56 courses with the subject URBS, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
URBS 100Introduction to Urban Studies1
As an introduction to urban inquiry, this course focuses on the historical evolution of cities, socio-spatial conflicts, and changing cultural meanings of urbanism. We examine the formation of urban hierarchies of power and privilege, along with their attendant contradictions and social movements of contestation, in terms of the rights to the city and the prospects for inclusive, participatory governance. Instructors coordinate the course with the assistance of guest presentations by other Urban Studies faculty, thereby providing insight into the architecture, cultures, economics, geography, history, planning, and politics of the city. The course involves study of specific urban issues, their theory and methodology, in anticipation of subsequent work at more advanced levels. Leonard Nevarez (a), Timothy Koechlin (b). Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
(Same as ART 144 and GRST 144 ) The great Mediterranean cities of Classical Antiquity, Athens in the 5th c. BC and Rome in the 1st-2nd c. CE (along with some of their satellite cities), are synonymous with the rise of western civilization. The city plans and monumental architecture dominate our view, but this course also focuses on the civic institutions housed in the spectacular buildings and the social worlds shaped by the grand public spaces, as well as the cramped working quarters. Neighborhoods of the rich and the poor, their leisure haunts, and places of congregation and entertainment are explored to reveal the rituals of everyday life and their political consequences. First six-week course. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27.
(Same as ANST 177 and ART 177 ) Beginning with visual and written descriptions of Tenochtitlán, the capital of the Aztec Empire (today’s Mexico City), this course explores visual and discursive representations of American cities from the colonial encounter to the present. Interpretations of urban landscapes have shaped the practice of planners, builders, artists, and activists in cities across the Americas. By introducing students to philosopher Henri Lefebvre’s theory of urban space—as materially, socially, and symbolically produced—this seminar invites students to reflect critically on the role of writing, representing, and intervening in public space in giving meaning to the built environment of North and Latin American cities. Second six-week course. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
This course reviews the development of theories regarding human behavior in cities and the production of space. The course spans the twentieth century, from the industrial city to the themed spaces of contemporary cities. Literature and topics examined to include the German school, urban ecology, debates in planning and architecture, political economy, and the cultural turns in urban studies. John Elrick.
URBS 100 or permission of the instructor. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Spring
URBS 202Public Policy and Human Environments1
(Same as ENST 202 , ESCI 202 , ESSC 202 and GEOG 202 ) This course combines the insights of the natural and social sciences to address a selected topic of global concern. Geographers bring spatial analysis of societal and political-ecological changes, while Earth Scientists contribute their knowledge of the diverse natural processes shaping the earth’s surface. Together, these distinctive but complementary fields contribute to comprehensive understandings of the physical limitations and potential uses and misuses of the Earth’s natural resources. John Elrick, Kirsten Menking. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
(Same as SOCI 204 ) What is the state of the rural — in contemporary society, and in urban imagination? How does modernization make rural livelihoods and settlements vulnerable? And why does it appear that many people are “going country”? This course examines the demographic, economic, cultural, and political conditions of rural society, with a focus on North America and an attention to global sources of change. Themes include rural inequalities and diversities; the transformation of agriculture, resource extraction, and industry in the countryside; hinterland out-migration, in-migration, and urbanization; and visibilities and invisibilities of “the rural” in popular culture, social problems, and politics. Leonard Nevarez. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
(Same as ART 211 and GRST 211 ) From humble beginnings to its conquest of most of the known world, Rome dominated the Mediterranean with the power of its empire. Art and architecture gave monumental expression to its political ideology, especially in the building of cities that spread Roman civilization across most of Europe and parts of the Middle East and Africa. Roman art also featured adornment, luxury, and collecting in both public and private spheres. Given the diversity of the people included in the Roman empire and its artistic forms, what is particularly Roman about Roman art? The Department.
