INDEPENDENT STUDY

Prerequisites: Open to majors who have fulfilled basic major requirements or written permission of the staff member who will supervise the project. Specialized reading and research projects planned in consultation with members of the Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures teaching staff.

• Department: Asian and Middle East @Barnard
• Instructor: Rachel McDermott
  CULPA: 37 Info
• Instructor: David L Moerman
  CULPA: 18 Info
• Instructor: Nicholas A Bartlett
  CULPA: 5 Info
• Instructor: Matthew L Keegan
  CULPA: 8 Info
• Instructor: Lili Xia
  Info
• 1-4 points

INDEPENDENT STUDY

Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required. Examines the theory and practice of transnational feminist activism. We will explore the ways in which race, class, culture and nationality facilitate alliances among women, reproduce hierarchical power relations, and help reconstruct gender. The course covers a number of topics: the African Diaspora, suffrage, labor, development policy, colonialism, trafficking, consumerism, Islam, and the criminal justice system.

• Department: History @Barnard
• TR 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Matthew Delvaux
  Info
• 1-4 points

INDIVIDUAL STUDY II

Prerequisites: open only to qualified majors in the department; the director of undergraduate studies permission is required. An opportunity for research under the direction of an individual faculty member. Students intending to write a year-long senior thesis should plan to register for C3996 in the spring semester of their senior year and are strongly advised to consult the undergraduate studies as they plan their programs.

• Department: Sociology @Barnard
• Instructor: Deborah Becher
  CULPA: 8 h-index: 4 Info
• Instructor: Elizabeth Bernstein
  CULPA: 27 Info
• Instructor: Maricarmen Hernandez
  Info
• Instructor: Debra Minkoff
  CULPA: 6 h-index: 17 Info
• Instructor: Mignon R Moore
  CULPA: 9 h-index: 17 Info
• Instructor: Jonathan Rieder
  CULPA: 17 Info
• Instructor: Angela Simms
  Info
• Instructor: Amy Zhou
  Info
• Instructor: Randa B Serhan
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 1-6 points

ADVANCED GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS

ADV GEOGRAPHIC INFO SYSTE

Prerequisite: Successful completion of URBS UN2200 Introduction to GIS Methods, or equivalent with instructor permission.

With the veritable explosion of urban data alongside the continued proliferation of new tools for its consideration, this course allows students to develop specialized approaches to spatial analysis while introducing a series of common advanced techniques and nuanced methodological questions. Aimed at covering a variety of topics with immediate relevance to urbanism in practice and in research, the course operates with a two-fold mission: (1) to critically discuss the theories, concepts, and research methods involved in spatial analysis and (2) to learn the techniques necessary for engaging those theories and deploying those methods. The class will work to meet this mission with a dedicated focus on the urban environment and the spatial particularities and relationships that arise from the urban context.

Among others, this course takes as a foundational premise that spatial analysis within geographic information systems is an incredibly powerful and double-edged weapon: it provides both the methods for answering complex spatial questions and the means for effectively communicating the results. Like any other weapon it can serve many ends, and as such an advanced course in spatial analysis must frame its use within the developing discourse on professional practice and responsibility.

The course is designed with a combination format. Early weeks are predominantly lecture-style presentations supplemented with discussion and technical demonstration and exercises. Students are expected to complete these exercises outside of class (as homework), bringing their questions to our discussion. The latter half of the course is a project-based seminar. Seminar-style presentation and discussion will rely heavily on student participation and preparation to consider the variety of spatial methods available and their implications on urban research and intervention. Woven throughout the semester is the development of a self-driven research project, through which students will engage and compare the methodological advantages and disadvantages of several assumptions, approaches, analyses, and datasets.

• Department: Urban Studies @Barnard
• M 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Leah M Meisterlin
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 3 points

Afro-Latin America in the Artistic Imagi

AFRO-LATIN AMER IN ART IM

How have painters, filmmakers, novelists, and other artists portrayed the history of Africans and their descendants in Latin America? How do those portrayals – of the Middle Passage, slavery, revolution, abolition, and contemporary social movements, to name a few examples – compare to scholarly approaches to those same subjects? To answer these and other questions, this class brings together a wide array of materials covering more than five hundred years of Afro-Latin American history. The course will move chronologically from the 15th century to the present, with each week devoted to grappling with a topic relevant to the history of Afro-Latin America in a given era, as viewed through both artistic and scholarly sources. Students will come to class prepared to consider what each has to offer to our understanding of the past. We will also debate the possibilities of using art to disseminate historical knowledge, and whether there any dangers to privileging artistic over scholarly approaches to history (or vice versa). In addition, because NYC is home to so many museums, archives, and cultural institutions relevant to our subject, it will serve as an experiential laboratory where we will spend several of our class meetings. Learning outcomes. By the end of the semester, students will be skilled at the following:

 analyzing artistic and scholarly sources on their own terms

 discussing them in relation to one another

 evaluating the utility of these diverse materials to the process of understanding the past.

