Advanced Urdu

ADVANCED URDU

Prerequisites: Two years of prior study in Urdu or one year of Urdu for Heritage Speakers I&II courses at Columbia University, or approval of the professor. This is a one-semester course in advanced Urdu language. It will be taught in the fall semester. The goal of the course is to develop students’ linguistic skills i.e. listening, speaking, reading, writing and cultural skills in Urdu, and give students in-depth exposure to some of the finest works of classical and modern Urdu prose. Special emphasis will be given to developing a high-register vocabulary. Necessary grammar points will also be explained for developing an accurate and nuanced understanding of the Urdu language. After completing this course, students will be able to read and enjoy Urdu classics and critical academic texts related to various disciplines i.e. old tales, short stories, essays, history, satire, criticism, politics, current issues etc. along with effective speaking skills suited to active interaction in the speech community and a more advanced academic discussion for undergraduate and graduate students. Students will develop an in-depth understanding of South Asian society and culture as well. This course will prepare students to take MDES GU4635 Readings in Urdu Literature I.

• Department: Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies
• TR 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Aftab Ahmad
  CULPA: 12 Info
• 4 points

NATURE, SCIENCE & THE STATE

This course considers the relationship between state power, scientific knowledge, and the natural world in its many manifestations—from sixteenth-century colonial “bioprospecting” to present-day initiatives in sustainable development. Throughout, we focus on two interrelated threads: the history of efforts to “govern” the natural world, and the role of science in enacting these modes of governance. Themes and topics include: the relationship between science and empire, the centrality of resource control to the consolidation of political authority, the history of wilderness preservation and conservation, the environmental dimensions of the history of international development, strategies of indigenous rights movements, the emergence of market-based approaches to environmental crises, and the invention of sustainable development. Though primarily historical in its focus, the course also draws on literature from science and technology studies, political ecology, environmental anthropology, and postcolonial studies.

• Department: Earth Institute
• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Leah V Aronowsky
  Info
• 4 points

CONTESTED GROUNDS

SPACE & THE POLITICS OF MEMORY

• Department: Architecture, Planning and Preservation
• T 11 a.m.-1 p.m.
• Instructor: Mabel O Wilson
  Wikipedia h-index: 8 Info
• 3 points

ANATOMY FOR PHYSICISTS & ENGR

Systemic approach to the study of the human body from a medical imaging point of view: skeletal, respiratory, cardiovascular, digestive, and urinary systems, breast and womens issues, head and neck, and central nervous system. Lectures are reinforced by examples from clinical two- and three-dimensional and functional imaging (CT, MRI, PET, SPECT, U/S, etc.).

• Department: Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics
• TR 4 p.m.-5:20 p.m.
• 3 points

BIODIVERSITY & ECOSYSTEM PROC

• Department: Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology
• M 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Shahid Naeem
  CULPA: 6 Wikipedia h-index: 70 Info
• 3 points

CONVEX OPTIMIZATION FOR ENG

CONVEX OPTIMIZATION ELCT ENG

Theory of convex optimization; numerical algorithms; applications in circuits, communications, control, signal processing and power systems.

• Department: Electrical Engineering
• MW 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• 3 points

CHILDREN'S RIGHTS ADVOCACY

This course is designed to introduce contemporary children’s rights issues and help students develop practical advocacy skills to protect and promote the rights of children. Students will explore case studies of advocacy campaigns addressing issues including juvenile justice, child labor, child marriage, the use of child soldiers, corporal punishment, migration and child refugees, female genital mutilation, and LBGT issues affecting children. Over the course of the semester, students will become familiar with international children’s rights standards, as well as a variety of advocacy strategies and avenues, including use of the media, litigation, and advocacy with UN, legislative bodies, and the private sector. Written assignments will focus on practical advocacy tools, including advocacy letters, op-eds, submissions to UN mechanisms or treaty bodies, and the development of an overarching advocacy strategy, including the identification of goals and objectives, and appropriate advocacy targets and tactics.

• Department: Institute for Study of Human Rights
• F 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• 3 points

BUSINESS ANALYTICS

This course focuses on how to identify, evaluate, and capture business analytic opportunities that create value. The course covers basic analytic methods alongside case studies on organizations that successfully deployed these techniques. The first part of the course is on using data to develop insights and predictive capabilities with machine learning techniques. The second part focuses on the use of A/B testing, causal inference, ethics, and optimization to support decision-making.

• Department: Industrial Engineering and Operations Research
• W 9 a.m.-11:30 a.m.
• TR 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Charles R Guetta
  Info
• Instructor: Adam N Elmachtoub
  CULPA: 1 h-index: 13 Info
• 3 points

Building Climate Justice: Co-Creative Co

BUILDING CLIMATE JUSTICE

This course will educate students and support effective coastal resilience planning and climate justice through social and data science learning and data acquisition and analysis, making use of emerging technologies and best practices for collaboration with environmental and climate justice practitioners.  

Instruction is provided in two areas: i. Climate adaptation planning & climate justice; and, ii. Data science: acquisition, analysis and visualization. Students and  instructors will work with participating community-based climate and environmental justice organizations to collect and analyze biological, geographic and socio-economic data  relevant to local resilience needs. Once this data has been acquired or generated and quality-assured, the students and community partner organizations will prepare it for presentation to federal, state and local planning officials, to help ensure that the resilience goals and related concerns identified by our community partners will be fully reflected in future planning by those officials.  

Upon completion of the course, students will better understand the challenges involved in creating and implementing collaborative, data-informed, multi-stakeholder plans for coastal resilience and ecosystem restoration in today’s increasingly climate-disrupted world. Successful completion of this course will partially fulfill the
Analysis and Solutions to Complex Problems
coursework requirement within the Undergraduate Major in Sustainable Development.

• Department: Earth Institute
• W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• 3 points

Polymer Chemistry for Sustainable Soluti

Polym Chem Sus

This course serves as a guide to the field of macromolecular materials chemistry, with a strong focus on the synthesis and design of polymers for tackling outstanding issues in polymer sustainability. The course will cover fundamental topics in polymerization techniques: step growth, conventional chain growth, ionic, controlled radical polymerizations, and ring opening polymerizations. As this course is primarily intended for engineers, great emphasis is placed on common, practical approaches to polymer synthesis and developing structure-property relationships. Fundamental topics will be expanded on using literature examples to demonstrate their applications in polymer sustainability.

• Department: Chemical Engineering
• MW 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Neil D Dolinski
  Info
• 3 points

INSECT DIVERSITY

Introduction to phylogenetic relationships, evolution, and ecology of the major groups of arthropods, with emphasis on insects. Lab: indentification of common families of spiders and insects of the northeastern United States.

• Department: Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology
• W 5 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Bekka Brodie
  Info
• 4 points

Hollywood's Counterculture Cinema: Movie

MOVIES OF THE 1970S

You will be asked to watch a lot of movies for this course. Some of the films will be assigned primarily to provide background and will receive only glancing attention in class; others (as indicated) will be the focus of our discussion. Your postings on Courseworks will draw from both categories of assigned films.

