SENIORS HONORS THESIS LAB
Corequisites: CHEM BC3901 Guided research in Chemistry or Biochemistry, under the sponsorship of a faculty member, leading to the senior thesis. A minimum of 8 hours of research per week, to be arranged.
- Department: Chemistry @Barnard
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Instructor:
Christian Rojas
CULPA: 24
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Instructor:
Marisa C Buzzeo
CULPA: 2 Info -
Instructor:
Dina C Merrer
CULPA: 24
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Instructor:
Andrew C Crowther
CULPA: 1 Info -
Instructor:
Michael Campbell
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Instructor:
Rachel Austin
CULPA: 18
Wikipedia
h-index: 28
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Instructor:
Christina Vizcarra
CULPA: 1 Info -
Instructor:
Rebecca Donegan
Info - 0 points
SENIORS HONORS THESIS LAB
Corequisites: CHEM BC3901 Guided research in Chemistry or Biochemistry, under the sponsorship of a faculty member, leading to the senior thesis. A minimum of 8 hours of research per week, to be arranged.
- Department: Chemistry @Barnard
- 0 points
COMMUNITIES AND SOCIAL CHANGE
Examines how changes in the economy, racial composition, and class relations affect community life-how it is created, changed and sometimes lost-with a specific focus on the local urban context. Student research projects will address how contemporary forces such as neoliberalization, gentrification and tourism impact a communitys social fabric.
- Department: Sociology @Barnard
- R 11 a.m.-12:50 p.m.
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Instructor:
Andrew S Anastasi
Info - 4 points
BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING DESIGN
A two-semester design sequence to be taken in the senior year. Elements of the design process, with specific applications to biomedical engineering: concept formulation, systems synthesis, design analysis, optimization, biocompatibility, impact on patient health and comfort, health care costs, regulatory issues, and medical ethics. Selection and execution of a project involving the design of an actual engineering device or system. Introduction to entrepreneurship, biomedical start-ups, and venture capital. Semester I: statistical analysis of detection/classification systems (receiver operation characteristic analysis, logistic regression), development of design prototype, need, approach, benefits and competition analysis. Semester II: spiral develop process and testing, iteration and refinement of the initial design/prototype and business plan development. A lab fee of $100 each is collected.
- Department: Biomedical Engineering
- TR 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
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Instructor:
Lauren N Heckelman
Info - 4 points
VISITING CRITIC I
Prerequisites: Department approval required. See requirements for a major in visual arts. VIAR UN3910 is the prerequisite for VIAR UN3911. Corequisites: VIAR UN3900 (Formerly R3921) Students are required to enroll in both semesters (VIAR UN3910 and VIAR UN3911). A second opinion is provided to the senior students regarding the development of their senior project. Critics consist of distinguished visitors and faculty. Issues regarding the premise, methodology, or presentation of the students ideas are discussed and evaluated on an ongoing basis.
- Department: Visual Arts
- W 5:15 p.m.-10 p.m.
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Instructor:
Emily C Henretta
Info - 2 points
SOCIAL CONTEXTS IMMIGRATN LAW
Examines the historical and contemporary social, economic, and political factors that shape immigration law and policy along with the social consequences of those laws and policies. Addresses the development and function of immigration law and aspects of the immigration debate including unauthorized immigration, anti-immigration sentiments, and critiques of immigration policy.
- Department: Anthropology @Barnard
- M 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
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Instructor:
J.C. Salyer
CULPA: 1 Info - 4 points
SEMINAR IN POLITCAL THEORY
INDIVIDUAL AUTONOMY IN 21CENT
Seminar in Political Theory. Students who would like to register should join the electronic wait list. For list of topics and descriptions see: https://polisci.columbia.edu/content/undergraduate-seminars
- Department: Political Science
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Instructor:
David C Johnston
CULPA: 25 Info - 4 points
SEMINAR IN POLITCAL THEORY
CITIZENSHIP AND EXCLUSION
Seminar in Political Theory. Students who would like to register should join the electronic wait list. For list of topics and descriptions see: https://polisci.columbia.edu/content/undergraduate-seminars
- Department: Political Science
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Instructor:
Turkuler Isiksel
CULPA: 3
h-index: 9
Info
- 4 points
SEMINAR
Required of senior majors, but also open to junior majors, and junior and senior concentrators who have taken at least four philosophy courses. This exploration will typically involve writing a substantial research paper. Capped at 20 students with preference to philosophy majors.