ART 105 - ART 106 or GRST 216 or GRST 217 , or permission of the instructor. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Fall
URBS 223Cinemas and Urbanisms1
(Same as FILM 223 ) The cinema is one of the technologies, like mass transit and electricity, that made rapid urbanization in the early 20th century possible. Cities were one of early cinema’s favorite subjects, and their population density provided the audiences media industries needed to flourish. A quarter of the way through the 21st century, as the global population is increasingly urbanized and our lives, wherever we live them, are increasingly mediated, the relationship of cinematic media and cities becomes ever more inextricable. The course surveys the development of that relationship over the past 125 years. We explore how cinema developed a standardized grammar for imagining the city and taxonomizing some of its key features, the role cinematic technologies played in shaping (and contesting) urban redevelopment, the architectures that determine how cities house moving images, and the uses to which the entertainment industry and citizens alike put the cinema as ti shapes our daily lives in the city. Throughout our explorations, we encounter deadly tourists in Glasgow, enchanted lovers and slaughterhouses in Paris, ghosts in Dakar, small-time mobsters in New York, detectives in over their heads in Tokyo, and travelers in Sao Paolo. Assignments include two papers, a group presentation, and a creative project on the cinematic image of the Hudson Valley region. Erica Stein.
URBS 100 or FILM 209 . Two 75-minute periods plus outside screenings. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Spring
URBS 225Renaissance Italy1
(Same as HIST 225 ) This course examines the history of Italy between 1300 and 1565. Italian intellectual, political, and religious history is emphasized, but some attention is also given to cross-cultural, gender, and social history. Looking beyond Italy, we also consider developments in Byzantium and the Ottoman Empire and their impact on Italy and Europe. Topics to be covered include the Black Death, the rise of humanism, the Renaissance papacy, and the Catholic Reformation. Finally, throughout the course, we question the meaning of the term “Renaissance”: is it a distinct period, a cultural movement, or an insufficient label altogether? Nancy Bisaha. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27.
(Same as ASIA 227 and HIST 227 ) The course explores the layered histories of Chinatowns in the United States, as they have defined, reflected, and adapted to the changing experiences of Chinese Americans over the last century and a half. First constructed in the era of gold and railroads, Chinatowns have continually served as lively centers for trade, kinship, and transnational community. They have anchored political movements against anti-Chinese sentiment, as well as brought solace, from Chinese Exclusion to COVID-19. These ‘ethnic enclaves’ have been policed, destroyed, and developed according to the fears and fantasies of other Americans, who have imagined Chinatowns as thriving sites for vice, plague, and also tourism. Yet, many Chinese Americans-including women, mixed-race families, Christian converts, queer ‘bachelors,’ herbalists, and architects-led complicated lives that have continually challenged the cultural and physical boundaries of Chinatowns. With new waves of immigration and suburbanization, what even is a ‘Chinatown’ in the twenty-first century? We explore these layers through historical texts, maps, oral histories, film, fiction, and a visit to NYC Chinatown. Ashanti Shih. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
URBS 229Paris and London: Society and Culture in the Early Modern City, 1500-18001
(Same as HIST 229 ) Between 1500-1800 European society experienced upheavals caused by cataclysmic events such as the Reformation and major shifts in economic and political organization. And it was Europeans living in urban areas – Europeans of different social status, faith, and ethnicities – who experienced these changes most intensely. This course investigates how two of the most dynamic cities in early modern Europe, London and Paris, changed from essentially medieval cities to urban metropolises. We look at the changing material, religious, and political conditions of London and Paris over two centuries and explore how the peoples of these two cities articulated and made sense of such changes. The central focus of the class will be examining how the identities of Parisians and Londoners as urban dwellers underwent transformations during this period. Sumita Choudhury. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
This course surveys the production of urban space, from the mid 19th century industrial city to today’s post-bubble metropolis. Theories of urban planning and design, landscape architecture, infrastructure and real estate development are discussed in the context of a broad range of social, cultural, political and economic forces that have shaped urban space. Looking at American and European case studies, we ask: Who made decisions on the production of urban space? How were urban interventions actually brought about? Who were the winners and losers? Tobias Armborst. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
(Same as ENST 232 and GEOG 232 ) We all want a sustainable and climate-smart future, but how do we get there? Communities at all scales, from colleges to cities to global institutions are seeking answers to this question. To have agency in transitions toward sustainability, we need to understand the range of approaches and practices available, and we need to understand a number of general issues: How do differences in scale and regional context create or constrain possibilities? How do we learn new approaches to decision-making with sustainability in mind? How do transitions toward carbon neutrality imply transformations in social relations and structures of production? Our aim here is to understand the ways communities and institutions address these questions as they envision a road map for putting sustainability principles into practice. We focus largely on the pivotal issue of energy, but we also address related topics such as building and transportation infrastructure, landscapes, and food systems. We draw on transformative examples from the US, Europe, and Asia to find pathways through the existential challenges of the climate crisis and sustainability goals. Students must be available for a mandatory 4-day field trip to New York City during October Break. Mary Cunningham.