• Department: English and Comparative Literature
• R 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Maura L Spiegel
  CULPA: 40 Info
• 4 points

FAQS ABOUT LIFE:APPL OF PSYC RSCH TO EVE

Prerequisites: Two courses in psychology, with at least one focusing on statistics and/or research methods in psychology, and permission of the instructor. Review of basic psychological research that is relevant to questions people frequently encounter during the course of everyday life. Potential topics for this seminar include research on decision-making, emotion, and/or interpersonal relationships.

• Department: Psychology
• W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Larisa H Solomon
  Info
• 4 points

Theory from the South

Typically, a course in social theory or political philosophy might be taught with two different emphases—as intellectual history, or as a theoretical tradition. In the first approach canonical texts are examined in relation to their political, social, economic and cultural contexts. In the second approach “classic” texts are systematically compared to one another to show both similarities and differences in their approach, and to place them in some developmental sequence. In either case, the textual corpus tends to focus on the historical experiences of the North Atlantic as both normative and universal.

Instead, this seminar focuses not merely on the placement of social theory in global contexts but rather, has as its explicit focus texts generated by thinkers who seek to theorize the geohistorical complexities of modern worldmaking through social forms and lifeworlds that stand askew to dominant approaches to the study of capitalist modernity. The South is conceived here as a set of relations and not as a place, less as a geographical location than a heuristic tool that might reorient discussion on fundamental questions about equality and difference, politics and personhood as these have taken shape as world historical questions of our time.

The seminar is particularly interested in the interface between subaltern and minority pasts as these confront material contexts of resource extraction and labor exploitation, and the distinctive manner by which embodied difference intersects social inequality. That is, we will think about the relationship between historical identities and their material substrate. Broadly speaking, the seminar will bring into conversation work generated in the Americas, especially African American scholarship that engages questions of slavery and subjectivity, black vitality, and Afropessimism together with approaches addressing problems of anticolonial politics, postcolonial sovereignty, ideas of Islamic universality, and global Marxisms. That is, we seek to direct the energies of social thought toward questions of translation, alterity, and historical comparison. A broad familiarity with colonial histories, anticolonial thought, and/or with canonical texts of social theory would be helpful, but not necessary.

The seminar will focus on key concepts such as anticolonial thought; racial capitalism, primitive accumulation; caste-race comparison; political aesthetics; and left and right populism. Readings for the seminar will include a mix of r

• Department: Comparative Literature and Society, Institute for
• W 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Anupama Rao
  CULPA: 28 Info
• 4 points

PRINCIPLES OF GENOMIC TECHNOL

Chemical and physical aspects of genome structure and organization, genetic information flow from DNA to RNA to Protein. Nucleic acid hybridization and sequence complexity of DNA and RNA. Genome mapping and sequencing methods. The engineering of DNA polymerase for DNA sequencing and polymerase chain reaction. Fluorescent DNA sequencing and high-throughput DNA sequencer development. Construction of gene chip and micro array for gene expression analysis. Technology and biochemical approach for functional genomics analysis. Gene discovery and genetics database search method. The application of genetic database for new therapeutics discovery.

• Department: Chemical Engineering
• M 7 p.m.-9:30 p.m.
• Instructor: Jingyue Ju
  h-index: 77 Info
• 3 points

INTRO TO FINANCIAL ENGINEERING

Prerequisite(s): IEOR E4106 or E3106. Required for undergraduate students majoring in OR:FE. Introduction to investment and financial instruments via portfolio theory and derivative securities, using basic operations research/engineering methodology. Portfolio theory, arbitrage; Markowitz model, market equilibrium, and the capital asset pricing model. General models for asset price fluctuations in discrete and continuous time. Elementary introduction to Brownian motion and geometric Brownian motion. Option theory; Black-Scholes equation and call option formula. Computational methods such as Monte Carlo simulation.

• Department: Industrial Engineering and Operations Research
• MW 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Xunyu Zhou
  h-index: 54 Info
• 3 points

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Prior knowledge of Python is recommended. Provides a broad understanding of the basic techniques for building intelligent computer systems. Topics include state-space problem representations, problem reduction and and-or graphs, game playing and heuristic search, predicate calculus, and resolution theorem proving, AI systems and languages for knowledge representation, machine learning and concept formation and other topics such as natural language processing may be included as time permits.

• Department: Computer Science
• TR 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• TR 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Ansaf Salleb-Aouissi
  CULPA: 21 h-index: 16 Info
• 3 points

STOCHASTIC MODELS FOR FIN ENG

This graduate course is only for M.S. Program in Financial Engineering students, offered during the summer session. Review of elements of probability theory, Poisson processes, exponential distribution, renewal theory, Wald’s equation. Introduction to discrete-time Markov chains and applications to queueing theory, inventory models, branching processes.

• Department: Industrial Engineering and Operations Research
• MW 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Daniel Lacker
  CULPA: 4 h-index: 13 Info
• 3 points

NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING

Computational approaches to the analysis, understanding, and generation of natural language text at scale. Emphasis on machine learning techniques for NLP, including deep learning and large language models. Applications may include information extraction, sentiment analysis, question answering, summarization, machine translation, and conversational AI. Discussion of datasets, benchmarking and evaluation, interpretability, and ethical considerations.
Due to significant overlap in content, only one of COMS 4705 or Barnard COMS 3705BC may be taken for credit.

• Department: Computer Science
• MW 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• TR 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Daniel Bauer
  CULPA: 17 h-index: 13 Info
• Instructor: John Hewitt
  Info
• 3 points

FOUNDATIONS FR FINANCIAL ENGIN

This graduate course is only for M.S. Program in Financial Engineering students, offered during the summer session. Discrete-time models of equity, bond, credit, and foreign-exchange markets. Introduction to derivative markets. Pricing and hedging of derivative securities. Complete and incomplete markets. Introduction to portfolio optimization and the capital asset pricing model.

• Department: Industrial Engineering and Operations Research
• TR 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Wenpin Tang
  h-index: 6 Info
• 3 points

Topics in Ottoman History, 1300 1800

The Ottomans ruled Southeast Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and Anatolia for nearly half a millennium. The objective of this seminar is to explore the rich and growing literature on the social, cultural, political, and economic history of this bygone empire, whose legacy still persists, in one way or another, in some twenty-five contemporary successor states from the Balkans to the Arabian Peninsula. The seminar is designed to contextualize the Ottoman experiences within the broader structures of global and regional histories during the late-medieval and early modern eras. Each week, we will focus on a particular theme, assess the current state of scholarship on the topic, and reflect upon a specific set of primary sources useful for the study of the issue. The themes we will explore include, but are not limited to, identities and mentalities, governance of the empire and its bureaucracy, the status of minorities and confessional politics, literacy and the use of the public sphere, legal culture and pluralism, the environment, and science and technology. Please be advised that this seminar will avoid the mere chronological narrative of Ottoman political and institutional history, which often recounts the transformation from the 'terror of Europe' to its 'Sick Man.' Throughout the course, we will emphasize the gradually evolving nature of the multi-layered, multi-ethnic, and multi-lingual Ottoman polity, society, and culture to challenge such essentialist and ahistorical assessments of past Ottoman experiences.