- Department: Philosophy @Barnard
- R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
- F 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Karen Lewis
CULPA: 12 h-index: 7 Info -
Instructor:
Christopher Peacocke
CULPA: 4
Wikipedia
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- 3 points
INEQUALITY, POVERTY & MOBILITY
INEQUALITY POVERTY & MOBILITY
This is an undergraduate seminar in social stratification. The course focuses on the current American experience with socioeconomic inequality and mobility. The goals of the course are to understand how inequality is conceptualized and measured in the social sciences, to understand the structure of inequality in the contemporary U.S. to learn the principal theories and evidence for long term trends in inequality, to understand the persistence of poverty and the impact of social policies on American rates of poverty, and to understand the forces that both produce and inhibit intergenerational social mobility in the U.S. Given the nature of the subject matter, a minority of the readings will sometimes involve quantitative social science material. The course does not presume that students have advanced training in statistics, and any readings sections that contain mathematical or statistical content will be explained in class in nontechnical terms as needed. In these instances, our focus will not be on the methods, but rather on the conclusions reached by the author concerning the research question that is addressed in the text.
- Department: Sociology
- T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
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Instructor:
Thomas DiPrete
CULPA: 7 Wikipedia Info - 4 points
GENDER, SEXUALITY & POWER IN TRANSNATION
GEND,SEX&POWER TRANSNATL
This course considers formations of gender, sexuality, and power as they circulate transnationally, as well as transnational feminist and queer movements that have emerged to address contemporary gendered and sexual inequalities. Topics include political economy, global care chains, sexuality, sex work and trafficking, feminist and queer politics, and human rights. If it is a small world after all, how do forces of globalization shape and redefine the relationship between gender, sexuality, and powerful institutions like the state? And, if power swirls everywhere, how are transnational power dynamics reinscribed in gendered bodies? How is the body represented in discussions of nationalism and in the political economy of globalization? These questions will frame this course by highlighting how gender, sexuality, and power coalesce to impact the lives of individuals in various spaces including workplaces, the academy, the home, religious institutions, the government, and civil society, and human rights organizations. This course will enable us to think transnationally, historically, and dynamically, using gender and sexuality as lenses through which to critique relations of power and the ways that power informs our everyday lives and subjectivities.
- Department: Women's, Gender, Sexuality Studies @Barnard
- T 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
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Instructor:
Manijeh Moradian
Info - 4 points
MODES OF INQUIRY
Corequisites: CSER UN3921 This class, a combination of a seminar and a workshop, will prepare students to conduct, write up, and present original research. It has several aims and goals. First, the course introduces students to a variety of ways of thinking about knowledge as well as to specific ways of knowing and making arguments key to humanistic and social science fields. Second, this seminar asks students to think critically about the approaches they employ in pursuing their research. The course will culminate in a semester project, not a fully executed research project, but rather an 8-10 page proposal for research that will articulate a question, provide basic background on the context that this question is situated in, sketch preliminary directions and plot out a detailed methodological plan for answering this question. Students will be strongly encouraged to think of this proposal as related to their thesis or senior project. Over the course of the semester, students will also produce several short exercises to experiment with research techniques and genres of writing.
- Department: Ethnicity and Race, Center for
- R 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
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Instructor:
Jessica H Lee
Info - 4 points
SENIOR SEMINAR
Open to senior chemistry, biochemistry, environmental chemistry, and chemical physics majors; senior chemistry concentrators; and students who have taken or are currently enrolled in CHEM UN3098. Senior seminar provides direct access to modern chemical research through selected studies by the students from active fields of chemical research. Topics to be presented and discussed draw from the current scientific literature and/or UN3098 research.
- Department: Chemistry
- F 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Laura J Kaufman
CULPA: 15 Wikipedia Info - 2 points
SENIOR SEM IN SCREENWRITING
- Department: Film
- F 2:10 p.m.-4:40 p.m.
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Instructor:
Loren-Paul Caplin
CULPA: 2 Info - 3 points
ADV TOPICS GENDER & SEXUALITY
This research and writing-intensive seminar is designed for senior majors with a background and interest in the sociology of gender and sexuality. The goal of the seminar is to facilitate completion of the senior requirement (a 25-30 page paper) based on ;hands on; research with original qualitative data. Since the seminar will be restricted to students with prior academic training in the subfield, students will be able to receive intensive research training and guidance through every step of the research process, from choosing a research question to conducting original ethnographic and interview-based research, to analyzing and interpreting ones findings. The final goal of the course will be the production of an original paper of standard journal-article length. Students who choose to pursue their projects over the course of a second semester will have the option of revisiting their articles further for submission and publications.
ANTICOLONIALISM
The age of colonialism, so it seems, is long over. Decolonization has resulted in the emergence of postcolonial polities and societies that are now, in many instances, two generations old. But is it clear that the problem of colonialism has disappeared? Almost everywhere in the postcolonial world the project of building independent polities, economies and societies have faltered, sometimes run aground. Indeed, one might say that the anti-colonial dream of emancipation has evaporated. Through a careful exploration of the conceptual argument and rhetorical style of five central anti-colonial texts—C.L.R. James’ The Black Jacobins, Mahatma Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj, Aimé Cesairé’s Discourse on Colonialism, Albert Memmi’s Colonizer and Colonized, and Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth—this course aims to inquire into the image of colonialism as a structure of dominant power, and the image of its anticipated aftermaths: What were the perceived ill-effects of colonial power? What did colonialism do to the colonized that required rectification? In what ways did the critique of colonial power (the identification of what was wrong with it) shape the longing for its anti-colonial overcoming?