• Department: Africana Studies (AFSB)
• T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Tamara Walker
  Info
• 4 points

ADVANCED GENETIC ANALYSIS

Prerequisites: for undergraduates: Introductory Genetics (W3031) and the instructors permission. This seminar course provides a detailed presentation of areas in classical and molecular genetics for advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students. Topics include transmission genetics, gain and loss of function mutations, genetic redundancy, suppressors, enhancers, epistasis, expression patterns, using transposons, and genome analysis. The course is a mixture of lectures, student presentations, seminar discussions, and readings from the original literature.

• Department: Biological Sciences
• M 1:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Martin Chalfie
  CULPA: 6 Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

CURATING ISLAM IN NEW YORK CITY

CURATING ISLAM IN NYC

This course focuses on the ways in which museums conceptualize, contextualize, curate and display Islamic art.  In the process, it interrogates the degree to which the orientalist past and the secular present shapes our understanding of the Muslim world.  Students will not just engage with material objects from Muslim societies but also consider the choices museums make about their display and presentation.  These choices, in turn, speak to the role of museums in defining a specific understanding of the “sacred.” Finally, students will learn to thoughtfully and critically pose questions about the roles that museums as public institutions play in sharping public and private understandings of Islam.

The course begins with a general discussion of material objects in the study of religion.  This is followed by a broad survey of Islamic Art which both describes and critiques the category as it has been framed in the Academy.  Students then visit a number of museums to learn about the style and content of their Islamic collections.  The course concludes by engaging a different kind of curation, namely oral histories in the Brooklyn Museum.

• Department: Religion @Barnard
• Instructor: Najam I Haider
  CULPA: 8 Info
• 4 points

ANALYTIC NUMBER THEORY

Prerequisites: MATH UN3007 A one semeser course covering the theory of modular forms, zeta functions, L -functions, and the Riemann hypothesis. Particular topics covered include the Riemann zeta function, the prime number theorem, Dirichlet characters, Dirichlet L-functions, Siegel zeros, prime number theorem for arithmetic progressions, SL (2, Z) and subgroups, quotients of the upper half-plane and cusps, modular forms, Fourier expansions of modular forms, Hecke operators, L-functions of modular forms.

• Department: Mathematics
• TR 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Dorian Goldfeld
  CULPA: 23 Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

INTRO MODERN ALGEBRA I

Prerequisites: MATH UN1102 and MATH UN1202 and MATH UN2010 or the equivalent. The second term of this course may not be taken without the first. Groups, homomorphisms, normal subgroups, the isomorphism theorems, symmetric groups, group actions, the Sylow theorems, finitely generated abelian groups.

• Department: Mathematics
• MW 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Myungsin Cho
  Info
• 3 points

INTRO MODERN ALGEBRA II

Prerequisites: MATH UN1102 and MATH UN1202 and MATH UN2010 or the equivalent. The second term of this course may not be taken without the first. Rings, homomorphisms, ideals, integral and Euclidean domains, the division algorithm, principal ideal and unique factorization domains, fields, algebraic and transcendental extensions, splitting fields, finite fields, Galois theory.

• Department: Mathematics
• TR 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Michael Thaddeus
  CULPA: 24 Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

ALGEBRAIC NUMBER THEORY

Prerequisites: MATH GU4041 and MATH GU4042 or the equivalent Algebraic number fields, unique factorization of ideals in the ring of algebraic integers in the field into prime ideals. Dirichlet unit theorem, finiteness of the class number, ramification. If time permits, p-adic numbers and Dedekind zeta function.

• Department: Mathematics
• MW 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• 3 points

ALGEBRAIC CURVES

Prerequisites: (MATH GU4041 and MATH GU4042) and MATH UN3007 Plane curves, affine and projective varieties, singularities, normalization, Riemann surfaces, divisors, linear systems, Riemann-Roch theorem.

• Department: Mathematics
• MW 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Yoonjoo Kim
  Info
• 3 points

SENIOR SEMINAR

Intensive study of a philosophical issue or topic, or of a philosopher, group of philosophers, or philosophical school or movement. Open only to Barnard senior philosophy majors.

• Department: Philosophy @Barnard
• Instructor: Francey Russell
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 4 points

INTRODUCTION TO KNOT THEORY

Prerequisites: MATH GU4051 Topology and / or MATH GU4061 Introduction To Modern Analysis I (or equivalents). Recommended (can be taken concurrently): MATH UN2010 linear algebra, or equivalent. The study of algebraic and geometric properties of knots in R^3, including but not limited to knot projections and Reidemeisters theorm, Seifert surfaces, braids, tangles, knot polynomials, fundamental group of knot complements. Depending on time and student interest, we will discuss more advanced topics like knot concordance, relationship to 3-manifold topology, other algebraic knot invariants.

• Department: Mathematics
• TR 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Deeparaj Bhat
  Info
• 3 points

SENIOR ESSAY

A substantial paper, developing from an Autumn workshop and continuing into the Spring under the direction of an individual adviser. Open only to Barnard senior philosophy majors.

• Department: Philosophy @Barnard
• Instructor: Caroline D Bowman
  Info
• 3 points

INTRO TO ALGEBRAIC TOPOLOGY

Prerequisites: MATH UN2010 and MATH GU4041 and MATH GU4051 The study of topological spaces from algebraic properties, including the essentials of homology and the fundamental group. The Brouwer fixed point theorem. The homology of surfaces. Covering spaces.

