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The Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. in Argentina

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Photo Source: United States Embassy in Argentina

“What would Martin Luther King do if he were here today in our Latin America?  With no doubt, he would certainly be denouncing the inequality that affects black populations, claiming for them to have fairer working conditions. He would be inspiring us. He would be making history.”

So writes Anny Ocoró Loango, professor at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences whose scholarship focuses on ethnic-racial issues, and presenter at a panel discussion, The Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., From the Argentine Context, held in early February. Centered around the topic of inclusion, NYU Buenos Aires (NYUBA) hosted the event, which was organized by the United States Embassy in Argentina. 

Convening academic and practitioner perspectives, the panelists also included: Madoda Ntaka, an anti-discrimination attorney; Miriam Gomes, president and co-founder of the Diáspora Africana en la Argentina (DIAFAR) and scholar on the influence of African culture in Argentinian society; and Nengumbi Sukama, founder and executive director of the Argentine Institute for Equality, Diversity and Integration (IARPIDI). From legal, academic, and human rights perspectives, the panelists considered how Dr. King would address the current struggles of Afro-descendants, and how his legacy has informed the work of activists historically and today. An audience of embassy personnel, members of Afro-Argentine advocacy organizations, city of Buenos Aires representatives, as well as members of the NYU community, came together to engage in open-format conversations with the presenters. 

“The space itself allowed for people of color, as myself, to feel heard in a safe room with others that acknowledge the plight of sticking out in a country that has done a lot in the past to white wash certain parts of history,” said Fanny Yayi Bondje, a junior studying away at NYUBA in the Global Liberal Studies program with a concentration in Politics, Human Rights, and Development. “The panelists were vulnerable and shared stories where they have been targeted with racist acts and words by neighbors, coworkers, and even strangers on the street. They have used those experiences to make them fight harder for what’s right and have been inspired by activists all around the world, such as Dr. Martin Luther King. They shared some of their favorite quotes from Dr. King but they also shared the names and legacies of influential Afro Argentines figures, who are often not talked about in history or today. For example, Bernardino Rivadavia, the first Argentine president was of Afro-descent.”

“To talk about leaders and activists who gave their life for equality, justice and integration is a way of disseminating their legacy to our generation and future ones to come,” said South African and Argentine lawyer Madoda Ntaka. Providing pro-bono work on anti discrimination cases to the Afro-descendant community, he hopes to promote justice and increase understanding of racial issues in the City of Buenos Aires. 

Growing up in an environment of activism, Ntaka’s father Simon “Blues” Kotsi Ntaka, was a musician and militant from South Africa. “[He] also fought for the rights of those in the African Diaspora. As an active member of the African National Congress, he dedicated his life to fighting the apartheid system in South Africa until 1965, when he was forced into exile in Argentina. […] So I feel connected with the struggle that many African and Afro-American leaders have undertaken in the US, Africa and the Americas as a whole.”

The topics of inclusion, diversity, belonging, and equity (IDBE), said Site Director Anna Kazumi Stahl, inform some of the events and academic projects at NYUBA, including Fall 2019 Global Equity Fellow Brian Ruiz’s collaboration with three local experts — Sandra Chaga, Cleonice Da Silva, and Maria Isabel Soares — on a workshop on the history, dance, and culinary culture of Afro-Descendants. IBDE is a deeply important issue — indeed a core concern — for us in BA. Many staff and faculty have a heightened experience of such and engage in research and/or activism vis-a-vis this theme. At the same time, we very much want to continue to develop more ways to bring attention to these themes as they play out in this local context.” 

The panelists agreed that one of the major problems today is the lack of education about the long history of Afro-Argentine presence and their contributions to the country. Reflecting on the ideas discussed, Bondje noted, “I can only imagine how much could change if children in schools were taught about them and could see them in this beautiful way, how different Argentina would look today.”

Revealing Traces of a Forgotten Diaspora

Next week, James D. Fernández, site director of NYU Madrid and professor of Spanish Literature and Culture, and Luis Argeo, a journalist and filmmaker from Asturias, Spain, will launch a fascinating multi-media exhibit that takes the viewer on the personal journeys of emigrants who settled in the US generations ago.

