Bard NYC courses emphasize interdisciplinary study and incorporate practical, career-focused skills into the classroom. Many courses touch on New York City and take advantage of the incomparable resources available to students in one of the world’s great metropolises. From world-famous museums and art collections; libraries and archives; Broadway theaters and symphony orchestras to the United Nations, Wall Street, and the city’s diverse patchwork of neighborhoods, New York City is a laboratory for students to learn both in and from.
Seminars and Cocurriculars
Full-time students earn 12–16 Bard College credits through two to three elective courses and the required core seminar The Future of Work. An essential aspect of Bard NYC, the core seminar contextualizes students’ academic classwork with robust reflection and career exploration allowing students to share and learn from one another’s internship experiences. Each section of the core seminar relates to a specific pathway, touching on topics relevant to both academic and career fields, tying together theory and practice. Faculty and students address timely questions such as “How is technology affecting work in my field?” and “What does work in this area look like after the pandemic?” The core seminar, in tandem with the internship experience, provides students with knowledge, skills, and insight to help them make more informed decisions about their future employment and life after graduation.
In addition to academic courses, cocurricular offerings are held throughout the semester including guest lecturers, roundtable discussions, and other events designed to raise awareness of topics relevant to a variety of career paths, introduce students to practitioners, including young professionals, and help them to build their professional networks. Examples include a Hackathon in collaboration with the Russian Independent Media Archive, Fireside Chat with the CEO of Schmidt Futures, and the Chace Lecture Series on international affairs.
Pathways
The experiential nature of Bard NYC is exemplified in the innovative and integrated pathway model, which lies at the intersection of academics and careers. Pathways are neither the equivalent of academic majors or departments, nor are they career fields or professions. Rather they lie somewhere between the two. Each pathway offers a section of the Future of Work core seminar, related elective courses, internship opportunities, and cocurricular offerings. During the application process, students select a pathway that relates to their academic major and career interests. The pathway helps determine placement in a section of the core seminar as well as potential internship opportunities. With the help of an advisor, elective courses are chosen based on student interests and graduation requirements.
Pathways
Advocacy & Social Justice The Advocacy & Social Justice pathway explores questions about how we can impact communities and create positive change. There are a variety of issues that affect our communities today: from climate change to immigration and from food security to diversity and discrimination. Students in this pathway work at the intersection of these issues, learning how to truly understand their communities and their values, identify the deep causes of social injustice and study different ways that can lead to meaningful change. This pathway may be of interest to majors across the humanities and social sciences working on areas such as ethics, human rights, gender studies, politics, and and sociology.
Sample courses: Globalization, Finance, and Marginalization Law and Order: Perspectives on the New York Legal System
Potential Internships: National Coalition Against Censorship Newtown Creek Alliance
Cocurricular activities: Tour of the Tenement Museum Visit to the Stonewall National Monument
Arts The Arts pathway takes advantage of the robust art community in New York City by providing career exploration for students interested in and around the arts. Students will engage in a variety of art forms from traditional fine arts to street photography and learn to develop their voice as artists and how to navigate the professional art scene. In addition, students in this pathway engage with questions of how art comes about, its historical roots, and how it affects our daily lives. For instance, what is a relationship between certain forms of architectural structures and the history of their location? Or how does a filmmaker best capture the inequalities inherent in city life? The Arts pathway may be of interest to majors from the visual arts, music and the performing arts.
Sample courses: Theater and the City New York Street Photography: The City Flâneur
Potential Internships: Dieu Donne Leslie Lohman Museum
Cocurricular activities: Tour of the International Studio and Curatorial Program Lecture by An-My Lê on her MoMA Exhibition
Data Science & Society Data Science & Society focuses on the impact and influence that technology has on contemporary society. In a world in which AI and big data are ubiquitous, this pathway is designed to provide a framework to data science and tech. While getting some training in data science, students will explore how data impacts our democracy, our sense of identity, the workplace, healthcare,the non-profit sector, and privacy/security. Students majoring in computer science, applied mathematics, information systems, or statistics would be interested in this pathway. It may also intersect with students majoring in biology, sociology, and digital humanities, among other fields.
Sample courses: Machine Media: A Hands-On Introduction to Machine Learning and Generative Art Ethics of Artificial Intelligence
Potential Internships: Russian Independent Media Archive Phi Networks
Cocurricular activities: Hackathon Tour of Google
Economics & Finance The Economics & Finance pathway engages students to examine what business looks like in contemporary New York City. Students will look at not just traditional Wall Street but also startups and alternative business models. In addition to exploring traditional themes of economics, corporate finance, and banking, some questions that will be posed in this pathway involve whether financial markets propagate existing inequalities and the role of entrepreneurship in our communities. This pathway is a good fit for students interested in finance and economics.
