Seminar 1 – The Arts in New York City
Catalogue Description: This seminar introduces Macaulay students to a diverse range of the arts and their roles in the life, history and expression of New York City. Students will attend theatrical, operatic, and musical performances,
exhibitions of visual art, and other highlights of the current cultural season. Students are encouraged to examine performances and exhibitions from the multiple perspectives of scholarship, creativity, and production. The seminar
will include examples and discussions of artistic endeavors from diverse racial and ethnic groups, specifically including the creations of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC) artists.
Course Description: The first seminar introduces Macaulay students to the arts and their roles in the life, history, and expression of New York. The seminar provides students with a foundation in the critical liberal arts skills and attitudes that will support their learning throughout their college years and beyond. During the semester students
attend theatrical, operatic, and musical performances, exhibitions of visual art, and other highlights of the current cultural season. In addition to experiencing these art forms as an audience, students are encouraged to examine performances and exhibitions from the multiple perspectives of scholarship, creativity, and production. The seminar will include examples and discussions of artistic endeavors from people of diverse racial, ethnic, class, national, religious, gender, sexuality, and other identities, specifically including Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC), with attention to the intersectionality of these identities. The historical and contemporary uses of works of art to inform and propel social change and protest will also form part of the seminar. Students from all campuses will attend an arts-related event at a NYC cultural institution, promoting critical attention, creative analysis, and clear communication through conversation. Visits to exhibits, performances, and artist encounters continue throughout the semester. The course includes a late-semester cross-campus celebration and sharing of seminar work.
Learning Goals/Outcomes
Students will:
- Explore the role of the arts in the lives of New Yorkers and their communities.
- Consider the diverse cultural perspectives communicated through art.
- Identify the key features of the different artistic forms studied in the class.
- Construct clearly written and well-reasoned analyses of these art forms for multiple audiences (e.g. reviews, arguments, summaries, personal responses, blogs, etc.).
- Analyze artistic forms both for their formal qualities and as cultural products of New York City and New Yorkers.
- Formulate their own individual aesthetic values after having studied the city’s wide range of artistic expressions.
- Understand the relationship of the arts to movements for justice and social equity in New York City.
- Look closely, think deeply, work with other students, and learn to discuss ideas.
Seminar 2: The People of New York
Catalogue Description: In this seminar, students use tools from the social sciences, from oral history to mapping and participant observation and beyond, to investigate how the diverse people of New York City shape its identity, past, present, and future. Extensive reading and writing assignments are enriched by visits to neighborhoods, museums and historical and cultural sites across the city.
Course Description: In this seminar, students use the tools of the social sciences, from oral history to mapping and participant observation and beyond, to investigate how the diverse people of New York City shape its identity, past, present, and future. Seminar topics include: the experiences of Indigenous and enslaved populations; the ongoing consequences of settler colonialism; the ways in which culture, class, religion, race, gender, ethnicity, xenophobia, and racism have shaped New Yorkers’ experiences with and within the city; the formation and social organization of New York’s communities; the impact of successive waves of newcomers to the city on urban culture and politics; and the continuing debates over assimilation, cultural retention, and “Americanization.” Extensive reading and writing assignments are enriched by visits to neighborhoods, museums, and historical and cultural sites across the city and the use of demographic, population and other quantitative data as well as qualitative approaches. All classes create public-facing final projects, documenting their research and presenting an aspect of New York City’s diversity.
Learning Goals/Outcomes
Students will:
- Critically examine their own roles in and effect on the communities of New York City.In this seminar, students use tools from the social sciences, from oral history to mapping and participant observation and beyond, to investigate how the diverse people of New York City shape its identity, past, present, and future. Extensive reading and writing assignments are enriched by visits to neighborhoods, museums and historical and cultural sites across the city.
- Demonstrate a comparative understanding of different populations through research and writing about one or more groups or about an area of the city and its shifting population across time.
- Use a variety of approaches (e.g. qualitative, quantitative, or experiential) to studying people in order to come to an understanding of the diversity of people’s experiences in and of the city.
- Understand the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches and methodologies used by the social sciences.
- Increase their understanding of past and present issues including colonialism, migration, immigration, race, and ethnicity by analyzing a variety of sources (current, historical, primary, secondary) and by engaging in active discussion about those issues.