One course in Geography, Environmental Studies, or Urban Studies. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
URBS 234Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Crisis, Politics, and Culture in a Modern City1
(Same as HIST 234 ) At the turn of the nineteenth century, the composer Gustav Mahler is rumored to have said: “If the world comes to an end, then I’ll move to Vienna, because there everything happens fifty years later.” Mahler’s opinion of Vienna was shared by many of his contemporaries, yet in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century the city seemed anything but impervious to historical transformation. The seat of a sweeping multiethnic empire, Vienna emblemized the promises and discontents of modern life. It underwent a process of rapid urbanization, gave new form to mass politics, produced avant-garde artistic and intellectual movements, and navigated novel questions about imperial expansion, sovereignty, and multiculturalism. In this seminar, we examine Vienna during this period of profound transition. We begin by contextualizing this era within the longer history of the Hapsburg Empire after the revolutions of 1848, and end by linking it to the rise of Austrofascism in 1934. Throughout the course, we explore different approaches to studying urban history and work with a wide range of primary source materials including city maps, architectural blueprints, works of visual art, fiction, and film. Anna Solovy. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
(Same as GEOG 236 ) This course invites students to consider major themes in the history of planning thought with an eye toward the political landscape of the present. How have towns, cities, and regions been figured, erased, and redrawn as distinct problem-spaces amenable to specific methods of intervention and reproduction? To what ends – and by whom – have those efforts been proposed and implemented? Taking the emergence and dissemination of ideas about space and social organization as windows into politics and the operation of power, the class maps the transatlantic history of planning thought onto the historical terrain of colonial and capitalist rule. From Enlightenment innovations to liberal and reform visions of order to more recent preoccupations over process and the optimization of systems, the class examines the work of particular theorists, the impact of broader intellectual movements, and the effects of novel planning and policy techniques. It also accounts for critical and radical planning frameworks as interventions in their own right. A primary objective of the course is to outline a social history of planning ideas that remains attuned to political conditions in cities and regions today. The Department. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
(Same as SOCI 237 ) Since the late 19th century, sociology has contributed to the historic formation and evolving agenda of urban studies. This course introduces classical sociological studies of the urban, from German sociologists like Georg Simmel to the so-called Chicago school of sociology, and their elaboration and challenge by later generations of sociologists. In many ways, traditional sociological concepts of neighborhood, stratification, deviance, and urbanism inform contemporary research on unanticipated urban phenomena, like gentrification and megacities. Elsewhere, sociologists have shaped multidisciplinary inquiries into public space, political economy, and place. We survey these disciplinary developments with added focus on the global forces and urban change visible in Poughkeepsie and the larger New York metropolitan area. Leonard Nevarez. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
Permission of the instructor. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Fall
URBS 245The Ethnographer’s Craft1
(Same as ANTH 245 ) This course introduces students to the methods employed in constructing and analyzing ethnographic materials through readings, classroom lectures, and discussions with regular field exercises. Students gain experience in participant-observation, fieldnote-taking, interviewing, survey sampling, symbolic analysis, the use of archival documents, and the use of contemporary media. Attention is also given to current concerns with interpretation and modes of representation. Throughout the semester, students practice skills they learn in the course as they design, carry out, and write up original ethnographic projects. Kaushik Ghosh. Two 75-minute periods.
URBS 250Urban Geography: Space, Place, Environment1
(Same as GEOG 250 ) With the majority of the world’s population living in urban areas, city-regions have become a key site for understanding contemporary social, political-economic, and environmental issues. This course focuses on the making of urban spaces, places, and environments at a variety of geographical scales. We examine historical and current patterns of urban development, sense of place and place making, inequalities of race, class, and gender, urban culture and place branding, environmental and spatial justice, and urban risk and resilience in facing climate change. Concentrating on American urbanism, case studies include New York City, Poughkeepsie, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Students also research urban issues, including land-use planning and public space, historic preservation, transit-oriented development, urban ecology and restoration, urban sustainability programs, and social movements, in cities of their own choice. The Department. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
URBS 252Cities of the Global South: Urbanization and Social Change in the Developing World1
(Same as GEOG 252 and INTL 252 ) The largest and fastest wave of urbanization in human history is now underway in the Global South—the developing countries of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. Most of the world’s urban population already resides here, where mega-cities now reach massive proportions. Despite widespread economic dynamism, high rates of urbanization and deprivation often coincide, so many of the 21st century’s greatest challenges will arise in the Global South. This course examines postcolonial urbanism, global-city and ordinary-city theories, informal settlements and slums, social and environmental justice, and urban design, planning, and governance. We study scholarly, journalistic, and film depictions of Mexico City and Rio de Janeiro in Latin America; Algiers and Lagos in Africa; Cairo and Istanbul in the Middle East; and Beijing and Mumbai in Asia. John Stehlin.
