SOCIAL PROBLEMS IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA

SOCIAL PROB IN CONTEMP CH

In this seminar, we will explore problems in contemporary Chinese society through reading and discussion. We will focus primarily on the market reform period in the People’s Republic of China following 1979, examining topics such as social inequality, gender and sexuality, class, ethnicity and religion, urbanization and migration, the Internet, and population challenges. Since society changes so rapidly in China, I will sometimes assign news reports in addition to the formal readings so that we can discuss current events related to course themes. We will adopt a social scientific perspective to think critically about how individual lives in contemporary China are shaped by the social structures around them, as well as how individuals can take action to change their environment. This course has no formal prerequisites, but background knowledge of Chinese history is desirable.

• Department: East Asian Languages and Cultures
• Instructor: Leta Hong Fincher
  CULPA: 1 Wikipedia h-index: 6 Info
• 3 points

ETHICS OF SUSTAINABLE DEVPT

Aiming to improve human conditions within many diverse environments, sustainable development seeks to create, increase and perpetuate benefit and to cease, rectify and reverse harm. Sustainable development is consequently inextricable from the fabric of ethics, woven with determinations of benefit and harm to the existence and well-being of both humans and nonhumans. Underlying such determinations are those of self- and other-regarding motivation and behavior; and underlying these are still others, of sensitivity and rationality in decision-making, whether individual, social or public. Sustainable development is interlaced with and contingent upon all these determinations, at once prescriptive and judgmental, which can be called the ethics of sustainable development. This course is divided into four main sections, of which two are intended to show the ethical fallacies of unsustainable development, and two, the ethical pathways of sustainable development. The first section focuses upon ethically problematic basic assumptions, including human (species) hegemony, happy (hedonic) materialism, and selective (data) denial. The second focuses upon ethically problematic ensuing rationalizations, including those pertaining to damages, victims, consequences and situations of climatic, chemical, biological and ecological harm. The third section responds to these rationalizations with ethically vital considerations of earth justice, environmental justice, culturally-based ethics, and sector-based ethics (water, food, place and climate ethics). Finally, the fourth section responds to the initial, longstanding problematic assumptions with a newly emergent ethical paradigm, comprising biotic wholeness, environmental integrity and the deliberative zero-goal. Tying all sections together is the central theme: to be sustainable, development must be ethical. Reflecting the collaborative quality of the field of sustainable development, the course extends to readings whose authors have all pursued their work at intersections of science and ethics, environment and ethics, policy and ethics, business and ethics, and sustainable development and ethics.

• Department: Earth Institute
• Instructor: Adela J Gondek
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 3 points

RACE. SPACE, URB SCHOOLS

Many people don’t think of themselves as having attended segregated schools. And yet, most of us went to schools attended primarily by people who looked very much like us. In fact, schools have become more segregated over the past 30 years, even as the country becomes increasingly multiracial. In this class, we will use public schools as an example to examine the role race plays in shaping urban spaces and institutions. We will begin by unpacking the concept of racialization, or the process by which a person, place, phenomenon, or characteristic becomes associated with a certain race. Then, we will explore the following questions: What are the connections between city schools and their local contexts? What does it mean to be a “neighborhood school”? How do changes in neighborhoods change schools? We will use ethnographies, narrative non-fiction, and educational research to explore these questions from a variety of perspectives. You will apply what you have learned to your own experiences and to current debates over urban policies and public schools. This course will extend your understanding of key anthropological and sociological perspectives on urban inequality in the United States, as well as introduce you to critical theory.

• Department: Urban Studies @Barnard
• Instructor: Faculty
  h-index: 37 Info
• 3 points

FEMINIST THEORY

Prerequisites: LIMITED TO 20 BY INSTRUC PERM; ATTEND FIRST CLASS

This course provides a theoretical itinerary to the emergence of contemporary queer theory and engagement with some contemporary legacies of the movement. The goal is not to be exhaustive nor to establish a correct history of queer theory but to engage students in the task of understanding and creating intellectual genealogies.

• Department: Women's, Gender, Sexuality Studies @Barnard
• Instructor: Faculty
  h-index: 37 Info
• 4 points

SPECIAL TOPICS IN ARCHITECTURE

SP TPC: ABSTR, PROJ, DIST

See the Barnard and Columbia Architecture Department website for the course description: 
https://architecture.barnard.edu/architecture-department-course-descriptions

• Department: Architecture @Barnard
• Instructor: Michael E Schissel
  Info
• 3 points

SPECIAL TOPICS IN ARCHITECTURE

SP TPC: IMMERSIVE ROOM

See the Barnard and Columbia Architecture Department website for the course description: 
https://architecture.barnard.edu/architecture-department-course-descriptions

• Department: Architecture @Barnard
• Instructor: Clara Kraft Isono
  Info
• 3 points

MUSIC IN EAST ASIA

A topical approach to the concepts and practices of music in relation to other arts in the development of Asian civilizations.

• Department: Music
• Instructor: Kevin Fellezs
  CULPA: 4 Info
• 3 points

Regulation of Behaviors for Survival

Reg of Survival Behaviors

To maximize their survival animals must regulate their behavior in response to external environmental cues and their own internal state. A fundamental goal of neuroscience is to understand how neural circuits in the brain function to influence behavior. The aim of this course is to highlight the neural basis of innate behaviors that are critical for survival and discuss modern approaches to study the neuronal regulation of classically studied aspects of behavior. We will explore motor control (escape responses), sensory systems (vision, taste, and olfaction), and survival behaviors (feeding, drinking, mating, and aggression). Focus will be on recent and current research, the diversity of approaches for studying it, and how this knowledge can be applied to solve scientific questions. Students will read primary scientific literature and a significant portion of the course will be presentation and discussion-based.

• Department: Biological Sciences
• Instructor: Laura Duvall
  Info
• 3 points

ECON & FIN MTHDS FOR SDEV

• Department: Earth Institute
• Instructor: Satyajit Bose
  CULPA: 4 Info
• 3 points

MUSICS OF INDIA & WEST ASIA

A topical approach to the concepts and practices of music in relation to other arts in the development of Asian civilizations.

• Department: Music
• 3 points

MUSICS OF INDIA & WEST ASIA

A topical approach to the concepts and practices of music in relation to other arts in the development of Asian civilizations.

• Department: Music
• Instructor: Alessandra M Ciucci
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 3 points

MUSICS OF INDIA & WEST ASIA

A topical approach to the concepts and practices of music in relation to other arts in the development of Asian civilizations.

• Department: Music
• 3 points

INFRASTRUCTURES

Infrastructures are the built networks moving goods, commodities, people, energy, waste organizing human action in modern societies. This course critically examines the work of infrastructures globally. It examines issues of urbanism, racial infrastructures, infrastructural breakdown and emergency, postcolonial infrastructures, climate change, and extraction.

• Department: Anthropology @Barnard
• Instructor: Brian Larkin
  CULPA: 16 Info
• 4 points

LABORATORY IN MICROBIOLOGY

Enrollment limited to 16. Provides experience in the isolation, cultivation, and analysis of pure cultures of microorganisms. Methods used for the study of cell structure, growth, physiology, and genetics of microbes will be incorporated into laboratory exercises.

• Department: Biological Sciences @Barnard
• Instructor: Gabrielle Corradino
  Info
• 3 points

MUSIC THEORY III

Intermediate analysis and composition in a variety of tonal idioms.

• Department: Music
• Instructor: Joseph P Dubiel
  CULPA: 3 Info
• 3 points

Ecopoetics

Poetry Seminar - Ecopoeti

“There are things / We live among ‘and to see them / Is to know ourselves.’”

George Oppen, “Of Being Numerous”

In this class we will read poetry like writers that inhabit an imperiled planet, understanding our poems as being in direct conversation both with the environment as well as writers past and present with similar concerns and techniques. Given the imminent ecological crises we are facing, the poems we read will center themes of place, ecology, interspecies dependence, the role of humans in the destruction of the planet, and the “necropastoral” (to borrow a term from Joyelle McSweeney), among others. We will read works by poets and writers such as (but not limited to) John Ashbery, Harryette Mullen, Asiya Wadud, Wendy Xu, Ross Gay, Simone Kearney, Kim Hyesoon, Marcella Durand, Arthur Rimbaud, Geoffrey G. O’Brien, Muriel Rukeyser, George Oppen, Terrance Hayes, Juliana Spahr, and W.S. Merwin—reading several full collections as well as individual poems and essays by scholars in the field.

