DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

"Teaching the City," A Seminar for Urban Studies Instructors
Sponsored by LaGuardia's Center for Teaching and Learning

 

When LaGuardia was first founded, its curriculum contained a college-wide, interdisciplinary requirement unlike any in the United States: each student is required to take an Urban Studies course to graduate. The program is unique for its emphasis on experiential education, a pedagogy that takes inspiration from John Dewey’s assertion that education must not be preparation for experience, it must in itself be an experience. Most Urban Studies courses are designated for the Global Learning competency, challenging us to think about how we study the city in a meaningfully global way, whether through comparison or through thinking in terms of the systems, circuits, and networks of exchange that mark the global world.

 

In this seminar, faculty teaching or who wish to teach Urban Studies courses will work across disciplines to discuss appropriate readings and assignments that represent the best of experiential and global learning. We will present sample assignments that use experiential methodologies such as field work, ethnographies, archival work, and interviews. Faculty will have the opportunity to workshop and receive feedback on their assignments. We will also discuss and present examples of the use of technology in Urban Studies pedagogy and introduce participants to the resources, missions, and activities of the Urban Studies program and the Urban Studies committee.

 

Participants will be expected to complete short interdisciplinary and pedagogical readings relevant to the seminar, to bring in one experiential assignment and one global assignment for feedback from participants.

 

The seminar is led by Arianna Martinez (Social Science) and Laura Tanenbaum (English). Contact us at ltanenbaum@lagcc.cuny.edu or amartinez@lagcc.cuny.edu.

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.