UNDERGRAD RESEARCH OR PROJECT

Independent work involving experiments, computer programming, analytical investigation, or engineering design.

• Department: Industrial Engineering and Operations Research
• Instructor: Lily Xu
  Info
• Instructor: David D Yao
  CULPA: 5 Info
• Instructor: Yi Zhang
  CULPA: 2 Info
• Instructor: Xunyu Zhou
  h-index: 54 Info
• Instructor: Kelly Katsigris
  Info
• 1-3 points

SUPERVISED INDIVIDUAL RESEARCH

Prerequisites: Permission of the departmental representative required. For specially selected students, the opportunity to do a research problem in contemporary physics under the supervision of a faculty member. Each year several juniors are chosen in the spring to carry out such a project beginning in the autumn term. A detailed report on the research is presented by the student when the project is complete.

• Department: Physics
• Instructor: Jeremy R Dodd
  CULPA: 25 Info
• 1-5 points

SUPERVISED INDIVIDUAL RESEARCH

Prerequisites: Permission of the departmental representative required. For specially selected students, the opportunity to do a research problem in contemporary physics under the supervision of a faculty member. Each year several juniors are chosen in the spring to carry out such a project beginning in the autumn term. A detailed report on the research is presented by the student when the project is complete.

• Department: Physics and Astronomy @Barnard
• Instructor: Timothy J Halpin-Healy
  CULPA: 6 Info
• 1-5 points

SENIOR THESIS I

Department approval required. See requirements for a major in visual arts. VIAR UN3900 is the prerequisite for VIAR UN3901. Corequisites: VIAR UN3910 (Formerly R3901) Students must enroll in both semesters of the course (VIAR UN3900 and VIAR UN3901). The student is required to produce a significant body of work in which the ideas, method of investigation, and execution are determined by the student. A plan is developed in consultation with the faculty. Seminars; presentations. At the end, an exhibition or other public venue is presented for evaluation. Studio space is provided with a refundable deposit of $150.

• Department: Visual Arts
• 2 points

INDEPENDENT STDY-UNDERGRADUATE

INDEPENDENT STUDY-UNDERGRAD

• Department: African American and African Diaspora
• Instructor: Kellie Jones
  CULPA: 3 Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Brandi Summers
  Info
• Instructor: Farah Griffin
  CULPA: 10 Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Edwidge Danticat
  Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Rachel Grace Newman
  Info
• Instructor: Jafari S Allen
  Info
• Instructor: Nyle Fort
  Info
• 1-4 points

SENIOR SEMINAR

SR SEM: ARCHITECTRL CRITICISM

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

• Department: Architecture @Barnard
• Instructor: Suzanne Stephens
  Info
• 4 points

SENIOR HONORS THESIS

Weekly seminar to accompany Senior Honors Thesis Lab (CHEM BC3903). Focus is on scientific presentation and writing skills and research conduct.

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

SENIOR HONORS THESIS

Weekly seminar to accompany Senior Honors Thesis Lab (CHEM BC3903). Focus is on scientific presentation and writing skills and research conduct.

• Department: Chemistry @Barnard
• 4 points

Senior Project Seminar

SENIOR PROJECT SEMINAR

Discussion of senior research projects during the fall and spring terms that culminate in written and oral senior theses. Each project must be supervised by a cognitive scientist working at Barnard or Columbia.

• Department: Cognitive Science @Barnard
• Instructor: John Morrison
  CULPA: 12 h-index: 7 Info
• Instructor: Elif A Duman
  Info
• 1 points

ENVIRONMENTAL MICROBIOLOGY

Fundamentals of microbiology, genetics and molecular biology, principles of microbial nutrition, energetics and kinetics, application of novel and state-of-the-art techniques in monitoring the structure and function of microbial communities in the environment, engineered processes for biochemical waste treatment and bioremediation, microorganisms and public health, global microbial elemental cycles.

• Department: Earth and Environmental Engineering
• Instructor: Kartik Chandran
  CULPA: 4 Wikipedia h-index: 51 Info
• 3 points

SENIOR SEMINAR

Guided, independent, in-depth research culminating in the senior thesis in the spring. Includes discussion about scientific presentations and posters, data analysis, library research methods and scientific writing. Students review work in progress and share results through oral reports. Weekly seminar to review work in progress and share results through oral and written reports.

• Department: Earth and Environmental Sciences
• 3 points

SUPERVISED READINGS I

Prerequisites: The written permission of the faculty member who agrees to act as sponsor (sponsorship limited to full-time instructors on the staff list), as well as the permission of the Director of Undergraduate Studies. The written permission must be deposited with the Director of Undergraduate Studies before registration is completed. Guided reading and study in mathematics. A student who wishes to undertake individual study under this program must present a specific project to a member of the staff and secure his or her willingness to act as sponsor. Written reports and periodic conferences with the instructor.

Supervising Readings do NOT count towards major requirements, with the exception of an advanced written approval by the DUS.

