COMMUN SCH GUIDED INDEP STUDY

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INTRO TO FILM & MEDIA STUDIES

This course serves as an introduction to the study of film and related visual media, examining fundamental issues of aesthetics (mise-en-scene, editing, sound), history (interaction of industrial, economic, and technological factors), theory (spectatorship, realism, and indexicality), and criticism (auteurist, feminist, and genre-based approaches). The course also investigates how digital media change has been productive of new frameworks for moving image culture in the present.  Discussion section FILM UN1001 is a required corequisite.

• R 10:10 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Robert King
  CULPA: 7 Info
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INTRODUCTION TO ART HISTORY II

The second part of the Introduction to Art History goes from about 1400 to 2015, circles the world, and includes all media. It is organized around one theme for each lecture, and approximately 100 works of art. Visits to New York museums and discussions sections are crucial parts of the course.

• MW 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Anne Higonnet
  CULPA: 31 Wikipedia Info
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GLOBAL WARMING FOR GLOBAL LEADERS

Global Warming will dominate civic discourse and inform economic, social, and governmental policies throughout the 21st century, in all walks of life. This course will cover the basics of climate science, anthropogenic global warming, proposed solutions and policy challenges facing society in response to our changing planet. This course will increase your confidence and ability to engage in public discourse on the subject of climate change, climate change solutions, and public policy concerning our collective future.

• TR 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Baerbel Hoenisch
  CULPA: 3 h-index: 33 Info
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Children s Literature

Children's Literature

This is a historical survey of literature (mostly narrative) intended primarily for children, which will explore not only the pleasures of imagination but the varieties of narrative and lyric form, as well as the ways in which story-telling gives shape to individual and cultural identity.  Drawing on anonymous folk tale from a range of cultures, as well as a variety of literary works produced from the late 17th century to the present, we’ll attend to the ways in which changing forms of children’s literature reflect changing understandings of children and childhood, while trying not to overlook psychological and formal structures that might persist across this history.  Readings of the primary works will be supplemented by a variety of critical approaches—psychoanalytic, materialist, feminist, and structuralist—that scholars have employed to understand the variety and appeal of children’s literature.

• MW 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: James E Adams
  CULPA: 12 Info
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Introduction to Latinx Literature and Cu

Intro to Latinx Lit & Cul

In the US, Latinxs are often treated in quantitative terms—as checkmarks on census forms, or as data points in demographic surveys. However, Latinxs have always been more than mere numbers: while some have stayed rooted in traditional homelands, and while others have migrated through far-flung diasporas, all have drawn on and developed distinctive ways of imagining and inhabiting the Americas. In this course, we will explore the resulting range of literature and culture: to understand how Latinxs have resisted and/or reinforced settler colonialism and racial capitalism, we will survey two centuries of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, performance, music, visual art, and more. With our interdisciplinary and intersectional approach, we will consider why Latinidad has manifested differently in colonial territories (especially Puerto Rico), regional communities (especially the US–Mexico borderlands), and transnational diasporas (of Cubans, of Dominicans, and of a variety of Central Americans). At the same time, we will learn how Latinxs have struggled with shared issues, such as (anti-) Blackness and
(anti-)Indigeneity, gender and sexuality, citizenship and (il)legality, and economic and environmental (in)justice. During the semester, we will practice Latinx studies both collectively and individually: to enrich the professor’s lectures, the teaching assistants’ engagements, and our in-person discussions, each student will complete a reading journal, a five-page paper, a creative project, and a final exam.

• TR 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Carlos Nugent
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ELEMENTARY GREEK II

Prerequisites: GREK UN1101 or the equivalent, or the instructor or the director of undergraduate studies permission. Continuation of grammar study begun in GREK UN1101; selections from Attic prose.

• MWF 9 a.m.-10:15 a.m.
• Instructor: Greta Gualdi
  Info
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ELEMENTARY LATIN II

Prerequisites: LATN UN1101. A continuation of LATN UN1101, including a review of grammar and syntax for students whose study of Latin has been interrupted.

• MW 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Lien Van Geel
  CULPA: 1 Info
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Shakespeare II

This course covers the second half of William Shakespeare’s career, attending to the major dramatic genres in which he wrote. It will combine careful attention to the plays’ poetic richness with a focus on their theatrical inventiveness, using filmed productions of many of the plays to explore their staging possibilities. At the same time, we will use the plays as thematic springboards to explore the cultural forces – pertaining to, among others things, politics, class, religion, gender, and race – that shaped the moment in which Shakespeare lived and worked.

• MW 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Julie Crawford
  CULPA: 24 Info
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GENERAL CHEMISTRY I-LECTURES

Corequisites: MATH UN1101 Preparation equivalent to one year of high school chemistry is assumed. Students lacking such preparation should plan independent study of chemistry over the summer or take CHEM UN0001 before taking CHEM UN1403. Topics include stoichiometry, states of matter, nuclear properties, electronic structures of atoms, periodic properties, chemical bonding, molecular geometry, introduction to quantum mechanics and atomic theory, introduction to organic and biological chemistry, solid state and materials science, polymer science and macromolecular structures and coordination chemistry. Although CHEM UN1403 and CHEM UN1404 are separate courses, students are expected to take both terms sequentially. The order of presentation of topics may differ from the order presented here, and from year to year. Students must ensure they register for the recitation that corresponds to the lecture section.

When registering, please add your name to the wait list for the recitation corresponding to the lecture section (1405 for lecture sec 001; 1407 for lecture sec 002; 1409 for lecture sec 003; 1411 for lecture sec 004).  Information about recitation registration will be sent out before classes begin.  DO NOT EMAIL THE INSTRUCTOR. Please check the Directory of Classes for details.

• TR 6:10 p.m.-7:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Ruben M Savizky
  CULPA: 22 Info
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GENERAL CHEMISTRY II-LECTURES

Prerequisites: CHEM UN1403 Although CHEM UN1403 and CHEM UN 1404 are separate courses, students are expected to take both terms sequentially. Topics include gases, kinetic theory of gases, states of matter: liquids and solids, chemical equilibria, applications of equilibria, acids and bases, chemical thermodynamics, energy, enthalpy, entropy, free energy, periodic properties, chemical kinetics, and electrochemistry. The order of presentation of topics may differ from the order presented here, and from year to year. Students must ensure they register for the recitation that corresponds to the lecture section. Please check the Directory of Classes for details.

• MW 6:10 p.m.-7:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Robert Beer
  CULPA: 22 Info
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Introduction to American History to 1865

This course, designed for newcomers to American history, tells three interconnected stories. The first is about the European colonization of North America between the 1500s and the 1750s. The second is about the wars for empire and independence that reshaped the North American continent between 1754 and 1815. The third story is about the creation of the United States and its destruction and remaking during the US Civil War. At the end of the class, you will be able to tell these stories and talk about why they matter. Along the way, you will meet all kinds of people from North America's past: enslaved voyagers, visionary women, costumed parade-goers, and land-hungry presidents. You will get a sense of how they made early America such a wild and unusual place, and at the same time, how they shaped the United States that we live in today.

• MW 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Hannah Farber
  h-index: 1 Info
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The Year 1000: A World History

This course is designed to introduce students to the study of premodern history, with a substantive focus on the variety of cultures flourishing across the globe 1000 years ago.  Methodologically, the course will emphasize the variety of primary sources historians use to reconstruct those cultures, the various approaches taken by the discipline of history (and neighboring disciplines) in analyzing those sources, and the particular challenges and pleasures of studying a generally “source poor” period. The course queries the concepts of “global history” and “world history” as applied to the “middle millennium” (corresponding to Europe’s “medieval history”), by exploring approaches that privilege connection, comparison, combination, correlation, or coverage.

• TR 8:40 a.m.-9:55 a.m.
• Instructor: Adam Kosto
  CULPA: 20 Info
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INTRO TO ASTROPHYSICS II

Prerequisites: a working knowledge of calculus. Corequisites: the second term of a course in calculus-based general physics. Continuation of ASTR UN2001; these two courses constitute a full year of calculus-based introduction to astrophysics. Topics include the structure of our galaxy, the interstellar medium, star clusters, properties of external galaxies, clusters of galaxies, active galactic nuclei, and cosmology.

• MW 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: David Schiminovich
  CULPA: 7 Info
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MUSIC & MYTH

The course explores the relationship between music and myth in Western culture, with particular emphasis on the role that mythological narratives continued to play in societies where rituals and other forms of symbolic behavior were gradually displaced and abandoned. Greek civilization provided the model for a dramatic representation of human behavior rooted in the union of music and myth. Despite the decline of ritual in modern Western societies, the model of ancient tragedy continued to inspire ritual-like performances of mythological themes in complex literary, musical, and theatrical works. We will develop in-depth analyses of myths
that gave rise to particularly influential and rich musical traditions, including those of Odysseus, Orpheus, Oedipus, Ariadne, and Semele, as well as Wagner’s use of Norse mythology. In the process, we will investigate how myths were borrowed, adapted, reinterpreted, transformed, or recreated within the context of changing cultural configurations and against the backdrop of different claims about the meaning of the knowledge preserved and transmitted as myth.

• MW 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Giuseppe Gerbino
  CULPA: 12 Info
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INTERMEDIATE LATIN II

Prerequisites: LATN UN2101 or the equivalent. Selections from Ovids Metamorphoses and from Sallust, Livy, Seneca, or Pliny.

