High School Courses

History and Social Science

The History curriculum is designed to foster excellence in reading, writing, class discussion and critical thinking, as well as to introduce students to the stories of various civilizations in different parts of the world. The required courses aim to expose students to the history of religions, political traditions, patterns of economic development, social and cultural trends, and numerous forms of artistic expression. The electives offer students the opportunity to pursue individual interests once they have mastered the fundamentals of history in 9th through 11th grade.  Course offerings highlight current events that relate to content.  Students are strongly encouraged to read the newspaper, view news programs, listen to podcasts, read magazines, visit local museums, and watch documentaries.

Dalton students are required to take three years of history. 

  • World History I

    Ninth-grade history marks the beginning of a three-year examination of world history in a global context. The overarching narrative of the course will take us from the late medieval period through the Early Modern period and will focus on several geographic locations and peoples.  Although some of the areas under study may seem dissimilar at first, common themes unify our investigation and afford us the opportunity to compare the histories and practices of a range of different cultural groups. We will do so through a number of analytical lenses. We will historicize the past with a yearlong introduction to the varieties of historical approaches by examining the religious, social, cultural, political, and intellectual aspects of each society under investigation. Overall, we help students develop historical skills such as analysis of documents and objects and images, construction of historical arguments, critical thinking and class discussion. To this end, both primary and secondary sources will be employed, and we expect students to prepare for class by reading and assessing the daily assignments. Students will also complete a research project that involves analyzing an object from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in its historical context. 
    The first semester will have us engaging in a close reading of two texts in order to orient our understanding of the early modern world. We will read Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali and Shakespeare’s The Tempest. A close reading of these texts will anchor our investigation of the historical contexts in which these works emerge and allow for a deep and expansive interpretation of the themes contained within them. Next, our focus will be on the relationship between state power and creative enterprise in Early Modern Asia, focusing on Mughal India, Ming China, and Tokugawa Japan.
    We return to Asia at the beginning of the second semester to consider the intellectual foundations of Chinese society, politics, and economics during the Qing dynasty. Grounding our initial discussion in the ideas of Confucius, we will examine an abiding tension between the rise of new ideas, methods, and regimes and a reliance on tradition, stability, and hierarchical order. This tension becomes particularly apparent when we turn to the history of Chinese science, leading us to pose the question of whether or not China experienced a “scientific revolution” or underwent a period of “enlightenment” similar to what occurred in Europe between the 15th and 18th century. To fully understand the history of intellectual transformations in these contexts, we need to consider the construction of narratives of the “Scientific Revolution” and “Enlightenment” as singular developments in history that occurred exclusively in the Western world. We will challenge this Eurocentric narrative, identifying connections and exchanges between Asia and the West that helped give rise to “modern” thought. We will also consider on their own terms the dramatic transformations in thinking about the natural, political, and social worlds that happened in Europe during this time.  Moving on from the intellectual foment of the Early Modern world and its various modes of enlightenment, we will finish the year with a consideration of how ideas were put to practice and reflected in revolutions in North America and Europe.

  • World History II

    Students in the tenth grade continue to investigate the making of the modern world through a rigorous examination of global developments in the nineteenth-century. A comparison and contrast of the Haitian and Latin American Revolutions serves as both our point of departure and as an extension of their ninth grade study of the French and American Revolutions. Here we analyze the flow of ideas, goods, and people across the Atlantic, thereby framing our year’s work in a global context. Subsequent Assignments extend this global approach to the ‘long’ nineteenth century through intellectual, social, cultural, political, and economic lenses. We explore industrialization, the advent of capitalism and responses from socialist and utopian movements, and the emergence and ultimate dominance of nationalism. Cycles of colonization, resistance, and independence in Africa, Asia, and South America provide an additional focus. 
    As a means of interrogating several of these themes while also building research skills, a term-long project prompts students to focus on a particular aspect (i.e. migration, infrastructure, colonial relations, popular culture, etc.) of a nineteenth century city, selected from a list of options from across the globe.  The end result will be an essay that utilizes secondary sources to demonstrate how themes we study in class--such as politics, economics, and social relationships, shaped life in a specific place in the long nineteenth century.  The project helps facilitate discussions about the way in which these lived realities, in all their manifestations, impacted the nineteenth-century world. The project unfolds in stages, with students generating a research proposal, preliminary bibliography, annotations, and a detailed outline; teacher guidance and feedback informs the development of the project at each stage.

  • Topics in World History III: The 20th Century

    Students in the eleventh grade continue their focus on the making of the modern world through a rigorous examination of twentieth-century history.  We begin with a detailed study of World War I in a global context, together with an in-depth look at the Russian Revolution and its immediate domestic and international impacts.  As both a precursor to and an outgrowth of these conflicts, we explore the rise of modernist and anti-rationalist strains of intellectual thought, with diverse figures including Sigmund Freud, the poet Wilfred Owens, and the female leaders of the Women’s Peace Party.  Subsequent Assignments will extend this global approach to the ‘long’ twentieth century through intellectual, social, cultural, political, and economic lenses. In our second Assignment, we will explore the interwar period, the Armenian genocide, the rise of anticolonialism in Africa, and the advent of communism in China.  Our third Assignment comprises an examination of the Great Depression in all its global dimensions. In the United States, we assess how the New Deal and the growth of the modern welfare state emerged as a response to economic crisis; in Russia, we examine Stalin’s Five-Year Plan and the collectivization of agriculture; and in Germany, we witness the rise of the Weimar Republic and the beginnings of Nazi expansionism. Our fourth unit comprises a detailed study of the Second World War, with attention to the military and domestic fronts of all major belligerents.  Here a capstone is a close reading of Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus, in which historical details about the Holocaust intersect with debates about historical identity and cultural memory. Later Assignments will examine the global reach of the Cold War, the independence and partition of India, African nationalism, the creation of the state of Israel, revolutions in Cuba and Latin America, Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution in China, the Iranian Revolution, and the struggle for racial equality and democracy in South Africa. Domestically, we will explore the rise of the movements for civil rights, women’s rights and gay rights as they gained visibility on the postwar landscape. 

    As a means of building research skills while interrogating the theme of forced and voluntary migration that pervaded this era, students will undertake a term-long project that analyzes the ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors that propelled a particular twentieth-century migration.  They will begin with a targeted search through one of several databases, which will produce a primary source—a photograph, a narrative, a memoir, a newspaper article—that will serve as inspiration for their project. Students will then compile an annotated bibliography of relevant scholarly sources, followed by an outline and rough draft.  Teacher guidance and feedback will inform the development of the project at each stage. The end result will be an essay that makes a historical argument shedding light on the question of how or why a particular group of people moved from one place to another during the twentieth century. In the process, students will further an ongoing scholarly conversation.  

    Full Year Course, 1.0 credit 

  • World History III: The 20th Century

    Students in the eleventh grade continue their focus on the making of the modern world through a rigorous examination of twentieth-century global history.  We begin with a detailed study of World War I in a transnational context, together with an in-depth look at the Russian Revolution and its immediate domestic and international impacts.  As both a precursor to and an outgrowth of these conflicts, we explore the rise of various strains of intellectual thought, with diverse figures including W.E.B. DuBois, the poet Wilfred Owen, and the female leaders of the Women’s Peace Party.  Subsequent Assignments extend this global approach to the ‘long’ twentieth century through intellectual, social, cultural, political, and economic lenses.  In our second Assignment, we explore the interwar period, the Armenian genocide, the rise of nationalism and anticolonialism in Africa and Asia, and the advent of communism in China.  Our third Assignment comprises an examination of the Great Depression in all its global dimensions.  In the United States, we assess how the New Deal and the growth of the modern welfare state emerged as a response to economic crisis; in Russia, we examine Stalin’s Five-Year Plan and the collectivization of agriculture; and in Germany, we witness the rise of the Weimar Republic and the beginnings of Nazi expansionism. Our fourth unit comprises a detailed study of the Second World War, with attention to the military and domestic fronts of all major belligerents.  In our study of the Holocaust we use a variety of scholarly primary and secondary sources, including several texts that focus on Jewish resistance and the particular role of Jewish women in challenging Nazism.  Later Assignments examine the global nature of the Cold War, the independence and partition of India, African nationalism, the creation of the state of Israel, revolutions in Cuba and Latin America, Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward and China’s Cultural Revolution, the Iranian Revolution, and the struggle for racial equality and democracy in South Africa.  Domestically, we will explore the rise of the movements for civil rights, women’s rights and gay rights as they gained visibility on the postwar landscape. 

