CEL Courses Offered Fall 2021
Introduction to Music History
This course presents a survey of music history, with a focus on developing the skills of thinking and writing critically about music. Students will learn to listen in a focused way and relate what they hear to issues of musical “meaning” and general culture. Students will learn some technical vocabulary that will help them describe or advocate for any music they encounter, and they will apply this vocabulary to examples throughout the semester, for instance a Beethoven Symphony or a Duke Ellington jazz arrangement. Sections may have different focuses in terms of geography or chronology.
Professor Angelina Tallaj, Course No. 1100
Consumer Behavior
An interdisciplinary approach to the study of consumer behavior and motivation. Topics include behavioral science findings and their implications in the marketing mix; socioeconomics, demographic and cultural influences; theories of promotion and communication; consumer behavior models; attitude measurement; perception and consumerism.
Professor Geneive O’Connor, Course No. 3435
Community Partner(s):
Bronx Art Ensemble
Visual Thinking
A foundation course in visual communication. The course will cover the following topics: visual perception, composition, light and color, drawing perspective, words and images, graphic design, and photography and photo montage.
Professor Ruble Casey, Course No. 1135
Project(s):
Starting with the premise that narratives can dispossess and malign but also empower and humanize, this studio-art course explores the ways image-based storytelling can enact visual justice by challenging the “single stories” that uphold systems of oppression. Students will study contemporary works of art and literature focusing on a range of issues and their overlap—race, ethnicity, class, migration, housing, incarceration, disability, gender, sexual orientation, and the environment, for example—and will be supported in creating an image-based story of their own in the medium of their choice. Incorporating community-engaged learning component with a CEL designation, the class will also partner with the Narrative Justice Project, an organization dedicated to providing a space for artists, writers, activists, and lawyers to discuss, share, and collaborate on issues at the intersection of justice, policy, and voice.
Italian Americans on Screen
What can explain the shocking popularity of Jersey Shore? Where did the controversial images of Italian Americans that the show displays originate? This course proposes an examination of Italian Americans as represented in mainstream and independent American cinema (and later television) from the silent era to the present. Particular attention will be paid to the traditional stereotypes associated with these representations (how they arose and why they continue to exist), two specific genres--the gangster film and the boxing film--and how Italian-American filmmakers respond to and re-vision them. The class will also include field trips to Arthur Avenue and Little Italy. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.
Professor Kathleen LaPenta, Course No. 3658
Anti-Semitism & Racism
This course will provide an introduction to the history of the Jewish people as it encountered the modern world from the 18th century through the twentieth. It will explore the social, cultural, religious, and political aspects of this encounter, primarily in Eastern and Western Europe, the United States, and the middle East. The course will touch on such issues and events as emancipation and the breakdown of traditional identities and communcal structures; Jewish religious movements from Hasidism to Reform; the invention of modern secular culture in Yiddish and Hebrew; political movements including Socialism, Zionism and Communism; migrations and the creation of American Jewry; anti-Semitism and the Holocaust; and the rise of the State of Israel.
Professor Magda Tetel, Course No. 4312
Community Partner(s):
The Jewish Board
Stephen Wise Free Synagogue
Project(s):
As seen in these current events, racial prejudice is commonplace in our society, and antisemitism and racism are the core characteristics of white supremacy. This course will examine the history of ideas and beliefs espoused by racists and antisemites: the differences and similarities, the contrasts and overlaps. Based on a wide variety of sources--texts, including literary and legal, visual evidence, such as paintings, ephemera, and films--along with scholarly works by historians, literary and legal scholars, and philosophers--we will examine the history of antisemitic and racist tropes, and place them in a range of contexts and multiple perspectives--theological, legal, social, political, economic, and mythological. We will discuss how these stereotypes emerged, how they are encoded and transmitted, and why they continue to appeal to contemporary racial sensibilities. We will try to historicize them, investigating change in racist and antisemitic ideologies over time, as well as ahistorical framings of such can trap us into discourses that generalize at the sufferance of specificities. During this course, students will also work on a hands-on exhibition in the Fordham’s Special Collection.
