This seminar examines the multifaceted experiences of Jewish communities in the Maghreb during the colonial period, spanning from the early 19th century through the independence movements of the mid-20th century. We will explore how these communities navigated the social, political, and cultural landscape of colonial rule, focusing on key themes that shaped the Jewish experience in colonial North Africa. These themes include the impact of French colonial policies, evolving legal status, the involvement of French Jews in colonial dynamics, the rise and decline of the Judeo-Arabic press and literature, the emergence of Jewish women's writing, rabbinical responses to colonialism, and Jewish participation in anti-colonial movements. By analyzing a diverse range of primary sources—from rabbinical responsa and colonial legal documents to Judeo-Arabic literature and photographs—we will examine how Maghrebi Jews confronted, subverted, and negotiated the colonial order while reconfiguring their cultural and religious identities.
By the end of the course, students will have developed a deeper understanding of the transformations in Jewish religious, cultural, and social life during the colonial period in North Africa. They will be able to evaluate the varied strategies of adaptation and resistance employed by Jewish communities in response to colonial rule. Students will also strengthen their ability to analyze a broad range of primary sources. Finally, they will learn to apply interdisciplinary approaches, drawing from history, postcolonial studies, Jewish studies, and literary analysis, to better understand Jewish life under colonial rule in the Maghreb.
Introduction to machine learning techniques with applications to biological systems, emphasizing cell-biological molecular mechanisms and applications, and computational simulation. Overview of biology. Introduction to biological neurons and neural networks, learning and memory. Parallels between biological and artificial neural networks. Deep neural networks are introduced, hands-on computational experience for students. Big data from experiments or computational simulations: machine learning to extract mechanisms, dimensional reduction. Deep learning applications include drug discovery, protein structure prediction, molecular coarse-graining for simulations, and acceleration of molecular dynamics simulations.
This course offers a comprehensive understanding of the origins, foundations and evolution of Freud’s psychoanalytic theorizing during the four decades following 1895. Via close readings of his texts, with neither worship nor condescension, we will situate the development of psychoanalysis as a theory of mind within historical context, and explore its applications to education, society, culture, and the humanities.
This seminar will concentrate on close readings of four key texts:
Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious; Mourning and Melancholia; Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety
;
and
one
additional text to be chosen by the class
. These texts are chosen in part to not overlap with those covered in CLPS GU4200. Key supplemental readings will explore aspects of the text’s historical, cultural and intellectual context, contemporary reception, and influence on psychoanalytic theory, philosophy, and beyond.
This course explores the recording studio and Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) as tools for diverse compositional practices. By exploring a range of recording and editing techniques to craft new musical works beyond the limitations of live performance, this class encourages a seamless blend of composition and music production. Various genres, artists, and techniques that push the boundaries of music recording will be studied, such as Jamaican dub, musique concrète, hyper-pop, jazz fusion, and more. Students will gain hands-on experience with DAWs, exploring tools like effects processing, layering, and spatial placement. They will learn to listen closely to pieces exemplifying these techniques, building a shared analytic vocabulary to describe them. Students will also create original pieces, applying and building on the techniques studied in class, while engaging in constructive feedback with peers.
NOTE: There are 2 sections of Third Year Arabic I. Section 001 follows the standard curriculum building all 4 language skills, as described below. Section 002 follows a reading-intensive curriculum, with less emphasis on listening and writing while still conducted in Arabic, and is intended for those preparing for advanced research in modern or classical Arabic texts. Students in the regular third-year Arabic track improve reading, writing, speaking, and listening skills through close reading, compositions, class discussions, and presentations in Arabic on topics such as cultures of the Arab world, classical and modern Arabic literature, and contemporary Arabic media. Review of grammatical and syntactic rules as needed. No P/D/F or R credit is allowed for this class.
Far from obvious renderings of place, maps are spatial arguments about who belongs where and how living should be defined. This course approaches place as something that is contested daily in the U.S. through the struggle of who gets to lay claim to a way of life. From the landscapes of dispossession to the alternative ways marginalized people work with and against traditional geographies, this course centers Black place-making practices as political struggle. This class will look at how power and domination become a landed project. We will critically examine how ideas about “nature” are bound up with notions of race, and the way “race” naturalizes the proper place for humans and non-human others. We will interrogate settler colonialism’s relationships to mapping who is and isn’t human, the transatlantic slave trade as a project of terraforming environments for capital, and land use as a science for determining who “owns” the earth. Centered on Black feminist, queer and trans thinkers, we will encounter space not as a something given by maps, but as a struggle over definitions of the human, geography, sovereignty, and alternative worlds. To this end, we will read from a variety of disciplines, such as Critical Black Studies, Feminist and Intersectional Science Studies, Black Geographies and Ecologies, Urban Studies and Afrofuturist literature. (Note: this class will count as an elective for the CCIS minors/concentrations in F/ISTS, ICORE/MORE, and Environmental Humanities.)
Energy sources such as oil, gas, coal, gas hydrates, hydrogen, solar, and wind. Energy conversion systems for electrical power generation, automobiles, propulsion and refrigeration. Engines, steam and gas turbines, wind turbines; devices such as fuel cells, thermoelectric converters, and photovoltaic cells. Specialized topics may include carbon-dioxide sequestration, cogeneration, hybrid vehicles and energy storage devices.