    As a means of building research skills while interrogating the theme of forced and voluntary migration that pervaded this era, students undertake a term-long project that analyzes the ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors that propelled a particular twentieth-century migration.  They begin with a targeted search through one of several databases, which produces a primary source—a photograph, a narrative, a memoir, a newspaper article—that serves as inspiration for their project.  Students then compile an annotated bibliography of relevant scholarly sources, followed by an outline and rough draft.  Teacher guidance and feedback informs the development of the project at each stage.  The end result is an essay that makes a historical argument shedding light on the question of how or why a particular group of people moved from one place to another during the twentieth century.  In the process, students’ work furthers an ongoing scholarly conversation. 

    Full Year Course, 1.0 credit    

  • Topics in World History III: Seeing the Century

    This section of eleventh-grade history continues to ask questions fundamental to historical inquiry: how do we access the past and how do we know what we know?  What constitutes proper historical evidence? With the expansion of communication technologies and the increased dissemination of popular culture over the twentieth century, we inherit a trove of new and old modalities for representing and interrogating the past.  By asking how cultural forms helped circulate ideas and generate awareness, we can gain insight into the historical consciousness of those living through historical events.

    Additionally, our focus will be on the popular means of representation, and our investigation will utilize images (both static and moving), exhibitions, memorials, music (ranging from opera to pop music), radio broadcasts and televised coverage, movies, and more along with customary primary and secondary source analysis.  For instance, what can we learn from the riotous response to the 1913 premiere of Igor Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring"? How do we understand Billie Holiday's rendition of "Strange Fruit" (1939) and its reception as popular responses to racist violence in America? As a televised event, how did the experience of "9/11" change popular perceptions of terrorism, Islam(ism), and United State's foreign policy?  How does Art Spiegelman's Maus inform and challenge narratives of the Holocaust? With these and other case studies in hand, we will be savvy to the various means of historical representation operating in the past but also the means informing our sense of what happened, why it happened, and the implications for historical development.

    The structure of the course will utilize a selection of historical episodes marked by a particular form of historical representation as a starting point. We will then contextualize this work in a search for analytical antecedents in an effort to understand historical development, and we will also consider the impact of these forms of historical representation on historical consciousness then and now.
     
    Full Year Course, 1.0 credit

  • Topics in World History III: Seeing the Century

    This section of eleventh-grade history continues to ask questions fundamental to historical inquiry: how do we access the past and how do we know what we know?  What constitutes proper historical evidence? With the expansion of communication technologies and the increased dissemination of popular culture over the twentieth century, we inherit a trove of new and old modalities for representing and interrogating the past.  By asking how cultural forms helped circulate ideas and generate awareness, we can gain insight into the historical consciousness of those living through historical events.

    Additionally, our focus will be on the popular means of representation, and our investigation will utilize images (both static and moving), exhibitions, memorials, music (ranging from opera to pop music), radio broadcasts and televised coverage, movies, and more along with customary primary and secondary source analysis.  For instance, what can we learn from the riotous response to the 1913 premiere of Igor Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring"? How do we understand Billie Holiday's rendition of "Strange Fruit" (1939) and its reception as popular responses to racist violence in America? As a televised event, how did the experience of "9/11" change popular perceptions of terrorism, Islam(ism), and United State's foreign policy?  How does Art Spiegelman's Maus inform and challenge narratives of the Holocaust? With these and other case studies in hand, we will be savvy to the various means of historical representation operating in the past but also the means informing our sense of what happened, why it happened, and the implications for historical development.

    The structure of the course will utilize a selection of historical episodes marked by a particular form of historical representation as a starting point. We will then contextualize this work in a search for analytical antecedents in an effort to understand historical development, and we will also consider the impact of these forms of historical representation on historical consciousness then and now.
     
    Full Year Course, 1.0 credit

  • Topics in World History III: Nature/Technology/Pow

    Students in the eleventh grade will focus on twentieth-century world history.  The foundational logic of this particular version of the course includes a definition of human ecology in which we explore the complex relationship between human beings and their natural, social, and built environments.  In this way, a solid evaluation and understanding of ecology and environmentalism relies on a keen perception of human behavior and the myriad relationships between the natural world and broader economic, political, social, and cultural forces.  An environmental and ecological assessment of world history is really a broad frame/ lens through which we examine human activity in a larger ecological setting: action unfolds in various contexts. All human activity has an ecological impact, and all human behavior has an ecological basis, and this idea will serve as our guiding logic as we explore the events and developments of the twentieth century into the twenty-first.

    Overall, we will conduct our investigation of the twentieth century through the lens of ecological and environmental impact.  We will reframe a consideration of the seismic events of the twentieth century (world wars, genocide, regional conflict, decolonization, etc.) through a careful analysis of the ecological and technological bases prompting, reflecting, urging, redirecting the episodes characteristic of the “Age of Extremes.”

    We will explore the role of land use, the struggle for energy, water rights and access, food shortages, deprivation, and the subsequent consequences of collectivization and rapid industrialization. Many of the environmental issues of the day have a direct antecedent in the events of the early to mid twentieth century (and often earlier), and attention to ecological developments will provide the overarching narrative for our investigation.

    Full Year Course, 1.0 credit

  • Topics in World History III: Nature/Technology/Power

    Students in the eleventh grade will focus on twentieth-century (and twenty-first century) world history.  The foundational logic of this particular version of the course includes a definition of human ecology in which we explore the complex relationship between human beings and their natural, social, and built environments.  In this way, a solid evaluation and understanding of ecology and environmentalism relies on a keen perception of human behavior and the myriad relationships between the natural world and broader economic, political, social, and cultural forces.  An environmental and ecological assessment of world history is really a broad frame/ lens through which we examine human activity in a larger ecological setting: action unfolds in various contexts.   All human activity has an ecological impact, and all human behavior has an ecological basis, and this idea will serve as our guiding logic as we explore the events and developments of the twentieth century into the twenty-first. 

    Overall, we will conduct our investigation of the twentieth century through the lens of ecological and environmental impact.  We will reframe a consideration of the seismic events of the twentieth century (world wars, genocide, regional conflict, decolonization, etc.) through a careful analysis of the ecological and technological bases prompting, reflecting, urging, redirecting the episodes characteristic of the “Age of Extremes.” We will explore the role of land use, the struggle for energy, water rights and access, food shortages, deprivation, and the subsequent consequences of collectivization and rapid industrialization. Many of the environmental issues of the day have a direct antecedent in the events of the early to mid twentieth century (and often earlier), and attention to ecological developments will provide the overarching narrative for our investigation.  

    Full Year Course, 1.0 credit

  • Topics in World History III: The West and the Rest

    In this course, students will focus on the intellectual history of the 20th Century. ​We will challenge the traditional view of intellectual history as a debate over the interpretation of a limited number of texts produced by a small group of prominent scholars from the cultural centers of Europe. We will instead trace the ideas that make up the modern world-historical intellectual landscape and explore their power to bend and shape society and the individual. Rather than limit our scope to historians, we will branch out and explore some intellectual biographies as well as readings in philosophy, anthropology, political theory, and literary criticism. 
    We will hold Western and non-Western thinkers in conversation, paying special attention to how world-historical events shaped their thought and praxis. How did they make sense of the unparalleled optimism regarding the moral, social and scientific progress of humanity that marked the beginning of the century? How did they respond to and attempt to make sense of the barbarism of modern warfare, colonialism, and fascism? How did they imagine a way out of totalitarianism and the assured mutual destruction of the Cold War? How did different ideas about the individual, the nation, race, gender, sovereignty, truth, and freedom, develop in response to the historical circumstances in which they were forged? 