A previous Geography or Urban Studies course. Two 75-minute periods.
Offered
Spring
URBS 254Victorian Britain1
(Same as HIST 254 and GNCS 254 ) This course examines some of the key transformations that Victorians experienced, including industrialization, the rise of a class-based society, political reform, and the women’s movement. We explore why people then, and historians since, have characterized the Victorian age as a time of progress and optimism as well as an era of anxiety and doubt. Lydia Murdoch. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27.
URBS 255Race, Representation, and Resistance in U.S. Schools1
(Same as AFRS 255 and EDUC 255 This course interrogates the intersections of race, racism and schooling in the US context. In this course, we examine this intersection at the site of educational policy, media and public attitudes towards schools and schooling- critically examining how representations in each shape the experiences of youth in school. Expectations, beliefs, attitudes and opportunities reflect societal investments in these representations, thus becoming both reflections and driving forces of these identities. Central to these representations is how theorists, educators and youth take them on, own them and resist them in ways that constrain possibility or create spaces for hope. Kimberly Williams Brown. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
URBS 256Bilingualism and/in K-12 Public Education1
(Same as EDUC 256 and LALS 256 ) Learning in schools where the language of instruction is new presents a challenge familiar to young immigrants and refugees across the globe. This affects their educational achievement, as well as their sense of inclusion and belonging in their new communities. This course examines the issue of education for English Language Learners through a field based experience. The hands-on component of the course is paired with readings that draw from bilingual education, critical theories of pedagogy, education policy, migration,, and education for social change. A group research and writing project is intended to highlight the academic needs of local ELLs, to examine the current instructional models for bilingual students. The course is open to all Vassar students interested in (a) community-based learning as a tool for social change; (b) learning about the experiences of bilingual students in Poughkeepsie schools; and (c) gaining practical experience researching bilingual education policy. Tracey Holland. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
(Same as AFRS 257 and POLI 257 ) This course explores the physical and imaginative dimensions of selected postcolonial cities. The theoretical texts, genres of expression and cultural contexts that the course engages address the dynamics of urban governance as well as aesthetic strategies and everyday practices that continue to reframe existing senses of reality in the postcolonial city. Through an engagement with literary, cinematic, architectural among other forms of urban mediation and production, the course examines the politics of migrancy, colonialism, gender, class and race as they come to bear on political identities, urban rhythms and the built environment. Case studies include: Johannesburg , Nairobi, Algiers and migrant enclaves in London and Paris. Samson Opondo. Two 75-minute periods.
URBS 258Sustainable Landscapes: Bridging Place and Environment in Poughkeepsie1
(Same as GEOG 258 ) Geographers have long understood the relationship of aesthetic landscapes and place to include concepts of identity, control, and territory. Increasingly we consider landscape aesthetics in the context of sustainability and environmental quality. How do these contrasting sets of priorities meet in the process of landscape design and land use analysis? In this course we begin by examining regional and local histories of landscape design and land use planning and their relationship to concepts of place, territory, and identity. We consider landscape ecological approaches to marrying aesthetic, land use planning, and environmental priorities in landscapes. We investigate local issues such as watershed quality, native plantings, and storm water management in the context of local land use planning in order to consider creative ways to bridge these once-contrary approaches to understanding the landscapes we occupy and construct. We focus on projects and topics related to the greater Poughkeepsie area. Susan Blickstein.
One 100-level course in Geography. One 3-hour period. Not offered in 2026/27.
URBS 264The Metropolitan Avant-Gardes1
(Same as ART 264 ) Radical prototypes of creativity and self-organization were forged by the new groups of artists, writers, filmmakers and architects that emerged in the first decades of the twentieth century. They based themselves in the new metropolitan centers. The course studies the avant-gardes’ different and often competing efforts to meet the economic transformation that industrialization was bringing to city and country alike. Afterward, the role of art itself would be seen completely differently. Molly Nesbit.
ART 105 or ART 106 , or permission of the instructor. Two 75-minute periods and one weekly film screening. Not offered in 2026/27.