• Department: History
• W 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Tunc Sen
  Info
• 4 points

Race and Enslavement in the Middle East

Race Enslavement - Middle

This research seminar explores the nexus between race and enslavement in the Middle East and broader Indian Ocean world. This course will re-envision the contours of the Middle East as part of a larger geography that extends beyond Southwest Asia and North Africa, highlighting its deep ties to what is often called “Black Africa.” It also looks at Blackness within the Middle East and examines its long history of belonging, exchange, and migration. It investigates the kinds of knowledge production required to erase these ties and connections, and to produce a vaguely “brown” racial sphere that both homogenizes the Middle East and removes any references to Blackness from its history and societies. Throughout the course, we will probe the memories and legacies of enslavement across the Middle East and Indian Ocean world. How has enslavement and the lives of those enslaved

been remembered, defined, written about, and narrated in both academic and non-academic texts? What were the factors that enabled remembering or forgetting these pasts and the people’s lives they controlled? And how do these narratives relate to the questions of race? This course considers narratives and their afterlives from throughout North Africa, the Nile Valley, West Asia, and South Asia.

• Department: History
• W 10:10 a.m.-noon
• 4 points

ADVANCED PERSIAN I

While helping students advance their levels of oral and written expression, this course focuses on literature of the modern and medieval periods, with particular emphasis on the development of the modern novella and traditional and new forms of poetry. In addition to literature, students are introduced to a wide variety of genres from political and cultural essays and blogs to newspaper translations of the early 20th century. They will be further exposed to ta´rof in reference to a wide variety of socio-cultural contexts and be expected to use ta´rof in class conversations. Students will be exposed to popular artists and their works and satirical websites for insight into contemporary Iranian culture and politics. No P/D/F or R credit is allowed for this class.

• Department: Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies
• MW 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Saeed Honarmand
  Info
• 3 points

MORPHOGENESIS:BIOL MAT SHP/STR

Introduction to how shape and structure are generated in biological materials using engineering approach emphasizing application of fundamental physical concepts to a diverse set of problems. Mechanisms of pattern formation, self-assembly, and self-organization in biological materials, including intracellular structures, cells, tissues, and developing embryos. Structure, mechanical properties, and dynamic behavior of these materials. Discussion of experimental approaches and modeling. Course uses textbook materials as well as collection of research papers.

• Department: Mechanical Engineering
• R 1:10 p.m.-3:40 p.m.
• Instructor: Karen Kasza
  h-index: 17 Info
• 3 points

QUANTITATIVE POLITICL RESEARCH

PRINC OF QUANT POL RESEAR

This course examines the basic methods of data analysis and statistics, through multivariate regression analysis, that political scientists use in quantitative research that attempts to make causal inferences about how the political world works. The same methods apply to other kinds of problems about cause and effect relationships more generally. The course will provide students with extensive experience in analyzing data and in writing (and thus reading) research papers about testable theories and hypotheses.

• Department: Political Science
• TR 8:40 a.m.-9:55 a.m.
• Instructor: Robert Y Shapiro
  CULPA: 4 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

GLOBAL CAPITAL MARKETS

An introduction to capital markets and investments providing an overview of financial markets and tools for asset valuation. Topics covered include the pricing of fixed-income securities (treasury markets, interest rate swaps futures, etc.), discussions on topics in credit, foreign exchange, sovereign ad securitized markets—private equity and hedge funds, etc.

• Department: Industrial Engineering and Operations Research
• M 6 p.m.-8:30 p.m.
• Instructor: Siddhartha Ghosh Dastidar
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 3 points

PRINC OF QUANT POL RESEARCH 1-DISC

PRINC OF QUANT POL RES 1-

This is the required discussion section for 
POLS GU4710.

• Department: Political Science
• 0 points

PRINC OF QUANT POL RESEARCH 1-DISC

PRINC OF QUANT POL RES 1-

This is the required discussion section for 
POLS GU4710.

• Department: Political Science
• 0 points

ORIENTALISM/HIST OF OTHER

This course will examine some of the problems inherent in Western historical writing on non-European cultures, as well as broad questions of what itmeans to write history across cultures. The course will touch on therelationship between knowledge and power, given that much of the knowledge we will be considering was produced at a time of the expansion of Western power over the rest of the world. By comparing some of the others which European historians constructed in the different non-western societies they depicted, and the ways other societies dealt with alterity and self, we may be able to derive a better sense of how the Western sense of self was constructed. Group(s): C Field(s): ME

• Department: History
• R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Marwa Elshakry
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 4 points

RE-THINKING BIM

• Department: Architecture, Planning and Preservation
• M 11 a.m.-1 p.m.
• Instructor: Joseph A Brennan
  Info
• 3 points

Empirical Macroeconomics and Finance

Empirical Macroecon & Fin

This course develops empirical methods to investigate key questions in macroeconomics and finance, and discusses the existing empirical evidence on those questions. While models developed in macroeconomics and finance provide theoretical frameworks for understanding economic fluctuations, long-run growth, and policy interventions, empirical work is crucial for testing these models and informing policy decisions. The course will examine key macroeconomics/finance questions—such as the sources of short-run fluctuations, the determinants of long-run growth, or the role of financial markets in business cycles—through the lens of modern empirical techniques. We will put a special emphasis on implications for the design of economic policy. For instance, we will consider what the empirical evidence tells us on questions such as: can stimulus checks boost consumer spending? does monetary policy affect investment? should governments invest in R&D?  Special attention will be given to recent advances in identification strategies, including high-frequency event studies, differences-in-differences approaches, and instrumental variables tailored to macroeconomic settings. By integrating empirical evidence with theoretical insights, the course aims to equip students with the tools to critically assess macroeconomic policy and contribute to ongoing debates in the field.

• Department: Economics
• MW 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Noemie Pinardon-Touati
  Info
• 3 points

Machine Learning for Signals, Informatio

ML FOR SIG, INF

• Department: Electrical Engineering
• T 1:10 p.m.-3:40 p.m.
• Instructor: John W Paisley
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 3 points

QUANT METH 1 APPL REG CAUS INF

Fitting and understanding linear regression and generalized linear models, simulation, causal inference, and the basics of design of quantitative studies. Computation in R. Textbook: Regression and Other Stories by Gelman, Hill, and Vehtari.

• Department: Political Science
• MW 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Andrew Gelman
  CULPA: 6 Wikipedia h-index: 112 Info
• 4 points

Archaeology and Heritage in the Ottoman

Archaeology in Ottoman la

“Archaeology and Heritage in the Ottoman Lands” is an undergraduate/graduate seminar focusing on archaeology, museology, and the notion of heritage throughout the lands under Ottoman rule during the ‘long’ nineteenth century. The objective is to critically reassess the nature of Western antiquarian and archaeological endeavors, and to focus on the local dimension of the question to fill numerous gaps and inconsistencies in the ‘grand narrative’ of Near Eastern archaeology and heritage.