Through reading articles and essays by Arab thinkers and intellectuals, students will be able to increase their fluency and accuracy in Arabic while working on reading text and being exposed to the main themes in Arab thought The course works with all four skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing). Arabic is the language of instruction. No P/D/F or R credit is allowed for this class.
MEMS markets and applications; scaling laws; silicon as a mechanical material; Sensors and actuators; micromechanical analysis and design; substrate (bulk) and surface micromachining; computer aided design; packaging; testing and characterization; microfluidics.
The Cold War epoch saw broad transformations in science, technology, and politics. At their nexus a new knowledge was proclaimed, cybernetics, a putative universal science of communication and control. It has disappeared so completely that most have forgotten that it ever existed. Its failure seems complete and final. Yet in another sense, cybernetics was so powerful and successful that the concepts, habits, and institutions born with it have become intrinsic parts of our world and how we make sense of it. Key cybernetic concepts of information, system, and feedback are now fundamental to our basic ways of understanding the mind, brain and computer, of grasping the economy and ecology, and finally of imagining the nature of human life itself. This course will trace the echoes of the cybernetic explosion from the wake of World War II to the onset of Silicon Valley euphoria.
Introduction to lab-on-a-chip and microrobotic devices with a focus on biomedical applications. Microfabrication techniques. Basics of micro- and nanoscale transport phenomena. Microsensors and microactuators. Microfluidic devices. Lab-on-a-chip systems. Microrobots.
This class takes a social movement perspective to analyze and understand the international human rights movement. The course will address the evolution of the international human rights movement and focus on the NGOs that drive the movement on the international, regional and domestic levels. Sessions will highlight the experiences of major human rights NGOs and will address topics including strategy development, institutional representation, research methodologies, partnerships, networks, venues of engagement, campaigning, fundraising and, perhaps most importantly, the fraught and complex debates about adaptation to changing global circumstances, starting with the pre-Cold War period and including some of the most up-to-date issues and questions going on in this field today.
We are used to thinking of history in national terms, or at least in reference to major civilizations (“Western civilization,” “Near Eastern civilization,” etc.). In “real life,” however, interactions among people, linguistic communities, and cultures frequently cut across political divisions. Water - rivers, streams, seas - is often an invitation to settlement, commerce, and conquest. This course offers a look (inspired in part by Fernand Braudel's Mediterranean) at a body of water - the Black Sea - and the lands around it, in sweeping historical perspective. Focus is on those moments when the various civilizations and empires that originated and flourished around the Black Sea met and intersected in friendship or in enmity. We will look at ancient civilizations, Greek colonization, Byzantine-Slav interactions, the period of Ottoman dominance, Russian-Turkish rivalry, and decolonization and wars in the 19th and 20th centuries. We hope that we will be able to pay particular attention to questions of ecology, language, religion, and cultural interaction throughout.
Prerequisites: (MDES UN2201) and (MDES UN2202) $10 Arabic Materials Fee; $15 Language Resource Fee. This is an introductory course to Levantine Arabic for students who have completed two years of Standard Arabic studies, at the Intermediate level. The course is designed to further develop fluency in oral communication, through building students’ familiarity with a less formal register of Arabic, namely the Levantine dialect. The course will convert and recycle some of the previous Standard Arabic knowledge to the dialect, by comparing their prior knowledge to its dialectal counterpart; while at the same time developing students’ new communicative skills in a diverse range of contexts that are essential in any conversational interaction. The course will build students abilities to interact effectively in various areas where Levantine Arabic is spoken. In addition to varied thematic topics, the course exposes students to cultural aspects specific to the region. Additionally, the course will work on both constructing students’ knowledge of dialectal diction as well as other grammatical features of the dialects. Even though the course is designed for communication in the four skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking), the emphasis will be mostly on speaking and listening. No P/D/F or R credit is allowed for this class.
Prerequisites: elementary physical chemistry. Basic quantum mechanics: the Schrodinger equation and its interpretation, exact solutions in simple cases, methods or approximations including time-independent and time-dependent perturbation theory, spin and orbital angular momentum, spin-spin interactions, and an introduction to atomic and molecular structure.
This is not a class in Theology. It is a class dealing with the
Qur’an
as a text and its linguistic and cultural significance. The readings will cover various
Suwar
(chapters) and excerpts dealing with a logical sequence of themes, starting with how the
Qur’an
defines itself, addresses its audiences, depicts and dialogues with other religions and religious groups, refers to itself as a historical source, especially through storytelling, and ending with how it legislates. They will also cover a choice of Hadiths. By being exposed to such a range of texts, students will gain a basic knowledge of types and structure of Hadith and a general sense of Qur’anic styles, textual arrangements, terminology and concepts. Specifically, the assignments will guide students toward an ability to read these texts in detail by expanding their vocabulary, deepening their understanding of advanced grammar points, and by providing an opportunity to discuss the texts and write about them. Student will also acquire research skills by identifying and working with sources and references.
Prerequisites: elementary physical chemistry. Corequisites: CHEM G4221. Topics include the classical and quantum statistical mechanics of gases, liquids, and solids.