Through close readings, in-class exercises, discussions, and creative/critical writings, we will invest in and investigate facets of the dynamic lyric that is aware of its environs (sound, image, line), while also exploring traditional poetic forms like the Haibun, ode, prose poem, and elegy. Additionally, we will seek inspiration in outside mediums such as film, visual art, and music, as well as, of course, the natural world. As a class, we will explore the highly individual nature of writing processes and talk about building writing practices that are generative as well as sustainable.

• Department: Writing
• Instructor: Samantha Zighelboim
  Info
• 3 points

POETRY AND THE POLITICS OF DECOLONIZATIO

POETRY AND DECOLONIZATION

The course looks at poets, writing in the twentieth century and after, whose work is concerned with liberation from colonial rule and, subsequently, with the formation of a post-colonial literary voice. Poetry in the period of decolonization deals with issues of national, racial, class and gender identity, place and displacement, and freedom from linguistic and political oppression. We will read, among others, poets from the Indian Subcontinent and Middle East such as Tagore, Iqbal, Faiz and Darwish; two leading poets of négritude, Aimé Césaire and Léopold Senghor, in relation to movements in Caribbean, African, and American literature from the Harlem Renaissance to the present (Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, Kamau Brathwaite, Derek Walcott, and Nicolas Guillén); Latin American poets including Gabriela Mistral, Pablo Neruda, and Nicanor Parra; and English-language poets including W.B. Yeats, William Carlos Williams, and voices of more contemporary movements in poetry including the Beat, feminist, LGBTQ, indigenous, and "Black Lives Matter" movements. Using theory and historical background, we will look at the work of each poet comparatively in the context of international development and political change. The course offers a critical approach to globalization through literature; since decolonization has touched so much of the world, we are open to works from other literatures that students propose. Though class discussions will be in English, students are encouraged, to the greatest extent possible, to read the poetry in the original language. Please email me as needed for further information.

• Department: English @Barnard
• Instructor: Linn C Mehta
  CULPA: 18 Info
• 4 points

Images of the Apocalypse

What does the end of time look like? How have still and moving images made the Apocalypse available for intellectual exploration, explanation, and even play? Why is the End so important in Western European and American culture and what role does it play in our imaginations? In this seminar we will explore the fascination with the end of time as articulated in a broad range of artworks from medieval illuminated manuscripts to Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957) and Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979). We will examine diverse proposals for the expected end of time, proposals often given urgency by the imminence of the Apocalypse (an anticipation sustained even in the face of constant deferrals).

• Department: Art History and Archaeology
• Instructor: Susanna C Berger
  Info
• 4 points

Fashion, Dress, and Cultural Futures in

Fashion in Oceania

This upper-level seminar examines fashion and dress as historical forces and contemporary practices in Oceania and the Pacific diaspora. Clothing is treated not as decoration, but as a domain where colonialism and missionization were enacted, where gender and class hierarchies are negotiated, where Indigenous political and cultural projects take material form, and where creative economies and transnational networks are built.

Students read ethnographic and historical scholarship that centers Pacific perspectives and interrogates how garments, materials, bodies, markets, institutions, and media shape everyday life. Topics include mission clothing and morality, gender and respectability, heritage and tradition, diaspora and migration, fashion platforms and mediation, hybridity and experimentation, intellectual property and Indigenous sovereignty, museums and cultural governance, ecological knowledge, and climate change.

Assignments emphasize analytical writing, discussion leadership, annotated bibliographies, object-based case studies, and a substantial final research project. Students develop skills in evidence-based argumentation, ethical interpretation across difference, and connecting local case studies to global processes without erasing Indigenous histories and lived experience.

• Department: Anthropology @Barnard
• Instructor: Paige West
  CULPA: 41 h-index: 23 Info
• 4 points

Old New York

What was New York City like before the skyscrapers and yellow cabs with which we associate it today? This class explores the long history of New York City and its surroundings through the literatures of the many peoples who have called it home over the centuries. We will read Lenape creation stories, eyewitness accounts of Henry Hudson’s voyage, colonial pamphlets about the earliest slave revolts in North America, and literary fiction and poetry by lifelong New Yorkers including Walt Whitman and Herman Melville. We will follow Dutch explorers and traders in Manahatta, investigate the seedy underworld of blackmail and brothels in the Bowery, survey the financial revolution that turned Wall Street into a center of global capitalism, and get a glimpse of the Gilded Age in the opulent novels of manners that take us from Grand Central to Greenwich Village. To make good use of our city, students will write dispatches from various locations in New York City, from Brooklyn to the Bronx, that look for traces of the past in the present.

• Department: English and Comparative Literature
• Instructor: Ethan A Plaue
  Info
• 4 points

CONSUMER CULTURE IN MOD EUROPE

The development of the modern culture of consumption, with particular attention to the formation of the woman consumer. Topics include commerce and the urban landscape, changing attitudes toward shopping and spending, feminine fashion and conspicuous consumption, and the birth of advertising. Examination of novels, fashion magazines, and advertising images.

• Department: History @Barnard
• Instructor: Lisa Tiersten
  CULPA: 45 Info
• 4 points

Glacial Geomorphology

This course focuses on the impact of glaciers on landscapes. We will learn about the interactions and feedbacks between landscapes and climate. We will cover what is known about glacial geomorphology, as well as the modern research methods and outstanding scientific problems.

• Department: Earth and Environmental Sciences
• Instructor: William H Menke
  CULPA: 14 Info
• 3 points

What Shakespeare Read

In this course we will read a selection of Shakespeare’s plays alongside the sources he used to compose them. We will take a deliberately wide generic perspective when it comes to these sources, reading biographies, histories, prose fiction, and poetry. Our basic aim will be to immerse ourselves in the texts Shakespeare read and responded to as he wrote his plays. Our more ambitious aim will be to gain a more precise understanding of how Shakespeare honed the nature and function of his drama in relation to and against his largely non-dramatic sources of inspiration. Questions we will consider include: What is a source? What is an adaptation? What is a play? What is a play by Shakespeare?

• Department: English and Comparative Literature
• Instructor: Lauren E Robertson
  CULPA: 5 Info
• 4 points

THE POET AND THE MACHINE

Post-structuralist. Post-modern. Post-colonial. Post-human? (Going to post that on my socials!). As technology becomes increasing more interwoven into our labor, our recreation, and our culture, how does it affect our words and our art? In this class we will explore poets and writers of experimental prose who write about, fret about, dream about, and utilize 20th and 21st technology into their work. We will start with anxieties of emerging middle class home appliances in the 1920s to home computing and this called the internet during Y2K to the debate over AI today.

Students will write both analytically and creatively, meet with the professor at least once during the semester, engage in collaborative work, and take turns leading class discussion. The semester will culminate in research leading to an analytical, interdisciplinary, or creative project. Nota Bene: Students will not be allowed to use AI in their writing; however, we will be discussion AI in class.

Readings will include Jon Bois, Shayla Lawz, Franny Choi, Jillian Weise, Lillian-Yvonne Bertram, and Margaret Rhee.

• Department: Writing
• Instructor: Quincy Jones
  Info
• 3 points

NOW. Moving in the Moment: An Introducti

Intro to Dance Improvisat

There are as many reasons to improvise as there are cultures. People from all over the world have turned to improvised dance for personal, social, and political reasons. Improvisation is equally as useful in developing self-expression as it is in forming community and mutual understanding. It can be a vehicle for discovering more about our world by heightening our senses and awareness. It can be a mind-puzzle, as practitioners devise creative constraints for the purposes of producing structure and clarity. Whatever the reason for improvising, all practitioners share a sense of questioning and curiosity. This course will cover five units of study, each one aimed at exploring a different function of improvisation: self- expression; music and space; our bodies and environment; structure and cognition; and community-building. Learning in the classroom will rely on reading texts and viewing images and videos, written work, peer-to-peer learning and self-directed inquiry. In the studio, students will be given different exercises and prompts to explore and refine. By the end of the semester students will understand how improvisation occurs and how it differs from codified or prescriptive work, and why different people choose to improvise. They will also be able to develop and perform their own improvisatory work, drawing from the skills learned over the semester.