• Department: Mathematics @Barnard
• 1-3 points

SOCIOLOGY OF CULTURE

Prerequisites: SOCI BC1003 or equivalent social science course and permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15 students. Drawing examples from popular music, religion, politics, race, and gender, explores the interpretation, production, and reception of cultural texts and meanings. Topics include aesthetic distinction and taste communities, ideology, power, and resistance; the structure and functions of subcultures; popular culture and high culture; and ethnography and interpretation.

• Department: Sociology @Barnard
• Instructor: Jonathan Rieder
  CULPA: 17 Info
• 4 points

Children and Youth in Caribbean Politica

Children/Youth Carib Poli

In this course, we will survey the many instances in which the bodies of children and teenagers have served as colonial tropes advancing mainstream depictions of Caribbean identities as feeble, dependent, and disabled; hints of hope amidst a narrative of disaster; and/or spaces for power negotiation in the contemporary Caribbean and its diaspora. Starting with some historical context from the 19th century, the course will primarily focus on the 20th- and 21st-century Hispanic Caribbean and Haiti by engaging with national formations, revolutions, and catastrophism. Among the questions to explore are: How have children and youth’s bodies been weaponized within Caribbean politics by diverse discourses, agents, and media? What roles have they played in diaspora and migration struggles faced by U.S. Latinx communities? How have they been used to either perpetuate or destabilize capitalism and totalitarianism? An array of diverse materials will include literature and visual arts (film, photography, painting) featuring infant/teen-like representations of the Caribbean and its diasporic communities through traditions such as the Puerto Rican
baquiné
, the Cuban
pionero
, the Dominican
rayano
children, and the
restavek
children in Haiti, among many others. In order to enhance students’ awareness of the impact of the different media at play, the course will also inquire into how diverse artifacts and medium’s infrastructures condition our relationship with these Caribbean bodies both as a trope and a material reality. This course will also foster a workshop on children/teens’s literature, accompanied by a community open house for students to share their works with migrant Caribbean and Latino/a children and youth. This course will also foster a workshop on children/teens’s literature, accompanied by a community open house for students to share their works with migrant Caribbean and Latino/a children and youth.

• Department: Latin American and Iberian Cultures
• Instructor: Jacqueline Garcia Suarez
  Info
• 3 points

SENIORS HONORS THESIS LAB

Corequisites: CHEM BC3901 Guided research in Chemistry or Biochemistry, under the sponsorship of a faculty member, leading to the senior thesis. A minimum of 8 hours of research per week, to be arranged.

• Department: Chemistry @Barnard
• Instructor: Christian Rojas
  CULPA: 24 Info
• Instructor: Marisa C Buzzeo
  CULPA: 2 Info
• Instructor: Dina C Merrer
  CULPA: 24 Info
• Instructor: Andrew C Crowther
  CULPA: 1 Info
• Instructor: Michael Campbell
  Info
• Instructor: Rachel Austin
  CULPA: 18 Wikipedia h-index: 28 Info
• Instructor: Christina Vizcarra
  CULPA: 1 Info
• Instructor: Rebecca Donegan
  Info
• 0 points

SENIORS HONORS THESIS LAB

Corequisites: CHEM BC3901 Guided research in Chemistry or Biochemistry, under the sponsorship of a faculty member, leading to the senior thesis. A minimum of 8 hours of research per week, to be arranged.

• Department: Chemistry @Barnard
• 0 points

COMMUNITIES AND SOCIAL CHANGE

Examines how changes in the economy, racial composition, and class relations affect community life-how it is created, changed and sometimes lost-with a specific focus on the local urban context. Student research projects will address how contemporary forces such as neoliberalization, gentrification and tourism impact a communitys social fabric.

• Department: Sociology @Barnard
• Instructor: Andrew S Anastasi
  Info
• 4 points

BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING DESIGN

A two-semester design sequence to be taken in the senior year. Elements of the design process, with specific applications to biomedical engineering: concept formulation, systems synthesis, design analysis, optimization, biocompatibility, impact on patient health and comfort, health care costs, regulatory issues, and medical ethics. Selection and execution of a project involving the design of an actual engineering device or system. Introduction to entrepreneurship, biomedical start-ups, and venture capital. Semester I: statistical analysis of detection/classification systems (receiver operation characteristic analysis, logistic regression), development of design prototype, need, approach, benefits and competition analysis. Semester II: spiral develop process and testing, iteration and refinement of the initial design/prototype and business plan development. A lab fee of $100 each is collected.

• Department: Biomedical Engineering
• Instructor: Lauren N Heckelman
  Info
• 4 points

VISITING CRITIC I

Prerequisites: Department approval required. See requirements for a major in visual arts. VIAR UN3910 is the prerequisite for VIAR UN3911. Corequisites: VIAR UN3900 (Formerly R3921) Students are required to enroll in both semesters (VIAR UN3910 and VIAR UN3911). A second opinion is provided to the senior students regarding the development of their senior project. Critics consist of distinguished visitors and faculty. Issues regarding the premise, methodology, or presentation of the students ideas are discussed and evaluated on an ongoing basis.