• Department: Mathematics
• MW 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Soren Galatius
  Info
• 3 points

INTRO MODERN ANALYSIS I

Prerequisites: MATH UN1202 or the equivalent, and MATH UN2010. The second term of this course may not be taken without the first. Real numbers, metric spaces, elements of general topology, sequences and series, continuity, differentiation, integration, uniform convergence, Ascoli-Arzela theorem, Stone-Weierstrass theorem.

• Department: Mathematics
• TR 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Sven Hirsch
  Info
• 3 points

INTRO MODERN ANALYSIS II

The second term of this course may not be taken without the first. Power series, analytic functions, Implicit function theorem, Fubini theorem, change of variables formula, Lebesgue measure and integration, function spaces.

• Department: Mathematics
• TR 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
• 3 points

BIOLOGY AT PHYSICAL EXTREMES

Prerequisites: one year each of biology and physics, or the instructor's permission. This is a combined lecture/seminar course designed for graduate students and advanced undergraduates. The course will cover a series of cases where biological systems take advantage of physical phenomena in counter intuitive and surprising ways to accomplish their functions. In each of these cases, we will discuss different physical mechanisms at work. We will limit our discussions to simple, qualitative arguments. We will also discuss experimental methods enabling the study of these biological systems. Overall, the course will expose students to a wide range of physical concepts involved in biological processes.

• Department: Biological Sciences
• TR 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Ozgur Sahin
  h-index: 24 Info
• 3 points

ANCIENT AND MODERN RNA WORLDS

Ancient and Modern RNA Wo

RNA has recently taken center stage with the discovery that RNA molecules sculpt the landscape and information contained within our genomes. Furthermore, some ancient RNA molecules combine the roles of both genotype and phenotype into a single molecule. These multi-tasking RNAs offering a possible solution to the paradox of which came first: DNA or proteins. This seminar explores the link between modern RNA, metabolism, and insights into a prebiotic RNA world that existed some 3.8 billion years ago. Topics include the origin of life, replication, and the origin of the genetic code; conventional, new, and bizarre forms of RNA processing; structure, function and evolution of key RNA molecules, including the ribosome, and RNA therapeutics including vaccines. The format will be weekly seminar discussions with presentations. Readings will be taken from the primary literature, emphasizing seminal and recent literature. Requirements will be student presentations, class participation, and a final paper.

• Department: Biological Sciences
• W 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Laura Landweber
  Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

INTRO-DIFFERENTIABLE MANIFOLDS

Prerequisites: (MATH GU4051 or MATH GU4061) and MATH UN2010 Concept of a differentiable manifold. Tangent spaces and vector fields. The inverse function theorem. Transversality and Sards theorem. Intersection theory. Orientations. Poincare-Hopf theorem. Differential forms and Stokes theorem.

• Department: Mathematics @Barnard
• MW 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Faculty
  h-index: 37 Info
• 3 points

THE WEALTH OF NATIVES

Indigenous people are often imagined in the distant past, or as living anachronisms in relation to contemporary life. Working against these assumptions, this course examines how Native peoples have survived colonialism, focusing on economic aspects of colonialism in North America, while looking to Australia and Hawai‘i. We will look at the long history of Native land struggles, and links between colonial economies and ecological destruction. Themes guiding our inquiry include: the development of wage labor, property law and economic production on Native lands, histories of political and economic dependency, "development" as defined and practiced over Native communities, and Native people's own economic choices. Our inquiry will be oriented towards deepening our ability to critically analyze the colonial situation we live in, and to see Indigenous survivals despite ongoing assaults against life and territory.

• Department: American Studies @Barnard
• Instructor: Manu Karuka
  Info
• 4 points

WORLD PHILOLOGY

Philology, broadly defined as the practice of making sense of texts, is a fundamental human activity that has been repeatedly institutionalized in widely separated places and times. In the wake of the formation of the modern academic disciplines in the nineteenth century and their global spread, it became difficult to understand the power and glory of older western philology, and its striking parallels with other pre- and early modern forms of scholarship around the globe. This class seeks to create a new comparative framework for understanding how earlier generations made sense of the texts that they valued, and how their practices provide still-vital models for us at a time of upheaval in the format and media of texts and in our scholarly approaches to them. Students will encounter key fields of philology—textual criticism, lexicography, grammar, and, above all, commentary—not in the abstract but as instantiated in relation to four foundational works—the Confucian Analects, the Ramaya?a of Valmiki, the Aeneid, and the Tale of Genji—and the scholarly traditions that grew up around them. We are never alone when we grapple with the basic question of how to read texts whose meaning is unclear to us. Over the course of the semester, this class will foster a global understanding of the deep roots and strange parallels linking contemporary reading and interpretation to the practices of the past.

• Department: Comparative Literature and Society, Institute for
• T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: David B Lurie
  CULPA: 17 Info
• 4 points

PROBABILITY THEORY

Prerequisites: MATH GU4061 or MATH UN3007 A rigorous introduction to the concepts and methods of mathematical probability starting with basic notions and making use of combinatorial and analytic techniques. Generating functions. Convergence in probability and in distribution. Discrete probability spaces, recurrence and transience of random walks. Infinite models, proof of the law of large numbers and the central limit theorem. Markov chains.