- Department: Anthropology
- W 10:10 a.m.-noon
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Instructor:
David Scott
CULPA: 6
h-index: 72
Info
- 4 points
AMERICAN POLITICS SEMINAR
EQUALITY AND THE LAW
Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Pre-registration is not permitted. Seminar in American Politics Seminar. Students who would like to register should join the electronic wait list. For list of topics and descriptions see: https://polisci.columbia.edu/content/undergraduate-seminars
- Department: Political Science
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Instructor:
Robert L Amdur
CULPA: 16
Info
- 4 points
AMERICAN POLITICS SEMINAR
Public Opinion Research
Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Pre-registration is not permitted. Seminar in American Politics Seminar. Students who would like to register should join the electronic wait list. For list of topics and descriptions see: https://polisci.columbia.edu/content/undergraduate-seminars
- Department: Political Science
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Instructor:
Greg Bovitz
Info - 4 points
AMERICAN POLITICS SEMINAR
POLICING IN THE US
Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Pre-registration is not permitted. Seminar in American Politics Seminar. Students who would like to register should join the electronic wait list. For list of topics and descriptions see: https://polisci.columbia.edu/content/undergraduate-seminars
- Department: Political Science
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Instructor:
Andrew J McCall
Info - 4 points
AMERICAN POLITICS SEMINAR
SEXUALITY & CITIZENSHIP
Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Pre-registration is not permitted. Seminar in American Politics Seminar. Students who would like to register should join the electronic wait list. For list of topics and descriptions see: https://polisci.columbia.edu/content/undergraduate-seminars
- Department: Political Science
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Instructor:
Justin H Phillips
CULPA: 23
Info
- 4 points
AMERICAN POLITICS SEMINAR
POLITICS OF INCOME INEQUALITY
Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Pre-registration is not permitted. Seminar in American Politics Seminar. Students who would like to register should join the electronic wait list. For list of topics and descriptions see: https://polisci.columbia.edu/content/undergraduate-seminars
- Department: Political Science
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Instructor:
Judith Russell
CULPA: 49 Info - 4 points
AMERICAN POLITICS SEMINAR
US IMMIGRATION & POLICY
Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Pre-registration is not permitted. Seminar in American Politics Seminar. Students who would like to register should join the electronic wait list. For list of topics and descriptions see: https://polisci.columbia.edu/content/undergraduate-seminars
- Department: Political Science
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Instructor:
Carlos Vargas-Ramos
CULPA: 4 Info - 4 points
HIGHER EDUCATION AND INEQUALITY
Prerequisites: (SOCI UN1000) Higher education in the U.S. is going through a period of rapid change. State support is shrinking, student debt is increasing, full-time faculty are being replaced by adjuncts, and learning outcomes are difficult to measure, at best. This class will try to makes sense of these changes. Among other questions, it will ask whether higher education is a source of social mobility or a means of class reproduction; how the college experience differs by race, class, and type of college attended; how the economics of higher education have led to more expensive college and more student loans; and how we might make college better. We will consider several different points of view on the current state of U.S. higher education: that of students who apply to and attend college, that of colleges and universities, and that of society at large. As part of this course, students will conduct research on their own universities: Columbia College or Barnard College.
- Department: Sociology
- W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Teresa Sharpe
CULPA: 14
Info
- 4 points
RACE&REPRESENTATION IN ASIAN AMER CINEMA
RACE&REPRSNTATN IN ASAM CINEMA
This seminar focuses on the critical analysis of Asian representation and participation in Hollywood by taking a look at how mainstream American cinema continues to essentialize the Asian and how Asian American filmmakers have responded to Hollywood Orientalist stereotypes. We will analyze various issues confronting the Asian American, including yellowface, white patriarchy, male and female stereotypes, the “model minority” myth, depictions of “Chinatowns,” panethnicity, the changing political interpretations of the term Asian American throughout American history, gender and sexuality, and cultural hegemonies and privileging within the Asian community.
- Department: Ethnicity and Race, Center for
- R 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
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Instructor:
Eric Gamalinda
CULPA: 9 Wikipedia Info - 4 points
LATIN MUSIC AND IDENTITY
LATIN MUSIC AND IDENITY
Latin music has had a historically strained relationship with mainstream music tastes, exploding in occasional boom periods, and receding into invisibility in others. What if this were true because it is a space for hybrid construction of identity that directly reflects a mixture of traditions across racial lines in Latin America? This course will investigate Latin musics transgression of binary views of race in Anglo-American society, even as it directly affects the development of pop music in America. From New Orleans jazz to Texas corridos, salsa, rock, and reggaeton, Latin music acts as both as a soundtrack and a structural blueprint for the 21st centurys multicultural experiment. There will be a strong focus on studying Latin musics political economy, and investigating the story it tells about migration and globalization.