From the 23rd of January to the 12th of April, the Invisible Emigrants exhibit will be on hosted at the Centro Cultural Conde Duque in Madrid, Spain. Read more in excerpts from the brochure below, on the exhibit’s blog, Spanish Immigrants in the United States, and Facebook Group (also titled Spanish Immigrants in the United States).


Out of invisibility: about the project

Tens of thousands of working-class Spaniards emigrated to the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Their story is largely unknown, invisible, in both Spain and the US. For the last ten years, [Fernández and Argeo] have been struggling to make this story visible, before it disappears for good. They’ve knocked on doors all over Spain and the US, gaining permission to digitize and analyze family archives, and rescuing from rusty cookie tins and crumbling family albums, the primary sources that chronicle the quiet heroism of the protagonists of this forgotten diaspora.

The project

Now, with the support and leadership of the Fundación Consejo España – EE. UU., Fernández and Argeo are embarking on their most ambitious project to date: serving as the curators of a major, multi-media exhibition, which will open in Madrid in January, 2020 at Madrid’s Centro Cultural Conde Duque, before traveling around Spain and the US. The exhibition will use the photographs, documents, film footage and objects they found in the homes of the descendants of immigrants, in order to reconstruct the textures and trials, the spirit and sentiment, of this fascinating but almost lost chapter in the history of immigration and in the history Spain-US relations.

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Luis Argeo (left) and James Fernández (right)

Photo by: Juan de la Fuenta

 

Behind the scenes: about the producers

 

The Fundación Consejo España – EE. UU. was created in 1997 to strengthen links between Spanish and American society and institutions, to promote mutual understanding and joint ventures of all sorts between the two countries.

Diseñar América: El trazado español de los Estados UnidosDesigning America: Spain’s Imprint in the US was the first major exhibition project created and promoted by the foundation. This prestigious show, which opened at the National Library in Madrid and has traveled to Washington D.C., Houston (TX), Santa Barbara (CA) and San Antonio (TX), allowed the foundation to consolidate experience and “know how” in managing cultural exhibitions on both sides of the Atlantic.

With this experience under our belt, the Fundación – in collaboration with Madrid City Council – has now assumed the production, management, and seed sponsorship of the exhibition Invisible Emigrants, with the firm conviction that this new project will make visible a fascinating and unknown shared history, and advance the core mission of our organization.

To date, the exhibition is sponsored by New York University and the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center Foundation of NYU; the Spanish companies Técnicas Reunidas and Navantia; the United States Embassy in Spain and the Franklin Institute of the University of Alcalá de Henares (University Institute for Research on North America).

10 Years in Tel Aviv

NYU Tel Aviv (NYUTA) marked its 10th anniversary earlier this month with a series of events that brought together faculty, students, and administrators from across NYU’s global network, as well as alumni, and members of NYU’s leadership team, including President Andrew Hamilton, and several members of NYU’s Board of Trustees. On November 10th, participants toured Tel Aviv and the surrounding area, and also had the opportunity to meet with NYUTA lecturers, students, and staff.

The group also visited the offices of one of NYUTA’s key internship partners, The Floor, a financial technology company located at the Tel Aviv stock exchange where they met with co-founder, Moises Cohen. Deyang Sun, a senior CAS major in Economics and student at NYUTA, and intern at The Floor, presented to the group his experience working with an international team to create an innovative tool that fosters connections between big banks and startups offering sought-after telecom and cybersecurity expertise. He explained, “this project is very meaningful because on the one hand, it increases the efficiency of the banks, and on the other hand, it also creates business for the Israeli startups.” Having studied away at three of NYU’s global locations, Sun noted that Israel’s thriving entrepreneurial and fintech arena was one of the reasons he chose to weave a fourth study away experience into the final year of his degree. 