• Department: History
• W 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Edhem Eldem
  Info
• 4 points

QUANTITATIVE METHODS 1 DISCUSSION

QUANT METH 1 DISCUSSION

This is the required discussion section for 
POLS GU4720.

• Department: Political Science
• 0 points

QUANTITATIVE METHODS 1 DISCUSSION

QUANT METH 1 DISCUSSION

This is the required discussion section for 
POLS GU4720.

• Department: Political Science
• 0 points

Medieval Art, Craft, Science

This bridge seminar investigates the history of science through the study of artworks and monuments and the materials and techniques of their manufacture. Because the course’s method hinges on the marriage of theory and practice, in addition to discussions in the seminar room, several sessions will take the form of workshops with artisans and conservators (e.g. stonemasons, illuminators, gardeners), or “laboratory meetings” where students will conduct their own hands-on experiments with materials as part of Professor Pamela Smith’s
Making and Knowing
Project. Topics to be explored include but are not limited to: metallurgy and cosmogeny, paint pigments and pharmacology, microarchitecture and agriculture, masonry and geology, manuscripts and husbandry, and gynecology and Mariology. Discussion and lab experiments enhanced thanks to the service and experience of Naomi Rosenkranz, Associate Director, The Center for Science and Society, The Making and Knowing Project.

• Department: Art History and Archaeology
• M 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Gregory Bryda
  CULPA: 7 h-index: 1 Info
• 4 points

Renaissance Culture Religion and Society

Renaissance Cult. Rel. &

Close reading of Rabelais, Marguerite de Navarre, Montaigne and La Boétie, in the context of the Renaissance, the rise of the individual, the religious quarrels, the civil wars, the discovery of the New World, the progress of science.

• Department: French
• M 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Antoine M Compagnon
  CULPA: 3 Info
• 3 points

TOPICS IN QUANTATIVE FINANCE

FINANCIAL ENG. FOR ESG FINANCE

ESG (Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance) Finance is a rapidly growing area of Investment Management – and Finance more broadly – that has received a lot of attention in the past several years from the investor community, financial regulatory agencies, and the general public alike. This course provides an introduction to ESG Finance from a financial engineer’s perspective. This course also discusses proliferation of newly available data sources and the associated quantitative techniques necessary to process those. A major component of this course is a discussion of Climate Risk, an area of particular focus due to its increasing general importance. The course includes an overview of both recent research and the evolving regulatory landscape in the climate risk space. An in-depth discussion of financial impact assessment of various climate risk-driven scenarios (climate risk stress testing) concludes the course.

• Department: Industrial Engineering and Operations Research
• T 7:10 p.m.-9:40 p.m.
• Instructor: Cyril Shmatov
  Info
• 1.5 points

TOPICS IN QUANTATIVE FINANCE

TERM STRUCTURES& CREDIT MODELS

In this course, we will cover the basics of mathematical modeling of interest rates and credit derivatives. In the first part, we will cover basic interest rate derivatives, the Heath-Jarrow-Morton (HJM) 
framework, classic short rate models (for both interest rates and default intensities), and the numerical techniques used in practice for their calibration. In the second part, we will cover the basics 
of single-name derivatives modeling, and we will discuss pricing simple credit derivatives. We will also discuss correlation products and the most common techniques used for their pricing. In the third part, we will discuss some recent research papers addressing the use of adjoint algorithmic differentiation for the calculation of risk for interest rate and credit derivatives.

• Department: Industrial Engineering and Operations Research
• W 5:40 p.m.-8:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Luca Capriotti
  Info
• 3 points

QUANT METH 3 EXPERIMENTAL METH

In this course, we will discuss the logic of experimentation, its strengths and weaknesses compared to other methodologies, and the ways in which experimentation has been — and could be — used to investigate social phenomena. Students will learn how to interpret, design, and execute experiments. Special attention will be devoted to field experiments, or randomized trials conducted in real-world settings.
 

Prerequisites: Students should have taken at least one or two semesters of statistics. Some understanding of probability, hypothesis testing, and regression are assumed. Familiarity with statistical software such as R is helpful. We will be working with data in class throughout the term. The examples used in the textbook and lectures are written in R, and R tutorials will be taught in special sessions early in the term.

• Department: Political Science
• TR 5:40 p.m.-6:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Donald P Green
  CULPA: 2 h-index: 87 Info
• 4 points

Global Latin America

Within the Global North social-science mainstream, Latin America (like other parts of the Global South) has often been conceptualized as a region of analytical interest due to its complex
internal
dynamics (relating, for example, to recurring authoritarian rule, democratization, transitional justice, “modernization” and economic development, and social mobilization). Yet until recently, these have infrequently been conceptualized as
global
processes in which Latin America plays a substantive role. To be sure, various
external
forces—namely, colonialism, imperialism, interventionism, and their legacies—are of course widely understood to have shaped Latin American in myriad ways. However, the notions that Latin America exercises agency (or at least matters) in world affairs, is more than a generally passive recipient of global flows, and is meaningfully connected to other regions (including through migratory, political, economic, and cultural linkages), have only recently begun to resonate within the Northern academy.   

In contrast to the “methodological nationalism” (or “regionalism”) that has long characterized outside analysis of Latin America, this course foregrounds the region’s global embeddedness and world-making potential—as a protagonist in the generation, adaptation, and diffusion of diverse border-crossing flows, frameworks, and imaginaries. These include: global discourses concerning modernity, postmodernity, liberalism, and postcolonialism; global understandings of race, class, gender, and the intersections between them; global policy frameworks related to human rights, democracy, and economic development; historical and contemporary globalizing relations with distant parts of the world, including the Middle East and Asia; and global alternatives to a world order based on exclusion, extractivism, and environmental degradation.     

Throughout, we will highlight the agency of state and non-state actors throughout “Latin America”—itself a homogenizing, Eurocentric label imposed from the outside—as constitutive forces in creating the world that we all inhabit, contributing to the problems that confront us, and helping to generate solutions. To do so, we will engage with a series of texts and materials produced by diversely situated interdisciplinary scholars, writers, artists, and political figures—many of them based in Latin America, an

• Department: Committee on Global Thought
• R 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Kevin Funk
  h-index: 6 Info
• 4 points

QUANTITATIVE METHODS 3: DISCUSSION

QUANT METH 3-DISC

This is the required discussion section for 
POLS GU4724.

• Department: Political Science
• 0 points

QUANTITATIVE METHODS 3: DISCUSSION

QUANT METH 3-DISC

This is the required discussion section for 
POLS GU4724.

