Apply for GSAS' Second Annual Threesis Challenge for MA Students: Applications Due 1/31

Draper encourages applications to GSAS' second annual Threesis Academic Challenge for Master's students. Eight of Draper's students participated in last year's challenge and two of our students were semi-finalists. More information about Threesis is below or is available on the GSAS website here. The application is attached, or can be picked up in hard copy in Draper's office.

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Save the date and submit your Application today for the 2012 GSAS Threesis Academic Challenge will be held on March 30th (qualifying rounds) and March 31st (final rounds)
The application for the 2012 GSAS Threesis Academic Challenge is open! This academic competition is for GSAS Master's Students. Students present the work of their thesis or final project (eg. creative project, science experiment or research paper) to a panel of judges in accessible language a non-expert can understand in three minutes or less. Competitors are judged on how well they grasp the subject of their thesis, their ability to discuss the topic to non-experts and presentation skills. Students compete for a grand prize of $1,000 and other prizes while learning to organize ideas and speak about them persuasively in a fun, academic atmosphere.

Look at what one competitor had to say about last year's experience:

The Threesis encourages students to take a step back from their research to see how it sits in a world outside of academia. It is about explaining what you are writing about in a way that grandma and grandpa, mom and dad and the random person that you meet on the street can understand. It is the opposite of what were are trained to do in our masters work and that's what makes it so challenging.

Jailee Rychen 2011 GSAS

Threesis Winner

Have you submitted your 2012 Threesis application? To submit your application, send the application and your abstract to gsas.threesis@nyu.edu. Applications are due by January 31st!

Watch the highlight video from last year's competition here:
http://gsas.nyu.edu/object/gsas.masterscollege.thethreesischallenge

Deadline: Delores Zohrab Liebmann Fellowship Apps Due 1/6

Reminder: The application deadline for the Delores Zohrab Liebmann Fellowship is Friday, January 6, 2012.

GSAS has announced a funding opportunity for GSAS graduate students, which you are encouraged to apply for. The Delores Zohrab Liebmann Fellowship competition for grant year 2012-2013 is now open. This scholarship was established to “support students with outstanding character and ability who hold promise for achievement and distinction in their chosen fields of study.”

More information on the fellowship--including the application--is available on the GSAS website, here: http://gsas.nyu.edu/object/grad.acadlife.zohrab. Contact the office of Academic and Student Life with questions by phone at 212.998.8060 or by e-mail at gsas.studentlife@nyu.edu.

Elective Options

Happy New Year, Draperites!

The classes detailed below have open spaces for Draper students. Please note that these classes are not cross listed. Interested students can enroll in them via Albert. If you encounter any registration issues or have questions regarding these courses, please contact Amanda at asa4@nyu.edu.

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BIOE-GA 2222.001 Cross-listed with PHIL-GA 2222.001 Clinical Ethics
Professor S. Matthew Liao
Spring 2012- M 6:00-8:30 pm

4 points

Physicians and nurses will present for discussion and theoretical analysis the ethical issues that they encounter in their Medical Center work. Topics to be discussed include the ethics of using placebos, conflicts of interest and clinical trials, ethics consultations in health care, pain management and end of life, conscientious objection, giving hope, and doctors as torture consultants. Reading will be drawn from medical and philosophy literature.

BIOE-GA 1008.001 Topics in Bioethics: Research Ethics

Professor Collin O’Neil
Spring 2012-T 6:45-9:15 pm

4 points

The course will begin by examining the historical scandals that launched the field of research ethics and ask whether the principles and regulations that have emerged in reaction are on the whole appropriate, or whether they are in some cases overly protective of human subjects and unduly burdensome on research. Among the questions that will be addressed: is it permissible to deceive subjects when necessary to obtain valid results; is it permissible to use a placebo control when proven effective care for the condition exists; should we be more liberal about enrolling children, the cognitively impaired, and pregnant women in risky research; are there any reasons to limit payment for participation in risky research; is there an obligation to participate in research? Thinking through these issues will require thinking about the nature of role obligations; the validity conditions for consent; the nature of manipulation, coercion, and wrongful exploitation. The course will also examine whether animals may be used in harmful research, whether certain lines of inquiry, such as into racial differences, should not be pursued at all, whether patents on research discoveries are justifiable, and whether some kinds of regulations on research may be inconsistent with academic freedom or freedom of expression.