Fundamentals and applications of solar energy conversion, especially technologies for conversion of sunlight into storable chemical energy or solar fuels. Topics include fundamentals of photoelectrochemistry, kinetics of solar fuels production, solar harvesting technologies, solar reactors, and solar thermal production of solar fuels. Applications include solar fuels technology for grid-scale energy storage, chemical industry, manufacturing, environmental remediation.
This course studies the effects and strategies of the cold war on Arab writing, education, arts and translation, and the counter movement in Arab culture to have its own identities. As the cold war functioned and still functions on a global scale, thematic and methodological comparisons are drawn with Latin America, India and Africa.
Money in its multiple forms has received renewed attention in recent decades, especially since the financial crises in 2008 and the emergence of new cryptocurrencies. Money has been described as a means of exchange, a store of value, a measure of debt, a commodity, a social institution, or a tool in the formation of identity. In all of these instances, money fuses economic purposes with social and cultural practices. Exploring the intersections between economics and aesthetics, this course will juxtapose some of the most influential theories of money from Adam Smith to the present with contemporaneous literary texts that reflect on various aspects of money in their poetics on a thematic or formal level. Literary texts include Shakespeare, Goethe, Balzac, Zola, Thomas Mann, and Martin Amis.
Prerequisites: PSYC UN1001 and Preferably, an additional course in psychology, focusing on cognition, development, or research methods. Instructor permission required. This seminar explores the relationship between language and thought by investigating how language is mentally represented and processed; how various aspects of language interact with each other; and how language interacts with other aspects of cognition including perception, concepts, world knowledge, and memory. Students will examine how empirical data at the linguistic, psychological, and neuroscientific levels can bear on some of the biggest questions in the philosophy of mind and language and in psychology.
This course offers an introduction to German intellectual history by focusing on the key texts from the 18th and 19th century concerned with the philosophy of art and the philosophy of history. Instead of providing a general survey, this thematic focus that isolates the relatively new philosophical subspecialties allows for a careful tracing of a number of key problematics. The texts chosen for discussion in many cases are engaged in lively exchanges and controversies. For instance, Winckelmann provides an entry into the debate on the ancients versus the moderns by making a claim for both the historical, cultural specificity of a particular kind of art, and by advertising the art of Greek antiquity as a model to be imitated by the modern artist. Lessings Laocoon counters Winckelmanns idealizing approach to Greek art with a media specific reflection. According to Lessing, the fact that the Laocoon priest from the classical sculpture doesnt scream has nothing to do with the nobility of the Greek soul but all with the fact that a screaming mouth hewn in stone would be ugly. Herders piece on sculpture offers yet another take on this debate, one that refines and radicalizes an aesthetics based on the careful examination of the different senses, especially touch and feeling versus sight.—The second set of texts in this class deals with key enlightenment concepts of a philosophical anthropology informing the then emerging philosophy of history. Two literary texts will serve to mark key epochal units: Goethes Prometheus, which will be used in the introductory meeting, will be examined in view of its basic humanist program, Kleists Earthquake in Chili will serve as a base for the discussion of what would be considered the end of the Enlightenment: be that the collapse of a belief in progress or the critique of the beautiful and the sublime. The last unit of the class focuses on Hegels sweeping supra-individualist approach to the philosophy of history and Nietzsches fierce critique of Hegel. Readings are apportioned such that students can be expected to fully familiarize themselves with the arguments of these texts and inhabit them.
This course deals with the proteome: the expressed protein complement of a cell, organelle, matrix, tissue, organ or organism. The study of the proteome (proteomics) is broadly applicable to life sciences research, and is increasingly important in academic, government and industrial research through extension of the impact of advances in genomics. These techniques are being applied to basic research, exploratory studies of cancer and other diseases, drug discovery and many other topics. Emphasis will be on mastery of practical techniques of sample preparation, liquid chromatography/ mass spectrometry (LC/MS) with electrospray ionization, and Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption and Ionization (MALDI-TOF) mass spectrometry. Database searching and interpretation for identification of proteins will be intensively studied, and practiced supported by background tutorials and exercises covering other techniques used in proteomics. Open to students in M.A. in Biotechnology Program (points can be counted against laboratory requirement for that program), Ph.D. and advanced undergraduate students with background in genetics or molecular biology. Students should be comfortable with basic biotechnology laboratory techniques as well as being interested in doing computational work in a Windows environment.
This seminar course explores the intersection of human rights and populism, examining how the rise of populist movements, leaders, and ideologies impact democratic institutions, global politics, and the protection of fundamental human rights. Through a multidisciplinary approach, the course evaluates the sociological, economic, and cultural factors driving populist surges, as well as their consequences for civic culture, governance, and international relations. Students will analyze the implications of populism for human rights in the context of migration, authoritarianism, freedom of speech, minorities, and challenges to international and regional courts and institutions. The course will investigate both left-wing and right-wing populist movements, considering the threat they pose to human rights, their pursuit of socio-economic rights through the redistribution of wealth, and how the human rights project could and is being rethought in light of these challenges and opportunities.