• Department: Political Science
• 0 points

TOPICS IN QUANTITATIVE FINANCE

ALTERNATIVE INVESTMENTS

The search for better performance has led investors to explore Alternative Investments that are outside the traditional categories of exchange traded equities, Treasury Bonds, and other
investment-grade fixed income products. The field of Alternative Investments covers a wide range of products such as convertible bonds, Preferred Shares, Hedge Funds, Venture Capital, and
Cryptocurrencies. There is a growing need in the market for students with knowledge of these products and the practical and theoretical know how of valuing and risk managing these investments given that each product has it own nuances and anomalies. This course presents and studies some major Alternative Investment products and ways to evaluate and risk manage them.

• Department: Industrial Engineering and Operations Research
• R 1:10 p.m.-3:40 p.m.
• Instructor: Khosrow Dehnad
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 1.5 points

Machine Learning & AI for the Social Sci

Machine Learning & AI Soc

In the first half of the course, students will learn a variety of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) models, ranging from regularized regression to random forest, deep learning, and foundation models. In the second half, students will learn how to use such ML and AI methods for the social sciences, e.g., how to use LLMs for text analyses, and how to use flexible ML models for causal inference. Students will collaborate to present discussion papers throughout the semester. The main goal of this course is to help students write a final paper that applies advanced ML and AI methods to social science questions. This course builds on the materials covered in POLS 4700, 4720, 4722, or their equivalent courses (i.e., probability, statistics, linear regression, logistic regression, causal inference with observational and experimental data, and knowledge of statistical computing environment R).

• Department: Political Science
• TR 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Naoki Egami
  h-index: 8 Info
• 4 points

Machine Learning & AI for Social Science

Mach Lrng & AI for Soc Sc

Discussion section for POLS GU4728

• Department: Political Science
• 0 points

Machine Learning & AI for Social Science

Mach Lrng & AI for Soc Sc

Discussion section for POLS GU4728

• Department: Political Science
• 0-1 points

Computer Vision I: First Principles

Introductory course in computer vision. Topics include image formation and optics, image sensing, binary images, image processing and filtering, edge extraction and boundary detection, region growing and segmentation, pattern classification methods, brightness and reflectance, shape from shading and photometric stereo, texture, binocular stereo, optical flow and motion, 2D and 3D object representation, object recognition, vision systems and applications.

• Department: Computer Science
• MW 5:40 p.m.-6:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Austin D Reiter
  Info
• 3 points

RESEARCH TOPICS IN GAME THEORY

Prerequisites: POLS W4730 or the instructors permission. Advanced topics in game theory will cover the study of repeated games, games of incomplete information and principal-agent models with applications in the fields of voting, bargaining, lobbying and violent conflict. Results from the study of social choice theory, mechanism design and auction theory will also be treated. The course will concentrate on mathematical techniques for constructing and solving games. Students will be required to develop a topic relating political science and game theory and to write a formal research paper.

• Department: Political Science
• TR 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Carlo Prato
  h-index: 11 Info
• 4 points

COMPUTATIONAL ASPECTS OF ROBOTICS

COMPUTATNL ASPECTS OF ROB

Introduction to fundamental problems and algorithms in robotics. Topics include configuration spaces, motion and sensor models, search and sampling-based planning, state estimation, localization and mapping, perception, and learning.

• Department: Computer Science
• MW 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Yunzhu Li
  Info
• 3 points

TOPICS GAME THEORY - DISC

• Department: Political Science
• 0 points

FOR EXCH/RELATD DERIVATVS INST

Foreign exchange market and its related derivative instruments—the latter being forward contracts, futures, options, and exotic options. What is unusual about foreign exchange is that although it can rightfully claim to be the largest of all financial markets, it remains an area where very few have any meaningful experience. Virtually everyone has traded stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. Comparatively few individuals have ever traded foreign exchange. In part that is because foreign exchange is an interbank market. Ironically the foreign exchange markets may be the best place to trade derivatives and to invent new derivatives—given the massive two-way flow of trading that goes through bank dealing rooms virtually 24 hours a day. And most of that is transacted at razor-thin margins, at least comparatively speaking, a fact that makes the foreign exchange market an ideal platform for derivatives. The emphasis is on familiarizing the student with the nature of the foreign exchange market and those factors that make it special among financial markets, enabling the student to gain a deeper understanding of the related market for derivatives on foreign exchange.

• Department: Industrial Engineering and Operations Research
• R 4:10 p.m.-6:40 p.m.
• Instructor: David Derosa
  CULPA: 4 h-index: 9 Info
• 1.5 points

STRUCTURED&HYBRID PRODUCTS

Prerequisite(s): IEOR E4700. Conceptual and practical understanding of structured and hybrid products from the standpoint of relevant risk factors, design goals and characteristics, pricing, hedging, and risk management. Detailed analysis of the underlying cash-flows, embedded derivative instruments, and various structural features of these transactions, both from the investor and issuer perspectives, and analysis of the impact of the prevailing market conditions and parameters on their pricing and risk characteristics. Numerical methods for valuing and managing risk of structured/hybrid products and their embedded derivatives and their application to equity, interest rates, commodities and currencies, inflation, and credit-related products. Conceptual and mathematical principles underlying these techniques, and practical issues that arise in their implementations in the Microsoft Excel/VBA and other programming environments. Special contractual provisions encountered in structured and hybrid transactions, and incorporation of yield curves, volatility smile, and other features of the underlying processes into pricing and implementation framework for these products.

• Department: Industrial Engineering and Operations Research
• R 7:10 p.m.-9:40 p.m.
• Instructor: Alireza Javaheri
  Info
• 3 points

Ottoman Westernization and Orientalism i

“Ottoman Westernization and Orientalism in the Long 19th Century” is an undergraduate/graduate seminar focusing on the intricate relationship between Westernization and Orientalism in the context of the Ottoman Empire. Based on the assumption that these two concepts cannot be dissociated from one another, it sets out to explore Western/Orientalist perceptions of the empire, Ottoman efforts to Westernize, the emergence of Ottoman Orientalism, and other local reactions such as Occidentalism and anti-Westernism.

• Department: History
• W 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Edhem Eldem
  Info
• 4 points

Programming for Financial Engineering

Covers C++ programming language, applications, and features for financial engineering, and quantitative finance applications. Note: restricted to IEOR MS FE students only.

• Department: Industrial Engineering and Operations Research
• W 7:10 p.m.-9:40 p.m.
• Instructor: Sebastien Donadio
  Info
• 3 points

Deep Learning for OR and FE

Selected topics of interest in area of quantitative finance. Some topics include energy derivatives, experimental finance, foreign exchange and related derivative instruments, inflation derivatives, hedge fund management, modeling equity derivatives in Java, mortgage-backed securities, numerical solutions of partial differential equations, quantitative portfolio management, risk management, trade and technology in financial markets. Note: open to IEOR students only.

• Department: Industrial Engineering and Operations Research
• S 9 a.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Ali Hirsa
  h-index: 8 Info
• 3 points

Applied Financial Risk Management

Applied Financial Risk Mg

Introduces risk management principles, practical implementation and applications, standard market, liquidity, and credit risk measurement techniques, and their drawbacks and limitations. Note: restricted to IEOR students only.