• TRF 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Greta Gualdi
  Info
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Introduction to American Politics

Intro American Politics

In this course, students will gain familiarity with some of the major questions and theoretical frameworks in the American Politics subfield of political science and learn how to think theoretically and empirically about politics.

• MW 6:10 p.m.-7:25 p.m.
• Instructor: David McGrath
  Info
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NATURE & POWER: ENV HIST NORTH AMERICA

Environmental history seeks to expand the customary framework of historical inquiry, challenging students to construct narratives of the past that incorporate not only human beings but also the natural world with which human life is intimately intertwined. As a result, environmental history places at center stage a wide range of previously overlooked historical actors such as plants, animals, and diseases. Moreover, by locating nature within human history, environmental history encourages its practitioners to rethink some of the fundamental categories through which our understanding of the natural world is expressed: wilderness and civilization, wild and tame, natural and artificial. For those interested in the study of ethnicity, environmental history casts into particularly sharp relief the ways in which the natural world can serve both to undermine and to reinforce the divisions within human societies. Although all human beings share profound biological similarities, they have nonetheless enjoyed unequal access to natural resources and to healthy environments—differences that have all-too-frequently been justified by depicting such conditions as “natural.”

• TR 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Karl Jacoby
  CULPA: 2 h-index: 8 Info
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Staging Early Modern London

This lecture course examines the performances through which early modern London (c. 1558-1642) “staged” itself: at the public and private theaters, on the street in civic and royal rituals, and in popular entertainments.   In so doing, we will examine how the capital city’s sense of itself came to be shaped by its various performances – its relationship with the crown, with the country, with strangers and foreigners – and how key sites (the “liberties,” the Royal Exchange, the Guildhall, the Thames, Covent Garden, Hyde Park) came to hold meaning for London audiences. 

We will be reading texts by dramatists including Thomas Dekker, Ben Jonson, Francis Beaumont, Thomas Middleton, and James Shirley, as well as less studied texts.

• MW 8:40 a.m.-9:55 a.m.
• Instructor: Alan Stewart
  CULPA: 14 h-index: 13 Info
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THE DOCUMENTARY TRADITION

This class offers an introduction to the history of documentary cinema and to the theoretical and philosophical questions opened up by the use of moving images to bear witness, persuade, archive the past, or inspire us to change the future. How are documentaries different than fiction films? What is the role of aesthetics in relation to facts and evidence in different documentary traditions? How do documentaries negotiate appeals to emotions with rational argument? From the origins of cinema to our current “post-truth” digital age, we will look at the history of how cinema has attempted to shape our understanding of reality. FILM W2311

• R 2 p.m.-5:45 p.m.
• Instructor: Nico Baumbach
  Info
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Nineteenth Century Britain: Politics, S

This course covers all aspects of British history – political, imperial, economic, social and cultural – during the century of Britain’s greatest global power.  Particular attention will be paid to the emergence of liberalism as a political and economic system and as a means of governing personal and social life.  Students will read materials from the time, as well as scholarly articles, and will learn to work with some of the rich primary materials available on this period.

• TR 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Susan Pedersen
  CULPA: 15 Wikipedia Info
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POLITICS OF TERROR:FRENCH REV

This course examines the political culture of eighteenth-century France, from the final decades of the Bourbon monarchy to the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte. Among our primary aims will be to explore the origins of the Terror and its relationship to the Revolution as a whole. Other topics we will address include the erosion of the kings authority in the years leading up to 1789, the fall of the Bastille, the Constitutions of 1791 and 1793, civil war in the Vendee, the militarization of the Revolution, the dechristianization movement, attempts to establish a new Revolutionary calendar and civil religion, and the sweeping plans for moral regeneration led by Robespierre and his colleagues in 1793-1794.

• TR 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Charly J Coleman
  CULPA: 7 Info
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VICTORIAN POETRY

(Lecture). This course examines the works of the major English poets of the period 1830-1900. We will pay special attention to Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning, and their great poetic innovation, the dramatic monologue. We will also be concentrating on poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Christina Rossetti, Matthew Arnold, A. E. Housman, and Thomas Hardy.

• MW 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Erik Gray
  CULPA: 35 Info
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U.S. ERA OF CIVIL WAR & RECON

It is difficult to exaggerate the significance of the American Civil War as an event in the making of the modern United States and, indeed, of the western world.  Indeed the American Civil War and Reconstruction introduced a whole series of dilemmas that are still with us.  What is the legacy of slavery in U.S. history and contemporary life?  What is the proper balance of power between the states and the central government? Who is entitled to citizenship in the United States?   What do freedom and equality mean in concrete terms?

This course surveys the history of the Civil War and Reconstruction in all of its aspects.  It focuses on the causes of the war in the divergent development of northern and southern states; the prosecution of the war and all that it involved, including the process of slave emancipation; and the contentious process of reconstructing the re-united states in the aftermath of Union victory.  The course includes the military history of the conflict, but ranges far beyond it to take the measure of the social and political changes the war unleashed.  It focuses on the Confederacy as well as the Union, on women as well as men, and on enslaved black people as well as free white people.  It takes the measure of large scale historical change while trying to grasp the experience of those human beings who lived through it.

• MW 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Stephanie McCurry
  CULPA: 3 Wikipedia Info
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POLITICAL HISTORY OF CONTEMPORARY AFRICA

POLITICAL HIST CONTEMP AF

This course offers a survey of the political history of contemporary Africa, from independence to the present day, with a focus on the states and societies south of the Sahara. We will use the tools of historians to study African political life: who held political power; how they wielded it and to what ends; and what kinds of opposition they faced. An important sub-theme involves American policy and actions, including those of civil society organizations, vis-à-vis African nation-states.

• MW 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Gregory Mann
  CULPA: 15 h-index: 13 Info
• 0 points

ORGANIC CHEMSTRY II-LECTURES

Prerequisites: CHEM UN1404 or CHEM UN1604, CHEM UN1500 and CHEMUN2443. The principles of organic chemistry. The structure and reactivity of organic molecules are examined from the standpoint of modern theories of chemistry. Topics include stereochemistry, reactions of organic molecules, mechanisms of organic reactions, syntheses and degradations of organic molecules, and spectroscopic techniques of structure determination. Although CHEM UN2443 and CHEM UN2444 are separate courses, students are expected to take both terms sequentially. Students must ensure they register for the recitation which corresponds to the lecture section. Please check the Directory of Classes for details.

• MW 6:10 p.m.-7:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Charles E Jr Doubleday
  Info
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HISTORY OF THE SOUTH

A survey of the history of the American South from the colonial era to the present day, with two purposes: first, to afford students an understanding of the special historical characteristics of the South and of southerners; and second, to explore what the experience of the South may teach about America as a nation.

• TR 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Barbara J Fields
  CULPA: 22 Wikipedia Info
• 0 points

JEWS & JUDAISM IN ANTIQUITY

• MW 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Seth R Schwartz
  CULPA: 1 Wikipedia Info
• 0 points

The Ottoman Empire and the West in the 1

“The Ottoman Empire and the West” is a course designed to familiarize undergraduate students with the major developments concerning the Ottoman Empire’s relations with the West throughout the ‘long’ nineteenth century, roughly from the end of the eighteenth century to the outbreak of World War I. The course will adopt a predominantly chronological structure but will address a wide range of themes, from politics and ideology to economics and diplomacy, and from religion and culture to gender and orientalism.

• MW 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Edhem Eldem
  Info
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American Modernism

This course approaches modernism as the varied literary responses to the cultural, technological, and political conditions of modernity in the United States.  The historical period from the turn of the century to the onset of World War II forms a backdrop for consideration of such authors as Getrude Stein, Willa Cather, Jean Toomer, Zora Neale Hurston, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Djuna Barnes.  Assigned readings will cover a range of genres, including novels, poetry, short stories, and contemporary essays.

• TR 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Rachel Adams
  CULPA: 16 Info
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BILDUNGSROMAN: THE COMING-OF-AGE NOVEL

The bildungsroman is the modern, realist version of the hero’s quest. Instead of slaying dragons and weaving spells, the protagonist of the bildungsroman struggles with what it means to become an adult – or to refuse to. Also known as the novel of development or coming-of-age novel, the bildungsroman typically focuses on growth and development, the cultivation of the self, marriage and vocation. It is a form marked by conflicts and tensions: between the individual and society, between idealism and realism, rebellion and compromise, dreamy inertia and future-oriented action.

The reading list spans works from Europe and the United States, from the 1790s through the 2010s. Lectures will focus on the novel as a literary form in dialogue with other literary works, with historical events, and with ideas drawn from philosophy, psychology, and sociology.

Lectures will address: What fosters human development and what thwarts it? What is a self and what is a life course? How do coming-of-age novels engage with social norms concerning love, work, personhood, and maturity? And how has this literary genre itself changed and developed over time?

This is a 3-point lecture course. In accordance with university guidelines, you should expect to spend about six hours per week outside of class doing the course reading, which will consist entirely of novels and vary from ~150 to ~200 pages per week, and doing the assignments.