Prerequisites: PSYC UN1010 PSYC UN1010 or equivalent; background in statistics/research methods recommended How does the human brain make sense of the acoustic world? What aspects of auditory perception do humans share with other animals? How does the brain perform the computations necessary for skills such as soundlocalization? How do we focus our auditory attention on one voice in a crowd? What acoustic cues are important for speech perception? How is music perceived? These are the types of questions we will address by studyingthe basics of auditory perception from textbook readings and reviews, and reading classic and current literatureto understand scientific progress in the field today.
Few places in the world have witnessed the shift from a multiethnic territory to a nationally homogeneous nation-state as profoundly as the Polish lands. A crucial site of the collapse of Central and Eastern European empires, the Holocaust, ethnic cleansings, Nazi occupation, Soviet-style socialism, and accession to the European Union, Poland’s twentieth-century and contemporary culture has developed in the shadow of catastrophe and political and economic revolutions.
This seminar investigates shifting meanings of cultural difference and sameness from 1918 to the present, including Polish debates on multiculturalism spurred by the ongoing European refugee crisis. We will examine meanings attached to people, things, and landscapes - Polish, Jewish, Ukrainian, German, Nazi or Soviet - through the lens of visual arts, everyday objects, scholarly discourses, and urban and rural topographies. While we will pay special attention to the historiography of twentieth-century Eastern Europe, the course relies on interdisciplinary approaches and welcomes students interested in the history of art and architecture, literature, social history, anthropology, cultural studies, and critical museology.
Prerequisites: PSYC UN1001 or equivalent introductory psychology course What is curiosity and how do we study it? How does curiosity facilitate learning? This course will explore the various conceptual and methodological approaches to studying curiosity and curiosity-driven learning, including animal and human studies of brain and behavior.
Prerequisites: (biol un2005 or biol un2401) or BIOL UN2005 or BIOL UN2401 or equivalent This is an advanced microscopy course aimed at graduates and advanced undergraduate students, who are interested in learning about the foundational principles of microscopy approaches and their applications in life sciences. The course will introduce the fundamentals of optics, light-matter interaction and in-depth view of most commonly used advanced microscopy methods, explore important practical imaging parameters, and also introduce digital images and their analysis.
Prerequisites: four semesters of biology with a firm foundation in molecular and cellular biology. Introduces students to the current understanding of human diseases, novel therapeutic approaches and drug development process. Selected topics will be covered in order to give students a feeling of the field of biotechnology in health science. This course also aims to strengthen students’ skills in literature comprehension and critical thinking.
Ordinary differential equations including Laplace transforms. Reactor Design. An introduction to process control applied to chemical engineering through lecture and laboratory. Concepts include the dynamic behavior of chemical engineering systems, feedback control, controller tuning, and process stability.
Focusing on a canonical author is an immensely productive way to explore translation research and practice. The works of Sappho, Dante, Rilke, Césaire or Cavafy raise the question of reception in relation to many different critical approaches and illustrate many different strategies of translation and adaptation. The very issue of intertextuality that challenged the validity of author-centered courses after Roland Barthes’s proclamation of the death of the author reinstates it if we are willing to engage the oeuvre as an on-going interpretive project. By examining the poetry of the Greek Diaspora poet C. P. Cavafy in all its permutations (as criticism, translation, adaptation), the Cavafy case becomes an experimental ground for thinking about how a canonical author can open up our theories and practices of translation. For the final project students will choose a work by an author with a considerable body of critical work and translations and, following the example of Cavafy and his translators, come up with their own retranslations. Among the materials considered are commentary by E. M. Forster, C. M. Bowra, and Roman Jakobson, translations by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, James Merrill, Marguerite Yourcenar, and Daniel Mendelsohn, poems by W.H. Auden, Lawrence Durrell, and Joseph Brodsky, and visual art by David Hockney, and Duane Michals.
This course examines the historical and theoretical issues concerning the representation of African Americans in film and media. The course will provide a historical overview while focusing on key themes, concepts, and texts.
Prerequisites: completion of three years of modern Chinese at least, or four years of Japanese or Korean.
Principles of propulsion. Thermodynamic cycles of air breathing propulsion systems including ramjet, scramjet, turbojet, and turbofan engine and rocket propulsion system concepts. Turbine engine and rocket performance characteristics. Component and cycle analysis of jet engines and turbomachinery. Advanced propulsion systems. Columbia Engineering interdisciplinary course.
What are the traditional definitions of jazz and how do they apply to improvised music in the twenty-first century? This course aims to communicate reliable methods and processes useful when dissecting and evaluating jazz performances and jazz compositions. Students will engage with traditional and fundamental jazz improvisation theory, then extrapolate new modalities reflective of the music happening today; including categorizing music on gradations from minimally to fully improvisational, tonal to harmonically abstract, rhythmically rigid to free, and sonically acoustic to fully synthesized. The class will explore and differentiate between “new complexity” classical compositions and virtuosic free form improvisation, compare US jazz to versions happening in other countries, and to recognize how world music influences affect improvisational tonal systems and improvisational traits.
Applications of continuum mechanics to the understanding of various biological tissues properties. The structure, function, and mechanical properties of various tissues in biolgical systems, such as blood vessels, muscle, skin, brain tissue, bone, tendon, cartilage, ligaments, etc. are examined. The establishment of basic governing mechanical principles and constitutive relations for each tissue. Experimental determination of various tissue properties. Medical and clinical implications of tissue mechanical behavior.
