The January Term Application for the academic year of 2019-20 closed on Sept. 20 and students from each year completed their J-Term course forms. This year the list boasted some exciting new additions. Among them is the addition of an Art, Design and Technology Core named “Sensory Ethnographic Methods in Kerala: Documenting Tradition, Documenting Change” taught by Professor Samuel Mark Anderson.

“This will be the first J-Term course I’m teaching, and because I do a lot of work with the Writing Program this course is really me trying to branch out,” Professor Anderson said of the course. “I do some work with film photography and interactive media combined with my own work in theater as well as collaborations with art installations. This work influences the course because I think it’s really interesting to explore different forms of expression and ethnographic methods of recording data.”

The course will be taught in Abu Dhabi with an international trip to Kerala, India for around 10 days. On his hopes for the course, Professor Anderson said, "I hope for students coming out of the course to be able to contextualize different ways of recording history and other communities and be open to the flexible and malleable ideas of truth.”

An additional exciting course that was added to the J-Term repertoire this year is another Core under Art, Design and Technology called “Plastic Fantastic” taught by Professor Felix Hardmood Beck.

“The course is very much inspired by my work at the Plastic Lab,” said Professor Beck. The Plastic Lab was an initiative started in December, 2018 by Professor Beck which aims to increase sustainable methods of recycling and disposing of plastic integrated with Engineering and Design.

“I’m not entirely sure what to expect from this as it’s my first time teaching the course, but it would be really nice for students to learn super practical life skills: what the individual could do to not use so much plastic or on the other side to also be able to see why plastic is an amazing material,” said Professor Beck. “Plastic is not bad, it’s amazing and it’s just the issue of misuse. So the understanding of that is what I hope for.” The course will include a trip to Manila, Philippines for seven to eight days.

Students also opened up regarding their previous experiences with J-Term courses. Scarlet Ng, Class of 2022, elaborated on her experience with the course “Migration and Displacement Across the Red Sea” which included an international trip to Djibouti.

“It was really eye-opening getting to go to the refugee camp, because it’s the only refugee camp for Yemeni refugees outside of Yemen,” said Ng. “Getting to interact with the refugees and seeing the conditions there was very illuminating. You don’t see a lot of news about the Yemeni conflict in the media, anyway, and war is something that’s very remote to a lot of us. So, hearing the stories of people who have personally been through it was a real experience.”

Another student, Wilson Hsu, Class of 2020, took the J-Term course “Who Are You: Israel,” which was taught in Washington D.C. On the course as a whole, Wilson said, “It was especially relevant considering NYUAD as a campus where there are many polarizing opinions regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict. In that sense, I think that it was especially pertinent and applicable to my understanding of on-campus relations.”