If you have taken one of the courses listed below, feel free to help other students in the Archives and Public History program by adding an evaluation of the course in the comments on this page.
| Gallatin School of Individualized Study – Gallatin – Gallatin – gallatin@nyu.edu | ||||
| Theorizing Practices: Underground Archives | G13.2304.002 | 4.0 | Tchen | This is an intensive research seminar “decolonizing” knowledge and building on the students’ own subaltern archival work, with the goal of producing publishable essays. As part of the “hidden” organizing work of groups excluded and marginalized from dominant normalizing political cultures, collectors and their collections are a foundational yet largely unrecognized group of cultural activists. This course will examine our own subject positions and our gleanings, visit collectors and their collections, and examine critical writings related to collecting, making presence, and the political culture of knowledge-making. Agnes Varda’s documentaries The Gleaners and I and Two Years Later will serve as a starting point for the class. Readings will likely include: essays by James Hevia, Dominick LaCapra, Bruno Latour, and Ann Stoler; and selections from: Ann Cvetkovich, An Archive of Feelings, Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever, Richards, The Imperial Archive, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies, and Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire. |
| Graduate School of Arts and Sciences – History – Program in History – eileen.bowman@nyu.edu | ||||
| Any | G57.XXXX | |||
| Local and Community History | G57.1750 | 4.0 | Exlpore the changing character of “locale” and “community” in light of contemporary historical interpretations that focus on ethnicity, race, gender, sexuality, religion, and other standard scholarly constructions. Focus especially on how community history informs the practice of public history and archival management, focusing on such issues as museum interpretation, historical sites, and archival collections. | |
| Lower East Side American Jewish Memory | G57.1271 | 3.0 | Diner | Focuses on the social history of the Jewish people in America, broadly exploring the impact of immigration and the particular cultural and economic conditions of America in the 19th and 20th centuries. |
| Material Culture in Chinese History | G57.1917 | 4.0 | Joanna Waley-Cohen | Material culture and the nature of consumption in China, focusing mainly on the mid-Ming to the late Qing period, approximately 1550-1850. The course has three main, interlocking goals. First, it introduces students to some of the current theoretical scholarship on material culture and consumption in the West; second, it provides students with a deep knowledge of Chinese elite social and cultural practices during this period; and third, it addresses, within the context of material culture and consumption, the currently much-debated issue of continuity and change from the late Ming to the period immediately preceding the age of imperialism in China. Overarching themes include periodization, urbanization, commercialization, internationalization, gender, and aesthetics. Students explore these issues through a number of specific aspects of material culture, including printing and publishing; court culture; textiles, clothing, and fashion; art, including collecting and connoisseurship; and architecture and gardens. |
| Memoirs and Diaries in Modern European Jewish History | G57.2688 | 4.0 | Marion Kaplan | This course analyzes modern Jewish history through the use of memoirs and diaries, which can offer an abundance of detail about the public political, economic, social and religious worlds of individual Jews and provide valuable, often rare glimpses into the motivations and expectations of Jews regarding the non-Jewish world. Moreover, these ego-documents reveal crucial concealed thoughts and emotions as well as attitudes and behaviors within the family, friendship networks, and the Jewish community. They allow students to delve into relations between parents and children, spouses, generations, neighbors and friends. Finally, memoirs and diaries give us clues as to the ways in which people thought they should write about their lives and the ways they fashioned their own images in relation (or opposition) to their societies. |
| The Material Culture of American Life | G57.1052 | 4.0 | This course concentrates on employing artifacts in order to explore memory and place from the late colonial period to the present. | |
| Graduate School of Arts and Sciences – Museum Studies – Program in Museum Studies – museum.studies@nyu.edu | ||||
| Development, Fund-Raising, and Grantsmanship | G49.2221 | 4.0 | Lineker | Overview of organizational development principles as they relate to the fundraising and grantsmanship process. Topics include sources of funding, current trends, and fundraising techniques, earned income, public relations, volunteers, and membership. Includes a practicum in proposal writing and work experience with an art organization in program development and fundraising. |
| Exhibition Planning and Design | G49.3332 | 4.0 | Gallagher | This course focuses on the planning, development and design of exhibitions, permanent, temporary and traveling. It is a participatory class where students learn basic exhibition design techniques, including spatial layouts and the use of graphics, audio-visual aids, lighting, colors, materials, and fabrication methods. Students gain insight into exhibition planning and development and the roles played by various museum professionals. There are visits to designers to discuss their work and to museums and other venues to analyze exhibition design techniques. Individual student projects provide hands-on experience. |
