RACHEL A.G. GILMAN

CFI-UF 101-002: Cultural Foundations I (Fall 2014) | Liberal Studies Program

Instructor: Martin Reichert

This course introduces the arts from their origins to the end of antiquity, as defined for these purposes by the roughly coincident dissolutions of the Gupta, Han, and Western Roman empires, focusing on how individuals and social relations are shaped in literature, the visual, plastic, and performing arts, and through music. Conceptions of the divine, the heroic, power and disenfranchisement, beauty, and love are examined within the context of the art and literature of East and South Asia, the Mediterranean world, and contiguous regions (such as Germania, Nubia, and Mesopotamia).

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SFI-UF 101-002: Social Foundations I (Fall 2014) | Liberal Studies Program

Instructor: Joseph Portanova

The first semester of Social Foundations introduces students to the ancient world and ends with the dissolution of the Western Roman Empire, of the Gupta Empire in India, and of the Han Dynasty in China. This course takes a global perspective and uses an interdisciplinary approach, and part of its aim is to explore enduring questions such as the relation between the individual and society, between justice and power, and between humanity and the divine.

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WRI-UF 101-015: Writing I (Fall 2014) | Liberal Studies Program

Instructor: Amie Hartman

Writing I and II comprise a two-semester writing sequence in which students develop analytical thinking abilities in the context of academic essay writing. Writing I has two main objectives. The first is to develop students' self-confidence and fluency by engaging them in the use of writing to express, explore, and develop ideas through a variety of forms, including informal writing (free writing, journal writing, etc.). The second objective is to engage them in practicing the critical and analytical skills they will use throughout their two years in LS's writing-intensive program. The course is conducted as a workshop. Students produce a wide range of writing, both in and out of class, which forms the basis for classroom activities. All papers go through multiple drafts, often with input from peers in addition to the instructor.

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WRTNG-UG 1555-001: Advanced Fiction Writing (Fall 2014) | Gallatin School of Individualized Study

Instructor: Anthony Tognazzini

Advanced workshops provide emerging writers with the opportunity to hone their individual voice and experiment with different aesthetic strategies in a genre-specific workshop taught by an eminent writer in the field. The workshops focus on innovative revision techniques, the development of a sustainable writing process, and the broadening of students' literary knowledge of classical and contemporary masters. Each advanced workshop has a distinct emphasis and area of exploration--students are advised to pay close attention to the course descriptions, which are available online and in the program office prior to registration.

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CFII-UF 102-002: Cultural Foundations II (Spring 2015) | Liberal Studies Program

Instructor: Martin Reichert

Examines the arts produced within diverse cultural traditions across the globe from the rise of Islam at the beginning of the 7th century to the global empire building of the late 17th/early 18th centuries. The course explores the distinctive conventions and traditions of different media and the development of cultural traditions from their ancient foundations to the early modern period through successive influences and assimilations, both local and external. Diverse cultural traditions are also considered in relation to one another: by direct comparisons of works even in the absence of historical cultural contact; by consideration of mutual interactions, exchanges, and contestations; by the assertion of cultural dominance; and by resistance to such assertions.

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SFII-UF 102-010: Social Foundations II (Spring 2015) | Liberal Studies Program

Instructor: Christian Parenti

Spans a thousand years, from the rise of Islam and the reunification of China under the Tang Dynasty (in the 7th century CE) through the Scientific Revolution and the decline of the Mogul Empire in India. Students consider great ideas that have often helped earlier peoples organize their lives—but which have also set them in conflict either with other communities or among themselves. Such ideas have sparked movements for ethical and social reform, conquest, recovery of lost classics, and religious renewal. Vast new empires appear during this period, but so do challenges to their rule. Religious conflicts lead to civil war, and modern science emerges as a challenge to traditional beliefs. Throughout, different conceptions of human nature emerge and collide. Oppression gives rise to new movements for greater equality and individual rights, and bitter struggles for power lead to the creation of large new colonial empires, whose effects linger to the present day. In addition, the world’s different civilizations come into increasing contact through exploration and trade. Students consider these ideas and developments critically, with an eye to their philosophical, political, and historical significance; and they explore the ways in which texts that have often been read in exclusively Western contexts yield new meaning when placed in non-Western settings.

