Course Announcement | Reality and Documentary Television, Summer 2012

Reality and Documentary Television, a non-GSAS summer course is open to Draperites for enrollment. Interested students should contact Robert at robert.dimit@nyu.edu regarding registration.

SUMMER COURSE (Graduate level)

Reality and Documentary Television

MCC-GE 2147-001; CINE-GT 1603-001

Instructor: Susan Murray

Meets: M/T/W/TH 10-12:45; May 21-June 8, 2012

Since 2000, we have witnessed the proliferation of "reality" genres across all areas of cable and network programming schedules. While there are specific explanations for the rise of the current wave of reality, reality programming is not new to television and has developed out of and in relationship to other non-fiction television forms--specifically game shows, participation programs, magazine news programs and, of course, documentary. This course will survey the history and development of documentary and reality television and its implications for the aesthetics, form, business and culture of television. Students will develop analytical skills needed to understand the aesthetics and culture referenced and created by the documentary tradition and reality-based programming as well as the business and marketing strategies that have been instituted in relationship to it.

Susan Murray is Associate Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at NYU. She is the co-editor, with Laurie Ouellette, of two editions (2004, 2008) of Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture and the author of Hitch Your Antenna to the Stars: Early Television and Broadcast Stardom (2005).

Check Out Draper's Summer Writing Workshops

Every summer, Draper offers a workshop course called "Preparation for Graduate School: Summer Writing Workshop." Although this course was originally designed for incoming graduate students, it has also been very useful to some Draper students after completing their first semesters in the program. 

If you'd like to brush up your writing skills this summer, the course will be offered in both summer session one (with Prof. MacPhail) and summer session two (with Prof. Moga). It's a pass/fail class which can be taken for two credits, or as a non-credit course (there's a flat fee of $1,000 for the non-credit section; regular tuition applies to the two credit sections). There are no access codes for Draper's summer courses, so you can just enroll directly on Albert. 

Course descriptions for both Prof. MacPhail and Prof. Moga's workshops are below. Email Draper (draper.program@nyu.edu) with any questions about the course or summer registration. 

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Summer Session One: 5/21 - 6/29

Summer Writing Workshop
Prof. Theresa MacPhail

Mondays, 6:00 - 8:30 PM
Draper Map Room

DRAP-GA.2900

Section 001: non-credit 

Section 002: two credits

This course introduces incoming and first-year graduate students to the practice of academic writing. We’ll cover some of the specific forms and styles that graduate students routinely encounter, including: grant proposals and prospectuses, abstracts, book  and literature reviews, critical essays, and research papers. We’ll also seek to demystify the writing process by discussing some of the practical problems that writers face and breaking down the process into manageable tasks at each stage.

           

Because this course is a practical, hands-on workshop, it will be centered around what you write from week to week, as well as in-class writing activities including peer review, feedback, editing, and discussion. Readings will consist of short articles on particular aspects of writing, and examples of the genres we are working with.

Aside from the writing you produce during the course, you should also have a longer paper that you would like to revise, either something in progress or previously written for another course. It doesn’t have to be a fully polished piece but it should have a recognizable shape with introduction, body and conclusion fleshed out. In case you do not have a suitable paper available, we can make other arrangements.

Summer Session Two: 7/2 - 8/10

Summer Writing Workshop
Prof. Steven Moga

Tuesdays, 6:00 - 8:30 PM
Draper Map Room

DRAP-GA.2900

Section 003: non-credit 

Section 004: two credits

This course focuses on academic writing in the form of short essays and research papers. Designed as a workshop, it aims to teach students practical skills for success in graduate school through weekly writing assignments, in-class writing and editing exercises, readings about academic writing, and discussion. Topics include style and tone in academic argument, writing with clarity and sophistication, the use of jargon and technical language, time management and the term paper, and the writing process.