• TR 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Sharon Marcus
  CULPA: 8 Wikipedia h-index: 19 Info
• 0 points

The Age of Augustus

The reign of the first Roman emperor, Augustus (27bce-14ce), has been seen as a Roman revolution, both political and cultural. Rome had for centuries been governed as a Republic, but a series of increasingly divisive civil wars allowed Augustus to create a new political system in which he exercised sole rule as the ‘first citizen’ within a ‘Restored Republic’. Augustus’ reign lasted more than 40 years, and established a model of autocratic rule that would last for four centuries. During this time there were profound changes in the political, social, and cultural structures of Rome. In this course, you will examine the nature of these changes, Augustus’ political strategies, military activities, and religious initiatives through his own writing, the accounts of (often hostile) historians and a range of literary and archaeological sources, including Roman poetry. Ultimately, we will address the question: how did Augustus achieve the seemingly paradoxical feat of becoming a monarch within a republican system?

• MW 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Lien Van Geel
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 0 points

Democracy and Technology

Athenian democracy could be direct because it was local; modern democracy is representative in part because citizens can no longer gather in a single assembly. And as the territorial size and number of citizens have grown, democracy has become unthinkable without modern technologies of transportation and communication. These technologies make it theoretically possible to maintain ongoing channels of equal, free communication between citizens and those who exercise political power in their name. This course is focused on examining how this dynamic has played out in practice, and in situating current technological controversies in historical and theoretical context.

A few of the questions we will be asking: How do modern technologies facilitate and bedevil democratic ideals of communication? Who controls the direction of technological change, and how could that power be distributed more democratically? Is capitalism destroying the democratic potential of the Internet? Was that potential always overblown?

The primary aim of the class is to give students the theoretical and historical tools to think critically about the relationship between technology and democracy in a way that takes neither our current democracy nor our current technology for granted. We will read and analyze a wide range of texts, but we will mainly be analyzing technology through the lens of democracy and democratic theory.

One of the key themes of the class will be the importance of educated, critical citizens for a democracy, and a secondary goal of the class is to think critically about the place of technology in our own intellectual lives.

• TR 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Xavier Flory
  Info
• 0 points

LIT & REVOLUTION (20TH C LIT)

The revolutionary period (1905-1938) in Russia was not only one of extreme social upheaval but also of exceptional creativity. Established ideas about individuality and collectivity, about how to depict reality, about language, gender, authority, and violence, were all thrown open to radical questioning. Out of this chaos came ideas about literature and film (just for example) which have shaped Western thought on these subjects to this day. In this course we will study a variety of media and genres (poetry, manifestos, film, painting, photomontage, the novel, theoretical essays) in an effort to gain a deep understanding of this complex and fascinating period in Russian cultural history.

• MW 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Mark Lipovetsky
  Wikipedia Info
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TOLSTOY AND DOSTOEVSKY

Two epic novels, Tolstoys War and Peace and Dostoevskys The Brothers Karamazov, will be read along with selected shorter works. Other works by Tolstoy include his early Sebastopol Sketches, which changed the way war is represented in literature; Confession, which describes his spiritual crisis; the late stories Kreutzer Sonata and Hadji Murad; and essays on capital punishment and a visit to a slaughterhouse. Other works by Dostoevsky include his fictionalized account of life in Siberian prison camp, The House of the Dead; Notes from the Underground, his philosophical novella on free will, determinism, and love; A Gentle Creature, a short story on the same themes; and selected essays from Diary of a Writer. The focus will be on close reading of the texts. Our aim will be to develop strategies for appreciating the structure and form, the powerful ideas, the engaging storylines, and the human interest in the writings of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. No knowledge of Russian is required.

• MW 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Liza Knapp
  CULPA: 28 Info
• 0 points

LATIN LITERATURE SELECTIONS

Prerequisites: LATN UN2102 or the equivalent. Since the content of this course changes from year to year, it may be repeated for credit.

• TR 8:40 a.m.-9:55 a.m.
• Instructor: Rosalie Stoner
  Info
• 0 points

INTRO TO FRENCH & FRANCOPHONE HISTORY

INTRO FREN FRANCOPHONE HI

Who were the Gauls and when was Paris the "capital of modernity"? What caused the French and Haitian Revolutions? Why do the French care so much about religion, nation, empire or, for that matter, food and fashion? This class surveys the history of France and the Francophone world from the Middle Ages to the present. It provides an introduction to major events and ideas that have shaped the lives of millions of people in France and across the world, in its former colonies. From feudalism and absolutism to imperialism, capitalism, and republicanism, we explore how questions of identity and difference play out in politics, culture and society. The class is based in lecture and discussion and relies on close readings of primary sources. The course is taught entirely in French and is one of two core courses for the major and minor in French. Students are encouraged to take FREN 3405 prior to this course.

• TR 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Emmanuelle Saada
  CULPA: 13 Info
• 0 points

Intro French & Francophone Literature

Intro French Francophone

This class offers students an introduction to major works that have marked the history of literature in French from the Middle Ages to the present. Our focus will be on close reading and discussion, but works will also be placed in historical context. We will look at a variety of literary genres (sonnet, short story, comedy, autobiography, narrative poetry, novel), and our readings will be complemented by visual materials such as paintings and films. The course is taught entirely in French and is one of two core courses for the major and minor in French. Students are encouraged to take FREN 3405 prior to this course.

• MW 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Joanna R Stalnaker
  CULPA: 18 Info
• 0 points

Ecstasy & Agony: Queer Electronic Dance

Queer dance floors balance utopian longing and material constraint. Sweat, flesh, and rhythm intermingle, allowing queer people to build counter-publics on the dance floor. At the same time, queer clubs have been entangled in the gentrification of traditionally Black and brown neighborhoods. This course explores tensions within queerness surrounding race and class by examining New York based queer electronic dance music scenes from the 1970s to the present. Through practice-based assignments, students will learn electronic music production techniques to develop their own dance music. Through journaling, students will reflect on how their identies have been shaped by dance.

• MW 5:40 p.m.-6:55 p.m.
• Instructor: David A Farrow
  Info
• 0 points

MOD JEWISH INTELLECTUAL HIST

This course analyzes Jewish intellectual history from Spinoza to the present. It tracks the radical transformation that modernity yielded in Jewish thought, both in the development of new, self-consciously modern, iterations of Judaism and Jewishness and in the more elusive but equally foundational changes in "traditional" Judaisms. Questions to be addressed include:  the development of the modern concept of "religion" and its effect on the Jews; the origin of the notion of "Judaism" parallel to Christianity, Islam, etc.; the rise of Jewish secularism and of secular Jewish ideologies, especially the Jewish Enlightenment movement (Haskalah), modern Jewish nationalism, and Zionism; the rise of Reform, Modern Orthodox, and Conservative Judaisms; Jewish neo-Romanticism and neo-Kantianism, and American Jewish religious thought.

• R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Michael F Stanislawski
  CULPA: 66 Wikipedia Info
• 0 points

SELECTIONS FROM LATIN LITERATURE

Prerequisites: LATN UN3012 or the equivalent. Since the content of this course changes from year to year, it may be repeated for credit.

• TR 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Katharina Volk
  CULPA: 7 Info
• 0 points

HUNGRY CITY WORKSHOP

The city has historically served to gather and leverage what the hinterland has produced: urban crafts guilds added value to raw materials, crops and piecework were monetized, knowledge was assembled and disseminated in cities. Within sustainability studies, cities are often cited for the efficiency of their transportation, housing and supply or refuse infrastructures, but the nature of their relationship to their hinterlands in a globalized world may be underplayed. Nothing – whether a living creature or a settlement – can have a metabolic rate of zero. This course will look to the knowledge base of urban metabolism to ask questions about how cities supply and off-load their metabolic processes. We will also engage with experts in food supply, public health, water, energy and other basic components of urban metabolism.

• M 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Lynnette Widder
  Info
• 0 points

Music, Sound and Image Theory

Some of the most exciting theoretical moving image work in recent years has centered on the problem of the acoustic sign in cinema and especially around the relation between image track and sound “track.” This course rethinks the history and theory of cinema from the point of view of sound: effects, dialogue, music. From cinematic sound recording and play-back technologies through Dolby sound enhancement and contemporary digital audio experiments. Revisiting basic theoretical concepts from the pov of sound: realism (sound perspective, dubbing), anti-realism (contrapuntal and dissonant effects), genre (the leitmotiv), perception (the synaesthetic effect). The silent to sound divide considered relative to the *19th* century Romanticism of the classical Hollywood score associated with the Viennese-trained Max Steiner to the scores of John Williams.

• W 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Benjamin A Steege
  Info
• 0 points

SUSTAINABILITY MANAGEMENT

This course will begin by clearly defining what sustainability management is and determining if a sustainable economy is actually feasible. Students will learn to connect environmental protection to organizational management by exploring the technical, financial, managerial, and political challenges of effectively managing a sustainable environment and economy. This course is taught in a case-based format and will seek to help students learn the basics of management, environmental policy and sustainability economics. Sustainability management matters because we only have one planet, and we must learn how to manage our organizations in a way that ensures that the health of our planet can be maintained and bettered. This course is designed to introduce students to the field of sustainability management. It is not an academic course that reviews the literature of the field and discusses how scholars thing about the management of organizations that are environmentally sound. It is a practical course organized around the core concepts of sustainability.