• Department: Visual Arts
• Instructor: Emily C Henretta
  Info
• 2 points

SOCIAL CONTEXTS IMMIGRATN LAW

Examines the historical and contemporary social, economic, and political factors that shape immigration law and policy along with the social consequences of those laws and policies. Addresses the development and function of immigration law and aspects of the immigration debate including unauthorized immigration, anti-immigration sentiments, and critiques of immigration policy.

• Department: Anthropology @Barnard
• Instructor: J.C. Salyer
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 4 points

SEMINAR IN POLITCAL THEORY

Arendt in 20th Century

Seminar in Political Theory. Students who would like to register should join the electronic wait list. For list of topics and descriptions see: https://polisci.columbia.edu/content/undergraduate-seminars

• Department: Political Science
• Instructor: Clara Maier
  Info
• 4 points

SEMINAR IN POLITCAL THEORY

CITIZENSHIP AND EXCLUSION

Seminar in Political Theory. Students who would like to register should join the electronic wait list. For list of topics and descriptions see: https://polisci.columbia.edu/content/undergraduate-seminars

• Department: Political Science
• Instructor: Turkuler Isiksel
  CULPA: 3 h-index: 9 Info
• 4 points

SEMINAR

Required of senior majors, but also open to junior majors, and junior and senior concentrators who have taken at least four philosophy courses. This exploration will typically involve writing a substantial research paper. Capped at 20 students with preference to philosophy majors.

• Department: Philosophy @Barnard
• Instructor: Karen Lewis
  CULPA: 12 h-index: 7 Info
• Instructor: Christopher Peacocke
  CULPA: 4 Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

LOVE, GHOSTS, AND CANNIBALISM: THE CHINE

THE CHINESE SHORT STORY

Focusing on short stories from the 7th-21st centuries, we ask what fiction can tell us about the real concerns that shaped the lives of Chinese writers. How do literary depictions of love/desire relate to social issues surrounding gender, power, and family? What do supernatural characters—hungry ghosts, lofty gods, unruly demons, seductive snakes and fox spirits—reveal about how humans made sense of unusual occurrences? What do motifs of cannibalism and related themes tell us about the socio-political changes China witnessed on its path toward becoming a nation-state?

• Department: East Asian Languages and Cultures
• Instructor: Allison E Bernard
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 4 points

INEQUALITY, POVERTY & MOBILITY

INEQUALITY POVERTY & MOBILITY

This is an undergraduate seminar in social stratification. The course focuses on the current American experience with socioeconomic inequality and mobility. The goals of the course are to understand how inequality is conceptualized and measured in the social sciences, to understand the structure of inequality in the contemporary U.S. to learn the principal theories and evidence for long term trends in inequality, to understand the persistence of poverty and the impact of social policies on American rates of poverty, and to understand the forces that both produce and inhibit intergenerational social mobility in the U.S. Given the nature of the subject matter, a minority of the readings will sometimes involve quantitative social science material. The course does not presume that students have advanced training in statistics, and any readings sections that contain mathematical or statistical content will be explained in class in nontechnical terms as needed. In these instances, our focus will not be on the methods, but rather on the conclusions reached by the author concerning the research question that is addressed in the text.

• Department: Sociology
• Instructor: Thomas DiPrete
  CULPA: 7 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

ADVANCED FILM PRODUCTION PRACTICE

Advanced Film Production Practice is an advanced production and lecture course for students who wish to obtain a deeper understanding of the skills involved in screenwriting, directing and producing.  Building on the fundamentals established in the Labs for Fiction and Non-Fiction Filmmaking, this seminar further develops each student’s grasp of the concepts involved in filmmaking through advanced analytical and practical work to prepare Thesis film materials.

• Department: Film
• Instructor: Greta Diaz Moreau
  Info
• 3 points

GENDER, SEXUALITY & POWER IN TRANSNATION

GEND,SEX&POWER TRANSNATL

This course considers formations of gender, sexuality, and power as they circulate transnationally, as well as transnational feminist and queer movements that have emerged to address contemporary gendered and sexual inequalities. Topics include political economy, global care chains, sexuality, sex work and trafficking, feminist and queer politics, and human rights. If it is a small world after all, how do forces of globalization shape and redefine the relationship between gender, sexuality, and powerful institutions like the state? And, if power swirls everywhere, how are transnational power dynamics reinscribed in gendered bodies? How is the body represented in discussions of nationalism and in the political economy of globalization? These questions will frame this course by highlighting how gender, sexuality, and power coalesce to impact the lives of individuals in various spaces including workplaces, the academy, the home, religious institutions, the government, and civil society, and human rights organizations. This course will enable us to think transnationally, historically, and dynamically, using gender and sexuality as lenses through which to critique relations of power and the ways that power informs our everyday lives and subjectivities.