• Department: Dance @Barnard
• Instructor: Caroline Fermin
  Info
• 3 points

MODERN V

This contemporary technique class invites students into an embodied practice focusing on a daily physical experimentation and challenge. Emphasis will be placed on corporeal ways to explore questions around propelling, listening, connecting, healing, and action. This course offers a chance for students to use their sensatorial experience to reflect on individual pathways/ desires for expression while, challenging the body to take risks and practice as their movement knowledge expands. Emphasis on sensation, initiation, and weight will be introduced in a floor or standing warm-up that will expand to a standing exploration of the transition between form and space. A focus will be to continue our development of a strong-grounded technique with healthy placement that moves with ease in and out of the floor. We will continue to develop our true embodied relationship to environment, people, and time.

• Department: Dance @Barnard
• Instructor: Francesca Dominguez
  Info
• Instructor: Colleen Thomas
  CULPA: 6 Info
• 2 points

A FIRST CRSE/FINITE ELEMENTS

Focus on formulation and application of the finite element to engineering problems such as stress analysis, heat transfer, fluid flow, and electromagnetics. Topics include finite ele?ment formulation for one-dimensional problems, such as trusses, electrical and hydraulic systems; scalar field problems in two dimensions, such as heat transfer; and vector field problems, such as elasticity and finally usage of the commercial finite element program. Students taking ENME E3332 cannot take ENME E4332.

• Department: Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics
• Instructor: Jacob Fish
  CULPA: 1 Wikipedia h-index: 54 Info
• 3 points

MODERN TECH-ORGANIC CHEM LAB

Prerequisites: (CHEM BC3328) or (CHEM BC3230) CHEM BC3328 with a grade of C- or better and CHEM BC3230. Corequisites: CHEM BC3231,CHEM BC3334 Advanced experimental organic techniques and introduction to qualitative and quantitative organic analysis. Emphasis on instrumental and chromatographic methods. Selected reactions. Students enrolling in this course must register for CHEM BC3334x.

• Department: Chemistry @Barnard
• Instructor: Christian Rojas
  CULPA: 24 Info
• 3 points

MODERN TECH-ORGANIC CHEM LAB

Prerequisites: (CHEM BC3328) or (CHEM BC3230) CHEM BC3328 with a grade of C- or better and CHEM BC3230. Corequisites: CHEM BC3231,CHEM BC3334 Advanced experimental organic techniques and introduction to qualitative and quantitative organic analysis. Emphasis on instrumental and chromatographic methods. Selected reactions. Students enrolling in this course must register for CHEM BC3334x.

• Department: Chemistry @Barnard
• Instructor: Christian Rojas
  CULPA: 24 Info
• 3 points

INTRO TO GERMAN LIT (GERMAN)

Prerequisites: GERM UN2102 or the equivalent. Examines short literary texts and various methodological approaches to interpreting such texts in order to establish a basic familiarity with the study of German literature and culture.

• Department: Germanic Languages
• Instructor: Claudia Breger
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 3 points

INTRO TO ITALIAN LITERATURE I

Prerequisites: Intermediate Italian II ITAL UN2102 or the equivalent. UN3334x-UN3333y is the basic course in Italian literature. UN3333: This course, entirely taught in Italian, introduces you to Medieval and early modern Italian literature. It will give you the opportunity to test your ability as a close-reader and discover unusual and fascinating texts that tell us about the polycentric richness of the Italian peninsula. We will read poems, tales, letters, fiction and non-fiction, travel writings and political pamphlets. The great “Three Crowns” - Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio - as well as renowned Renaissance authors such as Ludovico Ariosto and Niccolò Machiavelli, will show us the main path to discover Italian masterpieces and understand the European Renaissance. But we will also explore China with Marco Polo and the secrets of the Medieval soul diving into the mystical poems by Jacopone da Todi. We will study parody and laughter through the “poesia giocosa” (parodic poetry) by Cecco Angiolieri and the legacy of Humanism through the letters of Poggio Bracciolini. This first overview will allow you to explore Italian literature from its complex and multicultural beginnings to its diffusion across Europe during the Renaissance.

• Department: Italian
• Instructor: Steven J Baker
  CULPA: 3 Info
• 3 points

ADVANCED YIDDISH

Course Description and Goals:

This course focuses predominantly on developing reading comprehension skills, as well as on listening,  writing, speaking, and some more advanced grammar. It explores literary and scholarly texts examining the  modern Jewish experience in the context of the twentieth-century history and culture of the Ashkenazi Jews.  Supplementary texts will be selected based on students’ interests and may include historical pedagogical  materials, past and present newspaper articles, polemic, poetry, historical and scholarly articles. We will  also venture outside the classroom to explore the Yiddish world today: through field trips to Yiddish theater,  Yiddish-speaking neighborhoods, Yiddish organizations, such as YIVO, and so on. We will apply our reading  and translating skills to contribute to the Mapping Yiddish New York online project, and will also have  Yiddish-speaking guests. At the end of the semester, you will be able to converse in Yiddish on a variety of  everyday topics and read authentic Yiddish literary and non-literary texts. Welcome back to Yiddishland!

• Department: Germanic Languages
• Instructor: Agnieszka Legutko
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 3 points

IMPROVISATION

Improvisation is an open level, movement based class in which students will learn collaborative improvisation tools, skills, practices, and mindset through experience, reflection, practice, and generation. Deep play, support for others, and a willingness to experiment and reflect are key in this discovery based course.

• Department: Dance @Barnard
• Instructor: Caroline Fermin
  Info
• 2 points

SCIENCE, STATE POWER, ETHICS

A comparative study of science in the service of the State in the U.S., the former Soviet Union, Fascist Italy, and Nazi Germany during pivotal periods through the first half of the 20th century. Topics to be covered include the political and moral consequences of policies based upon advances in the natural sciences making possible the development of TNT, nerve gas, uranium fission and hydrogen fusion atomic bombs. Considers the tensions involved in balancing scientific imperatives, patriotic commitment to the nation-state, and universal moral principles and tensions faced by Robert Oppenheimer, Andrei Sakharov, Neils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg. Selected readings include: Michael Frayn's play 
Copenhagen,
 
Hitler's Uranium Club 
by Jeremy Bernstein, Brecht's 
Galileo
, John McPhee's 
The Curve of Binding Energy,
 Richard Rhodes' 
The Making of the Atomic Bomb.

• Department: Science and Public Policy @Barnard
• Instructor: Timothy J Halpin-Healy
  CULPA: 6 Info
• 4 points

MODERN VI

This contemporary technique class invites students into an embodied practice focusing on a daily physical experimentation and challenge. Emphasis will be placed on corporeal ways to explore questions around propelling, listening, connecting, healing, and action. This course offers a chance for students to use their sensatorial experience to reflect on individual pathways/ desires for expression while, challenging the body to take risks and practice as their movement knowledge expands. Emphasis on sensation, initiation, and weight will be introduced in a floor or standing warm-up that will expand to a standing exploration of the transition between form and space. A focus will be to continue our development of a strong-grounded technique with healthy placement that moves with ease in and out of the floor. We will continue to develop our true embodied relationship to environment, people, and time.

• Department: Dance @Barnard
• Instructor: Lisa Boudreau
  Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Tamisha Guy
  Info
• 2 points

ADVANCED ITALIAN I

Prerequisites: ITALUN2102 or the equivalent. If you did not take Intermediate Italian at Columbia in the semester preceding the current one, you must take the placement test, offered by the Italian Department at the beginning of each semester. Written and oral self-expression in compositions and oral reports on a variety of topics; grammar review. Required for majors and concentrators.

