George Jose

How does the ceaseless movement of people - a key feature of our globalized world - impact our sense of the self, of social identity, and indeed of political rights, all of which are anchored in a presumption of "belonging" that is secured by primordial ties of blood and soil. "Migrant," "Refugee," and "Indigenous" are among the most fraught terms in a time when the "Citizen" has been elevated to being the singular legitimacy. Formal citizenship often excludes migrants or those who were born to parents of foreign nationality. What are the tensions between citizenship and mobility? Can one recognize both the "right" to movement and mobility alongside assertions of the preeminence of "local populations"? How are these competing claims conceptualized and rights affirmed? What are the distinct valences of terms like "Neighbor," "Stranger," "Citizen," "Alien," "Guest," and "Resident"? And how do we debate the contrasting conceptual grounds of territorial claims and circulatory flows? In this multidisciplinary colloquium, students will engage these in order to better understand the place of the nation-state and the experience of citizenship in the context of globalization.

Prerequisite: Must be an NYU Abu Dhabi student and have not completed the Core: Colloquium requirement.

How do we understand and make sense of the consequences of what has clearly become a climate emergency? What conditions catalyzed this moment of crisis? Why and how might we consider re-orienting our habits of thought and action to engage this global challenge? What are the limits of anthropomorphism or the anthropomorphic imagination, of assigning human attributes to nonhuman others? Our notions of "development" and "progress," our conception of natural resources, our relationship to the technocratic imagination have all contributed to the making of the Age of the Anthropocene, in which human agency reshapes our environment. This course will engage with a range of approaches that re-conceptualize the relationship of humans with nature. It will study the environmental consequences of urbanization, resource frontiers, extractive industries, the quest for sustainable energy, human-animal conflict, and the politics of conservation. It will conclude by asking what constitutes environmental justice as students explore the need to recalibrate multiple disciplines to generate a "multispecies" perspective on our world.

Prerequisite: Must be an NYU Abu Dhabi student and have not completed the Core: Colloquium requirement.