• Department: Women's, Gender, Sexuality Studies @Barnard
• Instructor: Manijeh Moradian
  Info
• 4 points

MODES OF INQUIRY

Corequisites: CSER UN3921 This class, a combination of a seminar and a workshop, will prepare students to conduct, write up, and present original research. It has several aims and goals. First, the course introduces students to a variety of ways of thinking about knowledge as well as to specific ways of knowing and making arguments key to humanistic and social science fields. Second, this seminar asks students to think critically about the approaches they employ in pursuing their research. The course will culminate in a semester project, not a fully executed research project, but rather an 8-10 page proposal for research that will articulate a question, provide basic background on the context that this question is situated in, sketch preliminary directions and plot out a detailed methodological plan for answering this question. Students will be strongly encouraged to think of this proposal as related to their thesis or senior project. Over the course of the semester, students will also produce several short exercises to experiment with research techniques and genres of writing.

• Department: Ethnicity and Race, Center for
• Instructor: Jessica H Lee
  Info
• 4 points

SENIOR SEMINAR

Open to senior chemistry, biochemistry, environmental chemistry, and chemical physics majors; senior chemistry concentrators; and students who have taken or are currently enrolled in CHEM UN3098. Senior seminar provides direct access to modern chemical research through selected studies by the students from active fields of chemical research. Topics to be presented and discussed draw from the current scientific literature and/or UN3098 research.

• Department: Chemistry
• Instructor: Laura J Kaufman
  CULPA: 15 Wikipedia Info
• 2 points

SENIOR SEM IN SCREENWRITING

A seminar for senior film majors. Students will complete a step outline and minimum of 30 pages of their project, including revisions. Through reading/viewing and analyzing selected scripts/films, as well as lectures, exercises and weekly critiques, students will expand their understanding of dramatic writing and narrative-making for film and TV, including adaptations. They will learn appropriate structure for each specific screen-writing form, and endeavor to apply their understanding of drama, character, theme, and structure to their chosen narrative project.

• Department: Film
• Instructor: Loren-Paul Caplin
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 3 points

ADV TOPICS GENDER & SEXUALITY

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 ones 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.

• Department: Sociology @Barnard
• Instructor: Nic Rios
  Info
• 4 points

ANTICOLONIALISM

The age of colonialism, so it seems, is long over. Decolonization has resulted in the emergence of postcolonial polities and societies that are now, in many instances, two generations old. But is it clear that the problem of colonialism has disappeared? Almost everywhere in the postcolonial world the project of building independent polities, economies and societies have faltered, sometimes run aground. Indeed, one might say that the anti-colonial dream of emancipation has evaporated. Through a careful exploration of the conceptual argument and rhetorical style of five central anti-colonial texts—C.L.R. James’ The Black Jacobins, Mahatma Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj, Aimé Cesairé’s Discourse on Colonialism, Albert Memmi’s Colonizer and Colonized, and Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth—this course aims to inquire into the image of colonialism as a structure of dominant power, and the image of its anticipated aftermaths: What were the perceived ill-effects of colonial power? What did colonialism do to the colonized that required rectification? In what ways did the critique of colonial power (the identification of what was wrong with it) shape the longing for its anti-colonial overcoming?

• Department: Anthropology
• Instructor: David Scott
  CULPA: 6 h-index: 72 Info
• 4 points

AMERICAN POLITICS SEMINAR

EQUALITY AND THE LAW

Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Pre-registration is not permitted. Seminar in American Politics Seminar. Students who would like to register should join the electronic wait list. For list of topics and descriptions see: https://polisci.columbia.edu/content/undergraduate-seminars

• Department: Political Science
• Instructor: Robert L Amdur
  CULPA: 16 Info
• 4 points

AMERICAN POLITICS SEMINAR

Polling and Democracy

Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Pre-registration is not permitted. Seminar in American Politics Seminar. Students who would like to register should join the electronic wait list. For list of topics and descriptions see: https://polisci.columbia.edu/content/undergraduate-seminars

• Department: Political Science
• Instructor: Greg Bovitz
  Info
• 4 points

AMERICAN POLITICS SEMINAR

POLICING IN THE US

Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Pre-registration is not permitted. Seminar in American Politics Seminar. Students who would like to register should join the electronic wait list. For list of topics and descriptions see: https://polisci.columbia.edu/content/undergraduate-seminars

• Department: Political Science
• Instructor: Andrew J McCall
  Info
• 4 points

AMERICAN POLITICS SEMINAR

SEXUALITY & CITIZENSHIP

Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Pre-registration is not permitted. Seminar in American Politics Seminar. Students who would like to register should join the electronic wait list. For list of topics and descriptions see: https://polisci.columbia.edu/content/undergraduate-seminars

• Department: Political Science
• Instructor: Justin H Phillips
  CULPA: 23 Info
• 4 points

AMERICAN POLITICS SEMINAR

POLITICS OF INCOME INEQUALITY

Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Pre-registration is not permitted. Seminar in American Politics Seminar. Students who would like to register should join the electronic wait list. For list of topics and descriptions see: https://polisci.columbia.edu/content/undergraduate-seminars

• Department: Political Science
• Instructor: Judith Russell
  CULPA: 49 Info
• 4 points