  • World History III: "The West and the Rest"

    In this course, students will focus on the intellectual history of the 20th Century. ​We will challenge the traditional view of intellectual history as a debate over the interpretation of a limited number of texts produced by a small group of prominent scholars from the cultural centers of Europe. We will instead trace the ideas that make up the modern world-historical intellectual landscape and explore their power to bend and shape society and the individual. Rather than limit our scope to historians, we will branch out and explore some intellectual biographies as well as readings in philosophy, anthropology, political theory, and literary criticism. 
    We will hold Western and non-Western thinkers in conversation, paying special attention to how world-historical events shaped their thought and praxis. How did they make sense of the unparalleled optimism regarding the moral, social and scientific progress of humanity that marked the beginning of the century? How did they respond to and attempt to make sense of the barbarism of modern warfare, colonialism, and fascism? How did they imagine a way out of totalitarianism and the assured mutual destruction of the Cold War? How did different ideas about the individual, the nation, race, gender, sovereignty, truth, and freedom, develop in response to the historical circumstances in which they were forged? 


  • The Black Radical Tradition

    This course will introduce students to some of the major ideas, events, and thinkers in the history of black radicalism. Scholar-activist Angela Davis once said that “[r]adical simply means ‘grasping things at the root.’” In this course, we will have to ask: What does it mean for black people to be “radical?” Does our response change with space and time? Students will, among other things, learn about maroon societies in early colonial America, female investigative journalists exposing the horrors of post-Reconstruction, the cultural and artistic renaissance of the interwar period, and will be introduced to various narratives and theorists from the post-WWII period. We will then look at the Afrofuturism of the late-20th century,  as artists sought to reimagine a future filled with arts, science, and technology seen through a black diasporic lens.
     
    We will explore questions of nation, identity, language, and the cultural and political meaning of diaspora in various movements. We will rely on cultural, political, and intellectual history to examine the efforts of black people who have sought not merely reform but a fundamental restructuring of political, economic, and social relations. The following questions will provide a conceptual framework for the course: In moments of struggle and resistance what meanings can be found in cultural forms and expressions? Are the oppressed suffocated and silenced by the violence of history and hegemony or is another language, poetics, community, and politics possible? What is the role of the artist in the Black Radical Tradition? Throughout the semester, we will be in conversation with theorists, artists, and poets, such as Douglass, Wells, Césaire, Fanon, Achebe, Baldwin, Wa Thiong’o, Lorde, hooks, Rankine, regarding the culture, aesthetics, and politics of the Black Radical Tradition.

    Fall Semester Course, 0.50 credits

  • Caste, Communism, and K-Pop: The Making of Modern Asian Identities

    How do people with traditions extending back several millennia modernize themselves, especially when faced with the dilemma to either take action or perish? How have Asians attempted to define modernity for themselves? What does this look and feel like? How are issues of caste, class, ethnicity, gender, kinship, race, religion and sexuality experienced in China, India, Japan, Korea and across Southeast Asia? And, how is this both similar to and different from how we engage with these facets of identity as New Yorkers, Americans, and people who reside in the West?
     
    This course will begin with a consideration of how Asians experienced the Pacific War and subsequently explore case studies in Asian history from the mid-20th century to the present day, paying close attention to diverse Asian efforts to modernize. Through assigned readings and student-taught lessons, course participants will examine in depth the economic, political, and socio-cultural consequences of Asia’s physical and human geography. Students will also have opportunities to reflect on how contemporary Asian aesthetics (film, literature, art and other forms of creative expression) reflect local negotiations with an image of modernity once exclusively rendered by the Euro-Atlantic world and now shifting towards more globalized conceptions. Ultimately, students in this course will grapple with what it means to be modern in 21st century Asia.


  • Colonial America & the American Revolution

    The sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries gave rise to the phenomenon historians call the Atlantic World--a cross-cultural space for exchange of goods, people, and ideas.  In one part of that world, a hybrid culture took root in the English-speaking colonies of North America, spurred on by the imperial ambitions of Western powers. Free and bonded immigrants from Europe and Africa shaped this culture; so too did the Native Americans whose residence in North America long predated the newcomers’ arrival. This course will examine the development of colonial America within this Atlantic context.  Topics will include Native American folkways, the establishment of British settlements in the Chesapeake and New England, indentured servitude, the growth of commerce, daily life for slaves and free people, religious revival, and colonial governance. In our final Assignment, we will analyze the American Revolution. We will ask to what extent the Revolution wrought fundamental changes in American society; we will also ask how it was shaped by events throughout the Atlantic sphere.  In all, the course will equip us to better understand the diverse cultural, economic, and political circumstances from which the United States emerged, and to situate the narrative of North American history within a global framework. Together with selected secondary works, a rich variety of primary sources--including European explorers’ travelogues, writings by former slaves, diaries of New England women, and political pamphlets--will guide our inquiry.

    Fall Semester Course, 0.50 credits

  • Macroeconomics: Chasing Growth

    Will China overtake the US as the leading consumer of the world? Why is Maduro’s once rich Venezuelan economy failing? Will growing nationalism undo the benefits of free trade? How pervasive (and dangerous) is income inequality? Globalization has turned our macroeconomic model upside down in recent years, making the study of macroeconomics no longer nation specific but instead the study of a deeply interconnected world economy, in constant flux.  In this course, students will be introduced to the basics of macroeconomics, exploring the scale and structure of individual economies, and the dynamics of growth. We will consider specific topics including population and migration, human capital, health care and education, and the global cost of climate change, as well as the role of political institutions in economic development. Exploring case studies based on current events, we will deepen our understanding of these fundamentals in a 21st century context.
     
    Students will meet in class, and participate in regular on line work, including discussions, quizzes and case work, as well as individual labs.  This course can be taken in series with Microeconomics, or independently, and is available to juniors and seniors.

    Fall Semester Course, 0.50 credits

  • Conservatism in the United States

    We are at an opportune moment to interrogate the history of American conservatism.  While helming the major political party most closely aligned with the movement, former President Donald J. Trump has often had his conservative bona fides called into question.  The implication of this critique is that he does not reliably adhere to a core doctrine that reflects the “mainstream” of a particular tradition. But what tradition is that, exactly? Is there indeed a conservative mainstream? If so, does it have a discernible historical lineage? We will pursue these questions by analyzing selected periods in American political history at which certain groups have articulated a rhetoric of tradition, or adherence to precedent, in conscious juxtaposition with a rhetoric of progress or change.  Building from this historical examination, the course will culminate in a sustained analysis of modern American conservatism. Here we will probe the ongoing tension within the conservative movement between nationalist isolationism and interventionism in foreign policy; between free-market libertarianism and government support of the financial services industry; between a small-government philosophy and support for robust national defense; between a domestically oriented view of women and the embrace of women’s activism on the cultural right; and, in law, between originalism and textualism. Through this investigation, students will gain an awareness of the complexity and nuance of American conservatism as a historical and political force. 


  • Fashioning Ourselves: Why We Wear What We Wear

    In the film adaptation of Lauren Weisberger’s novel The Devil Wears Prada, fashion magazine editor Miranda Priestly patronizingly tells her assistant:

    “You go to your closet and you select…that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you’re trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back…However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs, and so it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you’re wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room.”
    This begs the question of how much choice or free will we really have when deciding, possibly even agonizing over, what to wear every day. What are some of the larger social, political, and economic forces at work that shape how we fashion ourselves? 
    This course will examine scholarship on “dress” and fashion across a wide range of contexts. We will consider the imposition of “codes” of dress by governments and institutions throughout history as well as ways in which individuals and groups have used dress to voice support for and opposition to certain values. Course themes include, but are not limited to: the symbolic nature of dress in various political, religious, and sociocultural contexts; social media and the business and promotion of fashion in the digital age; issues of labor, intellectual property, and environmental sustainability in the global fashion industry; and the use of fashion to transcend the realities of everyday life.

  • Drugs and Disease in the Modern World

    What role did pharmaceutical drugs play in the shaping of the world that we currently inhabit?  When and where did the key developments in drug therapy take place and how did these therapies relate to evolving understandings and definitions of disease?   In what ways has the relationship between the drug industry, the state, and the university changed over time? To what extent were and are drugs and the diseases they are designed to treat embedded in the broader society and culture?  What is the relationship between Western drug therapies and the global South?