- Department: Ethnicity and Race, Center for
- T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Edward Morales
Info - 4 points
ARABIC PRISON WRITING
This course studies the genealogy of the prison in Arab culture as manifested in memoirs, narratives, and poems. These cut across a vast temporal and spatial swathe, covering selections from the Quran, Sufi narratives from al-Halllaj oeuvre, poetry by prisoners of war: classical, medieval, and modern. It also studies modern narratives by women prisoners and political prisoners, and narratives that engage with these issues. Arabic prison writing is studied against other genealogies of this prism, especially in the West, to map out the birth of prison, its institutionalization, mechanism, and role. All readings for the course are in English translations.
- Department: Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies
- T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Muhsin Al-Musawi
CULPA: 8
Info
- 3 points
COLONIZATION/DECOLONIZATION
Prerequisites: Open to CSER majors/concentrators only. Others may be allowed to register with the instructors permission. This course explores the centrality of colonialism in the making of the modern world, emphasizing cross-cultural and social contact, exchange, and relations of power; dynamics of conquest and resistance; and discourses of civilization, empire, freedom, nationalism, and human rights, from 1500 to 2000. Topics include pre-modern empires; European exploration, contact, and conquest in the new world; Atlantic-world slavery and emancipation; and European and Japanese colonialism in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. The course ends with a section on decolonization and post-colonialism in the period after World War II. Intensive reading and discussion of primary documents.
- Department: Ethnicity and Race, Center for
- W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Natasha J Lightfoot
CULPA: 5
Info
- 4 points
SLAVERY/ABOLITION-ATLANTC WRLD
This seminar investigates the experiences of slavery and freedom among African-descended people living and laboring in the various parts of the Atlantic World. The course will trace critical aspects of these two major, interconnected historical phenomena with an eye to how specific cases either manifested or troubled broader trends across various slaveholding societies. The first half of the course addresses the history of slavery and the second half pertains to experiences in emancipation. However, since the abolition of slavery occurs at different moments in various areas of the Atlantic World, the course will adhere to a more thematic and less chronological structure, in its examination of the multiple avenues to freedom available in various regions. Weekly units will approach major themes relevant to both slavery and emancipation, such as racial epistemologies among slaveowners/employers, labor regimes in slave and free societies, cultural innovations among slave and freed communities, gendered discourses and sexual relations within slave and free communities, and slaves’ and free people’s resistance to domination. The goal of this course is to broaden students’ comprehension of the history of slavery and freedom, and to promote an understanding of the transition from slavery to freedom in the Americas as creating both continuities and ruptures in the structure and practices of the various societies concerned.
- Department: History
- T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Natasha J Lightfoot
CULPA: 5
Info
- 4 points
TOPICS IN AMERICAN STUDIES
AMER. CULTURAL CRITICISM
Please refer to the Center for American Studies website for course descriptions for each section.
americanstudies.columbia.edu
- Department: American Studies
- R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Casey Blake
CULPA: 22
Wikipedia
Info
- 4 points
TOPICS IN AMERICAN STUDIES
SUPREME COURT IN AMER HISTORY
Please refer to the Center for American Studies website for course descriptions for each section.
americanstudies.columbia.edu
- Department: American Studies
- M 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
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Instructor:
Benjamin Rosenberg
CULPA: 1 Info - 4 points
Creative Embedded Systems
CREATIVE EMBEDDED SYSTEMS
Ubiquitous computing is creating new canvases and opportunities for creative ideas.
This class explores the use of microprocessors, distributed sensor networks, IoT,
and intermedia systems for the purposes of creative expression. The course is delivered
in a mixed lecture and lab format that introduces the fundamental concepts
and theory behind embedded systems as well as issues particular to their creative
employment. The key objective of the course is for students to conceive of and
implement creative uses of computation.
- Department: Computer Science @Barnard
- TR 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
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Instructor:
Tiffany Tseng
Info - 3 points
Psychology/Neuroscience Senior Thesis Ad
Advanced Research Seminar
The seminar component of the Psych/Neuro Senior Thesis Advanced Research program. Students admitted to the research program should plan to take this seminar in the spring of their junior year and in the fall and spring semesters of their senior year. Students are expected to be working in a lab as part of their participation in this program. In addition to supporting students throughout their independent research project, this seminar will introduce students to some of the big questions in the field through its connection with the Psychology Department Colloquium and will train students in reading and evaluating scientific research and communicating their own research findings.