• Department: Mathematics
• TR 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Julien Dubedat
  CULPA: 4 Info
• 3 points

MATHEMATICS AND THE HUMANITIES

This course is being taught by two senior faculty members who are theorists and practitioners in disciplines as different as mathematics and literary criticism. The instructors believe that in today's world, the different ways in which theoretical mathematics and literary criticism mold the imaginations of students and scholars, should be brought together, so that the robust ethical imagination that is needed to combat the disintegration of our world can be produced. Except for the length of novels, the reading is no more than 100 pages a week.

Our general approach is to keep alive the disciplinary differences between literary/philosophical (humanities) reading and mathematical writing.  Some preliminary questions we have considered are: the survival skills of the logicist school over against the Foundational Crisis of the early 20th century; by way of Wittgenstein and others, we ask, Are mathematical objects real? Or are they linguistic conventions? We will consider the literary/philosophical use of mathematics, often by imaginative analogy; and the role of the digital imagination in the humanities: Can so-called creative work as well as mathematics be written by machines? Guest faculty from other departments will teach with us to help students and instructors understand various topics.  We will close with how a novel animates “science” in prose, stepping out of the silo of disciplinary mathematics to the arena where mathematics is considered a code-name for science: Christine Brooke-Rose’s novel
Subscript
.

• Department: Mathematics
• T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Michael Harris
  CULPA: 6 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

Religion and the Afro-Native Experience

Religion and Afro-Native

African Americans and Native Americans have a shared history of racial oppression in America. However, the prevailing lenses through which scholars understand settler colonialism, religion, and black and indigenous histories focus overwhelmingly on the dynamics between Europeans and these respective groups. How might our understanding of these subjects change when viewed from a different point of departure, if we center the history of entanglements between black and native lives? How does religion structure the overlapping experiences of Afro-Native peoples in North America?

From political movements in Minneapolis, Oakland, and New York City to enslavement from the Cotton Belt to the Rio Grande, this class will explore how Africans, Native Americans, and their descendants adapted to shifting contexts of race and religion in America. The course will proceed thematically by examining experiences of war, dislocation, survival, and diaspora.

• Department: Religion @Barnard
• Instructor: Tiffany Hale
  CULPA: 4 Info
• 4 points

Love, Labor, and Leisure in Contemporary

Love, Labor in Contemp Ch

This course takes an anthropological perspective on life in China today with special attention to the legacies of the country’s socialist past. We start with a brief look at the ideological and institutional frameworks employed by the Communist Party to organize the daily life of its citizens in the decades leading into the People’s Republic. We will then read about how economic and social reforms instituted since the 1980s, in particular changes to the work unit and household registration system, have resulted in dramatically different opportunities and expectations for Chinese citizens attempting to navigate career opportunities, search for romantic partners, move through communal and private spaces and engage in consumptive activities. Exploring the experiences of rural peasants, urban workers, and laborers who move between countryside and city as well as between nations, we will examine how class, gender, and sexuality come to be refigured as China integrates into the global market economy. Scholarly texts will be supplemented with political speeches, short work of fiction and essays, and films.

• Department: Asian and Middle East @Barnard
• W 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Nicholas A Bartlett
  CULPA: 5 Info
• 3-4 points

The Just City: Global Debates in Urban P

THE JUST CITY

Urbanization is inherently unequal, inscribing social, economic, environmental, and political unevenness into the spatial fabric of the city. But the distribution of such inequality is not inevitable. Urbanization is a product of the collective decisions we make (or choose not to make) in response to the shared challenges we face in our cities. And, thus, the patterns of urbanization can be changed. This is the task of urban planning and the starting point for this advanced seminar, which asks how we can reshape our cities to be more just—to alleviate inequality rather than compound it. In embarking on this effort, we face numerous “wicked” problems without clear-cut solutions. The approaches one takes in addressing urban inequality are therefore fundamentally normative—they are shaped by one’s place in the world and one’s view of it. The central challenge in addressing inequality is thus establishing a basis for collective action amongst diverse actors with differing—and sometimes conflicting—values and views. In other words, planning the just city a matter of both empathy and debate. In this course, we will endeavor to develop informed positions that can help us engage with others as a basis for taking collective action.

The course is organized into four 3-week modules, each of which addresses a dimension of the just city: equity, democracy, diversity, and sustainability. In the first week of each module, we will discuss how the issue has been understood in history and theory (with an emphasis on tradeoffs between different priorities and values); in the second week, we will apply this discussion to a global case study prepared and presented by a team of students; and in the third week, we will hold an in-class debate to determine what should be done. Specific case studies vary each year.

• Department: Architecture @Barnard
• Instructor: Nick R Smith
  h-index: None Info
• 4 points

Corporate Finance and Valuation

Corporate Finance & Valua

This course introduces the fundamental principles of corporate finance and their application to real-world business decisions. Students will examine how companies determine value, measure risk, and make financing choices, while developing the tools to analyze corporate investments and capital structures.

Intellectual Goals and Rationale
The course addresses core questions that drive business decision-making:


How do we determine what a company or investment opportunity is worth?