Advanced instruction in the Armenian dialect. No P/D/F or R credit is allowed for this class.
Prerequisites: (CHEM UN2443 and CHEM UN2444) and (CHEM UN3079 and CHEM UN3080) and (BIOC UN3501) , or the equivalent. Development and application of chemical methods for understanding the molecular mechanisms of cellular processes. Review of the biosynthesis, chemical synthesis, and structure and function of proteins and nucleic acids. Application of chemical methods--including structural biology, enzymology, chemical genetics, and the synthesis of modified biological molecules--to the study of cellular processes--including transcription, translation, and signal transduction.
This course introduces a molecular level understanding of topics in modern chemical engineering. It builds upon and validates the concepts presented in the rest of the chemical engineering curriculum via a molecular perspective.
Thermodynamics and kinetics of reacting flows; chemical kinetic mechanisms for fuel oxidation and pollutant formation; transport phenomena; conservation equations for reacting flows; laminar nonpremixed flames (including droplet vaporization and burning); laminar premixed flames; flame stabilization, quenching, ignition, extinction, and other limit phenomena; detonations; flame aerodynamics and turbulent flames.
Design and analysis of high speed logic and memory. Digital CMOS and BiCMOS device modeling. Integrated circuit fabrication and layout. Interconnect and parasitic elements. Static and dynamic techniques. Worst-case design. Heat removal and I/O. Yield and circuit reliability. Logic gates, pass logic, latches, PLAs, ROMs, RAMs, receivers, drivers, repeaters, sense amplifiers.
The platform of every modern “Islamist” political party calls for the implementation of “the shari‘a.” This term is invariably (and incorrectly) interpreted as an unchanging legal code dating back to 7th century Arabia. In reality, Islamic law is an organic and constantly evolving human project aimed at ascertaining God’s will in a given historical and cultural context. This course offers a detailed and nuanced look at the Islamic legal methodology and its evolution over the last 1400 years. The first part of the semester is dedicated to “classical” Islamic jurisprudence, concentrating on the manner in which jurists used the Qur’an, the Sunna (the model of the Prophet), and rationality to articulate a coherent legal system. The second part of the course focuses on those areas of the law that engender passionate debate and controversy in the contemporary world. Specifically, we examine the discourse surrounding Islamic family (medical ethics, marriage, divorce, women’s rights) and criminal (capital punishment, apostasy, suicide/martyrdom) law. The course ends by discussing the legal implications of Muslims living as minorities in non-Islamic countries and the effects of modernity on the foundations of Islamic jurisprudence. This class is designed for students interested in a close examination of the Islamic legal system; it is not a broad introduction to the Islamic religion. The format of the class will vary from topic to topic but students should anticipate *extensive* participation through in-class debates.
This advanced seminar examines important approaches, issues, perspectives, and themes related to planetary concerns of environmental crisis, climate change, life sustainability, and multi-species flourishing, with a focus on feminist, postcolonial, anti-racist, and queer perspectives. Topics for discussion and study include the global pandemic, histories of colonialism, slavery, and capitalism,
Prereqs: BOTH 1 WMST Intro course PLUS any WGSS 'Foundation' course, OR instructor permission.
This course provides a rigorous introduction to the theory underlying widely used biophysical methods, which will be illustrated by practical applications to contemporary biomedical research problems. The course has two equally important goals. The first goal is to explain the fundamental approaches used by physical chemists to understand the behavior of molecules and to develop related analytical tools. The second goal is to prepare students to apply these methods themselves to their own molecular biology research projects. The course will be divided into seven modules: (i) solution thermodynamics with an emphasis on application to analysis of protein structure, folding, and binding interactions; (ii) hydrodynamic methods; (iii) statistical analysis of experimental data; (iv) molecular dynamics calculations; (v) optical spectroscopy with an emphasis on fluorescence; (vi) nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy; and (vii) light-scattering and diffraction methods including an overview of cryogenic electron microscopy reconstruction methods. In each module, the underlying physical theories and models will be presented and used to derive the mathematical equations applied to the analysis of experimental data. Weekly recitations will emphasize the analysis of real experimental data and understanding the applications of biophysical experimentation in published research papers. The problem sets emphasize use of PyMOL for analysis of macromolecular structures and use of standard curve-fitting software for analysis of protein binding data; detailed tutorials on the related methods are provided in the recitation sections. The first three modules will be covered in Biophysical Chemistry I during the fall term, while the final three will be covered in Biophysical Chemistry II during the spring term, and treatment of molecular dynamics calculations will be divided between the two terms.
In 1935, WEB Dubois wrote about abolition democracy: an idea based not only on breaking down unjust systems, but on building up new, antiracist social structures. Scholar activists like Angela Davis, Ruth Gilmore and Mariame Kaba have long contended that the abolition of slavery was but one first step in ongoing abolitionist practices dismantling racialized systems of policing, surveillance and incarceration. The possibilities of prison and police abolition have recently come into the mainstream national consciousness during the 2020 resurgence of nationwide Black Lives Matters (BLM) protests. As we collectively imagine what nonpunitive and supportive community reinvestment in employment, education, childcare, mental health, and housing might look like, medicine must be a part of these conversations. Indeed, if racist violence is a public health emergency, and we are trying to bring forth a “public health approach to public safety” – what are medicine’s responsibilities to these social and institutional reinventions?