| Heritage and Memory in History Museums | G49.3330.1 | 4.0 | This class will examine the controversial subject of museums that represent heritage, history and memory. Considering cases as diverse as Colonial Williamsburg, Mexican-American heritage museums, Slavery museums in Africa, Holocaust museums, and museums of Native American history, we will seek out common themes and problems that define museum representations of the past. Topics covered will include: authenticity, race, cultural property, cultural brokers, nationalism, interpretation, multivocality, photography, contact zones, context, multiculturalism and community outreach. Our objective will be to examine the connections and distinctions between the theory and practice of exhibiting history and to understand how material culture, social process and historical events converge in the social production of collections and institutions. Our focus will be on museums not merely as containers of history, but as social arenas that influence and determine the politics, value and experience of the past. Accordingly, students will be expected to develop a theoretical toolkit for contextualizing and addressing controversies in the heritage industry. | |
| Historic Houses, Cultural Landscapes and the Politics of Preservation | G49.2223 | 4.0 | Trask | This course will examine the cultural politics that influence reuse of historic spaces for museums and other public purposes. Through course readings, site visits and individual archival research, students will explore sites ranging from historic houses and period rooms presented as museum installations to restored villages and communities to dramatic reuse of historic space for cultural tourism. Students will pay particular attention to the social and political contexts in which original use and subsequent reuse took place, and analyze primary documents that illustrate both motivations and strategies for interpretation. |
| History and Theory of Museums | G49.1500 | 4.0 | Stampe, Trask | Introduction to the social, cultural, and political history of museums. This course focuses on the formation of the modern museum with an emphasis on the US context. Museums of Natural History, Anthropology, Science, Technology, History, and Art will be addressed from a variety of disciplinary approaches that explore the institution and its practices with respect to governance, colonialism, nationalism, class, gender, ethnicity, and community. Frequent visits to New York museums are required, along with weekly writing assignments, and a final paper. |
| Museum Collections and Exhibitions | G49.1501 | 4.0 | Gear | This course introduces students to the care and management of objects and collections, and to the process of organizing a temporary exhibition. Assignments consist of individual reports and working in small teams to prepare and present proposals on specific functions of collection management, and to make an exhibition proposal. Museum professionals (Registrars, Conservators, Curators) will speak on issues specific to their practice. Museum visits are scheduled as part of regular classroom meetings. As far as possible the course covers museums of all disciplines. |
| Museum Conservation and Contemporary Culture | G49.2222 | 4.0 | Wharton | As an introduction to museum conservation, this seminar combines class room discussion with museum laboratory visits to provide an understanding of how conservation functions in the context of contemporary culture. The seminar is divided into three broad topics: museum collections care, the history and philosophy of western conservation, and the conservation of modern and contemporary art. It provides technical information about how artifacts age in the museum environment while examining conflicts that arise between professional and non-professional stakeholders. The seminar addresses concerns of living artists as well as indigenous groups and others with claims to the disposition and care of cultural materials. While enrollment is open to all NYU graduate students, priority will be given to Museum Studies students with research interests in exhibition and collections management. |
| Museum Education | G49.2224 | 4.0 | Barsky | This seminar provides an overview of the field of Museum Education. Museum Education is considered in the context of the institution’s relationship with constituent communities, with application to a broad range of audiences. Among the topics to be considered are teaching from objects, learning strategies, working with docents and volunteers, program planning, and the educational use of interactive technologies. |
| Museum Management | G49.1502 | 4.0 | Siegel, Thomas | This course provides an overview of management, finance, and administration for those aspiring to managerial and supervisory positions in museums. Topics to be covered include organizational structure and the roles and relationships of museum departments; operational issues, including security and disaster planning; museum accounting and finance, including operating and capital expense budgeting; leadership and strategic planning; and legal and ethical issues facing museums. |
| Museums & Interactive Technologies | G49.2225 | 4.0 | Gill | The course will present a survey and analysis of museum use of interactive technologies. Among the topics to be discussed in detail are strategies and tools for collections management, exhibitions, educational resources and programs, website design, digitization projects, and legal issues arising from the use of these technologies. Each student will develop an interactive project in an area of special interest. |