Happy New Year from NYU Libraries!

Be on the lookout this upcoming Spring semester for Library classes specifically for graduate students. These short sessions cover topics like developing your research skills, managing your citations, and introducing you to statistical software (if you want to sign up now, see http://webapps.library.nyu.edu/classes).

UVic Cultural, Social and Political Thought CFP

n/coherence: expression, translation, violence
Cultural Social and Political Thought Conference
University of Victoria: April 21-22, 2012

The Cultural, Social, and Political Thought program at the University of Victoria is pleased to announce a call for papers and projects for our annual graduate conference on April 21-22, 2012. The title of this year’s conference is in/coherence: expression, translation, violence. Thematic workshops will feature keynote speakers and student submissions (papers, performances, art pieces). This interdisciplinary conference seeks to engage in/coherence in social, cultural and political discourses, especially with respect to contemporary events.

Dynamics of expression, translation and violence in current contexts present opportunities for discussing in/coherence. As an interpretive thematic, in/coherence can be explored in ways that destabilize the binary reduction of “coherence versus incoherence”. How does in/coherence function politically, socially and culturally in contemporary arenas? Actions viewed as “incoherent” are frequently disregarded as illegitimate, yet claims of “coherent” actions are equally problematic. In response to recent expressions of dissent, a common insistence for actors to “bear reasonable witness” to their choices has illuminated the hegemonic scope of legitimacy. How do both demands and rejections of coherence complicate notions of incoherence (and vice versa)? Discussing in/coherence in these ways has potential ramifications for discussions around citizenship, postcolonialism, democracy, resistance, identity, liberal normativism, gender, nationalism, biopolitics, indigeneity, aesthetics, multiculturalism, the urban, language, globalization, critical theory, posthumanism, and capitalism, among others. We invite participants to submit original projects and aim to foster dynamic debate of these themes.
The conference will offer four workshops through which to approach these issues:

Narratives:
Narratives form horizons of consciousness: while they open up some ways of relating, they simultaneously close off the possibility of others. Proposals around this theme explore how the norms of “good,” i.e. coherent, narrative correspond to the dominant ideologies of our time (capitalism, neoliberalism, colonialism and so on). We also look for contributions that address the possibilities for new genres and narratives to reject the norms of efficiency and coherence.

Materialism/Materialities:
Is the material synonymous with the concrete? Can materiality be understood outside of language? Contributions to this workshop might consider the irreducible number of determinations (linguistic, topographical, concrete, etc.) that come into play in discussions of materiality.

Spatiotemporalities:
We are often told that a coherent notion of space and time, and conceptualizations thereof, are fundamentally imbricated in our ability to identify and make ourselves. Homelands and histories are presupposed as the fundamental conditions under which our being together is made and understood. We invite proposals which seek to describe, interrogate and trouble considerations of spaces and times (or spatiotemporalities) imagined as coherent or incoherent, and to call into question the rationalities that mobilize such discourses.

Technologies:
The clean lines and binary choices presented by contemporary technology give the strong impression of clarity, control, and coherence, but under the surface lurk power failures, code exploits, and unexpected mutations. In this spirit, proposals to this workshop might, among other aims, interrogate the in/coherent character of key technologies – questioning the reasons for their design, the way that they function, and the effects that they have on their users – interrogations that may demonstrate that an in/coherent logic informs the algorithmic operation of technology.

Please submit project proposals between 250-500 words (with expression of interest in one of the four workshops) to in.coherence2012@gmail.com by January 30th, 2012.