Medicine has a long and fraught history of racial violence. It was, after all, medicine and pseudoscientific inquiry that helped establish what we know as the racial categorizations of today: ways of separating human beings based on things like skin color and hair texture that were used (and often continue to be used) to justify the enslavement, exclusion, or genocide of one group of people by another. Additionally, the history of the professionalization of U.S. medicine, through the formation of medical schools and professional organizations as well as and the certification of trained physicians, is a history of exclusion, with a solidification of the identity of “physician” around upper middle class white masculinity. Indeed, the 1910 Flexner Report, whose aim was to make consistent training across the country’s medical schools, was explicit in its racism. From practices of eugenic sterilization, to histories of experimentation upon bodies of color, medicine is unfortunately built upon racist, sexist and able-ist practices.
This course is built on the premise that a socially just practice of medicine is a bioethical imperative. Such a practice cannot be achieved, however, without examining medicine’s histories of racism, as well as learning from and building upon histories of anti-racist health practice. The first half of the semester will be dedicated to learning about histories of medical racism: from eugenics and racist experiment
At once material and symbolic, our bodies exist at the intersection of multiple competing discourses, including the juridical, the techno-scientific, and the biopolitical. In this course, we will draw upon a variety of critical interdisciplinary literatures—including feminist and queer studies, science and technology studies, and disability studies—to consider some of the ways in which the body is constituted by such discourses, and itself serves as the substratum for social relations. Among the key questions we will consider are the following: What is natural about the body? How are distinctions made between presumptively normal and pathological bodies, and between psychic and somatic experiences? How do historical and political-economic forces shape the perception and meaning of bodily difference? And most crucially: how do bodies that are multiply constituted by competing logics of gender, race, nation, and ability offer up resistance to these and other categorizations?
Interface between clinical practice and quantitative radiation biology. Microdosimetry, dose-rate effects and biological effectiveness thereof; radiation biology data, radiation action at the cellular and tissue level; radiation effects on human populations, carcinogenesis, genetic effects; radiation protection; tumor control, normal-tissue complication probabilities; treatment plan optimization.
Explores cutting-edge field of cellular bioengineering and applications of cell therapies. Comprehensive understanding of the principles, techniques, and ethical considerations involved in cells for medical applications studied.
Fundamentals of catalyst design and characterization, kinetic modeling and interpretation, and reactor design for CO2 utilization technologies. Topics include tandem catalysis, fundamentals of electrocatalysis, heterogeneous catalysis, catalytic processes for the activation of CO2, and reactive capture. Course grades are based on evaluating case studies, quizzes, and the final project design, where students apply concepts learned in class to propose solutions for practical, real-world CO2 utilization challenges.
Guiding ideals in American architecture from the centennial to around 1960. The evolution of modernism in America is contrasted with European developments and related to local variants.
Developments in architectural history during the modern period. Emphasis on moments of significant change in architecture (theoretical, economic, technological, and institutional). Themes include positive versus arbitrary beauty, enlightenment urban planning, historicism, structural rationalism, the housing reform movement, iron and glass technology, changes generated by developments external or internal to architecture itself and transformations in Western architecture.
This introduction to German film since 1945 (in its European contexts) deploys a focus on feelings as a lens for multifaceted, intersectional investigations of cinematic history. We will explore how feelings have been gendered and racialized; how they overlap with matters of sex (as closely associated with political revolt in Western Europe, while considered too private for public articulation in the socialist East, especially when queer); and how they foreground matters of nation and trauma (for example via the notions of German ‘coldness’ and inability to mourn the Holocaust). Simultaneously, the focus on feelings highlights questions of mediality (cinema as a prototypically affective medium?), genre and avant-garde aesthetics: in many films, ‘high-affect’ Hollywood cinema intriguingly meets ‘cold’ cinematic modernism. In pursuing these investigative vectors through theoretical readings and close film analysis, the course connects affect, gender, queer, and cultural studies approaches with cinema studies methodologies. The films to be discussed span postwar and New German Cinema, East German DEFA productions, the ‘Berlin School’ of the 2000s, and contemporary transnational cinema.
Review of building energy modeling techniques for simulating time-varying demand. Detailed Physics-based models, gray-box and black-box modeling. Static and dynamic models of building energy systems. Deterministic and Stochastic occupancy modeling. Modeling of control and dispatch of HVAC and local energy systems. Implementation of models in Energyplus and Modelica platforms. Modeling of low and net-zero carbon buildings and local energy systems.
This seminar is one of the series “History of the Modern Self” which includes Montaigne, Rousseau, and soon Nietzsche. This semester will focus on Pascal’s conception of the self as revealed by his
humanistic
case for religious faith in response to the skeptical challenge of Montaigne. The aim is to understand all the implications of this encounter for the history of modern Western thought about human psychology, religion, and politics.
Premodern Chinese literati have long been regarded as active historical agents who shaped “This Culture of Ours”—a metonym for civilization in the premodern Sinitic context—while they also fed from, partook in, and influenced popular and foreign cultures. Besides “literary writings” like poetry and prose, literati also engaged in calligraphy, painting, and antiquarianism under the umbrella term of “literary or cultural arts.” In turn, the creation and appreciation of artwork were intrinsic to the aesthetic life of literati community and further established their self-identity. At the same time, social exclusivity, (self-)doubt and identity crises, along with the looming threat of cultural decline, have continually haunted this literati community throughout the ages.