The tour, led by Benjamin Hary, Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and Site Director of NYUTA, and Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, Associate Vice Chancellor for Global Network Faculty Planning, and professor in NYU’s departments of History and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, led a walking tour of Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard, the old city in Jaffa, and then finished the afternoon at Caesarea, where NYUTA has launched a new program in archaeology. In the evening, the group attended a reception with over 200 members of the NYU Alumni Club of Israel and local partners at the Peres Center for Peace and Innovation in Jaffa. 

On day two, the site hosted an international symposium, entitled International Higher Education in the Digital Age. Bringing together leading scholars, educators and administrators from Israel and across NYU’s global network, more than 130 attendees heard from and engaged with speakers who analyzed a number of critical challenges facing higher education today, including diversity, equity, and inclusion, academic freedom, and global mobility. The presentations brought to the fore “why we are doing Global Education”, explained Hary, and discussions “tackled difficult questions such as, how do you teach contested issues in the Global classroom? or how do you deal with the new challenges of growing diversity in the academy?”

Highlighting the shared goals of a liberal arts education and a global education, Hamilton pointed out that, “[t]he mission of every major US university is to teach as many excellent students as it can, to create new knowledge through research, and to provide a foundational liberal arts education. The most important thing to understand about global education is that it is in furtherance of these goals. It’s not a diversion. It’s a new development in the way we fulfill our mission.”

Those in attendance included representatives from many Israeli universities — including Tel Aviv University, Hebrew University, Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art, and the Technion — as well as from other local partners such as organizations hosting internships for NYUTA students, the NYU Alumni Club of Israel, and more.

A Half Century in Paris: A Look into the Past and a Glimpse of the Future

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NYU Paris 50th Anniversary announcement.

To celebrate its 50th anniversary last month, NYU Paris held a day of commemorative events designed both to provide a view into the past, and to ponder the site’s future, including the potential for new academic opportunities and collaborations. The event brought together key figures involved with different phases of the site’s growth, current and past faculty, students, and staff as well as colleagues from American universities with programs in France,  including the American University in Paris, the University of Chicago, Brown University, and Columbia University. 

Linda Mills, Vice Chancellor and Senior Vice Provost for Global Programs and University Life, kicked off the day by acknowledging the site’s history, and linking the past to the present. “As the second oldest site in NYU’s global network, NYU Paris has been a defining feature of our global identity and has become a key element of what makes NYU the leading global institution it is today,” said Mills. “NYU Paris is a beautiful expression of what the world needs – one that is inextricably tied to its environment, steeped in its host city’s culture and context, offering unparalleled academic and scholarly experiences to a wide range of faculty and students.”

In attendance were several individuals who have played critical roles in the establishment and operation of NYU Paris over the past 50 years: Tom Bishop, professor of French Literature, Thought and Culture, and a driving force in the creation of NYU Paris; Judith Miller, professor of French Literature, who served as Director of the NYU Center in Paris from 1998 to 2003; Benoît Bolduc, also a professor of French Literature, and the Director of NYU Paris from 2015 – 2018; and the current site director, Alfred Galichon, professor of Economics and Mathematics

 
NYU Paris is a beautiful expression of what the world needs - one that is inextricably tied to its environment, steeped in its host city’s culture and context, offering unparalleled academic and scholarly experiences to a wide range of faculty and students Linda Mills

Recalling the early history of the site, talks during the opening panel focused on memories and reflections on the founding of NYU Paris in 1969, at a time when it was less common to cross an international border while pursuing a degree and talk of establishing NYU’s global network was still some 40 years away.  Miller, Bolduc, and Galichon, traced the academic roots of the site in the study of French language and culture

NYU Paris opened its doors during a “glorious time for French studies, “ said Miller, “many post-war thinkers had not yet been translated to English,” so it was important to understand French. “Knowledge has since shifted from the philosophical terrain to a way of thinking that acknowledges global and digital interactions.” Reflecting this expansion, during her tenure as site director, NYU Paris opened its Anglophone program, “welcoming students who were not French majors but became French minors.”  On the experience of learning a new language and culture in situ, Miller explained, “you learn from a “different” world around you, and have to figure out how to live with it.” 