- Department: Psychology
- W 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
- 1-3 points
Psychology/Neuroscience Senior Thesis Ad
Advanced Research Seminar
The seminar component of the Psych/Neuro Senior Thesis Advanced Research program. Students admitted to the research program should plan to take this seminar in the spring of their junior year and in the fall and spring semesters of their senior year. Students are expected to be working in a lab as part of their participation in this program. In addition to supporting students throughout their independent research project, this seminar will introduce students to some of the big questions in the field through its connection with the Psychology Department Colloquium and will train students in reading and evaluating scientific research and communicating their own research findings.
- Department: Psychology
- W 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
- 1-3 points
Life at the End of Life: Palliative Care
Life at the End of Life (LATEOL) is a seminar designed to provide opportunities for readings and reflections on the experience of volunteer service work. Students will learn how to critically reflect on their experiences working with patients in the context of questions raised in the texts read in the seminar. Students will develop the skills necessary to critically reflect on the significance of emotional care as a medical practitioner, as well as form a deeper understanding of the role of palliative care and comfort care in a life cycle of care.
The fieldwork component of the course is met by the student’s continued direct service work during the course itself. Students participating in the seminar will volunteer
weekly at Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center
. Through this, students will provide emotional support and assistance, and serve as a consistent presence for someone experiencing chronic illness, disability, or the end of life. At the core of this framework is the patient; however, it is important to consider the impact this volunteer service will have on the student and Columbia. Therefore, the following specific goals and objectives are outlined to benefit each individual and group involved in this service relationship.
- Department: Comparative Literature and Society, Institute for
- 4 points
SOC JUSTICE & HUM RIGHTS
Corequisites: Students must have an internship related to social justice or human rights during This class is intended to complement and enhance the internship experience for students working in internships that relate to social justice and human rights during the Spring 2016 semester. This course will meet bi-weekly to provide an academic framing of the issues that students are working on and to provide an opportunity for students to analyze their internship experience.
- Department: Human Rights (HRTB)
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Instructor:
Faculty
h-index: 37 Info - 3 points
CLIM CHNG/GLOBAL MIGR/HUM RGT
While the existence of processes of anthropogenic climate change is well established, predictions regarding the future consequences of these processes are far less certain. In no area is the uncertainty regarding near and long term effects as pronounced as in the question of how climate change will affect global migration. This course will address the issue of climate migration in four ways. First, the course will examine the theoretical and empirical literatures that have elucidated the nature of international migration in general. Second, the course will consider the phenomena of anthropogenic climate change as it relates to migration. Third, the course will consider how human rights and other legal regimes do or do not address the humanitarian issues created by anthropogenic climate change. Fourth, the course will synthesize these topics by considering how migration and climate change has arisen as a humanitarian, political, and economic issue in the Pacific. Human Rights elective.
- Department: Anthropology @Barnard
- W 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
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Instructor:
J.C. Salyer
CULPA: 1 Info - 4 points
INDEPENDENT STUDY
Prerequisites: the department chairs permission. (Formerly R3932)
- Department: Visual Arts
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Instructor:
Matthew E Buckingham
Wikipedia Info -
Instructor:
David A Cruz
Info -
Instructor:
Delphine A Fawundu
Wikipedia Info -
Instructor:
Jon Kessler
CULPA: 5 Wikipedia Info -
Instructor:
Naeem Mohaiemen
Wikipedia h-index: 8 Info -
Instructor:
Sable Smith
Wikipedia Info -
Instructor:
Rirkrit Tiravanija
Wikipedia Info -
Instructor:
Tomas Vu Daniel
CULPA: 4
Info
- 1-3 points
INDEPENDENT STUDY
Prerequisites: the department chairs permission. (Formerly R3932)
- Department: Visual Arts
- 1-3 points
The American Graphic Novel
The course seeks to combine literary and historical approaches to investigate one of the most rapidly growing, increasingly influential, and, increasingly, critically recognized forms of American popular literature: the graphic novel. A historical overview of the medium’s development, complete with analysis of relevant broader institutional and cultural factors illuminating the development of American media culture more generally, will be complemented by study of a series of recent works illuminating the medium’s explosive maturation. Authors read include Eisner, Crumb, Spiegelman, Bechdel, Thompson, and Hernandez.
- Department: American Studies
- W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
- 4 points
SOCIOLOGY OF THE BODY
This seminar examines the ways in which the body is discursively constituted, and itself serves as the substratum for social life. Key questions include: How are distinctions made between normal and pathological bodies, and between the psychic and somatic realms? How do historical forces shape bodily experience? How do bodies that are racialized, gendered, and classed offer resistance to social categorization?
- Department: Sociology @Barnard
- R 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
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Instructor:
Elizabeth Bernstein
CULPA: 27 Info - 4 points
Seeking Sanctuary in New York City
In a renewed age of anti-immigrant fervor, the last few years have seen attention focused on people seeking asylum – the process under international law by which people fleeing persecution can seek protection in a country not of their citizenship. New York has become a particular flashpoint with a large influx of asylum seekers, most of them from Latin America. Often, they have arrived on buses sent here by southern governors intending to make the border “problem” that of a so-called “sanctuary city.” How has New York responded? And how does this fit into the city’s long history of refuge?