Covering the long trajectory of imperial China, this course reveals the birth and development of literati culture. In particular, we take an interdisciplinary approach, introducing intellectual and poetic discourses, socio-historical contexts, literary criticism, visual and material culture, to envision a “common ground” for their civil world. Textual, visual sources plus material objects are meant to have conversations with each other in this course. Important issues include historical transformations of the elite class, cultural geography in different eras, materiality and visuality of elite calligraphy and painting, literati self-expression through aesthetic practice, the roles of the court and literati in producing and preserving art, as well as other relevant issues such as gender studies, vernacular literature, and commodity society.
This course is cross-listed in AMEC and CPLT. For undergraduates, no background in Chinese language is required in this course, and all reading materials—either translation of primary sources or secondary scholarship—are accessible in English.
Prerequisites: LING UN3101 An investigation of the sounds of human language, from the perspective of phonetics (articulation and acoustics, including computer-aided acoustic analysis) and phonology (the distribution and function of sounds in individual languages).
In this course we will examine the New Testament canon and the twenty-seven texts that comprise it in light of their respective literary genres, their Jewish antecedents and Greco-Roman influences, which will include their historical, social, cultural, political and economic contexts, and the ways these factors impinged upon their various dimensions of meaning. Various modes of biblical interpretation, both ancient and contemporary, will be explored. A major emphasis will be on the ways select texts are utilized, misconstrued and weaponized in the public sphere in this contemporary moment.
The quarter century during which Joseph Stalin ruled the Soviet Union witnessed some of the twentieth century's most dramatic events: history's fastest plunge into modernity, an apocalyptic world war, and the emergence of a socialist state as a competitive world power. This tutorial will offer students a deep dive not only into the historical depths of the Stalin era but into the gloriously complex historiographical debates that surround it. Some of the questions that will animate the readings, writings, and discussions that students will engage in are as follows: Did Stalin depart from or represent a continuation of the policies introduced by his predecessor Vladimir Lenin? Did he rule in a totalitarian fashion or in ways comparable to other twentieth century regimes? Were his policies destructive or possibly productive? And perhaps most boggling of all: why did no one resist Stalinist rule?
Chemical engineering fundamentals as applied to process research, development, and manufacturing of pharmaceutical products. Course topics include: comprehensive overview of the biopharmaceutical business (therapeutic areas, markets, drug discovery, clinical development, commercialization), process research, creation, development, optimization, sustainability, green chemistry and engineering, safety (patient, process, and personnel), unit operations and associated calculations relevant to pharmaceutical processes, process scale-up, implementation, assessment, technology transfer, new technologies, economic analysis, drug product formulation and manufacturing, and regulatory considerations. Case studies and real-life examples are presented throughout the course.
Planar resonators. Photons and photon streams. Photons and atoms: energy levels and band structure; interactions of photons with matter; absorption, stimulated and spontaneous emission; thermal light, luminescence light. Laser amplifiers: gain, saturation, and phase shift; rate equations; pumping. Lasers: theory of oscillation; laser output characteristics. Photons in semiconductors: generation, recombination, and injection; heterostructures; absorption and gain coefficients. Semiconductor photon sources: LEDs; semiconductor optical amplifiers; homojunction and heterojunction laser diodes. Semiconductor photon detectors: p-n, p-i-n, and heterostructure photo diodes; avalanche photodiodes.
The objective of this course will be to tease out Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s complex and often contradictory ideas on women and gender difference in nature and society, to examine his own gender construction in his autobiographical writings, and to determine how women writers from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries have responded to these aspects of his work. Readings of Rousseau’s works (in French) will include the
Discours sur l’inégalité
,
Émile,
the
Lettre à d’Alembert
and the
Confessions
. Other authors will include Louise d’Épinay, Isabelle de Charrière, Olympe de Gouges, Germaine de Staël, Mary Wollstonecraft, Marie-Jeanne Roland de la Platière, George Sand and Monique Wittig, along with contemporary feminist criticism on Rousseau. The course will be taught in French with most readings in French, but papers may be written in English for non-majors or graduate students from other departments. This course fulfills the pre-1800 requirement for the French major and the 18th Century requirement for the MA or PhD in the French Department.
By the end of the course students should be conversant in the major arguments, themes and motifs Rousseau develops with respect to women and gender difference in the state of nature and society. They should have gained a nuanced understanding of the ways gender and sexuality are constructed in the
Confessions
and in the autobiographical works of women authors inspired by it. They should be able to characterize the diverse ways that various women writers, from Rousseau’s time to the present, have responded to his depiction of women and gender. They should have gained the ability to speak with fluency in French about these complex issues, and to develop in their written work, in French or in English, coherent and original arguments about Rousseau, women and gender. Above all, students will be expected to develop their own point of view on a central paradox of Rousseau’s corpus: how is it that a writer often derided in his own time and our own as misogynist has had such an outsized influence on successive generations of women writers?