URBS 265Modern Art and the Mass Media: the New Public Sphere1
(Same as ART 265 ) When the public sphere was reset during the twentieth century by a new order of mass media, the place of art and artists in the new order needed to be claimed. The course studies the negotiations between modern art and the mass media (advertising, cinema, TV), in theory and in practice, during the years between the Great Depression and the liberation movements of the late 1960s–the foundation stones of our own contemporary culture. As a consequence, the physical spaces of culture would be reimagined and designed. Molly Nesbit.
ART 105 or ART 106 . Two 75-minute periods and one film screening. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
URBS 268After 1968: Sustainable Aesthetics1
(Same as ART 268 and MEDS 268 ) This course studies the emancipation of the visual arts after 1968, here and abroad, together with the political and philosophical discussions that guided them. Theory and practice would form new combinations. The traditional fine arts as well as the new media, performance, film, architecture and installation art are treated as part of the wider global evolution creating new theaters of action, critique, community and hope. Molly Nesbit.
ART 105 or ART 106 . Two 75-minute periods and one film screening. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Spring
URBS 272Topics in Architectural History1
(Same as ART 272 ) Architectural history, considered through the material factors required for buildings’ construction. Topics covered include industrialization and urbanization, shifting colonial and national formations, and geographic division of labor. We also track the consolidation of liberal capitalism and the effects of environmental extractivism in and through built spaces and landscapes. Temporal scope varies by semester, but generally cover the period of modernity, from the 1750s until today.
URBS 273A Mirror Image: The Search for Self, Place & Home in Contemporary Architecture in the World, 1980s+1
(Same as ART 273 ) One could imagine that in the 1970s, the architectural movement known as the International Style looked back at the twentieth century with glee, surveying its spoils. It was after all, a style of architecture that held the century in thrall for almost 50 years; determining the built forms for much of the world in steel, glass and concrete. Le Corbusier for instance, likened architecture to a machine with parts that could be erected and function anywhere. Yet voices arose to articulate local architectural responses to such a paradigm, where the interrelationship between self, place, identity and home needed to be articulated in built form. The phrase that became the rallying cry for such a movement was “Critical Regionalism” and this course analyzes how many architectural projects in Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas embodied an approach to a more humane architecture.
ART 105 or ART 106 or permission of the instructor. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
URBS 274Buildings and Cities in Early Modern Italy1
(Same as ART 274 ) A history of architecture and urban design on the Italian peninsula, c. 1300-1700. We focus on the influential centers of Florence, Rome, and Venice, with reference to parallel developments elsewhere in Europe and the Mediterranean. Buildings and urban spaces are considered in social and political contexts, looking at the social structures as well as the patrons for which they were designed: governments, trade guilds, popes, nobles, and merchants. We study architectural and urban forms in relation to their functions, considering quotidian and ceremonial uses, the public and private spheres, and gendered spaces. Visual and textual evidence of performance, navigation, ritual, and sound reveal the varied ways that interior and exterior spaces could be experienced. Other topics include the changing role of the architect; individual versus collaborative design methods; the relation between theory and practice; new media; the transmission of memory; patterns of urban information exchange; manifestations of the ideal city; and the relation of urban, suburban, and rural topography. We investigate the designs and built work of such figures as Brunelleschi, Leon Battista Alberti, Leonardo da Vinci, Bramante, Raphael, Michelangelo, Palladio, Bernini, and Borromini. We also consider multimedia ensembles that blur traditional boundaries among art, architecture, urbanism, and landscape. Yvonne Elet. Two 75-minute periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
(Same as ART 275 ) A studio-based class introduction to architectural design through a series of short projects. Employing a combination of drawing, modeling and collage techniques (both by hand and using digital technology) students begin to record, analyze and create architectural space and form. Tobias Armborst.
ART 102 or ART 107 . Two 2-hour periods. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Spring
URBS 276Architectural Design II1
(Same as ART 276 ) A studio-based course aimed at further developing architectural drawing and design skills. Employing a variety of digital and non-digital techniques students record, analyze and create architectural space and form in a series of design exercises. Tobias Armborst.