• Department: Italian
• Instructor: Patrizia Palumbo
  CULPA: 15 Info
• 3 points

Introduction to Armenian Studies

Intro to Armenian Studies

Historians frequently situate Armenia between two powers: between Rome and Persia, then Byzantium and Islam. This class will shake up the usual “between-two-worlds” paradigm, which places Armenia and Armenians in the crosshairs of world powers. Instead, we will study Armenians as active participants in world dramas, at the center of global developments. Our main goal will be to draw upon a variety of sources to tell the story of Armenia and Armenians: histories, poems, art, coins, buildings, etc.  

Goals


Critically assess what it means to study history. Why are we learning this?

Analyze primary sources, whether written or material. How can we study this?

Engage with modern scholarship on Armenian experiences. How have other people studied this?

• Department: Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies
• Instructor: Alison Vacca
  Info
• 3 points

CONTACT IMPROVISATION

Prerequisites: Limited to twenty people. Examination of the gender-neutral partnering technique that is now common in contemporary dance. Focus is placed on recent improvisatory forms, sensation building, center connection and risk. Emphasis is placed on listening and sensing rather than controlling or leading.

This course will introduce the exploration of a partnering technique that is enriching for the mind and body. Contact Improvisation is not only an important tool for the dancer as it informs the body how to move with weight and connection and is required by most contemporary styles – it is also a technique that informs the artist in us all as it emphasizes listening, trust, and spontaneous creativity. In this course, students will use contact to support the creation of most duets, trios, and larger group dance.   Focus is placed on recent improvisatory forms, sensation building, center connection, and finding the safe edges of risk as well as applying these studies to creation and expression. Students in this course will explore their own weight and how it relates to other bodies by listening as well as employing emotional, psychological, and cultural structures to their improvisation. Emphasis is placed on listening and sensation rather than controlling or leading. Students will explore the dynamic ride and risk taking of improvisation and trusting another body by giving and taking weight. Contact Improvisation is open to all students.

• Department: Dance @Barnard
• Instructor: Colleen Thomas
  CULPA: 6 Info
• 2 points

COLL: GRASSROOTS ACTIVISMS AND SOCIAL CH

COLL: GRASSRTS ACT & SOC

How do ordinary people come together to enact social change in society? Focusing on the United States, this course explores how everyday people engage in collective action from the ground up, through social movements, community organizing, and other forms of advocacy and activisms. In particular, we will consider the role of grassroots movements and organizations as agents of democratic representation and catalysts for political transformation for marginalized communities. We will engage key questions about why groups choose to make political demands outside of formal institutional spaces, what kinds of visions for social change they put forward, how they seek to achieve their ideals, and how successful they are. The course will focus on contemporary activisms around racial justice, immigrant rights, LGBTQ+ rights, feminism, and labor.

• Department: Political Science @Barnard
• Instructor: Sonya G Chen
  Info
• 4 points

Business Italian and the Made in Italy E

Everywhere in the world, the expression ‘
Made in Italy’
evokes the idea of quality, elegance and unique taste. From food to wine, from artisanal craftmanship to fashion, from the automobile industry to the design, ‘
Made in Italy’
means creativity, durability, and a guarantee of excellence. Today, Italy is the fourth largest economic power in Europe and many countries like the USA have long established economic relationships and partnership with it. While the English language has been increasingly used during these economic exchanges, a basic knowledge of Italian terminology within a context of commerce and trade is an important asset and a useful resource. Developing a strong understanding of the Italian business environment and its culture offers useful advantages for all those who want to create ties with or plan to work in the Italian business world in the future.

The course is open to all students who have completed the Italian intermediate level and would like to have an introduction to Italian language used for work and business. The course will be conducted as an intensive practice in the spoken and written language through assigned topics focusing on Italian business and related cultural themes. It will provide an overview of the job market world and the business environment in Italy, giving students the main tools to explore and interact appropriately in a professional environment. During the second half of the semester, the course will introduce students to the
Made in Italy
excellence and the history responsible for Italian Style’s world-renowned fame and high-demand. Students will learn how the concept of
Made in Italy
originated, look at the history of Italian style and its international value. The lessons in the second half of the semester will be integrated with interviews of people in Italy and in New York City working in businesses that sell or advertise Italian products. The interviews (one per week) will provide a direct look into the areas that are being discussed in class, so that students will have the opportunity to learn firsthand what it means to work in a business in Italy or with Italy, and with Italian products.

• Department: Italian
• Instructor: Federica Franze
  CULPA: 4 Info
• 3 points

HISPANIC CULTURES I (SP)

Prerequisites: L course: enrollment limited to 15 students. Completion of language requirement, third-year language sequence (W3300). Provides students with an overview of the cultural history of the Hispanic world, from eighth-century Islamic and Christian Spain and the pre-Hispanic Americas through the late Middle Ages and Early Modern period until about 1700, covering texts and cultural artifacts from both Spain and the Americas.

• Department: Spanish and Latin American Culture
• Instructor: Alexandra V Mendez
  Info
• 3 points

HISPANIC CULTURES I (SP)

Prerequisites: L course: enrollment limited to 15 students. Completion of language requirement, third-year language sequence (W3300). Provides students with an overview of the cultural history of the Hispanic world, from eighth-century Islamic and Christian Spain and the pre-Hispanic Americas through the late Middle Ages and Early Modern period until about 1700, covering texts and cultural artifacts from both Spain and the Americas.

• Department: Spanish and Latin American Culture
• Instructor: Alexandra V Mendez
  Info
• 3 points

HISPANIC CULTURES I (SP)

ISLAMIC SPAIN-COLONIAL PERIOD

Prerequisites: L course: enrollment limited to 15 students. Completion of language requirement, third-year language sequence (W3300). Provides students with an overview of the cultural history of the Hispanic world, from eighth-century Islamic and Christian Spain and the pre-Hispanic Americas through the late Middle Ages and Early Modern period until about 1700, covering texts and cultural artifacts from both Spain and the Americas.

• Department: Latin American and Iberian Cultures
• 3 points

IN OTHER WORDS: WORLD POETRY & COSMOPOLI

WORLD POETRY & COSMOPOLIT

What is “world poetry”? This course will try to give an answer to this vexing question. You are being introduced to a number of influential poets who have entered a dialogue about what it means to write, read, translate and appreciate poetry in a global context. The impact of globalization is most visible in a number of anthologies which made considerable efforts to move beyond the existing range of national representatives and to make an English-speaking audience familiar with the names and works of poets who are bilingual or who write in their native language. Throughout the semester, we will read English translations of these poems (but feel free to read the original if you know the language). Secondly, the global context is of great importance for understanding each poet’s vision of the world since poets are involved in processes of “world-making” as well as reacting to the world’s past and present. s the semester progresses you will see that the poets are part of a larger conversation; some themes, forms and issues we discovered at the beginning will return in the middle or toward the end of the term. The selection of poets is based on considerations of gender, race, age and religious affiliation; many of the poets whose works we are going to discuss are iconic figures; in studying other cases, you will be exposed to new voices (for example, young South African poets) whose significance will emerge in a critical discussion of the anthologists’ rationale and criteria for selecting poets and marginalizing others.

• Department: Comparative Literature and Society @Barnard
• Instructor: Erk Grimm
  CULPA: 10 Info
• 3 points

HISPANIC CULTURES II (SP)

This course surveys cultural production of Spain and Spanish America from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries. Students will acquire the knowledge needed for the study of the cultural manifestations of the Hispanic world in the context of modernity. Among the issues and events studied will be the Enlightenment as ideology and practice, the Napoleonic invasion of Spain, the wars of Spanish American independence, the fin-de-siecle and the cultural avant-gardes, the wars and revolutions of the twentieth century (Spanish Civil War, the Mexican and Cuban revolutions), neoliberalism, globalization, and the Hispanic presence in the United States. The goal of the course is to study some key moments of this trajectory through the analysis of representative texts, documents, and works of art. Class discussions will seek to situate the works studied within the political and cultural currents and debates of the time. All primary materials, class discussion, and assignments are in Spanish. This course is required for the major and the concentration in Hispanic Studies.

