HSS Senior Seminar

This course aims to lay bare the interrelationships among technology and other human enterprises that shape a society, paying special attention to the arts, and thereby understanding society in terms of its various dynamics. A central activity in the course is the pursuit of certain definitions; these definitions—of art, beauty, culture, aesthetics, sublimity, and technology—shade one into the other, as each helps to comprehend the others.

Autonomy is a foundational concept in modern western philosophy and is central to many popular moral and political theories. Autonomy is also a term of art in the high-tech world, frequently seen in both artificial intelligence and robotics regulation and marketing. This course will attempt to weave these two discussions together so that the technical, philosophical, and sociopolitical aspects of autonomy can illuminate each other. The goal of the course is to develop a conception of autonomy that is sensitive to both historical and future uses of the term.

The purpose of this seminar is to assist students in their studies of cinema. Several films will be examined and discussed by the instructor. There will be a sampling of American classics and international films as well.  Students will assess the films' artistic value, human insight, etc. An exam will be given on all films shown during the seminar. Students, organized earlier into groups, will be tasked with narrowing down their selections of art house, classics, or international films to ONE during the second half of the semester. Each group will receive guidance from the instructor.  Students in each group will present their selection. During the presentation, students will describe various aspects of their selected film. We will then engage in discussion about the film, take a quiz, or verbally test what we saw after we have viewed it.  

This seminar explores effective communication tied to a digital environment. The course provides instruction and practice to prepare students to demonstrate the use of skills such as effective written and oral communication, group work, argument, and criticism, facility with digital media, and familiarity with working in digital environments.  Key concept areas include knowledge disclosure, dissemination, divulge, and directed instruction in written, oral and multimedia forms. This seminar ties into Dr. Lipuma’s current funded research into stem education and outreach through digital journals, undergraduate STEM role models, and work with the National Science Foundation. The final project for the class will require the creation of videos based on the metrics of overall effectiveness to demonstrate expertise and the ability to communicate knowledge to a variety of different target audiences.

In this course, you will learn to evaluate, critique, and develop written arguments about comics and other visual mediums. Throughout the semester we will develop a working definition of comics and analyze the strategies that sequential artists use to create meaning in their work. The course is split into three units. The first unit addresses the rhetorical dimensions of comics and visual narratives. The second unit focuses on larger works—graphic novels and graphic memoirs. The final unit is devoted to developing a thesis-driven research paper that analyzes the themes and ideas discussed throughout the semester.

This seminar is designed to compare and contrast the possibilities and limitations of the creative arts of literature and film. We will examine how books get shaped into movies, how meaning is created in this process, and how the viewer/reader is an active participant in that meaning-making. The language of film and literary criticism will be useful in our examinations. Parameters of time, space, imagination, and materiality will help shape our analyses. While focusing on books and films, this course will also consider the place of storytelling in what it means to be human.

This course is a journey into Newark’s rich and complicated history. We’ll begin with the year 1666 when Puritans from Connecticut purchased the land that is now Newark from a group of Lenape Indians for a price that included four barrels of beer, 10 pairs of breeches, two ankers of liquor, 10 kettles, 20 axes, 20 coats, 50 double hands of powder, 100 bars of lead, 20 pistols, 10 swords, 40 blankets, 50 knives, 20 hoes, 850 fathoms of wampum, and three troopers’ coats. From there, we will move forward in time, delving into the contrasting world views of the Puritans and the Lenape; the little-known history of slavery in Newark (and New Jersey); 19th century industrialization and its impact on the city; and the turmoil that roiled Newark in the 20th century, namely deindustrialization, racial inequality, and environmental pollution. Our methodology will involve a combination of readings, walking tours within a short distance of campus, and conversations with local experts. This will deepen our understanding of how the past informs the present – and how Newark is charting its way into the future.

As human-made climate change makes the headlines and is the subject of intense political debate, fictional explorations of possible futures explore its possibilities.  Whether set just a few years down the road, or in a post-apocalyptic society, climate change fiction (or “cli fi” for short) has become increasingly prominent in the twenty-first century.  In this course, we will read stories and novels that explore the ecological and human consequences of an ever more challenging landscape.  The class will culminate in a final essay that surveys climate change facts and the issues raised in the texts we have read and discussed during the semester.