| Topics in Museum Studies | G49.3330 | 4.0 | Various | |
| Leonard N. Stern School of Business – Economics – Full-time MBA – sternmba@stern.nyu.edu | ||||
| Economic and Business History of the United States | 3.0 | This course examines the historical development of American enterprise since the beginnings of the industrial revolution. Focusing on the entrepreneurial forces that shaped the rise and evolution of the modern economy and business system, the course takes into account business strategy and structure, finance, management, labor organization, technology, transportation, communications, and public policy. Discusses the broader economic, cultural, and political constraints within which American enterprise has been shaped. The goals are to impart a long-term perspective from which contemporary business can be understood and to introduce students to historical ways of thinking about economic development. | ||
| Financial History: Money and Power, 18th-21st Centuries | 3.0 | This is a study of the historical development of modern financial institutions from the 18th-century financial revolution to the present, and the relationship between finance and politics. Covers warfare, taxation, representative government, public debts, inflation, interest rates, redistributive fiscal policy, the economics of elections, globalization, exchange rates, currency unions, democratization, and imperialism. | ||
| Leonard N. Stern School of Business – Information, Operations, and Management Sciences – Full-time MBA – sternmba@stern.nyu.edu | ||||
| Data Mining for Business Intelligence | B20.3336 | 3.0 | Businesses, governments, and society leave behind massive trails of data as a by-product of their activity. Increasingly, decision makers rely on intelligent systems to analyze these data systematically and assist them in their decision making. In many cases, automating the decision-making process is necessary because of the speed with which new data are generated. This course connects real-world data to decision making. Cases from finance, marketing, and operations are used to illustrate applications of a number of data visualization, statistical, and machine learning methods. The latter include induction, neural networks, genetic algorithms, clustering, nearest neighbor algorithms, case-based reasoning, and Bayesian learning. The use of real-world cases is designed to teach students how to avoid the common pitfalls of data mining, emphasizing that proper applications of data mining techniques is as much an art as it a science. In addition to the cases, the course features Excel-based exercises and the use of data mining software. Real-world datasets are included as an optional data mining exercise for students interested in hands-on experimentation. The course is suitable for those interested in working with and getting the most out of data as well as those interested in understanding data mining from a strategic business perspective. It will change the way you think about data in organizations. | |
| Search and the New Economy | B20.3136 | 1.5 | The emergence of search engines over the last decade change drastically the business landscape in many industries. Traditional business models are now completely outdated, other business models are deeply transformed, and many new models emerge now, which are based on the unprecedented access to vast amounts of information. In particular, this course will examine how search technologies affect business and society. Students will first gain an understanding of the basics of how search engines work, and then explore topics such as search ranking, spam and anti-spam efforts, search engine marketing, keyword auctions, collective intelligence, search and privacy, intellectual property, and search of blogs and online communities. | |
| Leonard N. Stern School of Business – Interarea – Full-time MBA – sternmba@stern.nyu.edu | ||||
| Examining the Nonprofit Capital Market | 3.0 | This course will examine the nonprofit capital market and consider how our thinking about performance measurement, scale, and sustainability might evolve to make the sector more rational and efficient. Current practices are unsatisfying to almost all involved in managing, growing, or funding nonprofit organizations. But rising in importance are promising experiments, new thinking, and established practices which share the stated aim of delivering funds efficiently to organizations that are able to make the greatest social impact. There are increased efforts to arrive at common metrics against which nonprofits can benchmark their results, and in turn, organizations are adopting more sophisticated management techniques to gauge their own progress. New fundraising strategies focused on raising equity capital are gaining traction funders are beginning to address their own contributions to inefficient practices and, new intermediary organizations modeled on investment institutions are emerging to facilitate the allocation of dollars to best-in-class organizations. To support large-scale operations, nonprofits are developing earned income streams, and there is a rising interest in the potential of government to partner in new ways with social entrepreneurs so that public resources can be coupled with accountability for demonstrable results. Over the course of the semester, well examine the challenges inherent to a functioning nonprofit capital market through the lens of practitioners. We will invite guest speakers to discuss their experiences, describe how they navigate the nonprofit capital market, and share their perspective on emerging trends. | ||