AMERICAN POLITICS SEMINAR

US IMMIGRATION & POLICY

Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Pre-registration is not permitted. Seminar in American Politics Seminar. Students who would like to register should join the electronic wait list. For list of topics and descriptions see: https://polisci.columbia.edu/content/undergraduate-seminars

• Department: Political Science
• Instructor: Carlos Vargas-Ramos
  CULPA: 4 Info
• 4 points

HIGHER EDUCATION AND INEQUALITY

Prerequisites: (SOCI UN1000) Higher education in the U.S. is going through a period of rapid change. State support is shrinking, student debt is increasing, full-time faculty are being replaced by adjuncts, and learning outcomes are difficult to measure, at best. This class will try to makes sense of these changes. Among other questions, it will ask whether higher education is a source of social mobility or a means of class reproduction; how the college experience differs by race, class, and type of college attended; how the economics of higher education have led to more expensive college and more student loans; and how we might make college better. We will consider several different points of view on the current state of U.S. higher education: that of students who apply to and attend college, that of colleges and universities, and that of society at large. As part of this course, students will conduct research on their own universities: Columbia College or Barnard College.

• Department: Sociology
• Instructor: Teresa Sharpe
  CULPA: 14 Info
• 4 points

RACE&REPRESENTATION IN ASIAN AMER CINEMA

RACE&REPRSNTATN IN ASAM CINEMA

This seminar focuses on the critical analysis of Asian representation and participation in Hollywood by taking a look at how mainstream American cinema continues to essentialize the Asian and how Asian American filmmakers have responded to Hollywood Orientalist stereotypes. We will analyze various issues confronting the Asian American, including yellowface, white patriarchy, male and female stereotypes, the “model minority” myth, depictions of “Chinatowns,” panethnicity, the changing political interpretations of the term Asian American throughout American history, gender and sexuality, and cultural hegemonies and privileging within the Asian community.

• Department: Ethnicity and Race, Center for
• Instructor: Eric Gamalinda
  CULPA: 9 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

LATIN MUSIC AND IDENTITY

LATIN MUSIC AND IDENITY

Latin music has had a historically strained relationship with mainstream music tastes, exploding in occasional boom periods, and receding into invisibility in others. What if this were true because it is a space for hybrid construction of identity that directly reflects a mixture of traditions across racial lines in Latin America? This course will investigate Latin musics transgression of binary views of race in Anglo-American society, even as it directly affects the development of pop music in America. From New Orleans jazz to Texas corridos, salsa, rock, and reggaeton, Latin music acts as both as a soundtrack and a structural blueprint for the 21st centurys multicultural experiment. There will be a strong focus on studying Latin musics political economy, and investigating the story it tells about migration and globalization.

• Department: Ethnicity and Race, Center for
• Instructor: Edward Morales
  Info
• 4 points

ARABIC PRISON WRITING

This course studies the genealogy of the prison in Arab culture as manifested in memoirs, narratives, and poems. These cut across a vast temporal and spatial swathe, covering selections from the Quran, Sufi narratives from al-Halllaj oeuvre, poetry by prisoners of war: classical, medieval, and modern. It also studies modern narratives by women prisoners and political prisoners, and narratives that engage with these issues. Arabic prison writing is studied against other genealogies of this prism, especially in the West, to map out the birth of prison, its institutionalization, mechanism, and role. All readings for the course are in English translations.

• Department: Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies
• Instructor: Muhsin Al-Musawi
  CULPA: 8 Info
• 3 points

COLONIZATION/DECOLONIZATION

Prerequisites: Open to CSER majors/concentrators only. Others may be allowed to register with the instructors 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.

• Department: Ethnicity and Race, Center for
• Instructor: Natasha J Lightfoot
  CULPA: 5 Info
• 4 points

SLAVERY/ABOLITION-ATLANTC WRLD

This seminar investigates the experiences of slavery and freedom among African-descended people living and laboring in the various parts of the Atlantic World. The course will trace critical aspects of these two major, interconnected historical phenomena with an eye to how specific cases either manifested or troubled broader trends across various slaveholding societies. The first half of the course addresses the history of slavery and the second half pertains to experiences in emancipation. However, since the abolition of slavery occurs at different moments in various areas of the Atlantic World, the course will adhere to a more thematic and less chronological structure, in its examination of the multiple avenues to freedom available in various regions. Weekly units will approach major themes relevant to both slavery and emancipation, such as racial epistemologies among slaveowners/employers, labor regimes in slave and free societies, cultural innovations among slave and freed communities, gendered discourses and sexual relations within slave and free communities, and slaves’ and free people’s resistance to domination. The goal of this course is to broaden students’ comprehension of the history of slavery and freedom, and to promote an understanding of the transition from slavery to freedom in the Americas as creating both continuities and ruptures in the structure and practices of the various societies concerned.

