Prerequisites: the instructor's permission.
(Seminar).
Application Instructions:
E-mail Professor David Yerkes (dmy1@columbia.edu) with the subject heading "Medieval English Texts." In your message, include basic information: your name, school, major, year of study, and relevant courses taken, along with a brief statement about why you are interested in taking the course. Admitted students should register for the course; they will automatically be placed on a wait list from which the instructor will in due course admit them as spaces become available.
Prerequisites: the instructor's permission.
This seminar, designed for seniors, aims to acquaint students with the notion and theoretical understanding of culture and to introduce them to a critical method by which they can study and appreciate contemporary culture in the Arab World. The seminar will survey examples of written and cinematic culture (fiction and autobiography), as well as music, dance, and literary criticism in the contemporary Arab world. Students will be reading novels, autobioghraphies and literary criticism, as well as watch films and listen to music as part of the syllabus. All material will be in translation. Films will be subtitled. Songs will be in Arabic.
This research and writing-intensive seminar is designed for senior majors with a background and interest in the sociology of gender and sexuality. The goal of the seminar is to facilitate completion of the senior requirement (a 25-30 page paper) based on “hands on” research with original qualitative data. Since the seminar will be restricted to students with prior academic training in the subfield, students will be able to receive intensive research training and guidance through every step of the research process, from choosing a research question to conducting original ethnographic and interview-based research, to analyzing and interpreting one’s findings. The final goal of the course will be the production of an original paper of standard journal-article length. Students who choose to pursue their projects over the course of a second semester will have the option of revisiting their articles further for submission and publications.
Law creates order. And yet, outlaws or lawbreakers are everywhere. Students will learn to ask and answer questions about living law, understanding that it involves law-followers and law-breakers. Students will read and discuss sociological investigations of the law and perform their own research into a significant question about law-in-action.
Prerequisites: Open to CSER majors/concentrators only. Others may be allowed to register with the instructor's permission.
This course explores the centrality of colonialism in the making of the modern world, emphasizing cross-cultural and social contact, exchange, and relations of power; dynamics of conquest and resistance; and discourses of civilization, empire, freedom, nationalism, and human rights, from 1500 to 2000. Topics include pre-modern empires; European exploration, contact, and conquest in the new world; Atlantic-world slavery and emancipation; and European and Japanese colonialism in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. The course ends with a section on decolonization and post-colonialism in the period after World War II. Intensive reading and discussion of primary documents.
Please refer to the Center for American Studies for the course descriptions for each section.
Please refer to the Center for American Studies for the course descriptions for each section.
Please refer to the Center for American Studies for the course descriptions for each section.
Prerequisites: the instructor's permission.
This seminar explores major features of U.S. constitutional law through close examination of selected decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court. Through student discussion and some lecturing, the seminar addresses issues arising from the Constitution's allocation of power among the three branches of government; the allocation of powers between the National and State governments, including, in particular, the scope of Congress' regulatory powers; and the protection of the individual from arbitrary and discriminatory government conduct, including the protections of the Fifth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments against unequal treatment based on race, gender and sexual orientation, the evolution of the concept of liberty from its protection of economic interests before the New Deal to its current role in protecting individual autonomy and privacy, and some aspects of the First Amendment's protection of freedom of speech and press. More generally the seminar aims to enhance understanding of some main aspects of our constitutional tradition and the judicial process by which it is elaborated.
This course explores Arabia as a global phenomenon. It is organized around primary texts read in English translation. The site of the revelation of the Quran and the location of the sacred precincts of Islam, Arabia is the destination of pilgrimage and the direction of prayer for Muslims worldwide. It also is the locus of cultural expression ranging from the literature of the 1001 Nights to the broadcasts of Al Jazeera. We begin with themes of contemporary youth culture and political movements associated with the Arab Spring. Seminar paper.
Examines aesthetic responses to collective historical traumas, such as slavery, the Holocaust, the bombing of Hiroshima, AIDS, homelessness, immigration, and the recent attack on the World Trade Center. Studies theories about trauma, memory, and representation. Explores debates about the function and form of memorials.
Prerequisites: Instructor's permission.
