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History Lessons NYC

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Discover a world of history classes in NYC that will transport you back in time and deepen your understanding of the past. From ancient civilizations to modern events, explore fascinating topics and gain valuable insights to enrich your knowledge and perspective.

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Thomas Hobbes: Leviathan, Behemoth, and the State

Brooklyn Institute for Social Research

Thomas Hobbes’ famous declaration in Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme, and Power of a Commonwealth, Ecclesiastical or Civil that such a life would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” is often understood as a cynical bon mot, shorthand to a timeless, transcendental truth about human animals and our limitations. But Hobbes’ analysis and understanding of the world and its political structures was both philosophically materialist...

(29) All levels 21 and older
No upcoming schedules

Feminism, Politics, and Imagination

Brooklyn Institute for Social Research

This course approaches the politics of marginal subjects through the work of women thinkers, writers, characters, actors, and artists. These figures confront the logics of colonialism, capitalism, racism, fascism, and patriarchy by thwarting the voices, loves, fates, destinies, and narratives conferred to them within these systems, as well as within those discourses that seek to liberate them. Notions of speech, disorder, pathology, trauma, romance,...

(29) All levels 21 and older
No upcoming schedules

Edward Said: Culture and Empire

Brooklyn Institute for Social Research

Few contemporary intellectuals have generated enough interest in their work to achieve simultaneous fame and infamy, yet this distinction undoubtedly applies to Edward Said (1935-2003). In the aftermath of his monumental Orientalism (1978) and his outspoken advocacy on behalf of the Palestinian people, Said became a lightning rod within both academic and policy debates about multiculturalism, Euro-American exceptionalism, and the nature of American...

(29) All levels 21 and older
No upcoming schedules
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Introduction to Intersectionality

Brooklyn Institute for Social Research

Intersectionality, a term coined by Kimberle Crenshaw, forcefully challenges the idea that gender is the primary factor organizing women’s lives. Drawing on black feminist and critical legal theory, Crenshaw maintains that the experience of being a woman must be understood through the interrelation of race and gender. In other words, she proposes racial justice as central to feminist theory and politics. In the 30-plus years since the publication...

(29) Beginner 21 and older
No upcoming schedules

Pornography: Aesthetics, Politics, and Pleasure

Brooklyn Institute for Social Research

Pornography is one of humanity’s oldest, and most enduring artifacts. Variously celebrated and demonized, it has decorated sumptuous palaces and been furtively sold under pain of arrest.  In the modern United States, it is kept studiously out of sight, and yet is simultaneously omnipresent and accessible in its most explicit forms with a simple click of the mouse. What is pornography? What does it do? Why do we treat it so inconsistently?...

(29) All levels 21 and older
No upcoming schedules

International Relations: a Critical Introduction

Brooklyn Institute for Social Research

While international politics has been a topic of discourse since at least Thucydides, international relations, as a branch of study distinct from political theory, emerged in the late 19th century—just as the European nation-state was making itself felt as the dominant political actor on the world stage.  While arguably no discipline evolves entirely independently of social and political power, IR, with its descriptive and prescriptive...

(29) All levels 21 and older
No upcoming schedules

CSR Spotlight: Employee Engagement

Be Social Change

Each month the Be Social Change CSR Spotlight brings together experts, practitioners, and thought-leaders in corporate social responsibility, corporate foundations, B Corps, socially-conscious businesses, and nonprofits to share innovative models, high-performing social impact campaigns, and best-practices of using business as a force for good. This month’s theme is Employee Engagement. Join us for networking and a panel discussion...

(245) All levels 18 and older
No upcoming schedules

Future of Community Building

Be Social Change

Learn to design communities that are connected, support their members, and are able to overcome barriers in the face of unknown challenges. Building a community has never been more difficult or imperative. How can we design inspiring, engaged communities, especially in the face of crises and barriers like social distancing? Join us for this interactive online panel about trends, challenges, and best practices in the art of building community. Learn...

(245) All levels 18 and older
No upcoming schedules

Webinar: Leading Civil Discourse

Be Social Change

How can we discuss important topics such as racial justice, politics, climate change, and more while creating a space of potential growth, safety, and mutual-respect? How can open dialogue move our teams, communities, and countries forward? Especially at this vital time when it can be hard to talk about these topics, when division is all too common a default, and people are unsure how to engage creatively, this workshop will provide you with communication...

(245) All levels 18 and older
No upcoming schedules

Fireside Chat w/ Susan Mcpherson:Lost Art of Connecting

Be Social Change @ BSC Virtual Clasroom

At a time when we are more physically distant than ever before—how can we reverse the growing trends of disconnection to forge meaningful connections in business and in life? Even before the pandemic gripped the world, we had become a nation engulfed in loneliness. People have hundreds of “friends” on Facebook, and countless “connections” on LinkedIn, yet real connection remains rare and elusive. In THE LOST ART OF CONNECTING: The Gather,...