| Leonard N. Stern School of Business – Management and Organizations – Full-time MBA – sternmba@stern.nyu.edu | ||||
| Developing Managerial Skills | 3.0 | Many companies bestow a management title on key talent and expect appropriate behavior to follow. That is not the most effective way to develop future business leaders. Increasing self-awareness and being open to feedback are important first steps in leading today’s business for tomorrow’s results. This course focuses primarily on the practical aspects of managing. While based on solid research, it stresses a hands-on approach to improving students’ management skills. Each session focuses on (a) developing personal skills: self-awareness, managing stress, solving problems, and creativity; (b) interpersonal skills: coaching, counseling, supportive communication, gaining power and influence, motivating self and others, and managing conflict; and (c) group skills: empowering, delegating, and building effective teams. Class sessions also give students an opportunity to assess, learn, analyze, practice, and “apply” the above skills to their own work situations so that they can turn good ideas into accepted practice. Students learn not just about management skills but also how to apply those skills to get results. | ||
| Managing Change | 3.0 | Contemporary business environments contain challenges that demand an increasing pace, volume, and complexity of organizational changes. Most organizations, whether they are entrepreneurial start-ups or long-established Fortune 500 firms, find that they must change or wither. This course is geared toward deepening students’ understanding of the challenges, techniques, and burdens associated with initiating and implementing major change in an organization. The objective is to prepare managers, or their consultants and advisers, to meet the challenges of organizational change successfully. As such, the course is especially useful for students who plan careers in management consulting, general management (whether in line or staff positions), and entrepreneurship or corporate venturing. | ||
| Organization Theory | 3.0 | Organizations operate in dynamic environments. This course introduces doctoral students to the principal theoretical perspectives and empirical findings used to explain relationships among environments, organizational strategies, designs, and performance. Students are expected to develop expertise in the analysis of environments and organizations from several theoretical perspectives, such as resource dependence theory, institutional theory, organizational ecology, and industrial organization economics. The seminar stresses the competitive and mutual dimensions of environments that propel managers to enact business, corporate, and collective strategies, structures, processes, and systems to enhance their firms’ effectiveness. Both theoretical and empirical research are examined to illustrate how different theoretical perspectives require different empirical research methodologies. | ||
| Power and Politics in Organizations | 3.0 | This course considers the way political processes and power structures influence decisions and choices made within and by organizations. It analyzes the sources, distribution, and use of influence in relation to resource allocation, organizational change and performance, management succession, procedural justice, policy formulation, and social movements within organizations. It develops skills in diagnosing and using power and politics in organizational settings. A basic assumption underlying the course is that managers need well-developed skills in acquiring and exercising power to be effective. The course is designed to (1) improve students’ capacity to diagnose organizational issues in terms of their political dimensions and (2) enhance their effectiveness in their jobs and careers as a result of that improved capacity. | ||
| Steinhardt School of Education, Culture, and Human Development – Administration, Leadership, and Technology – Educational Communication and Technology – alt.education@nyu.edu | ||||
| Educational Design for Media Environments | E19.2158 | 3.0 | Shuchat, Shaw | The purpose of this course is to provide an introduction to the principles and practices of instructional design for the development of media-based learning. We will address issues in the field of instructional design such as professional definitions and boundaries, different theoretical and philosophical approaches to the design of mediated learning environments, and issues surrounding the use of media in learning. We will then examine representative instructional design models including their components, methodologies, theoretical underpinnings, and the types of learning and learners they support. Emphasis will be given to a detailed study of the “analysis phase” of instructional design, including how to conduct varieties of needs assessments, and the “design phase,” including the use of theoretical perspectives in cognitive science, developmental psychology, and the learning sciences to inform decisions about instructional strategies and media selection in the design of learning environments. |