• Department: Spanish and Latin American Culture
• Instructor: Ronald D Briggs
  CULPA: 4 Info
• 3 points

HISPANIC CULTURES II (SP)

ENLIGHTENMENT THROUGH PRESENT

This course surveys cultural production of Spain and Spanish America from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries. Students will acquire the knowledge needed for the study of the cultural manifestations of the Hispanic world in the context of modernity. Among the issues and events studied will be the Enlightenment as ideology and practice, the Napoleonic invasion of Spain, the wars of Spanish American independence, the fin-de-siecle and the cultural avant-gardes, the wars and revolutions of the twentieth century (Spanish Civil War, the Mexican and Cuban revolutions), neoliberalism, globalization, and the Hispanic presence in the United States. The goal of the course is to study some key moments of this trajectory through the analysis of representative texts, documents, and works of art. Class discussions will seek to situate the works studied within the political and cultural currents and debates of the time. All primary materials, class discussion, and assignments are in Spanish. This course is required for the major and the concentration in Hispanic Studies.

• Department: Latin American and Iberian Cultures
• Instructor: Graciela Montaldo
  Info
• 3 points

The Family in Film and Memoir

This course will examine films and a few memoirs that center on family narratives, family cultures, cultural legacies and customs inherited through generations, generational dynamics, childhood memory, and ideas of
home
as a utopian/dystopian and oneiric space.   Explorations of memory, imagination and childhood make-believe will interface with readings in psychoanalysis, attachment theory, phenomenology and in the social history of this polymorphous institution.
 
Authors will include Gaston Bachelard, Alison Bechdel, Jessica Benjamin, Mark Doty, Vivian Gornick, Lorraine Hansberry, Maggie Nelson and D.W. Winnicott; and films by Sean Baker, Alfonso Cuaron, Greta Gerwig, Lance Hammer, Barry Jenkins, Jennifer Kent, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinart, Lucretia Martel, Mike Mills, Sarah Polley, Charlotte Wells, Andrei Zvyagintsev and others.

Seminar application instructions: Email Professor Spiegel (mls37@columbia.edu) with the subject heading "Family in Film & Memoir Seminar." In your message, include your name, school, major, year of study, and relevant courses taken. All students are automatically placed on a waitlist, from which the instructor will in due course admit students as spaces become available.

• Department: English and Comparative Literature
• Instructor: Maura L Spiegel
  CULPA: 40 Info
• 4 points

DEVELOPMENT

Introduction to animal developmental biology and its applications. This course will examine the basic mechanisms through which animal bodies organize themselves, from an integrative perspective at the levels of genes and gene networks, cell properties and behaviors, coordinated interactions of cells in developing tissues, organs and organ systems, and the role of developmental processes in morphological evolution. Topics include: fertilization, cleavage and gastrulation, establishment of body axes, neural development, organ formation, tissue and organ regeneration, stem cells and medical applications, evolution of developmental programs, and teratogenesis.

• Department: Biological Sciences @Barnard
• Instructor: Rishita Shah
  Info
• 3 points

BIOCHEMISTRY LAB TECHNIQUES

BIOCHEMISTRY LAB TECHNIQUES -

Prerequisites: Organic II lab (CHEM BC3333, BC3335, or equivalent); Quantitative analysis lab (BC3338, BC3340, or equivalent); Biochemistry (CHEM BC3282y, CHEM C3501, or equivalent).

Theory and application of fundamental techniques for the isolation, synthesis and characterization of biological macromolecules including proteins, lipids, nucleotides and carbohydrates. Techniques include spectroscopic analysis, gel electrophoresis, chromatography, enzyme kinetics, immunoblotting, PCR, molecular cloning and cell culture, as well as modern laboratory instrumentation, such as UV-Vis, GC-MS and HPLC.

• Department: Chemistry @Barnard
• 5 points

Reproductive Biology

Seminar - Reproductive Bi

This course will explore developing topics in mammalian reproductive biology. Using textbooks and primary literature sources we will explore the molecular and physiological nature of reproduction, including fertilization, assisted reproductive technologies, and physiological changes to the reproductive system during and after birth. These topics will be further discussed in the context of medicine and society, with a particular focus on healthcare disparities in local communities.

• Department: Biological Sciences @Barnard
• Instructor: Rishita Shah
  Info
• 3 points

Adv Chemical Synthesis & Reactivity Lab

ADV CHEM SYNTHESIS LAB

Prerequisites: CHEM BC3333, CHEM BC3271, and CHEM BC3338 Corequisites: CHEM BC3253 Multistep and multi-day experiments in organic and inorganic synthesis via advanced synthetic methods. Experiments include solution phase, solid state, and photochemical syntheses. Products will be analyzed and characterized by a variety of methods, including: IR, NMR, and UV-Vis spectroscopy, and also by polarimetry, chiral GC, and GC/MS.

• Department: Chemistry @Barnard
• Instructor: Jean Vadakkan
  Info
• 5 points

Global Kafka: The Writer's dialogue with

GLOBAL KAFKA

Emines the writer’s view of foreign cultures and animals, his response to empires and states, reflections on bureaucracy or personal relationships, with an emphasis on Kafka’s international legacy and influence. Discussions of his followers in American or world literature. Major novels such as The Trial, The Castle and Amerika as well as short stories are covered and rediscovered in this course.

• Department: Comparative Literature and Society @Barnard
• Instructor: Erk Grimm
  CULPA: 10 Info
• 3 points

DISASTERS AND DEVELOPMENT

Prerequisites: EESC 2330; SDEV W2300. Human welfare status is very unevenly distributed throughout the globe - some of us live very comfortable lives, others remain in desperate poverty showing little progress away from their condition. Between are countries that are rapidly developing and converging toward the welfare of the richest. At all levels of economic development human activities place significant pressure on the environment and threatens all of Earth’s vital functions and support systems for human life. This challenge requires timely responses based on solid understanding of the human/environment interface, technological and economic approaches to mitigate adverse effects on the environment, and routes to understanding the complex dynamics of the coupled human/natural systems that can chart a pathway to improvement in the lives of the poorest and continued well-being for those who have achieved prosperity without forcing natural systems into decline or massive fluctuation. This course offers undergraduate students, for the first time, a comprehensive course on the link between natural disaster events and human development at all levels of welfare. It explores the role that natural disasters might have and have had in modulating development prospects. Any student seriously interested in sustainable development, especially in light of climate change, must study the nature of extreme events - their causes, global distribution and likelihood of future change. This course will cover not only the nature of extreme events, including earthquakes, hurricanes, floods and droughts but also their transformation into disaster through social processes. It will ultimately help students to understand the link between such extreme events, the economic/social shock they represent and development outcomes. The course will combine careful analysis of the natural and social systems dynamics that give rise to disasters and examine through group learning case studies from the many disasters that have occurred in the first decade of the 21st century. Offered in the Spring (odd years only).

• Department: Earth Institute
• 3 points

Death and Dignity: Forensic Science and

Forensic scientific investigations of mass political violence have proliferated in recent decades. As a form of “science in the service of human rights,” forensic methods are used to locate and identify the remains of people killed in mass political violence and, more broadly, to corroborate witness testimonies of rights abuses and contribute evidence for potential use in war crimes trials. Yet forensic investigations of mass violence are not only scientific endeavors, but also highly social and political ones. Families of the dead and disappeared have long been at the forefront of demanding state action to locate, exhume, and return the remains of their loved ones. What drives states, on the one hand, and families of the dead and disappeared, on the other, to turn to forensic exhumations of the dead? What social and political work does forensic science—and the dead bodies it unveils—do to mediate restorative transformation in the wake of mass political violence?

This course explores how the forensic sciences—in particular, forensic anthropology, archaeology, and genetics—are mobilized after atrocity to make rights claims to postmortem dignity, postwar memory, and transformative justice. It approaches forensic science from a holistic (or, in anthropological terms, “four-field”) perspective, in which the scientific cannot be separated from the social or political, given the profound social transformations brought about by war. Practices in biological and forensic science cannot be separated from the social and political contexts of the political violence and human rights violations they investigate. What would it look like to conceive of forensic science from a multi-focal, interdisciplinary perspective? 