Introduction to Professional Writing
Professional Writing is a writing-intensive course designed to help students understand practices of ethical and effective communication in a range of public, professional, and workplace settings. In particular, it introduces principles of professional communication through a focus on social justice. Emphasizing the application of rhetorical principles to processes of analyzing diverse audiences, designing accessible documents, and composing in culturally sensitive ways, this course will engage participants in a series of individual and collaborative client-based projects that will encourage consideration of how writers use communicative technologies to serve multiple purposes in professional and public contexts, including facilitating justice.
Professor Crystal Colombini, Course No. 3003
Infant and Child Development
A study within the framework of research and theory of emotional, intellectual and social growth of the child, with emphasis on norms in development and child-rearing practices. (Every Fall) Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.
Professor Joshua Brown, Course No. 2700
Community Partner(s):
Harry Gordon School
Project(s): Undergraduate students will work as and reflect through discussions and written exercises on their work as childcare assistants, classroom assistants, and tutors with children from infancy to age 12 in collaboration with Concourse House, City Tutors, The Harry Gordin School, and/or Jumpstart. In this course we will learn about human development from conception through infancy, toddlerhood, and early and middle childhood. We will focus on the broad domains of physical, cognitive, social and emotional development, and how development unfolds within and across multiple contexts including families, early child-care settings, pre-school and formal school and classroom environments, peer groups, neighborhoods, and sociocultural/sociopolitical environments. We will also explore how research on these developmental domains and contexts has been used to create programs and policies designed to promote successful development. The course will begin with an introduction to foundational theories of human development. It will then consider how these theories are used in studying physical, cognitive, social and emotional development, how these domains both shape and are shaped by the environments in which they take place, and ways in which this research is used to inform programs and policies for children and families. In class learning will be closely integrated with service-based placements in the Bronx community aimed at fostering the healthy development of infants, children, and/or early adolescents.
Spanish Community Engaged Learning
This advanced Spanish course develops students’ abilities in reading, writing, speaking, and oral comprehension. The goals of the course are for students to understand and communicate in standard Spanish in everyday contexts; to comprehend a variety of written, visual, and sounds texts, including literary works, newspaper articles, and films; and to comment on these texts orally and in writing in a coherent and grammatically correct manner. Grammar review will be an integral part of the reading, viewing, and writing activities for the course. The community-engaged learning component of this course treats the topic of Hispanic migration as a contemporary—not just historical—occurrence. Students will work in the community for an average of four hours every week using their Spanish and improving their language skills in a highly contextualized environment unmatched by the classroom experience. At the same time, they will gain first-hand knowledge about the immigrant experience while seeing real-world applications for their language skills
Professor Carey Kasten, Course No. 2700
Urban Poverty
This course deals with contemporary issues and problems in cities, with a special focus on residential segregation and urban poverty. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.
Professor Christopher Rhomberg, Course No. 3601
Community Partner(s):
Community Action for Safe Apartments
Northwest Bronx Commission and Clergy Coalition
Worker’s Write/Labor Arts
Internship Seminar: Community Organizations
This seminar explores the context, forms, and goals of community organization in the United States with a focus on urban, social, and environmental issues. Class meetings with proceed in tandem with students’ internship placements in local community-based organizations or other agencies. Students may choose their own internships, and assistance will be provided to help those in search of placement. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.
Professor Christopher Rhomberg, Course No. 4902
User Experience Design: Design for Empowerment
This course focuses on how human-centered design and participatory design methods can be used as approaches to empowerment. Students will gain hands-on experience with conducting user research, synthesizing findings into insights, ideating, sketching, rapid prototyping, and validating concepts with users. Course reading, discussions, and activities will be organized into a user-experience project to help students get out and interact with real users, needs, and challenges.
Professor Ralph Vacca, Course No. 3450
Strategic Communication
Scholars and practitioners alike have devoted decades to the study of how organizations communicate to achieve their goals. They have analyzed advertising and public relations since the inception of these professions; they have also sought to investigate the protests of activists and the tactics of NGOs. This class will follow this intellectual tradition, weaving together insights from sociology, psychology, business, media studies, and a number of other disciplines to explore strategic communication in the contemporary world. To help direct this course, in keeping with the mission of the Public Media MA program, the focus will be on how strategic communication can be used to advance social justice and the public interest. This entails not simply studying the campaigns of organizations doing good but also confronting tough questions about how these well-intentioned groups can communicate in ways that are ethical, effective, and equitable.
