This course continues the actor’s work of experiencing voice and text in a free body as a means to develop versatile and transformative speech. Students will deepen and refine their knowledge of the phonemes of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), as well as the ability to categorize and utilize Lexical Sets in pursuit of a dialect/accent. Students will demonstrate their ability to notate texts and transcribe dialects and accents into both IPA and practically apply the framework of the Four Pillars and the Voice Recipe.
The student will use these tools, supplemented by handouts, video & audio resources and independent research, to study several accents/dialects in class as well as at least one additional independently researched accent/dialect. The goal of the class is to expand upon the actor’s choices of speech and vocal expression and to acquaint her/him with the resources necessary to truthfully portray an individual utilizing a dialect/accent on stage or screen.
Students will develop their own unique process for learning accents and dialects
, as well as efficiently and effectively applying their progression to texts via a combination of practice sentences, scene work, conversation, improvisation, cold readings, and a prepared monologue. Students will complete the course having created a personal, in-depth method for researching and performing a role in which an accent or dialect is required.
Students will do self-directed and supported research as part of their study. They will consciously and intelligently assimilate this contextual research into their embodiment choices. The final project is a presentation of their research and the sharing of a monologue that is ideally
written in the student’s selected dialect or accent
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Substantive questions in empirical scientific and policy research are often causal. This class will introduce students to both statistical theory and practice of causal inference. As theoretical frameworks, we will discuss potential outcomes, causal graphs, randomization and model-based inference, causal mediation, and sufficient component causes. We will cover various methodological tools including randomized experiments, matching, inverse probability weighting, instrumental variable approaches, dynamic causal models, sensitivity analysis, statistical methods for mediation and interaction. We will analyze the strengths and weaknesses of these methods. The course will draw upon examples from social sciences, public health, and other disciplines. The instructor will illustrate application of the approaches using R/SAS/STATA software. Students will be evaluated and will deepen the understanding of the statistical principles underlying the approaches as well as their application in homework assignments, a take home midterm, and final take home practicum.
Test Course for Vergil Launch Demonstration
This is a course at the intersection of statistics and machine learning, focusing on graphical models. In complex systems with many (perhaps hundreds or thousands) of variables, the formalism of graphical models can make representation more compact, inference more tractable, and intelligent data-driven decision-making more feasible. We will focus on representational schemes based on directed and undirected graphical models and discuss statistical inference, prediction, and structure learning. We will emphasize applications of graph-based methods in areas relevant to health: genetics, neuroscience, epidemiology, image analysis, clinical support systems, and more. We will draw connections in lecture between theory and these application areas. The final project will be entirely “hands on,” where students will apply techniques discussed in class to real data and write up the results.
This one-semester course introduces basic applied descriptive and inferential statistics. The first part of the course includes elementary probability theory, an introduction to statistical distributions, principles of estimation and hypothesis testing, methods for comparison of discrete and continuous data including chi-squared test of independence, t-test, analysis of variance (ANOVA), and their non-parametric equivalents. The second part of the course focuses on linear models (regression) theory and their practical implementation.
MFA acting students will tackle verse drama and heightened language. We will spend much of our time investigating Shakespeare’s writing, with a focus on King Lear and Much Ado about Nothing, and will weave in contemporary heightened language texts throughout the semester.
Goals
To develop students into keen interpreters of heightened theatrical language, both classical and contemporary
To enable students to express their instinctive emotional responses to the rhythms, sounds and the mysteries contained in great language texts
To bring character and the specific imaginative world of each play alive thru the language
To foster each actor’s unique voice
This course introduces sequential designs for clinical trials in drug development. This course is designed for advanced Master's, DrPH, and PhD students in biostatistics. The overall learning objective is to equip students with the techniques to construct and evaluate sequential designs from a statistical perspective, although clinical relevance will be emphasized. The course consists of two parts. The first part is an in-depth study of the classical group-sequential designs, which are primarily applicable in large randomized phase III trials. The second part presents selected advanced topics on a variety of sequential procedures, also with an emphasis on clinical applications.
The seminar introduces graduate students to works of ancient art and architecture held in museum collections. It explores the modern history of their study as antiquities, a category which required a detailed connoisseurship set within a framework of newly arising aesthetic and racial theories and classifications that accompanied imperial archaeological endeavour. The seminar’s focus is on Mesopotamian, Anatolian, Egyptian and Greek antiquities, as ancient works in their original context and as extracted objects that mark an imperial trail. Students will also be introduced to the development of archaeological field methods within the colonial context, and archaeology’s varied forms of visual documentation which became instrumental to imperial knowledge production: architectural and scientific illustrations, excavation images, and archaeological photography, and by the early twentieth century, the introduction of aerial photography as a way of visualizing sites and ruins. Taking ancient works and their display as a starting point, the seminar also explores the ways in which archaeology and the collecting of antiquities were inextricably linked to the technologies and economies of empire and colonialism. Reading and discussions include museum histories and theories of collecting, as well as the history and theories of archaeology and ancient art. Permission of the instructor is required before registration. Please submit a seminar application to the Department of Art History and Archaeology.
Students in this course will learn and practice the fundamental methods and concepts of the randomized clinical trial: protocol development, randomization, blindedness, patient recruitment, informed consent, compliance, sample size determination, crossovers, collaborative trials. Each student prepares and submits the protocol for a real or hypothetical clinical trial.
Clinical trials are the pilars of clinical research. The main objective of this course is to prepare researchers to design and conduct complex clinical trials that yield valid and reliable results. The course emphasizes on several methodological and practical issues related to the design and analysis of clinical experiments. The course builds on the knowledge and skills gained in the course Randomized Clinical Trial (P8140). The objective of this course is to provide students with working knowledge of certain methodological issues that arise in designing a Clinical Trial. Topics include: Design of small studies (Phase I and II studies), Interim analyses and group sequential methods, Design of survival studies, Multiple outcome measures, Equivalency Trials, Multi-center studies, and trials with multiple outcome measures.
