Courses

Digital audio workstations (DAW), such as Garage Band, Audacity, and Ableton provide students with a hands-on polyphonic platform for studying and composing contrapuntal music.

The study of non-Western theories of music. This course examines topics in pitch, rhythm, and formal structure in selected music from Africa, Latin America, East Asia, India, and the Middle East. Students will acquire a foundational understanding of the transcription and analysis of non-Western art and folk music, as well as a basic introduction to theory and performance practice by guest artists. The course will culminate in a final analysis project.

An examination of advanced drama therapy theory and research; new approaches that speck to the aesthetic and psychological dimensions of drama therapy. Intended for students planning research for the M.A. thesis.

No course description available.

Of the 8 billion people on the planet today, only about 2 billion rely on supermarkets and grocery stores for their food. The remaining 6 billion rely on street vendors, formal and informal food markets that take place on sidewalks, street corners, alleys, and parking lots. This course examines the cultural aspects and processes related to food provisioning, in a global context.

This course examines the food landscape of New York City. In doing so, it explores the local landscape for buying food, the different paths food takes to reach city residents, and disparities in food access across the five boroughs. New York City's local food environment includes a mixture of supermarket chains, bodegas and corner stores, and many farmers markets. The city is surrounded by productive and fertile farmland in the Hudson Valley and New Jersey. The final defining part of the local food landscape is the wholesale market, Hunts Point.

This course will explore urban food waste management practice and policies through the lens of New York City. Students will examine how waste is generated across food supply chains and gain an understanding of the methods for reducing and managing waste. Topics will include a survey of NYC policies and programs, food waste auditing, strategies for reduction and recovery, diversion infrastructure development, and composting. Students will have an opportunity to apply these methods as they develop a food waste management plan for a NYC business or institution.

Course explores the intersection of gender, identity, culture and food. Students will analyze the influences of sexual identity, human sexuality, sexual orientation and gender on real and perceived cultural views of food and consumption. Topics will address how society assigns gender to food by investigating historical and contemporary texts. Employing advertisements, menus, recipes, cookbooks, television programs, films and packaging, students will critically analyze gendering practices. Theoretical frameworks will include queer theory, early feminist theory, Whiteness theory and emerging male studies and transgender studies.

New York State's 2021 passage of the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act outlined a comprehensive regulatory structure to oversee the licensure, cultivation, production, distribution, sale, and taxation of medical, adult-use, and cannabinoid hemp. Drawing on the experience of other states, New York sought to establish a legal cannabis industry that promoted social justice, public health, and economic development for all New Yorkers. This course examines the implementation of the law, which has been slow and riddled with challenges, and market development.

Course examines the process of agricultural globalization & its effects on the process of rural & agricultural development in the global south. Specifically, analyze the incorporation of agricultural producers & processors in developing countries into the supply chains of global food brands & retailers. The goal is to identify how globalization is shaping institutions that govern agricultural laborers in poor & middle income communities, who are the most vulnerable actors in the global economy

Agricultural policy and some food policy is regulated by The Farm Bill. This course covers the history of the farm bill, starting from its inception via the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933, up to contemporary farm bills. The course will analyze current proposals for agricultural policy, given the contemporary political, economic and agricultural climate.

Super storms, drought, abundant chemical and fertilizer overuse and misuse, ozone depletion, fossil fuel exploitation and a host of bad decisions have contributed the myriad causes of climate change and the shifting landscape of our food system. We have become accustomed to eating whatever we want whenever we want for more than 60 years; it's been a very good culinary life for many. The bill for this reinforcing feedback loop of heavy dependency on petrochemical fertilizers, mono-cropping, shrinking land on which to farm, and the worldwide demand for cheap and abundant food has been proffered; and the truth is we have been writing checks our planet cannot cash and many of the foods we're too fond of (coffee, chocolate, peanuts, almonds, berries) are becoming harder to grow and the predictions that these foods will either lose their flavor or disappear completely. This class will look at the future of food through the lenses of Design Thinking + Systems Thinking addressing these increasingly problematic issues in our food system and how we can dive and design more sustainable modes of operation, using sustainable materials and still have our food taste good. Students will work on small scale projects that tackles this concert at hat the local and global level.

This course examines the role of U.S. food and agricultural policy in perpetuating racial and economic inequality. Topics include agriculture, class and race in the 19th century; farm size and inequality; farm labor; low-wage workers in the food chain; food insecurity; and environmental inequality. The class covers both historical and contemporary social movements that respond to inequities within the food system. By introducing students to historical documents, empirical research, and the academic literature on these and related topics, the course prepares students to effectively evaluate contemporary legal and policy responses to food systems inequality.

This course explores organic agriculture from multiple angles, starting with a historical exploration of organic and finishing with policy approaches to organic. Specific aspects studied include the environmental benefits of organic production systems, the political economy of the US organic regulation, health benefits of organic, and organic consumption and marketing.

This course focuses on contemporary political struggles for control over agrifood systems. The course examines the relationship between the capitalist development of agrifood systems and national sovereignty and focusses on Latin America, a major U.S. agricultural trading partner. Students will review recent research on topics, such as trade integration, land grabbing, food systems financialization, states and contemporary agrarian policies, agroecology, and transnational peasant movements.

Multichannel Media Installation & Performance is a course designed for composers & artists who want to work in a performance or installation context with immersive sound & image technology. The course focuses on software & hardware workflows for the creative applications of multi-channel sound & immersive video for the creation of fixed, generative, reactive, performance-based, & interactive systems that can be experienced in a gallery context or a live performance. Students will develop a semester-length project to use scale & immersion to creative effect. The course will feature regular creative critique as well as an overview of relevant interaction design strategies for creating interactive spaces using sensors & cameras.

Multichannel Media Installation & Performance is a course designed for composers & artists who want to work in a performance or installation context with immersive sound & image technology. The course focuses on software & hardware workflows for the creative applications of multi-channel sound & immersive video for the creation of fixed, generative, reactive, performance-based, & interactive systems that can be experienced in a gallery context or a live performance. Students will develop a semester-length project to use scale & immersion to creative effect. The course will feature regular creative critique as well as an overview of relevant interaction design strategies for creating interactive spaces using sensors & cameras.

Detailed exploration of the aesthetic, technical, and “psychological” skills and tools required for the production of a master recording by a performer/artist other than producer. Producers will learn how to nurture and develop a vision for each recording; establish a creative environment; collaborate with writers and performers; elicit the best performances by the creative and technical team they assemble; realize the best production possible with the tools available; and create a production to which the target audience (and beyond) wishes to continue to listen.

This course will explore the esthetic and technical skills and tools necessary for the production of artistically and commercially successful demonstration recordings of songs. Students will learn how to: establish an environment in which creativity can flourish; elicit the best performances by all involved in a recording; make the best recording possible with the tools available in a given work environment; nurture and develop a vision for each recording; create a recording to which the target audience (and beyond) wishes to continue to listen.