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Global Programs Booklist

Posted on April 15, 2024 by Katie L

Inspired by the first NYU Bookstore display collaboration between the Office of Marketing Communications and the Office of Global Programs, this list of books representing NYU’s global locations promises to broaden your perspective and enrich your knowledge.

NYU Abu Dhabi

Temporary People
By Deepak Unnikrishnan

The skylines of Abu Dhabi and Dubai are recognizable around the world by their resplendent glittering towers—but how did they get there? Deepak Unnikrishnan, an Indian-born writer raised in the United Arab Emirates and associate arts professor of literature and creative writing at NYU Abu Dhabi, knows the answer: a foreign labor force was brought in to construct them. Using a series of clever and surreal linked stories, Unnikrishnan gives voice to a humanitarian crisis that doesn’t get the attention it deserves.

NYU Accra

The Hundred Wells of Salaga
By Ayesha Harruna Attah

Based on a true story, The Hundred Wells of Salaga tells the tale of two women from very different backgrounds whose lives converge in an unexpected way. It’s a novel that will entangle you emotionally, while offering you crucial insight into precolonial Ghana, particularly the slave trade and its impact on a people.

NYU Berlin

No Photos on the Dance Floor! Berlin 1989–Today
Edited by Heiko Hoffmann and Felix Hoffmann

History books offer what we think is a full story, but this photography book provides a peek into the city’s after-hours culture through the club scene that blossomed in 1989 after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It’s not only a delightful visual romp but also a history book in its own right, telling the story of a city in transformation, one party at a time.

NYU Buenos Aires

The Aleph and Other Stories
By Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges might seem like an obvious choice for Argentina—for a country that produced so many famous writers, he is arguably the most famous. Still, who can deny this selection? The brilliant, inventive tales of The Aleph and Other Stories will surprise and stimulate, and they are must-reads for diving into Argentine culture. Borges, after all, makes magic happen in the most unexpected ways.

NYU Florence

The Monster of Florence book cover featuring a close-up image of Giambologna's The Rape of the Sabine sculpture

The Monster of Florence: A True Story
By Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi

The Monster of Florence has developed a bit of a cult following in recent years, and for good reason—it’s a wild ride. American Douglas Preston moved to Florence with his family and quickly discovered that their olive grove was the site of one of Italy’s most infamous double murders. As he works with investigative journalist Mario Spezi, a Florentine, to get closer to the truth, things really begin to spiral. The Monster of Florence is a propulsive thriller that offers valuable, and often shocking, insight into the Italian justice system.

NYU London

White Teeth
By Zadie Smith

White Teeth is a rare novel that is entertaining while simultaneously layered with so much richness, one might want to read it all over again as soon as it’s over. Starting with two unlikely friends whose stories blossom into a poignant yet funny family saga, Zadie Smith’s debut novel keenly witnesses the immigrant experience in London, traveling to other continents as well while navigating the relationship between tradition and change.

NYU Los Angeles

Slow Days, Fast Company book cover featuring a distorted image of a woman

Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, the Flesh, and L.A.
By Eve Babitz

This slim book offers stories as wild and wanton as Los Angeles itself. Unapologetically hedonistic, Slow Days, Fast Company is also a clever, windy ride through the Los Angeles of the 1960s and 1970s. It has all the usual Angeleno archetypes, but Eve Babitz elevates them with her incisive and acerbic insights into life in Hollywood. Isn’t it funny that, decades later, so much has changed but so much remains the same?

NYU Madrid

Ghosts of Spain book cover featuring images of Spain

Ghosts of Spain: Travels Through Spain and Its Silent Past
By Giles Tremlett

Worth a read to understand a post-Franco Spain, Ghosts of Spain is a well-rounded, curious, and admittedly fun romp through the country, albeit prompted by the author’s questions about its devastating civil war. British author Giles Tremlett combines keen cultural reporting with memoir and quirky sidebars that add levity to what begins as a serious interrogation. While it’s intellectually critical, it’s also a love letter to Spain. After all, there’s a reason Spain is Tremlett’s adopted country.

NYU Paris

The Years book cover featuring an image of a woman looking at the viewer with the silhouette of a person looking down a hallway

The Years
By Annie Ernaux

Annie Ernaux’s whole oeuvre is masterful, but many critics cite The Years, first published in 2008, as her magnum opus. In this brilliant collage of a memoir, Nobel Prize winner Ernaux examines her life and the generation that she grew up in, favoring “we” over “I.” The result is a personal history tied to the collective experience of a generation in France during the 20th century. Ernaux weaves her memories into a story that offers cultural notes on topics from consumerism and immigration to unemployment and the threat of nuclear war.

NYU Prague

Havel: A Life book cover featuring an image of Václev Havel with his hand atop his head

Havel: A Life
By Michael Žantovský

In many ways, Václav Havel’s life mirrors the zeitgeist of Prague: it’s political, literary, antiauthoritarian, surreal, and somehow, even at its most serious moments, darkly humorous. If that sounds like a lot, it’s because Havel, like the city itself, was a complex figure. Michael Žantovský was a trusted friend, so this biography reads as an intimate and true portrait (faults and all) of a man loyal to his people, his values, and his art. Žantovský succeeds in showing the many dimensions of the iconoclast—playwright, political dissident, prisoner, president—who, in the end, was just as human as the rest of us.