The panelists emphasized the importance of shaping the minds of global citizens engaging in the local terrain. “We’re sending students to Paris, not the moon,” said Bolduc  “and we need to ensure our academic programming reflects the unique nature of that experience.” Shedding light on current academic and cultural initiatives, Galichon detailed “the expanding academic opportunities at the site, including course offerings that have resulted in new populations of students being drawn to the study of the French language. A good example is computer science students who have traditionally been less likely to even take a course in France. As a result of earning credits for their major in Paris, some computer science students have found that their immersive experiences in France have sparked new interests, with some choosing to complete minors in French. And the number of these types of students is increasing.” 

 

In a panel later in the day,The Next 50 Years of NYU Paris: What’s Next?, Sana Odeh, Clinical Professor of Computer Science, explained that “Paris’ position as a hub for mathematical and scientific inquiry, combined with the flourishing entrepreneurial culture draws global talent and has created a range of opportunities. Studying in a world capital with an inspiring environment, and taking [Computer Science] special topics and high-level courses makes NYU Paris a wonderful location for computer science students.” 

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NYU Trustee and President’s Global Council Chair Chandrika Tandon performs at the celebration.

Galichon also highlighted upcoming initiatives in store for NYU Paris. “In collaboration with colleagues in the French department, and following the masterclass format developed for doctoral students, a new set of masterclasses are on the horizon,” he said, accompanied by panelists who included Phillip Usher, Associate Professor and Department Chair, French Literature, Thought and Culture, François Noudelmann, Professor of French Literature and Director of the Center for French Language and Cultures, and Linda Mills. “French faculty from New York will come once per year,” said Usher, “to deliver short-term intensive courses related to their research. The topics will rotate each semester and the first course will cover cinema, myth, and politics. Increasing engagement with the broader community, enrollment will be opened up to local PhD students from French universities.” 

In conjunction with the celebration, photos that are only rarely viewed outside of the archives were on full display, including those documenting the student experience, staff over the years, and trips taken by the NYU Paris community. The exhibit also included shots of NYU Paris literary events and avant garde activities featuring Eugène Ionesco, and other well known French writers and politicians.The exhibition also included student works, including student-shot videos captured on iPhones in an experimental film class.

The day ended with a cocktail reception at Hotel des Arts et Métiers, which included guests such as NYU President Andrew Hamilton, Gene Jarrett, Dean of the College of Arts and Science, Jeffrey Lehman, Vice Chancellor, NYU Shanghai, Antonio Merlo, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science, and NYU Trustee and President’s Global Council Chair Chandrika Tandon.

Caesarea Maritama: Exploring Ancient Coastal Ruins

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Ruins of Caesarea

A new program at NYU Tel Aviv will allow students the rare opportunity to explore a focal point of regional and local archaeological attention. Founded by King Herod in the first century BCE on the site of a Phoenician and Greek trade post, the site, Caesarea Maritima, is positioned between Tel Aviv and Haifa (about 35 miles north of Tel Aviv). Situated in what was designated a national park in 2011, the site is comprised of ancient harbor ruins, and the complex has revealed a vast array of material culture manifestations, including architectural elements, ceramics, inscriptions, jewelry, and bones.

The program, which enrolled its inaugural cohort this fall, was developed through a collaboration between  NYU, NYU Tel Aviv, the Israel Antiquities Authority, and Tel Aviv University, with funding provided by the Edmond de Rothschild Foundation, for the purpose of supporting the study of Caesarea from a broad international scholarly perspective. “The NYUTA Program in Archeology trains students in various theoretical, methodological and practical aspects of the archaeological discipline, using Caesarea as a case study,” said Benjamin Hary, site director of NYU Tel Aviv and professor at the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies. “As part of their studies, students in the program take two courses in Archeology: Ancient Israel: History and Archeology and a Seminar in Archeological Methods.” 