This course will offer students an introduction to the theory, ethics, and history of the idea of international protection. We will look specifically at how Latin American citizens have engaged with the US asylum system over time and how this engagement has changed the shape of US immigration laws. We will study the origins of the ideas of international protection, who is understood to qualify and why, how the system has changed over time, and what these developments mean for a broader understanding of human rights across borders. We will also take a critical look at asylum, examine ideas of deservingness and innocence and their intersection with categories of race, class and gender, and question what it means for certain people to be constructed as victims and others to be seen as not eligible – or worthy – of protection.
This is an engaged pedagogy course. The class will be organized around a close collaboration with a NY legal organization that has taken on the work of representing many asylum seekers in the city. Students will learn the complexities of US asylum law and will work collectively to use this knowledge, while developing their research skills, to put together reports to be used in active asylum cases.
- Department: Human Rights (HRTB)
- TR 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Jennifer Trowbridge
Info - 5 points
HELLENISM&THE TOPOGRAPHICAL IMAGINATION
This course examines the way particular spaces—cultural, urban, literary—serve as sites for the production and reproduction of cultural and political imaginaries. It places particular emphasis on the themes of the polis, the city, and the nation-state as well as on spatial representations of and responses to notions of the Hellenic across time. Students will consider a wide range of texts as spaces—complex sites constituted and complicated by a multiplicity of languages—and ask: To what extent is meaning and cultural identity, sitespecific? How central is the classical past in Western imagination? How have great metropolises such as Paris, Istanbul, and New York fashioned themselves in response to the allure of the classical and the advent of modern Greece? How has Greece as a specific site shaped the study of the Cold War, dictatorships, and crisis?
- Department: Classics
- T 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
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Instructor:
Dimitris Antoniou
h-index: 5 Info - 3 points
American Journalism and Democracy
AMER JOURNALISM & DEMOCRA
The traditional role of the media in our democracy -- to support an informed electorate -- has been disrupted in the 21st century by technological change, transforming the delivery of information and opinion in radical ways. Partisanship has soared, along with a collapse of the shared fact base. In this course we examine the current state of political and election coverage, in counterpoint with iconic pieces of political reporting and media analysis that offer perspective and highlight turning points in the history of American journalism.
With the shrinking role of the legacy news media and the explosion of new formats and platforms, the concept of "objectivity" has lost value. We explore the impact of novel news sources and styles of expression, the impact of algorithms that prioritize emotional engagement, the decline of trust in the media, and the scourge of misinformation. What is the future of independent journalism? And how are these profound changes in news consumption affecting the decisions that voters make?
- Department: American Studies
- W 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
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Instructor:
Caroline Miller
Info - 4 points
ANIME EFFECT: JAPANESE MEDIA
Culture, technology, and media in contemporary Japan. Theoretical and ethnographic engagements with forms of mass mediation, including anime, manga, video, and cell-phone novels. Considers larger global economic and political contexts, including post-Fukushima transformations. Prerequisites: the instructor's permission.
- Department: Anthropology
- M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Marilyn Ivy
CULPA: 11
Wikipedia
Info
- 4 points
Senior Pro Seminar
SENIOR PRO SEMINAR
This course is a seminar for seniors to either write a formal proposal for a capstone project or to begin the research process for a Senior Thesis, which will be written in the Spring semester. This interdisciplinary course provides the necessary structure needed to complete either goal. This will be an interactive class in which students are required to participate and actively engage in each meeting.
- Department: African American and African Diaspora
- T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Farah Griffin
CULPA: 10
Wikipedia
Info
- 4 points
Free Speech in American Society
Free Speech in Amer Socie
In the contemporary USA, free speech is often understood as a legal doctrine or a branch of Constitutional Law. But it can also be understood as a tradition, a way of life, part of American culture. In this seminar, we will explore the hypothesis that America’s free speech tradition has been shaped primarily by people who aren’t lawyers or lawmakers: by beatniks, pamphleteers, abolitionists, Red Power activists, queers, feminists and Free Lovers, poets, preachers, and hackers. People from all these groups have shaped America’s free speech tradition from the sixteenth century to the present day, although they’re usually omitted from Constitution-centered histories of free speech because they weren’t lawyers or parties to lawsuits.
This course provides a transnational, cultural perspective on free speech history that decenters the First Amendment from its quasi-sacrosanct place in the historiography of American liberty. Instead of looking at legal arguments and decisions, we will survey the very wide range of social contexts in which struggles over free speech have taken place in American history, from the Pueblo Revolt in seventeenth-century New Mexico to the rise of MAGA in our own time. We’ll seek to understand how, starting in the twentieth century, “free speech” and “the First Amendment” became practically synonymous, with the result that most contemporary Americans know very little about the history of free expression in this country. And we’ll ask what (if anything) gives America’s four-hundred-year-old free speech tradition its unity and coherence.