NYU Shanghai

Shanghai Future: Modernity Remade
By Anna Greenspan

This brilliant book contextualizes China’s largest and most cosmopolitan city through the lens of modernity. Author Anna Greenspan, an associate professor of contemporary global media at NYU Shanghai, reexamines the changing landscape of the city as it steps well into the 21st century and takes its place on the world stage.

NYU Sydney

Mirror Sydney: An Atlas of Reflections
By Vanessa Berry

A fun and unexpected romp, Mirror Sydney takes us on a tour of the harborside city via engaging essays and clever hand-illustrated maps. Based on a blog Vanessa Berry started more than a decade ago, Mirror Sydney is clearly more than a mere guidebook—it’s too much fun to be that typical. Moreover, it tends to direct the reader to the kinds of places the average tourist wouldn’t care to know about or explore anyway.

NYU Tel Aviv

The Bibliomaniacs: Tales from a Tel Aviv Bookseller
By J.C. Halper

On Allenby Street in Tel Aviv, J.C. Halper—originally from New Jersey but now an Israeli for four-plus decades—runs the city’s most popular secondhand bookshop, containing a dazzling 60,000 books. And in 2022 he published this book of clever, often funny short stories from the point of view of a shop owner. While the stories are allegedly fiction, one can’t help but wonder if we’re learning more about real locals than the author lets on.

NYU Washington, DC

Lost in the City
By Edward P. Jones

It’s a joy to read anything by Edward P. Jones, the gifted, Pulitzer Prize–winning writer. His debut collection of short stories, Lost in the City, is no exception and first cemented his literary reputation. These 14 tales tell the everyday encounters and struggles of Black citizens in Washington, DC. But Jones has a gift for making even the most mundane situation meaningful, and his rich, textured stories give weight to life’s most quotidian moments as viewed through the lens of the Black experience in the nation’s capital.

Written by Marti Trgovich

On Art and Diasporic Aesthetics: The Art Scenes of Berlin and New York City

Posted on February 5, 2024 by Maxine P

Kulturbrauerei complex on a day with blue sky

One of NYU Berlin’s academic centers is located in the Kulturbrauerei complex, pictured here.

Cecilia Bien, a Global Research Initiative Fellow in Berlin, discusses the differences and similarities between two cosmopolitan art scenes, Berlin’s and New York City’s, as well as her thoughts on what makes art considered art with Nina Katchadourian, a clinical professor on the NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study faculty.

Their conversation has been condensed for clarity.

Cecilia: I’m interested in what is not yet framed as art. I’m interested in attitudes, the impulse. I am thinking about how to show “marginal” work in a contemporary context without the feeling of it being used for representation or shown in a way that has to be overexplained.

Nina: When you compare Berlin to New York City, what are the differences or similarities you see in fashion, style, or haircuts, for example, or how people walk down the street?

Cecilia: Reference to club culture doesn’t happen the same way in New York City as it does here. Fashion in Berlin subscribes way less to trends in favor of individuality—even if it’s ugly. I find that refreshing because maybe it means that the hierarchy of taste is always being questioned.

There are different codes here. A lot of the styles in Berlin seem to be more lived. I also see how subcultures can complicate expectations of diasporas. On the flip side, I feel like a lot of what gets absorbed by the cultural industry in Berlin is appropriated from what’s been happening for a while in New York City.

Nina: We’ve talked in a lot of different contexts about when something from the periphery gets absorbed into the mainstream. I think you have a good antenna for this and that it’s deeply interesting to you. How can you tell when something like this is happening?

Cecilia: Recently, I’ve been focusing on when and why certain tastes change. When an incisive political message gets diluted, the aesthetics attached to it become normalized. I think about what the term “diasporic aesthetics” means to people who understand things through representation. Diaspora is so layered and complex, but it seems to be becoming a euphemism for a certain kind of woke taste different enough from the norm but only with a certain kind of difference being accepted. It cannot feel bourgeois, but it must be digestible though not necessarily understood, and it must be appreciated without being deemed “trashy.” When I hear such aesthetics embraced as “beautiful,” I wonder what makes them so and which cultural tides had to change or switch course for them to be considered that way.

Nina: I’ve always known you as someone who thinks from two positions: a maker and a critical analyst of systems and institutions. When you think from those two positions, does one enhance the other? I know you’ve recently done some work as a curator. Do you think curating is a type of making?

Cecilia: I think it can be because it’s a way to conceptualize the making of an idea. I guess curating is also the making of an exhibition or the making of an argument. That said, making an exhibition about a so-called diasporic group does not count, for me, as the making of an argument. For example, I am no longer an Asian American outside of America. At least, this is how I feel I am perceived here. There are countless versions and political positions and reasons why people move from place to place, so how can you group them all by a prescribed cultural background? It’s quite superficial and certainly not enough to base a concept on.

Nina: What are some examples of an exhibition addressing a “vague diaspora,” and when do you think it works and when do you think it doesn’t?

Cecilia: A lot of times these exhibitions are accompanied by super research-based texts, which I often have a hard time with even though I also write some myself. Sometimes, I’m not sure what the relationship should be to the artwork, like whether it should exist in parallel as a complementary work or whether it should walk the viewer through, because a lot of times it is hard or impossible to place the work in an art historical context or within a canonical framework, which is what many viewers going to a museum or institution might expect. And still, the curatorial choices for non-Western art are also often from a Western-educated lens.

So these rather heavy-handed texts might be trying to contextualize the works in a new temporality but often come off as dry justifications of why the work is allowed to be there. There’s something slightly insecure in the overcompensation, and it feels a little like it’s not completely sure of what it should be doing.