Develops communication skills for contemporary global corporate and business markets. Topics include media in the public interest, corporate communication strategies, investor relations, and communication for corporate social responsibility.

A cyborg, short for cybernetic organism, is traditionally defined as a system with both organic and inorganic parts. In the narrowest sense of the word, cyborgs are people with machine body parts. These cyborg parts may be restorative technologies that help a body function where the organic system has failed, like pacemakers and bionic limbs, or other enhanced technologies that improve the human body beyond its natural state. In the broadest sense, any system of human interactions with technology could qualify as cyborgian. That’s the perspective for this course. In other words, we are all cyborgs. When we look at ourselves as cyborgs, it forces us to reevaluate the boundaries of the self that we are accustomed to. This includes the boundaries between humans and machines, but goes far beyond that. This course will consider such topics as the cyborg’s impact on gender, sexuality, sex, the environment, race and ethnicity, space travel, the prescience of science fiction, and much more.

The course itself is a cybernetic exercise in the sense that it will evolve with feedback resulting from interactions with readings, videos, movies and other resources, that will be reviewed. In the cyborg world, nothing is static. We, the cyborgs, react to information from all sources and continually are recreated.

This course examines and analyzes the topic of diversity and is designed to help students understand the individual, social, and cultural differences in their communities. It provides tools for thinking about diversity, the psychology of diversity, and gives students a platform to discuss and evaluate diversity’s role in creating a more collaborative and unified society. The course will demonstrate examples of diversity as advocacy, social action, and provide a map for a journey towards a greater understanding of individual identity. Some questions we will explore include: What is diversity? What impact does diversity have on relationships? On our mental and emotional processes? How does diversity positively and negatively influence our perceptions of individuals and groups? How does diversity influence our perceptions of fairness, justice, social problems, and social change? How does diversity promote positive change? What does diversity look like moving forward? How am I, as an individual, a uniquely diverse person?

This course investigates online digital literature created by writers who integrate computer technology in creative works. During the semester, several genres of Electronic Literature are presented and discussed. Students are introduced to remakes of literary computer experiments from the 1960s and 70s, and also explore Hypertext and Interactive Fiction, Kinetic and Interactive Poetry, Network Writing, and other game-like forms. We discuss and evaluate dynamics presented in works that integrate algorithmic programming, graphical artistry, videography, hypermedia, combinatory poetics, and sonic design while building an understanding of the blended values of these disparate forms of expression.

How do we know whether something is true or not? This seminar will explore the psychological underpinnings behind fake news and misinformation in the “post-truth” era by examining real-life events. To do that, we will first look briefly at the historical developments of these phenomena, define them, and understand their unprecedented proliferation within the contemporary media landscape. Our seminar will also consider different cutting-edge approaches to combat misperception. This will help you develop the necessary tools to successfully identify, measure, diagnose, and respond to false information.

Bernard Shaw: Social Satire on Screen, Stage, and Page is an examination of the 20th century's first and most effective social satirist, George Bernard Shaw, the English/Irish playwright, focusing on the five films for which Shaw provided the screenplays based on his five most successful plays: the anti-war Arms and the Man; the Oscar-winning communications manifesto, Pygmalion; the examination of religion and commerce, Major Barbara; the Nobel Prize-winning history, Saint Joan, and the treatise on good government, Caesar & Cleopatra.

This is a class on the art of film and its roles in culture and exploring its relationship to our world. We will explore film on a craft level and its disciplines as an art form through analysis and critique. This is a class for those who want to know more about film through a variety of films from different genres throughout the decades. Students will also conduct research on a topic; as appropriate and formulate a critical argument related to film and its influence and create Visual Exercises and finally a short film. This is a class on the art of film and its roles in culture and exploring its relationship to our world. We will explore film on a craft level and its disciplines as an art form through analysis and critique. This is a class for those who want to know more about film through a variety of films from different genres throughout the decades. Students will also conduct research on a topic; as appropriate and formulate a critical argument related to film and its influence and create Visual Exercises and finally a short film.

Food is a basic human need; however, beyond biological functions, food also has rich cultural significance. Taste, preference, ritual, tradition, gender, social class, and nationality all influence food choices and behaviors. In addition, economic and environmental factors, globalization, localization, and social movements all affect our access and attitudes toward food. 