A good grasp of the fundamentals of Population Genetics is crucial for an understanding of any field of human genetics. This is precisely the aim of this course: to provide to students the key elements of Population Genetics with a view to equip them with the right tools to understand the field of genetics in general and to pursue further studies in human genetics. The course uses various evolutionary principles to explain key population genetics concepts.
The course will introduce students to statistical models and mthods for longitudinal data, i.e., repeatedly measured data over time or under different conditions. The topics will include design and sample size calculation, Hotelling's T^2, multivariate analysis of variance, multivariate linear regression (Generalized linear models), models for correlation, unbalanced repeated measurements, Mixed effects models, EM algorithm, methods for non-normally distributed data, Generalized estimating equations, Generalized linear mixed models, and Missing data.
This colloquium provides an intensive exploration of the Atlantic World during the early modern era. Readings will attend to the sequence of contact, conquest, and dispossession that enabled the several European empires to gain political and economic power. In this regard, particular attention will be given to the role of commerce and merchant capitalism in the formation of the Atlantic World. The course will focus also, however, on the dynamics of cultural exchange, on the two-way influences that pushed the varied peoples living along the Atlantic to develop new practices, new customs, and new tastes. Creative adaptations in the face of rapid social and cultural change will figure prominently in the readings. Students may expect to give sustained attention the worlds Africans, Amerindians, and Europeans both made together and made apart.
In this course, you will learn to design and build relational databases in MySQL and to write and optimize queries using the SQL programming language. Application of skills learned in this course will be geared toward research and data science settings in the healthcare field; however, these skills are transferable to many industries and application areas. You will begin the course examining the pitfalls of using Excel spreadsheets as a data storage tool and then learn how to build properly-designed relational databases to eliminate the issues related to spreadsheets and maintain data integrity when storing and modifying data. You will then learn two aspects of the SQL programming language: 1) the data manipulation language (DML), which allows you to retrieve data from and populate data into database tables (e.g., SELECT, INSERT INTO, DELETE, UPDATE, etc.), and 2) the data definition language (DDL), which allows you to create and modify tables in a database (e.g., CREATE, ALTER, DROP, etc.). You will additionally learn how to optimize SQL queries for best performance, use advanced SQL functions, and utilize SQL within common statistical software programs: R and SAS.
In this course, you will learn to design and build relational databases in MySQL and to write and optimize queries using the SQL programming language. Application of skills learned in this course will be geared toward research and data science settings in the healthcare field; however, these skills are transferable to many industries and application areas. You will begin the course examining the pitfalls of using Excel spreadsheets as a data storage tool and then learn how to build properly-designed relational databases to eliminate the issues related to spreadsheets and maintain data integrity when storing and modifying data. You will then learn two aspects of the SQL programming language: 1) the data manipulation language (DML), which allows you to retrieve data from and populate data into database tables (e.g., SELECT, INSERT INTO, DELETE, UPDATE, etc.), and 2) the data definition language (DDL), which allows you to create and modify tables in a database (e.g., CREATE, ALTER, DROP, etc.). You will additionally learn how to optimize SQL queries for best performance, use advanced SQL functions, and utilize SQL within common statistical software programs: R and SAS.
Visual Ecologies: Photography, Visual Justice and Environmental Activism.
Graduate Seminar in Photo & Related Media
This course will explore the intersection of photography, nature, ecology, social and environmental activism, examining art’s role as a catalyst for change. Drawing from critical and historical approaches in photography, landscape studies, architecture, human rights, and interdisciplinary environmental studies, among others, this course offers an exploration of how images can address pressing environmental and social issues while revealing optimism, hope, and collective action in response to our present ecological condition, illuminating the geographies, histories, and ecologies of transformation, liberation, and everyday resistance.
Data is most useful when it can tell a story. Health analytics merges technologies and skills used to deliver business, clinical and programmatic insights into the complex components that drive medical outcomes, costs and oversight. By focusing on business intelligence and developing tools to evaluate clinical procedures, devices, and programs, organizations can use comparative and outcomes data to strengthen financial performance. This information can improve the way healthcare is evaluatedand delivered for better outcomes across the spectrum of health industries.
In this course, students will learn SAS as a tool to manipulate and analyze healthcare data and begin to understand what clinical and public health interventions work best for improving health, for example. Students will learn how to organize and analyze data to inform the practices of healthcare providers and policymakers to make evidence-based resource allocation decisions.Comparative & Effectiveness Outcomes Research (CEOR) certificate students will take this course inpreparation for the capstone class.SAS basics (e.g., creating SAS datasets and new variables, sorting, merging, reporting) and advanced statistics (e.g., using a logistical regression to create propensity scores for matched cohort analyses) will be covered.
This is an advanced graduate seminar in Economic Sociology looking at new developments in this field. It addresses the disciplinary division of labor in which economists study value and sociologists study values; and it rejects the pact whereby economists study the economy and sociologists study social relations in which they are embedded.
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Applications of behavioral insights are expanding rapidly across civic, medical, social, corporate, educational, and economic professions. This class covers the underlying theories for behavioral insights, using scientific and real-world examples of applications from multiple disciplines and locations. The course will also cover methods for behavioral implementation and evaluation, focusing particularly on healthcare policy perspectives. Students will learn a broad range of strategies through a highly interactive format, taught partially in a classroom setting in addition to remote asynchronous and synchronous sessions. Students will gain experience designing and developing their own evidence- based behavioral interventions as a part of a semester-long project.
The course is taught in three phases. The first phase will introduce fundamentals of behavioral science and evidence-based policy. Students will then spend the majority of the course on examples of behavioral insights such as nudges in practice, in a healthcare context and beyond. The course will end with sessions on practical applications, where students will learn to identify appropriate situations for behavioral interventions and produce a final project in a chosen context.