Professor Tim Wood, Course No. 5003
Participatory Action Research
This course is intended to give upper-level students the opportunity to advance their content knowledge and apply their research training in a real-world setting. The theme of this course is “Youth-Led Participatory Action Research” (YPAR), which is an innovative approach to positive youth and community development based in social justice principles in which young people are trained to conduct systematic research to improve their lives, their communities, and the institutions intended to serve them. YPAR can be useful for any young people wanting to make a difference and is an especially powerful approach for youth who are experiencing marginalization due to racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, ableism, or other forms of oppression. Drawing from the fields of developmental, community, and educational psychology—and applying both quantitative and qualitative methods—students will critically examine issues faced by young people in our local Bronx community. The course will include readings and audio-visual materials, reflection papers, and an APA-style research paper, in addition to a semester-long YPAR partnership project.
Note: This course is intended to give upper-level psychology students the opportunity to advance their content knowledge and apply their research training in a real-world setting. The theme of this course is “Youth-led Participatory Action Research” (YPAR), which is an innovative approach to positive youth and community development based in social justice principles in which young people are trained to conduct systematic research to improve their lives, their communities, and the institutions intended to serve them. YPAR can be useful for any young people wanting to make a difference, and is an especially powerful approach for youth who are experiencing marginalization due to racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, classism, ableism, or other forms of oppression. Drawing from the fields of developmental, community, and educational psychology – and applying both quantitative and qualitative methods – students will critically examine issues faced by young people in our local Bronx community. The course will include readings and audio-visual materials, reflection papers, and an APA-style research paper, in addition to a semester-long YPAR partnership project. Social justice oriented research project in collaboration with middle school (or high school) students.
Professor Lindsey Till Hoyt, Course No. 3510
Church in Controversy
This course traces the Catholic Church’s negotiations with the revolutionary challenges inaugurated by modernity. Topics will vary according to the instructor, but may include the colonial missions, the Enlightenment, the Holocaust, the Second Vatican Council, the rise of feminism, changing notions of normative sexuality, and more recent developments, such as the unprecedented numbers of religiously “unaffiliated” or “nones,” the majority of which have come from the Catholic Church. How did the Catholic Church—its theologians, the millions of everyday faithful, and the Vatican—respond to, sometimes deepening, sometimes informing, and oftentimes critiquing these challenges? Controversies forced the Church not only to make pronouncements on the crises of the moment, but to refine and sometimes revise some of its basic foundational beliefs about human nature, revelation, reason, truth, and God.
Professor David de la Fuente, Course No. 3390
Community Partner(s):
Xavier Mission
Church of St. Paul the Apostle
Virtual Camino de San Diego
Bronx Exploration: History, Economy, and Culture
This course is an introduction to the borough in which Rose Hill Honors students will spend their college years. The course combines readings about and discussions on the history, economy, and culture of the Bronx. There will also be several field trips to important Bronx historical and cultural sites. The course may also include opportunities for community engagement.
Professor Gregory Acevedo, Course No. 1104
Legal Framework of Business
This course covers the fundamental concepts and legal principles applicable to the American business community and the international environment. Topics include: sources of the modern legal system; legal ethics and governmental regulation; creation and discharge of contractual rights and liabilities; characteristics of agencies, partnerships, limited liability companies and corporations, including the rights and liabilities of agents, partners and corporate management.
Professor Dennis Cappello, Course No. 2234
Food For Thought
This course analyzes literature (in English translation) from German-language countries that showcases the whole range of food comsumption, from excess, such as in the myth of the Schlaraffenland (The Land of Cockaigne), to starvation as in Franz Kafka's Hungerkünstler (Starvation Artist), and cannibalism (Der Fan by Eckhart Schmidt). The miraculous sustenance provided to saints in their vitae as well as the ultimate inspiration for many of them, the Last Supper, will receive special attention. This course is being developed in collaboration with the Center for Community Engaged Learning and will include the opportunity to volunteer in a local soup kitchen. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.
Professor Sussane Hafner, Course No. 3515
Community Partner(s):
WISCAH & Mobile Pantry
Pre-Health Symposium
An introduction to medical, dental and other health professions schools requirements together with an opportunity to interact with members of different health professions.