• Department: Industrial Engineering and Operations Research
• TR 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Allan M Malz
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 3 points

Heterogeneous Computing for Signal and D

HETEROGENEOUS COMPUTING

Methods for deploying signal and data processing algorithms on contemporary general purpose graphics processing units (GPGPUs) and heterogeneous computing infrastructures. Using programming languages such as OpenCL and CUDA for computational speedup in audio, image and video processing and computational data analysis. Significant design project.

• Department: Electrical Engineering
• R 1:10 p.m.-3:40 p.m.
• Instructor: Zoran Kostic
  CULPA: 1 h-index: 24 Info
• 3 points

Art and Archaeology of Immigrants in Chi

ArtOf Immigrants in China

This seminar examines the art and archaeology of immigrants and immigrant communities in pre-modern China. Since the beginning of China’s dynastic history around the first millennium BCE, people from surrounding regions and even further afield have consistently moved into the Chinese heartland. These groups include not only nomads from the Mongolian steppes and the Tibetan Plateau, but also merchants, missionaries, and Muslims arriving via the so-called “Silk Roads”—a network of land and sea routes connecting China to the rest of the Eurasian continent (India, Persia, Central Asia, etc.). In certain periods, descendants of the Chinese diaspora and refugees in frontier regions also played significant roles in Chinese history. This seminar focuses on the archaeological remains and artistic expressions of these immigrants, as well as their interactions with native Chinese art and culture. Topics covered range from painting, sculpture, and calligraphy to crafts and architecture.

• Department: Art History and Archaeology
• W 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Jin Xu
  Info
• 4 points

Machine Learning for Functional Genomics

ML for Functional Genomic

This course will introduce modern probabilistic machine learning methods using applications in data analysis tasks from functional genomics, where massively-parallel sequencing is used  to measure the state of cells: e.g. what genes are being expressed, what regions of DNA (“chromatin”) are active (“open”) or bound by specific proteins.

• Department: Computer Science
• F 1:10 p.m.-3:40 p.m.
• Instructor: David A Knowles
  h-index: 35 Info
• 3 points

Feminist, Social and Political Philosoph

Fem, Soc & Pol Phil of La

This course explores different ways in which social and political settings affect our language – what we can do with our words and what our words mean – as well as ways in which our language affects our social and political setting – the effects of people saying things, or saying things using certain words, or words with specific meanings.  Topics and texts may vary with instructor and semester.

• Department: Philosophy @Barnard
• W 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Karen Lewis
  CULPA: 12 h-index: 7 Info
• 3 points

Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT)

IoT - INTELLIG & CONNECTED SYS

Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT), Internet of Things (IoT), and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). Embedded and mobile platforms. Embedded programming. Sensors, actuators, and interfaces. Wireless networking, web services, and databases. Edge and cloud computing. Large language models (LLMs) for AIoT. Time-series data visualization and analytics. Group projects to build end-to-end AIoT systems and applications.

• Department: Electrical Engineering
• MW 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Xiaofan Jiang
  h-index: 24 Info
• 3 points

MACHINE LEARNING

Topics from generative and discriminative machine learning including least squares methods, support vector machines, kernel methods, neural networks, Gaussian distributions, linear classification, linear regression, maximum likelihood, exponential family distributions, Bayesian networks, Bayesian inference, mixture models, the EM algorithm, graphical models and hidden Markov models. Algorithms implemented in MATLAB.

• Department: Computer Science
• TR 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• TR 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Daniel Hsu
  CULPA: 6 h-index: 44 Info
• 3 points

Unsupervised Learning

Core topics from unsupervised learning such as clustering, dimensionality reduction and density estimation will be studied in detail. Topics in clustering: k-means clustering, hierarchical clustering, spectral clustering, clustering with various forms of feedback, good initialization techniques and convergence analysis of various clustering procedures. Topics in dimensionality reduction: linear techniques such as PCA, ICA, Factor Analysis, Random Projections, non-linear techniques such as LLE, IsoMap, Laplacian Eigenmaps, tSNE, and study of embeddings of general metric spaces, what sorts of theoretical guarantees can one provide about such techniques. Miscellaneous topics: design and analysis of datastructures for fast Nearest Neighbor search such as Cover Trees and LSH. Algorithms will be implemented in either Matlab or Python.

• Department: Computer Science
• TR 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Nakul Verma
  CULPA: 10 h-index: 16 Info
• 3 points

Causal Inference

Causal Inference theory and applications. The theoretical topics include the 3-layer causal hierarchy,  causal bayesian networks, structural learning, the identification problem and the do-calculus, linear identifiability, bounding, and counterfactual analysis. The applied part includes intersection with statistics, the empirical-data sciences (social and health), and AI and ML.

• Department: Computer Science
• MW 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Elias Bareinboim
  h-index: 25 Info
• 3 points

Neural Networks & Deep Learning

NEURAL NETWORKS DEEP LEAR

Foundational concepts, methods, applications, and recent advances in neural network algorithms.

• Department: Computer Science
• TR 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Richard Zemel
  Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

META TOOL I

• Department: Architecture, Planning and Preservation
• W 7 p.m.-9 p.m.
• Instructor: Daniel Taeyoung Lee
  Info
• 3 points

Financial Engineering Practitioners Semi

FE Seminar Series

Degree requirement for all MSFE first-year students. Topics in Financial Engineering. Past seminar topics include Evolving Financial Intermediation, Measuring and Using Trading Algorithms Effectively, Path-Dependent Volatility, Artificial Intelligence and Data Science in modern financial decision making, Risk-Based Performance Attribution, and Financial Machine Learning. Meets select Monday evenings.

• Department: Industrial Engineering and Operations Research
• M 7 p.m.-9 p.m.
• Instructor: Ali Hirsa
  h-index: 8 Info
• 0 points

PROTEIN ENGINEERING

• Department: Chemical Engineering
• TR 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Scott Banta
  CULPA: 1 h-index: 36 Info
• 3 points

DATA SCIENCE CAPSTONE&ETHICS

• Department: Engineering
• M 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• 3 points

DATA SCIENCE CAPSTONE&ETHICS

• Department: Engineering
• M 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• 3 points

DATA SCIENCE CAPSTONE&ETHICS

• Department: Engineering
• M 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• 3 points

PROF SKILLS FOR NEUROSCIENTISTS

• Department: Neurobiology and Behavior
• T 4 p.m.-5:30 p.m.
• 1 points

MATH LOGIC II

• Department: Philosophy
• TR 6:10 p.m.-7:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Justin Clarke-Doane
  h-index: 10 Info
• 3 points

DIGITAL SIGNAL PROCESSING

Digital filtering in time and frequency domain, including properties of discrete-time signals and systems, sampling theory, transform analysis, system structures, IIR and FIR filter design techniques, the discrete Fourier transform, fast Fourier transforms.