• Department: History
• Instructor: Natasha J Lightfoot
  CULPA: 5 Info
• 4 points

TOPICS IN AMERICAN STUDIES

AMER. CULTURAL CRITICISM

Please refer to the Center for American Studies website for course descriptions for each section.
americanstudies.columbia.edu

• Department: American Studies
• Instructor: Casey Blake
  CULPA: 22 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

TOPICS IN AMERICAN STUDIES

SUPREME COURT IN AMER HISTORY

Please refer to the Center for American Studies website for course descriptions for each section.
americanstudies.columbia.edu

• Department: American Studies
• Instructor: Benjamin Rosenberg
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 4 points

Creative Embedded Systems

CREATIVE EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

Ubiquitous computing is creating new canvases and opportunities for creative ideas.
This class explores the use of microprocessors, distributed sensor networks, IoT,
and intermedia systems for the purposes of creative expression. The course is delivered
in a mixed lecture and lab format that introduces the fundamental concepts
and theory behind embedded systems as well as issues particular to their creative
employment. The key objective of the course is for students to conceive of and
implement creative uses of computation.

• Department: Computer Science @Barnard
• Instructor: Tiffany Tseng
  Info
• 3 points

Psychology/Neuroscience Senior Thesis Ad

Advanced Research Seminar

The seminar component of the Psych/Neuro Senior Thesis Advanced Research program. Students admitted to the research program should plan to take this seminar in the spring of their junior year and in the fall and spring semesters of their senior year. Students are expected to be working in a lab as part of their participation in this program. In addition to supporting students throughout their independent research project, this seminar will introduce students to some of the big questions in the field through its connection with the Psychology Department Colloquium and will train students in reading and evaluating scientific research and communicating their own research findings.

• Department: Psychology
• Instructor: Larisa H Solomon
  Info
• 1-3 points

Life at the End of Life: Palliative Care

Life at the End of Life (LATEOL) is a seminar designed to provide opportunities for readings and reflections on the experience of volunteer service work. Students will learn how to critically reflect on their experiences working with patients in the context of questions raised in the texts read in the seminar. Students will develop the skills necessary to critically reflect on the significance of emotional care as a medical practitioner, as well as form a deeper understanding of the role of palliative care and comfort care in a life cycle of care.

The fieldwork component of the course is met by the student’s continued direct service work during the course itself. Students participating in the seminar will volunteer
weekly at Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center
. Through this, students will provide emotional support and assistance, and serve as a consistent presence for someone experiencing chronic illness, disability, or the end of life. At the core of this framework is the patient; however, it is important to consider the impact this volunteer service will have on the student and Columbia. Therefore, the following specific goals and objectives are outlined to benefit each individual and group involved in this service relationship.

• Department: Comparative Literature and Society, Institute for
• Instructor: Paul Rezkalla
  Info
• 4 points

CLIM CHNG/GLOBAL MIGR/HUM RGT

While the existence of processes of anthropogenic climate change is well established, predictions regarding the future consequences of these processes are far less certain. In no area is the uncertainty regarding near and long term effects as pronounced as in the question of how climate change will affect global migration. This course will address the issue of climate migration in four ways. First, the course will examine the theoretical and empirical literatures that have elucidated the nature of international migration in general. Second, the course will consider the phenomena of anthropogenic climate change as it relates to migration. Third, the course will consider how human rights and other legal regimes do or do not address the humanitarian issues created by anthropogenic climate change. Fourth, the course will synthesize these topics by considering how migration and climate change has arisen as a humanitarian, political, and economic issue in the Pacific. Human Rights elective.

• Department: Anthropology @Barnard
• Instructor: Antara Chakrabarti
  Info
• 4 points

INDEPENDENT STUDY

Prerequisites: the department chairs permission. (Formerly R3932)

• Department: Visual Arts
• Instructor: Matthew E Buckingham
  Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: David A Cruz
  Info
• Instructor: Delphine A Fawundu
  Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Jon Kessler
  CULPA: 5 Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Naeem Mohaiemen
  Wikipedia h-index: 8 Info
• Instructor: Sable Smith
  Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Tomas Vu Daniel
  CULPA: 4 Info
• 1-3 points

The American Graphic Novel

The course seeks to combine literary and historical approaches to investigate one of the most rapidly growing, increasingly influential, and, increasingly, critically recognized forms of American popular literature: the graphic novel. A historical overview of the medium’s development, complete with analysis of relevant broader institutional and cultural factors illuminating the development of American media culture more generally, will be complemented by study of a series of recent works illuminating the medium’s explosive maturation. Authors read include Eisner, Crumb, Spiegelman, Bechdel, Thompson, and Hernandez.

• Department: American Studies
• 4 points

SOCIOLOGY OF THE BODY

This seminar examines the ways in which the body is discursively constituted, and itself serves as the substratum for social life. Key questions include: How are distinctions made between normal and pathological bodies, and between the psychic and somatic realms? How do historical forces shape bodily experience? How do bodies that are racialized, gendered, and classed offer resistance to social categorization?