    This course examines the history of pharmaceutical drugs and related medical technology in global perspective from the late nineteenth century to the present.  Important biomedical advances in drug therapy—such as vaccines, vitamins, antibiotics, steroids, and antiretrovirals—will be considered in relation to changes in the medical profession, the rise of the pharmaceutical industry, and an ongoing tension between drug marketing and state regulation. We will also consider the ways in which Western medicine relates to other medical and healing traditions.  Public reaction to and expectations about scientific discovery, intellectual property and global health, and the relationship between illicit and licit drugs will also serve as unifying themes for the course.
    Spring Semester Course, 0.50 credits

  • Microeconomics: A Close Look at Buyers and Sellers

    Must robots replace human workers in every industry?  Will Amazon completely redefine the retail store?  How will corporations respond to climate change, the ultimate negative externality, to work with the public sector toward the common good?  Microeconomics is the study of production and consumption, of how, as the Greek base word “oikonomos” suggests, we “manage our households.”  In this course students will be introduced to the basics of supply and demand, price elasticity, surplus and scarcity, opportunity costs, perfect competition and monopoly, and the continuing public private debate about market efficiency.  Through case studies based on current issues, we will deepen our understanding of market fundamentals in a 21st century context.
     
    Students will meet in class, and participate in regular on line work, including discussions, quizzes and case work, as well as individual labs. This course can be taken in series with Macroeconomics, or independently, and is available to juniors and seniors.

    Spring Semester Course, 0.50 credits

  • Peace, Perception, Power: An Introduction to International Relations

    We live in an era of globalization; as individuals and as a nation, we are more aware than ever of the broader world, but also, the issues that the international community confronts and must contend with daily. From wars to epidemics, terrorism to human rights, nations have to respond to these issues by balancing the needs of their own citizens with the demands or conflicting desires of other nations. 

    In this class, students will explore the fundamental theories of international relations and analyze components of the international system: state and non-state actors, NGOs, and intergovernmental organizations such as the United Nations. The first part of the course uses historical events of the previous century to understand the variety of past approaches to global issues. Students then move into an examination of 21st-century case studies that encapsulate current challenges and allow students to assess the policies, structures and strategies used to respond to a complex world of conflicting ideologies and goals.

    Spring Semester Course, 0.50 credits

  • Art and Revolution in Latin America

    The twentieth century saw the rise of revolutionary and counter-revolutionary movements across Latin America and the Caribbean, forever changing how citizens of the region engaged in civil life and imagined their place in the world.  In this seminar, we will examine how revolutionary art and propaganda helped to unite these mass social movements. We will use music, visual culture, material culture, and film to trace how the meaning and memory of revolutions have changed over the course of the 20th century.  This class will address a range of revolutionary moments, from major government overthrows in Mexico and Cuba, to the radical student movements and underground insurgencies of the 1960s and 1970s. We’ll also discuss how artists resisted dictatorships that sought to censor creative expression and suppress hard-won democratic traditions.  Throughout the semester, we will seek to define what makes social movements revolutionary by discussing how they began and developed over time, why people joined or resisted their call to action, and how we as historians can assess their lasting impact. We will pay particular attention to how Latin Americans drew on international movements for anti-racism, gender, and class equality to articulate new visions of freedom.

    Spring Semester Course, 0.50 credits, Tuesdays 6:30-8:30PM

  • World Religions

    A recent poll estimates that there are 5.8 billion religiously affiliated adults and children internationally, representing 84% of the world’s population.  Examined historically, it is then fair to say that the vast majority of the global population has historically identified as a practitioner of a religion given the ubiquity of religious belief across centuries of human experience.  The focus of this course is to examine what it means to be religious in the past and present. What are the dimensions of a religious identity, what is the structure of organized religion, and what is the overall form and function of religion both historically and in contemporary life.  How do we reconcile religious belief and modernity and attendant secularization? Rather than attempting a strict chronological development of major world religions (and some less popular ones), we will examine the ideas of “authentic” and “traditional” forms of worship and affiliation in the present era, and we will do this by examining the core beliefs of religious systems and their contemporary interpretations and iterations.  Religions may appear immutable (supported by complex ritual forms, social bonds, and dogma), but religious beliefs and identities are often in flux and changing over time. This reality will complicate the search for purity of religious experience and expression and we will witness how this search becomes one potent means of differentiation in contemporary religious life.

    This course will maintain a careful balance between central and original religious tenets and evolving practices and interpretations, the transformation of ideal religious forms of worship and celebration and expression (including rituals, arts, and artifacts), and the ways in which religious beliefs and expectations shape human behavior.  To better serve this last point, we will also examine how human behavior shapes religious belief and practice.

    Full Year Course, 1.0 credit

  • Thinking Globally, Acting Locally

    This course is designed to support greater local, national and global understanding and citizenship, while fostering a deep appreciation for the cultures of the world, to challenge students to critically think about the world's most pressing global issues, and to help students understand how their lives in New York fit into a larger global context.

    We begin this course with personal reflection coupled with an historical examination of globalization, definitions of citizenship, volunteering, community service and the way in which they inform service learning. Using the United Nations Millennium and Sustainable Development Goals as a means to guide our attempts to understand local and global issues and subsequent service opportunities. This course, places an emphasis on social action, and with that being able to understand the institutional roots of social, economic, environmental and political problems in the world today.

    Aligned with Dalton's mission of promoting global citizenship, this course seeks to promote student participation in service learning organizations/projects that are located in New York City, but have a global reach via the UN Sustainable Development Goals.  Students will partner with an organization and develop a service-learning project. This experiential learning that engages students in service within the community is an integrated aspect of this course.

    Full Year Course, 1.0 credit

  • Modern Ethics Since The Death of God

    This course explores how modern philosophers have thought about ethics in the context of what Nietzsche called “the death of God.”  The course poses these questions:  as religious faith became a private matter, how were people to reach a public consensus on issues of right and wrong?  In the absence of a religious foundation, how could people even conceive of right and wrong?  In the absence of a divine authority, can right and wrong be anything more than personal opinion and social convention?  We will consider the basic ideas of modern philosophers who have concerned themselves with these questions.  We will consider key arguments made by David Hume, G. E. Moore, and Alisdair MacIntyre in the Fall semester, and then look at the ethics of Immanuel Kant, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Richard Rorty in the Spring.  Students will concentrate on learning how to read these difficult texts, which means learning how to be precise with language and how to test that language against concrete examples, as well as on the substantive questions raised.

    Open to 11th and 12th graders
    This class will meet primarily online each Thursday evening 6:30-8:30; one evening each month the class and labs will meet in person (also in the evening on Thursday).
    Full Year Course, 1.0 credit

  • 9/11 In a Global Context

    The tragedy of September 11, 2001changed the world in profound ways. In this course, students explore the causes of 9/11, the events of the day itself, and its aftermath locally, nationally, and around the world. In place of a standard chronological framework, students instead view these events through a series of separate lenses. Each lens represents a different way to view the attacks and allows students to understand 9/11 as an event with complex and interrelated causes and outcomes. Using a variety of technologies and activities, students work individually and with peers to evaluate each lens. Students then analyze the post-9/11 period and explore how this event affected the U.S., the Middle East, and the wider world.

    This course is offered through our partnership with Global Online Academy (GOA).
    Spring Semester Course, 0.50 credits

    Requires Preapproval

  • Entrepreneurship In a Global Context

    How does an entrepreneur think? What skills must entrepreneurs possess to remain competitive and relevant? What are some of the strategies that entrepreneurs apply to solve problems? In this experiential course, students develop an understanding of entrepreneurship in today’s global market; employ innovation, design, and creative solutions for building a viable business model; and learn to develop, refine, and pitch a new startup. Units of study include Business Model Canvas, Customer Development vs. Design Thinking, Value Proposition, Customer Segments, Iterations & Pivots, Brand Strategy & Channels, and Funding Sources. Students use the Business Model Canvas as a roadmap to building and developing their own team startup, a process that requires hypothesis testing, customer research conducted in hometown markets, product design, product iterations, and entrepreneur interviews. An online startup pitch by the student team to an entrepreneurial advisory committee is the culminating assessment. Additional student work includes research, journaling, interviews, peer collaboration, and a case study involving real-world consulting work for a current business.