• M 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Howard N Apsan
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 0 points

WATER RESOURCES AND CLIMATE

This course will cover the science needed to understand hydrology, the link between hydrology and climate, and why climate change will affect the hydrologic cycle. It will then look at what changes have occurred in the past, and what changes are projected for the future and how these changes may affect other sectors, such as agriculture. The final module of the course will look at adaptation measures to adapt to climate change. The course will be formatted to be a mixture of lectures and seminars, with the lecture portion used to introduce scientific concepts and the seminar portion to discuss and evaluate the readings assigned. At the end of this course, students will the hydrologic cycle and its connection to climate, how changes in climate have affected/will affect how much water is available on land, how water impacts ecosystem services, and how to diagnose the cause of a climate-related water problem and develop solutions to address it.

• R 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Nicole K Davi
  Info
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SEA LEVEL CHANGE

Pre-requisite: At least a year of calculus and physics; basic programming experience (e.g. EESC3400 - Introduction to Computational Earth Science).
Recommended: EESC2100 (Climate System), EESC2200 (Solid Earth), EESC3201 (Solid Earth Dynamics). 

The course aims to explore sea level changes that take place over a wide variety of timescales and are the result of multiple solid Earth and climatic processes. The course will step chronologically through time starting with long term sea level changes over the Phanerozoic, followed by Plio-Pleistocene ice age sea level variations and lastly modern and future sea level change. This is a cross-disciplinary course, which is aimed at students with interests in geophysics, cryosphere evolution, ocean dynamics, sedimentology, paleogeography, and past and present climate.

• TR 8:40 a.m.-9:55 a.m.
• Instructor: Jacqueline Austermann
  h-index: 18 Info
• 0 points

SCIENCE OF URBAN ECOLOGY

Urban ecology is the study of both the interactions between organisms in an urban environment and the organisms' interactions with that environment. This course facilitates learning about 1) basic principles related to ecological interactions of life on Earth, 2) the causes and consequences of biological patterns and processes in urban environments, and 3) how ecology can inform land use decisions and applied management strategies of natural resources (e.g. water, air, biodiversity), particularly in urban environments. This course aims to provide students with an understanding of the ways in which ecological perspectives can contribute to an interdisciplinary approach to solving environmental problems facing human society. Towards that end, this course covers topics ranging from applied ecology and conservation biology to sustainable development. It uses a cross disciplinary approach to understand the nature of ecology and biological conservation, as well as the social, philosophical and economic dimensions of land use strategies. Although in some ways cities may seem to be isolated from what we would otherwise call "nature," they are not, and this is a major theme of this course. This course includes discussion of biodiversity, ecosystem function, evolutionary processes, nutrient cycling, and natural resource availability in cities. Students will acquire an understanding of the ecology of human-dominated landscapes, the theory and study of urban ecology, and the application of ecological principles to building sustainable urban communities. Students will also explore timely and important urban ecology issues including ecological restoration, invasive species, and biodiversity conservation.

• M 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Amy Karpati
  Info
• 0 points

Reversing the Biodiversity Crisis

Course Overview

Often described as “twin crises,” climate change and biodiversity loss are among the most urgent sustainability challenges to be addressed in our modern era. While much focus has rightfully been placed on climate change mitigation actions at local, regional, and global scales, biodiversity loss is less often addressed by governments, institutions, industries, and individuals as a critical piece of the sustainability puzzle. In 2021, COP 15, the fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, received far less media attention than COP 26, the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Climate Change. Yet climate change and biodiversity loss are inextricably linked, and without biodiversity and the associated ecosystem services and biospheric resilience upon which human society relies, a sustainable world is not possible. Moreover, certain climate change mitigation actions can actually be to the detriment of biological diversity.

 

Unlike a traditional conservation biology course geared towards ecologists and biologists, this course will be taught through the lens of sustainability management, equipping sustainability managers with the knowledge and direction needed to begin integrating biodiversity conservation and restoration into their professions. This course will illuminate the critical importance of biodiversity to sustainability and human well-being, the science and politics behind the current biodiversity crisis, and proposals, policies, and actions for bending the curve of biodiversity loss to create more sustainable and equitable outcomes for both humans and the non-humans with which we share our planet.

 

Students who seek to deepen their understanding of ecological sustainability and address the biodiversity crisis through the lens of sustainability management are encouraged to take this course. This course is an on-campus (or Hy-Flex) elective offered during the Fall semester and fulfills 3 credits within the Physical Dimensions of Sustainability Management curriculum area in the Master of Science in Sustainability Management program. Cross-registration is available to students outside of the Master of Science in Sustainability Management program, space permitting.

• M 8:10 p.m.-10 p.m.
• Instructor: Amy Karpati
  Info
• 0 points

Rationalizing the World: Am. Soc. Scienc

This course will cover the development of modern social science and its relation to American history and culture. The different strands of the course are indicated by its title, where “rationalizing” refers both to attempts to understand society through rational means and to the role of social science in providing a justification or rationale for existing social structures. 

Quantitative thinking and social science have become increasingly prominent in our society. But modern discussions of the political relevance of social science do not always account for the ups and downs of particular ideas. For example, Freudianism was huge in mid-century, both within psychology and in the culture at large, but has faded for both intellectual and economic reasons. The Keynesian revolution dominated economics from the 1930s through the 1960s but then was contested by later paradigms in response to the stagflation of the following decade. Trends in criminal justice policy have followed ideas from anthropology, psychology, and economics, and political theories of international relations have affected and been informed by developments in foreign policy. This course provides students with an opportunity to learn about these and other examples of the development and influence of theories in social science, and to form a larger connection between intellectual, social, and political history. 

It is common for students to learn about just one or maybe two social sciences and not to see the way that different social sciences fit together intellectually and how they compete for influence. There’s a tendency to think of any field of study as being a static set of truths as laid out in textbooks or else a steady march of progress. In contrast, this course presents a series of booms and crashes: unsustainable enthusiasms for new ideas followed by disillusionment and controversies that are often never fully resolved. Through readings, class discussion and activities, and final projects, students should learn to see social science as a process that proceeds both internally and with reference to society. 

By the end of the course, students should gain a broad understanding of the development of modern social science and its connection to American politics and society. They will read different sides of academic disputes involving figures from Margaret Mead to Milton Friedman and will gain a historically informed sense of how social science has been influenced by and has influence

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

PRAC-INNOVATV SUSTAIN LEADRSHP

This course deals with a fundamental question of sustainability management: how to change organizations and more complex systems, such as communities, industries, and markets, by integrating sustainability concerns in the way that they operate. The course poses this question to a dozen leading sustainability practitioners, who answer it by discussing management strategies that they use in their own work. Through these guest lectures, extensive class discussion, readings, and writing assignments, students identify and simulate applying practical ways for transforming how organizations and complex systems work. The practitioners, who work in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors and in a wide variety of organizations, make presentations in the first hour of the course. Students then have time to ask questions and speak informally with the guest practitioners, and will participate in an instructor-led class discussion, geared toward identifying management strategies, better understanding their application, and considering their effectiveness. By the end of the course, the students gain an understanding of management tools and strategies that they, themselves, would use to integrate sustainability in organizations.

The course complements the M.S. in Sustainability Management program’s required course, Sustainability Management (SUMA K4100). In that course, students study management and organization theory. In the Practicum, students learn directly from leading practitioners, who confront sustainability management issues daily.

• W 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Wendy J Hapgood
  Info
• 0 points

CHTENIIA PO RUSSKOI LITERATURE

A survey of Alexander Pushkin's poetry and prose in the original. Emphasis on the emergence of a new figure of the poet in Russia in the 1820s - 1830s. Linguistic analysis of poetic texts (vocabulary, metrics, versification) will be combined with the study of Russian history and culture as reelected in Pushkin's writing.

• TR 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Irina Reyfman
  CULPA: 5 Info
• 0 points

WOMEN IN CITIES: SUST URB DSGN,PLNG,MGMT

The course will examine both acknowledged indicators of women’s and girls’ inclusion in the conceptualization and life of a city (e.g., access to shelter, clean water, sanitation, safe transport, healthcare, education, jobs and leadership positions), and those not sufficiently acknowledged (stability and tenure in housing, labor force inclusion and wage parity, physical, mental and environmental health, sexual and reproductive rights, freedom from violence, assured levels of participation in policy- and decision-making, etc.). Migrating between multiple cultural and sociopolitical contexts, and between the individual and metropolitan, national and indigenous levels of policymaking, the course will look at how today’s cities have evolved; the consequential disconnect between enshrined legal frameworks, regulatory and administrative structures, and concrete urban realities; and at how, through a sustainable process of inclusive community and private sector engagement, responsive design, and strategic budgeting to realize select well-defined priorities, tomorrow’s cities can be better attuned to the human scale of their primary constituents by becoming more aware, inclusive, accommodating and enabling of women and families. Each week, one or more leading and cutting-edge thinkers and practitioners in the areas of urban and environmental design and management, corporate social responsibility, landscape architecture and planning, sustainable engineering, and urban health,  wellbeing and women’s rights will share their experience, current thinking and ideas in featured guest lectures; these will be followed by wide-ranging conversations among the instructor, lecturers and students, enabling students to hear firsthand how private, public and non-profit sector managers, policymakers and designers approach and deal with such issues as (for instance) making transport hubs equally navigable for women with strollers, walkers or young children, or implementing green or family-friendly CSR policies.