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WRII-UF 102-019: Writing II (Spring 2015) | Liberal Studies Program

Instructor: Stephen Policoff

In Writing II, students develop their skills in analysis and argumentation by exploring the ways in which the ideas of others can be incorporated into their own writing. Students read and discuss longer, more challenging texts; in their own writing, students are expected to incorporate a broad range of primary and secondary sources to develop and support their increasingly complex ideas. Students are familiarized with a wide variety of possible resources at the library and learn the mechanics and conventions of the academic research essay. The course continues to encourage in-class participation, collaborative learning, and workshop presentations. 

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WRTNG-UG 1536-001: The Short Story: a Workshop in Revising (Spring 2015) | Gallatin School of Individualized Study

Instructor: Carol Zoref

This workshop is dedicated to the oft-repeated observation that all writing is re-writing. Each writer focuses their efforts on only one or two short stories, rather than starting many new stories and abandoning them in favor of yet another new beginning. Students take each of their stories through a number of drafts and revise them in response to (though not necessarily in accord with) questions and comments raised by other members of the workshop. The objective is to learn ways of staying with such challenges as maintaining the story's voice, determining the order of experience, and arriving at an ending that satisfies the design of the story as well as the intentions of the writer. Workshop members share their stories in class throughout the semester and comment in detail on one another's work. Participants should have some experience writing short stories.

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CFIII-UF 103-022: Cultural Foundations II (Fall 2015) | Liberal Studies Program

Instructor: Lina Meruane

Explores the arts from the late 17th/early 18th centuries to the post-World War II era, examining how they define and reflect both local cultural views and rapidly shifting global understandings of the world. The course considers how the diverse conceptions and conditions of modernity shaped and were shaped by the arts around the world. Many of the issues pertinent to the course—industrialization/urbanization; the outcomes of cross-cultural contact; colonialism, decolonization, conflicts of political ideology, and liberation struggles; fundamental redefinitions of mind, language, gender, and sexual identity—have had very different effects in various parts of the world. Instructors encourage students to explore what it means to study the arts from global perspectives and to examine what “globalization” itself has meant and means in the context of the arts.

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IDSEM-UG 1749-001: Melodrama Unchained: Genre and Style in Western Narrative Since 1800 (Fall 2015) | Gallatin School of Individualized Study

Instructor: Karen Hornick

What do Jane Austen and  Empire  have in common? The forms taken by stories since the Industrial Revolution changed in tandem with shifts in the organization of work and leisure. Melodrama and realism, the major genres/styles of this period, have often been seen as antagonistic toward each other. In this class, however, we’ll follow up on recent suggestions that both modes always co-exist even though melodramatic and realistic texts so clearly differ in ostensible purpose, effect, and audience. Melodrama, for example, promotes conventionality but subversively celebrates the felt over the known and thereby speaks an otherwise unspeakable truth. Realism, in contrast, was developed to criticize a world that can be known and articulated, and yet the form tends to isolate the individual while failing to promote collectivity. Class readings will enable us to consider melodrama and realism as responses to or consequences of the key changes said to characterize Western modernity: the loss of common belief in the universal and metaphysical; the newfound role of the machine in relation to art; shifts in the political meaning of race, class, gender, and sexuality; and the philosophical arguments that emerged from the tension between the “Age of Enlightenment” and “Discovery of the Unconscious.” The syllabus, in addition to a few basic critical works on this topic (James Baldwin, Linda Williams, Lauren Berlant), may include: early examples of melodramatic plays and fiction; examples of sensation fiction and plays; Harriet Beecher Stowe’s  Uncle Tom’s Cabin , Henrik Ibsen’s  Hedda Gabler ; Fannie Hurst’s  Imitation of Life  and Douglas Sirk’s film version; a comparative analysis of Sirk’s  All that Heaven Allows , Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s   Ali:  Fear Eats the Soul,  and Todd Haynes’s  Far from Heaven.  Students will have the opportunity to propose other texts as our ideas develop.

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IRISH-UA 182-001: History of Modern Ireland I: 1580-1800 (Fall 2015) | College of Arts and Science

Instructor: Thomas Truxes

Examines the English conquest of Ireland from the reign of Elizabeth I to the last meeting of the Irish Parliament. Key themes include the plantation of Ireland with settlers from England, Scotland, and Wales; the decline of the Gaelic political order and culture; the religious reformation and Counter-Reformation; Ireland as a site of English and European wars; the imposition of a penal code; and the vain attempt to rebel against British rule in the late 18th century, resulting in the Act of Union, which disestablished the Irish Parliament in Dublin.

