Required of all first-year Ph.D. candidates. Each faculty member addresses the proseminar in order to acquaint students with the interests and areas of expertise on the faculty. Through discussion and the dissemination of readings the student learns about possible areas of doctoral research.
Advanced topics in signal processing, such as multidimensional signal processing, image feature extraction, image/video editing and indexing, advanced digital filter design, multirate signal processing, adaptive signal processing, and wave-form coding of signals. Content varies from year to year, and different topics rotate through the course numbers 6880 to 6889.
This class, team-taught by faculty from English and Architecture, explores radical visions of domestic life from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. Domesticity is often associated with sentimentality, coziness and comfort--the antithesis of the word “radical” or common understandings of modernism. But there is a fascinating history of experimental and alternative forms of living that challenge stereotypes of home life. This course will begin with 19th century utopian socialism and cover topics including aestheticism, the rational household, glass houses, surrealism, queer domesticity, and more.
Prerequisites: SIPA U6500 This course will be useful for students who would like to participate in evaluations of development projects. At the end of the course, students will know how to plan an impact evaluation, how to manage one, and how to recognize and differentiate a good impact evaluation from a badly conducted one. Students should also come with one case study that they have been involved in and that would lend itself to an impact evaluation. Previous experience in implementing a development project is desirable.
This course will go beyond technical or methodological materials (i.e. how to collect and analyze data) and instead focus on how M-E practically applies to day-to-day responsibilities of practitioners, regardless of their position title, and how anyone can (and should) become an effective producer and consumer of data and thus an impactful contributor in the field of international development and humanitarian assistance. For students interested in a career in M-E, this course will help them recognize and address some of the common challenges they will face at work (e.g. how to convince and collaborate with the chief of party to invest in and run effective M-E). For students who are interested in non-M-E career tracks, this course will help them do their jobs better and help the development and humanitarian fields overcome “pilot-itis” and become more evidence-driven. Students should also understand that they are likely to take on different roles throughout their careers, which may involve M-E - this course will prepare them to become versatile and impactful players in this challenging but meaningful line of work.
Advanced topics spanning Electrical Engineering and Computer Science such as speech processing and recognition, image and multimedia content analysis, and other areas drawing on signal processing, information theory, machine learning, pattern recognition, and related topics. Content varies from year to year, and different topics rotate through the course numbers 6890 to 6899. Topic: Advanced Big Data Analytics.
“Writing About Policy” gives you the journalistic tools to intervene in public policy debates. You will learn to translate the expertise you’re gaining – as policy professionals and as SIPA students –for the rest of the public, whether in op eds, review essays or blogs. You will also report and write feature stories. This class is a workshop, as well as a seminar, and there will be writing assignments due almost every week. Students will publish their work in SIPAs student publications, as well as in media outlets reaching far beyond the IAB.
Prerequisites: biology, ecology, genetics, and evolution. Introduction to the applied science of maintaining the earths biological diversity, its landscapes, and wilderness. Focus on the biological principles relevant to the conservation of biodiversity at the genetic, population, and community and landscape levels.
All first-year graduate students in the physics department must register for this course each term. Discussion of the experimental and theoretical research in the department.
Prerequisites: the instructors permission. (Seminar). This course aims to contribute to your professional development while preparing you to teach University Writing, Columbia’s required first-year writing course. By the end of this course, you should have a basic grasp of the goals and structure of University Writing, the principles that inform its design, and the kinds of materials used in the course. While the course has an immediate goal—to prepare you for your fall teaching assignment—it aims simultaneously to enrich your teaching in the broadest sense. Your fall University Writing syllabus, as well as your lesson plans and homework assignments for the first eight classes, are due for review on August 1, 2016. This course will give you opportunity to prepare these materials throughout this semester with the support of the UWP directors, senior instructors, and advising lecturers. This course is the first of your ongoing professional development obligations as a UW instructor. You must successfully complete G6913 to teach in the UWP. Every subsequent semester, you will be required to attend a staff orientation, attend at least one workshop, and meet with your mentor and advising UWP director. All instructors new to the UWP must take this 1-credit, ungraded course during the fall of their first year of teaching. The course is intended to guide instructors through their first semester and emphasizes the practical application of the knowledge and expertise developed in G6913. Successful completion of the course is required for continuation as a UWP instructor.
Art Humanities aims to instill in undergraduate students a passion and a critical vocabulary for the study of art as well as a fundamental capacity to engage the world of images and built environments. Principles of Art Humanities aims to prepare instructors to teach Art Humanities. We will study each unit of Art Humanities with an eye toward pedagogy, formal and critical analysis, and a capacious understanding of art and culture of past epochs. The course comprises presentations by the Art Humanities Chair and by weekly invited guests, as well as discussion among all participants. Required of all first-time Art Humanities instructors. Open to retuning instructors.