ART 102 or ART 107 . Two 2-hour periods. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
URBS 278American Landscapes: History, Politics, & Built Environments1
(Same as GEOG 278 ) This course invokes landscape as a means to study American history, politics, and geography. It introduces ways of seeing, interpreting, describing, and speculating on how everyday built environments in the United States and its colonial precursors have shaped and given meaning to social and political life. To that end, the class surveys the production and transformation of vernacular spaces at a variety of scales: fields, fences, rivers, houses, workplaces, parks, towns, billboards, road patterns, transit infrastructures, residential and commercial developments, and more. It pays close attention to the coincidence of social orderings and spatial forms: the hierarchical web, the interchangeable grid, the specialized complex, and the interconnected system. In so doing, it presents an eclectic history of lay and official attempts to understand, define, represent, plan, and intervene in the spaces and lives of ordinary people. Our overarching task in this class is twofold: to grasp how the making of landscapes inflects collective ways of being and to trace how the past continues to animate the multiple and overlapping worlds we inhabit. John Elrick. Two 75-minute periods. Course Format: CLS
0.5 to 1 unit(s) Individual projects through the Office of Community-Engaged Learning, under supervision of one of the participating instructors. May be elected during the college year or during the summer. Special permission. Unscheduled. Course Format: INT
URBS 303Senior Seminar: Advanced Debates in Urban Studies1
Bringing together senior majors, this required seminar explores enduring and contemporary debates in Urban Studies. We reflect on the big questions that arise in an increasingly urbanized world and how we can address them in our own work. After reviewing alternative approaches to urban theory and practice, students engage an issue of their own choosing. The seminar culminates in the presentation of student research proposals, which may lead to an optional senior thesis or project in the spring semester. John Elrick.
Permission of the instructor. One 2-hour period. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
URBS 316Constantinople/Istanbul: 14531
(Same as HIST 316 ) This seminar examines a turning point in history-the end of the Byzantine Empire and the rise of the Ottoman Empire. The focus is the siege of Constantinople as seen in primary accounts and modem studies. The course also looks closely at culture and society in late Byzantium and the early Ottoman Empire. Specific topics include the post-1453 Greek refugee community, the transformation of Constantinople into Istanbul, and the role of Western European powers and the papacy as allies and antagonists of both empires. Nancy Bisaha. One 2-hour period. Course Format: CLS
URBS 322The Metabolic City: Resources, Flows and Networks1
(Same as GEOG 322 ) Cities are not just human settlements; they are also built environments that are composed of and sustained by flows of resources both local and distant. This discussion-based seminar explores the networks and infrastructures of food, water, energy, building materials, and waste that produce and shape cities, as well as the power relations that govern them and their implications for the sustainability of urban life. We examine conceptual frameworks for understanding the relationships between cities and nature, with special attention to the urban dimensions of climate change mitigation and adaptation, and apply them through case studies ranging from New York and Madrid to Accra and Jakarta. Students complete an independent research paper on a case study of their choosing, with the option to contribute to senior theses. The Department. One 3-hour period. Course Format: CLS
(Same as HIST 326 ) This course examines the life and writings of the fascinating and often misunderstood Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527), and places him in dialogue with other political thinkers, courtiers, and artists, of his time, such as Baldessare Castiglione, Tullia d’Aragona, and Benvenuto Cellini. The course explores several of Machiavelli’s political writings, plays, and letters in tandem with the works of other writers as we explore a period that witnessed both the height of Italian Renaissance culture and power in Medici Florence, papal Rome, Venice, Milan, and Naples, as well as profound reversals with invasions by French, Spanish, and German troops, the loss of self-governance, and Machiavelli’s own exile from office. The late 15th and early 16th centuries was a fertile period for political thought, humanism, philosophy, and explorations of gender, sexuality, and self identity. Machiavelli and his contemporaries offer a lens to explore it with close readings of their works. Nancy Bisaha. Recommended HIST 116 and HIST 117 . One 2-hour period. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
URBS 344Living for the City: Race, Space, and Place in Urban America1
(Same as AFRS 344 and HIST 344 ) This seminar explores the development and transformation of Black urban life in America from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century. Organized chronologically and regionally, it examines how Black Americans shaped cities across the North, South, and West–from colonial cities to modern. metropolises. Topics include urban slavery and labor, nineteenth-century migration and urbanization, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Gilded Age and industrialization, and Jim Crow-era segregation. In addition to tracing key themes in Black urban history, the assigned course materials analyze the economic, social, and political transformations of Black urban communities. We consider the methods and strategies that Black urban communities used to challenge racial, gender, and class inequalities in the long nineteenth-century United States. Whitney Fields. One 2-hour period. Course Format: CLS
(Same as MEDS 352 ) In this seminar, we use the concept of the fragment to explore the contemporary city, and vice versa. We draw on the work of Walter Benjamin, for whom the fragment was both a central symptom of urban modernity and a potentially radical mode of inquiry. We also use the figure of the fragment to explore and to experiment with the situationist urbanism of Guy Debord, to address the failure of modernist dreams for the city, and to reframe the question of the “global” in contemporary discussions of global urbanization. Finally, we use the fragment to destabilize notions of experience and evidence—so central to positivist understandings of the city—as we make regular visits to discover, as it were, non-monumental New York. Readings include works by Walter Benjamin, Stefano Boeri, Christine Boyer, Guy Debord, Rosalyb Deytsche, Paul Gilroy, Rem Koolhaas, Henri Lefebvre, Thomas Lacquer, Saskia Sassen, Mark Wigley, and others. . Heesok Chang. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
This seminar focuses on land-use issues such as open-space planning, urban design, transportation planning, and the social and environmental effects of planning and land use policies. The focus of the course this year is impacts of planning policies (such as transportation, zoning, or growth boundaries) on environmental quality, including open space preservation, farmland conservation, and environmental services. We begin with global and regional examples and then apply ideas in the context of Dutchess County’s trajectory of land use change and planning policies.