- Present their research to a public audience through a final project that may be completed by small groups or the entire class.
Seminar 3 – Science Forward
Catalogue Description: Science Forward is a skills-based course that focuses on scientific thinking in the context of a variety of different fields of science. We will concentrate on the specific skills that allow one to have good Science
Sense: Number Sense, Data Sense, and Knowledge Sense. The course will address important current issues in science that are relevant to policy and public participation and will include active and experiential learning opportunities to allow students to engage in the work of scientists in the field.
Course Description: Science Forward is a skills-based course that focuses on scientific thinking in the context of different fields of science. The course focuses on the specific skills that allow one to have good Science Sense: Number Sense, Data Sense, and Knowledge Sense. Science Sense includes being able to distinguish science from
non-science; the ability to recognize how people collect and process facts into knowledge; the ability to recognize how a collection of facts becomes knowledge; being able to question and evaluate information that is presented as
scientific; being an informed consumer, evaluator, and practitioner of science. The interdisciplinary topics will serve as the context for honing students’ Science Sense, focusing on important current issues in science that are relevant
to policy and public participation. As a part of understanding how science makes progress, the course will consider scientific ethics, as well as the historical context of scientific discoveries, including discussions of people left out of
this historical record and those harmed in the process of coming to this knowledge. The course requires students to read/watch required science content outside of the classroom and to be prepared to use that content during discussions and activities inside the classroom. The course will include active and experiential learning opportunities, to allow students to engage in the work of scientists in the field
Learning Goals/Outcomes
Students will:
- Leave this course with an appreciation for the similar set of skills employed by scientists in seemingly disparate fields of scientific inquiry and recognize that these skills are not only applicable to their coursework, but also to their daily lives
- Develop a sense of scale and calculate order of magnitude estimates with reasonable assumptions.
- Collect and analyze scientific data taken during activities in the field (including the Macaulay BioBlitz common event) and be able to create and communicate their results visually in a research poster
(presented at a cross-campus common event). - Describe and utilize aspects of good experimental design (replication, reproducibility, proper sample choice, controls, etc.) and scientific inquiry in multiple fields of science.
- Describe how science makes progress and changes through time based upon newly available evidence.
- Distinguish science from pseudoscience using critical thinking skills and employing reasonable skepticism.
- Communicate science to scientific and non-scientific audiences through major assignments.
Macaulay Seminar 4: Shaping the Future of New York City
Catalogue Description: In this seminar, students analyze the interplay of social, economic, and political forces that shape the physical form and social dynamics of New York City. Students will research, investigate, propose, and defend projects to address contemporary issues facing the city and its residents.
Course Description: Having examined a variety of important aspects of the past and present of New York City in the previous seminars, in this fourth and final seminar students analyze the interplay of social, economic, and political forces that shape the physical form and social dynamics of New York City. Students learn to conduct in-depth study of important urban policy and planning issues facing the city, such as homelessness, gentrification, race and racism, education, public health, approaches to criminal justice, mass transit and vehicular congestion, urban ecological preservation and sustainability, environmental justice, and economic development. By studying agents of change – federal, state, and city governments, public authorities, private sector interests, community boards, nonprofit organizations, community activists, and others – students come to appreciate the roles people take or are given in decision-making processes and the ways these roles are affected by historical and contemporary patterns of access, inequality, and the mechanisms of power. Culminating projects of this seminar are presented in a cross-campus conference setting, with small groups of students explaining their investigations of crucial issues affecting the future of New York City, and proposals for addressing them.
Learning Outcomes
Students will:
- Use primary sources, both qualitative and quantitative, as well as scholarly secondary sources, site visits, case studies, and research projects, to understand historical causes of current problems, including the roles of government, community institutions, public policy, and structural inequities.
- Develop the ability to engage in key contemporary debates that shape the future of the city through in- class discussions and presentations, drawing on in-depth investigations and embracing complex multi- faceted analysis.
- Learn to communicate complex ideas in simple and understandable terms, using multiple formats, such as written reports of varying length, professional-quality visual presentations, public speaking, and web- based formats.
- Develop, propose, and defend viable solutions to the city’s challenges.
