This course will group together the women who shaped and epitomized Left Bank culture in Paris from the Belle Époque to the mid-twentieth century; it will also situate these women in relation to their male peers whose works went on to establish the canons of Symbolism, Dadaism, Surrealism, and Existentialism. We will focus primarily on the realms of literature, philosophy, and art, but we will also examine how some of these women advanced cultural production more broadly—by starting publishing presses, opening bookshops, holding salons, etc. Readings will be primarily in French (Colette, Anna de Noailles, Renée Vivien, Simone de Beauvoir; Breton, Valéry, Aragon, Sartre) but will also include some English-language authors (Gertrude Stein, Djuna Barnes, Anaïs Nin). All discussions, coursework, and examinations will be in French.
Prerequisites: RUSS UN2102 or the equivalent and the instructors permission. Enrollment limited. Recommended for students who wish to improve their active command of Russian. Emphasis on conversation and composition. Reading and discussion of selected texts and videotapes. Lectures. Papers and oral reports required. Conducted entirely in Russian.
Prerequisites: (VIAR UN1000) and (VIAR UN2100) Painting III: Advanced study in painting will be a material inquiry into the consequential concepts, histories, and critical language embedded in making painting’s historical past and its’ present. Is painting now a singular “medium”? How do facture, scale, form and a multitude of image-making options, regardless of “style”, accrue as to create meaning? Participants are expected to present work weekly, as Individual studio or group critiques. These will be augmented by readings of selected historical essays and contemporaneous writings, as well as visual presentations on a rotating basis.
The course is aimed at enhancing students' competence in reading and listening comprehension as well as the ability to present or show their knowledge of the language and various aspects of Vietnamese with the use of more advanced Vietnamese.
Essay writing above the first-year level. Reading and writing various types of essays to develop one's natural writing voice and craft thoughtful, sophisticated and personal essays.
This is a course in intermediate statistical inference techniques in the context of applied research
questions in data science. Assuming some prior exposure to probability and statistics, this course will
first introduce the student to the principles of Bayesian inference, then apply them in estimation and
prediction in the context of linear and generalized linear models, counting and classification, mixture and
multilevel models, including scientific computation (like MCMC methods). Students will also learn
about the main benefits of using Bayesian vs. frequentist methods, like naturally combining prior
information with the data; posterior probabilities as easier to interpret alternatives to p-values; parameter
estimation “pooling” in hierarchical model and so on.
Elements of statics; dynamics of a particle and systems of particles.
Prerequisites: At least one, and preferably both, of STAT UN2103 and UN2104 are strongly recommended. Students without programming experience in R might find STAT UN2102 very helpful. This course is intended to give students practical experience with statistical methods beyond linear regression and categorical data analysis. The focus will be on understanding the uses and limitations of models, not the mathematical foundations for the methods. Topics that may be covered include random and mixed-effects models, classical non-parametric techniques, the statistical theory causality, sample survey design, multi-level models, generalized linear regression, generalized estimating equations and over-dispersion, survival analysis including the Kaplan-Meier estimator, log-rank statistics, and the Cox proportional hazards regression model. Power calculations and proposal and report writing will be discussed.
Practice in writing short stories and autobiographical narrative with discussion and close analysis in a workshop setting. For a more detailed, instructor-specific description,
please see our Course Offerings Google doc
. If you are a Columbia student, please note that you will need to submit an access request to view the document containing instructor-specific course descriptions. All requests will be approved within 24 business hours. Please note that these workshops are only open to undergraduate students.
Kinematics of rigid bodies; momentum and energy methods; vibrations of discrete and continuous systems; eigen-value problems, natural frequencies and modes. Basics of computer simulation of dynamics problems using MATLAB or Mathematica.
A workshop in which students from the BC/CU community collaborate with a team of students from the École Normale Supérieure-Lyon on two translation projects. In addition to video-conferenced group sessions, students will work virtually with their translation partner in France, and consult in-person with their Barnard instructor. Prerequisite: completion of at least Intermediate II level of French.
Prerequisites: STAT UN2103. Students without programming experience in R might find STAT UN2102 very helpful. This course is a machine learning class from an application perspective. We will cover topics including data-based prediction, classification, specific classification methods (such as logistic regression and random forests), and basics of neural networks. Programming in homeworks will require R.
Through readings in language philosophy, translation studies, and critical animal studies,
Translating the Animal
explores how translation, language, and reason have historically worked together to maintain speciesism, preventing human animals from perceiving their commonalities with, and attunement to, sentient nonhuman beings.
Practice in writing short stories and other forms of fiction with discussion and close analysis in a workshop setting. For a more detailed, instructor-specific description,
please see our Course Offerings Google doc
. If you are a Columbia student, please note that you will need to submit an access request to view the document containing instructor-specific course descriptions. All requests will be approved within 24 business hours. Please note that these workshops are only open to undergraduate students.