• Department: Electrical Engineering
• M 4:10 p.m.-6:40 p.m.
• Instructor: John Wright
  CULPA: 1 h-index: 44 Info
• 3 points

ADVANCED SANSKRIT I

This course constitutes the first half of a year-long advanced reading course in Classical Sanskrit. In 2021-2022, the focus of Advanced Sanskrit will be the genres of literary theory (alaṅkāraśāstra) and belles-lettres (kāvya). Lending equal attention to literary theory and literary practice, this course will introduce students to iconic works of Sanskrit literature along with the interpretive frameworks whereby they were analyzed, relished, and appraised. Literary excerpts may be drawn from an array of subgenres, including courtly epic (mahākāvya), epic drama (nāṭaka), literary prose (gadya), and individual verses (muktaka). Rigorous analysis of primary texts will be supplemented by occasional discussions about what implications the disciplined reading of kāvya may hold for practices such as translation, comparative literature, and transdisciplinarity. Prerequisites: Intermediate Sanskrit II or instructor’s permission.

• Department: Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies
• TR 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Jonathan Peterson
  Info
• 4 points

Sound: Foundations

SOUND: FOUNDATIONS

This foundational course in sounding media will begin by exploring how listening happens as well the tools necessary to capture and present that listening. Through hands-on experimentation and demonstration, this seminar will examine both the technical and semiotic use of sound as a material within creative practice.  Fundamental acoustic and electronic principles, studio techniques, and the building blocks of analog and digital processes for the creation of sound will be explored creatively and critically. Through hands-on projects that implement these ideas we will examine critical terms through praxis.  We will study theories of sound and listening that determine or are determined by technology, from the physical and social dimensions of the sounds we use to create, language (sound as a symbol or object), acoustics (sound in space), acousmatics (sound without a visual reference), and psycho-acoustics (sound as cognitive process). This class assumes no prior knowledge or technical skill. Readings will be assigned and we will look and listen to a lot of work, all of which will generate material to engage actively in discussions.

• Department: Music
• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Seth Cluett
  h-index: 4 Info
• 3 points

Aerospace Human Factors Engineering

Engineering fundamentals and experimental methods of human factors design and evaluation for spacecraft which incorporate human-in-the-loop control. Develop understanding of human factors specific to spacecraft design with human-in-the-loop control. Design of human factors experiments utilizing task analysis and user testing with quantitative evaluation metrics to develop a sate and high-performing operational space system. Human-centered design, functional allocation and automation, human sensory performance in the space environment, task analysis, human factors experimental methods and statistics, space vehicle displays and controls, situation awareness, workload, usability, manual piloting and handling qualities, human error analysis and prevention, and anthropometrics.

• Department: Mechanical Engineering
• F 1:10 p.m.-3:40 p.m.
• Instructor: Michael J Massimino
  Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

GLOBAL ENERGY: SECURITY/GEOPOL

The course focuses on the nexus between energy and security as it reveals in the policies and interaction of leading energy producers and consumers. Topics include: Hydrocarbons and search for stability and security in the Persian Gulf, Caspian basin, Eurasia, Africa and Latin America; Russia as a global energy player; Analysis of the impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on energy markets, global security, and the future of the energy transition; Role of natural gas in the world energy balance and European energy security; Transformation of the global energy governance structure; Role and evolution of the OPEC; Introduction into energy economics; Dynamics and fundamentals of the global energy markets; IOCs vs NOCs; Resource nationalism, cartels, sanctions and embargoes; Asia's growing energy needs and its geo-economic and strategic implications; Nuclear energy and challenges to non-proliferation regime; Alternative and renewable sources of energy; Climate change as one of the central challenges of the 21st century; Analysis of the policies, technologies, financial systems and markets needed to achieve climate goals. Climate change and attempts of environmental regulation; Decarbonization trends, international carbon regimes and search for optimal models of sustainable development. Special focus on implications of the shale revolution and technological innovations on U.S. energy security.

• Department: Political Science
• MW 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Albert Bininachvili
  CULPA: 6 Info
• 3 points

ADVANCED LOGIC DESIGN

An introduction to modern digital system design. Advanced topics in digital logic: controller synthesis (Mealy and Moore machines); adders and multipliers; structured logic blocks (PLDs, PALs, ROMs); iterative circuits. Modern design methodology: register transfer level modelling (RTL); algorithmic state machines (ASMs); introduction to hardware description languages (VHDL or Verilog); system-level modelling and simulation; design examples.

• Department: Electrical Engineering
• TR 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Mingoo Seok
  h-index: 31 Info
• 3 points

COMPUTER ARCHITECTURE

Focuses on advanced topics in computer architecture, illustrated by case studies from classic and modern processors. Fundamentals of quantitative analysis. Pipelining. Memory hierarchy design. Instruction-level and thread-level parallelism. Data-level parallelism and graphics processing units. Multiprocessors. Cache coherence. Interconnection networks. Multi-core processors and systems-on-chip. Platform architectures for embedded, mobile, and cloud computing.

• Department: Computer Science
• MW 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Simha Sethumadhavan
  CULPA: 8 Info
• 3 points

Indo-Islamic Culture in Literature

This course will focus on the Indo-Islamic literary traditions in South Asia, and particularly in what is now India and Pakistan, focusing on Urdu literature from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The course will emphasize the rhetorical and performative history of poetic forms in the subcontinent (including the forms of the
Ghazal
and
Nauha
, among others) and will consider how classical poetic tropes continue to inform contemporary mass culture in India and Pakistan—particularly in the song lyrics of Hindi/Bollywood cinema. The course will also consider more contemporary prose genres of Urdu-language writing (in English translation), including the literature of the Partition and the works of contemporary authors such as Naiyer Masud and Saima Iram.

Through a comparative study of texts in different genres and at different moments in history, students will consider questions such as: What aspects of contemporary literary culture in India and Pakistan can be traced to early establishment of Islamic culture in the region? How have the poetic conventions of Indo-Islamic poetry continued to resonate? How did the interaction of Hindu and Muslim literary, musical, visual, and religious cultures in the Mughal era help to generate the rich profusion of literature and music and cultural tolerance in this period?

Most of our readings in this course will Urdu literature in English translation. We will also, however, read some secondary sources in order to help us better understand the primary sources.

• Department: Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies
• R 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Timsal Masud
  Info
• 4 points

WETLANDS & CLIMATE CHANGE

Prerequisites: introductory biology or chemistry, or the instructors permission. Analysis of modern wetland dynamics and the important ecological, biogeochemical, and hydrological functions taking place in marshes, bogs, fens, and swamps, with a field emphasis. Wetlands as fossil repositories, the paleoenvironmental history they provide, and their role in the carbon cycle. Current wetland destruction, remediation attempts, and valuation. Laboratory analysis and field trips.

