Current Student Profile: Jonathan Toubin Studies the History of Rap music in NYC
"Uptown Downtown: Rap Music in Lower Manhattan, 1980 - 1984," by MALS student Jonathan Toubin, will soon be published by the Institute for Studies in American Music in an anthology: "Critical Minded: New Approaches to Hip-Hop Studies." He expects to complete his M.A. this spring and will write a book–length expansion of the themes explored in his forthcoming essay.
Jonathan Toubin’s studies focus particularly on cultural aspects of American music and through the M.A. program in Liberal Studies, he has taken courses offered by the Graduate Center’s various doctoral and interdisciplinary programs. Some of these have included CUNY’s English, History, Music, and Anthropology departments. "I've always believed that subjects could and should be approached from a variety of perspectives," explains Jonathan who chose the MALS program at the CUNY Graduate Center precisely because of its distinctive and unique features. In addition to his soon-to-be-published article, Jonathan has also written on a number of related topics including Jewish blackface entertainment and hardcore political punk of the 1980s.
New York City’s vast resources offer a number of options for educational pursuit, but Jonathan Toubin chose the Graduate Center’s MALS Program because it provided opportunities for publication, interdisciplinary work, and experience in a rigorous academic and graduate level environment. He is looking forward to his future at the Graduate center and is currently in the process of applying to the Ph.D. program in History at the Graduate Center for Fall 2005, where he is particularly interested in the American Studies cncentration.
Bob Friedhoffer, Resident Magician
As Resident Magician for CUNY Graduate Center, Bob Friedhoffer is charged with communicating science to the public. In collaboration with Brian Schwartz, Vice President of Sponsored Research, Bob develops and presents programs making science understandable and interesting to the public.He has personally developed a number of successful science vaudeville programs this semester and presented a small symposium on the History of Magic and Science in New York City. His background in magic and science allows him to present scientific principles as interesting vignettes. For example, Bob uses magic with early-childhood groups to explain that science can be fun. With adult audiences he uses a laboratory demonstration that is performed as a magic trick. Bob explains: "Almost everyone wants to know, ‘How does it work?’ I then explain the scientific principle, allowing the participants to perform the demos at home as demos or as magic tricks.”
Bob Friedhoffer has developed magic as an analog for phenomena that are generally invisible. This includes relativistic and quantum effects including the Twin Paradox and Quantum Tunneling. The use of science as magic allows Bob to perform team-building seminars with students and teachers. He teaches a group how to perform the demonstration, gives them the materials, then they work together on building the "prop" and writing a story to make the presentation engaging to an audience. Then, the students or teachers perform the “demo” to an audience.
Rosamond Rhodes, Distinguished Professor teaches Bio Ethics course for the MALS program
Dr. Rosamond Rhodes received her degree in Philosophy from The CUNY Graduate Center, where she specialized in ethics and political philosophy. She is currently a member of the Doctoral Faculty of the Ph.D. Program in Philosophy at The Graduate Center and this semester Dr. Rhodes is teaching a course specifically designed for the interdisciplinary Liberal Studies Program. Entitled Bio and Medical Ethics: Policies and Cases, the course is an “introduction to bioethical issues and will exploreconnections and divergences between two distinct perspectives, that of sociology and that of philosophy…Weshall focus our efforts and discussion on trying to span the divide between the ‘is’ of human experience and the ‘ought’ of human morality.”
Since 1988 Dr. Rhodes has served on the faculty of Mount Sinai School of Medicine as Director of Bioethics Education and is now Professor of Medical Education. At Mount Sinai she oversees the medical ethics curriculum for students in all four years of medical school, for house staff in eleven residency programs, and for graduate students in Masters programs in public health, clinical research, and genetics counseling. She directs a program of faculty education and serves as Secretary of Mount Sinai's Ethics Committee. Through these activities she is constantly engaged in clinical ethics consultation and teaching.
Dr. Rhodes is the sole author of over fifty publications. Her writing has focused on the history of moral and political philosophy and on its applications to a broad range of issues in bioethics including: medical education, health care distribution, the doctor/patient relationship, surrogate decision making, research ethics, physician- assisted suicide, genetics, cloning, abortion, assisted reproduction, transplantation, and psychiatry.
Since 1990 Dr. Rhodes has served as editor of the American Philosophical Association Newsletter on Philosophy and Medicine. She also serves on the editorial boards of Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, and Bioethics/Developing World Bioethics as well as the editorial boards of the forthcoming A History of Medical Ethics and A Dictionary of Medical Ethics, both for Cambridge University Press.
She has presented papers and organized panels for ASBH and its predecessor organizations, the APA, APLS, and numerous smaller groups. For ASBH she served as 2003 Program Committee Co-Chair and as a member of a program review sub-committee in 2001. She serves on the Advisory Board of the Association in Manhattan for Autistic Children and the Program & Steering Committees of the International Hobbes Association. She has also provided interviews for television, radio, magazines, and newspapers as well as presentations at community schools, churches and synagogues.
Other News
We would like to thank the following recent contributors to the Liberal Studies Program. Their contributions demonstrate the importance of the MALS program and its unique place at the Graduate Center:
Adriana Bennett-Bernstein
Janet Brof
Zohra Lampert
Michael Newton
Alice Harrison
Sandra Waldman
Edwin Weber