GEO304 Sustainability on Trial: Environmental Justice in Northern Europe (Signature Seminar; Fall, Spring)

GEO304 Sustainability on Trial: Environmental Justice in Northern Europe (Signature Seminar; Fall, Spring)

Limited enrollment. Syracuse Signature Seminars are travelling courses that frame a semester abroad in the light of shared concerns for people and planet. This seminar examines diverse and contested approaches to ‘being green’. The first part of the course explores eco-innovations being piloted in the Nordic countries, home to some of the world’s greatest progress toward sustainable development and carbon-neutral living. In the second portion of the class, students travel into the Arctic Circle to question whether sustainability is living up to its promise for all stakeholders. Who has been benefitted or harmed by environmental policies? Ultimately, the Seminar helps students to understand their impact on the world, and how they can take action to make that impact a more positive one.

During the fall semester, students will explore Copenhagen as an eco-city through cycling tours; kayak a Swedish archipelago and consider urban design in Stockholm; and spend time with huskies and reindeer alongside Europe’s only recognized indigenous people, the Sami—in nearly 24 hours of daylight thanks to the high latitude.

Spring semester field activities include witnessing climate change firsthand in Bergen and snowshoeing up a glacier in the Norwegian fjords; touring sustainable urban technologies in Stockholm; and mushing huskies in the snowy Arctic Circle after a dark night searching for the Northern lights.

Both semesters explore questions of human-nature interactions, animal ethics, and connections between global climate patterns and local politics.

Satisfies IDEA Course Requirement.

The three credits earned for this pre-semester seminar will be included in the maximum 19 credits that you can earn for your semester abroad. In order to meet U.K. immigration requirements, you must enroll in a minimum of 16 credits—including this seminar—for the semester. 

ARC434 London’s Built Environment (Fall, Spring)

London’s Built Environment: The Ways of the Architect presents a history of London’s built environment by examining the changing attitudes and practices of British architects from the mid-17th to the mid-20th century. It explores the ways in which London’s architectural culture was understood and produced through its architects’ diverse trainings, evolving modes of design and notions of style, built and theoretical work. It does so by identifying four pairs of architects and architectural thinkers and by thematically investigating their respective practices and conflicting professional perspectives: Christopher Wren and Nicholas Hawksmoor; Robert Adam and William Chambers; William Morris and John Ruskin; Alison and Peter Smithson and Denys Lasdun. As such, the course pinpoints four paradigm-shifting moments in the production of London’s built environment, allowing at the same time for a comprehensive and continuous narrative of British architectural history, including the Palladian Revivals, late-18th century cultures of ruins and the Picturesque, the impact of industrialisation in the 19th century and post-war reconstructions.

Each of the four thematic chapters of the course involves two seminars and a site visit. The syllabus is built around the critical understanding of buildings and the close reading of key primary and secondary texts. The course ultimately aims at providing a comprehensive overview of the development and evolution of the profession of the architect and its relationship with the social, political and economic circumstances of British history.

Enrollment priority is given to students admitted to the London Architecture program, then Architecture minors as space allows.

Satisfies Shared Competencies:

  • Critical and Creative Thinking
  • Communication Skills

MAR301 Essentials of Marketing (Fall, Spring)

Exploration of the principles of marketing as a major business function and social process. Students develop a full understanding of the marketing concept and learn how marketing interrelates with other business functions. You will learn how to identify the political, economic, and social factors that affect an organization’s marketing decisions; how elements of the marketing mix work together, and how to understand the various techniques of marketing.

Course restriction: Not open to students who have taken another intro to marketing course.

Prereq: Sophomore standing

ARC408 Architectural Design VII (Fall)

Fourth-year fall semester required design studio. The London semester is comprised of two interrelated workshops focused on a particular theme, and involves local critics whose work is pertinent to the theme. Each workshop is structured into a fast-paced analysis and synthesis period followed by a curation and exhibition period. The workshops include excursions to visit studio practices and works in situ, intended to explore emergent design sensibilities and modes of research responsive to contemporary issues.

Open only to students admitted to the London architecture program who are required to take a studio course.

Prereq: ARC 407

Coreq: ARC 561 – Survey of British Architecture

ARC407 Architectural Design VI (Spring)

Third-year spring semester required design studio. The London semester is comprised of two interrelated workshops focused on a particular theme, and involves local critics whose work is pertinent to the theme. Each workshop is structured into a fast-paced analysis and synthesis period followed by a curation and exhibition period. The workshops include excursions to visit studio practices and works in situ, intended to explore emergent design sensibilities and modes of research responsive to contemporary issues.

