| University | Semester | Year | Course | Department | Instructor(s) | Students Enrolled |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| New York University | Fall | 2025 | Philanthropy and Social Difference | Gallatin School of Individualized Study | Victoria Rosner | 22 students |
| New York University | Fall | 2024 | Philanthropy and Social Difference | Gallatin School of Individualized Study | Victoria Rosner | 23 students |
| New York University | Fall | 2023 | Philanthropy and Social Difference | Gallatin School of Individualized Study | Victoria Rosner | 22 students |
Philanthropy Lab
Course Taught by Dr. Victoria Rosner
Department: Gallatin School of Individualized Study
Dr. Victoria Rosner is the Dean of the Gallatin School. She works on nineteenth and twentieth century literature in English, with a special interest in modernism across diverse forms of cultural production, especially literature, architecture, and design.
Her most recent book is Machines for Living: Modernism and Domestic Life (Oxford University Press, 2020). She is also the author of Modernism and the Architecture of Private Life (Columbia University Press, 2005), and has edited two volumes, The Cambridge Companion to the Bloomsbury Group (Cambridge University Press, 2014) and The Global and the Intimate: Feminism in Our Time (Columbia University Press, 2012; with Geraldine Pratt). She has been a guest editor for journals including Signs, WSQ, and The Scholar and Feminist.
In addition to her scholarly work, Rosner has several public projects on gender in the professions. She is a founding co-editor of the web-based archive Pioneering Women of American Architecture, a project that recovers the histories of US women architects born before 1940. Beginning in 2018, Rosner also co-directed Frontline Nurses: Leaders in Pandemic Response, an oral history project on the role of nurses and midwives in pandemic outbreaks.
Rosner’s work has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the Columbia University Center for the Study of Social Difference, and more. She is the winner of the Modernist Studies Association Book Prize (for Modernism and the Architecture of Private Life). Rosner is the co-editor of Gender and Culture, the pre-eminent book series in English on gender and literary studies (published by Columbia University Press).
Rosner taught previously at Columbia University, where she served as Dean of Academic Affairs at Columbia School of General Studies, as well as at Texas A&M University.
Interesting Course Components
- At the outset of the course students complete a 2-3 page paper citing what they feel are the most important needs that philanthropy should address and why. Groups share their work and present a collaborative document outlining the group’s goals and philosophy to serve as a roadmap for disbursing funds.
- Groups then advocate for three organizations that meet their group’s philosophy.
- Each student visits at least two organizations for a site visit, in groups of at least two.
- Students complete a 3-5 page Philanthropic Autobiography, outlining their story as a giver and receiver of philanthropic gifts, both past and future.
- Each group creates a collaborative memo identifying the leading organization they are nominating for funding, also weighing the relative merits of other organizations under consideration. Memo must include an interview of a rep of the organization.
- Groups craft both award letters that justify gifts to the organization and letters of declination to non-funded organizations the group visited.
- Students view philanthropy through the lens of literary fiction and humanities.
Guest Speakers
- Ann and Andrew Tisch, Founders of an all girls public school in Harlem and Young Women’s Leadership Foundation. City Parks Foundation, Wildlife Conservation Society, NYC Police Foundation.
- Bea Welters – former US Ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago, AnBryce Foundation and Scholars Program
- Estrella Castillo – Wirikuta Preservation Project, SACRD, Morning Star
Media