Life on Mars: Building a New Society in
Life on Mars: Society & S
This course explores the interdisciplinary challenges of establishing a human society on Mars. Students explore a number of challenges that are involved in reaching the Red Planet and setting up a functional social habitat for the long term. This includes both the numerous logistical hurdles of traveling to and surviving on Mars, as well as the social, political, and ethical considerations of establishing a new society on the planet. Through analysis and discussion of scientific research, social science texts, and popular media, students will gain a deep understanding of the physiological, psychological, and strategic challenges of long-duration space travel and human habitation on another planet.
The course is not scientific or overly technical in nature. Instead, the perspective being adopted is that of a social scientist seeking to understand how humans can travel to another planet and live together. The first half of the course focuses on the practical, physiological, and psychological challenges of traveling to and surviving on Mars while maintaining contact withEarth. In the first part of the course, students will study the unique environmental conditions of Mars, the health risks of space travel, and how to maintain communication and connectivity with Earth despite vast distances. Students will also engage with how sustainable living on Mars—through food, energy, and resource management—could shape the future of human expansion in space.
The second half delves into the complexities of building social, legal, and economic systems in a new extraterrestrial society. Students will critically evaluate how to create a self-sustaining, functional civilization on Mars. Given the social science focus of the class, there will be emphasis placed on topics such as governance, establishing social contracts and property rights, and building economic systems for an entirely new world.
This course is meant to attract a small group of 10-15 students interested in space exploration. The small size and intensive four-hour class format is intended to foster creative problem-solving and interdisciplinary thinking (see below for discussion of non-traditional format). By the end of the course, students will not only understand the practicalities of space colonization but also develop skills in envisioning and designing innovative solutions for humanity’s future beyond Earth.
- Department: Sociology
- M 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
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Instructor:
Sudhir A Venkatesh
CULPA: 11 Wikipedia Info - 4 points
AMERICAN CULTURAL CRITICISM
- Department: History
- R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Casey Blake
CULPA: 22
Wikipedia
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- 4 points
Black Americans Abroad
This course focuses on the long history of Black Americans going (and sometimes returning from) abroad. Our exploration will unfold chronologically from the 19th century to the present day, as we trace our subjects’ myriad reasons for setting out beyond their country’s shores. Each week of the course will be devoted to grappling with a set of travelers and international departures characteristic of a given era, including:
Enslaved people’s quests for freedom
Entertainers, creatives, and scientists’ pursuit of professional opportunities during the era of Jim Crow
Scholars, journalists, and diplomats’ search for knowledge and cultural understanding
Modern nomads and expats’ journeys of self-actualization
Our goal is to consider Black Americans’ evolving relationship to the United States and the world at large.
- Department: Africana Studies (AFSB)
- R 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
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Instructor:
Tamara Walker
Info - 4 points
SUPERVISED INDIVIDUAL RESEARCH
1-4 points. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Except by special permission of the director of undergraduate studies, no more than 4 points of individual research may be taken in any one term. This includes both PSYC UN3950 and PSYC UN3920. No more than 8 points ofPSYC UN3950 may be applied toward the psychology major, and no more than 4 points toward the concentration. Readings, special laboratory projects, reports, and special seminars on contemporary issues in psychological research and theory.