Courses on public opinion and political behavior (including the GR8210 seminar taught by Professor Shapiro) ordinarily move briskly through a wide array of topics having to do with how American tend to think and act. This class has a narrower scope but tries to delve more deeply into the literature. We focus on four topics that are arguably crucial understanding contemporary American politics (and perhaps the politics of other times and places).
The first topic addresses what might be thought of as the legacies of slavery: prejudice, resentment, racial/ethnic group identification, issue preferences on topics that are directly or indirectly connected to race/ethnicity, and group differences in political behavior.
The second topic considers the literature on partisanship and polarization, as well as related topics on “macropartisan” change and party realignment. What are the causes of micro- and macropartisan change, and what are its consequences?
The third topic is support for democratic norms, civil liberties, and respect for the rights of unpopular groups. How deeply committed are Americans to democratic values and constitutional rights?
The fourth topic is the influence of media on public opinion, a vast topic that includes the effects of advertising, news, social media, narrative entertainment, and so forth.
Although we will be focusing on just four broad topics, time constraints nevertheless prevent us from covering more than a fraction of each scholarly literature. Students are encouraged to read beyond the syllabus, and I am happy to offer suggestions.
From 1970 until today, America’s prison and jail population has increased sevenfold, from some 300,000 to around 2.2 million adults and children behind bars. Accounting for less than 5 percent of the world’s inhabitants, but about 25 percent of the world’s incarcerated inhabitants, the United States is the most incarcerating society in human history. The U.S. federal and state governments imprison more people and at higher rates than do any other governments on the planet, and they do so today more than they did at any other period in American history.
This astounding amount of human confinement (commonly called “mass incarceration”) disproportionately impacts the polity’s poorest communities of color—especially young Black males—which suffer from chronic conditions and infectious disease; face higher mortality rates; and experience, because of criminal records, less opportunity to secure gainful employment, stable housing, access to safety net programs, and education. Female incarceration over the past few decades has grown at twice the rate of male incarceration, and black women, specifically, are twice as likely as white women to serve time. Imprisonment exposes people to a wide range of circumstances proving detrimental to long-term physical and mental health, like inadequate sanitation, poor ventilation, and solitary confinement. And most formerly incarcerated people return to their communities with deep wounds and new traumas resulting from incarcerated life and from isolation through long separations from families and social supports.
This course sits at the intersection of public health, policy, and law. The course will explore the full spectrum of causes and costs of mass incarceration as a public health crisis. This course will examine how exposures to different structures of the American criminal punishment apparatus (e.g., law enforcement, jail, prison, or detention centers, community supervision) shape the health of people, families, and society. Observing mass incarceration as an epidemic, this course will adopt a useful public-health model of prevention to contemplate a concerted approach consisting of primary, secondary, and tertiary strategies for unwinding mass human imprisonment while advancing enhanced public health for the nation’s most disempowered members. This course will pay special attention to acutely at-risk populations, including detained youth and youth of incarcerated adults, pregnant incarcerated people, and the elderly. And the role that
The Course introduces students to the fundamentals of case competitions and prepares them to compete in select case competitions over the course of the year. Case competitions afford students the opportunity to apply classroom learning to dynamic health care organizational and industry problems. The Course covers topics ranging from the framework for breaking down cases to common analytical techniques and presentation skills. We will build the foundational skills for students to prepare and deliver comprehensive, professional analyses in competitive settings.
Who gets what and why? Policy makers and stakeholders in the healthcare space must make difficult decisions involving trade-offs that are often controversial. By exploring a series of ethical frameworks and contentious healthy policy issues, students will learn to apply a systematic process of ethical analysis to justify policies in a legitimate way. Through a dynamic teaching approach involving case studies, role playing and active discussion, we will explore how acceptability and feasibility of controversial policies can be enhanced to promote health equity using tools from distributive justice, procedural justice and bioethics. Topics of discussion include migrant health/migration policy, rationing at the VA, using algorithmic fairness in policy design and nudging in the safety-net.
This seminar is designed as an overview of the major debates in Judicial Politics, with deeper
coverage of a selection of topics. The primary goal of the course is to familiarize students with the
principal questions being asked by scholars in this subfield, the methodological approaches
employed, and the avenues available for future research. The primary focus is on law and courts as
political institutions and judges as political actors. We will examine decision making and power
relations within courts, within the judicial hierarchy, and within the constitutional system. While
we will concentrate on U.S. courts, we will also cover some material on other courts. We will aim
to clarify and probe the puzzles, theories, methods, and evidence presented in the various texts and
to assess the contributions they make to an understanding of judicial politics. We will explore
issues such as research design, causal inference, the role of theory, and the nature of political
science argument, in ways relevant throughout political science. This course will have a seminar
format, though I will occasionally lecture on material as necessary. Other than that, my role is to
moderate and guide discussion, relying on you to do your part.
Popular media routinely tout imminent breakthroughs that often fizzle. In this course, we examine advances that indisputably changed medical practice in the last quarter of the 20th century through case histories. The case histories suggest that protracted,
multiplayer
innovations – not solitary breakthroughs – produce transformational results. Yet venturesome individuals who do not follow the crowd remain crucial. Engaging stories make the vast number of facts presented in the case histories memorable. But the course treats learning new facts mainly as a valuable byproduct. Rather, we rely on the case histories in two more subtle ways, namely: (1) developing skills and judgment and (2) sharpening goals and aspirations.
Investigation of contemporary composition topics through invited guest lectures, student and faculty presentations, listening sessions, and professional development workshops. DMA students only also receive one-on-one weekly composition lessons during which they will develop individual projects in composition (lessons are offered for the first three years of the DMA).
This course offers a sample of historical research on debates around African-American intelligence, mental health, family organization, and other social scientific controversies from the era of slavery to the late 20th century. The principal assignment is a lesson plan, instructions for which will be supplied on the CourseWorks site.
Please note that you may not take this course as an auditor or pass/fail without the permission of the instructor.
Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences guidelines may be found at
http://gsas.columbia.edu/
. Those for the history department may be found at
http://history.columbia.edu/graduate/index.html
.