How do we value financial securities in an uncertain world?

What is risk? How do we measure it, and how does it affect the cost of capital?

What is the appropriate balance between debt and equity?


Course Content and Learning Approach
Through a combination of theoretical frameworks, case discussions, and Excel-based financial modeling, students will build the ability to analyze complex financial scenarios. Lectures provide the foundations of valuation and financing, while case work applies these tools to real business challenges.

Why This Course Matters
Valuation, investment evaluation, and financing decisions are central to careers in finance, consulting, entrepreneurship, and management. The skills gained—financial modeling, risk assessment, and valuation analysis—are directly relevant to roles in investment banking, private equity, corporate development, consulting, and executive leadership.

Who Should Take This Course
This introductory finance course is open to students from all academic backgrounds who seek to strengthen their financial literacy and analytical capabilities. It is particularly valuable for:


Students considering careers in finance, consulting, or general management

Entrepreneurs who need to understand funding and valuation

Students in other fields interested in how businesses create and measure value

Those planning to pursue graduate business education


Prerequisites


Economics:
 ECON UN1105 Principles of Economics

Statistics (one of the following):


STAT UN1001 Intro to Statistical Reasoning

STAT UN1101 Introduction to Statistics

STAT UN1201 Calc-Based Introduction to Statistics

PSYC UN1610 Introductory Statistics for Behavioral Science




Cours

• Department: Mendelson Center
• MW 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Haran Segram
  Info
• 3 points

DISABILITY AND ARCHITECTURE

This course explores the manifold relationships between architecture and disability. We will discuss how architecture mediates different bodily experiences and relationships and negotiates social norms and forms of assembly that intervene in shaping shifting understandings and performances of impairment, assistance, access, rehabilitation, and oppression that have historically framed disability.  We will explore disability as a culture, an episteme, and a politics, often negotiated by architecture.

 

We will assess the disabling effects of the built environment as well as architectural projects and designs defined to normalize, segregate, or eradicate disability. We will also study environments, artifacts, and infrastructures that have allowed disabled individuals and communities to thrive, often against expectations of integration in normative life frameworks. We will additionally explore how disability contributes to framing architecture differently and opens up space for new aesthetic experiences, different cultures of making, and diverse politics of the built environment. We will discuss how it challenges normalizing understandings of space and form, functionalist paradigms in architecture, and modern and contemporary interpretations of nature, the city, and society.  We will discuss the ideologies enacted by different projects shaping the life of disabled individuals, including their own designs and interventions in the built environment.

 

These explorations are organized thematically, with sessions engaging design and disability scholarship and providing students with a robust introduction to disability studies. In dialogue with this field, students will explore how design and architecture have operated in relation to medical, social, environmental, cultural, and political paradigms of disability. They will discuss the role that built environments play in the agendas of the disability rights and disability justice movements. Sessions engage both historical and theoretical questions.

 

Three assignments will allow students to explore the intersections of the built environment and disability in a diversity of formats. Advanced students will have the opportunity to write a research paper.

• Department: Architecture @Barnard
• Instructor: Ignacio Gonzalez Galan
  Info
• 4 points

CONTEM AMER JEWISH WOMEN'S LIT

The seminar will focus on trends that have emerged over the past three decades in Jewish American women's writing in the fields of memoirs, fiction and Jewish history: the representation and exploration through fictive narratives of women's experiences in American Jewish orthodox communities; reinterpretation of Jewish history through gender analysis; the recording of migration and exile by Jewish women immigrants from the former Soviet Union, Morocco, Iran, and Egypt; and gender transformations. Texts will be analyzed in terms of genre structures, narrative strategies, the role of gender in shaping content and Jewish identity, and the political, cultural and social contexts in which the works were created. The course aims for students to discuss and critically engage with texts in order to develop the skills of analytical and abstract thinking, as well as the ability to express that critical thinking in writing. Prerequisites:
Both
one introductory WGSS course
and
Critical Approaches to Social and Cultural Theory,
or
Permission of the Instructor.

• Department: Women's, Gender, Sexuality Studies @Barnard
• Instructor: Agnieszka Legutko
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 4 points

SWANA Diasporas: Culture, Politics and I

In this class we will study South-West Asian and North African (SWANA) diasporic populations, social movements and cultural production that have responded to the multi-faceted ramifications of the 21st century war on terror. We will focus on diverse Arab, Iranian, and Afghan diasporas in the United States, where 19th and 20th century legacies of racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia and Orientalism combined in new ways to target these groups after the September 11th, 2001 attacks. Drawing on an interdisciplinary array of texts, including ethnography, fiction, feminist and queer theory, social movement theory, and visual and performance art, we will look at how the “war on terror” has shaped the subjectivities and self-representation of SWANA communities. Crucially, we will examine the gender and sexual politics of Islamophobia and racism and study how scholars, activists and artists have sought to intervene in dominant narratives of deviance, threat, and backwardness attributed to Muslim and other SWANA populations. This course takes up the politics of naming, situating the formation of “SWANA” as part of an anti-colonial genealogy that rejects imperial geographies such as “Middle East.” We will ask how new geographies and affiliations come into being in the context of open-ended war, and what new political identities and forms of cultural production then become possible.