This discussion-based seminar explores the complex social and scientific worlds that come into being over the course of postwar forensic exhumations, bringing the living and the dead into new forms of relation. We situate forensic investigations within broader struggles over historical and collective memory, narratives of past violence, and accountability for state violence. Drawing primarily on ethnographic and sociocultural anthropological perspectives from Latin America and other global regions, the course engages debates on international humanitarianism, necropolitics, and human rights in death. We critically assess the promises and limits of forensic science as a tool for human rights intervention, while remaining attentive to its af

• Department: Human Rights (HRTB)
• Instructor: Jennifer Trowbridge
  Info
• 4 points

CELLULAR & MOLECULAR NEUROSCIENCE

This upper-level lecture course provides an in-depth analysis of neuroscience at the molecular and cellular levels. Topics include: the structure and function of neuronal membranes, the ionic basis of the membrane potential and action potential, synaptic transmission, synaptic plasticity, and sensory transduction.

• Department: Neuroscience & Behavior @Barnard
• Instructor: Alexis S Hill
  Info
• Instructor: Elizabeth P Bauer
  CULPA: 3 h-index: 21 Info
• 3 points

ANXIETY, OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE, AND RELAT

ANXIETY AND OCD

Prerequisites: (PSYCH BC2141) and (PSYCH BC1001) This course presents an in depth investigation of anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and OCD-related disorders, from a primarily psychological perspective. The course will focus on the phenomenology, correlates, and contributing factors of these conditions. Students will also learn about the current psychological treatments for these disorders. Emphasis will be placed on recent empirical research findings.

• Department: Psychology @Barnard
• Instructor: Michael Wheaton
  h-index: 31 Info
• 4 points

ENERGY LAW

This course concerns the regulation of energy, energy resources, and energy facilities. Among the topics will be the regulation of rates and services; the roles of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the state public utility commissions; and the interaction with environmental law. Attention will be devoted to energy resources (such as oil, natural gas and coal) and to generating, transmission and distribution facilities. The current and future roles of renewable energy, energy efficiency, and nuclear energy will receive special attention, as will the regulation and deregulation of electricity.

• Department: Earth Institute
• Instructor: Michael Gerrard
  CULPA: 2 Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

Colloquium: Transnational Kleptocracy

COLL: TRANSNTNL KLEPTOCRA

The term “kleptocracy” literally means “rule by thieves” and refers to the extensive grand corruption that elite rulers, allies and their family members engage in to privately enrich themselves at the expense of their populations. Traditionally, kleptocracy has been viewed as a scourge on developing countries, associated with greedy authoritarian rulers in conflict-prone, resource rich and/or aid dependent states. However, in recent years scholars and policymakers have increasingly become aware of the critical role played by international actors, institutions, legal structures and professional service providers that facilitate kleptocracy at a global level. Unlike other transnational illicit sectors such as narcotics trafficking or terrorism, many aspects of kleptocracy networks are publicly visible and perfectly legal. Overall, these networks function to enable the domestic plundering of these elites, the whitewashing of their reputations, and the exacerbation of vast inequality, both within the countries that kleptocrats systemically plunder and between the Global South and the West which receives and benefits from many of the proceeds of these corrupt activities. 

The first part of the course (Weeks 2-5) examines the transnational actors, service professionals and institutions that facilitate money laundering by kleptocrats. The second part (Weeks 6-7) concentrates on how kleptocrats launder their reputations, by presenting themselves as global philanthropists or business professionals and by acquiring residency in other jurisdictions through the growing market for citizenship.  The final part of the course (Weeks 8-10) examines recent developments in international policy efforts to counter kleptocracy, including incorporating such efforts into national security strategies, enacting extraterritorial legislation to punish corporate bribery, sanctioning individual kleptocrats and oligarchs, and amending libel laws in countries like the UK that are routinely used by kleptocrats to intimidate journalists and deter investigations into their dealings.  

Finally, throughout the course we will grapple with the methodological challenges posed by trying to study and detect illegal and secretive patterns of behavior. What are the tools, resources and research techniques available to researchers and policy makers interested in making more evidence-based assessments about kleptocracy and grand corruption?

• Department: Political Science @Barnard
• Instructor: Alexander A Cooley
  CULPA: 22 h-index: 33 Info
• 4 points

LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT

Prerequisites: PSYC BC1001 and one of the following: PSYC W2240, PSYC BC1129, or LING UN1101. Enrollment limited to 15 students. Examines the acquisition of a first language by children, from babbling and first words to complex sentence structure and wider communicative competence. Signed and spoken languages, cross-linguistic variation and universalities, language genesis and change, and acquisition by atypical populations will be discussed.

• Department: Psychology @Barnard
• Instructor: Tyler Knowlton
  Info
• 4 points

RETHINKING SPANISH TRANSLATION

Through special attention to translation method and practice, this course aims to develop a solid foundation on which to build the full set of competences required to become thoughtful, alert, self-critical translator while extending and improving the students competence of Spanish through complex translation tasks of a wide range of texts presented with a progressive overall structure and thematic organization. With a professional approach, it focuses on translation as a cross-cultural and crosslinguistic communicative activity that integrates areas such as interlanguage pragmatics, discourse analysis and transfer.

• Department: Spanish and Latin American Culture
• Instructor: Javier Perez Zapatero
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 3 points

Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy

Vertebrates have been around for millions of years. In that time, they have evolved morphological attributes to live in the sea, on land, and in the air; hunt or scavenge food; escape from predation; and more. Yet despite the vast differences that have evolved, vertebrates (including humans) share many common traits. In this course, we will explore the evolution of the vertebrate body plan, focusing specifically on the evolution of form and function in many body systems. We will examine the evolution of homologous structures and identify how vertebrates have evolved a wide array of adaptations within the constraints of evolution. Though anatomy courses necessitate memorization of some key structures, we will focus more on the function of those structure, the broad principles of evolution, and the research techniques used in the related field of functional morphology rather than memorizing large lists of terms.

• Department: Biological Sciences @Barnard
• Instructor: Jordan Balaban
  Info
• 3 points

Neuroscience Frontiers

This course introduces students to a bold, high-risk, high-reward framework for thinking about neuroscience, tracing the field's most transformative discoveries from the action potential through the present day. Each week, students will examine landmark breakthroughs drawn from the last century of neuroscience through the lens of unconventional thinking that prioritizes ambitious questions over incremental research. Students will engage in guided discussions analyzing how risk-tolerant scientific culture has historically driven paradigm shifts, and how those lessons can be applied to today’s unanswered questions. Additionally, scientific discussions will be had about unconventional ideas of memory, consciousness, bioelectricity, brain organoids, and neural regeneration. By the end of the course, students are expected to not only understand the history of modern neuroscience and exciting discoveries in the field today, but to articulate and defend their own vision for what a high-risk, high-reward research agenda in the field might look like. Students are expected to contribute actively to the discussion.

• Department: Neuroscience & Behavior @Barnard
• Instructor: Bj Casey
  Info
• 4 points

Visual Neuroscience: From the Eyeball to

VISUAL NEUROSCIENCE

By absorbing electromagnetic radiation through their eyes, people are able to catch frisbees, recognize faces, and judge the beauty of art. For most of us, seeing feels effortless. That feeling is misleading. Seeing requires not only precise optics to focus images on the retina, but also the concerted action of millions of nerve cells in the brain. This intricate circuitry infers the likely causes of incoming patterns of light and transforms that information into feelings, thoughts, and actions. In this course we will study how light evokes electrical activity in a hierarchy of specialized neural networks that accomplish many unique aspects of seeing. Students will have the opportunity to focus their study on particular aspects, such as color, motion, object recognition, learning, attention, awareness, and how sight can be lost and recovered.  Throughout the course we will discuss principles of neural information coding (e.g., receptive field tuning, adaptation, normalization, etc.) that are relevant to other areas of neuroscience, as well as medicine, engineering, art and design.

• Department: Neuroscience & Behavior @Barnard
• Instructor: Alex White
  h-index: 13 Info
• 4 points

ADOLESCENT PSYCHOLOGY

Prerequisites: BC1001 and BC1129 Developmental Psychology or permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 20 senior majors. Barnard students receive priority. Examines adolescent development in theory and reality. Focuses on individual physiological, sexual, cognitive, and affective development and adolescent experiences in their social context of family, peers, school, and community. Critical perspectives of gender, race and ethnicity, sexuality, and teen culture explored.