• W 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Susan M Blaustein
  CULPA: 1 Wikipedia Info
• 0 points

The Politics of Memory. Remembrance, Eth

This seminar will explore the multidimensional interplay between collective memory, politics, and history in France since 1945. We will examine the process of memorializing key historical events and periods – the Vichy regime, the Algerian War, the slave trade – and the critical role they played in shaping and dividing French collective identity. This exploration will focus on multiple forms of narratives – official history, victims’ accounts, literary fiction – and will examine the tensions and contradictions that oppose them. The seminar will discuss the political uses of memory, the influence of commemorations on French collective identity, and the role played by contested monuments, statues and other “
lieux de mémoire
” (“sites of memory”). We will ask how these claims on historical consciousness play out in the legal space through an exploration of French “memorial laws”, which criminalize genocide denial and recognize slave trade as a crime against humanity. These reflections will pave the way to retracing the genesis of the “
devoir de mémoire
” (“duty to remember”), a notion that attempts to confer an ethical dimension to collective memory. The seminar will examine the multiple uses of the French injunction to remember – as a response to narratives of denial, as an act of justice towards the victims, and as an antidote to the recurrence of mass crimes and persecutions. We will examine how amnesty is used to reconcile conflicting collective memories and will evaluate the claim that the transmission

• M 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Emmanuel Kattan
  Info
• 0 points

PIRANDELLO & MOD ITALIAN DRAMA

• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Elizabeth Leake
  Info
• 0 points

CANTERBURY TALES

(Lecture). Beginning with an overview of late medieval literary culture in England, this course will cover the entire Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English. We will explore the narrative and organizational logics that underpin the project overall, while also treating each individual tale as a coherent literary offering, positioned deliberately and recognizably on the map of late medieval cultural convention. We will consider the conditions—both historical and aesthetic—that informed Chaucer’s motley composition, and will compare his work with other large-scale fictive works of the period. Our ultimate project will be the assessment of the Tales at once as a self-consciously “medieval” production, keen to explore and exploit the boundaries of literary convention, and as a ground-breaking literary event, which set the stage for renaissance literature.

• TR 8:40 a.m.-9:55 a.m.
• Instructor: Eleanor Johnson
  CULPA: 20 Info
• 0 points

Practicum on Environmental Research

This course provides students with an overview of environmental research, covering the conceptualization of research projects, the grantmaking process, and article writing. Throughout the semester, students will attend lectures from Columbia researchers and professionals from other organizations. These lectures will cover their current projects and how they communicate their findings in various settings, communities, cultures, and industries. The lecturers will also discuss different aspects of the research process and the practicalities of project development. Students will learn the basics of grant writing and research methodology, write an academic research paper, and participate in a colloquium, with the aim of providing them with tangible transferable skills.

• W 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Louise A Rosen
  Info
• 0 points

PALEOCEANOGRAPHY

Prerequisites: Complements GU4937 Cenozoic Paleoceanography, intended as part of a sequence with GU4330 Terrestrial Paleoclimate. For undergrads, UN2100 Earth System: Climate or equivalent, or permission of instructor The course examines the ocean's response to external climatic forcing such as solar luminosity and changes in the Earth's orbit, and to internal influences such as atmospheric composition, using deep-sea sediments, corals, ice cores and other paleoceanographic archives. A rigorous analysis of the assumptions underlying the use of climate proxies and their interpretations will be presented. Particular emphasis will be placed on amplifiers of climate change during the alternating ice ages and interglacial intervals of the last few million years, such as natural variations in atmospheric greenhouse gases and changes in deep water formation rates, as well as mechanisms of rapid climate change during the late Pleistocene. The influence of changes in the Earth's radiation distribution and boundary conditions on the global ocean circulation, Asian monsoon system and El Nino/Southern Oscillation frequency and intensity, as well as interactions among these systems will be examined using proxy data and models. This course complements W4937 Cenozoic Paleoceanography and is intended as part of a sequence with W4330 Terrestrial Paleoclimate for students with interests in Paleoclimate.

• TR 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Jerry F McManus
  CULPA: 8 h-index: 56 Info
• 0 points

PLATE TECTONICS AND CLIMATE

What produced the change from the hothouse to the ice house Earth in the last ~60 million years? What caused earlier ice ages and huge swinges in sea level that covered so much of the continents with marine sediments? The possible answers, from weathering of rocks during periods of enhanced mountain building to changes in the rate of CO2 release at mid-ocean ridges, all involve plate tectonics. We review the development of the plate tectonic theory, including role Columbia researchers played in making the break-throughs that first confirmed the theory. We will discuss ideas about what might control plate motions on Earth as well as what we know about different kinds of tectonics on other planets. Researchers working on cutting-edge observations and models relating tectonics and climate will be invited to air their views to the class.

• TR 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: W R Buck
  CULPA: 1 h-index: 43 Info
• 0 points

PRED EFFCT CLIMATE CHNGE ON GLOB FORESTS

Forests are often called the lungs of the earth, for their role in converting atmospheric CO2 into the life-sustaining Oxygen that we all breathe. Collectively, the global forests contribute to roughly 40% of the annual global carbon sink, and yet little is known about the drivers of terrestrial carbon sequestration, and the processes involved in these systems response to changes in climate. Forested landscapes also comprise some of the most critical habitats on planet Earth, by serving as refuge to diverse and often endangered flora and fauna, and as regulators of water and soils. These services are particularly important for highland regions where forests are heavily exploited and are often the primary source of water and food for marginalized human populations. This course takes an in-depth look into the current, primary literature on the direct and indirect effects of climate change on forest ecosystems around the globe, and examines some of the primary policy solutions to forest loss mitigation and sustainability. Because the instructor is from the LDEO Tree Ring Lab there will be an emphasis on using dendrochronology for understanding changes in biomass for forest environments, with emphasis on the broadleaf forests of eastern North America and the largely coniferous, fire-prone forests of the American West. Students will have access to multiple sources of data, including satellite, forest inventory, tree rings and eddy-flux measurements. The course will have a field component that will take place at the Black Rock Forest (BRF), about two hours north of NYC. Students will conduct primary research for a final project, with the goal being to develop a set of group projects related to forests and climate change. This course will prepare students to assess the impacts of climate extremes on forest systems and to understand the complexities of response possibilities from diverse ecosystems.

This course will combine lectures and assigned course readings to develop the framework for understanding global forest response to climate change. Each class will begin with a 5-question mini-quiz based upon the assigned readings and the previous lecture. This class will discuss the questions asked, techniques used and key findings of the papers, with discussions led by the students. The class includes a field trip to Black Rock Forest (dates TBD) where students will collect data for use in a class project, thereby providing the opportunity to develop skills in field research and data analysis.

• M 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Mukund P Rao
  Info
• 0 points

CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING AND S

CORP SUST REPORTING & STR

The purpose of this course is to provide an overview of trends and best practices in corporate communications relating to sustainability, with a particular focus on global sustainability reporting frameworks and green marketing communications. It is designed for those who hold/will hold positions in organizations with responsibilities for communicating the sustainability goals, challenges and achievements, as well as accurately and honestly communicating the environmental aspects of an organization's products and services. Increasingly, large corporations are creating c-suite roles or dedicated departments to oversee this function. More typically, multiple functions contribute information such as: Corporate Communications, Marketing, Community Affairs, Public Policy, Environmental Health & Safety, R&D, Facilities, Operations and Legal. Benefits of reporting range from building trust with stakeholders, and uncovering risks and opportunities; to contributing to stronger long-term business strategy, and creating new products and services.

• R 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Celine S Ruben-Salama
  Info
• 0 points

DECISION MODELS & MANAGEMENT

This course provides an introduction to computer-based models for decision-making.  The emphasis is on models that are widely used in diverse industries and functional areas, including finance, accounting, operations, and marketing.  Applications will include advertising planning, revenue management, asset-liability management, environmental policy modeling, portfolio optimization, and corporate risk management, among others. The applicability and usage of computer-based models have increased dramatically in recent years, due to the extraordinary improvements in computer, information and communication technologies, including not just hardware but also model-solution techniques and user interfaces.  Twenty years ago working with a model meant using an expensive mainframe computer, learning a complex programming language, and struggling to compile data by hand; the entire process was clearly marked “experts only.”  The rise of personal computers, friendly interfaces (such as spreadsheets), and large databases has made modeling far more accessible to managers.  Information has come to be recognized as a critical resource, and models play a key role in deploying this resource, in organizing and structuring information so that it can be used productively.

• M 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Lucius J Riccio
  CULPA: 4 Info
• 0 points

ESG ALIGNED CORPORATE GOVERNANCE

ESG ALIGNED CORP GOVERNAN

Environmental, social and governance issues (‘ESG’) are moving to center stage for corporate boards and executive teams.  This elective course complements management and operations courses by focusing on the perspective and roles of the board and C-suite of corporations, financial institutions and professional firms in addressing ESG risks as well as promoting and overseeing governance aligned with ESG principles. The course focuses on the interchange between the external legal, competitive, societal, environmental and policy ‘ecosystems’ corporations face (which vary around the world) and a company’s internal structure, operations and pressures. We will use the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the UN Global Compact Principles (which incorporate all aspects of ESG) as the central frameworks to explore the concept of a corporation’s responsibility to respect and remedy human rights and environmental harms.  We will also examine the Equator Principles and other frameworks that spell out good practices for project finance and other investment decisions, and reference a wide range of the myriad indices, supplier disclosure portals and benchmarks that exist in this inter-disciplinary field.  Relevant regulations, corporate law regimes and court cases will be discussed from the point of view of what business managers need to know. While most of the course will deal with companies and firms serving global, regional or national markets, several examples will deal with the question of how the ESG ecosystem affects or offers opportunities to start-ups.