Draper's Provisional Summer 2012 Course Schedule Now Available

Draper's provisional summer schedule has now been made available on our website, here. Please keep the following information in mind when planning your summer registration:

• Registration opens on Albert on Monday, February 13, but many departments may not have confirmed their full course schedules until the middle of the spring semester. Please continue to check departmental listings to see updates and additions to course schedules. The last day to register for the Summer Session I is not until May 20, so there will be plenty of time to consider your summer course choices throughout the spring semester.

• The majority of Draper's summer courses are crosslists, so our program has to wait for external departments to finalize their summer schedules before we can finish our own. We anticipate, however, that Draper will be adding several more crosslisted classes for the summer, most likely including several English courses in both summer session one and two. Any new information about summer classes--including new crosslists and new course descriptions--will be sent to the listserv and posted here, on in.ter.reg.num, as it becomes available.

• There are no access codes required to register for summer classes and Draper does not hold formal advising for the summer semester. Please email Robert Dimit directly with questions about summer registration: robert[dot]dimit@nyu[dot]edu.

Notice about summer class schedule and registration

Dear Draperites,

While we know that the search function in Albert now includes summer courses, we want you to be clear that most departments do not have their full course schedules set yet, including Draper.

We will send an announcement to this listserv when our schedule is up, closer to February 13. The last day to register for the Summer Session I is not until May 20, so you have plenty of time to consider your summer course choices.

Draper does not have an official advisement period for summer classes. After February 13, if you want to enroll in summer courses, please email draper.program@nyu.edu for approval.

Best,

Georgia

Grad Eng Class Open to Outside Students: Enlightenment & Counter-Enlightenment in Britain

For registration access codes, please contact Lissette.roarabaugh@nyu.edu.

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Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment in Britain

Visiting Professor Henry Abelove

Wednesdays, 1-3 pm, beginning Jan. 25, 2012

In this course we will focus on a set of closely related British non-fiction prose works of the middle to late eighteenth century, especially as they treat empire, sexuality, and religiosity. Our approach will include both formal and historical analysis. Several short papers will be required; a research paper will be optional. Principal readings will be drawn from David Hume’s ethical writings, Jonathan Swift’s writings on British imperialism in Ireland, Samuel Johnson’s Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, James Boswell’s London Journal, Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, John Wesley’s Sermons and Journals, and Edmund Burke’s Letter to a Noble Lord and his parliamentary speeches on British imperialism in India. Class meetings will be discussion-based.

Students will be expected to acquire these four paperback books: Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and Journal of A Tour to the Hebrides, ed. Peter Levi, Penguin English Classics; Edward Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. Womersley, Penguin Classics; James Boswell, Boswell’s London Journal, 1762-1763, ed. Pottle, Yale University Press; Edmund Burke, On Empire, Liberty, and Reform: Edmund Burke’s Speeches and Letters, ed. Bromwich, Yale University Press.

Henry Abelove is Visiting Professor of English at NYU for the spring term of 2012. He is Wilber Fisk Osborne Professor of English Emeritus at Wesleyan University. He is the author of The Evangelist of Desire: John Wesley and the Methodists (1992), Deep Gossip (2002). A leading scholar of queer studies in the United States, he is coeditor of the path-breaking volume The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader (1993). He is currently working on a book called George Berkeley and the American Indians.

Spring Course: From Third World to Global South

We'd like to highlight another of our spring Topics classes--Topics in Global Histories: From Third World to Global South--taught by Prof. Maia Ramnath. Prof. Ramnath was Draper's previous faculty fellow in Global Histories and has recently published two books: Haj to Utopia: How the Ghadar Movement Charted Global Radicalism and Attempted to Overthrow the British Empire (University of California Press, 2011) and Decolonizing Anarchism (AK Press, 2011).

The course description is below; please contact Larissa Kyzer at larissa.kyzer@nyu.edu if interested in enrolling.