At the moment, I work at an archive that is a collection of people globally reacting to and rejecting the canon and art history, a global network which came to be called Fluxus. In Prague Milan Knížák’s Aktual Walk considers everything between how to wear a garment and walk down the street to how to interact provocatively. This kind of work is impossible to pin down as an art object, as something that can be placed in a museum, or something understood purely by looking.

So it’s interesting to try to give these works significance without placing them in categories structured by a hierarchical order. Every day, we deal with questions of how to contextualize collective action outside of art history, how to show what is not necessarily called art, as art, and whether we should do it at all when most of what was created was ephemeral and meant for impermanence. But I still want to curate a show with Knížák’s drawings and sketches and correspondences between the artists in the collection as a way to show the very attitude that we’re talking about right now.

Repurposed and edited with permission by the NYU Berlin blog

Cecilia Bien

Cecilia Bien writes and organizes programs in Berlin, for artists as well as para-institutions such as SAVVY Contemporary and Archivio Conz, a Fluxus archive. Previously working in applied art and fashion contexts in New York City, she came to Berlin to complete studies in art and cultural theory, recenter her critique of dominant narratives, and understand her own subjectivity outside of an identity politic tied to living in the US. Her current practice concerns diasporic aesthetics and situating play, chance, and community coming from the periphery in the context of art.

Nina Katchadourian

Nina Katchadourian is an interdisciplinary artist whose work includes video, performance, sound, sculpture, photography and public projects. Her video Accent Elimination was included at the 2015 Venice Biennale in the Armenian pavilion, which won the Golden Lion for Best National Participation. In 2016 Katchadourian created Dust Gathering, an audio tour on the subject of dust, for the Museum of Modern Art. A traveling solo museum survey of her work entitled Curiouser opened in March 2017 at the Blanton Museum of Art and toured to the Cantor Art Center at Stanford University in fall 2017. It will conclude at the BYU Museum in Provo, Utah in March 2018. An accompanying monograph, also entitled Curiouser and edited by curator Veronica Roberts, is available from Tower Books. Katchadourian’s work is public and private collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Blanton Museum of Art, Morgan Library, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Margulies Collection, and Saatchi Gallery. She has won grants and awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation, the Tiffany Foundation, the American-Scandinavian Foundation, and the Nancy Graves Foundation. Katchadourian lives and works in Brooklyn and she is a clinical professor on the faculty of NYU Gallatin. She is represented by Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco, and Pace Gallery, New York.

NYU Affiliations Around the World: A Robust Network for Research and Study

Posted on March 27, 2023 by Maxine P

Students not only gain perspective and knowledge from time spent away from their home campus but also benefit from NYU partnerships with local institutions in the University’s global network. With one partnership that began before the global site itself was founded and another established over 50 years ago, it’s clear these relationships are invaluable to NYU research, scholarship, and community.

NYU Berlin

The Wilhelm von Humboldt Memorial in front of Humboldt University

Humboldt University in Berlin

NYU Berlin’s first agreement with Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin was in 1995, and the partnership remains as strong as ever. Today, students can enroll in courses at Humboldt and access its library. In addition to its partnership with Humboldt-Universität, NYU Berlin has an impressive record of establishing—and continuing—student and faculty exchange programs with other German universities. For example, in 1995 NYU established an agreement with the Freie Universität Berlin. Over 20 years later, in 2019, Freie Universität hosted Radha S. Hegde, NYU professor of media, culture, and communication, as the Dahlem International Network Professor in Gender Studies to teach two seminars.

NYU London

Before NYU London was established in 1999, the University held a partnership with the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) for NYU Tisch School of the Arts students. Even as course offerings and programming expanded into the NYU London we know today, that relationship has remained steadfast for over 20 years. Each semester, a small group of NYU students audition for placement in RADA’s Shakespeare in Performance program. Students learn all aspects of performing Shakespeare as they work with a variety of RADA instructors. The intensive program culminates with the performance of one of Shakespeare’s plays. A more recent partnership with the National Film and Television School was established in 2018, with the first NYU students taking Directing the Actor: London in 2019. At the end of the course, students shoot and direct professional actors on a soundstage.

NYU Paris

A young woman on a laptop sits on the steps to the Sorbonne, a building with large columns.

The Sorbonne building houses various Parisian universities including the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

Over the years, NYU Paris has established a number of agreements with local universities, including Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Université Paris Cité, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, and Université Paris Sciences et Lettres. These agreements allow NYU Paris students to take courses at these institutions, while Paris-based students have the opportunity to study at NYU’s campus in New York City. The relationship between NYU and Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne dates back to the founding of NYU Paris in 1969. Currently, the agreement allows NYU Paris students with advanced proficiency in French to take Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne classes in subjects ranging from art and history to philosophy and mathematics. In addition, the University’s partnership with Université Sorbonne Nouvelle dates back almost as long—to 1975. Eligible NYU Paris students can take courses there in literature, cinema, theatre, and media studies.

NYU Sydney

A building in the Victorian Academic Gothic Revival style in front of a green manicured lawn

A view from inside the University of Sydney Quadrangle

In November 2021 NYU established a new partnership with the oldest university in Australia, the University of Sydney (USYD). Through the partnership, NYU Sydney students have all the benefits of being a full-time USYD student: living on campus, enrolling in USYD courses, and participating in the Industry and Community Projects Units (ICPUs). ICPUs pair students with an industry partner and academic lead to work on real issues that industry, community, and government organizations encounter. And the partnership benefits are reciprocal—USYD students have the opportunity to enroll in Sydney-based courses taught by NYU instructors or spend a semester abroad at NYU’s campus in New York City or one of NYU’s global academic sites.