Sample courses: Corporate Finance Political Economy, Globalization and Technological Change
Potential Internships: Treehouse Brooklyn GreenMax Capital
Cocurricular activities: Talk with Global Director of Antler Williamsburg Start Ups Networking event
International Affairs The International Affairs pathway focuses on current issues from the global perspective and the interactions between states, nations, transnational NGO’s and international organizations. Students in this pathway study international law, policy, and diplomacy and explore the ways in which politics, economics, legal theory, and other disciplines intersect and shape the global stage. Students majoring in international relations, politics, economics, and history may be interested in this pathway.
Sample courses: Policy and Diplomacy in the Middle East: Six Case Studies Multilateralism in Crisis? How International Institutions Can Better Manage Global Challenges
Potential Internships: Oxford Analytica Central American Legal Aid
Cocurricular activities: The James Clarke Chace Memorial Speaker Series Tour of the United Nations
Media & Publishing Students choosing this pathway will study how different forms of media and communication interact with society and shape our experience of the world. Topics to be explored include the complex relationship between democracy and communication and how our increasingly networked world is shaped by different new forms of media products and industries.This pathway is designed for students who are interested in social media, digital media, journalism, marketing, publishing, and other forms of communication and is a good fit for students majoring in digital media, marketing, communications, English, journalism, written arts and literature.
Sample courses: Film Criticism Writing in the City
Cocurricular activities: Author Reading with Center for Fiction Tour of Simon & Schuster
Spring 2024 Courses
Civil Society and the Voluntary Sector
Civil Society and the Voluntary Sector
There has been a remarkable resurgence of interest in the voluntary sector by politicians and scholars over the past three decades. It has come to be praised on all sides, however, it has not been understood as much as it has been admired. We will investigate the theory underpinning civil society, with its origins in the Scottish Enlightenment and the US Constitution, then trace these threads through the rise of the not-for-profit sector and focus on the principles of best practice for organizations generating significant social impact. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of most socialist states sparked international enthusiasm in the 1990s for the building of civil society by means of voluntary non-profit activity, in the belief that strong civil societies would promote democracy. No one has advanced this principle more aggressively over the past thirty years than billionaire philanthropist George Soros and his Open Society Foundations, whose work is based on the philosophy of Karl Popper. The renewal of civil society in Central and Eastern Europe was met with enthusiasm in the 1990s, yet over the last decade has been met with resistance and even hostility by political leadership pivoting toward illiberal democracy and authoritarianism. We will explore the core elements of civil society and issues such as: Is the movement toward an open society inevitable and linear? What are the fundamental threats to an open society?
Globalization, Finance, and Marginalization
Globalization, Finance, and Marginalization
The objective of this course is to explore the reconstitution of local structures of marginalization by the increasing economic integration of the global economy over the last three and a half decades. We place particular emphasis on the increasing dominance of finance in both advanced and developing societies and explore the impact of this process of financialization and the associated financial integration of the world on marginalized constituencies identified on the basis of class, gender, and ethnic identity. We further explore the interplay of the global ascendance of finance capitalism with transnational flows of human beings and commodities that together comprise the economic face of globalization and question the neoliberal assertion that globalization will necessarily empower the marginalized, basing our exploration on both theoretical insights drawn from multiple disciplines and documented evidence. There are no prerequisites for this course; students do NOT need a background in Economics or quantitative analysis.
Intelligence, Risk and Decision-Making
Intelligence, Risk and Decision-Making
This course is essentially about the relationship between information, analysis, risk and decision makers. On one level, this means that it is about something you do yourself all the time — but we will be looking specifically at how analysis is produced for those who work in both the public and the private sectors and face critical political, investment, or even humanitarian decisions. Concentrating on three crucial components – collection, analysis and communications – the goal is understand processes behind the production of good analysis and the ways in which it can be conveyed to decision makers. At the same time as studying some of the instances in which intelligence analysis has resulted in success -- and, because it tends to be more revealing, those where it has not -- we will be trying out some of the techniques involved in professional analysis, including writing, presentations, and team work, and looking at analysts working in the government, financial, and non-profit sectors. The intention is to offer an appreciation of what professional analysts do in an intelligence and political risk context, and how their work can feed into the conduct of international relations and international business.