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

Literati Culture in Pre-Modern China

Literati Cult. Pre-Mod. C

Premodern Chinese literati have long been regarded as active historical agents who shaped “This Culture of Ours”—a metonym for civilization in the premodern Sinitic context—while they also fed from, partook in, and influenced popular and foreign cultures. Besides “literary writings” like poetry and prose, literati also engaged in calligraphy, painting, and antiquarianism under the umbrella term of “literary or cultural arts.” In turn, the creation and appreciation of artwork were intrinsic to the aesthetic life of literati community and further established their self-identity. At the same time, social exclusivity, (self-)doubt and identity crises, along with the looming threat of cultural decline, have continually haunted this literati community throughout the ages.

Covering the long trajectory of imperial China, this course reveals the birth and development of literati culture. In particular, we take an interdisciplinary approach, introducing intellectual and poetic discourses, socio-historical contexts, literary criticism, visual and material culture, to envision a “common ground” for their civil world. Textual, visual sources plus material objects are meant to have conversations with each other in this course. Important issues include historical transformations of the elite class, cultural geography in different eras, materiality and visuality of elite calligraphy and painting, literati self-expression through aesthetic practice, the roles of the court and literati in producing and preserving art, as well as other relevant issues such as gender studies, vernacular literature, and commodity society.

This course is cross-listed in AMEC and CPLT. For undergraduates, no background in Chinese language is required in this course, and all reading materials—either translation of primary sources or secondary scholarship—are accessible in English.

• Department: Asian and Middle East @Barnard
• W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Lili Xia
  Info
• 4 points

Investment Strategies

This course provides a comprehensive introduction to modern investment analysis, integrating two distinct yet complementary approaches: fundamental value investing and quantitative investment strategies. The first half focuses on value investing, emphasizing the economic analysis and valuation of a firm's business operations to estimate its fundamental value. Students will learn to assess competitive advantages and barriers to entry, apply valuation frameworks beyond standard DCF models, and manage risk in concentrated portfolios. The methodology is grounded in identifying a 'margin of safety' by investing when a company's market value is significantly below its intrinsic worth.

The second half shifts to quantitative investment strategies, exploring the tools and techniques used in an environment of continuous financial innovation. Topics include hedging and risk management, single- and multi-period portfolio optimization, the use of factor models and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) for investment decisions, and the construction of systematic and volatility-based strategies. A hands-on approach is used to highlight the applications and limitations of these quantitative methods. Upon completion, students will have a rich and coherent view of investing that combines a sound understanding of business economics with robust quantitative and risk management techniques.

We recommend that students take Corporate Finance (BUSI 4280 and ECON 4280) beforehand and Capital Markets (BUSI 3705) or Financial Economics (ECON 3025) concurrently.

• Department: Mendelson Center
• T 4:10 p.m.-6:40 p.m.
• 3 points

Crime, Sex, Race and the Politics of Pur

The Politics of Purity

The politics of what and who counts as worthy, good, or pure mediates possibilities for political and legal life. This course takes as its central question: how do certain ideas around purity and innocence come to appear natural? By considering a wide range of topics including carceral studies, immigration, race-making, settler colonialism, gender and sexuality and cultural studies, we will uncover the ways that cultural objects circulate and do political work. How are notions of race, crime, and purity produced, policed, and lived? And finally, how might we live otherwise—against innocence?

• Department: American Studies @Barnard
• Instructor: Daria Reaven
  Info
• 4 points

ITL CULTRL ST II:WWI-PRESENT

ITL CULTRL STUDIES II:WWI-PRE

An interdisciplinary investigation into Italian culture and society in the years between World War I and the present. Drawing on historical analyses, literary texts, letters, film, cartoons, popular music, etc. the course examines some of the key problems and trends in the cultural and political history of the period. Lectures, discussion and required readings will be in English. Students with a knowledge of Italian are encouraged to read the primary literature in Italian.

• Department: Italian @Barnard
• Instructor: Nelson Moe
  CULPA: 10 h-index: 6 Info
• 3 points

GENOMICS OF GENE REGULATION

• Department: Biological Sciences
• MWF 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Harmen Bussemaker
  Wikipedia h-index: 43 Info
• 4 points

Molecular Biology

Prerequisites: one year of biology. This is a lecture course designed for advanced undergraduates and graduate students. The focus is on understanding at the molecular/biochemical level how genetic information is stored within the cell, how it is replicated and expressed, and how it is regulated. Topics covered include genome organization, DNA replication and repair, transcription, RNA processing, and translation. This course will also emphasize the critical analysis of the scientific literature and help students understand how to identify important biological problems and how to address them experimentally. SPS and TC students may register for this course, but they must first obtain the written permission of the instructor, by filling out a paper Registration Adjustment Form (Add/Drop form). The form can be downloaded at the URL below, but must be signed by the instructor and returned to the office of the registrar.
http://registrar.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/content/reg-adjustment.pdf

• Department: Biological Sciences
• MWF 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Alice Heicklen
  CULPA: 15 Info
• 3 points

Foundations of Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship is one of the most important economic activities shaping the United States. Entrepreneurial processes play a role in delivering new solutions to social problems, they are a strong determinant of wealth inequality and spatial disparities, and underlie technological progress. The class Foundations of Entrepreneurship provides any undergraduate student a comprehensive introduction to what entrepreneurship is and how it functions, including understanding how an idea evolves into a company, the role of key actors in an entrepreneurial ecosystem, and experiencing the entrepreneurial process. The class is valuable to any student in science, engineering, and liberal arts who would like to understand what determines whether promising inventions and solutions fulfill their potential impact. It is offered as part of the Mendelson Center’s special program in business management.