Caesarea allows students to study the “geographical, economic and socio-political facets in antiquity, far beyond the scope of the mere material culture manifestations..." Benjamin Hary

The program’s students come from all three of NYU’s degree-granting “portal” campuses, and represent a range of disciplines, said Hary. “One student, from New York, is an anthropology major, but then we have a psychology major from Abu Dhabi, who is especially interested in the Hebrew Bible and in early Christianity.”

Students are able to gain a deep understanding of urban life at Caesarea through examination of physical artifacts and the rich corpus of available research “illuminating numerous aspects of the site and its inhabitants” said Hary. Ultimately, Hary said, Caesarea allows students to study the “geographical, economic and socio-political facets in antiquity, far beyond the scope of the mere material culture manifestations – the site is a laboratory for exercising several archaeological methods.”

Multi-modal in nature, the program,“combines frontal lectures with tours of major sites of the Roman period, including Jerusalem and Beit Shean in Israel and Jarash in Jordan,” explained Dr. Yifat Thareani, the Academic Principal Investigator of the Foundation’s grant and Lecturer with NYU Tel Aviv.  “In the framework of this seminar,” she said, “the students gain insight from local and international experts in aspects of the Roman Period, such as imperial control strategies, urban layout, trade, local elites and minorities, ethnic identity, cultural ecology from NYU, the Israel Antiquities Authority, and Tel Aviv University. Meetings with local specialists in ancient pottery, archaeozoology, inscriptions and more, enable an understanding of just how specific pieces of material culture and archaeological remains are processed, reconstructed, and analyzed.”

Students will present their findings from their semester exploring Caesarea at two international conferences. Thareani said “one will be held in Caesarea in 2020 and be open to the Israeli public and international academics from Europe and the United States, as well as locally renowned academics. The other will be held in New York in 2021, most likely in the form of workshops and public lectures.”

Commedia dell’Arte and the Art of Invention

 

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The 2019 cohort performing.

Devin Shaket

“It was enlightening to do work with Commedia dell’Arte, a centuries old style of performance, and then use it as a pathway to help us grow as actors in the modern world,” says Ian LoCascio, a rising senior, Tisch School of the Arts, of his experience studying this summer at NYU Florence. Having toured with a Commedia group early in his career, James Calder, head of movement, Tisch Graduate Acting Department, and founder of the Commedia in Florence program, created a forum for learning the inventive theatrical form in its birthplace.

With a long and rich cultural heritage, Commedia dell’Arte (comedy of professional players), is an Italian theatrical tradition that originated in the Middle Ages. It is a genre, explained Calder, that combines mask making, circus skills, and lazzi (bits and specialty acts) and is still visible in the “modern-day theatrical and cinematic works of Dario Fo and Roberto Benigni.” An integral part of Italy’s collective imagination, imagery rooted in Commedia, said LoCascio, “pop[s] up everywhere from museums to souvenir shops.”

A defining feature of Commedia is its focus on character driven narratives in comedic situations, and masks represent this concept, said Calder. During the summer program at La Pietra, students learn to create their own using traditional techniques, under the guidance of sculptor-in-residence, Joan Harmon. “When we did work with the Commedia masks, we were embracing the same characters and scenarios that have been associated with those masks for centuries,” says LoCascio. “ We did not, however, merely stop there and only approach the Commedia work from a classical perspective. A heavy emphasis of the program was taking the brutally honest, gleefully imperfect humanity at the root of those Commedia characters and channeling that honesty and vulnerability in the work that we do with any text.” Students  applied Commedia’s highly theatrical approach in “nuanced ways while acting texts from contemporary television in front of the camera,” explained LoCascio.

“To do this program anywhere would be amazing, but I don't think it would be anywhere near as life changing if it weren't in Italy"
Ian LoCascio

Unlike traditional theater’s use of a memorized and rehearsed script, Commedia’s plot is chosen first and then the actors develop the story in spontaneous ways as they play off of one another, said Calder. A successful performance hinges on one’s ability, explained LoCascio, to “embrace discomfort and uncertainty” while quickly building upon the unforeseen and transforming any given stage props and coperformers’ dialogue into one’s own scenario. 

