Hamilton in New York City - Future Programs

Future Programs

Fall 2021

Photography and Arts Leadership in the Global City

Director: Robert Knight, Associate Professor of Art
Phone: 315-859-4266
Email: rbknight@hamilton.edu

New York City has long been at the epicenter in the development of photography as a fine art. The first galleries devoted to the medium were founded there in the late 1890s by the legendary modernist photographer Alfred Stieglitz. In the 1940s, The Museum of Modern Art launched the first photography department at a prominent museum, with New York-based photographer Edward Steichen as its founding curator. Alongside such institutional support, New York nurtured a burgeoning art scene with photographers’ studios and darkrooms occupying former industrial and warehouse spaces across the city. This program will focus on the intersection of those two histories, focusing specifically on the development of “street” photography as a genre and the institutions that helped catapult photography onto the center of the art world stage.New York City has long been at the epicenter in the development of photography as a fine art. The first galleries devoted to the medium were founded there in the late 1890s by the legendary modernist photographer Alfred Stieglitz. In the 1940s, The Museum of Modern Art launched the first photography department at a prominent museum, with New York-based photographer Edward Steichen as its founding curator. Alongside such institutional support, New York nurtured a burgeoning art scene with photographers’ studios and darkrooms occupying former industrial and warehouse spaces across the city. This program will focus on the intersection of those two histories, focusing specifically on the development of “street” photography as a genre and the institutions that helped catapult photography onto the center of the art world stage.

Concentration credit will be accepted for Studio Art (College 395 and 398); Art History (College 395 and 398); Cinema and Media Studies (College 395) and Digital Arts minor (College 395).

College 395 Documentary photography in the digital age

This is a photography production course in which we will use smartphone and DSLR cameras to explore the fabric of the city as a site for photographic investigation, closely examining its rich cultural, racial and socioeconomic diversity. Each week we will use the history of New York-based “street” photography as a road map for site specific photographic field trips. Since the early 1900s, the streets of New York have served as inspiration to generations of photographers such as Paul Strand, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Walker Evans, Garry Winogrand, Lee Friedlander, Roy DeCarava, Margaret Bourke-White, and Helen Levitt, among many others. Class will be a combination of classroom-based technical training, critique, and in situ production. Potential photographic sites include Times Square, Central Park Zoo, Chinatown, South Street Seaport, Washington Square Park, Prospect Park, Coney Island and Governor’s Island. No prerequisite, but preference given for students who have taken a Studio Art or Art History course.

College 396 Independent Study

Supervised tutorial resulting in a substantial photographic project and/or written paper that integrates experience and learning from the internship with an academic perspective and knowledge gained in the seminars or other tutorial readings.

College 397 Internship

Work experience with an artist, organization, agency or advocacy group appropriate to the theme of the course during four days a week. Weekly electronic journal entries chronicling and reflecting upon the experience required.

College 398 Seminar: fine art photography and arts leadership in nyc

This seminar will provide students with a global perspective on the history of photography as a fine art form through the lens of New York’s art institutions. New York has long-served as the institutional capital of the art world and this seminar will take advantage of New York’s status through visits and meetings with photography curators and arts leaders at various NYC-based institutions, including: The Museum of Modern Art, International Center for Photography, The Studio Museum Harlem, The Whitney Museum, The Metropolitan Museum, Christie’s, Pace/MacGill Gallery, Edwyn Houk Gallery, Yossi Milo Gallery, and Yancey Richardson Gallery, among others. Field trips will be supplemented with classroom lectures, readings and discussions.

Spring 2022

Environmental Ethics: Theory & Practice

Responses to the Climate Crisis in the Global City

Director: Katheryn Doran, Associate Professor of Philosophy

Phone: 315-859-4135

Email: kdoran@hamilton.edu

October 29, 2012: battered by Hurricane Sandy, New York City learned first-hand the enormous and deadly costs of climate change. We will explore how, in the intervening (near) decade New York City – citizens, industries, government – has set about to repair the damage and prevent future such catastrophes.

The program will combine theoretical work on environmental ethics with applied attention to a variety of environmental ethical issues, and in particular on the question of how we should respond to the climate crisis.

We will explore questions about the relationships among individual action, political measures, and work in and on the private sector. Among our areas of focus will be varieties of information about and advocacy regarding transportation, environmental education, investment in research and development of energy resources, urban food sources, and building and housing.

Open to all majors. No pre-requisites.

Environmental Studies, Philosophy, and Public Policy concentrators and minors may receive up to two credits toward their concentration or minor.

COLLEGE 395 Environmental ethics PRACTICUM

An experientially grounded exploration of various environmentally focused events and venues in the city. We will meet at least once a week either in-house or at city-wide events (usually both).

COLLEGE 396 INDEPENDENT STUDY

A tutorial leading to the development of a substantial paper that integrates the theoretical course concepts from our traditional course work with the many on-the-ground events – talks, panels, debates, information sessions, tours, museum visits, webinars – we will participate in in Manhattan.

COLLEGE 397 INTERNSHIP

Work experience with a firm, organization, agency, or advocacy group appropriate to the theme of course, four days a week. Weekly electronic journal entries chronicling and reflecting up the experience.

COLLEGE 398 SEMINAR: Environmental Ethics: theory & Practice

Responses to the climate crisis in the global city.

The anchor academic component of the semester will critically cover materials ranging from basic systematic normative ethical traditions from Aristotle to the present to contemporary debates about the relationship between individual personal responsibility to other kinds of private and public activism and advocacy. We will look at a number environmentally ethical applied cases with a heavy emphasis in the second half of the semester on several major works in philosophy on climate change, starting with Mark Maslin’s Climate Change: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford) and ending with Dale Jamison’s Reason in a Dark Time: Why the Struggle Against Climate Change Failed -- and What It Means for Our Future.