The Africana Studies Department offers special topics courses every year as colloquia. These colloquia provide opportunities for students to explore areas of particular interest within African Diasporic Studies in a seminar environment. Students earn 4 credits for these courses. There are multiple colloquia offered by the department every year. Some of the topics for these colloquia have included Critical Race Theory, Indian Ocean Diaspora, The New Black, Caribbean Women, and Black Shakespeare. As the topics change, students should check with the Chair of the Africana Studies Department if they have any questions about the topics for a particular academic year.
The Africana Studies Department offers special topics courses every year as colloquia. These colloquia provide opportunities for students to explore areas of particular interest within African Diasporic Studies in a seminar environment. Students earn 4 credits for these courses. There are multiple colloquia offered by the department every year. Some of the topics for these colloquia have included Critical Race Theory, Indian Ocean Diaspora, The New Black, Caribbean Women, and Black Shakespeare. As the topics change, students should check with the Chair of the Africana Studies Department if they have any questions about the topics for a particular academic year.
Varied assignments in poetry designed to explore the resources of language through imitation, allusion, free association, revision, and other techniques. For a more detailed, instructor-specific description,
please see our Course Offerings Google doc
. If you are a Columbia student, please note that you will need to submit an access request to view the document containing instructor-specific course descriptions. All requests will be approved within 24 business hours. Please note that these workshops are only open to undergraduate students.
This course explores the world of Chinese theater: where a heroine is resurrected through the power of love, a filial son saves his mother from underworld torment, and stalwart workers fight for revolution. Examining texts in many genres/forms-from the 16th century romantic drama The Peony Pavilion to the 20th century revolutionary opera The Red Lantern - we investigate the versatility of Chinese drama to encompass politics, history, social movements, and human emotions. Connecting texts to stage practice, we explore gender fluidity in performance, theories of theater, "star culture," and cross-cultural work.
Writing sample and application required to apply. If you are a Barnard Student, please
click here to view guidelines, instructions, and the application form on the Portal under “Applying to Creative Writing Courses”
(login required). Columbia students can find
the guidelines, instructions, and application form here
(no login required).
The class will explore a broad range of approaches to playwriting in a workshop setting. Classes will largely be spent reading and discussing students’ work. Students will also be choosing from a wide selection of plays to read each week. For a more detailed, instructor-specific description,
please see our Course Offerings Google doc
. If you are a Columbia student, please note that you will need to submit an access request to view the document containing instructor-specific course descriptions. All requests will be approved within 24 business hours. Please note that these workshops are only open to undergraduate students.
Material behavior and constitutive relations. Mechanical properties of metals and cement composites. Structural materials. Modern construction materials. Experimental investigation of material properties and behavior of structural elements including fracture, fatigue, bending, torsion, buckling.
Note: Designed for but not limited to sophomores; enrollment beyond 60 is at the discretion of the instructor. Co-requisite: ARCH UN3118.
How has architecture been “modern”? This course will introduce students to this contentious and contradictory concept emerging across the world during a time in which ideas and tools similar to ours were used for seeing and ordering constructed environments and architectural thinking. It introduces students to the history of modern architecture as an art of building as well as a discursive field, whose historical consciousness played a part in its historical development.
The course is structured chronologically and encourages experiential learning around episodes that informed the development of the built environment and the architecturally “modern.” Students will gain hands-on practice in researching and writing architectural history, theory, and criticism: skills that lie at the basis of conceptual architectural practices. While a one-semester course will not provide a full survey of buildings, events, and people associated with modern architecture, students will develop the critical tools to identify, approach, and comprehend such histories. The following areas of focus anchor the course, and students learn about each by understanding the establishment and institution of structures nourishing and supporting them, which have persisted into the present:
Architecture as made, thought, and taught—enmeshed with power and ideas, social concerns, intellectual and public debates, and diverse forms of cultural production
Makers, thinkers, and organizers of the designed or built environment
Designed constructions as the material ends and means of extraction, refinement, trade, and the labor associated with each
Sites, institutions, media, events, and practices that have come to hold meaning in architectural discourse
Concerns with both the past and the future as a basis for architectural theory
Modernization, modernism, and modernity as drivers for events, their historical narration, and the dissemination of these architectural narratives
The conceptual writing practices of history, theory, and criticism
The course is designed to accommodate multiple styles of learning. Course components include weekly lectures and discussions of assigned readings; re
Writing sample and application required to apply. If you are a Barnard Student,
please click here to view guidelines, instructions, and the application form on the Portal under “Applying to Creative Writing Courses”
(login required). Columbia students can find
the guidelines, instructions, and application form here
(no login required).
Assignments designed to examine form and structure in fiction. For a more detailed, instructor-specific description,
please see our Course Offerings Google doc
. If you are a Columbia student, please note that you will need to submit an access request to view the document containing instructor-specific course descriptions. All requests will be approved within 24 business hours. Please note that these workshops are only open to undergraduate students.