Calder noted that it is the uniqueness of each performance that generates a sense of excitement among the audience, as they follow characters through a story. And the inventive nature of the performance calls attention to the actors themselves as they navigate obstacles that arise during the act. There is a sense of uncertainty, he said, as the Commedia troupe attempts to steer the performance to a successful and entertaining finale.

This form of acting allows performers to weave together, often satirically and polemically, old texts and current social issues. As LoCascio explained, “with our final Commedia performance of “Buffo Tartuffo” (funny truffle) – a riff on Moliere’s play “Tartuffe” – we took a very old text and approached it from a modern perspective, using it to address such highly relevant topics as abuse of power and the #MeToo Movement.” Turning to the early history of Commedia when sensitive topics were not allowed in the theater, improvised performances could avoid censorship, and enabled open discussion about social and political issues.

“In addition to plays performed for the Florentine community on La Pietra’s amphitheater, the Continuum Theater stage, students are also involved with a summer theater festival.” For over a decade, Calder has directed the La Pietra Summer Theatre Festival. Sculptors create huge masks and giant puppets and students join a procession through the town, he explained. Delivering works, such as the Odyssey and the Iliad, in ancient courtyards, accented by the talents of the many renowned artists who join the program every summer, the festival has “quite a regional and expat following,” said Calder 

Further enriching the program, a grant from the Dean of Tisch, Allyson Green, said Calder, has brought the Continuum Company, a group of Tisch graduate acting alumni and other artists, to Florence to develop classical and new works. Artists-in-residence this summer include many award winning alumni, such as Nina Arianda, a Tony Award winner for Venus in Fur; Sterling K. Brown and Susan Kelechi Watson from This is Us; and André Holland from Moonlight, Selma, High Flying Bird, and The Knick. For the past 13 years, he explained, undergraduate students have worked alongside the alumni in La Pietra’s immersive and intimate learning environment, providing “an experience that isn’t possible in New York.” The alumni also offer, said LoCascio, “unfiltered insight into what life is like as a working actor.”

Studying Commedia, explained Locascio, and learning a style of acting “radically” different from his training at his primary studio in New York, the Stella Adler Studio of Acting, which is very intellectual and heavily text-based, pushed him to “embrace uncertainty. With Jim and Jacob’s [teacher of acting, stage presence, Commedia dell’Arte and clown] ceaseless support, encouragement, and provocation, I challenged myself in entirely new ways and think that I am a far better and bolder actor for it.”

“Living in a new place with a new group of people, many of whom I did not know before,” LoCascio said, “and learning a whole new approach to acting was such a rewarding combination.” He added that “to do this program anywhere would be amazing, but I don’t think it would be anywhere near as life changing if it weren’t in Italy.” 

Leaving a Bright Spot: Practicing Therapeutic Arts with Underserved International Populations

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Interns lead a painting session in Ghana.

Stemming from her own experiences delivering art therapy workshops around the world, Ikuko Acosta, director of NYU Steinhardt’s Graduate Art Therapy program, and clinical associate professor, wanted to offer her students the invaluable experience of practicing art therapy internationally.

More than a decade ago, Acosta established a global internship program at Steinhardt to provide “the opportunity for students to develop racial and cultural self-awareness, work with diverse communities, hone critical thinking skills, and explore the role of art therapy in another culture.” Says alumna Krystal Atwood of her decision to enroll in the internship in Buenos Aires, “I wanted to learn everything I could to provide the most nuanced and culturally fluent art therapy services possible to a range of client populations.”

Coordinated in collaboration with several of NYU’s global sites, Acosta’s interns have practiced therapeutic arts in a wide array of foreign settings, including Florence, which welcomes its third cohort in July 2019. Some of this year’s group will serve a geriatric population that has worked with two different intern cohorts. Acosta recalled that this population was especially receptive to engagement in creative activities, noting “their facial expressions became cheerful, moods were boosted, and their social interactions improved.” In Accra, Ghana, students have worked at a rehabilitation center for young men with mental, cognitive and physical disabilities. A grouping, Acosta said, that contrasts with “facilities in the US where patients are usually separated based on the nature of their disabilities.” The men are also provided with “job training and various types of skills to survive in society” explained Acosta. During the three weeks that the men worked with interns, she emphasized that “they are not treated in a clinical sense, yet a very positive change can be seen in their self-esteem due to their increased ability to express themselves freely without being judged. Their general attitudes became more positive.”