(Seminar). This course of distinguished poetry about warriors and warfare goes to the intersection of disciplines, where warrior and poet together compete and excel--ingeniously, formally, passionately, consequentially--as allies in dire contest against annihilation and despair. Homer's
Iliad
heads our list of exemplary titles selected from ancient and classical, mediaeval and early modern sources, including, among others, Sophocles'
Ajax
, and
Philoctetes
;
Beowulf
;
Song of Roland
;
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
;
The Tale of the Heike
; Shakespeare's
Henry V
; and Milton's
Paradise Lost
. We also will read histories, memoirs, oratory, and guidebooks, from Yuzan's
Budoshoshinshu
to General Patton's "The Secret of Victory," from Vegetius'
De Re Militari
to U.S. Army Field Manual (FM) 6-22. Our reading is historically broad enough to prove the range of virtues, precepts, codes and rules of martial character and action. Yet our poetry also excels in vision and in virtuosity quite apart from how it might cultivate the norms of aristeĆa, chivalry, or bushido, so that certain of our questions about form and style or imaginative effects might differ in kind from other questions about the closeness or disparity of the practical warrior and the poetic warrior, and the extent to which the latter elevates and inspires the former's conception of himself in times of war and peace. We shall consider how battle narratives which excel as poetry and ring true for the warrior, appealing to his wit and outlook, might replenish the aggrieved and battle-weary mind; how a war poem's beautifully formed and lucidly rendered chaos remembers and regains for him the field of action. Toward my interest in the range of possibilities for military literature as a discipline of study, I welcome not only the novice whose interest is avid but the student knowledgeable about military topics in literature, history, political and social philosophy, and especially the student, who, having served in the Armed Forces, can bring to the seminar table a contemporary military perspective and the fruits of practical wisdom.
Application instructions
: E-mail Professor Giordani (mg2644@columbia.edu) with the subject heading "Poetics of Warrior seminar." In your message, include your name, school, major, year of study, relevant courses taken, and a brief statement about why you are interested in taking the cou
Prerequisites:
POLS V1501
or the equivalent, and the instructor's permission. Pre-registration is not permitted. Please see here for detailed seminar registration guidelines: http://polisci.columbia.edu/undergraduate-programs/seminar-registration-guidelines.
Seminar in Comparative Politics. For most seminars, interested students must attend the first class meeting, after which the instructor will decide whom to admit.
Prerequisites: Course open to Barnard Art History majors only.
Independent research for the senior thesis. Students develop and write their senior thesis in consultation with an individual faculty adviser in art history and participate in group meetings scheduled throughout the senior year.
Prerequisites: minimum GPA of 3.5 in MESAAS courses.
The MESAAS honors seminar offers students the opportunity to undertake a sustained research project under close faculty supervision. The DUS advises on general issues of project design, format, approach, general research methodologies, and timetable. In addition, students work with an individual advisor who has expertise in the area of the thesis and can advise on the specifics of method and content. The thesis will be jointly evaluated by the adviser, the DUS, and the honors thesis TA. The DUS will lead students through a variety of exercises that are directly geared to facilitating the thesis. Students build their research, interpretive, and writing skills; discuss methodological approaches; write an annotated bibliography; learn to give constructive feedback to peers and respond to feedback effectively. The final product is a polished research paper in the range of 40-60 pages. Please note: This is a one-year course that begins in the fall semester (1 point) and continues through the spring semester (3 points). Only students who have completed both semesters will receive the full 4 points of credit.
This course is a seminar on contemporary art criticism written by artists in the post war period. Such criticism differs from academic criticism because it construes art production less as a discrete object of study than as a point of engagement. It also differs from journalistic criticism because it is less obliged to report art market activity and more concerned with polemics. Art /Criticism I will trace the course of these developments by examining the art and writing of one artist each week. These will include Brian O’Doherty/Patrick Ireland, Allan Kaprow, Robert Morris, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Smithson, Art & Language, Dan Graham, Adrian Piper, Mary Kelly, Martha Rosler, Judith Barry and Andrea Fraser. We will consider theoretical and practical implications of each artist’s oeuvre.
Prerequisites: Barnard Art History Major Requirement. Enrollment limited only to Barnard Art History majors.
Introduction to critical writings that have shaped histories of art, including texts on iconography and iconology, the psychology of perception, psychoanalysis, social history, feminism and gender studies, structuralism, semiotics, and post-structuralism.
This course is structured to provide each of you with an in-depth look at a modern institution of oppression: the ghetto. The readings examine ghettoization across a wide geographic area. The course runs (fairly) chronologically, beginning with the ghettoization of Jews in Medieval Europe and ending with the ghettoization of African Americans and Latinos in the twentieth century United States, but also exploring the expanding patterns of segregation in the modern urban world.
Working with her advisor, a student will expand the research project initiated in the Fall Senior Seminar for Music Majors (BC3992x). In order to satisfy the requirement, the student will complete a fifty page research paper.