    This course is offered through our partnership with Global Online Academy (GOA).
    Spring Semester Course, 0.50 credits

    Requires Preapproval

  • Genocide and Human Rights

    Students in this course study several of the major 20th century genocides (Armenian, the Holocaust, Cambodian, and Rwandan), analyze the role of the international community in responding to and preventing further genocide (with particular attention to the Nuremberg tribunals), and examine current human rights crises around the world. Students read primary and secondary sources, participate in both synchronous and asynchronous discussions with classmates, write brief papers, read short novels, watch documentaries, and develop a human rights report card website about a nation of their choice.

    This course is offered through our partnership with Global Online Academy (GOA).
    Spring Semester Course, 0.50 credits

    Requires Preapproval

  • (Dis)Order in the Courts: Gender & American Legal History from the Early Republic to the Present Day

    How has the American legal system shaped gender relations? How has the deeply gendered nature of American society crafted its laws? Initial legal histories viewed the law as a “male domain” of judicial decisions and statutory legislation that mirrored social phenomena. Interrogating it constituted a useful means of assessing the interests of the white male elites dominating society. The course will explore the shift in legal historical scholarship after the “cultural turn” of the 1990s, when historians ceased to see “law” and “culture” as entirely distinct realms, the former reflecting the latter. “Law” and “society” were now perceived as highly integrated, mutually-constitutive domains. Historians expanded the “law” to include all of the drama and intrigue of courtroom trials, and they explored a past that was uncertain and conflicted. Legal results rooted in history were by no means foregone conclusions that would automatically match the concerns of white male elites. Rather, newspaper editors, lawyers, plaintiffs, defendants, witnesses, judges and legislators - white and non-white, male, female and gender non-conforming - all constituted autonomous legal actors, making key choices and decisions as they attempted to negotiate for themselves a version of the law that favored their varying interests, and enshrining in law certain gendered expectations in the process. 

    This elective will explore the broader relationship between American law and gender relations by examining numerous judicial opinions as well as an array of scholarly articles and excerpts from books. We will scrutinize how the American legal system has fashioned gender relations for all people through regulation of such issues as marriage, divorce, work, reproduction, gender identity, sexuality, and the family. We will explore how these themes fragmented along lines of race, class, nationality, and religion. Additionally, we shall consider how the history of gender and the law informs our comprehension of contemporary power structures. The final assessment will constitute a collaborative project, requiring students working in pairs to create a video that analyzes an American legal decision, demonstrating how it reflected and molded gender relations, and connecting it to current-day issues with which our society wrestles.
     
    Fall Semester Course, 0.50 credits

  • A Study of Color: History / Theory / Meaning

    Consider the many, many ways in which you interact with colors on a daily basis and receive or send information via these colors.  In other words, why are some colors associated with certain qualities, and how and why do those qualities take on cultural meaning as a result of their associations with color.  Color can be used to rank, to discriminate, to promote, to startle, to grab attention.  This course, after an initial grounding in the study of the physical reality of color and seeing, will examine a variety of theories, examples, and a series of case studies in which we will witness the ways in which color is perceived and understood as a complex system of signification.  We will concurrently examine how the availability and use of color speaks to complex historical forces and acts of human agency.  History, science, and culture will intersect. What is color?  What does it mean to experience color? An answer to that question requires a transdisciplinary approach involving cultural and social history, the sciences, art history and theory, psychology, philosophy, a study of symbolism and linguistics, and any other interpretive approach that helps to make sense of the meanings associated with color historically and in our contemporary world.  How have colors come to take on the meaning(s) they have? Do colors contain inherent features meriting a certain psychological and emotional response or are these associations cultural by-products and social constructions?  For instance, why did the desire for the color indigo enable a vast system of global commerce, enslavement, and imperialism?  In addition, have colors been gendered?  How, when, and why? One last thing.  Consider the following. The Pantone Color of the Year 2022 is “Pantone 17-3938 Very Peri” characterized (by Pantone) as a “New Pantone Color Whose Courageous Presence Encourages Personal Inventiveness and Creativity.” If you would like to make sense of this statement, this course might be for you.  No prerequisites. Millennial pink clothing is not required.

    Spring Semester Course, 0.50 credits

  • Acting Locally

    Picking up where the fall semester of Thinking Globally left off, students will have the opportunity to  partner with an organization and develop a service-learning project. This experiential learning that engages students in service within the community is an integrated aspect of the spring semester. Students will also have the opportunity to engage in larger conversations with change makers around the country and  the world.

    Aligned with Dalton's mission of promoting global citizenship, this course seeks to promote student participation in service learning organizations/projects that are located in New York City, but have a global reach via the UN Sustainable Development Goals.  

    “Thinking Globally” (Fall Elective) is a prerequisite for this semester

    Spring Semester Course, 0.50 credits

  • American Jewish History

    From the 1654 origins of their arrival in New Amsterdam until today, generations of Jews from around the world have decided to call America their home. Whether fleeing persecution or seeking economic mobility, these Jews believed that their futures would be best served by uprooting themselves from their lands of origin and reestablishing themselves in a novel, promising place. Jewish newcomers to America sought to integrate into their surroundings while simultaneously leaving imprints of their religious and cultural values and traditions upon the broader American political, economic, and social landscapes. These moments of interconnectedness are at the heart of this course, which will explore the American Jewish experience from its inception in the early modern period through the incredibly rich and diverse tapestry of Jewish communal life that is expressed in our contemporary age. We will regularly contextualize the American Jewish historical experience within broader movements affecting non-Jewish minorities in the United States while also considering the lived experience of Jews living elsewhere during the same period.

    Spring Semester Course, 0.50 credits

  • Economics and Development: The Elusive Quest for Growth

    This full year course will introduce students to key concepts in macroeconomics and microeconomics (GDP and the measurement of national income, inflation and deflation, the monetary system, supply and demand, price elasticity, surplus and scarcity, opportunity costs, perfect competition and monopoly). Armed with these tools of analysis, we will then turn to the problems of development. Through macro and micro case studies, we will look closely at how economic growth is achieved or not, at the international, national and local levels. We will consider specific topics including poverty and income inequality, population and migration, human capital, health care and education, agriculture, industrialization and the environment, as well as the role of political institutions in economic development. At the global level, we will explore trade theory and policy, foreign aid and investment, and debt issues. Throughout, we will address the fast-expanding impacts, both positive and negative, of globalization.

    Students will meet twice a week in class, have regularly scheduled individual labs, and participate in online work (skype, blogging, social book work) on a weekly basis. Students will participate in a practicum project to develop a Dalton Fair Trade Store, working with potential international entrepreneurs.

    Class meets two days a week at Dalton, and two days a week online
    Full Year Course, 1.0 credit (Open to 11th and 12th graders) M. Tewell

  • Election Seminar 2018

    Five years ago, an unbeatable headline appeared on a polling firm’s website: “Congress Less Popular Than Cockroaches, Traffic Jams.”  Congressional hyper-partisanship and gridlock has emboldened this pervasive jadedness about our federal government’s ability to do its work effectively.  In cyclical fashion, popular frustration with government has manifested itself in recent election cycles.  The 2016 federal election returns saw a resurgence of populism at both ends of America’s political spectrum, embodied by the rise of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, two idiosyncratic conduits of economic, cultural, and political grievance.  To put it another way: it is now in fashion to nominate--and, often, elect--candidates who loudly proclaim their distaste for our electoral system.  To what extent will the trend continue in the 2018 congressional midterm elections?  To what extent will the Democratic party be able to make gains in House elections?  To what extent will a large handful of Democratic Senate incumbents in so-called purple states be able to defend their seats?  This course will provide interested students with an opportunity to discuss and debate these and other questions pertaining to the upcoming November elections.  Through discussion, students will consolidate their understanding of the constitutional provisions that govern the election of United States Senators and Representatives.  Topics will include the modern American political campaign and its historical antecedents; the primary system; the roles of polling and advertising; and party ideology.  We will also evaluate debates about incumbency, term limits, the role of populism as a cultural and political force, and the national campaign finance structure.  A common reading will prompt our weekly discussions. 
    Students who took the 2016 Election Seminar are welcome to register; course content will vary entirely from the 2016 seminar.