Returning to NYU’s global sites offers faculty the opportunity to observe the long-term impacts of programs. In Ghana, when the van entered the driveway to the rehabilitation center one year later, Acosta and her students were greeted by shouts of “art therapy!” “And,” she added, “the young men went right back into making art as if they had done so yesterday.” When returning to the geriatric facility in Florence two years later, the demeanor of the residents immediately became “uplifted,” and they “even remembered the names of some interns from prior years,” providing “evidence,” that the “experiences were etched in their memories.” Acosta says that “while what we do may be little, at a basic human level, the experience leaves a bright and memorable spot in their minds.”

“There is an amazing resilience that each location reveals. The internship leads to a questioning of one’s values in a way that can’t be gained inside a classroom." Ikuko Acosta

Indeed, Acosta notes that “the program is not geared toward addressing mental illness directly” and that “it would be unrealistic to treat a patient in three weeks.” Furthermore, she explained that “applying a western concept of art therapy to non-western societies can create tension with local attitudes around mental illness. And therapeutic techniques that are not adapted to the culture situate the therapist as a colonialist.” But while mental illness is viewed in various ways around the world, she emphasized that “the symptoms and behavioral manifestations of mental and psychological disturbances are very similar.  What differs are cultural attitudes and treatment.” Yet she has observed that art therapy brings together commonalities in international settings. “Art is universal and so too is human suffering.”

Regardless of location, Acosta says, art therapy students work to build a “human connection.” In every country in which the course has been held, Acosta has seen “students establish relationships despite not speaking the local language. They learn to become highly receptive and attuned to the subtleties of body language and other non-verbal cues.” She added that her students “thoroughly enjoy getting to know each client’s personality beyond his/her disability through creative communication.” Inevitably, explained Acosta, “basic human bonds are formed during experiences that are not bound by a singular form of expression. Connecting in this way is a universal phenomenon.”

Other skills that students quickly acquire, said Acosta, are “flexibility and adaptability, because their clinical training does not translate directly in foreign locations.” She went on to say that “outside of the US, concepts of boundaries between patient and client are much different, particularly those that are physical – it is common and natural for patients to openly and physically express affection to their therapists in many cultural contexts. Another example is corporal punishment, which seems to be an acceptable form of discipline in some countries.” Therapists in the US, Acosta explained, are trained to report signs of “abuse,” so it can be “difficult to set aside feelings of confusion about roles and responsibilities during the internship.”

Reflecting on her experiences in Buenos Aires, Atwood explained that she “felt humbled by the grace and dignity with which Dr. Acosta acknowledged our interpersonal struggles while maintaining hope for all of the involved parties and, ultimately, guiding the student interns toward providing life-changing art therapy services to the clients.” The level of care delivered by the interns is possible, says Acosta, because they “very quickly, learn to take a humanistic perspective and adapt to local mores.” “Interns observe, learn, and respect the host country and are not there to negate or impose their cultural norms,” she explained, and added that “after we leave, they resume their own lives, yet are instilled with memories of the brief but undeniable human connections that we all shared.”

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Creating stick puppets in Florence.

“Students also learn to adapt their planning process for clinical sessions,” said Acosta, as “they develop activities appropriate to the population […] and seek out locally available art materials.” During an early iteration of the program in India, coordinated by Cross-Cultural Solutions, a New York-based non-profit that provides volunteer service to communities around the world, Acosta said her students “found beautiful textiles with which they made dolls with women at a shelter for victims of domestic violence. They also collected many found objects from the streets, which they incorporated into a piece of artwork.” In Florence, a capital of the art world, “students find low cost materials at art stores and unusual items from junk shops.” Acosta elaborated that “these experiences too contribute to students’ creative growth and help them to become more flexible and less confined in their practice of art therapy.”

