New York City

New York City is our greatest metropolitan legend.  Capital of dreams, it soars to the skies, gathers immigrants from around the globe, and governs world finance. The scale of its swagger is matched only by the misery of its mistakes.  Here is your chance to get to know the epic place you chose for college.

The course is team-taught, by professors, teaching assistants, and all its students.  Lectures are held twice a week. A third weekly session is devoted to small-group forums in which students present to each other on assigned field work themes. The first half of the course studies the relationships between urban design, immigration, and finance in three-lecture units; the second half of the course explores a variety of municipal subjects.  

The course is designed to introduce students, especially Barnard first-year students, to their new home city, as well as to the fundamental intellectual skills of comparative reading, writing which considers competing points of view, reporting on local facts, and public speaking in real time.