• W 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Bridget C Murphy
  Info
• 0 points

STRATEGIC NEGOTIATION IN COMPLEX SYSTEMS

STRAT NEG IN COMPLEX SYST

Negotiation today requires navigating complexity, interpreting incomplete data, managing uncertainty, and fostering trust in environments where clarity is scarce and stakes are high. Practitioners must address information gaps and asymmetry, regulatory pressures, and power dynamics while aligning diverse interests and shaping agreements that endure.

This course prepares students with skills to negotiate effectively across healthcare, technology, and business—domains where outcomes hinge on data limitations, contractual nuance, and shifting stakeholder priorities. Trust and credibility are emphasized as essential currencies, especially when agreements depend on long-term relationships, compliance, and cross-functional collaboration.

Guest speakers from multiple industries will share practical insights into negotiating across roles and power structures. Their perspectives will underscore the value of preparation, trust-building, and adaptive strategies for navigating uncertainty in dynamic environments.

Students will:


Build and apply negotiation frameworks in complex, multiparty environments.

Learn how to extract meaning from structured (quantitative) and unstructured (qualitative) data.

Develop data-informed narratives to guide decision-making and stakeholder alignment.

Practice identifying cognitive bias, ethical tension, and strategic leverage points.

Engage in simulations and case studies grounded in real-world contracting and influence challenges.


Note for NECR Students
: As an elective offered by the Negotiation and Conflict Resolution (NECR) program, this course builds on students’ conflict negotiation skills (PS5105) and their application in healthcare. Students will further engage with concepts on the influences and cultural understandings of conflict parties, and conflict analysis (PS5124 and 6050). The aforementioned courses will contribute to the understanding of this course’s content and should, in general, be taken before this elective.

• W 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Rodney K Jr. Erb
  Info
• 0 points

STATISTICS, DATA ANALYSIS, AND CODING FO

STATS, DATA, ANLYS&CODING

Students in the Master of Science in Sustainability Science program will encounter a range of scientific problems throughout their Science-specific courses that require a strong working knowledge of computer programming.  This course provides an introduction to scientific programming using Python. Computer coding skills gained in the course will prepare students for coursework in the Master of Science in Sustainability Science program as well as to succeed in a career having a programming component.  Students enrolled in this course will learn through lectures, class discussion, and hands-on exercises that address the following topics:


Basics of computer programming, including precision of variables, arrays and data structures, input/output, control flow, and subroutines.

Applying Python to read common scientific data formats, including NetCDF for gridded climate and other environmental data.

Applying Python for data analysis, with a focus on popular machine learning methods including linear regression, decision trees, neural networks, principal component analysis, and clustering.

Applying Python to visualize scientific data through basic X-Y plots as well as images of data fields on a global map.


This course will train students to analyze and model scientific data using Python in order to better understand current and future environments and their interactions with human systems.  By learning analysis and modeling with Python, students will be better able to inform sustainability policy, management, and decision-making.

• T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Michael Previdi
  Info
• 0 points

Machine Learning in Sustainability Scien

This course is for students who wish to participate in a hands-on, project-based, exploration of how machine learning (ML) can be harnessed to tackle challenges in sustainability science.  Students will work collaboratively on a semester-long coding project, applying ML techniques to real sustainability problems in data analysis and visualization. Along the way, they will sharpen their skills in AI-assisted coding with tools such as ChatGPT, using these technologies not just to write and debug code more efficiently, but also to enhance creativity, streamline collaboration, and bring complex ideas to life. By the end of the course, students will have experienced the full arc of designing, building, and refining an ML solution with direct relevance to the future of our planet.

This course equips students with experience using advanced scientific and computational tools for tackling environmental and sustainability challenges. Through AI-assisted coding of ML solutions, students develop creative approaches to analyzing, modeling, and interpreting state-of-the-art observations of Earth systems using rigorous, quantitative methods. Guided readings and discussion will help students achieve mastery of the subject. The class takes place in a project-based setting where students collaborate on a semester-long project, requiring them to plan together, manage tasks, and integrate diverse skills in applying scientific principles to real-world problems. In doing so, the course not only deepens technical expertise but also strengthens students’ ability to provide data-driven insights that inform sustainability decision-making.

• R 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: James L Davis
  h-index: 57 Info
• 0 points

THE AUTHENTIC LEADER

Effective leaders are able to think critically about problems and opportunities, imagine unexpected futures, craft a compelling vision, and drive change. In this course, we study the theoretical underpinnings of leadership communication, relying on empirical evidence as a guide for practice. Students gain important perspective on leadership styles, mastering the competencies required for a variety of contexts.

• S 1:30 p.m.-5:30 p.m.
• Instructor: Jenny M Fernandez
  Info
• 0 points

MONITORING AND ANALYSIS OF COASTAL MARIN

MONIT & ANLYS OF COASTAL

From a global perspective, many of the earth’s most important environments and resources for global sustainability are located in marine and estuarine areas.  This class will explore open-ocean and estuarine processes, reviewing what is known about the temporal variability and interconnectedness of these physical and biologic systems.. A few examples include; 1.) oceanic environments were incompletely understood processes regulate the exchange of heat, water and carbon dioxide gas with the atmosphere, 2.) the relationship between nutrients and primary production and fisheries in open ocean, estuarine and coral reef environments and climatic phenomenon such as El Niño South Oscillation (ENSO), the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). 3.) For estuaries, current sea level and urbanization stresses on the coastal environments will be discussed.  Professionals working in the environmental and engineering fields will benefit from a wide-ranging discussion of the multi-scaled processes influencing estuaries. Knowledge of the processes operating in these environments will lead to a more thorough understanding of the complex issues that may influence infrastructure and coastal development in and around estuarine environments in the near-future. Throughout the class we will explore marine and estuarine processes by studying regional and local responses to broader scale climatic forcing. Reading of textbook chapters and journal articles will supplement in-class lectures and discussion. Grading will be based on class participation, a two exams and a research paper. At the end of the course, students will have a strong scientific understanding about the impacts made on marine and estuary systems through physical, chemical, and biological processes. The course will prepare students to be well-trained in the core features of these systems and the relationship between natural and human processes, and equip them with the skills needed to explore marine and estuary systems in diverse scales and functions in the future.

• W 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Braddock Linsley
  h-index: 42 Info
• 0 points

DIGITAL MEDIA & ANALYTICS

Digital media opens new opportunities for increasingly targeted communications across a variety of channels, which rapidly expands the importance of analytics in tracking and measuring key performance indicators (KPIs). This course prepares students to work within data- and model-driven environments with an emphasis on using analytics to develop insights and support strategic decisions.

• R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Lilian Ore
  Info
• 0 points

COMPLEXITY OF CONFLICT AND CHANGE MANAGE

Complexity of Conflict and Change Management (NECR K5095) is an elective course in the Negotiation and Conflict Resolution (NECR) Program. The course explores how change can create conflict and also how conflict requires change. Conflict is generally about differences in how people think, know, prefer, believe, and understand. By entering into a conflict resolution process, people can shift their understanding and beliefs about the conflict, the other party or parties, and possible outcomes. The course reviews literature and case studies of how people are impacted at a fundamental level when change occurs. Understanding this elemental human experience can lead to greater self-awareness and the ability to manage change professionally and personally, in order to become effective change agents, negotiators, mediators, and peacemakers. We will also explore how leaders at all levels in organizations can play an important role in implementing change in an organizational context. Thoughtful and strategic approaches that consider the impact of a change management process can mitigate and even prevent conflict. We will review change management models and links to developments in neuroscience and how humans are biologically wired to resist change. Balancing theory and practice, this course will focus on the experience and expertise of the students. They will learn to apply practical conflict resolution approaches to change efforts at the individual and organizational levels as well as consider national and international applications.

• WR noon-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Susan Levin
  Info
• 0 points

Leadership and Team Dynamics

This course introduces students to the core principles of effective leadership and collaborative team performance in organizational settings. Through a practical, evidence-based approach, the course examines how leaders influence outcomes, foster engagement, and navigate challenges in dynamic, multidisciplinary environments. Students will explore leadership qualifications, strategic decision-making, ethical considerations, and performance development frameworks. Emphasis is placed on understanding the dynamics of team formation, multicultural collaboration, communication, conflict management, and high-performance team practices.

As a central component of the Project Management curriculum, this course supports the program’s larger goal of preparing graduates to lead effectively in diverse and evolving organizational contexts. By grounding students in evidence-based leadership concepts and team effectiveness frameworks, the course advances the discipline’s primary principles of organizational performance, collaboration, and responsible decision-making. The course aligns closely with other program requirements by complementing technical project management competencies with the interpersonal and strategic skills necessary for successful project execution. In doing so, it bridges technical expertise with leadership acumen, equipping students with a holistic foundation for professional growth.