• Department: Sociology @Barnard
• Instructor: Elizabeth Bernstein
  CULPA: 27 Info
• 4 points

Seeking Sanctuary in New York City

In a renewed age of anti-immigrant fervor, the last few years have seen attention focused on people seeking asylum – the process under international law by which people fleeing persecution can seek protection in a country not of their citizenship. New York has become a particular flashpoint with a large influx of asylum seekers, most of them from Latin America. Often, they have arrived on buses sent here by southern governors intending to make the border “problem” that of a so-called “sanctuary city.” How has New York responded? And how does this fit into the city’s long history of refuge? 

This course will offer students an introduction to the theory, ethics, and history of the idea of international protection. We will look specifically at how Latin American citizens have engaged with the US asylum system over time and how this engagement has changed the shape of US immigration laws. We will study the origins of the ideas of international protection, who is understood to qualify and why, how the system has changed over time, and what these developments mean for a broader understanding of human rights across borders. We will also take a critical look at asylum, examine ideas of deservingness and innocence and their intersection with categories of race, class and gender, and question what it means for certain people to be constructed as victims and others to be seen as not eligible – or worthy – of protection.

This is an engaged pedagogy course. The class will be organized around a close collaboration with a NY legal organization that has taken on the work of representing many asylum seekers in the city. Students will learn the complexities of US asylum law and will work collectively to use this knowledge, while developing their research skills, to put together reports to be used in active asylum cases.

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

HELLENISM&THE TOPOGRAPHICAL IMAGINATION

This course examines the way particular spaces—cultural, urban, literary—serve as sites for the production and reproduction of cultural and political imaginaries. It places particular emphasis on the themes of the polis, the city, and the nation-state as well as on spatial representations of and responses to notions of the Hellenic across time. Students will consider a wide range of texts as spaces—complex sites constituted and complicated by a multiplicity of languages—and ask: To what extent is meaning and cultural identity, sitespecific? How central is the classical past in Western imagination? How have great metropolises such as Paris, Istanbul, and New York fashioned themselves in response to the allure of the classical and the advent of modern Greece? How has Greece as a specific site shaped the study of the Cold War, dictatorships, and crisis?

• Department: Classics
• Instructor: Dimitris Antoniou
  h-index: 5 Info
• 3 points

American Journalism and Democracy

AMER JOURNALISM & DEMOCRA

The traditional role of the media in our democracy -- to support an informed electorate -- has been disrupted in the 21st century by technological change, transforming the delivery of information and opinion in radical ways. Partisanship has soared, along with a collapse of the shared fact base. In this course we examine the current state of political and election coverage, in counterpoint with iconic pieces of political reporting and media analysis that offer perspective and highlight turning points in the history of American journalism.

With the shrinking role of the legacy news media and the explosion of new formats and platforms, the concept of "objectivity" has lost value. We explore the impact of novel news sources and styles of expression, the impact of algorithms that prioritize emotional engagement, the decline of trust in the media, and the scourge of misinformation. What is the future of independent journalism? And how are these profound changes in news consumption affecting the decisions that voters make?

• Department: American Studies
• Instructor: Caroline Miller
  Info
• 4 points

ANIME EFFECT: JAPANESE MEDIA

Culture, technology, and media in contemporary Japan. Theoretical and ethnographic engagements with forms of mass mediation, including anime, manga, video, and cell-phone novels. Considers larger global economic and political contexts, including post-Fukushima transformations. Prerequisites: the instructor's permission.

• Department: Anthropology
• Instructor: Marilyn Ivy
  CULPA: 11 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

Senior Pro Seminar

SENIOR PRO SEMINAR

This course is a seminar for seniors to either write a formal proposal for a capstone project or to begin the research process for a Senior Thesis, which will be written in the Spring semester. This interdisciplinary course provides the necessary structure needed to complete either goal. This will be an interactive class in which students are required to participate and actively engage in each meeting.

• Department: African American and African Diaspora
• Instructor: Farah Griffin
  CULPA: 10 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

Free Speech in American Society

Free Speech in Amer Socie

In the contemporary USA, free speech is often understood as a legal doctrine or a branch of Constitutional Law. But it can also be understood as a tradition, a way of life, part of American culture. In this seminar, we will explore the hypothesis that America’s free speech tradition has been shaped primarily by people who aren’t lawyers or lawmakers: by beatniks, pamphleteers, abolitionists, Red Power activists, queers, feminists and Free Lovers, poets, preachers, and hackers. People from all these groups have shaped America’s free speech tradition from the sixteenth century to the present day, although they’re usually omitted from Constitution-centered histories of free speech because they weren’t lawyers or parties to lawsuits.

This course provides a transnational, cultural perspective on free speech history that decenters the First Amendment from its quasi-sacrosanct place in the historiography of American liberty. Instead of looking at legal arguments and decisions, we will survey the very wide range of social contexts in which struggles over free speech have taken place in American history, from the  Pueblo Revolt in seventeenth-century New Mexico to the rise of MAGA in our own time. We’ll seek to understand how, starting in the twentieth century, “free speech” and “the First Amendment” became practically synonymous, with the result that most contemporary Americans know very little about the history of free expression in this country. And we’ll ask what (if anything) gives America’s four-hundred-year-old free speech tradition its unity and coherence.