| Interaction Design for Learning Environments | E19.2015 | 3.0 | Plass, Migliorelli | This design course builds on cognitive and cultural theory as well as design theory, translating them into approaches to the design of the representation of information and design of interaction in media environments. Interaction design discussions will explore issues such as types and levels of interactivity, levels of user control, pattern languages, and media-specific instructional strategies for different levels of engagement, and will result in the design of wire frames of a learning environment. For the visual design, discussions will explore topics such as the semiotics of visual representations, use of metaphors, and development of a visual language, and will result in drafts of storyboards of the visual design of the environment. |
| Tisch School of the Arts – Maurice Kanbar Institute of Film and Television – Interactive Telecommunications Program – itp.inquiries@nyu.edu | ||||
| Any | H79. | 4.0 | ||
| Interactive Documentary | H79. 2412 | 4.0 | Sergel | Interactive documentaries provide radical new possibilities for both community creation and active audience engagement. This class explore the history of the documentary form through photography, oral history, film/video, performance and current hybrid projects. Interactive Documentary is a production class. Weekly experiments in creating documentaries are supported by lectures, viewing of non-traditional works and learning the necessary audio/video & projection tools. Assignments focus on developing works whose creation mirrors the themes we are seeking to explore. In the past documentaries were created with an expectation of the audience operating as passive consumers. Interactive documentaries enable us to dream new possibilities with audiences actively participating in the work. |
| Live Web | H79.2734.1 | 4.0 | Van Every | The World Wide Web has grown up to be a great platform for asynchronous communication such as email and message boards. More recently this has extended into media posting and sharing. With the rise of broadband, more powerful computers and the prevalence networked media devices, synchronous communications have become more viable. Streaming media, audio and videoconference rooms and text based chat give us the ability to create content and services tailored to a live audience. During this course, we focus on the types of content and interaction that can be supported through these technologies as well as explore new concepts around participation with a live distributed audience. In this course, we look at new and existing platforms for live communication on the web. We leverage existing services and use Flash, PHP, AJAX and possibly Processing/Java to develop our own solutions. Experience with ActionScript/Flash, PHP/MySQL and HTML/ JavaScript are helpful but not required. |
| Orality in the Electronic Age | H79. 2638 | 4.0 | Kiser | Marshall McLuhan said that the arrival of the electronic age would bring with it a rediscovery of the aural. People would favor the immediacy and expressivity of oral communication over visual and written forms. The tools for creating and distributing oral stories in the digital realm are more available than ever. In this class we look at the potential for oral storytelling in the light of the affordances these new tools offer. We explore current topics and projects ranging from examples that take a more traditional approach such as “Story Corps,” to the more experimental such as Janet Cardiff’s “Her Long Black Hair.” Techniques covered include – but will not be limited to – fundamentals of audio engineering and sound design for spoken word, field recording and podcasting. Students are encouraged to develop unconventional methods of oral storytelling. Prerequisite is a familiarity with digital audio editing applications. |
| Tisch School of the Arts – Skirball Center for New Media – Moving Image Archiving and Preservation – tisch.preservation@nyu.edu | ||||
| Access to Moving Image Collections | H72.1803 | 2.0 | Tadic | Students in this course will learn the major components of providing access in moving image archives. Topics include: physical, virtual, and intellectual presentation of collection information;search strategies and use of particular moving image reference resources; access protocols;multi-institutional access projects; establishment of policies and fee structures; evaluation of software for facilitating access to moving image collections. In addition, principles of reference services; descriptive cataloging of moving images, documentation, and artifacts; and indexing and subject analysis will be taught. |
| Any | H72.XXXX | 4.0 | ||
| Conservation and Preservation of Moving Image Material: Principles | H72.1802 | 4.0 | Duane A. Watson | This course will explain the principles of conservation and preservation, and place moving image preservation within the larger context of cultural heritage preservation. Questions of originals vs. surrogates will be raised, and the wide variety of variant forms will be covered. The course also addresses tensions between conservation and access. Students will learn principles of collection assessment, and how to write a preservation plan. They will also learn about dealing with laboratories, writing contracts, etc. On a more pragmatic level, they will learn about optimal storage conditions and handling. |
| Contemporary Cultural Institutions | H72.1801.719 | 2.0 | Lant | This course studies the different kinds of institutions that collect and manage moving image material: museums of art, natural history, and motion pictures; libraries and historical societies; corporate institutions. It compares and contrasts these types of institution to reveal how they differ from one another. It examines their organizational structures (including trends in staffing and the roles of individual departments), their respective missions and operational ethics, their fund-raising strategies, and their audiences and outreach efforts. Aspects of project management and the handling of competing interests within an organization may also be considered. |