Working with her advisor, a student will develop a vocal or instrumental recital program with representative musical works from a variety of historical periods. In order to satisfy the requirement, the student will present an hour long public performance of the recital program. Students may also satisfy this requirement by composing original vocal or instrumental works.
The goals of this seminar are a) to introduce senior music majors to ethnographic, bibliographic, and archival research methods in music and b) to help the same students develop, focus, implement, draft, revise, and polish a substantive, original piece of research (25-30 pages) which will serve as the senior project. The course will begin with a survey of academic literature on key problems in musicological research and writing, and will progress to a workshop/discussion format in which each week a different student is responsible for assigning readings and leading the discussion on a topic which s/he has formulated and deemed to be of relevance to her own research.
Prerequisites: Senior standing. Admission by application only (available at http://urban.barnard.edu/forms-and-resources). Year-long course; participation is for two consecutive terms. No new students admitted for spring.
Emphasizes the study of the built environment of cities and suburbs, and the related debates. Readings, class presentations, and written work culminate in major individual projects, under the supervision of faculty trained in architecture, urban design, or urban planning.
“Freedom” was perhaps the central watchword of Romantic-era Britain, yet this concept remains exceedingly, notoriously difficult to pin down. Taking a cue from the sociologist and historian Orlando Patterson, who writes that “freedom is one those of values better experienced than defined,” this seminar will explore the variegated experiences of freedom (and its opposites) in the literature of British Romanticism. Romanticism unfolds alongside major revolutions in America, France, and Haiti, and we will begin by examining how the differing conceptions of freedom offered in the wake of these revolutions and their receptions galvanized writers and thinkers in Britain. From here, we will probe the expressions, possibilities, implications, and limits of freedom as outlined in various domains: political, individual, aesthetic, economic, philosophical, religious, and beyond. What does, say, Wordsworth’s claim to freedom to experiment in poetic form have to do with political and social freedom? In situating Romanticism alongside developments like revolution, the rise of globalization, and the Atlantic slave trade, we will be particularly interested in confronting how the explosion of claims to freedom in this period emerges together with and in response to the proliferation of enslaved, colonized, and otherwise constrained or hindered bodies.
As we read poems, novels, slave narratives, philosophical essays, political tracts, and more, a fundamental question for the course will concern the relation between seemingly oppositional terms: to what extent, and how, do notions of freedom in Romanticism depend on the necessary exclusion of the unfree? Since the Romantic age sees the birth of concepts of freedom still prevalent in our own day, this course will offer an opportunity to reflect critically on the present. To that end, we will take up some contemporary theoretical analyses and critiques of freedom, both directly in relation to Romanticism and reaching beyond.
Prerequisites: Senior standing. Admission by application only (available at http://urban.barnard.edu/forms-and-resources). Year-long course; participation is for two consecutive terms. No new students admitted for spring.
Using New York City as a research laboratory, under the guidance of the faculty coordinator, students clarify basic theoretical issues related to their chosen research problem; find ways of making a series of empirical questions operational; collect evidence to test hypotheses; analyze the data using a variety of social science techniques; and produce reports of basic findings.
The senior seminar is a capstone course required for the human rights major. The seminar provides students the opportunity to discuss human rights from a variety of disciplinary perspectives and to explore various theoretical approaches and research methodologies. Students undertake individual research projects while collectively examining human rights through directed readings and discussion.
Prerequisites: a formal proposal to be submitted and approved prior to registration; see the director of undergraduate studies for details.
A creative/scholarly project conducted under faculty supervision, leading to completion of an honors essay, composition, or the equivalent.
Prerequisites: required methods and theory courses for the major, and the instructor's permission.
Students wishing to qualify for departmental honors must take
W3996y
. Students carry out individual research projects and write a senior thesis under the supervision of the instructor and with class discussion. Written and oral progress reports.
Supervised research under the direction of individual members of the department.
Prerequisites: required methods and theory courses for the major, and the instructor's permission.
Students wishing to qualify for departmental honors must take
W3996y
. Students carry out individual research projects and write a senior thesis under the supervision of the instructor and with class discussion. Written and oral progress reports.
Prerequisites: Senior standing. Admission by application only (available at http://urban.barnard.edu/forms-and-resources). Year-long course; participation is for two consecutive terms. No new students admitted for spring.
A year-long research seminar for students who wish to conduct a senior thesis project that focuses on cities outside of the United States. Topics relating to the rapid urbanization of Latin America, Africa, and Asia are particularly welcome. Seminar meetings will include discussion of relevant readings, as well as occasional class presentations and peer-editing assignments.
Supervised research under the direction of individual members of the department.
Supervised research under the direction of individual members of the department.