Issues in Global Public Health
Issues in Global Public Health
This course provides a general overview of determinants of health in the developing world and principles within the field of global public health. It will include a review of some current and historical public health problems, such as tuberculosis, malaria, AIDS, small pox, maternal and infant mortality and reproductive health and rights, and the approaches used to understand and address them. Students will also examine the roles of a range of international organizations involved in global public health efforts, including local and international non-governmental organizations, multilateral agencies such as the WHO, UNAIDS, bilateral organizations like the CDC and USAID, governments and donor organizations. The course aims to convey an understanding of the complexity of health problems in developing countries, the impact of health on social and economic development, the contributions of various disciplines and analytical perspectives in decision-making about public health priorities, and the range of players that contribute to developing and implementing the programs to address them. The course will be structured primarily around a series of case studies of public health policies and practices around which there has been controversy or debate about the appropriate course of action. The case studies will include a major focus on HIV/AIDS and sexual and reproductive health, and will examine such issues as quarantine, testing of new technologies on vulnerable populations, commitment of resources to treatment versus prevention, and the influence of conflicting "moralities" on public health program approaches. These debates will examine the tensions that sometimes arise between efforts to ensure public health and safety, while promoting health equity and rights. It will incorporate perspectives of stakeholders in the developing world, as well as scientists, policy makers and activists. The analysis and readings will draw from various disciplines, including epidemiology and medical anthropology.
Here and There: Writing on International Affairs
Here and There: Writing on International Affairs
This course will put a heavy emphasis on reporting, writing and developing the sensibilities needed for success as an international news correspondent. We will focus heavily on the techniques of the craft, always in the context of contemporary world events and the realities of modern English-language media. A series of lecturers, and a visit to one of New York City's great newsrooms, will be included during the semester. This is not a course for purists, but rather a broad look at a varied, complex discipline. We will examine briefly many of the topics an international journalist will confront today. We also will touch upon the broadcast and Internet skills that no journalist who strives to be in interesting places at interesting times can afford to ignore in this modern world.
Corporate Finance: Theory and Practice
Corporate Finance: Theory and Practice
This course will provide students with practical experience in solving finance issues typically encountered in investment banking and the CFO’s office through lecture, case study and excel-based lessons. On successful completion of this course, students should understand corporate policies and actions, such as capital structure, firm valuation, and mergers and acquisitions. Specifically, students will demonstrate an understanding of the impact of leverage on the cost of capital, payout policy, the impact of taxes and agency costs on firm value, and issues related to control of the firm. Lastly, students should demonstrate ethical awareness and the ability to think critically and deal successfully with unstructured problems. The course will consist of lectures, homework assignments, case studies, guest speakers and exams. Lectures will introduce specific finance concepts. Homework and exams will reinforce understanding of concepts. Case studies will apply concepts to real world situations. Guest speakers will highlight personal experience with concepts and application.
Statistics in Action: from Clinical Trial to Social Justice
Statistics in Action: from Clinical Trial to Social Justice
Statistics play a pivotal role in illuminating complex issues, from public health crises to the data mining of social media. Through real-life case studies, students will delve into how these mathematical tools uncover the root causes of significant events, even when masked by societal constructs. The primary aim of this course is to impart a broad statistical literacy relevant to fields ranging from the life sciences, data science, economics, and social sciences. By adopting a problem-solving approach, students will become adept at employing advanced statistical modeling, such as analysis of variance and multiple regression, to apply hypothesis testing to diverse real-world situations. A significant component of this instruction includes using the R-programming environment, allowing students to compute and visually represent their analysis outcomes using open-access software. Furthermore, students will engage in critical discussions about the controversies that have molded contemporary statistics, understanding its power and limitations, especially in big data and social justice. Prior knowledge of statistics or programming is not necessary.
New York Street Photography: The City Flâneur
New York Street Photography: The City Flâneur
This class explores photography as made in New York in two ways; history and practice. Photographs made on the streets of New York City throughout the twentieth century define the experience of modernity in America. The great city and its multitudes has been a magnet to our most revered photographers; Lewis Hine, Berenice Abbott, Gordon Parks, Lisette Model, Diane Arbus, the list continues. As does the city, always room for the next photographer ready to describe the here and now in their own uncommon way. In this class, students will study the history of New York street photography as an instrument to learn about how the city evolved; the stories, the conflicts and the triumphs. On the practice side, students will make pictures responding to weekly assignments inspired by expansive themes; power, identity, survival, hubris, play, family. Group field trips will be made in different neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs, the city becomes our learning lab of the human experience. Students will gain confidence making pictures in public places allowing their singular artistic voice to flourish.