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Writing sample and application required to apply. If you are a Barnard Student,
please click here to view guidelines, instructions, and the application form on the Portal under “Applying to Creative Writing Courses”
(login required). Columbia students can find
the guidelines, instructions, and application form here
(no login required).
Assignments designed to examine form and structure in fiction. For a more detailed, instructor-specific description,
please see our Course Offerings Google doc
. If you are a Columbia student, please note that you will need to submit an access request to view the document containing instructor-specific course descriptions. All requests will be approved within 24 business hours. Please note that these workshops are only open to undergraduate students.
Prerequisites: FILM BC3201 or equivalent. Enrollment limited to 12 students. Priority is given to Film Studies majors/concentrations in order of class seniority. Corequisites: (Since this is a Film course, it does not count as a writing course for English majors with a Writing Concentration.)
This course is ideal for writers of their FIRST, SECOND AND THIRD screenplays. The first several weeks will focus on STORY: What it is, what it isn’t, how to recognize the difference. How to find your own individual stories that nobody else in the universe can tell.
From there we will make the transition to the highly individualized techniques, the strengths and limitations, the dynamics of telling a SCREEN STORY; what to leave in, what to leave out. As Michelangelo puts it—starting with a block of marble and chipping away everything that isn’t David. Through studies of existing screenplays and films in coordination with and hands-on writing exercises which we will share in class, we will develop our skills in all aspects of screenwriting; building fascinating characters, dialogue, story construction (The BIG PICTURE) and scene construction (The Small Picture)
Perfection is not the goal; but rather it is to be able to say truly at the end of each day’s writing, “I did the best I could with what I had at the time. (Phillip Roth quoting heavyweight champion Joe Louis)
Methods of structural analysis. Trusses, arches, cables, frames; influence lines; deflections; force method; displacement method; computer applications.
Open only to undergraduates.
This course will introduce you to principles of effective public speaking and debate, and provide practical opportunities to use these principles in structured speaking situations. You will craft and deliver speeches, engage in debates and panel discussions, analyze historical and contemporary speakers, and reflect on your own speeches and those of your classmates. You will explore and practice different rhetorical strategies with an emphasis on information, persuasion and argumentation. For each speaking assignment, you will go through the speech-making process, from audience analysis, purpose and organization, to considerations of style and delivery. The key criteria in this course are content, organization, and adaptation to the audience and purpose. While this is primarily a performance course, you will be expected to participate extensively as a listener and critic, as well as a speaker.
Open only to undergraduates.
This course will introduce you to principles of effective public speaking and debate, and provide practical opportunities to use these principles in structured speaking situations. You will craft and deliver speeches, engage in debates and panel discussions, analyze historical and contemporary speakers, and reflect on your own speeches and those of your classmates. You will explore and practice different rhetorical strategies with an emphasis on information, persuasion and argumentation. For each speaking assignment, you will go through the speech-making process, from audience analysis, purpose and organization, to considerations of style and delivery. The key criteria in this course are content, organization, and adaptation to the audience and purpose. While this is primarily a performance course, you will be expected to participate extensively as a listener and critic, as well as a speaker.
This class is designed to introduce you not only to the subject of painting the human figure and its expressive potential, but also to focus on the art and craft of Painting. We will be painting the figure from secondary source material that can include photos, other artworks, clay models etc. The focus will be on figurative narration. We will be learning to see color, and use paint in response to that. Painting is a way to account for, express and communicate what you have seen with your eyes, mind or in your imagination. You will be introduced to different approaches to the craft of painting, and will by the end of the semester be more free and confident in interpreting your inner and outer vision. We will also be looking at paintings made in different times and places and discuss how and why they look the way they do. You will also be designing and carrying out your own independent project to be completed by the final critique.
Prerequisites: No prerequisites. Departmental approval NOT required. Character is something that good fiction supposedly cannot do without. But what is a character, and what constitutes a supposedly good or believable one? Should characters be like people we know, and if so, how exactly do we create written versions of people? This class will examine characters in all sorts of writing, historical and contemporary, with an eye toward understanding just how characters are created in fiction, and how they come to seem real to us. Well read stories and novels; we may also look at essays and biographical writing to analyze where the traces of personhood reside. Well also explore the way in which these same techniques of writing allow us to personify entities that lack traditional personhood, such as animals, computers, and other nonhuman characters. Does personhood precede narrative, or is it something we bestow on others by allowing them to tell their story or by telling a story of our own creation on their behalf? Weekly critical and creative exercises will intersect with and expand on the readings and discussions.
Design criteria for varied structural applications, including buildings and bridges; design of elements using steel, concrete, masonry, wood, and other materials.