| Copyright, Legal Issues, and Policy | H72.1804 | 4.0 | Rina Pantalony | With the advent of new technologies, film producers and distributors and managers of film and video collections are faced with a myriad of legal and ethical issues concerning the use of their works or the works found in various collections. The answers to legal questions are not always apparent and can be complex, particularly where different types of media are encompassed in one production. When the law remains unclear, a risk assessment, often fraught with ethical considerations, is required to determine whether a production can be reproduced, distributed or exhibited without infringing the rights of others. What are the various legal rights that may encumber moving image material? What are the complex layers of rights and who holds them?Does one have to clear before attempting to preserve or restore a work? How do these rights affect downstream exhibition and distribution of a preserved work? And finally, what steps can be taken in managing moving image collections so that decisions affecting copyrights can be taken consistently? This course will help students make intelligent decisions and develop appropriate policies for their institution. |
| Digital Preservation and Restoration | H72.1807 | 2.0 | Chris Lacinak | This class will address the use of digital files as both production and preservation media, and will investigate current theories and practices for the conservation and preservation of both digitized and born digital materials. Characteristics of image, audio and video files will be explored, as well as the computer environments within which they are produced and stored. Students will gain practical skills with identification and risk assessment for works as a whole, their component parts, and associated software and metadata. Initiatives by broadcasters, the Library of Congress and other national archives, digital libraries and others will be explored as examples of the architecture and attributes of digital repositories. Emphasis will be placed on how moving image archivists may interact with these repositories as part of their preservation practice. Students will also develop an increased understanding of metadata and of rights management for digital materials. |
| Handling Complex Media | H72.1805 | 4.0 | Mona Jimenez | This seminar will increase students’ knowledge of primary issues and emerging strategies for the preservation of media works that go beyond single channels/screens. Students will gain practical skills with identification and risk assessment for works as a whole and their component parts, particularly in the areas of audio and visual media and digital, interactive media projects that are stored on fixed media, presented as installations, and existing in networks.
Examples of production modes/works to be studied are animations (individual works and motion graphics) web sites, games, interactive multimedia (i.e., educational/artist CDROMs), and technology-dependent art installations. Students will test principles and practices of traditional collection management with these works, such as appraisal, selection, care and handling, risk/condition assessment, “triage”, description, and storage and will be actively involved in developing new strategies for their care and preservation. Case studies will be undertaken in collaboration with artists/producers, museums, libraries, and/or archives. |
| History and Culture of Museums, Archives, and other Repositories | H72.1801 | 4.0 | Howard Besser | This course studies the different kinds of institutions that collect and manage cultural material: museums of art, natural history, and motion pictures; libraries and historical societies; corporate institutions. It compares and contrasts these types of institution to reveal how they differ from one another, paying particular attention to how different institutional missions affect internal metadata and information systems. It examines theories of collecting, the history and ethics of cultural heritage institutions, the organizational structures of institutions that house collections (including trends in staffing and the roles of individual departments), and their respective missions and operational ethics. The class will visit a variety of local cultural organizations, and will have working professionals talk about their organizations and duties. |
| Introduction to Moving Image Archiving and Preservation | H72.1800 | 4.0 | Howard Besser | This graduate-level course introduces and contextualizes aspects of the archiving and preservation of film, video, and new media. We will consider the moving image and sound recording media as material objects, as technologies with histories. We will contextualize them within culture, politics, industries, and economics. Topics include: conservation and preservation principles, organization and access, restoration, collecting, curatorship, and programming, legal issues and copyright, and emerging issues in digital media.
Designed for students entering the profession of moving image archiving, the course examines the history of archiving and preservation and the development of the field’s theories, practices, and professional identities. We will consider the tasks and areas of specialization practiced by moving image professionals and how these are changing and multiplying in the digital era. |