Contemporary Art Seminar
Contemporary Art Seminar
This class will survey recent developments in the visual arts. We will take advantage of New York’s unparalleled richness of museums and art galleries by having several class meetings at exhibitions of contemporary art, including visits to artists’ studios. Presentations in class will survey the backgrounds of recent artistic developments. These will be supplemented by readings of classic texts about contemporary art, plus articles and reviews about the artists whose exhibitions we will be seeing. Students will give two presentations to the class about selected contemporary artists, and will write a midterm and a final paper, plus short responses to a few of their favorite readings.
Film Criticism
Film Criticism
A workshop focusing on the weekly writing of short film criticism, on strict deadline. The course is designed for students who wish to engage with cinema in its widest variety of styles and forms, and to practice and discuss what it means to translate the experience of an essentially audio-visual medium into the written word. Students will be encouraged to write about films screening at theaters in New York City, and will meet with working film critics as guest speakers. In addition, we will read and discuss exemplary pieces of published film criticism, from the era of silent film to our own, in order to widen our understanding of how film has been written about and strengthen our sense for essential characteristics of engaging and intelligent writing. Please note that participants will need to be comfortable with sharing their writing with others in a seminar setting.
Courses Previously Offered by Bard NYC
City Frictions
City Frictions
This seminar course will examine the political conflicts, material frictions, and social differences that occur within the city. Often urban struggles emerge from the opposing ways in which city planners, government institutions, forces of capital, and the public want the space and land of the city to be used and to develop. At the outset of the semester, students will discuss readings that characterize struggle and discord as fundamental to urban politics. The assigned texts – which will include works by Marshal Berman, Mike Davis, Jane Jacobs, David Harvey, Raquel Polnik, Mimi Sheller, and Samuel Stein – will provide a foundation for analyzing sites in New York City where struggles for affordable housing, racial justice, public land-tenure, social services, cultural spaces, and community-led rezoning have unfolded or are presently taking place. Activists directly involved in these efforts will join the class throughout the semester and students will potentially visit the locations that they are researching.
Art and Civic Power Lab
Art and Civic Power Lab
In New York, art stands for the experimental, risk-taking, and socially committed dimensions with which the city prides itself. And yet, in spite of its reputation for glamour and exceptionalism, New York City encapsulates many of the political problems within the United States and big cities globally. New York’s artists have confronted these issues, from deindustrialization, lack of affordable housing, access to healthcare, to demographic changes, intrusion/rise of technology, treatment of immigrants, climate change, and precarity and indebtedness. In this course, we will paint a panoramic picture of the living city through the experiences of its artists—here examined as citizens as well as makers. Our core focus are those vivid moments where art and politics collide to create complex pictures that stretch our understanding of both. And through this research, we ask: What is the relationship between expression and power? Does art naturally point the way toward individual identities and personal brands, or can we imagine it opening the door to big-tent politics? This question resonates strongly in America’s largest city—a place of deep contradictions, dominated by economic inequality yet rich with an ongoing tradition of grassroots organising. We think the intensities of New York make a good lens for interacting with contemporary art, while also providing perspective on civic power and responsibility. This course will combine aspects of a studio and seminar course, with a series of modules/themes through the semester, and experiential projects tailored to our areas of focus. Rather than studio-based art making, we introduce multi-media documentation techniques, site specific interventions, and performance as tools to map the city’s social and political geography.
Machine Media: Machine Learning and Generative Art History
Machine Media: Machine Learning and Generative Art History
Recent developments in Machine Learning platforms like Dall-E and Midjourney have created a frenzy around 'AI art'. While media outlets question whether AI will replace artists, this interdisciplinary course focuses instead on situating Machine Learning within a larger history of generative art. In this introductory course, we will unpack some of the commonly used terms surrounding Machine Learning and consider the historical relationship between machines and creativity. We will also learn about networks of human labor, ecological resources, and funding structures behind Machine Learning. In addition to readings, students will think through these issues by working with Machine Learning in a hands-on way. Students will spend the semester working slowly and intentionally to prepare a dataset of images that will be used to create their own Machine Learning model. No prior coding experience is required and students will not be evaluated on their technical ability. Instead, we will use the process of designing a dataset and building a model as a catalyst for discussing more ethical and nuanced approaches to thinking with and about machines and how these approaches might translate across disciplines.
Food Microbiology
Food Microbiology
In this course designed for non-majors, we will study the microorganisms that inhabit, create, or contaminate food. The first half of the course will introduce students to topics in food safety such as food spoilage, food borne infections, and antibiotic resistance. In the second half of the course, students will learn how to harness the capabilities of the many microbes present in our environment to turn rotting vegetables or spoiling milk into delicious food. Students will also learn how next-generation technologies are revealing the important ecological dynamics shaping microbial communities in transforming food with possible beneficial effects on human health. Throughout the course, students will learn how to design, conduct, and analyze simple experiments while working with microbiology techniques, including DNA sequencing.