Open only to students admitted to the London architecture program who are required to take a studio course.

Prereq: ARC 307

Coreq: ARC 561 – Survey of British Architecture

WGS416 British Masculinity On Screen: James Bond and Sherlock Holmes (Fall, Spring)

Sherlock Holmes and James Bond instantly evoke particular ideas about British masculinity: an uncannily intuitive intellectual not averse to bouts of cocaine use, and the suave, globe-trotting spy with a license to kill. 2015 marked the release of Spectre, the 24th iteration of the most successful film franchise in cinema history. Likewise, Conan Doyle’s creation is in rude health, having been the recent subject of a high-profile exhibition at the Museum of London, and the centre of two successful contemporary television adaptations, BBC’s Sherlock, and CBS’s Elementary. Just as Baker Street remains a perennial tourist attraction for Sherlockians, so too has London’s tourist industry embraced an army of fans eager to retrace the footsteps of the latest — and controversially blond — Bond, Daniel Craig. This course investigates what on-screen adaptations of Sherlock Holmes and James Bond have to say about the construction of British masculinity. Providing close readings of key examples of Sherlock and Bond adaptations, we will explore issues of gender and sexuality, class, race, ethnicity and nationhood in the construction of hegemonic and “other” British masculinity on screen. In tandem, we will explore the ever-changing places that Sherlock and Bond occupy in British film and television culture.

This course may also be registered as FIL/QSX 416, and counts towards the Film and Screen Studies track for SU English and Textual Studies majors.

WGS400.1 Sex, Gender and the City (Spring) CANCELLED Fall 2026

This course offers students a critical overview of the contested terms “sex,” “gender” and “sexuality” through the framework of the City. This course will explore some of the ways in which cities and the inhabitants have been historically sexed, gendered, and sexualized. Traversing “the private” and “the public,” the temporal and spatial, and the individual and the social, this course will explore the centrality of these themes in London and British history.

Meets with SOC/QSX 400.1.

Limited enrollment; Sociology majors may take more than one  Sociology (SOC) course, all others limited to one SOC course (including SOC cross-listing) during the semester.

FMA316 Introduction to Visual Culture (Spring)

Visual culture studies recognize the predominance of visual forms of media, communication, and information in the postmodern world. Visual culture is best understood as a tactic for studying the functions of a world addressed through pictures, images, and visualizations, rather than through texts and words. We negotiate the world through visual culture, and the world itself is negotiated politically through visuality and visual images. This class is an introduction to the key issues of visual culture. It will examine the politics of images, the role that images play in producing cultural meaning, visuality and power relations, and how images are forms of visual communication. We will examine how images circulate through digital media, remakes, and viral networks, and the cross-fertilization of images between various social arenas, such as art, advertising, popular culture, news science, entertainment media, video games, and design.

Key questions and points of consideration are:

  • Can we study visual culture as a system, but not as a pure state of visuality—that is, a system of visual meanings that are not purely imagistic—not formed only of images—but include texts and graphic design, design of functional objects, architecture, logos?
  • Are social institutions systems of order that perpetuate, preserve, and legitimize complex forms of collective identity?
  • What is the role of the visual arts in a mass-mediated visual world?
  • Can visual culture studies be defined as an interdisciplinary field?

This course may also be registered as AIC 316 or CRS 316.

TRF560.1 The BBC: Reinventing Public Service Broadcasting (Spring)

Imagine that PBS in the United States had created American broadcasting… and that it was still the best funded national broadcaster and an institution whose values and standards continued to determine all other American broadcasters’ activities, whatever their funding model. The BBC laid the foundation for a tradition of Public Service Broadcasting in Britain with a mission ‘to inform, educate and entertain.’ Despite funding of nearly £3 billion per year from the government and licence fees, the BBC is facing the challenge of how to remain relevant in the face of satellite broadcasting and streaming.

This course will explore how the BBC…

  • Operates as the world’s largest news organization
  • Has pioneered entertainment programming from The Office to the soap opera EastEnders with a distinctive social agenda
  • Acts as a testbed for new styles of programming—mockumentary, reality TV, food programmes, etc.
  • Is the major sports broadcaster in the UK
  • Reflects the UK back to its audience through coverage of major national events such as Royal Weddings (most recently between Prince Harry and Meghan Markle) and the State Opening of Parliament
  • Responds to the challenge of diversity in front of the camera—for example, the first woman cast as Dr. Who

Enrollment priority to Newhouse and other communication majors.

This course has an associated course fee. See the London Course Fees page for more information.