One 200-level course in Geography, Urban Studies or Environmental Studies. One 3-hour period. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
URBS 360Reckoning with Urban Renewal, Gentrification, and Displacement1
(Same as GEOG 360 ) Federal programs have transformed American cities over the last century. During the Depression of the 1930s, the Home Owners Loan Corporation “redlined” whole neighborhoods as “hazardous” for investment. After World War II, federal funding for “urban renewal” operated on U.S. cities between 1949 and 1974 with “slum clearance” of what planners regarded as blighted neighborhoods, although they were often vibrant (even if redlined) communities. Urban renewal focused on providing new public and private housing, freeways and expressways, cultural centers, recreational and educational facilities, office complexes, and more. Those displaced by eviction from their homes numbered in the millions, comprised disproportionately of working classes, people of color, and immigrants. Social displacement now results more from urban revitalization and “gentrification,” which increasingly affects cities worldwide. After exploring the complex linkages among these historical and contemporary processes, students apply applicable urban theory to explain changes in cities of their choice.
Permission of the instructor. One 2-hour period. Course Format: CLS
URBS 367Urban Education Reform1
(Same as EDUC 367 ) This advanced seminar examines American urban education reform from historical and contemporary perspectives to understand the recent impetus to push towards privatizing the public educational system. In particular, this course helps you think about the origins, philosophies, and implications of recent public school reform initiatives that are generally driven by neoliberal market-based ideologies, as well as the possibilities for resistance, agency, and change on both the micro- and macro-levels. Particular attention is given to both large-scale initiatives as well as grassroots community based efforts in educational change. Our class also partners with local youth from area high schools. For the last hour of class, these young people come to our class and you work with them on thinking through what changes they would like to see in their own schools and districts. This also involves helping them collect data and research at their sites. Maria Hantzopoulos.
EDUC 235 or permission of the instructor. One 2-hour period. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
URBS 370Seminar in Architectural History1
(Same as ART 370 ) Topic for 2026/27a: Building sites are inherently sites of class confrontation. Financier-capitalists hire architects and managers to supervise workers, who sell their labor for subsistence wages. Once completed, constructed buildings sustain stratification by spatially segregating people by class, race, and gender, on scales ranging from rooms to urban neighborhoods to entire regions. From the moment that architects begin to draw, they formulate means of exclusion: lines represent walls and doors, instruments that restrict who is allowed to be where. Architecture’s very appearance can serve as a marker of class distinction, affirming the aesthetics of a ?cultured? stratum of society, and often reinforcing conservative tastes of the working class. Thus while taste may be related to class, the relationship between these phenomena is frequently complex. This course studies modern architectural history (from the eighteenth century to today) through the lens of class conflict. Where have buildings exacerbated preexisting divisions between people? What precise spatial, organizational, and material devices contribute to segregation? How do we see ramifications of class stratification in domestic settings and the enforcement of gender norms? Readings include selections from John Ruskin, Harriet Martineau, Karl Marx, Catharine Beecher, Thorstein Veblen, Henri Lefebvre, Pierre Bourdieu, Fredric Jameson, Manfredo Tafuri, Dolores Hayden, David Harvey, and others. Through a combination of focused architectural analysis and an intensive program of reading in political economy and architecture, we develop methods of interpreting urban, suburban, and rural landscapes by considering how they were built, who built them, and who they were built for. Jonah Rowen.