The content is delivered incorporating lecture-based content, case discussions of existing companies, and group work to develop an early-stage idea and pitch it to a panel of investors.

Foundations of Entrepreneurship is a prerequisite to future lab-based entrepreneurship classes for undergraduates, Launch Your Startup and Entrepreneurial Greenhouse.

 

Prerequisite or Corequisite:

ECON 1105W
(Principles of Economics)
AND
one of the following Statistics courses:



STAT 1001W
(Intro to Statistical Reasoning)



STAT 1101W
(Introduction to Statistics)



STAT 1201W
(Calc-Based Intro to Statistics)



PSYC 1610W
(Statistics for Behavioral Scientists)

• Department: Mendelson Center
• T 1:10 p.m.-3:40 p.m.
• Instructor: Michael Mauskapf
  h-index: 5 Info
• 3 points

EVOL IN THE AGE OF GENOMICS

• Department: Biological Sciences
• TR 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• 4 points

Fundamentals of Human Genetics

From the notion of a type-specimen for a species to a wild-type mouse strain, biology has long relied on the idea of an archetype. In reality, however, there is variation everywhere one looks—no wild-type, only mutants. This variation is what makes some families taller than others or more susceptible to autism. Making sense of these differences is what led from the study of “the” human genome to that of millions of genomes. Notably, this goal is central to precision medicine, undergirding accurate disease risk prediction and tailored individual treatments. This shift in perspective poses new and fundamental questions, challenging us to understand how genetic perturbations and environmental effects together give rise to human difference. The goal of this course is to provide a basis for the study of such questions, by focusing on the causes and consequences of human genetic variation. It aims to provide a fundamental toolbox with which to approach human genetic data and to facilitate access to exciting developments in the field, from weekly discoveries about our prehistory to major developments in our understanding of the genetic basis for disease risk. The basis for the course is a new, freely available textbook, An Owner’s Guide to the Human Genome, by Jonathan Pritchard.

• Department: Biological Sciences
• TR 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
• 3 points

JUDAISM & CHRISTIANITY S.ASIA

An introduction to the indigenous traditions of Judaism and Christianity in the subcontinent, with attention to historical development, community diversity, cultural patterns, interactions with Hindus and Muslims, and contemporary controversies over caste and conversion.  Concluding classes focus on South Asian Jews and Christians in the diaspora, particularly Israel and New York.  An academic background in Judaism, or Christianity, or Hinduism / Indian history is highly recommended.

• Department: Asian and Middle East @Barnard
• Instructor: Rachel McDermott
  CULPA: 37 Info
• 3 points

DIVINE HUMAN ANIMAL

This course focuses on thinking with animals (Levi-Strauss) through the lens of the religious imagination. The concentration will be primarily on Western religious cultures, especially Judaism and the question of Jewishness.

• Department: Religion @Barnard
• Instructor: Beth A Berkowitz
  CULPA: 2 h-index: 6 Info
• 4 points

MASTERS RESEARCH OR PROJECT

Prerequisite(s): Approval by a faculty member who agrees to supervise the work. Independent work involving experiments, computer programming, analytical investigation, or engineering design.

• Department: Industrial Engineering and Operations Research
• Instructor: Anish Agarwal
  Info
• Instructor: Shipra Agrawal
  h-index: 24 Info
• Instructor: Eric Balkanski
  h-index: 13 Info
• Instructor: Daniel Bienstock
  h-index: 38 Info
• Instructor: Agostino Capponi
  h-index: 19 Info
• Instructor: Rachel Cummings
  h-index: 16 Info
• Instructor: Antonius B Dieker
  CULPA: 10 h-index: 19 Info
• Instructor: Adam N Elmachtoub
  CULPA: 1 h-index: 13 Info
• Instructor: Yuri Faenza
  h-index: 11 Info
• Instructor: Vineet Goyal
  h-index: 21 Info
• Instructor: Ali Hirsa
  h-index: 8 Info
• Instructor: Anran Hu
  Info
• Instructor: Garud Iyengar
  CULPA: 6 h-index: 30 Info
• 1-3 points

MASTERS RESEARCH OR PROJECT

Prerequisite(s): Approval by a faculty member who agrees to supervise the work. Independent work involving experiments, computer programming, analytical investigation, or engineering design.