In this course, we will examine how food behaviors are shaped by culture, and what that means. We will examine the memories of food and what it means for individuals, our families, and our cultural/geographic origins. 

Additionally, we will also examine how COVID-19 has impacted food issues since the mid-March quarantine: 

• scarcities of items on supermarket shelves due to supply chains and illness, 
• the necessity to do more home cooking, 
• food insecurities
• closures of restaurants and the effect on Mom-and-Pop establishments, 
• on the importance of feeding those on our front lines in hospitals,
• creating victory gardens
• finding ways to eat more local (including take-out/curbside/delivery options)

How legends become myths: a journey through classic Greek Literature, is a foray into Classic Greek literature of the Classic period, roughly 750 BCE to 300 BCE. We’ll read and discuss the Greek literature of the period, and how the heroes went from doers of big deeds to mythic status so that even today their names are still known and their deeds mined by modern-day creators. We’ll start from the creation myths to the age of heroes, then the Iliad and Odyssey, some Greek poets, the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides, and some plays. We’ll also touch on some of the works of the philosophers that have stood the test of time and still have relevance for us today. We'll also try to get student views in too, so be prepared to speak your view of some of the people we come across since a course like this opens minds into a world partly familiar to us but in many ways quite different.

Along the way, we will need some historical context, so there will have to be some background into the Greek geographical world of the day, then relying chiefly on Plutarch for biographies of the famous ones both legend and historical, and the history of the period including contrasting Sparta and Athens, the Persian Wars, the Peloponnesian War, and the status of women.

Global cities are considered urban centers that serve as hubs of economy, work, and culture. Many scholars consider the art, literature, and social relationships in global cities to be unique, and this course presents opportunities for students to engage more deeply with this idea. In part 1 of the course, students investigate demographic and economic change in global cities – including Newark. In part 2 of the course, students review and research artistic and scholarly representations of people’s experiences in the global city, drawing from film, literature, anthropology, journalism, and creative nonfiction. Students’ researched and written work in this course ranges from analysis of fiction to consideration of cultural diversity in urban planning and the development of technologies and technological systems. The culmination of the course is a research project of the student’s own design, reflecting course themes in relation to their field of study and/or the professional sectors they will be entering upon graduation.

Leading Social Innovation explores the meaning of collaborative change and social innovation for large social challenges and what is needed to bring about innovation with multisector collaborative partnerships. Major frameworks are explored  including: collective impact, collaborative infrastructure, network communities, open innovation, and collaborative convergence. The class explores task-oriented leadership, collaboration, the role of followers, key aspects of effective leadership tied to collaboration with partners all in the context of social innovation. Topics in the course examine key concepts  that underpin  large-scale  projects  and the role of collaboration, leadership, communication, evaluation,  and sustainability when several organizations  from different sectors come together to work on a problem (i.e. government, academia, private sector,  not-for-profits, community groups, secular  programs, philanthropists, individual stakeholders, etc.)  The case of the National Science Foundation INCLUDES project will be examined in detail as it relates to the professor's on-going research tied to this course topic.  

Start a lifetime habit of exploring the world by listening to audiobooks as you engage in your daily routine: commuting, exercising, or doing any activity that leaves your mind free. This course will begin with the class listening to one audiobook in common, followed by group presentations on some aspect of the book. Then, during the rest of the semester, students will choose three other audiobooks in a preferred genre, sharing their experiences with the class in discussion.  The required coursework is weekly listening reports, making two major presentations, and classroom discussion. Attendance and a subscription to Audible are required.

Hollywood has been fascinated with the news business since the earliest days of cinema. Yet Hollywood’s depiction of journalism is decidedly mixed: some movies celebrate the profession; others offer a searing critique. In this course, we’ll analyze films about journalism with the aim of understanding what these portrayals tell us about our culture and ourselves. Among the questions, we’ll be asking: What is the overall message about journalism in the film? How do journalists in the film respond to the problems they face, such as censorship, changing technology, or tensions with home and family? What does the historical context of a film tell us about the social forces at work at the time the film was made?