Deconstructing the Data Industrial Complex
Deconstructing the Data Industrial Complex
This course will introduce students to the analytical tools required to fully understand the opportunities and harms of algorithmic governance. From identifying how bias and other social values become embedded in discrete datasets to mapping the sale of data and government procurement of data-driven technologies, this course will teach students how to critically dissect a discrete point of data as well as the institutional dynamics of those involved in deploying data-driven technologies. The course material will draw from technical introductions to data and database infrastructures, political philosophy, critical data studies scholarship, investigative journalism, and sci-fi film. Students will collaborate in small groups to focus on one type of algorithmic governance system and produce research about the reliability of the data used in that system, as well as the philanthropic, government, academic, and corporate institutions that support and oppose it.
Multilateralism in Crisis? Managing Global Challenges
Multilateralism in Crisis? Managing Global Challenges
For over 75 years, the United Nations, other international institutions, and their member governments have sought ways to maintain peace and security, manage global crises, defend human rights, advance justice, and support social and economic development. In more recent years, new actors including civil society, philanthropy, and the private sector have been engaged to bring new perspectives, broaden outreach, and improve program implementation. But recent crises have tested the ability of these institutions to manage change and develop solutions. The global coronavirus pandemic, climate change, inequality and injustice, the decline of democracies, rapid technological change, rising food and commodity prices, and increased refugee and migration flows—these global challenges require global solutions. Yet many wonder whether the United Nations and international institutions are up to the task. Amid the strain that these challenges already posed on global institutions and support for global cooperation, Russia's invasion of Ukraine has raised fundamental questions about their existence and continued legitimacy. This course aims to equip students with a better understanding of when and why global institutions work and what it takes to make global policy effective. We will examine the roles, responsibilities, and effectiveness of international institutions in helping to manage global crises, and how the Biden Administration, UN officials, or other decision-makers should respond. We will study successes and failures of multilateralism, whether the system is working the way it was designed to, and the role that governments, civil society, and others play in its effectiveness. At a time of increasing political division—both within societies and between powerful governments—what are our options for developing collective responses that are effective and uphold our values?
Foreign Policy in the Age of the Internet
Foreign Policy in the Age of the Internet
Foreign policy is among the things that the Internet has revolutionized. No longer is diplomacy confined to oak-paneled rooms and gilded corridors. This change, as New York Times reporter Mark Landler noted, "happened so fast that it left the foreign policy establishment gasping to catch up." This course examines how foreign policy and international affairs are being shaped in the age of the Internet. Topics include democracy versus censorship, conflict, climate change and the environment, big data and privacy, global economics and the movement of capital. Among the questions we will explore are: • What is the changing nature of power? Are there actors? • How is the concept of the nation-state changing? • What constitutes world order in this new era? • How have the Internet, the mobile phone, and other technologies changed the conduct of foreign affairs?
Democratic Decline and the New Authoritarianism
Democratic Decline and the New Authoritarianism
“Illiberal democracy” is the catchphrase of the moment, as illiberal politics appear to be winning elections and delivering radical changes with increasing frequency around the world, from Poland and Hungary, to Israel and India, Brazil, Turkey, and of course, the United States. In this course we’ll explore “democratic backsliding” from a global perspective, what is meant by the term, what it looks like, and why it seems to be happening so widely right now. We’ll look at factors contributing to the rise of the far right, sources of support for illiberal politics, and whether this politics offers real solutions to actual problems. Some critics argue that the concept itself of “illiberal democracy” is an oxymoron. But therein lie some of the difficulties facing liberal societies: where and how do we draw a distinction between legitimate disputes among parties within a democratic community, and behaviors that damage, and potentially destroy, the system itself? Readings for this course will be interdisciplinary, drawing on critical texts on democratic erosion, from Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky, and Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes, as well as recent theoretical writings on democracy, its vulnerabilities, and limits, from Patrick Deneen and Roger Scruton, and journalistic works, such as those by Anne Applebaum and Isabel Wilkerson. We will examine case studies, and students will complete a final assignment that may be devoted to one such case study, an essay or journalistic piece, or another writing project to be determined with the instructor. An underlying line of inquiry in this class will be to consider whether (or not) we may be entering into a “post-liberal” era, and what that might mean for the future of the democratic institutions – the media, civil society, schools and universities, museums, the courts – within which many of us will seek to make our careers and our public lives.