Permission of the instructor. One 2-hour period. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Fall
URBS 372Design Workshop1
In this intensive, a small group of students works with the faculty mentor to select and address a specific architectural or urban design challenge on campus, in the city of Poughkeepsie or in the wider region. The workshop works with partner groups on or off campus that are looking for support in tackling specific, more or less defined spatial planning and design questions. Partners can be existing constituencies such as student organizations, advocacy groups and non-profits, but also less organized groups that are brought together by particular spatial issues. In either case, the students help their partners articulate the scope of a feasible planning or design study, and they then develop a report over the course of the semester. Depending on the needs of the partner, the deliverables can range from immediately implementable design (for example new signage for a local non-profit) to drawings that render spatial issues visible and thereby negotiable, and that help partners advocate for or against spatial change. Tobias Armborst. One 2-hour period. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: INT
(Same as SOCI 374 ) This advanced level seminar delves into the rich field of urban ethnography, examining classical and contemporary works that illuminate the intersections of race, space, class, and representations of urbanism. Through an interdisciplinary lens drawing from sociology, anthropology, Black Studies, geography and others, students critically engage with theories, methods, and empirical research to deepen their understanding of everyday life in cities and communities across the United States. Stephane Andrade. One 2-hour period. Course Format: CLS
(Same as ART 375 ) An examination of a number of visual constructs, analyzing the ways architects and urbanists have employed maps, models and projections to construct particular, partial views of the physical world. Using a series of mapping, drawing and diagramming exercises, students analyze these constructs and then appropriate, expand upon, or hybridize established visualization techniques. Tobias Armborst.
ART 102 or ART 107 . Two 2-hour periods. Course Format: CLS
Offered
Spring
URBS 383Indigenous New York1
(Same as ANST 383 ) Over half of all Native American people living in the United States now live in an urban area. The United States federal policies of the 1950’s brought thousands of Indigenous peoples to cities with the promise of jobs and a better life. Like so many compacts made between the United States and Native tribes, these agreements were rarely realized. Despite the cultural, political, and spiritual losses due to Termination and Relocation policies, Native American people have continued to survive and thrive in complex ways. This seminar examines the experiences of Indigenous peoples living in urban areas since the 1950’s, but also takes into consideration the elaborate urban centers that existed in the Americas before European contact. Using the New York region as our geographical center, we examine the pan-tribal movement, AIM, Red Power, education, powwowing, social and cultural centers, two-spiritedness, religious movements, and the arts. We study the manner in which different Native urban communities have both adopted western ways and recuperated specific cultural and spiritual traditions in order to build and nurture Indigenous continuance. Finally, in this course, we understand and define “urban” in very broad contexts, using the term to examine social, spiritual, geographical, material, and imagined spaces in which Indigenous people of North America locate themselves and their communities at different times and in different ways. Molly McGlennen. One 2-hour period. Not offered in 2026/27. Course Format: CLS
URBS 394Architecture, “Originality,” Reproduction: First-Edition Modern Architecture Publications1
(Same as ART 394 ) Vassar College has received a donation of a trove of first-edition architecture books and magazines from the Jeffries family. The collection features Frank Lloyd Wright’s Wasmuth Portfolio (1910), Le Corbusier’s Vers une architecture (1923), a range of significant nineteenth-century books, and several more by other protagonists of architectural modernism. As a mass medium, mechanical printing rendered architecture obsolete (or so the consensus has been since Victor Hugo’s lament, ventriloquized through the villain of Notre-Dame de Paris , in a chapter titled “This Will Kill That”). Supposedly unmediated experience of architecture demands a physical visit to a completed building: the presumptive “original.” Yet such ostensible authenticity is complicated by forms of presentation and representation such as drawings and text, essential to architectural practice, which are eminently reproducible. Thus we frame our research by asking, What roles do printed matter play in the production of architecture? How did architects use print as a complement to their work in other media and materials, from drawings and photographs to physical building materials? How can we “read” architecture? How can we “inhabit” books? This Intensive meets in Special Collections to study the publications included in the collection. Deconstructing the concept of originality, we practice direct encounter with original copies of reproduced printed materials that reproduce original built objects, themselves reproduced from architects’ original drawings, printed and reproduced. Jonah Rowen.