- Department: Psychology
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Instructor:
Ana Alexandrescu
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Instructor:
Dima Amso
CULPA: 1 h-index: 31 Info -
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Christopher Baldassano
h-index: 13 Info -
Instructor:
Niall Bolger
CULPA: 4 h-index: 55 Info -
Instructor:
Natalie Brito
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Instructor:
Sarah Demoya
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Instructor:
Geraldine Downey
CULPA: 9
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Instructor:
Elif A Duman
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Katherine T Fox-Glassman
CULPA: 6
h-index: 4
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Instructor:
Jon B Freeman
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Carl Hart
CULPA: 43 Wikipedia h-index: 54 Info -
Instructor:
Tory Higgins
CULPA: 23
Wikipedia
h-index: 134
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Instructor:
Nora Isacoff
CULPA: 1 Info -
Instructor:
Sheena Iyengar
Wikipedia Info -
Instructor:
Nikolaus Kriegeskorte
h-index: 56 Info -
Instructor:
Chujun Lin
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Patricia G Lindemann
CULPA: 64 Info -
Instructor:
Bianca J Marlin
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Janet Metcalfe
CULPA: 31 h-index: 70 Info -
Instructor:
Meghan Meyer
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Michael W Morris
h-index: 68 Info -
Instructor:
Kevin Ochsner
CULPA: 12 h-index: 86 Info -
Instructor:
Valerie J Purdie-Greenaway
Wikipedia h-index: 29 Info -
Instructor:
Daphna Shohamy
CULPA: 10 h-index: 47 Info -
Instructor:
Rae Silver
Wikipedia h-index: 69 Info -
Instructor:
Larisa H Solomon
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Yaakov Stern
Wikipedia h-index: 160 Info -
Instructor:
Herbert S Terrace
CULPA: 29 Wikipedia Info -
Instructor:
Nim L Tottenham
Info - 0-4 points
Computational Models of Decision-Making
Comp Models of Decision-M
We make decisions countless times a day. Computational models have been developed that improve our understanding of how these decisions are made. This course is organized in three parts: perceptual decision-making, value-based decision-making, and computational psychiatry. In part one, perceptual decision-making, we will focus on computational models that can capture and explain decisions in perception, such as categorizing an orientation, or discriminating the direction of moving dots, or estimating the magnitude of a stimulus (e.g., time). We will start by laying the foundations of signal detection theory and Bayesian inference under uncertainty and build to models that incorporate confidence ratings and reaction times. In part two, value-based decision-making, we will move on to decisions that incorporate our values (e.g., ‘Should I go out or stay in and study?’, ‘Should I eat a burger or a salad?’). We will learn the basics of a computational modeling framework that captures how we learn values from rewards and punishments, reinforcement learning, as well as about model-free and model-based learning. Lastly, we will learn how impairments in decision-making that occur in psychopathology (e.g., addiction, anorexia nervosa, anxiety) have been conceptualized and quantified in the relatively new field of computational psychiatry.
- Department: Cognitive Science @Barnard
- F 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
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Instructor:
Andra L Mihali
Info - 4 points
UNDERGRADUATE SEMINARS I
Prerequisites: Two years of calculus, at least one year of additional mathematics courses, and the director of undergraduate studies permission. The subject matter is announced at the start of registration and is different in each section. Each student prepares talks to be given to the seminar, under the supervision of a faculty member or senior teaching fellow.
- Department: Mathematics
- MW 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
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Instructor:
Chiu-Chu Liu
CULPA: 1 Wikipedia Info - 3 points
COMPARATIVE POLITICS SEMINAR
POWER, ORGS & INSTITUTION
Prerequisites: POLS V1501 or the equivalent, and the instructors permission. Pre-registration is not permitted. Please see here for detailed seminar registration guidelines: http://polisci.columbia.edu/undergraduate-programs/seminar-registration-guidelines. Seminar in Comparative Politics. Students who would like to register should join the electronic wait list.
- Department: Political Science
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Instructor:
Junyan Jiang
h-index: 8 Info - 4 points
COMPARATIVE POLITICS SEMINAR
INFORMATION MEDIA POL BEHAV
Prerequisites: POLS V1501 or the equivalent, and the instructors permission. Pre-registration is not permitted. Please see here for detailed seminar registration guidelines: http://polisci.columbia.edu/undergraduate-programs/seminar-registration-guidelines. Seminar in Comparative Politics. Students who would like to register should join the electronic wait list.
- Department: Political Science
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Instructor:
John Marshall
h-index: 20 Info - 4 points
Philosophy of Computing
Advances in artificial intelligence carry potential for both social good and ethical danger. The purpose of this course is to explore both foundational and applied debates in the philosophy of computing, with a focus on machine learning technologies. Drawing from works in philosophy, computer science, literature, and policy, this course will comprehensively examine the conceptual and normative challenges artificial intelligence presents. The course analyzes present-day challenges through the prism of specific technologies and tools, namely predictive analytics, computer vision, and large language models, and also investigates moral and social questions on the horizon, with an eye to how advancements in computing will impact responsibility, moral status, and relationships.
- Department: Cognitive Science @Barnard
- 4 points
SENIOR RESEARCH SEMINAR
Prerequisites: Course open to Barnard Art History majors only. Independent research for the senior thesis. Students develop and write their senior thesis in consultation with an individual faculty adviser in art history and participate in group meetings scheduled throughout the senior year.
- Department: Art History @Barnard
- R 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
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Instructor:
Elizabeth Hutchinson
CULPA: 9 Info - 3 points
How Race Gets Under Our Skin: The Sociol
RACE, HEALTH, AND BIOMEDI
One of the glaring forms of inequalities that persists today is the race-based gap in access to health care, quality of care, and health outcomes. This course examines how institutionalized racism and the structure of health care contributes to the neglect and sometimes abuse of racial and ethnic minorities. Quite literally, how does race affect one’s life chances? This course covers a wide range of topics related to race and health, including: racial inequalities in health outcomes, biases in medical institutions, immigration status and health, racial profiling in medicine, and race in the genomic era.
- Department: Sociology @Barnard
- M 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
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Instructor:
Domonique M Reed
Info - 4 points