Recent work at the intersection of queer and transgender studies has sparked debates
about shared or divergent histories of gender variance, a shared or divergent politics of
embodiment, and about formulations of gender variance in a global frame. Rather than
contribute to an increasingly volatile set of debates, this course offers instead a series of
sustained inquiries into histories, theories and epistemologies of mobile, flexible and
transitional narratives of being in a body. At the same time we will investigate the binary
of mobility/fixity to see what other, potentially invisible social structures depend upon
this opposition.
Prerequisites: EESC GU4008, and advanced calculus, or the instructors permission. The current climate and its variations over Earth history are interpreted as consequences of fundamental physical processes, including radiative transfer, the atmosphere and ocean circulation, and the carbon cycle. Perturbations to climate, resulting from changing atmospheric composition or insolation, are examined using a combination of simple interpretative models and full Earth System Models.
Prerequisites: EESC GR6901 This course teaches students to design and apply idealized models to study the fundamental properties of climate system processes and their interactions. Though these models typically have at their core only a handful of interacting differential equations, they can significantly advance process understanding. We cover three topical areas in climate system science: (1) the interpretation and attribution of atmospheric methane trends (2) the role of the ocean in regulating atmospheric carbon dioxide, and (3) the influence of climate system feedbacks on the Earth’s energy balance. Throughout the course, emphasis is placed on identifying assumptions underlying conclusions drawn from simple models and the time scales over which different processes operate.
This course introduces graduate students to rhetorical theory as a techne: a theory-driven craft of doing and making things. We will survey the major rhetoricians of the classical period, the Renaissance, the 20th century, and today, with an emphasis on primary texts. As we do, we will discover that rhetorical theory gives us tools to teach and offer critical responses to questions of enduring import: How do words make peace
(and war)? How does language make people change their minds? How does speech make a person identify as a member of a group? What kinds of expertise do ethical speakers need, and how can we teach our students those skills? Our study will move chronologically, situating major rhetorical theorists in their political and social moments to illuminate theories about the role of words and images in the negotiation of persuasion, meaning making, and the formation of the public. Rhetoric is what Richard McKeon calls an “architectonic” discipline. It explains and orders all other disciplines. For this reason, graduate students not only in English & Comparative Literature but in all disciplines will find existing scholarly conversations on rhetoric to take part in. You will also find many models of scholars who bring rhetorical theory to bear in research and teaching within your discipline. While our main focus will be Western rhetorics, we will also encounter African, East Asian, and South Asian theories, and you are welcome to explore these traditions further in your course projects.
Prerequisites: ECON G6412, ECON G6411, ECON G6215, ECON G6211. Corequisites: ECON G6212, ECON G6216, ECON G6412. This course will critically examine mainstream approaches to economic theory and practice, particularly in the areas of macroeconomic stabilization policy, poverty reduction, economic development, environmental sustainability, and racial and gender inequality. Topics will vary from year to year, but may include responses to the credit crisis and Great Recession, global warming and international negotiations, globalization, the measurement of poverty and inequality, different approaches to poverty reduction, AIDS and malaria, mass imprisonment, childrens wellbeing, the IMF and the World Bank, intellectual property in an international context, racial disparities in life expectancy, public pension systems in developed countries, health care, and homelessness. The course will also examine biases in economic discourse, both among policy makers and scholars.
This is a course in how to think about documentary but not about “how to” make documentary work. Its premise is that documentary as an approach is still undergoing revision as a definitional problem. Relevant to our times, cameras and sound recorders are called upon to “witness” events. Basic readings on the history and theory of documentary are the heart of the course and practical exercises test theoretical questions. Students conduct low end exercises with their own smart phone cameras. Topics and issues center on the history of the radical documentary—from the Workers Film and Photo League of the 1930s to the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, comparing then new 16 and 35mm film camera capabilities with contemporary internet distribution. Other topics include climate change and documentary work; motion picture film and photography in labor struggles; uses of anti-war and nuclear bomb footage; sexualities and video camera activism.
Prerequisites: (ELEN E3106) and (ELEN E3401) or equivalent. Recommended: ELEN E4944. This course provides an understanding of the methods used for structuring matter on the nanometer length: thin-film technology; lithographic patterning and technologies including photon, electron, ion and atom, scanning probe, soft lithography, and nanoimprinting; pattern transfer; self-assembly; process integration; and applications.
This introductory course is aimed at teaching the fundamentals of persuasive speechwriting for the public and private sectors, NGOs, and international organizations. Students will learn how to apply the classical canons of rhetoric to speechwriting in the 21st Century; deconstruct great political and business speeches using text and video; compare and contrast different speechwriting techniques in various international settings; as well as become familiar with some of the latest advances in neuroscience breaking new ground in understanding how persuasion works. Students will be expected to draft, edit and deliver their own speeches every week. No prior speechwriting experience is required, however, exceptional written-English skills are strongly recommended. Practical topics will be essential for this course: Why do some speeches persuade while others do not? How does one effectively capture the voice of the person you're writing for? How are speeches tailored for specific audiences, venues and occasions? Should one's message be solely what the speaker thinks the audience wants to hear-or what the speaker believes the audience needs to hear? And how important is delivery in terms of moving an audience?