(245) All levels 18 and older
No upcoming schedules

Geraldo Cadava: Hamilton’s America

92nd Street Y @ Online Classroom, New York, NY

Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical, Hamilton, became a national sensation, capturing the imaginations of Americans young and old, far and wide, of diverse backgrounds and ancestries. A hip hop infused musical, Hamilton is widely considered to have revolutionized the genre of the Broadway musical, just as many saw the American Revolution as a first for the world. Miranda, the show’s creator, has enjoyed all of the accolades befitting a master of his...

(1061) All levels 18 and older
No upcoming schedules
$140

5 sessions

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Raphael Cormack: Cairo in the Roaring 20s

92nd Street Y @ Online Classroom, New York, NY

The 1920s in Cairo were a time of revolution—political, social, and cultural. Egypt had recently won independence from British rule (officially at least if not always in practice), women were becoming more prominent in public life, and Cairo was one of the most multicultural cities in the world where Muslims, Christians, and Jews all rubbed shoulders in cafés, bars, and theatres. Based on research from his new book, Midnight in Cairo: The Divas...

(1061) All levels 18 and older
No upcoming schedules
$108

4 sessions

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The Three I’s: Industry, Institutions, and Immigration

Wagner College Lifelong Learning

The Civil War, including soldier encampments and the race riots that spilled onto Staten Island, will be inspected. Immigration, specifically Irish and German, will be analyzed, as will the immigrant impact on manufacturing. Hundreds of products were made during the 19th century. Let’s talk about beer, bricks, blocks of soap and more. Institutions such as the Almshouse, “Mount Loretto,” Saint Michaels Home, Sailors’ Snug Harbor, “The...

(5) All levels 18 and older
No upcoming schedules

How Creatures Helped Create New York City

92nd Street Y @ Online Classroom, New York, NY

Full Course Name: Horses, Oysters and Pigeons: How Creatures Helped Create New York City Yet the city is also shaped by forces that are not as obvious or visible but nonetheless have had significant impact on the city: its animal inhabitants. Join us as we look at the city’s culture and history through horses, oysters, and pigeons—those unexpected and unique beings that make New York, well, New York! We’ll explore how these species...

(1061) All levels 18 and older
No upcoming schedules
$81

3 sessions

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Race, Racism, and the Making of American History

92nd Street Y @ Online Classroom, New York, NY

Join Christina Proenza-Coles, author of American Founders: How People of African Descent Established Freedom in the New World, and Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, daughter of comedic icon Richard Pryor and author of Colored Travelers: Mobility and the Fight for Citizenship Before the Civil War, for a timely and thought-provoking program that looks at how we think and talk about race, racism, and history in America—the words we use and the words...

(1061) All levels 18 and older
No upcoming schedules

The Mahabharata: From Exile to Apocalypse

Brooklyn Institute for Social Research @ Online, New York, NY

The Mahabharata is one of the great literary works of South Asian history. It narrates an epic story: the introduction to our supposed age, the Kali Yuga—one of downfall and decline, but also eventual rebirth. Preeminently a dialogic work, the Mahabharata remembers a past that requires constant re-narration, simultaneously defining and critiquing dharma—or “proper conduct.” These dialogues culminate famously...

(29) All levels 21 and older
No upcoming schedules
$315

4 sessions

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Reading the Bible: the Life of Moses

Brooklyn Institute for Social Research @ Online, New York, NY

Why do we write the lives of individual people? Why do we write them the way we do? In this course, we’ll consider an individual whose life has been written perhaps more than anyone else’s: Moses. Why was Moses’s life written, and why, in the Bible, was it written in the way that it was? We’ll begin with the perhaps the earliest biography of Moses as such, Philo of Alexandria’s On the Life of Moses. We’ll then...

(29) All levels 21 and older
No upcoming schedules
$315

4 sessions

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On Decadence: Aesthetics, Culture, and Decline

Brooklyn Institute for Social Research @ Online, New York, NY

From stories of Roman emperors drowning their dinner guests in roses to the reveries of Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil, tropes of decadence—decay, decline, decomposition—have flourished in modern times. Decadence has played a vital role in narratives of culture, history, and political economy. On the one hand, decadence can indicate a sense of historical or cultural loss in the face of swift-moving technological progress. On the other, it...

(29) All levels 21 and older
No upcoming schedules
$315

4 sessions

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Economics, Narrative, and Pandemics

92nd Street Y @ Online Classroom, New York, NY

Narratives that circulate among the general population are potentially contagious and can be epidemic, just as disease viruses are.  The general public does not talk about pure economic theory much, but some rudimentary theories that guide their economic decisions are spread by their connection with viral human-interest narratives. With modern historical files of digitized text, such as of newspapers or books, we can get clues of the changes...

(1061) All levels 18 and older
No upcoming schedules

The Teachings of Emerson, Thoreau & Whitman

New York Open Center @ 22 E 30th St, New York, NY

The Transcendentalist movement of the 19th century was a period of revolutionary and reflective thought. It brought forth some of the greatest visionary thinkers in American history who awakened the nation to its rightful spiritual and intellectual heritage. Their writings continue to inspire us to be ever-conscious of all-pervading Spirit, to seek true freedom, to strive for an unconditional love for humanity, to embrace each moment,  and to...

(299) All levels 18 and older
No upcoming schedules
$75

3 sessions

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