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WRTNG-UG 1537-001: Crafting Short Fiction from the Sentence Up (Fall 2015) | Gallatin School of Individualized Study

Instructor: Steven Rinehart

This class explores the craft of writing, starting with the sentence and ending with the scene. Half of each class is devoted to craft exercises and the remaining half to a traditional workshop approach to discussing student submissions. By the end of the semester we’ll be able to talk intelligently about some of the “micro” parts of a short story or novel, giving the students some practical tools for editing those parts.

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SFIII-UF 103-001: Social Foundations III (Spring 2016) | Liberal Studies Program

Instructor: Luke Trusso

Examines major intellectual and historical events from the Enlightenment and the Qing Dynasty (around 1700) to the contemporary world, a period that features some of the most rapid and significant changes in human society and scientific understanding. At the same time, many of the enduring questions of humanity have become even more critical as disparate cultures interact in a new global arena. This course is a capstone to the Foundations sequence; accordingly, authors and themes come from a range of texts both interdisciplinary and international. Among the themes the course explores are the philosophical and political debates that followed the creation of global colonial empires, as societies from around the world confronted imperial polices and institutions. The course also considers the rise of vast, new international markets; the spread of revolutionary and national liberation movements in the 19th and 20th centuries; new challenges to established property; and the social effects of industrialization. In addition, instructors discuss postmodern attempts to question and undermine the institutions and practices that structure contemporary societies. Students consider criticisms of Western practices that form both within the West and from other regions of the world, giving special attention to the reception of Western texts by other traditions and, conversely, the influence of these other traditions on the West.

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CRWRI-UA 850-001: Advanced Creative Nonfiction Workshop (Spring 2016) | College of Arts and Science

Instructor: Marcelle Clements

Advanced workshops provide emerging writers with the opportunity to hone their individual voice and experiment with different aesthetic strategies in a genre-specific workshop taught by an eminent writer in the field. The workshops focus on innovative revision techniques, the development of a sustainable writing process, and the broadening of students' literary knowledge of classical and contemporary masters.

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IDSEM-UG 1873-001: Jane Austen in the 21st Century: The Novels and Their Afterlife (Spring 2016) | Gallatin School of Individualized Study

Instructor: June Foley

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Jane Austen’s novels are most appreciated while sipping tea and nibbling crumpets. Yet considerable controversy surrounds Austen’s six novels, their place in literary history, their cultural work and cultural capital. Scholarship includes books on "Austen and. . . " the French Revolution, queer studies, and game theory, along with  Global Jane Austen . Questions abound: Is Austen, who first published as "A Lady," politically conservative, progressive, or radical? Is she a proto-feminist? Does she glorify the marriage plot or subvert it, and what narrative aspects provide the basis for each claim? What part do irony and free indirect discourse play in her sparkling style? Media commodification brings debates on the afterlife: Which group to join, idolizing (and fan fiction-writing) Janeites or academic Austenites? Was "Clueless" the best adaptation? What about the Bollywood or manga versions? We consider these issues and more while reading  Pride and Prejudice ,  Mansfield Park ,  Emma , and  Persuasion  through the lenses of literature, gender studies, and cultural studies. Critics and theorists include F.R. Leavis, D.W. Harding, Lionel Trilling, Claudia Johnson, Edward Said, Mary Poovey, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, and Cornel West.

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OART-UT 35-001: Fundamentals of Developing the Screenplay (Spring 2016) | Tisch School of the Arts

Instructor: Sheldon Woodbury

The course combines lectures on the basics of feature length screenwriting with the development of the student’s own writing work. Students are required to complete 50-70 pages of a full length screenplay with an outline of the rest. The students study story structure, conflict, and character, in conjunction with the screening and study of several classic films and screenplays. The writing process starts in the first month with a focus on exercises to help students develop five story ideas with the complexity and depth to sustain a full-length screenplay. One of these ideas will serve as the basis for the required work. Each idea can be described in one or two paragraphs. 

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CRWRI-UA 850-001: Advanced Creative Nonfiction Workshop (Fall 2016) | College of Arts and Science

Instructor: Craig Teicher

Advanced workshops provide emerging writers with the opportunity to hone their individual voice and experiment with different aesthetic strategies in a genre-specific workshop taught by an eminent writer in the field. The workshops focus on innovative revision techniques, the development of a sustainable writing process, and the broadening of students' literary knowledge of classical and contemporary masters.

