This course is recommended for all students in their first semester of enrollment in the Honors Program.  This is an introductory course that utilizes New York City as a basis for interdisciplinary study of politics, economics, transportation, demographics, science and technology, labor, culture and the arts specific to major events or time periods in the history of this remarkable metropolis.  The specific themes and eras studied vary each academic year. 

This course studies the careers of seven American presidents:  George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Ronald Reagan. 

Using the careers of these seven presidents, students will explore the processes of decision-making as they have pertained to significant events in U.S. history.  Students will be exposed to noted biographers such as David McCullough and Edmund Morris and will utilize both primary and secondary research sources as they learn to develop their own historical biographical writing skills. 

This interdisciplinary course uses the study of the Holocaust to investigate causes and lessons of other modern genocides and the human rights movements of the 20^th century.  Besides readings and films, students are offered lectures, and field visits to further develop their understanding of these events in world history.  Students have visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as the culminating event for this course.

This interdisciplinary advanced honors course challenges the student to understand the dynamic relationship of spatial organization and the built environment to politics, economics, cultures, demographics, technology and societies.  Students study the changing forms of the city over time and analyze the ways through which people have recreated urban life through time and across cultures.   Each year, the cities studied will vary, but will include three that developed under differing circumstances.