NYU Tel Aviv

A partnership with Tel Aviv University (TAU) further enriches students taking science courses at NYU Tel Aviv. TAU, Israel’s largest university, is just a short distance from the NYU global academic center. While NYU Tel Aviv offers science courses, including Organic Chemistry II and General Physics II, TAU offers the lab sections for those courses.

Three people in white lab coats and safety glasses in a chemistry lab

NYU Tel Aviv students take a chemistry course at Tel Aviv University’s labs.

In addition, undergraduate students can intern in a research lab through NYU Tel Aviv’s biology internships at TAU. Depending on the type of research conducted at each lab, students may learn different techniques like cell culture, gel electrophoresis, and microscopy. During the internship, students take part in the experimentation, research, and writing processes with at least one PhD student. What’s more, TAU students can also take advantage of NYU’s resources in return by enrolling at one of the University’s global academic sites for a semester.

NYU Interactive Media Arts Program Hosted Show in Berlin at Art Studio Weise7

Posted on March 20, 2023, modified on March 20, 2023 by Kristin Law

This January the Interactive Media Arts low residency program (IMA Low Res) showcased work from their two-week intensive at NYU Berlin. The program, jointly offered by NYU Tisch School of the Arts and NYU Shanghai, gives students the opportunity to complete a master’s degree in one year. Interspersed with online learning are three low-residency sessions at NYU campuses in New York City, Shanghai, and Berlin. Show & Tell was devised by students and instructors from classes during NYU Berlin’s January session: Civic Ecologies, Virtual Worlds, and Radical Networks.

The back of a person viewing games on a screen

A visitor enjoying the show

Civic Ecologies with Jamie Allen

IMA Low Res students in the Civic Ecologies class used various mediums to create daily rituals. Their results were a diverse group of works including documentaries, mobile apps, short films, tarot readings, written instructions, and more.

Berlin Ecological Tarot

Two people sit at a candelit table with their eyes closed

Nicole Padilla (right) presents Berlin Ecological Tarot

Breadcrumbs

A sheet of paper with written instructions

Through video and a series of location-based scores, Jamie McCoy’s Breadcrumbs considers the ways in which passing through a city connects inhabitants to each other and their surroundings.

Virtual Worlds with Pierre Depaz

Students from Virtual Worlds worked in groups to create virtual worlds and games using the Unity game engine. Visitors experienced these worlds projected on a large screen as well as by immersing themselves in constructed spaces.

Adam Diggler’s Grave

Two people stand in front of a screen with a computer generated image of a city street and church

Yiyang Cao and Renton Lin’s Adam Diggler’s Grave was created using the Unity development platform

Journey to Mars

A computer-generated image of the interior of a spacecraft

Yunshan Jiang and Siri Zhao’s Journey to Mars. Visitors witness their created world: 500 years from now people can easily transport between the uninhabitable Earth and Mars.

Radical Networks with Sarah Grant

Using Raspberry Pis, which are single board computers, students in Radical Networks created various interactive works related to networking technologies. Works ranged from public Wi-Fi networks where users could only access a 2012 version of the web, filtered and manipulated unencrypted government sites, and playful explorations of the physicality of signals emitted through connected devices.

PESCA

Visitors play with Kat Park’s PESCA, a portable mesh network. An LED signals when another node has wandered too far away. The work was programmed with Python and is made with Raspberry Pis, battery packs, Wi-Fi antennae, and LEDs.

Photography by Brian Ho and Renton Ling

Course Spotlight: Augmenting the Gallery, Theory and Practice with Augmented Reality at NYU Berlin

Posted on February 27, 2023 by Katie L

Pierre Depaz leads the Augmenting the Gallery course

Pierre Depaz leading the Augmenting the Gallery course at NYU Berlin

Combining his background as an educator, artist, and programmer, instructor Pierre Depaz’s NYU Berlin course Augmenting the Gallery makes use of his research on simulation and public organization through technological means to explore the overlap of the digital and the physical in museums.

“We use augmented reality technology to reveal some of the invisible knowledge threads that weave through a museum’s exhibitions, spaces, and publics,” says Depaz. “This allows us to look critically both at a new technology that pervades our devices and centuries-old institutions, sometimes in need of an update.”

Augmenting the Gallery offers students both a theoretical framework for understanding the museum space and the practical application and experience using new technologies like Unity (a game engine used to develop games and simulations) and prototyping tools like Figma and Adobe XD. Ultimately, students learn how to create relevant mobile content within a given exhibition through prototyping, iteration, and integration. More importantly, they are able to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of augmenting technologies within cultural spaces and sensitively implement them using their acquired knowledge. Accessibility is a key theme in the course as students grapple with the question: How much does digital media provide access to knowledge and to whom?

“Berlin is particularly great in terms of the layers of history that are rendered visible across the city. From Prussian empires to refugee waves through the Holocaust and the Cold War, there’s many ways you can look at a particular place and many different stories told by each of these places,” says Depaz. “Additionally, the creative tech scene also exposes the students to cutting-edge new media art and exhibitions.”

