During the first year, LS Core students take most courses in LS, but during the sophomore year, students combine required courses with elective courses taken in other NYU schools or colleges. With assistance from your advisor, you will select electives with a view towards the future. For example, you may sample introductory courses in the NYU school or program you are considering for completing your degree.
Social Sciences
Principles of Macroeconomics and Principles of Microeconomics may meet some of the equivalent course requirements for the College of Arts and Science.
Principles of Macroeconomics
This course introduces basic concepts of macroeconomic theory. Topics include unemployment, inflation, aggregate demand, income determination and stabilization policies, fiscal and monetary policies, and the Keynesian monetarist debate over stabilization policy.
Principles of Microeconomics
This course introduces basic concepts of microeconomic theory by examining price theory and its applications. Topics include consumer demand and choice, indifference curve analysis, big business and public policy, and factor markets and the distribution of income.
Global Cultures
Students may choose electives from the Global Cultures courses, which feature the regions of Africa, East Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and South Asia. Global Cultures is designed to help students understand societies that have long histories and enormous diversity within themselves – societies and cultures that intersect across the globe. These courses introduce students to aspects of one particular region's cultural development. "Culture" is broadly defined as including, but not limited to, such disciplines as history, philosophy, the arts, politics and social institutions.
African Cultures
This course offers a broad interdisciplinary introduction to the great diversity of peoples, places, and cultures on the African continent. Students use a variety of historical sources, literature, and film to explore the paradigms of traditional cultures of precolonial societies and the disruptions of those structures by the incursions of Islam and European colonialism. The course also explores the decolonialization of the continent, the attendant struggles for independence, and post-liberation problems. The impact of modernity on cultural roles and the transformation of African cultures in the diaspora also receive attention.
East Asian Cultures
This course offers a broad interdisciplinary introduction to China, Japan, and Korea, generally concentrating on one of these regions. Students study aspects of the traditional and/or modern cultures of one or more of these countries, such as the foundational texts of major schools of thought, as well as literary, political, philosophical, religious, and artistic works. Topics may include the roots and growth of East Asian culture, national or cultural identity in relation to imperialism and colonialism, East-West tensions, modernism’s clash with tradition, the persistence of the traditional within the modern, the East Asian diaspora, and questions of East Asian “modernities.”
Latin American Cultures
This course offers a broad, interdisciplinary introduction to the diversity in the Caribbean and the Americas beyond the United States and Canada. Given the European, American, African, Asian, and indigenous Indian influences on the region’s varied cultures and societies, the course focuses on one or more of such topics as the social, political, artistic, economic, and ethnological issues of the pre-Columbian, colonial, independence, and contemporary periods. It traces both cultural communities and differences within Latin America. The course also explores Latin American ideas about the place that the region occupies in the Americas and the world.
Middle Eastern Cultures
This course offers a broad interdisciplinary introduction to the societies, cultures, politics, and history of the contemporary Near East and Islamic North Africa. Sociological, historical, and political texts, as well as achievements in the fine and performing arts, films, and literary works, are employed to examine the region’s rich historical legacy and current complexity. Topics include the historical-cultural relations between the Middle East and the West; the impact of historical, economic, and political change in the region’s cultures and societies; and the contemporary state of the region.
South Asian Cultures
This course offers a broad interdisciplinary introduction to the society and culture of the Indian subcontinent, concentrating on one or more of the nations of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. Students study aspects of the traditional and/or modern cultures of one or more of these countries, such as the foundational texts of major schools of thought, as well as literary, political, philosophical, religious, and artistic works. The course explores the interactions of historical tradition and change and illuminates such issues as colonialism, sectarianism, and modernization.
Creative Writing
Creative Writing: Global Voices and Forms
The conversations and work in this course are guided by a reading list that has been constructed with an emphasis on the global writing community. Readings are drawn from the diverse international tradition of modern and contemporary writing in order to facilitate a discussion of the role national or geographic identity plays in the construction of creative works. The course considers, when appropriate, the national or geographic origin of particular forms—in fiction, for example, magical realism and its ties to Latin America, and the nouveau roman and its ties to France—and the ways those forms have migrated and influenced creative works around the globe. Students complete creative writing exercises inspired by and related to the readings and discussions of form, some of which might turn into longer works.
Creative Writing: Places
This course considers place, setting, or location as central concerns of the creative writing craft. Students examine contemporary theories and poetics around issues of place, as well as consider how writers use place, geography, landscape, and nationality to shape their creative work. Students consider how one makes places with language, how one conveys what it feels like to be in a place, and how place influences narrative.