Step 1: Gallatin's Philosophy and Curriculum

A concentration is a program of study organized around a theme, a problem, an activity, a period of history, an area of the world, or a central idea or question. It takes the place of a traditional major in Gallatin’s undergraduate curriculum. As a Gallatin student, you will develop a unique concentration based on your academic interests and professional goals. It will evolve through coursework, experiential learning, independent projects and input from advisers.

You will have the opportunity to select courses from all of NYU’s distinct undergraduate schools, colleges and programs. You will complete a liberal arts core that combines Gallatin courses in writing, significant texts, the history of ideas, the arts and interdisciplinary studies with offerings from departments and programs at NYU. As you develop your concentration, you will learn to look for intersections between academic disciplines with support from your faculty advisers.

Creativity, flexibility and rigor characterize academics at Gallatin. The School will enable you to design an program of study that suits your unique interests and goals while providing you with a strong foundation in the liberal arts. You will work closely with your academic advisers to design your undergraduate program of study, which will include an area of concentration that you define. In Gallatin’s interdisciplinary seminars and small classes, you will be encouraged to rethink the connections between the areas of study that compel you.

The undergraduate core consists of 32 units in Gallatin courses, all of which contain the letters “UG” in the course subject area: 4 units in the First-Year Interdisciplinary Seminar, 4 units in First-Year Writing Seminar, 4 units in First-Year Research Seminar, and 12 units in Interdisciplinary Seminars. The remaining 8 units may be taken in other Gallatin curricular offerings, including additional interdisciplinary seminars, advanced writing courses, arts workshops, community learning courses, travel courses, and individualized projects (independent studies, tutorials, internships, and private lessons). Please note the First-Year Interdisciplinary Seminar counts as an interdisciplinary seminar; thus students who do not complete a First-Year Interdisciplinary Seminar are required to complete a total of 16 units in Interdisciplinary Seminars.

After completing the Interdisciplinary Seminar requirement (usually in four 4-unit courses), the remaining courses toward the undergraduate core requirement of 32 units may be taken in advanced writing courses, arts workshops, community learning courses, travel courses, global programs, independent studies, tutorials, internships, or private lessons.

After successfully completing the First-Year Writing Seminar and First-Year Research Seminar, Gallatin students may choose from a rich variety of Advanced Writing Courses in genres including fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, advocacy writing, comedy writing and documentary writing.

The Gallatin Interdisciplinary Arts Program, modeled on the artist-scholar/scholar-artist philosophy of education, enables students to design programs that combine academic and creative work in the arts. The arts curriculum includes many workshops and writing seminars offered each semester in the performing, literary and visual arts.

After the first year, Gallatin students may take advantage of several forms of global learning. Whether you study abroad for a semester or summer at an NYU site, study as an exchange student at an international university, or take a Gallatin summer or winter travel course, you will return to Washington Square with expanded academic and cultural horizons.

After the first semester, Gallatin students can create their own individualized projects, which also count toward the undergraduate core requirement. Individualized projects include credit-bearing internships, independent studies, tutorials, private lessons, and senior projects.

All students must complete a foundation requirement, which is comprised of two areas: the liberal arts foundation and the historical and cultural foundation. The liberal arts foundation must be distributed as follows: 8 units in the humanities; 8 units in the social sciences; and 4 units in mathematics or natural science. The historical and cultural foundation must be distributed as follows: 4 units in the pre-modern period, 4 units in the early modern period, and 4 units in global cultures.

Gallatin students must complete 8 units (usually two 4-unit courses) in the humanities, to include the study of literature, classics, comparative literature, dramatic literature, foreign languages, philosophy, religious studies, history and art history.

Gallatin students must complete 8 units (usually two 4-unit courses) in the social sciences, to include the study of anthropology, economics, international relations, linguistics, psychology, politics and sociology.

Gallatin students must complete 4 units (usually one 4-unit course) in mathematics or natural sciences, to include the study of biology, chemistry, computer science, environmental studies, mathematics, physics, statistics and some Gallatin courses on the history of science.

The "pre-modern" period traditionally extends from the world of antiquity to the emergence of early modern social, political and technological regimes (14th-16th centuries). It is common to include under this vast temporal umbrella such disparate phenomena as the ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean, the Middle East and South Asia; the societies and cultures of the European 'Middle Ages;' the Mayan and Incan civilizations of South and Central America; pre-Ming Dynasty China; the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates of the Middle East, North Africa and Spain.

Students of the pre-modern world might expect to study (among many possibilities): Classical Greek philosophy and drama; ancient Mediterranean wisdom literature; epic poetry and romance; the interplay of oral and written cultures; the Han legacy in the East; the Roman legacy in the West; heresy and the institutionalization of religion; the rise of Islam; crusade; and the flourishing of scientific learning at Baghdad and Cordoba.

The "early modern" period is understood to begin in many regions around the 14th century and to continue to the late 18th or 19th centuries. It describes the era from the invention of the printing press to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, from the early contact of European explorers with the Americas to the American Revolution.

It marks the beginning of world exploration and the expansion of world trade; the beginning of a global economic system; and the beginning of European colonialism, including the Atlantic slave trade. It is common to associate this period with the European Renaissance, the Ottoman Empire, the Tokugawa Shogunate in Japan, the Ming and Qing Dynasties in China, colonial Latin America and the colonial and early revolutionary culture of the United States.

To expand their cultural knowledge, Gallatin students are required to stretch beyond the cultures with which they are most familiar and take (at least) 4 units of coursework in classes dealing with the beliefs, practices, literatures, or intellectual traditions found in cultures beyond the boundaries of, in general, the United States and Western Europe. Students are encouraged to take classes that address the cultures of Africa, Latin America and Asia.