Professor Ellen Watts, Course No. 1
Spirituals, the Blues, and African-American Christianity
In the makings of the modern western world, the Christian imagination and African American cultural production have held a longstanding relationship. Afro-Christian, Afro-Blue is an invitation to read, view, and listen to two genres of African-American cultural production: the Blues, and the Spirituals. The course focuses specifically on the proliferation of these two genres in the early decades of the 20th Century. Through engagement with the Spirituals and the Blues, students will weigh in on three substantive problems in the making of the Americas: the involuntary presence of Africans and their descendants in the Americas, the God reality, and the religious meaning of Africa. The insights in the Blues and the Spirituals provide a sonic angle into how Americans have used their imagination of the Sacred to continuously restructure and reimagine options for life and living. Students will be afforded a unique opportunity not only to read texts, but also to listen to and view the sonic productions of a people and their efforts to speak, sing, and moan the Sacred otherwise.
Professor Rufus Burnett, Course No. 3376
Role and Function of the School Psychologist or Doctoral Internship (6) courses
An analysis of the role of the school psychologist. Emphasis is on models for delivering effective services. Consideration of ethical and legal issues.
Professor Tamique Peters, Course No. 7442
Marketing Principles
Marketing's role within an organization is to develop products or services that have value to potential customers, to estimate that value and price accordingly to distribute the goods efficiently and to communicate their value and availability effectively. This course introduces students to techniques and theories that help the marketer to accomplish these tasks, whether for a mom- and-pop store or a global or multinational manufacturer.
Professor Marcia Flicker, Course No. 3225
Art and Action on the Bronx River
This course is designed around direct experiences with the Bronx River, which flows only a few minutes' walk from the Rose Hill campus. The river is a critical urban landmark, a scenic dividing line that runs from Westchester County to the East River. Throughout the semester, we will study the history of the river, its ecology, its relationship to surrounding communities, and its connection to New York City’s watershed. Walking, collecting, observation, and boating are some of the actions that might be combined with creative processes throughout the semester. We will also explore contemporary artists whose work combines social practice, activism, and environmental action. This is a visual arts class; however, experience in the creative arts is not required to be successful in this course. Assignments will be experimental in nature and may include drawing, photography, creative writing, and alternative research techniques. Throughout this course we will directly engage with the Bronx River Alliance, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting and protecting the river. We will also engage with the river itself. The engagement is what gives this course a CCEL designation. Note: Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.
Professor Matthew Lopez-Jensen, Course No. 3515
Communication Ethics & The Public Sphere
This course deals with the policy decisions and ethical issues facing society in the telecommunications age. Of special concern are the ethical issues raised by the melding together of heretofore discrete media into vertically integrated, profit oriented, corporations. Note: Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.
Professor Diana Kamin, Course No. 4360
Structures of Computer Science
An introductory course in the discrete structures used in computer and information technology. Emphasis will be placed on the ability to solve problem and develop logical thinking. Topics such as sets, functions, elementary combinatorics, discrete probability, logic, Boolean algebra, recursion and graphs will be covered through the use of algorithmic and concrete construction. The learned materials are reinforced by computer laboratory assignments. This course also fulfills the Mathematical Reasoning requirement of the Core Curriculum.
Professor Michael Pastine, Course No. 1100
Faith and Critical Reason
An introductory theology course designed to acquaint students with the analytical study of religion and religious experience, and to give them some critical categories of evaluating the history of theological discourse. The academic study of some of the forms, concepts, experience, and theological formulations found in Christianity and various other traditions will be introduced.
Professor Megan Gooley, Course No. 1000
Buddhist Meditation
What constitutes valuable knowledge in Buddhist communities, past and present? How does meditation enable the acquisition of meaningful knowledge? This course introduces students to a variety of strategies that Buddhist communities over the past 2,500 years have employed in order to discipline the minds and bodies of practitioners. Course assignments are intended to help students understand what is at stake in Buddhist debates about meditation and to prepare students to ask themselves how these debates might be relevant to the pursuit of transformative knowledge in their own lives.