This class will introduce students to principles, methods, and applications of health technology assessment (HTA). Students will learn (1) definitions and components of HTA and its history in the United States; (2) approaches to measurement of health benefits and costs; (3) methods of economic evaluation in HTA, including cost-effectiveness analysis, cost-benefit analysis, and budget impact analysis; (4) HTA agencies and processes in selected countries outside of the U.S. We will discuss advantages and disadvantages of different methods and metrics in HTA, as well as challenges and controversies regarding their role in health technology adoption decisions. Students will review recent health technology adoption decisions and discuss the future of HTA and economic evaluation in the U.S.
This class is intended for students to develop composing skills for creating music “between the keys” (or “outside the keys”) of a traditionally tuned piano or organ. We will be analyzing relevant works and techniques of the present and of the past. Students compose and perform/present their own music influenced by these works and techniques. We will start with quartertones and with music independent from Western traditions.
This course introduces the fundamental physical principles that govern the behavior of the earth's atmosphere and climate. Topics to be studied include the general circulation of the atmosphere, motions on a rotating sphere, atmospheric thermodynamics, radiative transfer, the basic chemistry and physics of air pollution, the hydrologic cycle, climate dynamics and synoptic weather. The effects of these systems on public health, including mental health, rates of exercise, infectious disease, allergens and asthma, heat morbidity and mortality, will be assessed throughout the course.
What does interaction have to do to storytelling? How do we tell stories within media that are non-linear, including games, virtual reality, and immersive theater? How can we craft narratives that emerge from the dynamics of interaction, narratives experienced through exploration and choice? What design strategies exist regarding an understanding of character, plot, drama, time, space, and event within interactive fictions? This course will take a close look at the mechanics of storytelling within dynamic media, exploring connections between interactivity and narrative experience. The course will examine examples ranging from the design of Live Action Role Playing games to massively multi-player experiences, from hypertext to tarot cards, from Oculus to Punchdrunk. Content will be delivered through lectures, reading, discussion, case studies, and small studio-based exercises. Elective open to all SOA students.
This course introduces students to the basic principles and practices of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene. This field encompasses the anticipation, recognition, evaluation, and control of chemical, physical, and biological hazards arising in and from the workplace, home, and ambient environments. The course content encompasses many diverse aspects of the field such as the inhalation hazards of gases and vapors, the effects of particle size and morphology on aerodynamic behavior, respiratory system deposition, and disease risk, factors influencing dermal permeation of chemicals, biological monitoring for chemicals and their metabolites, and approaches to measurement and associated instrumentation. This course is intended to provide a basic understanding of the field for students in Public Health disciplines, and is the starting point for students who may choose to pursue occupational and environmental hygiene as a career.
Molecular epidemiology is an interdisciplinary research approach that incorporates advanced laboratory methods into epidemiology to identify causes of disease and facilitate intervention. It is increasingly utilized as a tool to understand interactions between external ‘environmental’ exposures and genetic and other susceptibility factors, and to identify ‘at-risk’ populations and individuals. This course will cover conceptual and methodological issues in molecular epidemiology including the application of biomarkers to the study of disease causation, risk assessment, and prevention. The course covers principles in the selection and validation of biomarkers, study design and statistical methods in data analysis including gene-environment interactions, biological sample collection, storage, and banking, and current laboratory methods for biomarker analysis. These principles will be illustrated using examples from current molecular epidemiologic research in cancer, neurodevelopment, childhood asthma, screening, risk assessment and disease prevention. Students will gain proficiency and experience in critically evaluating key papers in molecular epidemiologic studies.
This course is designed to provide students with a comprehensive mechanistic understanding of the molecular events associated with chemically-induced degenerative and proliferative diseases.
Prerequisites: ECON G6411 and G6412. Students will make presentations of original research.
Review of continuum mechanics in Cartesian coordinates; tensor calculus and the calculus of variation; large deformations in curvilinear coordinates; electricity problems and applications.
This course explains the toxic effects of chemicals (including drugs and other agents) on living organisms. An overview of the history, principles, mechanisms and regulatory applications of toxicology is provided. Also, the absorption, distribution and excretion of toxins are described. The toxic effects of chemicals (including cancer) on the digestive (liver), respiratory, cardiovascular, nervous, hematopoetic, immune, dermal, urinary, endocrine and reproductive systems and development forms the major portion of the course. Members of chemical classes such as solvents, metals, pesticides, air pollutants (sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and ozone), radiation, plants, fungi, venoms and pharmaceuticals are used as examples. Environmental toxicology form the primary emphasis, but aspects of occupational, food, pharmaceutical and clinical toxicology are also included.
An optional addition hour for credit is provided for those students needing a background in anatomy, histology, chemistry, biochemistry, cell biology, and the normal physiology of the digestive (liver), respiratory, cardiovascular, nervous, hematopoetic, immune, dermal, urinary, endocrine and reproductive systems.
Prerequisites: G6215 and G6216. Open-economy macroeconomics, computational methods for dynamic equilibrium analysis, and sources of business cycles.
Digital Storytelling III: Immersive Production is a mix of theory and practice. Teams of students work to design, build and deploy a digital storytelling experience that is staged for an audience at the end of the semester. The course combines project work, mentors, emerging technologies and collaborative methods to create a dynamic hands-on immersive environment that mixes story and code.
How should society regulate environmental health risks? Some argue that the health of the citizenry is paramount, and that the role of government should be to protect against any possibility of harm. Others back an approach based on a full accounting of the benefits and costs of environmental protection. And in the current political environment, ideological positions sometimes eclipse analysis. These debates occur against a backdrop of uncertainty about the health risks posed by specific environmental insults. In spite of all this ambiguity and complexity, policy happens: congress makes laws, regulatory agencies enforce the law, and most polluters comply.