Corequisites: CIEN E3125. Introduction to software for structural analysis, design, and modeling with lab. Integration of software into project workflows. Introduction to best practices for modeling and verification of results using hand calculations.
This course begins with focused attention on select plays of Zora Neale Hurston and her critical writing on performance, then takes ZNH’s aesthetics, politics, and provocations as a lens to study Black performance, broadly defined. We will consider the contexts in which Hurston pursued a career as playwright and theatremaker, and the influences that found their way into her plays including spiritual narratives and voodoo. We will turn our attention to key writers of the Harlem Renaissance to learn where ZNH first made her mark, and the milieu to which she ultimately turned her back. Each week’s reading/viewing will include primary sources (ZNH’s plays and dramaturgical statements) as well as scholarly criticism of those works or genre. The final weeks of the course will take up Black performance in the realms of dance and song from the early 20th century, and finish with more recent plays and visual art. In addition to short weekly response papers, students will complete a long-form research paper that may, if they choose, include a creative element.
Capstone design project in civil engineering. This project integrates structural, geotechnical and environmental/water resources design problems with construction management tasks and sustainability, legal and other social issues. Project is completed in teams, and communication skills are stressed. Outside lecturers will address important current issues in engineering practice. Every student in the course will be exposed with equal emphasis to issues related to geotechnical engineering, water resources / environmental engineering, structural engineering, and construction engineering and management.
Topics in western music from the Classical Era to the 20th Century, focusing on the development of musical style and thought, and on analysis of selected works. Pre-req: Music Theory II or permission of instructor.
The primary aim of this course is to help students develop a set of tools for thinking about justice. We will do this by examining a range of subjects, from criminal justice to distributive justice to the circumstances of war and peace and others. We will consider issues such as abortion, the criminalization of behavior, the death penalty, justice in sexual relationships, surrogate motherhood, global poverty, civil disobedience, and international conflict. We will also discuss the justice or injustice of legal and political systems in their entirety and a range of responses to systemic injustice.
Prerequisites: completion of the language requirement in French or the equivalent. Conversation on contemporary French subjects based on readings in current popular French periodicals.
This seminar investigates the significance of contemporary and historical issues of social, political, and cultural conflicts conducted through the language of gender. How do such conflicts constitute social relations, and what do they tell us about societies, cultures, and politics? How do we understand gender analysis in relation to intersectionality? How to we read and analyze gender through contested social issues? How do we analyze the ethical discourses employed in such conflicts? How do we best create change in response to such conflicts?
Discussion/Recitation section for ECON BC3033
Data types and structures: arrays, stacks, singly and doubly linked lists, queues, trees, sets, and graphs. Programming techniques for processing such structures: sorting and searching, hashing, garbage collection. Storage management. Rudiments of the analysis of algorithms. Taught in Java. Note: Due to significant overlap, students may receive credit for only one of the following three courses: COMS W3134, COMS W3136, COMS W3137.
In this course we will explore various genres of creative non-fiction and practice a range of craft techniques, paying special attention to the construction of the writing self and the ethics of writing about real people and events. For a more detailed, instructor-specific description,
please see our Course Offerings Google doc
. If you are a Columbia student, please note that you will need to submit an access request to view the document containing instructor-specific course descriptions. All requests will be approved within 24 business hours. Please note that these workshops are only open to undergraduate students.
What does it mean to think materially? To
use
color? These are the questions that will guide this foundational course designed for painters, ranging from beginner to advanced, who want to develop their technique and material thought process.
We will begin with a focus on color, using the Albers method to learn first from experience, developing an eye for color, before we delve into color theory and color philosophy. The creative eye for color will aid us as we learn the ins and outs of acrylic painting, oil painting, the mediums, historical techniques, and associated theoretical concerns in
how
something is painted. Some of the class will be spent painting observationally, working on our ability to see creatively and translate experience into material. Many of the projects will be self-directed in subject or approach, whether you consider yourself a staunch realist or pure abstract artist, focusing mostly on the material language of the painting. Students can expect to cover the basics of a studio practice, such as stretching canvases, building a palette, developing a range of techniques, as well as gaining a critical eye for material decisions and how to realize their vision.
A second programming course intended for nonmajors with at least one semester of introductory programming experience. Basic elements of programming in C and C++, arraybased data structures, heaps, linked lists, C programming in UNIX environment, object-oriented programming in C++, trees, graphs, generic programming, hash tables. Due to significant overlap, students may only receive credit for either COMS W3134, W3136, or W3137.
Shakespeare's plays as theatrical events. Differing performance spaces, acting traditions, directorial frames, theatre practices, performance theories, critical studies, cultural codes, and historical conventions promote differing modes of engagement with drama in performance. We will explore Shakespeare's plays in the context of actual and possible performance from the Renaissance to the twenty-first century.
