help them. We then examine one particular, Euro-American psychological culture that is being spread worldwide by pharmaceutical companies, humanitarian interventions, and mass media. We begin by observing how contemporary psychologists diagnose and treat mental illness. Then we read personal memoirs and ethnographic studies, seeing how people interpret their own mental distress. Examining brain scans and clinical trials, we investigate how scientific knowledge is shaped by social and cultural forces including capitalism, inequality, and individualistic values. Entering factories, homeless shelters, and online groups for the lonely, we see how global social changes are creating psychological suffering, while disrupting the cultural systems through which people make their suffering meaningful. Finally, we encounter new ideas about mental health that are emerging from social and ecological movements that seek to integrate diverse perspectives on the human mind.
FALL 2021 CORE-UA 9500, Cultures and Contexts: Topics—Chinese Identity in Global Perspective
Prof. Hung (NYU Shanghai)
Taking a transnational and comparative approach, we explore the intricate conditions undergirding the making—and unmaking—of Chinese subjectivities in fiction, poetry, essay, magazine article, painting, and global screen cultures from early twentieth century onward. Together with writers and filmmakers of different genders who work in Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, America, and Southeast Asia, we also think alongside ordinary migrants of Chinese descent whose border-crossing movements compel us to question Chineseness not as a personal destiny, a timeless truth, or a theoretical given, but instead as a discursive arena where jarring voices and kaleidoscopic (self-)representations either converge or collide. In light of the evolving histories today of China and the Chinese overseas, we ask how mass-mediated images of Chineseness on the world stage respond to sociohistorical shifts, and what interventionist effects they generate. How do certain storytelling strategies and voices tell us about the malleability and contestability of so-called Chinese traditions? What roles do literary markets and film industries play in either cementing or undermining East-West and other territorially- or linguistically-bound community divides? Why do anti-discriminative cultural representations sometimes go hand in hand with racism? And how do changing circumstances of minority inclusion in societies with a Han-Chinese settler majority expose continued intercommunity fractures within the rhetoric of multiculturalism?
FALL 2021 CORE-UA 9534, Cultures and Contexts: The Black Atlantic
Prof. Baku (NYU Accra)
We consider the Black Atlantic as a socio-cultural and economic space from the fifteenth-century first arrival of Africans in the ‘New World,’ through the rise of slavery in the Americas, continuing on to slave emancipation and decolonization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and conclude with contemporary black life in the Atlantic world. We trace the origins and importance of the concept of the Black Atlantic in the context of European imperial expansion and the transformation of indigenous structures of governance in the Americas, paying special attention to shifting social relations that shaped community formation among people of African descent and laid the foundations for political and economic institutions. Topics include civilization, slavery, colonialism, capitalism, freedom, and justice. We approach these broad concerns through focused engagement with African enslavement and settlement in Africa and the Americas; the development of transatlantic racial capitalism; variations in politics and culture between empires in the Atlantic world; creolization, plantation slavery and slave society; the politics and culture of the enslaved; the Haitian Revolution; slave emancipation; and contemporary black Atlantic politics and racial capitalism.
FALL 2021 CORE-UA 9534, Cultures and Contexts: The Black Atlantic
Prof. Kersh (NYU London)
FALL 2021 CORE-UA 9534, Cultures and Contexts: The Black Atlantic
Prof. Odida (NYU London)
FALL 2021 CORE-UA 9700, Expressive Culture: Topics—K-pop
Prof. Choi (NYU Shanghai)
Considers the trajectory of changes in the production, circulation, and reception of Korean popular music from the turn of the twentieth century to the latest K-pop hits across successive political, social, and economic junctures, with regard for major themes such as nationalism, race, gender, technology, and globalization; and investigates music culture in relation to hybridity, authenticity, transculturation, cyber-culture, and fandom, among other subjects.
FALL 2021 CORE-UA 9722, Expressive Culture: Topics—Architecture in Paris Field Study
Prof. Wick (NYU Paris)
For all of the staid elegance and grandeur of Paris today, for much of its history the city developed in an ad-hoc manner, in fits and starts, beset by adversity, invasions, repression and want. We retrace this history through field study in the city’s different quarters, examining how the city’s urban form developed, and studying celebrated works of architecture, as well as the workaday structures that have defined daily life here. We explore how innovations in building, landscape design, and urbanism have sought to give the city a more livable, sustainable form, to inspire and create a sense of shared purpose and identity, but also how these arts have been used to suppress and control an often restive population. Throughout, we also consider contemporary questions facing Paris today: how can the city maintain the rich architectural and urbanistic heritage that has made it famous, while also remaining vital, sustainable, and providing quality of life and opportunities for all its residents?
FALL 2021 CORE-UA 9722, Expressive Culture: Topics—Architecture in London Field Study
Prof. Powers (NYU London)
The history of London architecture as exemplified by surviving buildings, which can be seen and visited, principally from the 17th to the 20th centuries, considered through an equal mixture of classroom lectures and field study visits to the sites and buildings, and types of buildings, discussed in the lectures.
FALL 2021 CORE-UA 9750, Expressive Culture: Film—French Cinema
Prof. Azulys (NYU Paris)
By putting the films into their social, historical and philosophical context, the students will get to study, across a diverse range of examples, the relation existing between French films and French culture. It deals for example with the formal and thematic relationships among the Avant-garde artistic movements (futurism, cubism, expressionism, surrealism, etc.) and the cinematographic Avant-garde (Buñuel, L’Herbier, Cocteau), those between the cinema of Renoir and classical French theatre (Marivaux, Beaumarchais, Musset), the troubled period of the occupation and the filmmakers who deliberately chose to stay in France to work there (Clouzot, Carné) and the influence of Saint Germain des Prés’s existentialism (Sartre, Camus) on the Nouvelle Vague, etc. The students will thus discover that cinema is a cultural agent that reflects a period all the while produces a critical point view on said period.
FALL 2021 CORE-UA 9750, Expressive Culture: Film
Prof. Vela (NYU Madrid)
Almodóvar and Buñuel. Analyzes the films of the two most well-known Spanish filmmakers, Luis Buñuel and Pedro Almodóvar, from the standpoint of grotesque expression. Despite their differences, there are things they share that allow us to investigate very different moments in the cultural history of Spain with a specific focus: both were born and received their first sentimental education in rural areas, under strong religious influence (and religious repression), and in their works we can see a strong use of the grotesque. Both repression and grotesque expression are related in our analysis of the films, since grotesquery is a way of degrading and decentralizing what is considered the center of social authority. Two museum field trips are included for students to explore the grotesque in Spanish artistic history since the Middle Ages. Concern is also given to the formal techniques of cinematic art.
FALL 2021 CORE-UA 9750, Expressive Culture: Film
Prof. Carrigy (NYU Sydney)
FALL 2021 CORE-UA 9761, Expressive Culture: La Belle Epoque
Prof. Hackney (NYU Shanghai)