    Fall Semester Course, 0.25 credits
     

  • Election Seminar 2020

    It’s cliché to say that ‘it’s never been more important than now to be politically aware,’ but this time it is no cliché.  The United States is in the midst of a public health emergency of the sort that few of us have ever lived through. This emergency has been shaped by, and continues to shape, the contours of American political life—including the operations of our state, local, and national governments.  Our upcoming elections are no longer solely about the candidates and issues themselves. They are now referenda on the fundamental purpose and character of government. Even the basic question of how to safely conduct elections is now in question. 

    To begin grappling with these questions, Election Seminar 2020 will offer interested students an overview of the federal, state, and municipal elections process.  Students will each track an issue of choice, and report periodically to the group via research in credible news sources. The historical and political knowledge the class gleans will culminate by asking, “How can I use my growing awareness of the political process to help my community in a meaningful way?”  Toward that end, students in the class will work in teams to curate activities and assemblies for the broader Dalton community as the election cycle unfolds. Students will also research alternate methods of election in Western democracies, as the course seeks to foster creative thinking about political change on both the local and national level.  Several guest speakers will lend their expertise about the political process to the class.

    As in past years, the class will be open to interested students from all four high school grades. 

    Fall Semester Course, 0.25 credits

  • Election Seminar 2022

    It has never been more imperative to gain an understanding of the political processes that define our nation.  The last two years have witnessed a fractured national government attempting to craft workable policy in the face of an emergent and fluid public health crisis.  In some ways, the results have highlighted latent fissures in American society.  At times these fissures have threatened to become chasms, with a climate of misinformation and partial truth obscuring the mechanisms of pluralist democracy.  The high watermark of this disinformation climate, at least thus far, has been the claim of a stolen election that fueled an insurrection at the Capitol on January 6 of last year.  We are still feeling the ripple effects of that seismic event.  At the same time, if our democracy is shaken, it has also proven resilient.  Even a campaign of denial was insufficient to sway local officials in positions of authority into changing election certifications.  For that matter, anyone who had ever doubted that their voice can be heard at the local level has been proven wrong by the last two years.  Formerly sleepy town hall meetings have become staging grounds for pitched battles over essential questions about education, public health, the relationship of the state to the citizen.  In all its messiness, this is the stuff of democracy.  Such gatherings stand in sharp contrast to what we see in Eastern Europe, where a dictator shapes policy to his will, with disastrous effects for the people of Ukraine and deleterious effects for his own people.  No contentious town hall meetings are to be found in Russia, for the state has clamped down on public dissent.  With our words and deeds, we Americans continue to indicate our preference to live in a battered, rancorous republic than a land where civil liberties bend to the will and ego of one man. To begin grappling with these questions, Election Seminar 2022 will offer interested students an overview of the federal, state, and municipal elections process as it has existed until now.  Students will also track a candidate and an issue of choice, and report periodically to the group via research in credible news sources.  This ‘two-track’ approach—political science and political history on one plane, student interest and an evolving news cycle on a parallel plane—will accommodate a cross-section of students from all four high school grades.  The only prerequisite is an interest in learning more about civics and political affairs.  Students who have taken a previous version of Election Seminar are eligible to take the course, as the content will be entirely different.
    Open to all grades, priority given to upper class students
    Fall Semester Course, 0.25 credits

  • From Salons to Social Media: A History of the Public Sphere

    On January 8, 2021, two days after a mob stormed the Capitol, our former president was permanently suspended from Twitter for having made statements that “mobilized…different audiences, including to incite violence.” In this course, we will investigate the relationship between communication networks and political authority by analyzing the historical emergence and current-day contours of the so-called public sphere. We shall ground our exploration in an examination of early modern Europe’s commercialization of culture and the formation of what German philosopher Jurgen Habermas has coined the public sphere. This site was a revolutionary forum - both physical and intellectual - in which previously isolated individuals came together to exchange information, ideas, and criticism, and alter political regimes in the process. 
     
    We will ask: For a public to effectively engage in productive debate, should its members have to possess certain qualities, as Habermas, romanticizing the eighteenth-century reasoned debate of white, bourgeois men in possession of property, education, and cultivation, believed? If so, who or what is expected to participate in the public sphere, what are the risks of participating, and how are the rules of participation set and changed? Has expanded political, economic and social democratization led to an explosion of competing interests, sensationalist propaganda and violent clashes rather than thoughtful political discussion, a fear that was articulated in the writings of nineteenth-century thinkers Alexis de Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill? Or, has the expansion of active participation of citizens in shared debate resulted in the tempering of political conflict by a sense of a common good? What is the socioeconomic, political and cultural power of the various publics that you belong to as animated, engaged players in an array of novel socio-technical cultures? How are these fora imagined, constrained and potent?
     
    Spring Semester Course, 0.50 credits

  • History Capstone Project

    Students who possess a demonstrable passion for critical inquiry and self-directed research are invited to apply for the Capstone experience in historical research and investigation.  Open to seniors in the fall semester of their culminating year, the Capstone Project represents an opportunity for students to utilize their existing skills in an effort to expand upon their research techniques and dispositions in pursuit of original historical research and project completion.  As an initial step, students will craft and propose a viable research project idea and a plan for realizing that project.  As part of the proposal, students will identify sources of information and document a plan for accessing these sources.  Initial research questions will frame the proposal as well and students will suggest a particular form for their completed project.  
     
    Students who participate in the program will meet  weekly to share research findings, troubleshoot problems, offer and receive feedback, and provide general insight into the research process.  In the main, students will work independently and meet frequently with their advisor as they pursue their research and will work to meet assignment benchmarks with the support of dedicated History faculty.  Students will also periodically share their research findings and progress in order to ensure steady and consistent effort and production.  
     
    In addition to completing the project, students will share their findings in a public exhibition.
     
    Requires Preapproval
    Open only to 12th graders by application process 
    Fall Semester Course, 0.50 credits

  • Inequality in America: The History and Theory of Social Class in the COVID-19 Era

    To what extent have class distinctions played a role in American politics, society, and culture? What were the key turning points in the history of the working, middle, and upper classes in the U.S.? What place have questions of inequality played in political discourse and what does the historical record tell us about actual inequality? How have American artists, musicians, and writers imagined class in ways that both challenged the status quo and perpetuated the myth of the “self-made man” or “self-made woman”? Why did socialism or social democracy never take root in the United States? What might we learn by comparing the U.S. to other countries, such as Britain and Russia, in this respect?

    In this elective we will explore the history of social class in the United States from colonial times to the present, paying careful attention to changes and continuities in how Americans have talked about, imagined, and embodied economic distinctions and inequalities of various kinds.  Some of the topics considered include the Whiskey Rebellion, 19th-century booms and busts, the Populists and Progressives, economic inequality and race, the Great Depression, the rise and fall of the New Deal order, and Reaganomics. We will use this historical grounding to help us navigate contemporary debates about social and cultural capital, the economic legacy of slavery, the Great Recession, and the “Second Gilded Age.”  We will also frame our discussions, especially those in the third and final assignment, in terms of the inequalities in income, wealth, and access to health care that have been exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
     
    Fall Semester Course, 0.50 credits

  • IS: History

    Independent studies are opportunities for 10th, 11th, and 12th grade students to pursue ideas and passions not covered by current course work.  

    Students must complete this form to apply for preapproval.

    Requires Preapproval
    Graded Pass/Fail
    Fall or Spring Semester Course, 0.25 credits

  • Knowledge, Mind, and Existence

    The German philosopher Immanuel Kant once claimed that philosophy could be boiled down to three questions: What can I know? What ought I to do? What may I hope? Kant also suggested, that these three questions could be further boiled down to a fourth: What is the human being? In this elective, we will examine a variety of attempts made by philosophers, both contemporary and historical, to grapple with these questions. We will explore  readings in the philosophy of religion, epistemology, philosophy of the mind, ethics, and existentialism. 
    Some of the questions we will consider include: What is the relationship between logos and mythos in different societies and to what extent has this changed over time? How do we know things about the world and what kinds of knowledge do we consider to be valuable? ? If everything in the world is determined by previous events, can we say that we ever act freely? If God is dead, is everything (or anything) permitted? Are humans and persons the same thing or does the status of personhood extend beyond homo sapiens? To what extent do we have access to the interior lives of others? Or put another way: Can you ever know definitively that your friend is not a zombie or mindless automaton?