Plant people are in our midst: they covet plants, grow them, and obsess over them. We call plant people green thumbs. They tend gardens; sniff herbs; make poultices; take cuttings. Plant people risk life and limb in pursuit of plants or become plant-like themselves. They tire of human ways and root in place, preferring the company of trees. As people can become plant-like, plants can also appear people-like, as sentient, sovereign beings who should be addressed with the proper pronouns. These plants have the power to act upon the world of people, and not always benignly. Finally, plant people can be everyday people like you and me, who consume and incorporate plants into our bodies, often without thought or awareness.
In this fiction seminar, we will read all about plant people: stories about plant obsessives, plant witnesses, plant actors, and plant consumers. How do we write stories about plant people? We will discuss craft techniques that relate to writing about plants, from voice to perspective to plot. How do we pull off the disorienting perspectival shift when writing from the vantage of an oak tree? How do we render plants precisely, botanically; what new vocabulary do we need to know? What are some of existing tropes about plants? Most importantly, how do we overcome plant blindness? In addition to short stories and novels, we will also read some nonfiction that will inform our fiction writing. Authors on the syllabus include Ursula Le Guin, Elif Shafak, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Richard Powers, Han Kang, David Diop, Andrea Barrett, and Christina Garza Rivera.
From love to anger to disappointment to hope, political activism mobilizes emotions towards certain ends but also generates new affective states and feelings along the way. This advanced seminar will familiarize students with feminist, anti-racist and queer scholarship on affect, feelings and emotion as intrinsic to politics and as crucial for understanding how political thought and action unfold in contingent and often unexpected ways. Mixing theoretical and cultural texts with case studies, we will look at how affect permeates structures of power and domination, embodiment and identity, and collective activist projects concerned with gender and sexual liberation. Students will have an opportunity to read theories of affect as well as to “read” activist movements
for
affect by working with archival documents (such as zines, manifestos, and movement ephemera) and other primary sources (such as memoir, photography and documentary film).
This course is for the intermediate advanced dancer. Material presented will focus on healthy anatomical alignment in barre work, extended combinations in the center, fostering personal artistic expression, and integrating improvisation in combinations with the ballet vocabulary. Clarification, analysis and repetition are fundamental elements for a sound technique of any dancer and are the foundation of this course. Center work will include attention to shaping adagio work, multiple turns in the large poses, batterie, and extended grand allegro.
Modern American Drama and Performance in an era of cultural contestation. What is united about the United States? How are the important claims of cultural difference related to the intercultural claims of shared community? Is there a place for historical continuity in the modernist pursuit of change? How have these issues been addressed in the emergence and development of modern drama and performance in America? Questions such as these will be addressed in the context of theatrical exploration, performance history, and social change. Canonical and experimental playwrights include Rachel Crothers, Susan Glaspell, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Eugene O’Neill, Clifford Odets, Thornton Wilder, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Lorraine Hansberry, Edward Albee, Suzan-Lori Parks, Sarah Ruhl, and Dominique Morisseau.
This course is designed for developing singers. Group vocalizing, learning of songs and individual workshop performances are aimed at improving the students technical skill and the elements necessary to create a meaningful musical and dramatic experience. Attention to text, subtext, emotional and psychological aspects of a piece and the performers relationship to the audience are included in the work. Repertoire is predominantly in English and comes from both classical and popular traditions Individual coaching sessions are available with the class accompanist and help strengthen the students confidence and skill. The class culminates with an in-class performance.
Vocal exercises and exploration of wide-ranging repertoires, styles, and languages of the Western European song tradition. The rich variety of English, French, Italian and German poetry and music from the Baroque period through the Twentieth Century allows the student to experience both the music and the cultural environment of each of these styles. Attention is given both to meaning oftext and musical interpretation. Individual coaching sessions are available with the class accompanist and help strengthen the students confidence and skill. The class culminates with an in-class performance.
This course serves as a continuation of BIOL2500 R for Scientists. The course will meet weekly. Students will explore a range of methods and resources used by contemporary computational biologists. These include advanced statistical modeling approaches, manipulating genomic and spatial data, and working in R outside of the RStudio environment (including git, bash, Shiny and high-performance computing). Students will have opportunities to explore diverse biological and statistical R packages in the context of homework assignments, and will analyze a dataset of their own choosing for a semester project.
This course is for the advanced dancer. Material presented will focus on healthy anatomical alignment in barre work, extended combinations in the center, fostering personal artistic expression, and integrating improvisation in combinations with the ballet vocabulary. Clarification, analysis and repetition are fundamental elements for a sound technique of any dancer and are the foundation of this course. Center work will include attention to shaping adagio work, multiple turns in the large poses, batterie, and extended grand allegro.