Making extensive use of museums and galleries in Berlin, Augmenting the Gallery is a great academic example of how NYU’s global network enhances the student experience. Working closely with these institutions, students gain practical skills they can leverage with future employers while learning that “designing augmented reality is a lot more complex than what commercials promise,” says Depaz. Students also learn “how complex the job of a museum is if they want to uphold their mission.”

By learning to design and deliver immersive experiences that breathe new life into displays, using technology to challenge the more complicated and problematic aspects of exhibitions, and making the hallowed museum space accessible to the widest swath of people possible, students develop the skills they need to help uphold a museum’s mission and break barriers in Berlin and beyond.

Want a taste of Augmenting the Gallery?

Depaz recommends checking out what the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin did with an augmented sound walk of their bird collection. He also cites “The Ignorant Art Museum: Beyond Meaning Making” by Emilie Sitzia as one of the course’s most popular readings. “It’s an article on how museums can help foster knowledge and provide agency back to their audience without keeping the posture of an elite ivory tower, sometimes facilitated by the use of digital technologies,” he says. “The class about how museums engage in education and, more broadly, what is good education is very fruitful—students always report their best learning experiences happening outside of museums (or outside of university, for that matter!).”

Written by Kristin Maffei

Opportunities for Immersion: Experiential Learning Across the World

Posted on November 14, 2022, modified on November 14, 2022 by Kristin Law

One of the many benefits of studying abroad is students learning from world-class faculty while also gaining a new perspective on the world around them. The space where learning happens isn’t limited to the classroom, but expanded to a specific site, with courses planned to both inform and immerse.

As they connect their learning to the places where they study and vice versa, students are equipped with the tools to approach knowledge with curiosity, exploration, and context. Here are some recent courses that capitalize on the locations where they take place.

Cultures and Context: The Black Atlantic

At NYU Accra, Professor Kofi Baku teaches this wide-ranging history course to explore the concept of the Black Atlantic as a sociocultural and economic space. The course covers the 15th-century capture of Africans and their arrival in the New World, the rise of slavery and the eventual emancipation in the Americas, and decolonization and the Black struggle for liberation, equality, and Pan-Africanism.

A large group of students in front of a white set of stairs and building

NYU Accra students on a trip to Elmina Castle.

To complement the historical moments covered in the course, Professor Baku organizes field trips to key sites in Ghana. These trips include a tour of the Cape Coast and Elmina Castle, where African captives were held before they were sent to the Americas. They also visit Osu Castle to learn about the legacies of the Danish slave trade on the Gold Coast. And finally, they visit a plantation in Sesemi to learn about the Gold Coast’s development after the abolition of the slave trade. As students visit these sites, they write personal, interdisciplinary reflections based on their experiences.

Culture of the City: Italian Urban Life

At NYU Florence, Professor Davide Lombardo thinks of the city on two levels: historical and theoretical. From ancient times to modernity, students get a historical and spatial overview of the evolution of Florence’s urban environment.

Aurora Russell, a junior double majoring in Psychology and Journalism with a minor in Anthropology comments on the importance of immersion, “We spend the field-based classes completely in the location, whether it’s out in the city, in a museum, or at a church. Immersing yourself in an environment while you’re discussing that place is a really good way to learn about and understand it.”

Students wearing white gloves look through large books

NYU Florence students immerse themselves in the Acton Art Collection.

Shaping an Educational Landscape: Museum Island

At NYU Berlin, Professor Annette Loeseke organizes a thematic exploration of museums in her course, a mixture of classroom discussions and field trips to the cultural institutions on Museumsinsel. Home to Berlin’s complex of five world-famous museums, students explore the role of the museum in modern times covering topics like feminist and LGBTQ+ perspectives on art collections, digital museum tools and the politics of code, and postcolonial museums in diverse societies.

Throughout the semester, the class meets at the Altes Museum, Neues Museum, Alte Nationalgalerie, Pergamon Museum and Panorama, Bode-Museum, and Hamburger Bahnhof Museum for Contemporary Art (which is not on Museuminsel), to explore the intersection of museums, history, culture, and politics.

A group of people stand in a circle in front of greenery.

Annette Loeske introduces a museum visit to her Museum Island class at NYU Berlin.

Repurposed with permission from Meet NYU.

Global Equity Fellows Serve as Diversity Ambassadors Around the World

Posted on October 17, 2022, modified on November 11, 2022 by Katie L

NYU has 12 academic centers and programs around the world, each in a region with unique customs, traditions, and beliefs that may be unfamiliar to students studying abroad for the first time. Luckily, each site also hosts Global Equity Fellows (GEFs), specially trained upper-level students tasked with advancing inclusion, diversity, belonging, equity, and accessibility (IDBEA) at study away sites while simultaneously supporting meaningful cultural transition.

The Global Equity Fellowship is a competitive semester-long fellowship created by the NYU Office of Global Programs in partnership with NYU’s Office of Global Inclusion, Diversity, and Strategic Innovation, the NYU Changemaker Center, and the NYU Division of Student Affairs. Before leaving home, GEFs participate in the Global IDBEA Leadership Institute training to master leadership, crisis management, and community-building skills. Once abroad, they step into their new roles, working closely with site staff to develop a research project that focuses on IDBEA and listen to and advise students who are navigating challenges in their host cities.