How do media-makers not simply represent trauma but construct responses that intervene in its complex psychic and cultural ecologies? Because trauma is a time-based concern — its effects can appear years after an instigating event or chronic condition — moving images can serve as a powerful means to confront it. We will examine media works that challenge us to distinguish between cure and healing as we consider trauma as both an individual and collective dilemma, one that arises in ordinary life and under extraordinary circumstances. Students will have the opportunity to pursue projects in writing and media production.

Today, like never before, complex worldwide patterns shape health and medicine, the travel of people, the interaction of governments, and the forms and actions of international business play significant roles in people’s daily lives. This course suggests that in a world of different approaches, different cultures, and wide variations of practice in health and medicine, simple facts change meaning when interpreted in a global context. It “Means'' something different to say that Healthcare and Medical costs will soon hit 20% of the United States economy, nearly twice that of the most similar comparable industrialized nations and has lower patient satisfaction and worse public health indicators than any of those comparable countries.

Memes have existed in some form since the early days of the Internet, but the modern memetic ecosystem is vast and varied, full of distinct genres of memes for purposes ranging from political to commercial to philosophical. In this course, you will gain a basic foundation in the media, genres, and the rhetorical situation surrounding meme production and learn to produce effective, engaging, rhetorically sophisticated memes.

From the 1840s when three short stories by Edgar Alan Poe founded the modern mystery genre, this "new" form had proved among the most healthy and influential. Using landmark films and live performances, we will examine how mystery writing has not only entertained but given us practical tools to use across disciplines. The course will involve two papers, four tracking quizzes, and one live professional performance.

This course is a comprehensive survey of Newark, a combined literature/cultural studies seminar and anthropological fieldwork course designed to explore and map Newark in various disciplines, including literature, history, film, politics, religion, architecture, and sociology. It will be provisional and investigative, based on knowledge accrued and acquired, delving into various possible lines and intersections of inquiry. We will be cartographers of the cosmopolis, generating new insights into the various meanings about cities and city life. 

Since the inspiration and conception of this class originated in the work and life of Newark artist Amiri Baraka (1934-2014)—in fact, was discussed and designed in tandem with him on the campus of NJIT—the recurring and representative status of his legacy will be a cornerstone to our site-strategic inquiry and sometimes a counterpoint or complement to other voices, other vantages, other angles, and other core components of Newark’s artistic and cultural heritage.

How did minds evolve? How unique is the human mind in nature? Are humans the only species capable of thinking? What does "thinking" even refer to? Can other species form beliefs and concepts about the world? Do some animals possess the capacity for language? Do other species have a rudimentary sense of morality? If so, what challenges would this raise toward traditional notions of human nature? What might these questions tell us about our moral obligations to other species? This class offers a detailed look into contemporary debates in the philosophy of animal minds. These debates are inherently multi-disciplinary, ranging from questions in evolutionary biology, cognitive science, comparative psychology, the philosophy of mind, environmental ethics, and questions about the future of artificial intelligence. 

This course considers the short story first as a genre and then as it has evolved in American literature since Modernism (in the early 20th century), looking at how its form has shifted in subtle ways in recent times, and attending to its subject matter and concerns personal and societal. After the first weeks of discussing early and mid-twentieth-century short fiction, the course will settle into reading recent fiction first from the last and then present century, finally to ask if the standard conception of the short story--in this case inherited from an earlier American era--is outmoded and/or quaint. Within this context, the class will consider, among other forces at work that would impinge on this question, the viability of recent short fiction in offering insight or simply psychological support in the living of one's life now.

What is “happiness?” What is your definition of happiness? In this course, we will explore the various meanings of happiness throughout time. What makes people and cultures “happy?” What is the science of happiness? Can happiness be taught? Is it innate? What is the ultimate pursuit of happiness for individuals in their lifetimes? This course will examine and analyze sociologists, psychologists, philosophers, artists,  and musicians, among others, and their views and experiences with happiness and what constitutes a  “good life.” This course will not make you “happy.” However, it will provide insight, exploration, and understanding into the social and cultural changes that evolved what it means to be "happy". Together, we will examine the “science” behind happiness, and individually, the course will provide students tools to aid in the creation of their own individual definition of happiness. 