This course will overview the dramatic, theatrical, and theoretical work of tragedy, the genre that, according to Northrop Frye, guarantees a realistic perspective on the world we live in. We will read many of the classic critical encounters with tragedy (Aristotle, Nietzsche, Hegel, Frye) alongside more recent theorists of literary and cultural representation. But rather than taking a chronological approach, this course understands “tragedy” as a fluid notion, one used to shape a variety of historical experiences through a range of dramatic, theatrical, and critical encounters. Throughout the semester, we will frequently pair earlier with more recent plays, under the aegis of a network of questions posed by critical or theoretical reading.
The objective of this class is to examine a given topic and relate it to a number of literary texts. Students will examine a variety of literary genres and to an equally wide variety of cultural, linguistic, and historical contexts.
Variations
class is a course for the intermediate to advanced dancer. As in all other ballet classes, there will be a focus on correct physical alignment, proper technique and musicality. The added challenges in this course will be the pointe shoe technique, creative choreographic choices, and musical phrasing. The class will include variations based on works ranging from Petipa to Balanchine to today’s choreographers. Dancers will explore personalizing already known works, pushing the boundaries of the pointe shoe, examining how choreography has evolved and developing the stamina required to execute a full variation. Learning material rapidly while paying attention to the stylistic demands of each choreographer’s works and being able to shift from one stylistic choice to another is simply expected.
Even as students learn to be scientists, there is a need to learn how to write about science, translating the science for a general readership. In this seminar we will develop writing skills by, first, close reading and analysis of science writing (on research about humans, non-human animals, and non-animals) for the non-specialist, as well as some of the original research papers from which the pieces arose. We will simultaneously begin an iterative process of composing pieces of different lengths and different genres, based on recently published science papers. Assignments will include a short news summary, book review, an audio interview, and a final feature print or audio story; some of these assignments will involve multiple drafts or stages. Guest speakers and a recording practices intensive from IMATS will complement the readings and writing assignments. We will focus on concept translation, storytelling, and other elements of narrative craft in this writing-intensive seminar. We will also emphasize proper citation practices. Final projects will be a long-form feature or a podcast.
Since the beginning of the movement that would become Christianity, Jews have occupied a unique – and uniquely fraught – position in the Christian imagination. Why did so few of the very Jews to whom Jesus preached accept him as their messiah? Why, as the Church grew in wealth and influence, did Jews continue to live in Christian communities, and what was their proper place in Christian society? In our course, we will read early and medieval Christian narratives about Jews that are, in many ways, an attempt to answer these questions – dark imaginative visions of Jews as child-killers, cannibals, and devil worshippers. We will use narrative, psychological, and literary theory as tools to analyze these tales and to make sense of their complicated and continuing legacy.
Competing constructions of American identity in the United States date back to the early republic when a newly emerging nation struggled with the questions: What makes an American American? What makes America America? From colonial times forward, the stage has served as a forum to air differing beliefs as well as medium to construct new beliefs about Nation, self and other. The texts we will read, from colonial times through WWI, explore diverse topics such as politics, Native American rights, slavery, labor unrest, gender roles, and a growing immigrant population.
Worldmuse Ensemble delves into compelling music from many genres such as world music, gospel, classical--old and new. We perform without a conductor, increasing awareness and interaction among ourselves and our audience. We collaboratively integrate music, dance, and theatre traditions (masks etc.). For experienced singers, and instrumentalists and dancers who sing.
In this seminar we will examine attention, the critical cognitive process responsible for prioritizing certain information for more efficient processing while filtering out distractions. We will review attention’s effects on early to late-stage vision, how it interacts with other sensory systems, and higher cognitive functions, all while surveying some of the most common ways it’s historically been measured using psychophysical and neuroscientific methods. We will evaluate how attention has been assessed across human development, and in clinical populations, such as individuals with Neurodevelopmental Disorders (NDD), schizophrenia and hemispatial neglect. We will end by discussing the practical implications of our increasingly limited and divided attention when navigating the modern technological landscape, as well as review the potential for improving attention through training.
This course undertakes a dialectical approach to reading and thinking about the history of dramatic theatre, interrogating the ways writing inflects, and is inflected by, the material dynamics of performance in the modern era. Course undertakes careful study of the practices of performance, and of the sociocultural, economic, political, and aesthetic conditions animating representative performances in theatres globally; course will also emphasize development of important critical concepts for the analysis of drama, theatre, and performance. Topics include the sociology of theatre, the impact of print on conceptions of performance, representing gender and race, the politics of intercultural performance, and the dynamics of emerging forms and critical practices of performance analysis. Writing: 2-3 papers; Reading: 1-2 plays, critical and historical reading per week; final examination. Fulfills one (of two) lecture requirements for Theatre/Drama and Theatre Arts majors.
Long before Aristotle’s Rhetoric and far from Athens and Rome, rhetoricians were teaching people how to communicate powerfully in politics, the law, and the street. This course surveys the ancient rhetorics of Egypt, China, the Americas, and the Arab world. We will examine a body of primary texts from 2,300 B.C.E. to 1,500 C.E. that teach people to wield language effectively.