In this class we will study several frameworks for thinking about these questions. Environmental economics, in the form of benefit-cost analyses, is the primary framing used by the US Federal Government. We will explore its conceptual foundations and its applications in the US regulatory context. In our discussions of the sociology of science perspective, we will examine how environmental health scientists interact with the policy process, and think through how such interactions might be improved. The third perspective is decision theory, and in particular, choice under uncertainty. We will consider the basic analytics of expected value, and some permutations and applications that are germane to the environmental health policy domain. In addition to these conceptual frameworks, we will analyze and interpret cases drawn from recent experiences with environmental health regulation in the United States.
This course is designed to introduce Mailman students to core frameworks for thinking about environmental health policy. The course is open to all students.
Science Basic to Public Health Practice (SBPHP) is a 3 credit, one semester course designed to provide students with a better understanding of the science underlying topical issues vital to public health. In past years, this class has examined scientific support (or not) for legislative and policy decisions concerning the potential human health effects related to exposure to bisphenols, UV and low-dose ionizing radiation, mercury and other heavy metals, GMO foods, alternative energy sources, or talcum (baby) powder. In addition to case studies such as these, the course provides a basic introduction to the biochemistry, cell & molecular biology, genetics and toxicology surrounding carcinogenesis, neurotoxicity, endocrine disruption and damage to specific target organs and tissues. Students in this course are often drawn from a cross-section of different educational and scientific backgrounds including the Schools of Public Health, Physicians & Surgeons, Journalism, SIPA and Law. The diversity of backgrounds provide for vigorous discussions from various perspectives and enriches the student experience. In essence, this course is designed for and appropriate for any student interested in gaining a clearer basic science understanding of the biological processes underlying current public health concerns.
Through the process of developing, pitching, researching, and writing a treatment for a documentary short, students will develop an overview of the documentary process from development through distribution. The course will touch on research, story, production and post production logistics, legal, financing, budgeting, distribution, and ethical issues in the creation of documentary films.
This class, will primarily focus on the challenges of interpreting and performing Shakespeare.
Risk Assessment is the process of correlating the amount of exposure (to a chemical, activity, or situation) with expected harm. This Department core course is primarily concerned with toxic substances to which humans are exposed through their environments, in the context of whether and how exposure to such toxicants should be controlled: risk assessment. Toxicological and epidemiological principles are used primarily to provide (uncertain) quantitative estimates of the harm associated with a given level of exposure: dose-response. Using a dose-response relationship necessitates quantifying exposure, an uncertain endeavor that relies on understanding human physiology and behavior. The quantitative estimates of harm from anthropogenic activity that risk assessment gives are just the starting point for the challenge of risk management: What do we do now?" The resulting decisions are influenced by both economic factors (e.g., cost-benefit analysis) and psychological factors (e.g., risk perception)."
What is “health,” biologically speaking? What is aging? These big, controversial questions are the subject of much debate, but the answers are crucial to everything we do in public health: what kinds of treatments and research we pursue, how we evaluate our progress, and whether we make a difference in people’s lives. The current biomedical framework is built on a reductionist view of these questions, building up the organism one molecule, cell, or tissue at a time. However, new research is increasingly showing us the interconnected nature of our biological systems, where risk factors for one disease are often risk factors for many. This course will provide a foundation in this new research, showing how it relates to old knowledge and paradigms, and using it to build a global understanding of what an organism is, how it maintains it health, and how this gets lost during the aging process. All of this will be situated within a public health perspective: how can we, as public health researchers, use this knowledge to ask better questions, to identify true risks and evaluate interventions, and most importantly to grow the health of our societies.
This course is a quantitative companion to Molecular Epidemiology (P8307) and will discuss quantitative methods and considerations needed to conduct epidemiology research involving biomarkers. Using ‘real world’ examples, this course covers topics including data accession, storage, and sharing. It includes a comprehensive evaluation of sources of biomarker data variability and how these features are handled analytically in the conduct of molecular epidemiology research. The course covers topics including how to handle values less than the limits of detection, the identification of outliers and variability due to batch effects, freeze/thaw cycles along with sources of biologic variability including urinary dilution and lipid concentration. It also discuss methods for implementing genome-wide and epigenome-wide association studies, sample and data pooling along with considerations for returning individual and aggregate-level molecular epidemiology results to study participants, scientific and lay audiences. Class activities include quantitive demonstrations and discussions. Assessment will be based on four assignments that include responses to quantitive and qualitative prompts using R-markdown.
Careful consideration is needed in the design and implementation of molecular epidemiologic studies that leverage biomarkers of exposure, disease susceptibility, disease etiology, prediction, and prognosis. This course aims to provide insight into major methodologies and logistic considerations when incorporating the use of biological specimens in epidemiologic research from concept to publication. For this purpose, we will utilize simulated laboratory experiences and a mock molecular epidemiology study for hands-on insight into the application of biomarkers in epidemiologic settings in conjunction with class discussions on published findings. Class activities include small group assignments where each group takes responsibility of designated tasks as part of a mock molecular epidemiology study and report back their activities for in-class discussion throughout the semester. This work will culminate in a final report at the end of the semester. In addition, 1-2 students in each session will be assigned to lead an in-class discussion that critically exams a published molecular epidemiology study. Students will also complete a virtual lab notebook that assesses material covered in the assigned virtual laboratory.
To begin to develop an understanding and vocabulary in relation to theatrical design with a central emphasis on the roles of scenery and costumes in telling a dramatic story.
The class will begin with a general introduction into the issues and goals of the course, after which there will be three sessions devoted to issues of scene design and three sessions devoted to issues of costume design. Shakespeare’s Hamlet will be the focus for these discussions. Over the course of these sessions, directors will be asked to gather visual research and, in the end, arrive at a concept for their production of the play.
Directors will also be asked to visit one set and one costume class so that they can see how designers are grappling with the same principles and developing different approaches to interpreting and realizing a theatrical text for the stage.