  • Power and the People: A Social History of NYC

    How did New York get to be the city we know and love – or love to hate? This class will explore the Island of Manhattan and its environs from the 16th century to the present primarily through the lens of social history, which focuses on the lives of ordinary people. From the time members of the Lenape tribe viewed the profile of Giovanni da Verrazzano in 1524 to the Upper West Side’s reaction to Donald Trump’s election, we will focus on ways in which people living in NYC engaged with their environment, one another, and how they left their mark upon this urban landscape.
    Topics of study will include:                                             
    ·      Manahatta: Native American Life Pre-European Contact
    ·      Wigs, Not Whigs: Alexander Hamilton’s NYC
    ·      They Built This City: The Rise of the Metropolis
    ·      Landlords and Labor: Class, Work and Residency Patterns
    ·      Privilege and Protest: The 1960s
    ·      A Heaven or Hell: Writing about Life in the City
    ·      Kimchee, Kenkey, and Kreplach: Eating in Ethnic Enclaves
    Because we are fortunate enough to live in the city of our study, we will also incorporate an experiential element to our study through site visits to monuments, archives, museums, and other important cultural institutions.

    Spring Semester Course, 0.50 credits

  • Social Psychology

    Are we rational creatures?  How can we find happiness?  Why do we fall in love?  How do we rationalize undesirable actions?  Why do we risk our lives to help others?  How do orderly crowds turn into violent mobs?  Why do we like gossip?  These sorts of questions lie at the heart of Social Psychology, a social science which illuminates and clarifies the nature of human beings and their social world.  

    This course introduces students to the study of social thought and behavior.  Main topics include an overview of the field, the role of the mind in social life (e.g., obedience, self-perception), the nature of social interaction (e.g., attraction, social influence), and the application of psychology to social problems (e.g., justice, crowds, popular delusions).  The last two weeks of the course will include presentations and discussion of student-designed research projects on topics of their choice.
     
    Spring Semester Course, 0.50 credits (Open to 11th and 12th graders)
     

  • Soft Power/Hard Power: An Introduction to International Relations

    We live in an era of globalization; as individuals and as a nation, we are more aware than ever of the broader world, but also, the issues that the international community confronts and must contend with daily. From wars to epidemics, terrorism to human rights, nations have to respond to these issues by balancing the needs of their own citizens with the demands or conflicting desires of other nations.
    In this class, students will explore the fundamental theories of international relations and analyze components of the international system: state and non-state actors, NGOs, and intergovernmental organizations such as the United Nations. The first part of the course uses historical events of the previous century to understand the variety of past approaches to global issues. Students then move into an examination of 21st-century case studies that encapsulate current challenges and allow students to assess the policies, structures and strategies used to respond to a complex world of conflicting ideologies and goals.

  • Sports and Society

    Beyond spectacular World Cup finals, Super Bowl touchdowns and walk-off grand slams, sports remains a vital institution for analyzing the ideological and theoretical frameworks of nationalism, empire, morality, gender, and race. From the 1936 Berlin Olympics to the 2015 FIFA corruption scandal, sport can be used as a serious vehicle for conceptualizing and analyzing the triumphs and limitations of our society and its complicated histories.

    This course will explore the following questions: How did sports transition from amateurism to professionalism? How and why does American sports culture differ from the rest of the world? How did the fight for Title IX shape the gender equality debate? How do nation-states use sports as a political tool? How do sports serve as vehicles for cultural imperialism? Where are the intersections between football hooliganism, fascism, and gender performativity in Europe? How have sports been used throughout history as a platform for social justice? How is cultural meaning inscribed on the athletic body, and how do these inscriptions indicate various forms of sexual, gender, racial, and class identification and distinction?

    In addition to more traditional textbook-style readings, we will also examine excerpts from novels and memoirs, watch documentaries, and embark on a number of field trips.
     
    Spring Semester Course, 0.50 credits

  • Stage and Screen: Race, Gender, and Representation

    From Hamilton: An American Musical, to Wonder Woman, to Get Out, to Black Panther to A Wrinkle in Time, increasing discourse around issues of race and gender are reaching the mainstream. This course analyzes how film and theater have represented race, ethnicity, class and gender in contemporary society. Through readings, class discussion, film screenings and special projects, students gain insights into the ways that different groups of American people have been depicted in both mainstream and alternative media/entertainment. The course looks at the interaction of form and content on stage and screen, and how these are  used to create meaning.

    Spring Semester Course, 0.50 credits (Open to 11th and 12th graders)

  • The American Presidency

    In the last several years, questions about the nature of the American presidency–and the process by which the United States elects its Chief Executive–have taken on pressing importance. This course will equip students to fully understand the evolution of American executive power. Students will assess the evolution of the presidency through an interdisciplinary lens. As they examine the impact of individual presidents in shifting the dynamic between federal and state power and between the three branches of the federal government, they will also assess the role of the chief executive as domestic policy leader, military commander, and international spokesperson. A comparative approach will allow students to gauge the extent to which United States presidents and their decisions have shaped, and been shaped by, events throughout the world. Primary source material will include writings by American presidents, together with observations from their advisers, observers, and family members. Students will have the opportunity to extend their primary source exposure through research in manuscripts related to a presidency of their choosing. Secondary sources will encompass biographical material, investigative journalism, and documentary footage. Taken together, these sources will enable students to draw conclusions about the role of leadership in advancing sociopolitical change, and to evaluate the significance of the most recent administrations–including the presidencies of Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joseph R.Biden.


  • The American Revolution

    The vicissitudes of the past year and a half—including a devastating pandemic, the beginning of a national reckoning with racial inequity, and an election cycle culminating in a violent threat to democracy—have left many Americans wondering what long-term forces might have begat our current moment.  How did we get here?  This course will offer the beginning of an answer, by way of a detailed examination of the American Revolution within its global context.  Topics will include the growing rift with Great Britain, Loyalism and Patriotism, the drafting of the Declaration of Independence, persistence and change in the institution of American slavery, lived experience for free and enslaved Americans of color, the role of women in the Revolution, visual culture and artifacts, the progression of battle, and variance in Native American participation in the theaters of war.  The course will interrogate the ways in which global culture and geopolitics profoundly influenced the course of the Revolution, and in turn, influenced the way the United States developed.

    Students will closely read a number of core texts for context, content and significance.  Among those texts are Thomas Paine’s groundbreaking pamphlet Common Sense; the Declaration of Independence in its various incarnations; a Tory account of the Revolution written by the brother of the tax collector who had the unfortunate job of enforcing the Stamp Act in Boston; and petitions for freedom by enslaved men and women.  Secondary sources will include Pauline Maier’s groundbreaking study of revolutionary political documents, recent biographical sketches by historians including Gordon Wood and Jon Meacham, and essays collected together by historian Gary Nash in his seminal Race and Revolution.  Students will have the opportunity to undertake an original research project exploring some aspect of a particular topic in detail.  In pursuing both the shared readings and their independent research, students will assemble a snapshot of an era in which the fundamental terms and rhythms of life were changing utterly, with new precedents set each day.  In at least this respect, perhaps the Revolutionary era was not altogether different from our own.