Meaningful Collaboration

Ruben Mayorga with Jerusalem in the background

Ruben Mayorga on a trip to Jerusalem during his time at NYU Tel Aviv

NYU Shanghai graduate Ruben Mayorga had already spent a semester at NYU Tel Aviv when he returned there as a GEF in fall 2021. This time he was equipped with new tools shared by NYU global staff. “In training I worked with all the GEFs who were heading to diverse places, and this diversity enriched the conversations by allowing me to see potential problems that might arise at the site and come up with more diverse solutions,” Ruben explains. “It allowed me to take a step back and absorb different perspectives in similar topics. It was a really enriching experience.”

During his fellowship, Ruben worked closely with Eran Rotshenker, NYU Tel Aviv’s manager of student life and housing. Rotshenker guided Ruben as he navigated more sensitive topics like the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the intersection of LGBTQ+ identity and religion in Israel. “Global Equity Fellows should be passionate about what they want to promote—and should also be tuned in to the community they are serving,” Rotshenker says. “Having stayed in Tel Aviv before that fall, Ruben already knew what was essential to share with the NYU Tel Aviv community. I truly enjoyed seeing how he took the opportunity to share his knowledge and experience with the new group of students and witnessing his transformation into the social leader he is today.”

A Safe Space for Growth

Mi-Kaisha Masella

At NYU Berlin, Tisch School of the Arts senior Mi-kaisha Masella found ways to prioritize listening and create safe spaces for students—and herself—to learn and grow. She developed a close mentor relationship with former staff member Linn Friedrichs, who is now the deputy head of college at Mahindra United World College in India, and she soon felt comfortable sharing ideas and brainstorming solutions for various challenges. Mi-kaisha also spent time meeting with students and talking through their concerns together. “I wanted my peers to be open and honest about their experiences, both positive and negative, at NYU Berlin as well as in the city at large,” she explains. For her research project, Mi-kaisha developed a training module for faculty and staff at NYU Berlin on trauma-informed teaching practices. “I was proud to develop a resource for the NYU Berlin community to use that will support the creation of a safer, more inclusive, and more informed learning community in the future,” she says.

Diving Into Research

For his research project, NYU Buenos Aires GEF and College of Arts and Science senior Ivan Brea turned his attention to the local LGBTQ+ community and dance. “Out of all Argentina’s cultural intricacies, perhaps no dance form is more heavily linked with Argentina’s history than the tango,” Ivan explains. “And in recent years, Argentine tango has undergone a cultural transformation initiated by the LGBTQ+ community.” Now it’s more common to see two men, two women, or people of any gender dancing the tango together in addition to the traditional form featuring a man and a woman. “Queer tango has become a tool for the LGBTQ+ community to maintain their own cultural identity while serving as an expression of their queerness,” he argues in his research project.

Ivan Brea on a visit to Iguazú Falls during his time at NYU Buenos Aires

During his fellowship, Ivan also organized a number of other initiatives for the NYU Buenos Aires community. Under the guidance of Assistant Director of Student Life Paula Di Marzo and other faculty, he held weekly Breathing Room sessions, where students could discuss IDBEA issues they experienced both in and out of the classroom. He hosted events like Ni Una Menos and the Global Feminist Tide with Professor Cecilia Palmeiro and Queer Cultures in Context with Professor Mariano López Seoane. Ivan also took care to prioritize everyday things that would make Argentina feel more like home, such as finding restaurants that serve traditional food or salons that cut non-Argentine hair. “Because heavy topics such as race, sexuality, and gender can look very different in a new cultural context, I really wanted to make people feel more comfortable,” Ivan says. “The fellowship was an amazing way to be there for my fellow students.”

Wherever they are in the world, GEFs are one of many resources available to help NYU students make the most of their time in an unfamiliar place. “Inclusion, diversity, belonging, equity, and accessibility are big topics and key pillars of our communities as well as our personal lives,” says Mi-kaisha. And as ambassadors of these topics, GEFs are an integral part of helping NYU students feel at home abroad—while challenging them to expand their definitions of community and culture.

Written by Sarah Bender

Environmental Studies Abroad

Posted on February 25, 2022, modified on February 28, 2022 by Kristin Law

NYU global faculty teach a range of courses on environmental studies. At NYU Shanghai, for example, faculty discuss the government’s response to environmental challenges. At NYU Sydney, faculty consider the impact of literature on environmental action. And at other NYU sites, faculty study the evolution of US environmental policy on everything from climate change and invasive species to land management and fracking. Below, we outline several environmental studies courses offered at NYU’s global academic locations.

A professor and students squat in the forest to discuss the soil

NYU London’s Climate Change course on a class trip to Highgate Wood

Finding Your Focus at NYU London

In Dr. Lisa Weber’s Climate Change course, students acquire a multifaceted understanding of climate change while studying in a global center of policy, business, and research. They learn how the climate system works and how human activities influence greenhouse gas emissions. They also explore projections about past and potential future climate change on Earth.

Before her time at NYU London, Mahima Kakani, Class of 2021, was pursuing a Business degree at the Stern School of Business with concentrations in finance and business economics. But after taking Weber’s Climate Change course, she changed her second concentration to sustainable business. “By thinking about how businesses can remain profitable while also doing good, we can contribute to a better environment while creating significant economic opportunities for communities,” she explains.

Mahima was particularly inspired by the class discussions they had on European companies and their response to climate change regulations. For example, her class discussed Airbus’ efforts toward zero-emission flight. After graduation, Mahima hopes to work on sustainability in the private sector.

Students and a professor seated at a table covered in maps.