This course covers the fundamentals of electromagnetic (EM) geophysics for mapping Earth’s electrical conductivity structure, with a focus on the magnetotelluric and controlled-source electromagnetic methods. The curriculum spans electromagnetic induction theory, electrical conduction in rocks and multi-phase systems, and theory and practice of EM geophysics with an introduction to numerical modeling and inversion methods. Student learning is facilitated with in-class data processing and modeling software tutorials. Case studies from the literature provide example applications for imaging volcanic systems, tectonic boundaries and crustal and mantle structure, as well as for groundwater studies and resource exploration.
The overall goal of this course is to improve the writing skills of international students in the MIA and MPA degree programs. The course requirements will include weekly short exercises (definitions of key terms and abstract concepts, summaries of statistical data, summaries and critiques of seminal concepts and theories, and descriptions of processes and procedures) and longer assignments (an argumentative essay, case study and short research paper). Students will also learn to revise and edit their work as well as to integrate sophisticated rhetorical and syntactic structures. To improve the accuracy and clarity of their writing, the course will review the aspects of grammar that pose particular problems for international students.
It is estimated that Gender-Based Violence (GBV) affects one-third of all women during their lifetime. GBV affects women’s health, mental health, labor market outcomes, and their overall wellbeing. GBV also increases the costs of health services, affects labor productivity outputs, and creates the need for additional counseling and psychological services. Can supporting women’s empowerment, reducing gender disparities, promoting positive masculinities, and changing norms and attitudes which foster violence help to end GBV? And, what have we learned about good practices that can be mobilized to attain these ends? This course focuses on four areas: legal and institutional reform, health, education and economic empowerment. In each, we will identify good practices as well as unintended consequences and shortcomings of interventions and policies implemented by governments, the private sector, NGOs, and grass roots organizations in South Asian, African and Latin American countries. By the end of this course students will be able to critically analyze and provide advice on interventions and policies aimed at preventing GBV and addressing the needs of survivors.
This course will examine the debates which have shaped internet policy, with a particular emphasis on the business models employed by the major US-based tech and internet giants - Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Google and Amazon. For decades, policy took a backseat to growth in the internet industry (the “do no harm” approach to regulation), but that changed dramatically with revelations around the role of major technology platforms in the 2016 election. The Cambridge Analytica scandal in particular roused both houses of Congress to action, a series of ongoing hearings may lead to a sweeping new regulatory framework governing how data flows in US society, particularly if Democrats in Congress have their way. But while the major internet players grew in a largely unregulated environment, there’s a rich history of policy fights that inform current debate. This class will survey those early skirmishes with an eye toward understanding the state of today’s current debate.
Provides students the opportunity to present work in progress or final drafts to other students and relevant faculty to receive guidance and feedback.
MRST Directed Readings, Independent study. Students should meet with the Program Director and Program Manager before registering for this course.
Prerequisites: Instructors permission. Selected topics in computer science. Content varies from year to year. May be repeated for credit.
Prerequisites: Instructors permission. Selected topics in computer science. Content varies from year to year. May be repeated for credit.
Prerequisites: Instructors permission. Selected topics in computer science. Content varies from year to year. May be repeated for credit.
Prerequisites: Instructors permission. Selected topics in computer science. Content varies from year to year. May be repeated for credit.
Prerequisites: Instructors permission. Selected topics in computer science. Content varies from year to year. May be repeated for credit.
Prerequisites: Instructors permission. Selected topics in computer science. Content varies from year to year. May be repeated for credit.
Prerequisites: Instructors permission. Selected topics in computer science. Content varies from year to year. May be repeated for credit.
Prerequisites: Instructors permission. Selected topics in computer science. Content varies from year to year. May be repeated for credit.
Prerequisites: Instructors permission. Selected topics in computer science. Content varies from year to year. May be repeated for credit.
Prerequisites: Instructors permission. Selected topics in computer science. Content varies from year to year. May be repeated for credit.
Prerequisites: Instructors permission. Selected topics in computer science. Content varies from year to year. May be repeated for credit.
Prerequisites: Instructors permission. Selected topics in computer science. Content varies from year to year. May be repeated for credit.
Prerequisites: Instructors permission. Selected topics in computer science. Content varies from year to year. May be repeated for credit.
Prerequisites: Instructors permission. Selected topics in computer science. Content varies from year to year. May be repeated for credit.
First part of two-term MA Thesis sequence for MRST MA Students.
Examines representations of the mafia in American and Italian film and literature. Special attention to questions of ethnic identity and immigration. Comparison of the different histories and myths of the mafia in the U.S. and Italy. Readings includes novels, historical studies, and film criticism. (NOTE: This is the graduate section of CLIA GU3660 which meets W 6:10p-10:00p)
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