• Department: Psychology @Barnard
• Instructor: Erica Musser
  Info
• 4 points

Bilingual Minds: Language, Brain & Cultu

This discussion-based seminar explores how bilingualism shapes the developing brain, cognitive processes, communication, and cultural identity. Students will engage with research from psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, and anthropology to understand how bilingual experiences differ across individuals, communities, and cultures. Through weekly reflections and student-led discussions, we will examine both foundational theories and contemporary debates, including the bilingual advantage, code-switching, gesture, neuroplasticity, language socialization, bilingualism in autism, and sociopolitical dimensions of bilingualism.

• Department: Psychology @Barnard
• Instructor: Armita Ghobadi
  Info
• 4 points

SOCIAL COGNITION

• Department: Psychology @Barnard
• Instructor: Antonio Viera
  Info
• 4 points

DIFFERENTIAL GEOMETRY

• Department: Mathematics
• Instructor: Mu-Tao Wang
  CULPA: 27 Wikipedia h-index: 25 Info
• 3 points

TOPICS IN NEUROETHICS

Prerequisites: BC1001 and one of the following: Neurobiology, Behavioral Neuroscience, Fundamentals of Neuropsychology, or permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 20 students. Recent advancements in neuroscience raise profound ethical questions. Neuroethics integrates neuroscience, philosophy, and ethics in an attempt to address these issues. Reviews current debated topics relevant to the brain, cognition, and behavior. Bioethical and philosophical principles will be applied allowing students to develop skill in ethical analysis.

• Department: Neuroscience & Behavior @Barnard
• Instructor: E'Mett McCaskill
  CULPA: 38 Info
• 4 points

MODELS OF NEUROPSYCHIATRIC DISORDERS

MODELS NEUROPSYCHIATRIC D

This course is a seminar designed to enhance students understanding of the methods used in primary research to inform how we study and understand the neural basis of both normative and pathological behavior in humans through the use of model systems. Through this course students will read and discuss primary research papers, debate the merits, limitations, and applicability of various approaches for advancing our understanding of the human condition, gain skills in presentation of scientific data, and a richer understanding of the scientific process. Topics covered will include the study of depression, anxiety, aging, memory, evolution, developmental disorders, and genetics (among others).

• Department: Neuroscience & Behavior @Barnard
• Instructor: Kevin G Bath
  Info
• 4 points

CANINE COGNITION

Prerequisites: PSYC BC1001 and one other Psychology course. Enrollment limited to 15 students. Permission of the instructor is required. An examination of the scientific study of the domestic dog. Emphasis will be on the evolutionary history of the species; the dogs social cognitive skills; canid perceptual and sensory capacities; dog-primate comparative studies; and dog-human interaction.

• Department: Psychology @Barnard
• Instructor: Alexandra C Horowitz
  CULPA: 23 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

GIS FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMNT

This course is designed to provide students with a comprehensive overview of theoretical concepts underlying GIS systems and to give students a strong set of practical skills to use GIS for sustainable development research. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are a system of computer software, data and analysis methods used to create, store, manage, digital information that allow us to create maps and dynamic models to analyze the physical and social processes of the world. Through a mixture of lectures, readings, focused discussions, and hands-on exercises, students will acquire an understanding of the variety and structure of spatial data and databases, gain knowledge of the principles behind raster and vector based spatial analysis, and learn basic cartographic principles for producing maps that effectively communicate a message. Student will also learn to use newly emerging web based mapping tools such as Google Earth, Google Maps and similar tools to develop on-line interactive maps and graphics. The use of other geospatial technologies such as the Global Positioning System will also be explored in this class. Case studies examined in class will draw examples from a wide ranges of GIS applications developed to assist in the development, implementation and evaluation of sustainable development projects and programs. On completion of the course, students will: 1. use a variety of GIS software programs to create maps and reports; 2. develop a sound knowledge of methods to search, obtain, and evaluate a wide variety of spatial data resources; 3. develop skills needed to determine best practices for managing spatial data resources; 4. use GIS to analyze the economic, social and environmental processes underlying the concept of building a sustainable world; 5. Gain an understanding of the limits of these technologies and make assessments of uncertainty associated with spatial data and spatial analysis models. Offered in the fall and spring.

• Department: Earth Institute
• Instructor: Linda I Pistolesi
  Info
• 3 points

RESEARCH SEMINAR IN HISTORY I

Prerequisites: Open to Barnard College History Senior Majors. Individual guided research and writing in history and the presentation of results in seminar and in the form of the senior essay. See Requirements for the Major for details.

• Department: History @Barnard
• Instructor: Angelo Caglioti
  h-index: 2 Info
• 4 points

PSYCHOBIOLOGY OF STRESS

• Department: Neuroscience & Behavior @Barnard
• Instructor: Russell D Romeo
  CULPA: 9 Info
• 4 points

NEURODEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITIES

INTERVENTIONS DEVELOP DISABIL

The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the history of disability as a construct, as well as major models of disability. Both medical and social models (as well as others) will be examined across each of the major neurodevelopmental disabilities explored, including: ADHD, autism, intellectual disability, specific learning disability, and communication/language/speech and motor disabilities. We will examine the ways in which disability is rooted in disparities associated with power and resources, political rights, and social status. We will also utilize an intersectional lens in approaching disability to examine intersections with class, ethnicity, gender, race, sexuality, and more. For each disability, we will examine cultural, historical, and socio-political context; diagnostic criteria; epidemiology; etiology; assessment; and interventions/common accommodations. For each disability, we will also engage with several first-person, lived experience accounts and attempt to identify links to the different models and theories of disability, as well as theories of intersectionality.

• Department: Psychology @Barnard
• Instructor: Erica Musser
  Info
• 4 points

Novels, Netflix & the British Empire

Novels/Netflix/British Em

Nothing seems to hold our attention quite like Britain’s early-nineteenth century and the women who wrote about it. But why are so many of the stories most resonant with modern audiences love stories? How can we account for the tenacious staying power of the Regency romance? What is lost, and gained, in the reinterpretations (or reinventions) of these works, and what does it say about the legacy of Britain and its empire? These are some of the questions to be explored in this course, which will engage with the original texts and put those texts in conversation with recent adaptations.

• Department: History
• Instructor: Julia P Burke
  Info
• 4 points

ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING PRACTICE

Design project planning, written and oral technical communication, the origin and role of standards, engineering ethics, and practical aspects of engineering as a profession, such as career development and societal and environmental impact. Generally taken fall of senior year just before ELEN E3390.

• Department: Electrical Engineering
• Instructor: David G Vallancourt
  CULPA: 28 Info
• 1 points

ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING PRACTICE

Design project planning, written and oral technical communication, the origin and role of standards, engineering ethics, and practical aspects of engineering as a profession, such as career development and societal and environmental impact. Generally taken fall of senior year just before ELEN E3390.

• Department: Electrical Engineering
• Instructor: David G Vallancourt
  CULPA: 28 Info
• 1 points

Evidence

This course will examine theories and methods pertaining to evidence as a process, a tool, and a failure. What kinds of evidence are rendered legible or legitimate? What is excluded? What cannot be measured at all? Through close reading and assignments involving both the production and critique of different evidentiary forms, students will be trained to methodologically apply a range of research skills from the archival to the ethnographic and observational. We will also consider particular forms confession, testimony, divine intervention character evidence, archival materials, expertise, and more to parse not only the limits of what can be known, but also the worlds that evidence makes possible and impossible.

• Department: American Studies @Barnard
• Instructor: Daria Reaven
  Info
• 4 points

TOPICS IN MUSIC & SOCIETY

This course seeks to approach the study of music and society by comparatively studying repertories from different parts of the world, how the history of ideas and methods of studying such repertoires shaped them, the practices that constitute them and the ways they are understood and used by different peoples. Central to this course is the interrelationship between the constitution of a repertoire and the history of the construction of knowledge about it.