Students meet with their professor in NYU Berlin’s Urban Greening Lab course.

Exploring Community Activism at NYU Berlin

NYU Berlin lecturer Sigismund Sliwinski teaches a course called Urban Greening Lab, which provides a comprehensive look at Berlin’s urban ecology and approaches to urban planning. In Sliwinski’s course students discuss the intersection of Berlin’s built structure, urban nature, and culture. They also attend workshops and visit local neighborhoods and sites, such as an indoor market called Markthalle Neun, the ufaFabrik cultural center, and an urban farmland called the Princess Gardens, to understand Berlin’s history of urban change along with the processes that turned it into a global green icon.

For Nina Lehrecke, Class of 2021, taking Urban Greening Lab gave her the confidence to pursue a concentration in infrastructural ecologies at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study. The class trips especially influenced her outlook. “It was affirming,” Nina says. “I’m focused on how community-based movements and activism shape cities, and the class was all about visiting alternative communities that are sustainable in some way.”

Students walk along a green and rocky coast

NYU Sydney students walk along the coast.

Witnessing the Effects of Climate Change Up Close at NYU Sydney

Over the years, lecturers at NYU Sydney have taught students how to report on environmental issues in a country directly experiencing the climate crisis. In Australia concerns about climate change and its effects on society can be found in the media every day, as was evident in the case of the wildfires from late 2019 to early 2020. The environmental journalism courses at NYU Sydney—which is scheduled to reopen in its new home this fall after its closure in spring 2020 due to COVID-related border restrictions—help expose students to some of the most important environmental issues of our time.

As part of an environmental journalism course he took while studying at NYU Sydney, Nicolas Mendoza, Class of 2020, learned about the effects of climate change on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, one of the seven natural wonders of the world. In particular, he learned about the 2016 mass bleaching event that wiped out approximately 30 percent of shallow-water corals.

On a diving trip in Cairns, Nicolas witnessed these effects up close. But he also encountered people trying to save the reef, which gave him hope. “Even though the reef is clearly damaged, the people who are looking after it really do care,” he says. “We’re all there because we want to get some actual experience with these issues so we can try to protect other ecosystems.”

Overall, in their environmental studies courses, NYU global faculty teach students how to address the consequences of climate change and other environmental threats. Their coursework also sheds light on the global activism related to these issues.

Content adapted with permission from NYU Global Notebook by Samantha Jamison

NYU Berlin Lecturer Colin Self on Making Distanced Experimental Music

Posted on May 12, 2020, modified on May 12, 2020 by Martha J Bekink

NYU Berlin Lecturer Colin Self was on a ten-day trip in Mexico when the COVID-19 crisis broke. His ten-day trip has become a multi-month journey, though the composer and choreographer continues to teach his NYU Berlin course, Experiments in the Future of Performing and Producing, from Mexico City.

Self, who teaches in the Clive Davis Institute program in Berlin, explores themes related to expanding consciousness, troubling binaries, and boundaries of perception and communication, and his teaching is focused on the “exchange of energies” in the classroom. His class has a virtual live performance coming up on May 15. Details are in the flyer below.

1 – What inspired you to teach at NYU Berlin? How have you found the experience?

I was really fortunate to have met Jason King, Associate Professor and the founding faculty member of The Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music who developed the international study abroad program Clive Davis Institute x Berlin. After some initial conversations, he invited me to submit a performance syllabus. With some dialogue, Jason generously approved and I jumped right into teaching. It immediately felt like I was on the right path, in the right place. Performance is my life and getting to build and share ideas about what it is and what it can be is an ongoing practice. The experience has been incredibly inspiring, from the first class into the current class. One of the best things about teaching is the perpetual learning experience that occurs in all directions, with dialogue unfolding into new territory every term. Perceiving and experiencing the world of music and performance through the eyes of artists who are 20 and 21 years old folds back into my own learning of what the future of music and performance will be.

2 – Prior to the COVID-19 crisis did you have any experience with remote learning / teaching?

No, this is all fairly new to me.

3 – How have you found the transition? How do the classes work?

It was certainly a challenge at first try to think about performance as something that we could be in dialogue about over distance. So much of the class is about this kind of vis-à-vis energetic exchange between all of us in the laboratory of watching and responding to performance. As a perfmonance-maker that is really something that I cherish about performance pedagogy. The IRL [in real life] experience. It has required a great amount of re-imagining with a lot of care being put into presenting alternatives; asking questions about how the psychological and emotional conditions of this experience also affects art-making and performance.

It took a couple of weeks to get into the flow of things, but actually turned out to be a wonderful bonding experience for the group. So often this class is about connectivity and creating mutually supportive relationships students have with each other and each other’s art-making.

4 – I noticed that you developed a new syllabus for a Zoom course and specifically pivoted to “explore the canon of experimental art made during pandemics, global crises, and how individual and collective limitations can activate opportunities to experiment and grow as artists.” Can you comment about that? Can and will great art come of this?

One of the most fruitful things that happened as COVID was unfolding was engaging with others about what it might mean to make art in this time. It started with a letter by California College of the Arts Dean of Fine Arts Allison Smith about art being made during crises and the role artists have to heal and process our collective experiences. I was then in conversation with Jason King about the AIDS crisis and trench art and the really deep emotional history we have on this planet of artists making work under challenging circumstances. Quite often history shows us that some of the most grave circumstances brought forth some of the most inspiring and evolutionary art-making. Now that we are seeing the amplification of care as a priority, and the distribution of resources to people who do not have as much, the creative landscape is changing.

