The semester is off to an exciting start at NYU Buenos Aires. Our fall lecture series commenced with a lively workshop on rhythm and percussion. The workshop students participated in an original group improvisation technique involving hand signals and everyday objects and movements. The inventor of this technique is a prize-winning musician and bandleader, Santiago Vazquez. NYU Buenos Aires Professor of Latin American Music, Juan Raffo, has performed with him and arranged for him to lead this workshop. Here NYU Buenos Aires students are making music with this renowned artist:
NYU Buenos Aries Professor Martin Sivak who teaches the Global Media Seminar is on leave this semester because his book on Bolivia’s President Evo Morales is being launched in translation in Beijing. It’s already been translated into several other languages around the world, but this is a significant first foray into Asia for his work. While in China, he also plans to stop in at NYU Shanghai.
In another exciting Fall-only activity, NYU Buenos Aires is participating in a multi-sport tournament (soccer, basketball, volleyball) – a fun-filled weekend event in which our students will compete against Argentine university students at the Universidad de San Andres later this semester. It will be nice to see the violet NYU Buenos Aires jerseys out on the field amid the magical springtime weather in October and November.
We ran two special additions in our Global Orientations course this term:
First, we had a workshop on Learning a Foreign Language called “Switching Hats” where we talked about specific “untranslatable” terms that are fun and that show how learning another language is also exploring another way of seeing life. Our goal was to take the fear out of making mistakes when you are a second-language user, no matter the level. The Language Coordinator was on hand to verify how in language class “perfect” isn’t the goal, but rather the non-native speaker’s “authentic” progress. Our Wellness coordinator joined us for this workshop as well, to create a space to acknowledge the frustration involved in learning a new language. We ended with a letter-writing activity where the students wrote to their future selves about their expectations, fears, hopes, and goals for the semester. We’ll have them open their messages to themselves around Thanksgiving to add a P.S. and then they’ll get them back to take home at end of semester.
Second, we hosted a dynamic and interactive talk with the students about “Academic Interculturality.” The talk’s title comes from an academic article by NYU Buenos Aires language instructor Vera Cerqueiras who led the discussion. The focus was on specific ways in which academic culture is different in the US and Argentina. The talk was designed to prepare students to engage with Argentine professors in the classroom, and for this reason we will now offer a similar workshop to our faculty. A variety of examples of the cultural differences came up during the conversation. Some were anecdotal – US students leaving at the end of class time, and the Argentine professor worrying they didn’t have a good class because no one said goodbye. Some were more illustrative of how learning may be more of a collective endeavor and less about the experience of a private individual in competition with other individuals. To highlight this, Vera Cerqueiras showed a clip of an Argentine university class where the professor returned papers giving feedback / evaluations out loud so that “the advice could help all in the course” and where final grades are posted publicly.
We will continue these new additions to Global Orientations moving forward. Happily oriented, the students are busy with classes, activities, and discovering vibrant Buenos Aires.