Chaucer as inheritor of late-antique and medieval conventions and founder of early modern literature and the fiction of character. Selections from related medieval texts.
Course provides a perspective on traditional forms of Indian performance from classical theory to contemporary traditional practices. Course covers Sanskrit drama, Kathakali, Ramlila, and Chhau; extensive video of performances and guest practitioners. Course fulfills lecture/seminar "studies" course requirement for Theatre/Drama and Theatre Arts major.
C programming language and Unix systems programming. Also covers Git, Make, TCP/IP networking basics, C++ fundamentals.
E3156: a design problem in materials science or metallurgical engineering selected jointly by the student and a professor in the department. The project requires research by the student, directed reading, and regular conferences with the professor in charge. E3157: completion of the research, directed reading, and conferences, culminating in a written report and an oral presentation to the department.
This class is a close reading of postcolonial plays, both as they form a recognizable canon, and as counters to it. Through a grounding in postcolonial theory, students will explore how the colonial encounter leaves a lasting impact on language and performance. How do these playwrights tackle questions of authenticity, influence, inspiration and agency? What stories do they adapt, translate or reimagine? Also, we read in equal measure male and female playwrights, attending to the ways in which power and authority are negotiated by them. This class looks both at plays that are seminal to postcolonial writing and also newer ones that unsettle the position of the greats. Do we then understand postcolonialism as a historically bound literary trend or an ongoing process of exploration? Fundamentally we ask, in our efforts to decolonize the theatre, how do we find new ways or reading? Course fulfills lecture/seminar in drama studies, theatre studies, performance studies requirement for Theatre major.
This course examines Asian American experience through the lens of theatre and performance. These performances are often critical sites where members of the community preserve their cultural legacies and negotiate American racial politics. By discussing representative works by Asian American playwrights, performance artists, and filmmakers, we will cover the following topics: key events in Asian American history; immigration and citizenship; identity and community formation; intersectionality of race, gender, and sexuality; generational differences in Asian American culture; trauma and memory; U.S. imperialism and social justice. This course examines Asian American experience through the lens of theatre and performance. These performances are often critical sites where members of the community preserve their cultural legacies and negotiate American racial politics. By discussing representative works by Asian American playwrights, performance artists, and filmmakers, we will cover the following topics: key events in Asian American history; immigration and citizenship; identity and community formation; intersectionality of race, gender, and sexuality; generational differences in Asian American culture; trauma and memory; U.S. imperialism and social justice.
As an introduction to the field of medical anthropology, this seminar addresses themes of health, affliction, and healing across sociocultural domains. Concerns include critiques of biomedical, epidemiological and other models of disease and suffering; the entwinement of religion and healing; technocratic interventions in healthcare; and the sociomoral underpinnings of human life, death, and survival. A 1000 level course in Anthropology is recommended as a prerequisite, although not required. Enrollment limited to 30. 4 units
T
his course provides a detailed introduction to eukaryotic parasites (a.k.a. everything but viruses or bacteria). The course starts with overall concepts in parasitology, focusing on the ecology, evolution and systematics of parasites (week 1) and immunology and pathology of parasitic infections (week 2). The remainder of the course covers case studies of parasites across the main parasitic lineages, including important human parasites that cause malaria, elephantitis, schistosomiasis, and hookworm. For each case study, we delve into the life cycle of the parasite, pathology, interactions with the host immune system, environmental impacts, historical significance, and current and future treatments.
This undergraduate course introduces students to algorithms, data structures and mathematical principles used in computer graphics. Students will gain experience with OpenGL and graphics processing unit (GPU) programming and develop an understanding of the graphics pipeline. The topics covered include shading and illumination, sampling and reconstruction, ray tracing, graphics hardware, geometric and viewing transformations, rendering, modeling curves and surfaces and image-based methods. Near the end of the course, students will be introduced to topics in animation, global illumination and reflectance and modern concepts like neural rendering. Pre-Requisites: COMS W3157 Advanced Programming, Linear Algebra (COMS W3251, APMA E3101, APMA E2101, MATH UN2010, or MATH UN2015), and Calculus I or higher.
Please note:
Due to significant overlap in content, only one of COMS BC3160 or COMS W4160 may be taken for credit.
Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to Barnard English majors. In the Enlightenment colloquium we will look at English and European imaginative and intellectual life during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. During this period, writers tried in new ways to reconcile the tensions between reason and religion. Categories of thought that underlie our world today were taking shape: secularity, progress, the public and the private, individual rights, religious tolerance. Writers articulated principles of equality in an era of slavery. Literary forms like the novel, which emerges into prominence during this period, express in irreducibly complex ways these and other changes. In this intensive course, we will study from multiple angles a variety of authors that may include Hobbes, Dryden, Locke, Spinoza, Lafayette, Defoe, Swift, Pope, Richardson, Voltaire, Fielding, Johnson, Diderot, Sterne, and Wollstonecraft, among others.
