Peqod :: Classes - Columbia University Catalog of Classes

From its relative appearance in American homes (ca. 1950 - 1955) through the first decade of the 21st century television has remained (arguably) the most culturally, socially and politically determinative technology in American life. The exchanges that occur between the content of American television and its ever-broadening audience really shaped perspective on the American character and American values across fifty years. Indeed, it’s difficult to imagine that the cultures of consensus and conformity that shaped the 1950s were in fact attainable in the absence of television. But, and at the same time, we must admire the creativity of shows like
Donna Reed
or
Wagon Train
that made certain that subtilty insured the advocacy for a more democratic America.

We begin with brief attention to the most immediate creative influences on early television: vaudeville, and radio. Across the semester we will then consider the evolution of the various technologies that shaped and reshaped the American experience of television. While our focus remains on creative content, we must also note the moments where television afforded new experiences of collective sympathy (JFK and MLK assassinations, the Vietnam War etc.) as well as collective failure (The Pentagon Papers, Iran Contra, Rodney King) and triumph (Civil Rights Movement across the American South, the moon landing etc.). We will also, of course, consider the full implications of television “events” that afforded news kinds national debate concerning the very soul of America: Roots, the final episode of M*A*S*H*, and The Day After)

Finally, we will conclude with discussion of HBO and the formative impress of unprecedented creative achievement: The Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood, Mad Men; and, we must consider that during the early years of the 21st century these serial dramas represent a particular (and unprecedented) manifestation of American art and artistry.

Department: Film
R 6:10 p.m.-8:40 p.m.
Instructor: Ben Alexander
Info
3 points

Details

FILM GU4955

Fossil Power: history of global climate

Hist - global climate pol

Department: History
M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
Instructor: Adam Tooze
CULPA: 3 Wikipedia Info
4 points

Details

HIST GU4955

THE ASIAN AMERICAN NOVEL

What does it mean to write an Asian American novel? In this seminar, we will explore this question by examining a range of novels written by Asian American authors. I use the term “Asian American” to underscore its political importance as an identity and community formation that consolidated in the late 1960s. These novels we will read were published from the early twentieth century to as recently as earlier this calendar year. Some are bestsellers, prize winners, or have been deemed as pivotal to the development of Asian American literature and its history. Others are not. Some are well known authors; others are newer or emergent writers. Some feature characters who are Asian or Asian American. Others explicitly questions our assumptions and expectations regarding literary and cultural representations of Asians and Asian Americans. Across their work, these authors are nevertheless held together in part by their engagement with transnational relations in Asia and North America, including U.S. expansion across to the Pacific, migration and immigration legislation, labor exclusions and political resistance, and the changing dynamics of the United States in the wake of a so-called global Asian century.

A guiding principle will inform our work: Asian American writers have long been interested in theorizing the novel as an artistic, literary, and political form. While the content of these novels will of course be important, we will also examine how Asian American writers have explicitly experimented with the
form
of the novel as a genre, including romance,
bildungsroman
, hybrid creative nonfiction, speculative fiction, postmodern palimpsest, YA novel, apocalyptic dystopia. To guide us in this goal, we will read scholars who have theorized the novel as a genre, we’ll also situate this work alongside the substantial history of Asian American literary scholarship on the novel.

Department: English and Comparative Literature
F 10:10 a.m.-noon
Instructor: Denise Cruz
CULPA: 8 h-index: 6 Info
4 points

Details

ENGL GU4956

Making and Knowing in Early Modern Europ

Making&Knowing: Hands-On

Department: History
W 10:10 a.m.-noon
Instructor: Pamela Smith
CULPA: 4 Info
4 points

Details

HIST GU4962

Gender-Based Violence & Human Rights

GENDER-BASED VIOL & HUM R

Department: Institute for Study of Human Rights
W 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
Instructor: Julie Rajan
Info
3 points

Details

HRTS GU4965

Refugees, Citizenship, Migration

Refugees Citizenship Migr

This interdisciplinary course grapples with nation-states and cities at its margins, exploring the exclusions, oppositions, silences and, in particular, the 'Others' or 'in-betweens' of the nation-state as an organizing tool. ‘Illegal migrants’, ‘refugees’, ‘asylum seekers’, ‘exiles’, ‘nomads’, ‘aliens’, and other ‘Others’: these are all in-between figures, exceptions to a political order defined by membership in the city, borders, sovereignty and nation-states. In their very existence, they represent a challenge to this political order, as social and political theorists have long recognized. This seminar explores the dynamics, contradictions and politics surrounding nation-states and their Others with particular attention to the responses to them on the part of ostensibly liberal-democratic states. We examine the relationship between citizenship, statelessness, refugee-hood and migration as exceptions to a political order defined by membership in the city, borders, sovereignty and nation-states. Students will engage with film, fiction, visual animations and displacement maps to examine key theoretical and critical interventions by scholars who examine nation-states and cities at their margins. To this end, participants will examine key theoretical interventions by Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Giorgio Agamben alongside scholars who have grappled with, contested, and developed their ideas, such as Étienne Balibar, Didier Bigo, Jacques Rancière, and Seyla Benhabib. With these texts, the participants will attempt to explore non-national or post-national alternatives to the nation-state and citizenship as a tool for planning and organization of people and space.

Taken together, this course provides an alternative to conventional scholarship on this subject. It engages with and provides an alternative to the mainstream literature to take for granted the inclusive and integrative character of nation-states and its respective memberships in the form of refugees, citizens and migrants.
At first glance, the course may appear highly theoretical, but not to worry—we will move slowly through the texts and concepts together. The instructor will also ensure that we apply the ideas discussed in class to concrete and tangible case studies with examples given to enable easier access and collective learning.

Department: Institute for Study of Human Rights
M 10:10 a.m.-noon
Instructor: Shourideh Molavi
Info
3 points

Details

HRTS GU4970