• Department: Earth and Environmental Sciences
• TR 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Dorothy Peteet
  h-index: 38 Info
• 3 points

The Industrial Novel

This seminar offers intensive study of “the industrial novel,” a body of mid-Victorian fiction responding to the economic volatility and class conflict that accompanied the rise of industrial production.  In little more than a decade, treatments of this broad concern by a number of major novelists converged in a set of distinctive formal strategies, yet the relatively brief prominence of the form underscores an unusually direct connection with contemporary political anxieties.  The industrial novel presses against the increasingly domestic preoccupations of mid-Victorian fiction, so familiar in “the marriage plot,” but it thereby throws those preoccupations into sharp relief, and more broadly illuminates the construction of Victorian domesticity.   We’ll be especially interested in the intersections of gender and class, the interplay of socio-economic history and narrative form, and the political dimensions of the mid-Victorian novel.  Finally, the topic poses large questions about genre and literary history: does “the industrial novel” denote a genre, and why apply that tag to works that rarely depict industrial labor?   Why not the “social problem” novel, the “domestic novel in Northern dress,” or even “the novel of insurrection”?  Major authors include Disraeli, Gaskell, Charlotte Bronte, Kingsley, Dickens, and George Eliot; we’ll also gather in some of the political economy of John Stuart Mill and Marx, as well as the social commentary of Carlyle and Engels.

• Department: English and Comparative Literature
• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: James E Adams
  CULPA: 12 Info
• 4 points

Machine Intelligence

This seminar will survey historical and modern developments in machine intelligence from fields such as psychology, neuroscience, and computer science, and from approaches such as cybernetics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics, connectionism, neural networks, and deep learning. The emphasis is on the conceptual understanding of topics. The course does not include, nor require a background in, computer programming and statistics. The overall goal is for students to become informed consumers of applications of artificial intelligence.

• Department: Psychology
• T 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Trenton Jerde
  h-index: 11 Info
• 4 points

CHINA AND POLITICS OF DESIRE

A recent American newspaper headline announced that China has become “the most materialistic country the world.” Globally circulating narratives often interpret Chinese consumers’ demand for commodities as an attempt to fill a void left by the absence of the Maoist state, traditional religious life, and Western-style democracy. But things aren’t as simple as they appear. This course explores the intertwined questions of “Chinese” desire and the desire for China. Avoiding reductionist understandings of desire as either a universal natural human attribute or a particular Chinese cultural trait, we will track the production and management of desire within a complex global field. Drawing on ethnographies, films, short stories, and psychoanalytic and postcolonial theory, this course will explore the shifting figure of desire across the Maoist and post-Maoist eras by examining how academics, government officials, intellectuals, and artists have represented Chinese needs, wants and fantasies. From state leaders’ attempts to improve the “quality” of the country’s population to citizens’ dreams of home ownership, from sexualized desire to hunger for food, drugs and other commodities, we will attend to the continuities and disjunctures of recent Chinese history by tracking how desire in China has been conceptualized and refracted through local and global encounters.

• Department: Asian and Middle East @Barnard
• W 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Nicholas A Bartlett
  CULPA: 5 Info
• 4 points

BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS

Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 Within economics, the standard model of behavior is that of a perfectly rational, self interested utility maximizer with unlimited cognitive resources. In many cases, this provides a good approximation to the types of behavior that economists are interested in. However, over the past 30 years, experimental and behavioral economists have documented ways in which the standard model is not just wrong, but is wrong in ways that are important for economic outcomes. Understanding these behaviors, and their implications, is one of the most exciting areas of current economic inquiry. The aim of this course is to provide a grounding in the main areas of study within behavioral economics, including temptation and self control, fairness and reciprocity, reference dependence, bounded rationality and choice under risk and uncertainty. For each area we will study three things: 1. The evidence that indicates that the standard economic model is missing some important behavior 2. The models that have been developed to capture these behaviors 3. Applications of these models to (for example) finance, labor and development economics As well as the standard lectures, homework assignments, exams and so on, you will be asked to participate in economic experiments, the data from which will be used to illustrate some of the principals in the course. There will also be a certain small degree of classroom ‘flipping’, with a portion of many lectures given over to group problem solving. Finally, an integral part of the course will be a research proposal that you must complete by the end of the course, outlining a novel piece of research that you would be interested in doing.

• Department: Economics
• MW 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Mark Dean
  CULPA: 2 h-index: 26 Info
• 3 points

GENERATIVE DESIGN

• Department: Architecture, Planning and Preservation
• T 9 a.m.-11 a.m.
• Instructor: Danil Nagy
  Info
• 3 points

NMR BIOSOFTENG

This course is for junior/senior undergraduates and graduate (MS) students. The course focuses on the fundamentals of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and imaging in fields ranging from biomedical engineering to electrochemical energy storage. Course material covers basic NMR theory, instrumentation (including in situ/operando setup), data interpretation, and experimental design to couple with other materials characterization strategies. Course grade based on problem sets, quizzes, and final project presentation.

• Department: Chemical Engineering
• MW 5:40 p.m.-6:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Lauren E Marbella
  Info
• 3 points

SOC OF CHOSON KOREA 1392-1910

Major cultural, political, social, economic and literary issues in the history of this 500-year long period. Reading and discussion of primary texts (in translation) and major scholarly works. All readings will be in English.

• Department: East Asian Languages and Cultures
• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Jungwon Kim
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 4 points

INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY

This course explores key frameworks and issue areas within international political economy. It examines the history and key characteristics of (economic) globalization, the theories of international cooperation, as well as the nature and role of international organizations (such as the World Trade Organization) in fostering trade and international economic cooperation. Furthermore, the course discusses the pros and cons of globalization and its implications on domestic policies of nation-states, with a particular focus on the tensions globalization creates and the lines of cleavages between winners and losers from globalization. Finally, the course reflects on the future of globalization and international trade and the challenges faced by national and supranational policy makers.

• Department: Political Science
• TR 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Davit Sahakyan
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 4 points

MODERNISM + THE VERNACULAR

• Department: Architecture, Planning and Preservation
• T 11 a.m.-1 p.m.
• Instructor: Mary C McLeod
  Info
• 3 points

SYSTEM-ON-CHIP PLATFORMS

Design and programming of System-on-Chip (SoC) platforms. Topics include: overview of technology and economic trends, methodologies and supporting CAD tools for system-level design, models of computation, the SystemC language, transaction-level modeling, software simulation and virtual platforms, hardware-software partitioning, high-level synthesis, system programming and device drivers, on-chip communication, memory organization, power management and optimization, integration of programmable processor cores and specialized accelerators. Case studies of modern SoC platforms for various classes of applications.

• Department: Computer Science
• TR 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Luca Carloni
  CULPA: 2 Wikipedia h-index: 45 Info
• 3 points

JAPAN BEFORE 1600

Spend a semester in Ancient Japan!  This tour of premodern places and spaces introduces the history of the Japanese archipelago, from the Stone Age to the 16th century C.E., through various primary source materials in translation, including archaeological sites, literary works, and the anime Princess Mononoke.  No prior knowledge of Japanese history required, and all course readings are in English.

• Department: East Asian Languages and Cultures
• R 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: David B Lurie
  CULPA: 17 Info
• 4 points

CONSTRUCTION ECOLOGIES

• Department: Architecture, Planning and Preservation
• W 11 a.m.-1 p.m.
• Instructor: Thomas Schaperkotter
  Info
• 3 points