This is a required core course for all Project Management students and is delivered in person on campus in a full-semester format. Space permitting, the course may also be open to cross-registrants from other Columbia University graduate programs where leadership, management, and teamwork skills are relevant, such as programs in management, public administration, and engineering. There are no formal prerequisites, though prior exposure to management or organizational behavior may be helpful in engaging with course materials. Students will participate in selected readings, interactive discussions, and team-based exercises, as well as hear from guest lecturers with extensive leadership experience. By the end of the course, students will have strengthened their ability to lead ethically, communicate clearly, manage team dynamics, and contribute meaningfully to organizational goals.

• T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Evangelia Ieronymaki
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FINANCE AND ACCOUNTING FOR THE CONSTRUCT

FIN & ACTG FOR CONSTR IND

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• M 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: William Fischer
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UNDERSTAND CONFLICT & COOPERATION

UNDERSTAND CONFL & COOPER

• TMT noon-1:30 p.m.
• Instructor: Fulya N Beriker
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SAFETY IN THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY

SAFETY IN THE CONSTR INDU

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• T 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Joseph Schwed
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LEGAL ISSUES IN BUILDING CONSTRUCTION

• R 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Ross McKinnon
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• 0 points

Practices in Design and Innovation

Pract in Design and Innov

Design is at the core of every innovation. It’s the visual, experiential, and strategic medium through which ideas transform into tangible and digital products, service platforms, experiences, and consequences. This course is a comprehensive exploration of the methods, vocabulary, challenges, and opportunities of design-led innovation. It demystifies how business and design intersect through the lens of innovation, and is foundational for anyone seeking to generate positive social and economic outcomes.

Students experience the course through interconnected paths—interrogating contemporary issues in design and business while simultaneously moving a chosen project through a sequence of hands-on design sprints. These sprints cover everything from ideation and visualization to journey mapping, prototyping, user testing, and branding of their own unique ideas. Participants will emerge with a critical and reusable toolkit for both understanding the innovation process and effectively leading creative teams.

Topics include: Design Thinking; User-Centered Design; Business Value of Design; Problem Framing; Systems Mapping; User Journey Mapping; Ambiguity and Complexity; Liberatory Design Practices; The Impact of AI; Design Ethics; Sustainability, Wicked Problems; Design Futuring and speculative design.

• T 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Allan Chochinov
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Electoral Data & Predictive Modeling

One of the best ways to predict the future is to study the past. A dizzying amount of data is available to study elections and politics, including survey and polling data on individual preferences, beliefs, demographics, and choices; data on aggregate conditions and outcomes; and, for more recent years, a wide range of social media data. From polling analysts and pundits to campaign managers and career journalists, making sense of this data can create a competitive advantage for professionals working in the field of politics. By analyzing the results of previous elections, insights can be gleaned to enhance understanding of the factors that contributed to electoral wins and be used to build statistical models or to create machine learning models that can predict future outcomes. Students will curate various types of data and work with starter code to build their data wrangling and computational skills. Students will learn how to explore data with these techniques, understand how they work, and derive insights and knowledge based on the analysis results.

• T 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Michael Schwam-Baird
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Driving Social Change with Technology

Driving Social Change w T

This one-semester onsite course explores how social entrepreneurs use technology innovation to achieve social impact and help achieve the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) in collaboration with corporations and governments. Social entrepreneurs are defined as organizations who develop and implement solutions to social and environmental problems while striving for financial sustainability.

• T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Alexis Wichowski
  CULPA: 1 h-index: 6 Info
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Digital Transformation

This course explores the principles, strategies, and challenges of technology-driven transformation in organizations. Students will examine emerging technologies, digital disruption, and frameworks for implementing large-scale change. This course provides a comprehensive understanding of digital transformation, focusing on how businesses leverage technology to drive transformation based on various drivers including efficiency, productivity, competitive advantage, and compliance. Students will explore key topics such as product development, systems development lifecycle, enterprise architecture, IT capabilities, and automation. Through case studies, research, and hands-on projects, students will develop the skills needed to lead strategic and technical skills necessary to lead and manage digital transformation initiatives.

• T 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Richard R. Ranade
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GRN BLDG & SUST: TOOLS & TECH

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• M 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Christopher P Hagen
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Technology Marketing

This class provides students with a deep dive into marketing and communication strategies and channels for tech company, product, and services launches. Students will work on customer personas for B2B and B2C technologies and reflect upon sustainability guidelines to shape their marketing strategy. They will analyze the different elements that make a soft and hard launch successful, such customer testimonials and industry analyst relations. The course will also discuss how AI is changing the marketing of  companies, products and services.

• M 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Katja Schroeder
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ANALYSIS FOR ENERGY EFFICIENCY

Energy Management is the cornerstone of any sustainability initiative. The generation, distribution, and use of energy has a profound, continuous, and global impact on natural resources, societal structure, and geopolitics. How energy is used has significant repercussions on an organizations cash flow and profitability. For these reasons, energy issues tend to be the fulcrum upon which sustainability programs hinge.

The ability to identify and articulate organizational benefits from energy savings tied to efficiency improvements and renewable energy projects is a requisite skill set for all sustainability managers.

This course will provide real-world information on energy management issues from a practitioner's perspective. Through lectures, problem sets, and readings students will learn how to manage energy audits, analyze building energy performance, and evaluate the energy use and financial impacts of potential capital and operations improvements to building systems. The class will focus on understanding energy issues from a building owner’s perspective, with discussions also examining energy issues from the perspective of utility companies, energy generators, and policy makers.

Best practice in energy management will always involve some level of complex engineering to survey existing conditions and predict energy savings from various improvement options. Sustainability managers need to understand how to manage and quality control these analyses and to translate to decision makers the opportunity they reveal. This course seeks to empower students to do that by providing an understanding of building systems and methods for quantitatively analyzing the potential benefit of various energy improvements.

• T 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Thomas Sahagian
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SUSTAINABILITY SCIENCE

• R 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Jenna M Lawrence
  CULPA: 6 Info
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INTEGRATED TALENT MGMT STRATEGIES

• W 8:30 p.m.-10 p.m.
• Instructor: Steven I Safier
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Core Data Science Concepts for Sustainab

The course introduces practitioners of sustainability management to the data analysis techniques and statistical methods which are indispensable to their work. The class teaches how to build statistical substantiation and to critically evaluate it in the context of sustainability problems. The statistics topics and examples have been chosen for their special relevance to sustainability problems, including applications in environmental monitoring, impact assessment, and econometric analyses of sustainable development. Students are assumed to have had no previous exposure to statistics.

This course demonstrates how to conduct a quantitative analysis of an organization’s work processes and operations, resource utilization, and environmental impact necessary to create a rationale for implementing sustainability initiatives. Statistical topics, including probability and random variables, will be discussed in both theory and in their practical applications for sustainability managers. This course will provide students with the skills to conduct regression analysis, to conduct hypothesis and estimation testing, to design surveys, and to prepare statistics packages. These quantitative skills are necessary for a professional manager responsible for the management of people, finances and operations toward sustainability goals.

• W 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Bruce Kahn
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AI/ML for Leaders

Generative AI represents a pivotal technological evolution with profound implications for the global economy and modern society. This course delves into the decades-long development of AI and machine learning, emphasizing its emergence as a critical economic and strategic force. As we explore this technology, we will assess its potential to revolutionize industries, enhance capabilities, and introduce complex challenges related to security, identity, and ethical considerations.

In this dynamic landscape, both incumbent businesses and governmental bodies face the urgent need to adapt to this disruption and the transformative changes it heralds. This course seeks to unpack the catalysts of this technological surge, its foundational principles, and the critical knowledge required for modern leadership in the AI era.

• W 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• R 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Hsing-Hsing Li
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• Instructor: Mark Ritzmann
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SOLID WASTE MANAGEMENT

• R 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Haralambos Vasiliadis
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PURPOSE-DRIVEN COMMUNICATION

• W 5:10 p.m.-7 p.m.
• Instructor: Hayley Berlent
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GLOBAL COMMUNICATION FOR PROFESSIONALS

The global knowledge economy, cross-border market permeability, and worldwide talent mobility have accelerated the rise of multinational and domestic organizations comprised of individuals from many different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. As these trends strengthen, so, too, does the likelihood that the 21st-century worker will spend a significant part of her/his professional career in a multicultural workplace. While such diversity affords great benefits to organizations, their employees and clients, it is often accompanied by a rise in communication misfires and misunderstandings that can undermine individual, team, and organizational performance.

• MTWRU 9 a.m.-5 p.m.
• Instructor: Kristine Billmyer
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BUSINESS ANALYTICS

OVERVIEW: Business analytics (BA), in essence, is the discipline of using data analysis - ranging from simple descriptive statistics to advanced, AI-based predictions - to illuminate all quantitative aspects relevant to a specific organization, from its own performance, to the behavior of its customers, and challenges from competitors. This course covers the entire value chain of a BA process, including formulating the question, collecting and managing the relevant data, analyzing said data to answer the question, and finally effectively communicating the results (e.g., data visualization) to stakeholders. While the course teaches some hands-on data analysis/statistics (e.g., database structures, conditional averages, correlations, confidence intervals), the emphasis of the course is on educating users and managers of BA, and as such includes stakeholder engagement and implementation planning.