• Department: American Studies
• Instructor: Ryan Carr
  Info
• 4 points

Life on Mars: Building a New Society in

Life on Mars: Society & S

This course explores the interdisciplinary challenges of establishing a human society on Mars. Students explore a number of challenges that are involved in reaching the Red Planet and setting up a functional social habitat for the long term. This includes both the numerous logistical hurdles of traveling to and surviving on Mars, as well as the social, political, and ethical considerations of establishing a new society on the planet. Through analysis and discussion of scientific research, social science texts, and popular media, students will gain a deep understanding of the physiological, psychological, and strategic challenges of long-duration space travel and human habitation on another planet.

The course is not scientific or overly technical in nature. Instead, the perspective being adopted is that of a social scientist seeking to understand how humans can travel to another planet and live together. The first half of the course focuses on the practical, physiological, and psychological challenges of traveling to and surviving on Mars while maintaining contact withEarth. In the first part of the course, students will study the unique environmental conditions of Mars, the health risks of space travel, and how to maintain communication and connectivity with Earth despite vast distances. Students will also engage with how sustainable living on Mars—through food, energy, and resource management—could shape the future of human expansion in space.

The second half delves into the complexities of building social, legal, and economic systems in a new extraterrestrial society. Students will critically evaluate how to create a self-sustaining, functional civilization on Mars. Given the social science focus of the class, there will be emphasis placed on topics such as governance, establishing social contracts and property rights, and building economic systems for an entirely new world.

This course is meant to attract a small group of 10-15 students interested in space exploration. The small size and intensive four-hour class format is intended to foster creative problem-solving and interdisciplinary thinking (see below for discussion of non-traditional format). By the end of the course, students will not only understand the practicalities of space colonization but also develop skills in envisioning and designing innovative solutions for humanity’s future beyond Earth.

• Department: Sociology
• Instructor: Sudhir A Venkatesh
  CULPA: 11 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

Global Artivisms

Presently, there is a an increasingly hardening of frameworks to describe, understand, and relate to social, political, and cultural changes. This environment often inhibits people and communities from developing nuanced vocabularies to act upon an increasingly complex realities, including rising economic inequality, growing migration, and climate change.

Since at least the late nineteenth century, one path to generating new frames and vocabularies has been what we now call “artivism.” The term is a neologism from the 1990s, when artists increasingly employed artistic practices to make public or “activist” interventions in institutions, debates, and other contexts where existing strategies had become ineffective or stale.

In this course, we will examine the emergence, limits, and potential of “artivism” as a praxis. Through case studies from the United States and other parts of the world, the course will explore a range of questions, including: What is artivism? Is it simply art that is activist, or is it a different conception of art and activism? Why did this praxis emerge and extend in most of the world? What are some of artivism’s effects? How has the expansion of the Internet change artivism and artivists?

• Department: Ethnicity and Race, Center for
• Instructor: Frances Negron-Muntaner
  CULPA: 18 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

Black Americans Abroad

This course focuses on the long history of Black Americans going (and sometimes returning from) abroad. Our exploration will unfold chronologically from the 19th century to the present day, as we trace our subjects’ myriad reasons for setting out beyond their country’s shores. Each week of the course will be devoted to grappling with a set of travelers and international departures characteristic of a given era, including:


Enslaved people’s quests for freedom

Entertainers, creatives, and scientists’ pursuit of professional opportunities during the era of Jim Crow

Scholars, journalists, and diplomats’ search for knowledge and cultural understanding

Modern nomads and expats’ journeys of self-actualization


Our goal is to consider Black Americans’ evolving relationship to the United States and the world at large.

• Department: Africana Studies (AFSB)
• Instructor: Tamara Walker
  Info
• 4 points

SUPERVISED INDIVIDUAL RESEARCH

1-4 points. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Except by special permission of the director of undergraduate studies, no more than 4 points of individual research may be taken in any one term. This includes both PSYC UN3950 and PSYC UN3920. No more than 8 points ofPSYC UN3950 may be applied toward the psychology major, and no more than 4 points toward the concentration. Readings, special laboratory projects, reports, and special seminars on contemporary issues in psychological research and theory.

• Department: Psychology
• Instructor: Ana Alexandrescu
  Info
• Instructor: Dima Amso
  CULPA: 1 h-index: 31 Info
• Instructor: Christopher Baldassano
  h-index: 13 Info
• Instructor: Niall Bolger
  CULPA: 4 h-index: 55 Info
• Instructor: Natalie Brito
  Info
• Instructor: Sarah Demoya
  Info
• Instructor: Geraldine Downey
  CULPA: 9 Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Elif A Duman
  Info
• Instructor: Katherine T Fox-Glassman
  CULPA: 6 h-index: 4 Info
• Instructor: Jon B Freeman
  Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Carl Hart
  CULPA: 43 Wikipedia h-index: 54 Info
• Instructor: Tory Higgins
  CULPA: 23 Wikipedia h-index: 134 Info
• Instructor: Nora Isacoff
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 0-4 points