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IDSEM-UG 1268-001: The Cultural Politics of Childhood (Fall 2016) | Gallatin School of Individualized Study

Instructor: Patrick McCreery

This interdisciplinary seminar explores children and childhood in the United States from two vantage points—those of public policy makers and of parents. In what ways does public policy shape children’s lives? What historical trends influence the ways that people parent? What happens when parents disagree with laws or conventions regarding how to parent? The first half of the course examines common conceptualizations of the child figure historically and today. While all children possess some universal characteristics that transcend time, place and personal circumstance, we can also understand the contemporary child figure to be a social construction, with “childhood” as we know it emerging as a coherent life stage only in the past few centuries. Public policy—laws about healthcare, education and labor, in particular—have both shaped and responded to these conceptualizations of childhood. The second half of the course examines children as members of families. Just as we can understand the symbolic child figure as a social construction, so we will see that race, class, gender and sexual orientation are key factors influencing the lived experiences of actual children and their parents. Additionally, we will examine how the proscribed “best methods” of child-rearing seem to change continuously—parents who consult various “experts” often receive contradictory advice. Work we may engage include Guggenheim's What's Wrong with Children's Rights? , Lareau's Unequal Childhoods , Solomon's Far from the Tree , and the photography of Sally Mann. By the end of the course, we should have deeper understandings of childhood as a social construction, of the debates surrounding some of the issues that society currently deems relevant to children, and of differing child-rearing practices that parents employ.

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UNDSW-US 90-001: Love and Relationships (Fall 2016) | Silver School of Social Work

Instructor: Vera Michaels

Making sense of love is a lifelong task. Love puzzles, agonizes, and exhilarates. It is the topic of philosophers and poets, high school students and college graduates, CEOs and grandmas. Looking for love can be a passionate focus and all-consuming goal. In this course we will answer the following questions: *What is the connection between love and sex? *Why do we repetitively pick the same "wrong partner?" *How do our own values and beliefs foster or inhibit love? *What are our own preconditions for loving? *What makes us overvalue or undervalue a loved one? *What do we project on others? What do we identify with?

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CRWRI-UA 880-01: Master Class in Creative Nonfiction (Spring 2017) } College of Arts and Science

Instructor: Meghan O'Rourke

These workshops and craft seminars—taught by acclaimed poets and prose writers—are open to select NYU undergraduates. Manuscript submission is required for admission. Most master classes are limited to 12 students and provide intensive mentoring and guidance for serious and talented undergraduate writers.

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IDSEM-UG 1910-001: Habits of Reading: Narrative and Genre in Europe and America (Spring 2017) | Gallatin School of Individualized Study

Instructor: Karen Hornick

“Myth,” “novel,” “epic,” “thriller,” “romantic comedy”—why do people bother making these distinctions between types of narratives, and how do we make them? From defining self (“I’m a sci-fi geek”) to organizing society (“only kids read comic books”), genres help us make sense of what we read and perform artistic, social, personal, and commercial functions. In this class we will closely examine stories representing a wide range of Western genres--an ancient epic, fairy tales and folktales, a Shakespearean tragedy, a novel, a novella, a short story, one modern 3-act play (a comedy), television shows, a classic Hollywood film, an "art" film, a video game "narrative," a graphic novel, perhaps even narrative painting and photography. In addition to helping us consider genre in relation to authorial intention and reader response, our survey will enable us to address contemporary questions about readership, fan fiction, and interactivity. When and why do we find it necessary to classify our stories into categories, and who benefits? How do genres reflect and contribute to the cultures that produce them? How do media shape genre and vice verse? How has genre constrained and inspired European and American authors? How do narrative genres prompt distinctions between fiction and truth, affect taste judgements, and shape opinion?

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INDIV-UG 1901-049: Independent Study: Women and Sex in Contemporary Media (Spring 2017) | Gallatin School of Individualized Study

Instructor: Karen Hornick

The topic of sex has been of particular interest and discussion in the years following the simultaneous women’s and sexual liberation movements of the 1960s and 70s, while simultaneously, in 1964, the Supreme Court Justice Stewart Potter wrote about obscenity and pornography, that he would “know it when [he saw] it.” Since these movements, especially in the past twenty years, how has the portrayal of women in sexual relationships changed in creative media? How has the operation of sexuality functioned in plot and character? How do we know when something is erotic versus when it is solely artistic? Ultimately, we want to answer the question that Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City claims she knows the answer to: what makes good sex (at least in art) and how is that created? This will be done through the examination of fiction and non-fiction texts, as well as through viewing television shows (specifically, thirty-minute comedies or comedy/dramas) and films from the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. The goal of this study will be to understand what the most productive, artistic, and realistic ways to depict sex in a written medium are, and how this changes depending on what the art form is (novel versus film versus television show). The end goal will be to produce a creative written body of work applying these principles.