5 – Have you or the students learned anything – whether academically or personally – that you might not have done in a classroom?

One of the biggest lessons for me and so many others I’ve been in communication with has been the vitality of live performance and public assembly, and what a source of inspiration and energy that is to us both individually and collectively. Performance has always been a real life process of dreaming a better, different world into reality. Without that energetic interaction, I’ve realized what a treasure those experiences are and how there is really no replacing that over digital experiences.

6 – Anything else you would like to share?

I could say how deeply grateful I am for the interdependence and care that has appeared among colleagues both at NYU and other schools, to be in conversation with the present day circumstances, working together to re-imagine both our pedagogy and how to move forward together in a way that acknowledges and incorporates our collective condition. The problem-solving together, especially in regards to something like performance, continues to be one of the most inspiring experiences I’ve had at NYU – seeing across distance and difference, everyone working together to nurture our shared process of teaching.

NYU Berlin Offers Virtual Tour of Humboldt Forum

Posted on May 5, 2020, modified on May 4, 2020 by Martha J Bekink

NYU Berlin recently sought to foster community by giving students a unique opportunity to stay connected to Berlin through a virtual tour of the Humboldt Forum. The Humboldt Forum has not yet opened to the public, but NYU alum, NYU Berlin lecturer, architect and art historian Tarek Ibrahim was able to lead the tour.

For those unfamiliar, the Humboldt Forum is the largest cultural project under construction in Germany. In its own words: The Humboldt Forum opens in phases beginning in September 2020 as a unique place of experience, learning and encounter in the heart of Berlin. Discover the world and immerse yourself in the exhibits, marvel at the remarkable fusion of Baroque and contemporary architecture, visit restaurants and cafes, gaze out from the rooftop terrace over the panorama that stretches to the Brandenburg Gate, find inspiration in concerts, readings and discussions, and dive into Berlin’s multifaceted present and past.

Tarek graduated from NYU in 2000, before NYU Berlin existed. He came to the German capital in 2008 and worked for four years as practicing architect at Sauerbruch Hutton, one of Europe’s most innovative firms. In 2012, he decided to obtain a second master’s degree in Art and Architectural History at Humboldt University of Berlin. During this time, he became involved with NYU Berlin. Shortly after submitting his thesis, he began work as a research associate for the founding directors of the Humboldt Forum, where he continues to this day. In addition to his full-time work at the Forum, he is pursuing his PhD.

Tarek first began teaching at NYU Berlin as an assistant lecturer in an architecture course with emphasis on “graphics, the basics of design, text and image.” After joining the Humboldt Forum team, Tarek stepped back from the course, but remained affiliated with NYU Berlin, taking the lead in organizing learning journeys for students, excursions, and teaching J-term courses in Berlin, Hamburg, and Potsdam.

In his Berlin learning journeys, Tarek strives “to contrast the classic and contemporary official representations of Berlin since reunification – the museums, cultural and historical institutions, opera houses, universities and libraries – with what modern Berlin is really known for – decadence, its rough edge, and vibrant nightlife.” The move from curated architecture and representation to the more intense underbelly of Berlin can sometimes be jarring for students, but it is always illuminating. “There are two sides of the city” according to Tarek, “and one cannot be understood without the other.” Berlin needs its darker side, a descendant of the city’s well-known hedonism during the 1920s and later its Cold War division, as much as it needs the curated “official” representation. Tarek was leading excursions through mid-March before COVID-19 prompted the cancellation of his Potsdam and Dresden trips and the transition to online learning.

Tarek feels it is important to remind students that they will again have the chance to see iconic places in Berlin and beyond. “The opportunity and ability to discover are not lost, but merely on hold. Nothing lasts forever.” This is partially why he was glad to offer students an exclusive glimpse inside the Humboldt Forum. Currently under construction, there is no access to the building for anyone not directly involved in the process. After obtaining the requisite permissions, Tarek was able to offer an insider tour.

The tour also demonstrated that learning and exploration continues at NYU Berlin. We have all adapted our behaviors because of the pandemic, but we will go on. Shot on an iPhone which provided an ad hoc, gritty feel, Tarek offered a slightly unpolished but all the more exclusive look into the world of the Humboldt Forum by leading viewers through the building. He selected a sequence of rooms, sometimes needing one of the countless keys to gain access to off-limits spaces. Covering all the key features of the building, he shared some of the projects he is personally working on and showed views from particular windows or points in the building. He concluded the tour on the roof which offers – hands down – the best view over the city, from the Soviet-style apartment blocks of the former East to the illustrious neoclassical buildings on the Museum Island and Unter den Linden, and as far as the abandoned US spy station on the “Devil’s Mountain.” in the West. This concluding image conveyed to the students that “Berlin is still here and it will all be here for you when you come back.”

Tarek hopes to remind students that Berlin and all it has to offer will not disappear. It will all be there when and if students take the opportunity to return whether through study, internships, or travel. By then the Humboldt Forum should be open. Although this has been a challenging time, even in the face of adversity, we endure. Tarek also hopes that we all might find some perspective in this pause. Recalling Douglas Adams, he noted “I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”

We do not yet know where life after COVID-19 will take us or how it may change us, but finding ways to reflect, stay connected with one another, and continuing to explore may help us be open to possibilities. NYU Berlin’s virtual tour is a lovely example of just that.