This class will focus in on how to direct opera and will cover the process of making an opera from analysing the score until the opening night. The aims are to: 1) Introduce theatre directing students to the practical differences between theatre and opera directing; 2) Equip them with practical skills and knowledge so that they could walk into any opera rehearsal room (either as an assistant or a director) and know exactly what to expect and how to manage the process; 3) Offer them techniques to strengthen their skill of interpretation or concept by guiding them to focus in on one specific opera case study; and 4) Introduce them to specialist professional practitioners, like conductors, singers and set designers, to allow them to understand the art form through the lens of the collaborators the opera director works with.
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has emerged as an essential tool for public health researchers and practitioners. The GIS for Public Health course will offer students an opportunity to gain skills in using GIS software to apply spatial analysis techniques to public health research questions. The laboratory section of the course will give students the opportunity for hands-on learning in how to use GIS systems to analyze data and produce maps and reports. These laboratory exercises will be designed to increasingly challenge the students to incorporate the analytic skills and techniques they have learned in other courses with the geospatial and spatial statistics techniques commonly used in GIS. Guest speakers will be invited to share their real-world examples of GIS in Public Health research and practice. These speakers will include Columbia researchers and staff from government agencies or non-profit organizations.
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has emerged as an essential tool for public health researchers and practitioners. The GIS for Public Health course will offer students an opportunity to gain skills in using GIS software to apply spatial analysis techniques to public health research questions. The laboratory section of the course will give students the opportunity for hands-on learning in how to use GIS systems to analyze data and produce maps and reports. These laboratory exercises will be designed to increasingly challenge the students to incorporate the analytic skills and techniques they have learned in other courses with the geospatial and spatial statistics techniques commonly used in GIS. Guest speakers will be invited to share their real-world examples of GIS in Public Health research and practice. These speakers will include Columbia researchers and staff from government agencies or non-profit organizations.
The purpose of this course is to provide practical experience in analyzing epidemiologic data. The goal is to familiarize you with various analytic methods and their uses to answer specific epidemiologic research questions. Brief reviews of relevant statistical methods, their applications in epidemiologic research and interpretation of results will be covered step by step in this course. You will be provided with several data sets from epidemiologic (case-control and cohort) studies and will be asked to conduct analyses of these data.
This course, intended for graduate students, exposes students to some “classics” in 20th century U.S. historiography with newer scholarship that reconceptualizes the American past. Readings cover topics including labor, class and capitalism; political divides and comparative civil rights movements; race and migration; gender, sexuality, and reform; urbanization and suburbanization; health and environment; and relationships between human and non-human historical agents. Discussions of texts will build necessary skills in critical reading and understanding authors’ arguments, sources and methods, scope and style, and historiographical intervention. This course will require one oral presentation on a supplementary book; a historiographical essay on a 20th c. topic of the student’s choosing; and a professional assignment of writing either a lesson plan or lecture.
This is a semester-long course that addresses issues in adult psychiatric epidemiology. The course begins with a review of the origins of psychiatric epidemiology in several classic studies. It also describes major recent studies, presents evidence concerning the reliability and validity of psychiatric diagnosis in community studies and summarizes evidence derived from epidemiological studies that is relevant to issues of etiology. The course also covers selection into treatment, treatment effectiveness, the distribution of treatment, and social factors affecting course and role functioning.
A study of the theoretical and practical aspects of ethnomusicological fieldwork, using the New York area as a setting for exercises and individual projects.
Why are some nations able to grow and prosper while others mired in conflicts and poverty? What are the political factors that shape countries’ success in growing their economies How does economic progress affect a regime’s ability to stay in power and the prospects and direc-tions of political changes? This course addresses these questions by introducing students to major ideas and findings from both classical and cutting-edge scholarship on political economy of de-velopment. The first part of the course will review major episodes of growth (or the lack thereof) in human history and how they influenced the theoretical paradigms for studying development. The second half of the course will be devoted to more specialized topics, examining how differ-ent institutions, strategies, and contingencies affect countries’ economic fortunes. The goal of the course is to help you acquire the necessary conceptual and empirical toolkit for digesting and producing scholarly knowledge about the origins and consequences of economic development.
This course considers visual culture in Britain in the context of Black European studies. The discipline of cultural studies, which evolved in postwar Birmingham, intersected with the rise of black consciousness throughout Britain in the 1980s. How did the interactions of intellectuals and artists at this moment in the late 20th century lead to the creation of strong postcolonial theory and practice? We will consider the role of medium (particularly film and video), feminism, issues of diaspora, migration, and globalization, and the emergence of Black European Studies. Readings include texts by Hazel Carby, Paul Gilroy, Stuart Hall, and Kobena Mercer. We will look at visual production and film by artists such as Sonia Boyce, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Ingrid Pollard, Chris Ofili, Isaac Julien, and Khadija Saye among others.
This course introduces cancer epidemiology through critical examination of assigned readings, lectures, and class discussion. Topics include the biology and molecular mechanisms of carcinogenesis; cancer risk factors, including chemical, microbial, hormonal, genetic, behavioral, and environmental factors; epidemiologic methods and study designs; and patterns of cancer incidence, mortality, and survival. The course also addresses cancer prevention, screening, and control, including issues relevant to disproportionately affected populations. The course is offered in a hybrid format, with in-person and virtual sessions held throughout the semester.
Spatial epidemiology is the study of geographic distributions and determinants of health in populations. The goal of this class is to introduce students to relevant theory and methods, in order to provide the foundational skills required to understand and critically analyze spatial epidemiologic studies. The course emphasizes spatial epidemiology as a sub-discipline of epidemiology while acknowledging the many scientific disciplines that shape it, including biostatistics, cartography, criminology, demography, economics, geography, psychology, and sociology. We begin by defining spatial epidemiology and exploring these multi-disciplinary roots, with particular regard to the theoretical causal mechanisms that provide a bridge between social and physical environmental conditions and population health. We then provide a basic overview of geographic information systems and their utility for descriptive spatial epidemiology—including data visualization and cluster detection—before demonstrating how to incorporate spatial structures within conventional epidemiologic study designs to examine associational and causational relationships between environmental conditions and health outcomes. Class readings describe advances in theory and methods for spatial epidemiology and related disciplines, as well as concrete examples of applications for communicable disease, non-communicable disease, and injury epidemiology. This course is intended for doctoral and 2ndyear MPH students.
Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Students will make presentations of original research.
This course, intended for non-clinicians with an interest in psychiatric epidemiology, is designed to familiarize students with the major psychiatric clinical entities and relevant issues concerning diagnosis, based in part on the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria. In this course, we will cover the phenomenology of mental illness by way of contemporary psychiatric theory and practice and give students heavy exposure to the process of psychiatric assessment. The course will start by introducing students to how to build a disorder from symptom bricks as well as giving students an in-depth review of clinical psychiatric evaluations. This foundation will ultimately be used through the duration of the semester as we discuss many of the major categories of mental disorders in the following weeks.
The primary objectives in this course are to gain knowledge about and to critically engage with current topics in the field of injury control and prevention, to develop research and scientific inquiry skills, and to make meaningful connections with experts in this field. In this course, we will learn from experts on four topics in the field of injury control and prevention. By the end of the semester, students will have improved their ability to interpret peer-reviewed research on current topics in injury control and prevention and will be prepared to go forward asking important scientific questions in this field, with a solid sense of what is already known and what is worthy of further inquiry and investigation. Readings will be determined by the four guest speakers based on what is relevant to their field of research.
Public health surveillance is the fundamental mechanism that public health agencies use to monitor the health of the communities they serve. It is a core function of public health practice, and its purpose is to provide a factual basis from which agencies can appropriately set priorities, plan programs, and take actions to promote and protect the public's health. This course will cover the principles of public health surveillance, including historical context, vital registration, disease reporting regulations and notifiable diseases, surveillance registries, surveillance for behaviors and risk factors, administrative data sources in surveillance, epidemiologic uses of surveillance data, legal and ethical issues, and dissemination of surveillance information.
The goals of this class are to familiarize the students with the methodological issues and design strategies used in environmental epidemiology and to develop the student's critical thinking regarding the application of epidemiologic methods. The course covers traditional approaches to environmental epidemiology such as, occupational cohorts and ecologic studies and also covers newer molecular epidemiologic approaches to exposure assessment and the analysis of gene-environment interactions. Discussions of classic environment-disease associations, such as aflatoxin and liver cancer, illustrate methodologies used to investigate the health effects of environmental exposures. Each week readings will be assigned for discussion in the following class, students are expected to be prepared to discuss the readings.
Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Students will make presentations of original research.
This intensive course offers an introduction to multiple disciplinary and cross-disciplinary approaches to the major issues defining the emergence, persistence, and transformation of the countries that once comprised the Soviet bloc. The course explores the history, politics, economies, societies, and political cultures of Russia, the non-Russian republics of the former USSR, and East Central Europe, focusing on the conceptual, methodological, and theoretical developments employed by Soviet studies in North America and related disciplines. It also critically interrogates the enduring relevance and problems posed by the widespread use of the term “Soviet legacy” in reference to contemporary features and challenges faced by the region.
The intensive nature of this course is reflected in two ways- preparation and focus. First, the course carries a substantial reading load designed to inform and prepare students for the course sessions. These assignments will mostly be academic readings, but may also include short videos, news articles, and digital archival materials. In order to use our time together productively, the lectures and discussion will build upon, not review, the assignments for the session. Each session typically will be split into 2 segments, roughly of 55-60 minutes each. Many of these segments will be taught by guest lecturers who will give 30 mins presentations on their topic and then field questions. During our limited time for Q&A students should ask single, concise questions.
Clinical epidemiology is a basic science of clinical medicine and a subspecialty of epidemiology. It is the application of epidemiologic methods to studying problems encountered in clinical settings pertaining to the causes and management of diseases and medical conditions in individual patients. The central paradigm of clinical epidemiology is that exposure and outcome patterns of the disease in different population groups can be analyzed methodically to gain scientific knowledge about the etiology, diagnosis, prognosis, safety, and effectiveness of therapeutic and other interventions. Epidemiologic methods are increasingly used in clinical investigations to provide scientific evidence for assessing clinical practice and for improving clinical decision making and outcomes. This course is designed to introduce students to basic theories, concepts, and methods of clinical epidemiology, and provide them with the necessary tools and skills to critically appraise the clinical research literature, competently design and conduct clinical studies, and appropriately analyze and interpret clinical data. This course consists of one lecture and one laboratory session per week. Students will be evaluated based on a mid-term exam, final exam, and homework assignments.
This applied course introduces students to the epidemiology of HIV infection in resource-rich and resource-limited settings. Class sessions focus on the latest approaches to conducting surveillance of HIV and AIDS; the evolving burden of HIV infection in sub-groups, including men who have sex with men, people who inject drugs, adolescent girls and older people; the development and evaluation of prevention- and treatment-related interventions across a range of settings; and the application of epidemiologic methods to understand historical and current controversies and determine best practices. Activate participation in class discussion and exercises, homework, a group presentation and a final project will be used to evaluate student progress towards learning objectives.
Malaria imposes a profound burden on public health and inhibits economic growth. It is distributed over 90 countries accounting for an annual estimate of 400 million cases and over one million deaths, most of them in children. Pregnant women are more vulnerable to malaria, resulting in infection, miscarriages, severe anemia, maternal mortality and low birth weight. Low birth weight poses the greatest risk for neonatal death. The disease also affects non-immune immigrants, refugees and displaced populations during their movement from non-endemic to endemic areas. Resistance to anti-malarial drugs and insecticides by the Plasmodium human parasites and Anopheles vector mosquitoes respectively is widespread. This course examines the ecological and epidemiological characteristics of malaria, transmission dynamics, economic costs of malaria, available intervention strategies and the global challenge of its control.