Professor Joshua Schapiro, Course No. 3728
Senior Seminar: Studio Art
This is a course for senior visual arts students who wish to have a senior project exhibition. The seminar will discuss critical issues relating to the making, presentation, and interpretation of contemporary art. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.
Professor Carleen Sheehan, Course No. 3728
Data Communications and Networks
The course presents the basic concepts of data communications: data transmission, data encoding, data link control, multiplexing, error detection techniques. It covers communication networking techniques: switching, protocols line control procedures, local networks. Communication carrier facilities and systems planning considerations will also be discussed. Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.
Professor David Wei, Course No. 4516
Composition II
Intensive training in the principles of effective expository writing, with an emphasis on sound logic, correct grammar, and persuasive rhetoric. Introduces research techniques, including use of the library, conventions and principles of documentation, analysis of sources, and ethics of scholarly research. Weekly papers will be written and discussed.
Professor Julie Gafney, Course No. 1102
Healthcare Justice
This course focuses on intersections between philosophical theories of justice and healthcare. Topics covered include distributive justice and issues involving scarce resources, such as the allocation of organs to transplant, prioritization for ICU beds in a pandemic, and triage methods in disaster scenarios; issues of social, political, and structural justice, such as access to tertiary care, social determinants of health, and structural competency in medical education; and issues of epistemic justice, such as allegations of medical error, assessments of medical expertise, and judgments of patients’ decisional capacity and competency. Note: Four-credit courses that meet for 150 minutes per week require three additional hours of class preparation per week on the part of the student in lieu of an additional hour of formal instruction.
Professor Laura Sullivan, Course No. 3710
Manresa Courses
Drug Discovery: From the Laboratory to the Clinic
A rigorous course for non-science majors on the scientific, public policy, and ethical considerations of drug development and commercialization. Topics include an introduction to basic concepts of chemical structure and bonding as applicable to medicinal chemistry, computational structure-based drug design methods, drug testing and approval process, economics of drug commercialization, and public policy issues.
Professor Joshua Schrier Course No. 1102
Lost Interlocutor: Philosophy of Human Nature
This course examines the philosophical views of pre-Socratic thinkers, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, and Ignatius of Loyola and their connections to contemporary science, religion, and Jesuit education. We analyze primary texts, critique theories, compose philosophical arguments, and critically challenge the thinking of multiple perspectives. These skills comprise the greater philosophical tradition that stems from the ancients to us today. Salient themes of our lives—knowledge, understanding, truth, falsity, doubt, goodness, mortality, reality, evidence, belief, love—stir fundamental questions that need systematic investigation in order to make sense of our human nature and give greater purpose to life. Since this Manresa course satisfies the FCRH first year Eloquentia Perfecta I requirement, it stresses critical spoken dialogue and writing-intensive assignments. It also consists of interactive (and fun) out-of-class learning experiences, and the professor even feeds you at most of these. This course satisfies the Philosophy of Human Nature Core requirement for both FCRH and Gabelli students.
Professor Robert Parmach, Course No. 1003
Sinners, Saints, and Stories
This course will explore both the ways that biblical narratives have informed the traditional self-understanding of the western world and the ways in which that self-understanding has been complicated in the modern era. Of particular interest for this course is 1) the different biblical presentations of what it means to be a “sinner” or a “saint,” 2) the further reflection on these narratives and topics found in post-biblical literature, and 3) the competing narratives that may be found in the modern world.
Professor Henry Nasuti, Course No. 1007
Mathematics and Democracy
What is the relationship between mathematics and democracy? In this course we explore answers to this question from different perspectives One approach is that members of society must have a certain mathematical literacy for informed participation in their society. It is increasingly the case in our world that people must comprehend and analyze numbers and quantitative information, in complicated contexts, on a regular basis. We’ll discuss and look at examples of the numeracy skills needed to evaluate data and information, to analyze statistics, and to understand and formulate quantitative arguments, as well as social justice issues of access to mathematics. We will then explore the contributions of mathematics to the development of democratic systems, looking at voting and the larger question of how a group can best arrive at a decision. Topics may include decision-making strategies, the manipulability of voting systems, fair division and apportionment, and the mathematics of competition. This course should be particularly relevant to students in political science, philosophy, economics, and sociology.
Professor Maura Mast, Course No. 1003