• Department: Industrial Engineering and Operations Research
• Instructor: Garud Iyengar
  CULPA: 6 h-index: 30 Info
• Instructor: Hardeep Johar
  Info
• Instructor: Cedric Josz
  CULPA: 2 h-index: 13 Info
• Instructor: Soulaymane Kachani
  CULPA: 12 Info
• Instructor: Yaren Kaya
  Info
• Instructor: Christian Kroer
  h-index: 16 Info
• Instructor: Daniel Lacker
  CULPA: 4 h-index: 13 Info
• Instructor: Henry Lam
  h-index: 17 Info
• Instructor: Fabrizio Lecci
  Info
• Instructor: Tianyi Lin
  Info
• Instructor: Uday Menon
  Info
• Instructor: Bento Natura
  Info
• Instructor: Jay Sethuraman
  CULPA: 10 Info
• Instructor: Eric Stratman
  Info
• Instructor: Clifford Stein
  CULPA: 31 Wikipedia h-index: 53 Info
• Instructor: Wenpin Tang
  h-index: 6 Info
• Instructor: Harry West
  CULPA: 1 h-index: 1 Info
• Instructor: Kaizheng Wang
  CULPA: 1 h-index: 8 Info
• Instructor: Lily Xu
  Info
• Instructor: David D Yao
  CULPA: 5 Info
• Instructor: Yi Zhang
  CULPA: 2 Info
• Instructor: Xunyu Zhou
  h-index: 54 Info
• 1-3 points

MASTERS RESEARCH OR PROJECT

Prerequisite(s): Approval by a faculty member who agrees to supervise the work. Independent work involving experiments, computer programming, analytical investigation, or engineering design.

• Department: Industrial Engineering and Operations Research
• 1-3 points

Labor and Life: Critiques of Capitalism

LABOR AND LIFE

This advanced seminar examines materialist conceptions of labor and life as approached through feminist, black, anti-racist, indigenous, queer, postcolonial, and Marxist perspectives. We will trace the ways that labor and life as well as their constitutive relations have been understood in historical and contemporary radical critiques of capitalism, with a focus on gender, race and sexuality as analytical categories for understanding their shifting roles in structures and practices of social reproduction, the production and expropriation of value, the logic and exercise of violence, the organization of sociality and culture, and the practice and imagination of freedom, justice, and new forms and potentials of collective existence. Finally, we will consider the limits and possibilities of different conceptions of “material life” for understanding politics today.

• Department: Women's, Gender, Sexuality Studies @Barnard
• Instructor: Neferti Tadiar
  CULPA: 10 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

Reading Capitalism: Economization

Since the financial crisis of 2007-8, a growing body of interdisciplinary work in the social sciences and humanities has worked to situate the timeless logics of economics within processes of governing that constitute economic space, time and subjects. This 4000-level graduate seminar, open to senior undergraduates, brings key themes and methods in this literature on processes of ‘economization’ into conversation, streamlining prominent genealogies. Informed by attention to links across British imperial and contemporary neoliberal formations, the course highlights legal-governmental imaginaries and media that convey and create market value. Working in-between the study of practices of capitalism (formal and vernacular) and theories of capital, we will consider infrastructures that frame the drive for perpetual profit. After a review of foundational literature, the syllabus will foreground processes of financialization or the bolstering of financial value as primary means for profit-making. Reading capitalism as governing project with attention to subject-formation and sign-value, the course weaves the analysis of governmentality, legal and financial fictions, finance and society, approaches from the historical anthropology of economy and media, and science and technology studies. Themes will include: “the economy” as governing imaginary; the performativity of economics; incarnations of homo economicus; risk, speculation and the commodification of futurity; uncertainty and the “spirits” of capitalism; virtual value and instruments of securitization; money, the semiotics of value, and monetization. The course assumes basic background in social and political theory, and political economy.

• Department: Comparative Literature and Society, Institute for
• W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Ritu Birla
  Info
• 4 points

Education in Conflict Zones

Across the world, conflict and violence are on the rise, in many forms and due to myriad factors. This course explores the relationship between war, conflict, and education. Drawing on a human rights framework and its applications to education, this course will explore the possibilities and limitations inherent in this framework. Questions we will explore include: How does education contribute to, or mitigate conflict? What is the role of education in emergencies? What is the role of education in addressing the needs of refugees? What is the role of education in post conflict contexts and peacebuilding? What is human rights education?

• Department: Education @Barnard
• Instructor: Thea R Abu El-Haj
  Info
• 4 points

Genetics

Prerequisites: BIOL UN2005 and BIOL UN2006 or the equivalent. General genetics course focused on basic principles of transmission genetics and the application of genetic approaches to the study of biological function. Principles will be illustrated using classical and contemporary examples from prokaryote and eukaryote organisms, and the experimental discoveries at their foundation will be featured. Applications will include genetic approaches to studying animal development and human diseases.  All students must get permission from the instructor to be added from the waitlist.

• Department: Biological Sciences
• TR 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• 3 points

FOUNDATIONS OF CLINICAL MEDICINE I

• Department: Medicine
• 0 points

FOUNDATIONS OF CLINICAL MEDICINE II

FOUNDATIONS OF CLINICAL MED II

• Department: Medicine
• 0 points

THE BODY IN HEALTH & DISEASE I

• Department: Medicine
• 0 points

UNDERWRITING

• Department: Insurance Management
• Instructor: Mary Ann Susavidge
  Info
• 3 points

Foundations of Clinical Medicine Tutoria

FCM Tutorials I

• Department: Medicine
• 0 points