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UNDSW-US 89-001: Film, Literature, and Mental Health (Spring 2017) | Silver School of Social Works

Instructor: Vera Michaels

Artists often explore powerful issues of mental health through literature and film. "No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul." (Ingmar Bergmann 1918-2007) In this course, we will draw on classic examples from literature and film to highlight and understand aspects of mental health in ways that are more vivid and visceral than any text book can illustrate. Materials will be chosen from novels, poems, and films to illustrate various mental health issues, such as anxiety, depression, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), dissociative identity disorder (DID), and schizophrenia. We will look at how some of the disorders fare in psychological treatments that either succeed or fail. Guest speakers may be invited to highlight some topics.

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WRTNG-UG 1019-001: The Basics and the Bold: Fundamentals of Editing Fiction and Creative Nonfiction (Spring 2017) | Gallatin School of Individualized Study

Instructor: Barbara Jones

Book editors and agents find that a great variety of submissions (including novels, short story collections, memoir and narrative nonfiction) require precisely the same kinds of editorial attention. Learning to identify and attend to these ubiquitous weaknesses in concept, narrative and prose can lift a manuscript from the “no” pile to enthusiastic acceptance and, later, from lackluster publication to strong word of mouth and review attention. This class will focus on two kinds of editing that can address those frequent, genre-crossing manuscript problems: the bold—identifying and troubleshooting the bigger conceptual and structural problems, including the young writer’s frequent habit of not being bold at all; and the basics—sweating the small stuff by learning and using the tricks of an editor’s trade. Readings will include works by writers such as Jennifer Egan, Jeffrey Eugenides, Mary Karr, Laura Hillenbrand and others (models of successful basics and boldness), and student writings. Students will be expected to: 1) bring in one story, chapter of a novel, piece of memoir or narrative nonfiction that they have written, 2) edit (including a line edit and an editorial letter) and 3) revise their own piece of writing in response to editorial feedback from the class.

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CAMS-UA 146-001: Twentysomething (Fall 2017) | College of Arts and Science

Instructor: Yamalis Diaz

Are 20-somethings really overeducated, afraid of commitment, self-centered, and spendthrift? It is a fact that people in most countries are marrying, having children, and becoming financially independent at a later age than in any previous generation. In the last 10 years a critical new developmental period between adolescence and adulthood has started to gain recognition. “Emerging Adulthood” has been characterized as the age of identity exploration, instability, self-focus, feeling “in-between,” and infinite possibilities. This course will analyze whether this theory has validity, explore the factors that contribute to diverging developmental pathways, review the typical life of the American 20-something, and uncover the truth behind the stereotypes.

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CRWRI-UA 860-001: Master Class in Fiction (Fall 2017) | College of Arts and Science

Instructor: Emily Barton

These workshops and craft seminars—taught by acclaimed poets and prose writers—are open to select NYU undergraduates. Manuscript submission is required for admission. Most master classes are limited to 12 students and provide intensive mentoring and guidance for serious and talented undergraduate writers.

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IDSEM-UG 1258-001: The Ancient Theatre and Its Influences (Fall 2017) | Gallatin School of Individualized Study

Instructor: Laura Slatkin

What role did the theater play in the civic life of ancient Greece? How did Greek drama address vital social and political issues? Does Greek drama serve as a useful paradigm for exploring contemporary theater? Through our readings, we will explore Greek theater as a live space of social action, representing conflicts between the claims of family and state, between male and female, between traditional values and emergent democratic concerns. We will examine Greek drama's relation to religion (e.g. sacrifice, lament, festival), to law (e.g. courtroom proceedings, punishment), and to civic debate. We will discuss both how plays were produced and the theories of drama they inspired. Building on our investigation of the Greek 'case', we will turn our attention to Roman drama and to selected works of the modern theater. Readings may include Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Menander; Seneca; Racine, Sartre, Fugard, Al-Bassam, McLaughlin.

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OART-UT 36-001: Intermediate Screenwriting (Fall 2017) | Tisch School of the Arts

Instructor: Charlie Schulman

A continuation of the training presented in Fundamentals of Developing the Screenplay. Required work in the class includes extensive scene work. Guided by their screenwriting instructor, students will complete the screenplay begun in Fundamentals of Developing the Screenplay and then do a rewrite or they may begin, complete, and rewrite a new full-length screenplay. The focus in this class will be on story structure and development and the completion of a full-length screenplay.

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