    Fall Semester Course, 0.50 credits

  • The Early United States

    Regardless of partisan allegiance, one thing that appears to unite most Americans is a sense of how our national government ought to function.  Probe a little deeper, and you will find that most Americans tie their beliefs about how the government should work to an understanding of how it was intended to work.  This is where the divergence begins.  Even within the Republican coalition, we see radically different understandings of what the men in powdered wigs were thinking when they scribbled away in Philadelphia.  A Trump supporter will tell you one thing about how our republic was intended to function; what is sometimes called a mainstream conservative will give you another picture; and a self-proclaimed libertarian will provide a third vision.  The same thing is true of self-identified Democrats. Progressives lay out a particular view of American political development; so too do more moderate Democrats. Amidst such a variety of stories--each one emphasizing certain facts while glossing or eliminating others--it can be difficult to figure out what is really true about our early national polity.
    There is no better time, then, to investigate the origins of United States political culture for ourselves.  A sustained examination will help us discern fact from fiction. Topics will include the Articles of Confederation; the drafting and ratification of the 1787 Constitution; republican motherhood; the growth of political parties and participatory politics; the tension between Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian ideology; the growth of the abolition movement; the retrenchment of plantation slavery in the aftermath of the cotton boom; the early movement for women’s rights; the rise of an American working class; the War of 1812; Manifest Destiny and territorial expansion; Native American removal; the Second Great Awakening; Jacksonian democracy; and the second American party system.  A particular emphasis will be placed upon the development of an American jurisprudence through Supreme Court cases such as Marbury v. Madison, McCulloch v. Maryland, Dartmouth College v. Woodward, and Charles River Bridge v. Warren Bridge. As we study these events, we will gain insight about how and why Americans tell themselves differing stories about our national origins, as we see the politicization of the country’s revolutionary legacy unfold from the very beginning of its history.  

    Spring Semester Course, 0.50 credits (Open to 11th and 12th graders)

  • The Makings of Modern Antisemitism

    We commonly understand “antisemitism,” to mean prejudice or negative attributes assigned to Jewish people. This course interrogates both the term and its usage in places across the globe over the course of the 16th-21st centuries. Why have the Jews served as targets for a particular form of animosity? How did specific local or national contexts shape manifestations of these feelings, or actions, towards Jews? How did Jews in predominantly Christian or Muslim lands experience antisemitism in the Modern Era? To address these questions, we will explore a variety of case studies using visual and textual primary sources along with academic material from disciplines including history, religious studies, literature, and ethnography. There is a potential Spring 2021 DGI trip to Eastern and Central Europe being offered to explore the Jewish past and present with antisemitism being one of the main themes explored. Students in this Fall elective would not be expected to attend, but would be encouraged to do so.
     
    Fall Semester Course, 0.50 credits

  • The Modern Middle East

    One cannot hope to understand recent events in the Middle East without studying the social, religious, economic, and political history of the region.  To that end, this course journeys back in time—and then to the present—to offer a greater understanding of the history and present of the modern Middle East.  We will begin by questioning the usefulness and origin of the term “Middle East.”  This then raises questions about how the Middle East has been understood by the West over time and vice versa.  Then using Napoleon’s 1798 invasion of Egypt as a starting point, we will briefly survey the history of the region, highlighting major themes, such as imperialism, nationalism, constitutionalism, and Islamic orthodoxy.  The course will then shift to an in-depth investigation of two of the Middle East’s major questions and debates: the Iranian Revolution and the Arab-Israeli conflict.  We will conclude the course with the 2011 revolts in the Arab world and policy review papers on a major national security issue on a topic that affects a nation or population of each student’s choosing. 

    Fall Semester Course, 0.50 credits    

  • Thinking Globally

    The course begins with an examination of what it means to be a citizen-- locally, nationally and globally. It also challenges students to critically think about the world's most pressing global issues, and helps students understand how their lives in New York City fit into a larger global context.

    Key components of this  course include personal reflection coupled with an historical examination of globalization, definitions of leadership, volunteering, community service and the way in which they inform service learning. Using the United Nations Millennium and Sustainable Development Goals as a means to guide our attempts to understand local and global issues and subsequent service opportunities. This course places an emphasis on social action, and with that being able to understand the institutional roots of social, economic, environmental and political problems in the world today. Assignments will also be dynamic to take advantage and give attention to major world happenings.

    Fall Semester Course, 0.50 credits

  • You Are What You Eat: A Critical Investigation Into Food Production, Consumption, and Justice

    "A significant part of the pleasure of eating is in one's accurate consciousness of the lives and the world from which food comes."  
    —Wendell Berry

    This course is a fundamental reimagining of  “You Are What You Eat.” In its new form, this course, a full-year one, will continue to explore the historical, ecological, ethical, scientific/ biological, cultural, aesthetic, political and economic forces shaping what and how we eat.  We will continue to explore the convergence of the local and the global, the urban and the rural, and the past and the present, when it comes to the choices we make when we eat. We will highlight eating as a profound engagement with (or alienation from) the natural world indicated by our food consciousness and current practices of production and consumption.  However, the course will utilize project-based learning models in the Teaching Kitchen and will focus on research, communication, and collaboration toward the fulfillment of service-learning projects based on student interest. In the Teaching Kitchen, we will engage in formative activities, and as a result students will utilize a base of knowledge (fortified by engagement with key texts, discussion, and their native curiosity) as a means for applying their knowledge in innovative forms.  An emphasis on social action around environmental sustainability, food justice, and beyond will be a focus of our investigation, particularly in the form of individualized projects, as we consider the obligations of an informed and participatory citizenry.  

    Full Year Course, 1.0 credit

  • YOUTHQUAKE! Children in American History & Culture

    What has it meant to be “young” in American history? How has childhood been defined and who has wielded the power to determine its contours and who counts? How have individuals defined as “children” or “youths” countered prescriptive demands of their role in society? This class explores the emergence and continued characterization of childhood from the Colonial period through the present and seeks to understand how perceptions of childhood shaped American culture at various moments of time while also looking closely at how those defined and self-defined as children engaged with the social, economic, political, educational, and cultural movements of their time.
    To this end, we will examine topics including:
    ·      Teenage Angst? The Salem Witch Trials
    ·      To Be Or Not To Be: Did Slaves have a Childhood?
    ·      Fight For Your Rights: Youth in Labor Protest Movements
    ·      Material Girls? Fashion, Food and Fun
    ·      Boys Don’t Cry: Ideas of Toxic Masculinity
    As an additional case study, we will be looking at the history of Dalton and try to understand the context in which the school was founded and how students throughout the school’s history reflected broader trends and topics of their time.

    Fall Semester Course, 0.50 credits (Open to 11th and 12th graders)
     

Faculty

  • Photo of Jennifer Stolper Muenz
    Jennifer Stolper Muenz
    High School History Teacher and History Department Chair in Grades 9-12
    Harvard College - B.A.
    Teachers College, Columbia University - M.A.
  • Photo of David Davidson
    David Davidson
    High School History Teacher
    Yale University - B.A.
    Northwestern University - Ph.D.
  • Photo of Sarah Dunitz
    Sarah Dunitz
    HS History Teacher
    University of Cambridge - B.A.
    Columbia University - Ph.D.
  • Photo of Parul Kalbag
    Parul Kalbag
    High School History Teacher
    The George Washington University - B.A.
    SOAS, University of London - M.A.
    Teachers College, Columbia University - M.A.
  • Photo of Joy Ming King
    Joy Ming King
    High School History Teacher
    Wesleyan University - B.A.
    The University of Chicago - M.A.
  • Photo of Shira Kohn
    Shira Kohn
    History Teacher (HS)
    The Ohio State University - B.A.
    New York University - Ph.D.
  • Photo of Brendan Matz
    Brendan Matz
    History Teacher
    Bowdoin College - B.A.
    Yale - Ph.D.
  • Photo of Donald Okpalugo
    Donald Okpalugo
    History Teacher
    Pomona College - B.A.
    Columbia University Teachers College - M.A.
  • Photo of Kevin Slick
    Kevin Slick
    High School History Teacher
    Bard College - B.A.
    Binghamton University - M.A.
  • Photo of Mila Tewell
    Mila Tewell
    High School History Teacher
    Stanford University - B.A.
    University of Hong Kong - M.A.
    New York University - M.B.A.
(Grades K-3) 53 East 91st Street
New York, NY 10128
General: (212) 423-5200 | Admissions: (212) 423-5463
General: info@dalton.org | Admissions: fpadmissions@dalton.org

(Gr. 4 Dalton East & PE Center) 200 East 87th Street
New York, NY 10128
General: (212) 423-5200 | Admissions: (212) 423-5262
General: info@dalton.org | Admissions: admissionsmshs@dalton.org

(Grade 5-12) 108 East 89th Street
New York, NY 10128
General: (212) 423-5200 | Admissions: (212) 423-5262
General: info@dalton.org | Admissions: admissionsmshs@dalton.org