“Through exposure to how others survive amidst adversity,” Acosta noted, “with very limited resources and significant hardship, students gain a sense of humbleness.” For Atwood, her work with refugees and asylum seekers in Buenos Aires provided a glimpse into individuals’ experiences – many had fled war and violence, and struggled to live with uncertainty in the confines of refugee centers. During the internship, explained Krystal, she saw increases in “self-efficacy and a reduction of isolation as they connected with other refugees and asylum seekers in art therapy groups.”

“There is an amazing resilience that each location reveals,” said Acosta. “The internship leads to a questioning of one’s values in a way that can’t be gained inside a classroom. And that is essential as a therapist because personal value systems can’t be brought into clinical sessions.”

A Lab for Pedagogical Innovation: Doctoral Masterclasses at NYU Paris

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Galichon delivering a coding session

Paris hosted its first-ever master class, math+econ+code Masterclass on Optimal Transport, Choice and Matching Models, delivered by Alfred Galichon, NYU Paris site director, and professor, Department of Economics and Mathematics, Courant Institute, in late June.

Interdisciplinary in nature, the five-day course focused on “models of demand, matching models, and optimal transport methods, with various applications pertaining to labor markets, the economics of marriage, industrial organization, matching platforms, networks, and international trade from the crossed perspectives of theory, empirics and computation.”

Interestingly, it is Paris’ world renowned cooking schools, such as Le Cordon Bleu and L’Atelier des Chefs, that inspired Galichon to take a new approach to the delivery of coding lessons. Galichon says his approach was informed by “scientific-context-based learning principles, where theoretical tools are introduced just in time, as needed, at the point in time when they are called for by the specific application.” Under this model, much as culinary students would in a kitchen, Galichon’s students essentially take on the role of apprentices, and over time, move from their position at the periphery of a learning community to the center as they build their expertise.

Galichon explained that the course starts with a presentation of “the raw ingredients to the student, which in this case, means the data, such as the characteristics of consumers and of products.” Following this, he describes to the class “what we will cook, which in this case means the type of matching or pricing problems we will solve.” To make this delivery format possible, Galichon emphasized that “[t]he time-consuming data preparations” – the tasks of the sous chef – “have been done off-line. I show the ideas on the whiteboard, and then I cook/code them myself in front of the students,” explains Galichon. “The students then code themselves, inspired by what they saw.”

Galichon grounds his pedagogy in “a ‘learning-by-coding’ philosophy,” which involves creating code “in front of the students rather than showing them lines of pre-written code.” In this way, students actively learn in-situ, rather than via a scripted method that relies heavily on the passive visualization of code and other course content. Delivering immersive courses, he says, has allowed him to be “quite creative and test new pedagogical ideas that may apply to other courses of this type.”

The curriculum, said Galichon, was constructed to serve the needs of two core groups of doctoral candidates. “There is a big demand from students in economics who look to acquire coding skills, and who want to develop a deeper understanding of the mathematical structure behind the economic models,” he said, “and at the same time from students in math/computer students who seek to understand better the economic applications of their tools.” Crafted around these requirements, the “course provides students with the conceptual tools and coding skills in an apprenticeship philosophy.”

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The masterclass quickly attracted “a wonderful mix of students,” said Galichon, from quantitative disciplines, including economics, math, computer science, and engineering. In addition to students from NYU, the inaugural cohort comprised international enrollees from Faculté des sciences de Tunis, and Harvard as well as others from “very strong [local] institutions” such as Sciences Po, and Ecole Polytechnique/Ensae.

The international nature of the masterclass is also part of the linguistic aspects of learning to code. The course presents several different types of coding languages simultaneously, lending to a sense of multiliteracy within the learning environment. This is accomplished, Galichon explained, with “the presence of ‘veteran students’ who, after the lectures, present the course material coded in other programming languages than the one I am presenting.” He added that “These are among the novel ideas that I will test in Paris, which will thus serve as a lab for pedagogical innovation.”