Fall 2018

Topic:  The Economy of the Social Sector in the Global City

Director: Julio Videras, Professor of Economics
Phone:  315-859-4528
Email:  jvideras@hamilton.edu

New York City is home to many social entrepreneurs and nonprofit organizations that aim to deliver creative, effective, and ethical solutions to local and global social problems. The social sector is an important contributor to the economy as a large employer and provider of goods and services. We will study social enterprises, the nonprofit sector, corporate social responsibility, and impact investing. The social sector has a long and vibrant history in New York City; we will learn about these topics from guest lectures and field trips to sites that illustrate past practices and current trends. 

College 395 Economics of the Social Sector 
(Prerequisite Econ 102)

We will study the philanthropic sector, impact investing, corporate social responsibility, and social enterprises. We will examine conventional and new models of philanthropy, how for-profit enterprises incorporate social values into their business models, benefit corporations, and the principles and practices of social innovation. We will also consider challenges to the concepts of social innovation and concerns about the commercialization of the public good.

College 398 Seminar in Global Processes: Innovation in the Social Sector

In this course we will examine how social enterprises and nonprofit groups that operate in New York City tackle local, national, and global problems. We will consider how the social sector focuses on replicability and scale to extend local solutions to global problems. Students will learn from enterprises and organizations in New York City and take field trips to sites that illustrate past and current practices in the social sector.

College 396 Independent Study

A tutorial resulting in a substantial 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

An Independent Study supervised by the director of the Program in New York City and based on an internship with a firm, organization, agency or advocacy group appropriate to the theme of course.

Spring 2019

Topic:  The City as a Global Phenomenon

Director: Daniel Chambliss, Professor of Sociology
Phone:  315-859-4291
Email:  dchambli@hamilton.edu

For thousands of years, cities have been melting pots of peoples, economies and cultures. The explosion of truly international capitalist economies in the 21st century has produced global cities – New York, London, Tokyo – in which the attentive student can find at close range the intricate connections between how the world at large works and how macrolevel forces play out in the lives of individual people on the street, at work and in their homes. This program will offer students both a wide-ranging vision of how cities have developed throughout history and across the world, as well as allowing closeup studies of urban life.  Courses will be supplemented by a variety of group activities and field trips designed to explore the rich offerings of New York City.

COLLEGE 398 SEMINAR IN GLOBAL PROCESSES: THE GLOBAL CITY

This course will explore the phenomenon of cities, using both historical and comparative examples, including writings of Georg Simmel and Louis Wirth, Jane Jacobs, Herbert Gans, Harvey Molotch, and Douglas Massey, up to the recent pathbreaking work of Saskia Sassen.  Topics will include immigration, poverty, residential segregation, urban economics and the sociology of urban life. 

COLLEGE 396 INDEPENDENT STUDY

A tutorial resulting in a substantial paper (30 pages) 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 during four days a week that includes a journal or written account of that experience.

COLLEGE 395 URBAN ETHNOGRAPHY

This is a fieldwork course in ethnographic research, wherein students will spend time in various settings throughout New York City, learning how to systematically observe people in order to understand their lives. Students will choose many of the settings themselves, giving them a chance to get to know urban places and events they may be interested in. New York offers a vast range of interesting locales, giving students the chance both to learn about new places as well as practice these classic methods of social science research.

Fall 2019

Topic:  Innovation in the Global City

Director: Chris Georges, Professor of Economics
Phone:  315-859-4472
Email:  cgeorges@hamilton.edu

New York City is one of the great global cities at the heart of the global economy. It is also a site of continual innovation, disruption, and change. This semester, we will focus on economic and social innovation in NYC in the context of innovation and change in the global economy.

Spring 2020

Topic:  Philosophy in the Global City:  Exploration of the Existential Dynamics of the Uptown/Downtown Dichotomy

Director: Todd Franklin, Prof. of Philosophy and Africana Studies
Phone:  315-859-4628
Email:  tfrankli@hamilton.edu

This spring semester program will be phenomenological in nature.  More specifically, the emphasis will be on theoretically framing and critically analyzing an array of dichotomous everyday experiences shaped by various historical, social, cultural, and economic facets of urban location.  Focusing primarily on the role of race in demarcating differences in social location and lived experiences, the program philosophically examines both the differences and dynamics between the racialized life worlds of Harlem and the rest of Manhattan and ponders the ways in which those differences and dynamics both reflect and bear upon the society more broadly.