CONTENT: Following an introduction to the history of BA, weekly lectures and associated assignments (some spreadsheet-based, others in essay format) teach all above elements of the BA value chain one by one. Accompanying readings cover academic foundations and practitioner commentary, from Alan Turing's work (1912-1952) to latest advances in quantum computing. A short individual presentation and a group white paper allow students to combine and hone the various acquired skills in an end-end application. As an overarching objective, upon successful completion of the course, students will be able to devise and "pitch" an innovate BA process to an organization, including strategic recommendations on its business value and implementation.

LOGISTICS: Required course for IKNS students, open to all Columbia University graduate students; no prerequisites other than beginner's familiarity with spreadsheet software and simple statistics (e.g., average, error margin). Online course meets once a week (live via zoom) for the duration of the semester.

• T 8:10 p.m.-10 p.m.
• W 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Kathy Koontz
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DIGITAL COMMUNICATION STRATEGY

As digital media increasingly drives the field of strategic communication, leading successful communication efforts also require a platform specific, evidence-based strategic approach. Leaders must know how to use a broad and rapidly changing mix of digital media platforms and tools to connect their message with the right audience. To that end, this course covers major topics in digital media and communication, such as content strategy, digital experience, channel planning, online reputation management, programmatic marketing, audience targeting, artificial intelligence and more. Through in-class lectures, discussion, case studies, guest speakers, group projects and individual writing assignments, students in this course will be introduced to strategic decision-making and communications planning for social media, mobile, digital advertising, search, email, digital out-of-home and interactive media (video, radio, podcasts). Students will also gain an in-depth understanding of how to integrate digital strategies and tactics with traditional communication efforts.

• R 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Lilian Ore
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Environmental Investigation and Sustaina

ENV INVESTIGATION &REMEDI

Environmental Investigation and Sustainable Remediation covers the major steps in the investigation, assessment and remediation of contaminated sites. The course will introduce the student to the multidisciplinary aspects of environmental remediation including sustainability considerations, an important background for any environmental career, such as an environmental consultant, a corporate remediation manager or a government regulator. Management and remediation of contaminated sites is an important consideration in sustainable regional development, since failure to control contamination usually yields an ever-increasing area of impact, with greater environmental and societal costs. Using US EPA Superfund guidance as a framework, the course will explore the major steps in identifying a site, establishing the degree of contamination, identifying the likely ecological and human receptors, and selecting and implementing a remedial action. Sustainable remediation in particular has received increased emphasis by the EPA and is now a required component of remedy selection. The Superfund process has been extensively developed through more than 30 years of legislature and agency guidance, and now provides a robust approach for pollution assessment and remediation. Contaminated sites typically involve a broad spectrum of contaminants across at least two media, including soils, sediments, groundwater, surface water, and air. This course examines the main steps involved in environmental investigation and remediation primarily from a technical perspective, although legal aspects will be incorporated at the major decision points in the process. In particular, the course will focus on the main environmental sampling and analytical techniques needed to conduct a remedial investigation, and cover some of the main remedial engineering considerations for the successful selection and implementation of a sustainable and resilient remedy. Students will be assigned one of several completed Superfund sites to track the application of the Superfund process to a real-world example as the class proceeds, providing a regular link between theory and application.

• W 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Edward A Garvey
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ANALYTICS & LEADING CHANGE

• M 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: David Kreutter
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Geographies of Environmental Justice and

The origin of the American Environmental Justice Movement can be traced back to the emergence of the American
Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, and more specifically to the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964. These historical
moments set the stage for a movement that continues to grow with present challenges and widening of economic,
health and environmental disparities between racial groups and socioeconomic groups. The environmental justice
movement builds upon the philosophy and work of environmentalism, which focuses on humanity’s adverse impact
upon the environment, entailing both human and non-human existence. However, environmental justice stresses the
manner in which adversely impacting the environment in turn adversely impacts the population of that environment.

At the heart of the environmental justice movement are the issues of racism and socioeconomic injustice.
This course will examine the intersections of race, equity, and the environment – focusing on history and the
growing role and impact of the environmental justice movement in shaping new sustainability discourses, ethics,
policies, and plans for the twenty-first century. Environmental Justice embeds various disciplines into its analytical
framework ranging from human geography and history to urban studies, economics, sociology, environmental
science, public policy, community organizing, and more. Drawing from these disciplines, as well as from recent
policies, advocacy, and regulations, students will develop a deeper understanding of equity, sustainability, social
impact, and environmental justice in places and spaces across the nation.

Building on the broadness of environmental justice and sustainability, this course will use the geography lens and
frameworks, building on the concept that geography brings together the physical and human dimensions of the
world in the study of people, places, and environments. Geography will set the stage for us to explore a variety of
environmental justice topics and issues in different regions across the nation, from the Black Belt South to the Rust
Belt to Cancer Alley, New Orleans, and Atlanta; then back to New York City and the metropolitan area, introducing
students to initiatives, policies, stakeholders, research, community groups, and advocacy involved in the
development and implementation of environmental laws, policies, practices, equity-based solutions, and sustainable
infrastructure.

• T 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: John E Williams
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SPECIAL TOPICS: Getting AI Right for Tec

AI + Techno-Social Change

OVERVIEW:

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming every sector of human activity—from healthcare and education to defense and diplomacy—presenting both risks and opportunities and raising urgent questions about ethics, governance, global stability, and even civilizational churn. This course explores AI as both a technological and geopolitical force, one that has considerable societal impact in reshaping institutions, economies, and even civilization itself. Rather than approaching the topic from a technical perspective, the course is designed for students across disciplines who seek to understand how AI and convergent technologies can be developed and governed responsibly in a time of unprecedented change.

 

CONTENT:

Students will examine AI not as a set of tools but as an evolving infrastructure of global order. The course integrates ethical reasoning, policy analysis, and systems thinking to investigate how to get AI right in an era of rapid techno-social transformation. Students will explore foundational frameworks for AI governance and regulation (e.g., EU AI Act); analyze how the convergence of emerging technologies drives innovation and reshapes industries (e.g., autonomous vehicles); understand the role of AI within the larger context of human innovation; debate the rise of sovereign AI as a geopolitical force (e.g., UAE’s ‘Falcon’, Singapore’s ‘SEA-LION’ models.); evaluate AI’s potential role in both civilizational collapse and societal resilience; and apply methods of strategic foresight to anticipate future emerging technologies (e.g., the work of Sachs, Acemoglu & Robinson, Spengler etc.). Final projects will synthesize technical, ethical, and geopolitical perspectives to design a Responsible AI framework relevant to students’ personal and professional contexts.

 

LOGISTICS:

The course meets once per week in person. No technical background or coding experience is required. Open to all Columbia University graduate students.

• M 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Manail Anis
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Human-Centered Design for Data-Driven St

HumCenDesignForDDStrat+De

Within this course, students will explore how practices from human-centered design (HCD) can be applied to the end-to-end data science workflow—problem (use case) definition, data collection & preparation, data exploration, data modeling, and communicating and visualizing the results— in order to build trust in data that is used to drive strategy and decision making and impact organizational change. Students will learn about fundamental human values and how methods from the behavioral sciences and HCD can inspire ethical use of data to drive strategy and change in the modern, data-driven workplace. Students will understand how keeping “humans in the loop” is beneficial, and they will develop a critical eye for assessing whether the data they rely on to make decisions at work is human-centric, particularly as we become more reliant on data science and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to inform our insights, strategies, and decision making at work.

Content & Goals: Through hands-on, project-based work, students will work individually and in project teams to practice designing human-centric information and communication experiences, leveraging audience-focused data visualizations and storytelling techniques to drive a strategic workplace objective, motivating leaders and employees into action to create traceable organizational impact that benefits people. Students will have an opportunity to practice their writing and presentation skills through practical course assignments.

Logistics: This graduate-level elective course is designed for students in Information & Knowledge Strategy but is open to other students at Columbia University. This course would be relevant to students studying management and technology more broadly. The course will be delivered in person on Columbia’s campus during the spring semester.

No prerequisites.

• T 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Blake Dicosola
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SUMA PS6120 Equity, Policy, and Sustaina

Public policy shapes how our environment, both natural and built, is managed and regulated. Policy not only creates the infrastructure and regulatory frameworks needed to support sustainability goals, but is also critical in establishing an equitable foundation that supports individual and collective change in pursuit of those goals.

This course will serve as an introduction to equity in sustainability policy: We will survey federal, state, and local policies and proposals to understand how we use policy to enhance urban resilience, mitigate environmental impacts, and also promote social and economic justice. Using an interdisciplinary approach that draws from economics, sociology, urban studies, critical theory, and more, students will develop their capacities to read and interpret policy, enhance their understanding of current policy frameworks, and strengthen their ability to engage with emerging policy developments.

Building on contemporary efforts in public policy, we will use an equity lens to focus on the human dimension of sustainability. We will explore policy frameworks and dialogues that foster more equitable outcomes, increase engagement of people most impacted, and contribute to sustainability goals. As an entry point, the course will focus on policies related to climate adaptation and urban sustainability transitions, setting the stage for students to explore equity in urban resilience efforts and to examine intersections of race, class, and other social factors with access to resources.

The course will be discussion-based and center participatory activities (e.g., student-led discussions, paired analyses, team exercises) designed to encourage students to consider policy issues from multiple perspectives—including identifying disparities and assessing opportunities for increasing equity in the sustainability policy sector. The course will also invite scholars and practitioners to share expertise and experience from the field. Students are not expected or required to have any previous experience with policy or law.

• T 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Dan Mathis
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