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Topics in Global Histories: From Third World to Global South

DRAP-GA.3005

Prof. Maia Ramnath

Course Overview

The aim of this class is to explore the political and intellectual legacy of anti-colonialism. In it we will trace the development of ideologies and practices of decolonization through transnational solidarities and internationalist movements from the late 19th century to the present.

Paying attention to the continuities as well as the turning points in the structures that have defined a global field of power and action, we confront systems of political, military, economic and cultural dominance and their legitimating ideologies of race and civilization: "high" imperialism, capital expansion, Cold War geopolitical blocs, developmentalism, neoliberal globalization, and the "new" imperialism.

On the other side we see the precursors of today's call to "globalize resistance" through cultural/civilizational or class categories of allegiance and identity, as Pan-African, Pan-Asian and Pan-Islamic movements fed into interwar congresses of Oppressed Peoples and the Comintern-backed League Against Imperialism, succeeded by the post-war/Cold War era of the Non-Aligned Movement, Afro-Asian and Tricontinental collaborations and Third Worldist liberation struggles, and finally into the contemporary notion of the Global South and "globalization from below."

Since the cultural dimension has been so crucial to questions and practices of anti-colonial resistance and so interconnected with political, social and economic conditions, we will supplement each discussion with student-presented modules on some of the many writers whose literary contributions were intrinsic to the experience of Third Worldist politics and the later development of postcolonial criticism.

Students will be expected to produce a substantive research paper, an oral presentation and brief weekly critical reading responses.

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Literature

(possibilities; focus to be determined by students in collaboration with instructor)

George Lamming, Patrick Chamoiseau, Derek Walcott, Wole Soyinka, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Naguib Mahfouz,Mahmoud Darwish, Chinua Achebe, Pablo Neruda, Jose Marti, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Agha Shahid Ali, Sajjad Zaheer, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Saadat Hasan Manto, Ismet Chughtai, Buchi Emecheta, Forugh Farrokhzad, Mulk Raj Anand, Lu Xun, Sam Selvon, V.S. Naipaul, Assia Djebar, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh, Hanif Kureishi, Monica Ali, Zadie Smith, Ama Ata Aidoo, Shani Mootoo, Jessica Hagedorn, Ahdaf Soueif, Hanan Ashrawi, Jean Rhys, E. M. Forster, Rudyard Kipling,Joseph Conrad, Albert Camus...the sky's the limit.

Don't Forget Advising for the Spring Semester!

If you have not already made your advisement appointment for spring 2012 classes, please call Draper (212.998.8070) to set up an appointment. Appointments can be held in person or over the phone, but all students who will be enrolling in courses during the coming semester *must* speak to Dr. Dimit for advising.

Next week will be the last week of advising until January--there will be no advising appointments made in December.

Appointments are still available on Monday, Nov. 21 and Tuesday, Nov. 22.

Call Draper at 212.998.8070 to schedule your appointment.

Academic Advising and Registration for the Spring 2012 Semester

It may only be October, but we're already looking ahead to the spring 2012 semester. Registration on Albert for the spring term will begin on Monday, November 14, 2011. Spring classes will be available in Albert's Course Search beginning the week of October 17, 2011. Please remember that most departments in GSAS have earlier registration than Draper does, so if you plan to register for non-Draper classes, you will be able to start making those arrangements before you complete your Draper advising and registration.

Draper's preliminary spring 2012 course schedule will be available on our website within the next couple weeks. These listings will be updated regularly with new crosslists and information.

Draper's spring 2012 academic advising period will be held in two separate sessions. The first academic advising session will begin on Thursday, November 10th and end on Wednesday, November 23rd. Any students who are unable to come in for advising during this session will have the opportunity to do so on January 9th and 10th. No advising appointments will be held in December.

Draper will begin scheduling advising appointments on Tuesday, October 25th. To schedule your appointment, please call 212.998.8070 on or after October 25. No advising appointments will be scheduled before that day.

All students who will be enrolling in courses in the spring must have an advising appointment prior to the start of the semester.