This class investigates how recent literature and films depict the workings of the mind. How have artists represented their own thought processes, and emotions? How have they imagined the minds of others—whether of a fictional human, or a real one, or a cat, or an alien from another planet, or an AI? How do they capture rambling trains of thought and moments of zoning out? What about extreme mental states, like depression, paranoia, addiction, or obsessive-compulsion, among others? How do writers and directors describe the experience of Alzheimer’s disease, or of a hallucination? Can they do so without essentializing or reducing something as intricate and poorly understood as a brain? We will discuss works that take up these questions and others.

In this course, we'll examine speculative technologies, as presented in science fiction, in connection with the contemporary technologies you have studied, or are otherwise interested in, and will consider the connection between imagination and innovation. We will discuss ideas, in fiction and film, which include space travel, artificial intelligence, advanced computing and communication, human survival on Mars, and more. Students will create a final research paper that incorporates speculative technologies as presented in a science fiction text or film, while looking at the real-world possibilities suggested by contemporary science and technology, and where they might take us in the future.

This project-based course introduces students to the ethical, political, and social impacts of digital technologies, with a particular focus on social media. Through the lens of an emergent field called digital sociology, students read, engage in debate, and design semester-long research projects that require several collaborative components. Major learning outcomes include 1) students’ ability to describe ongoing national and global debates about social media regulation and content moderation; 2) the development of primary or bibliographic research projects centered on students’ majors (or interests) within the context of class themes; 3) composing and communicating effectively in digital environments.

This course will allow students to study the methods by which documentary work is conducted and to complete a documentary project of their own. The course will connect the qualitative methods of the social sciences and the humanistic concerns of the arts by allowing students to study documentary subjects as captured by writing, photography, film, and web-based tools. The course examines some of the reasons why documentaries have become such a popular genre today, and consider the role they play in collapsing the distinctions between fact and fiction. Special emphasis will be placed on storytelling. As a senior seminar and capstone, the rigor and breadth of this course allows students to bring together interests and skills developed in previous courses.

This capstone seminar allows senior students the opportunity to examine and explore aspects of theatre in which students will be required to bring together interests and skills developed in previous courses and experiences. We will follow our theatrical productions from beginning to end:  auditions, safety classes (to prepare for using power tools and lighting equipment) building and painting sets, and running the show.  We will accomplish the above in four segments:  (1) observing rehearsals and keeping a journal of observations throughout the semester; (2) watching a professional NYC production; (3) making an oral presentation of your favorite artist and (4) writing two papers—one exploring individual artistic nature and a research paper on a theme gleaned from the professional production   By the end of this hands-on semester, students will have a clearer idea of how productions are put together and the creativity required to do so.  

This senior seminar will examine issues of race and exploitation in the history of colonialism particularly as depicted in media. It is inspired by Raoul Peck's 2020 HBO series, Exterminate All the Brutes. The series disrupts formal and artistic film conventions by weaving together rich documentary footage and archival material, as well as animation and interpretive scripted scenes that offer a counter-narrative to white Eurocentric history. Through a sweeping story in which history, contemporary life, and fiction are wholly intertwined, it challenges the audience to re-think the very notion of how history is being written, based on the books we will read in class: Sven Lindqvist’s Exterminate All the Brutes, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, and Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s Silencing the Past, all works that critique the mainstream trajectory of global domination and white supremacy. The seminar will begin with the series, then investigate how and if serious discussion of these issues can be based on media that are designed to shock us and to question our assumptions.

This course combines current theory with practice to prepare students as socially conscious technology developers. Students will analyze complex social and technical situations to develop socially appropriate responses through tasks that involve problem analysis, ethical considerations, and technology issues regarding “influences on the distribution of jobs and nature of work. While advances promise to inject great value into the economy, they can also be the source of disruptions as new kinds of work are created and other types of work become less needed due to automation” (Partnership on AI).

In this course, we will analyze a set of science films, and some of the stories/novels on which they are based, in order to better understand the underlying cultural assumptions that the drive the real-life US technological enterprise. In the second half of the course especially, we will take a closer look at how these assumptions are critiqued in the films of several major directors, with special attention to the idiosyncrasies of visual style.

The Wonders of World Cinema explores with compassion intersections of the art (and commodification) of cinema across nations. Cinematic concepts shape discussions and writings. Considerations of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation are central. Final projects can be created around subject matter or cinematic theme, movement, or country.