In this course, students will gain expertise in lab and field methods through investigating host-parasite dynamics across NYC. At least 50% of the labs in this course will involve local host-parasites systems, leveraging the abundant wealth of resources and habitats across the city to investigate the causes and consequences of parasitism.
This survey of modern and contemporary world literature deals explicitly with environmental issues as a main theme. The course is supposed to serve as an introduction to the new field of “ecocriticism” in the Humanities and to a wide range of literary responses to current ecological concerns and transformations of natural habitat. All texts are available in English, though students will have the opportunity to read them in the original if they desire to do so.
Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 60 students. Critical and historical introduction to selected comedies, histories, tragedies, and romances by Shakespeare. Please note that you do not need to take ENGL BC3163: Shakespeare I and ENGL BC3164: Shakespeare II in sequence; you may take them in any order.
Literary and visual texts sometimes express the essence of historical experience more powerfully than “factual” narratives or historical debates. This class will focus on four such texts – three novels and one film – which take empire as their central theme. They are taken from different empires, different chronological periods, and different (but sometimes interrelated) phases of imperial conquest, development, and decline. Our task will essentially be a close reading of the texts, and the reconstruction of their historical and geographical context. The empires in question for this semester are the British, Ottoman, Russian, and French.
Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 16 students.
Course surveys the wide range of genres and categories addressed by the practice of modern "performance studies"; it introduces a number of performance practices, as well as relevant interdisciplinary methodologies. Students consider live performances as well as a number of mediated works, learning to think critically and creatively about the relation between text, technology, and the body. Course may fill
either
the Theory requirement,
or
one (of two) required courses in dramatic literature/theatre studies/performance studies for Theatre/Drama and Theatre Arts major, but not both.
How and why might we read Milton now? And how do his writings and thinking intersect with issues in our present moment? We will read his influential epic
Paradise Lost
after reading selections of Milton's earlier poetry and prose (attack against censorship, defenses of divorce, individual conscience, toleration, complicated issues of political and religious liberty). He wrote about these matters as he was involved in the English Civil war, an advocate of liberty (we will consider what kind, for whom?) and revolution, which Americans would embrace as inspiration and to justify the American Revolution. We will critically read Milton’s literary and political texts within the contexts of religious, political, and cultural history of early modern England and Europe but also colonial and revolutionary America—asking difficult questions, and with a sense of how Milton’s writing connects to present issues of our time.
This class offers a general introduction to English drama at the moment when it arose as a major art form. In Renaissance London, astonishingly complex plays emerged that reflected the diverse urban life of the city, as well as the layered and often contradictory inner life of the individual. This poetically rich theater was less concerned with presenting answers, and more with staging questions—about gender, race, religion, literary tradition, love, sex, authority, and class. In this course, we will try to tap into this theater’s cosmopolitan, embodied poetics by reading not only Shakespeare, but also the various other major authors who constituted this literary world: Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Thomas Dekker, Thomas Middleton, John Webster, the ever-popular Anonymous and others.
“We have become a novel-reading people,” wrote Anthony Trollope in 1870. “Novels are in the hands of us all; from the Prime Minister down to the last-appointed scullery maid.” This course will consider why the novel was so important to Victorian culture and society. What made the Victorian novel such a fertile form for grappling with the unprecedented cultural changes of the nineteenth century? To address this question, we will explore how Victorian novels both responded to, and participated in, major social and cultural shifts of the period, including industrialism and urbanization; colonialism and empire; the changing status of women, sexuality, and marriage; the emergence of Darwinism; class conflict and social reform; and the expansion of education and literacy. This course will also consider more broadly what novels are for, and what the Victorians thought they were for. Do novels represent the world as it really is, or do they imagine it as it ought to be? What kinds of solutions to social and political problems can novels offer? Can novels ethically improve (or corrupt) their readers? We will consider these issues in the context of realism, Victorian literature’s trademark genre, but we’ll also explore an array of other genres, such as the industrial novel, the Bildungsroman, the sensation novel, detective fiction, and gothic fiction. Authors include Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, Wilkie Collins, and others.
This seminar is designed to introduce you to the methods used to discern and describe the cognitive repertoire of novel, understudied, animals. The animals which we will specifically examine in the class are octopuses and cuttlefish. Over the course of the semester you will learn how we define cognitive abilities in humans and examine them in various animal species for modeling and comparison purposes. Each week you will examine one specific ability in humans, a traditional animal model, and a cephalopod. In this manner you will come to understand the historical process of understanding animal cognition, the current state of the literature in at least one area of cephalopod cognition and be capable of proposing a novel experiment as a way to extend our knowledge of that area of cephalopod cognition.