This course focuses on the branch of epidemiology concerned with how social arrangements, processes, and interactions shape the population distribution of health and disease and produce social inequalities in health. The sub-discipline of social epidemiology has grown dramatically in the past decade and, while still evolving as an interdisciplinary enterprise, it is now an established field of etiologic inquiry, both incorporating and influencing the conventional theories, methods, and principles of epidemiology. This course will familiarize students with the key theories, concepts, methods, findings, and ongoing debates in social epidemiology. Through lectures, readings, and discussion we will review the major social determinants of health, the theories and empirical evidence with respect to how social conditions “get under the skin,” and the methodological challenges involved in measuring social phenomena and making causal inferences about the relationship between social factors and health. By the end of the course students will understand the theoretical, substantive, and methodological parameters of this growing sub-discipline of epidemiologic inquiry, and be able to evaluate both its strengths and limitations.
Prerequisites: the instructor's permission. A graduate seminar designed to explore the content, process, and problems of China's political and economic reforms in comparative perspective. Please see the Courseworks site for details
In recent years, a number of infections have appeared for the first time, while many others have spread rapidly to new areas; these are termed emerging infectious diseases". HIV/AIDS, SARS, the recent Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV), human infections with H5N1 and H7N9 avian influenza, and a number of others are recent examples. Infectious causes have also been implicated in such chronic diseases as gastric ulcers and certain cancers. This course examines the concept of emerging infectious diseases and our current understanding of emergence. The course will consider methods for identifying and studying emerging pathogens, factors responsible for disease emergence, and methods for surveillance and intervention.
The primary objectives in this course are to learn to systematically review and summarize primary research in chronic disease epidemiology, to synthesize scientific evidence to establish causal inference, and to understand how this evidence relates to scientific decision making for improving health outcomes. In this course, we will evaluate 4 topics in the epidemiology of chronic diseases. By the end of the semester, students will improve their ability to interpret the literature on current topics in chronic disease epidemiology and will be able to evaluate how the evidence can inform health decision making and causal inference. Readings will be based upon publications highlighted in the Dean’s Seminar Series on Chronic Disease and the Department of Epidemiology’s Chronic Disease Cluster seminars.
Mental, neurological, and substance use (MNS) disorders are substantial drivers of the global burden of disease. The burden is particularly high in low-and-middle-income countries (LMIC) where over 80% of persons in need of MNS services go untreated. Yet for decades, attention to MNS epidemiologic research in LMIC was scarce relative to both psychiatric epidemiology studies conducted in high-income countries as well as infectious disease epidemiology studies in LMIC. Recently, however, the emerging field of global mental health has been recognized by international agencies, including the United Nations (via the Sustainable Development Goals) and the World Health Organization (via the Mental Health Action Plan) as major funding agencies, including NIH, CDC, and the UK MRC have followed suit in prioritizing global mental health research.
As the field has emerged, challenges in how to appropriately conduct public mental health research in LMIC contexts have surfaced. Such challenges require the appropriate application of epidemiologic methods in order to accurately measure and describe MNS problems in LMIC and evaluate and implement intervention approaches. Epidemiologic methods to be discussed in this course include: complex survey designs to measure MNS prevalence in humanitarian and emergency settings; validation of mental health screening tools in the absence of a gold standard criterion among culturally diverse populations; evaluation of MNS intervention effectiveness using experimental and non-experimental designs; novel methods for assessing clinical competency and intervention fidelity of lay mental health providers in LMIC; and implementation science tools, designs, and analysis approaches for translating evidence-based interventions into practice in LMIC.
The course is designed to complement Priorities in Global Mental Health (P6813), which provides a broad overview of priority issues in global mental health, and epidemiologic methods series courses (e.g., Quant Core Module / P6400, and Epidemiology II). The course is also designed to be practical in the sense that the intent is for students to learn the ‘how to’ of conducting global mental health epidemiologic studies in the field. Each lecture will apply a core epidemiologic method or concept (e.g., information and selection bias; survey, cohort, case-control, and RCT study designs; effect modification; and causal inference) to the field of global mental health. Through lectures, int
Seminar for students in the Social Determinants certificate program
Life course epidemiology is the study of exposures, both physical and social, that occur during the periconceptional period, during gestation or during early childhood and adult health and disease risk. This course will examine conceptual models and identify study designs appropriate for a variety of life course research questions, as well as the limitations of these designs. Understanding the approaches to the life course, the development and evaluation of epidemiologic research designs related to the life course, and the contextual models and their relevance for the design and evaluation of research studies will be covered using a combination of lectures, case studies and small group work.
This course will argue for a broader spatial history of empire by looking at sites such as frontiers and borderlands in a theoretical and comparative perspective. The course will familiarize students to “frontier thesis” to the “spatial turn” and to the emergence of “Borderland Studies” before embarking on specific monographs highlighting borderlands scholarship in a global context. Formulations of power, race, gender, and class will be central to our comparative units of historical analysis and allow us to create conversations across area-studies boundaries within the discipline.
Ethnography is often taught as a method of observation. This course begins from a different premise: ethnography is a political technology of knowledge production shaped by empire, race, capital, gender, and disciplinary power. It is also a fragile and unfinished writing practice that scholars continually remake. This seminar treats ethnography as a site of struggle over these questions: Who can produce knowledge? Whose worlds become legible? Which archives endure? What research should refuse to know? And, how writing itself organizes relations of power?
Individual work with an adviser to develop a topic and proposal for the Ph.D. dissertation.
Large data sets provide crucial information for monitoring the health of our nation and evaluating public health policies. The principal goal of this course is for students to develop the skills to identify, process, and analyze these data to answer a specific research or policy question. The class is an applied, hands-on course that provides an introduction to several major health data sets and guides students in processing and analyzing these data. Students will hone computer and statistical skills developed in other research methods courses. Students with also gain insight into active research projects that utilize large scale health data sets via a series of guest lectures. By accessing data that measure health variables of current importance, the class provides a foundation for developing a variety of health policy research questions.