• Department: Music
• Instructor: Aaron A Fox
  CULPA: 7 Info
• 3 points

HUMAN POPULATIONS & SDEV

• Department: Earth Institute
• Instructor: Dana Thomson-Browne
  Info
• 3 points

American Studies Methods: Archive Fever

AMST Methods: Archive Fev

Introduction to the theoretical approaches of American Studies, as well as the methods and materials used in the interdisciplinary study of American society. Through close reading of a variety of texts (e.g. novels, films, essays), we will analyze the creation, maintenance, and transmission of cultural meaning within American society.

• Department: American Studies @Barnard
• Instructor: Jennie Kassanoff
  CULPA: 20 Info
• 4 points

SEMINAR IN GLOBAL THOUGHT

INQUIRIES INTO AN INTERCONNECT

This course on global thought will consider the ways in which we think about, debate, and give meaning to the interconnected world in which we live. In thematically focused collaborative teams, students will examine how the flows of people, things and ideas across national borders both connect our world and create uneven consequences within and among communities. We will locate ourselves in these processes, suggesting we need go no further than our closets, tables, and street corners to consider the meanings of globalization and our roles in the world today. This course has been approved to partially satisfy the Global Core requirement.

• Department: Committee on Global Thought
• Instructor: Kevin Funk
  h-index: 6 Info
• 4 points

SOUND DESIGN

Prerequisites: Permission of instructor given at first class meeting. Studies the art and practice of designing sound and scoring music for dramatic performance. Students study the relationship between concert and incidental music, and read plays toward the production of a score for live theatre. Students also read broadly in the fields of sound, music, acoustics, and the cultural analysis of sound as a component of performance. Background in music or composition not essential. .

• Department: Theatre @Barnard
• Instructor: Daniel Baker
  Info
• 3 points

The Global Threat of Antimicrobial Resis

Antimicrobial Resistance

Antimicrobial resistant bacterial infections were estimated to account for 1.27 million deaths worldwide in 2019. The goal of the seminar is to provide an in-depth analysis of this ongoing threat. Discussions will include the molecular mechanisms, epidemiology of transmission and the consequences of antimicrobial resistant infections. It will also cover current efforts to reduce the spread and emergence of these difficult to treat pathogens, both in the community and the healthcare setting.

• Department: Biological Sciences
• 3 points

SCENE DESIGN

Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 12 students. Permission of instructor given at first class meeting. Introduction to designing for the theatre. The course will focus on set design, developing skills in script analysis, sketching, model making, storyboarding and design presentation. Some investigation into theatre architecture, scenic techniques and materials, and costume and lighting design.

• Department: Theatre @Barnard
• 3 points

Read, Think, Write in French

UN3405 enables students to hone and perfect their reading and writing skills while improving their ability to express and organize thoughts in French. In this engaging advanced language class, students are exposed to major texts in fields as diverse as journalism, sociology, anthropology, politics, literature, philosophy and history. Stimulating class discussions, targeted reviews of key grammatical points in context, and an array of diverse writing exercises all contribute to strengthen students’ mastery of the French language. This course also works as a bridge class between Intermediate French II and courses that focus on French and Francophone cultures, history and literature (such as 3409 and 3410). Students who take this class will be fully prepared to take advanced content classes or spend a semester in a Francophone country. This class is required for the French major and minor.

• Department: French
• Instructor: Laurence Marie
  CULPA: 3 Info
• Instructor: Alexandra Borer
  CULPA: 4 Info
• 3 points

COMPUTER GRAPHICS & DESIGN

Introduction to drafting, engineering graphics, computer graphics, solid modeling, and mechanical engineering design. Interactive computer graphics and numerical methods applied to the solution of mechanical engineering design problems.

• Department: Mechanical Engineering
• Instructor: Sinisa Vukelic
  CULPA: 2 h-index: 11 Info
• 3 points

COMPUTER GRAPHICS & DESIGN

Introduction to drafting, engineering graphics, computer graphics, solid modeling, and mechanical engineering design. Interactive computer graphics and numerical methods applied to the solution of mechanical engineering design problems.

• Department: Mechanical Engineering
• Instructor: Sinisa Vukelic
  CULPA: 2 h-index: 11 Info
• 3 points

SEMINAR IN CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY

Clin Psy:Depressive Disorders

This course offers an in-depth examination of depressive disorders, including major depressive disorder, persistant depressive disorder, post-partum depression, premenstrual dysmorphic disorder, and pediatric depression.   Topics include historical perspectives, current understanding of diagnoses and symptoms, neural changes associated with the disorders, and research on effective treatments.  Emphasis will be placed on the impact of depressive disorders on families and communities, as well as gender and cultural differences in diagnosis, treatment and outcomes.

• Department: Psychology @Barnard
• Instructor: Kathleen M Taylor
  CULPA: 78 Info
• 4 points

INTRO TO FRENCH & FRANCOPHONE HISTORY

INTRO FREN FRANCOPHONE HI

Who were the Gauls and when was Paris the "capital of modernity"? What caused the French and Haitian Revolutions? Why do the French care so much about religion, nation, empire or, for that matter, food and fashion? This class surveys the history of France and the Francophone world from the Middle Ages to the present. It provides an introduction to major events and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions of people in France and across the world, in its former colonies. From feudalism and absolutism to imperialism, capitalism, and republicanism, we explore how questions of identity and difference play out in politics, culture and society. The class is based in lecture and discussion and relies on close readings of primary sources. The course is taught entirely in French and is one of two core courses for the major and minor in French. Students are encouraged to take FREN 3405 prior to this course.

• Department: French
• 3 points

MACHINE DESIGN

Computer-aided analysis of general loading states and deformation of machine components using singularity functions and energy methods. Theoretical introduction to static failure theories, fracture mechanics, and fatigue failure theories. Introduction to conceptual design and design optimization problems. Design of machine components such as springs, shafts, fasteners, lead screws, rivets, welds. Modeling, analysis, and testing of machine assemblies for prescribed design problems. Problems will be drawn from statics, kinematics, dynamics, solid modeling, stress analysis, and design optimization.

• Department: Mechanical Engineering
• Instructor: Yevgeniy Yesilevskiy
  h-index: 7 Info
• 3 points

APPROACHES TO CONTEMPORARY ART

This course examines the critical approaches to contemporary art from the 1970s to the present. It will address a range of historical and theoretical issues around the notion of the contemporary (e.g. globalization, participation, relational art, ambivalence, immaterial labor) as it has developed in the era after the postmodernism of the 1970s and 1980s.

• Department: Art History and Archaeology
• Instructor: Branden W Joseph
  CULPA: 9 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

COMPUTERS AND SOCIETY

Broader impact of computers. Social networks and privacy. Employment, intellectual property, and the media. Science and engineering ethics. Suitable for nonmajors.

• Department: Computer Science
• Instructor: Ronald Baecker
  Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

Intro French & Francophone Literature

Intro French Francophone

This class offers students an introduction to major works that have marked the history of literature in French from the Middle Ages to the present. Our focus will be on close reading and discussion, but works will also be placed in historical context. We will look at a variety of literary genres (sonnet, short story, comedy, autobiography, narrative poetry, novel), and our readings will be complemented by visual materials such as paintings and films. The course is taught entirely in French and is one of two core courses for the major and minor in French. Students are encouraged to take FREN 3405 prior to this course.

• Department: French
• Instructor: Joanna R Stalnaker
  CULPA: 18 Info
• 3 points

COLLOQUIUM ON HUMAN RIGHTS IN A DIVERSE

COLL:HUMAN RGTS DIVERSE W

Examination of human rights within the context of international migration. The course covers topics such as citizenship, state sovereignty, border control, asylum-seekers, refugees, and undocumented immigrants. (Cross-listed by the Human Rights Program.)

• Department: Political Science @Barnard
• Instructor: Ayten Gundogdu
  CULPA: 20 h-index: 8 Info
• 4 points

SYMBOLIC LOGIC

Corequisites: PHILV3413 Required Discussion Section (0 points). Advanced introduction to classical sentential and predicate logic. No previous acquaintance with logic is required; nonetheless a willingness to master technicalities and to work at a certain level of abstraction is desirable.

• Department: Philosophy
• Instructor: Tamar A Lando
  CULPA: 8 Info
• 4 points