Global Arc

This course introduces a wide variety of reading material (newspaper, memoir, letter, short story, diary etc.) to strengthen students' abilities in understanding and evaluating modern Turkish texts. Information on selected authors and their works will provide a general view on the Ottoman/Turkish cultural, literary and historical panorama. The analysis and discussions of the texts in class will serve to build fluency.

This course introduces a wide variety of topics in contemporary Turkish media, cinema and documentaries. It will develop students' skills in listening and understanding colloquial Turkish, as well as in evaluating social, political and cultural issues covered by the media (including BBC, TRT, VOA). Viewing a selection of Turkish documentaries and films will serve to build fluency through in-depth classroom analysis and discussions. Weekly written assignments will help to develop students' proficiency in literary Turkish.

In this course, students will learn how to read Ottoman Turkish in the Arabic script, acquire knowledge of relevant Persian and Arabic grammar rules, develop a basic set of Ottoman Turkish vocabulary, and romanize written Ottoman sources. The readings will emphasize variety, provided by sources such as legal tracts, histories, and biographies; as well as depth, provided by focus on a specific genre of prose fiction, the Tifli stories, showcasing developments in Ottoman language and society across the last three centuries of the empire. While most of the texts we read will be printed, we will look at some simple manuscripts as well.

The course will provide the students with fluency in reading and understanding Ottoman Turkish written in various periods. The texts will consist of printed and handwritten materials: articles, letters, newspapers and archival documents.

Introduces students to social scientific thinking on cities and urbanism and then builds on this base to consider and evaluate various approaches to urban policy.

This course will examine different crises confronting cities in the 21st century. Topics will range from immigration, to terrorism, shrinking population, traffic congestion, pollution, energy crisis, housing needs, water wars, race riots, extreme weather conditions, war and urban operations. The range of cities will include Los Angles, New Orleans, Paris, Logos, Caracas, Havana, New York, Hong Kong, and Baghdad among others.

This seminar uses film to explore the social and political issues facing the post-industrial American city and examines how films employ different documentary methodologies. Students will apply these techniques hands-on, collaborating on short explorations of housing issues in Trenton. They will learn how to establish a relationship with a subject, gather observational footage, conduct interviews, and weave narrative in a visual medium. The goal of the course is to give students not only a greater understanding of urban history and the challenges cities face today but also a foundation in the practical and theoretical issues of documentary.

This interdisciplinary seminar introduces research methods in urban studies. We will focus on some of the ways in which researchers make sense of cities, including various aspects of urban experience, culture, history, theory, form, and policy. Students will use the analytical frameworks covered in the course to develop their own research projects with the goal of developing more dynamic junior papers and senior theses.

This interdisciplinary course explores the history of city-nature relations, centering the intersection of industrialization, environmentalism and modernization known as urban greening. Particular emphasis is placed on urban greening outside Western traditions of capitalist urbanism. We will apply a framework of critical and comparative analysis to the question of how urbanists' visions for socialist urban landscapes have responded to community and environmental health hazards in the long 20th century. What lessons and warnings for present climate justice and mitigation efforts in urbanism can be taken from their attempts?

This interdisciplinary course will explore the history, politics, and social dynamics of urban migration on the Indian Subcontinent, home to and source of some of the largest migrations in human history. Through writing, discussion, and mapping, the class will also encounter broader concepts in the study of migration; its diversity, causes, challenges, as well as implications for social organization and city planning. Subtopics will include the history of Asia's great migrations, partition and refugee resettlement, internal migration, indentured and imported labor, gender politics, and the rural urban divide in the global South.