Two-body orbital motion, Newtonian and Keplerian mechanics, energy and angular momentum conservation, Vis-Viva equation, Kepler’s Equation, Euclidean geometry, vector mathematics, conic sections. Trajectory design using analytical and software-based methods. Systems Tool Kit Astrogator for simulation of Earth-Moon and interplanetary missions.
Science and technology have become increasingly central to the basic functioning of democratic societies The administrative state, both on the local and national level, is dependent on technological systems to ensure democratic rule and deliver services: from voting machines and welfare databases to passport scanners and the laboratory equipment necessary to set environmental standards. Just as necessary are the numerous experts – engineers, statisticians, epidemiologists, and environmental scientists – who either work for or advise the state in its dealings. How should we think about the technocratic nature of modern democracy? Is it an inevitable and necessary pre-condition for governing modern mass society? Or is it an alarming aspect, an undemocratic impulse, that undermines the promise of democratic rule?The course will examine the coproduction of science and politics. In the first part of the semester, students will gain conceptual tools with which to rethink the connection between science, technology, power, politics, policy, and democracy. They will consider the role of expertise in modern politics, as well as the construction of the public. In the second part of the semester we will consider in greater detail the way technocratic governance developed in the United States from the end of the nineteenth century to the contemporary moment.
This course examines the transatlantic sounds of African music, including Afrobeat, Afrobeats, Amapiano, Chimurenga, Highlife, Kwaito, Makossa, Reggae, and more, to explore the rich cultural roots of African musical traditions and how they navigate and assimilate within the global popular culture sphere. From migration and collaborations to the rise of African artists in the era of advanced technology, the course uncovers how these genres transcend borders, inspire cross-cultural innovation, and influence the global music scene in contemporary times. Critical issues such as cultural appropriation, commodification, gender, health, and authenticity in the ever-evolving global music industry will be explored. By the end of the course, you will have a deep understanding of the complex dynamics driving the influence and dissemination of African music across the world.
Generalized dynamic system modeling and simulation. Fluid, thermal, mechanical, diffusive, electrical, and hybrid systems are considered. Nonlinear and high order systems. System identification problem and Linear Least Squares method. State-space and noise representation. Kalman filter. Parameter estimation via prediction-error and subspace approaches. Iterative and bootstrap methods. Fit criteria. Wide applicability: medical, energy, others. MATLAB and Simulink environments.
Introduces students to technological innovations that are helping cities around the world create healthier, safer, more equitable, and more resilient futures. Focus on architecture, urban design, real estate development, structural, civil and mechanical engineering, data analytics, and smart communication technologies. Course covers five distinct sectors in the field of urban infrastructure, including transportation and mobility, buildings, power, sanitation, and communications. A Columbia Cross-Disciplinary Course.
Understanding the properties and behavior of materials is critical to the mechanical design and subsequent function of any product or part – including wide-ranging applications from aircraft fuselage to robotic manipulators to flexures to telescope mirrors to flywheels to sports equipment to thermal insulators. This course provides a fundamental understanding of the microstructure of a range of materials (metals, polymers, ceramics, composites, hybrid) and the connection to design-determining or limiting properties including stiffness, expansion, thermal expansion, strength, energy storage and dissipation, toughness, and fatigue. Objective functions which are used to determine a “material index” for the selection of the best materials for use in a particular mechanical design are developed, underscoring the combined role of material properties and loading conditions in optimizing for materials selection. For example, take the case of determining a material index for selecting a best set of materials for a lightweight, stiff beam – how do the material density and elastic modulus together with the beam geometry and loading conditions factor in to determining the material index for materials selection? Note that the resulting material index for selecting best materials for a lightweight stiff beam (bending) is different than that for a lightweight stiff rod (tension). The material indices provide the framework for construction and use of materials selection charts to rapidly compare the effectiveness of wide-ranging materials for different applications.
Introduction to methods in deep learning, focus on applications to biomedical signals and sequences. Review of traditional methods for analysis of signals and sequences. Temporal convolutional neural networks and recurrent neural networks. Long-short term memory (LSTM) models and deep state-space models. Theory and methods lectures accompanied with examples from biomedical signal and sequence analysis, including analysis of electroencephalogram (EEG), electrocardiogram (ECG/EKG), and genomics. Programming assignments use tensorflow/keras. Exams and final project required.
Introduction to statistical machine learning methods using applications in genomic data and in particular high-dimensional single-cell data. Concepts of molecular biology relevant to genomic technologies, challenges of high-dimensional genomic data analysis, bioinformatics preprocessing pipelines, dimensionality reduction, unsupervised learning, clustering, probabilistic modeling, hidden Markov models, Gibbs sampling, deep neural networks, gene regulation. Programming assignments and final project will be required.
This seminar provides an overview of the mechanisms and behaviors associated with neural plasticity. Students will obtain a basic working knowledge of the different types of neural plasticity, and how these affect cognition and behaviors.
Introduction to optical systems based on physical design and engineering principles. Fundamental geometrical and wave optics with specific emphasis on developing analytical and numerical tools used in optical engineering design. Focus on applications that employ optical systems and networks, including examples in holographic imaging, tomography, Fourier imaging, confocal microscopy, optical signal processing, fiber optic communication systems, optical interconnects and networks.
Introduction to use of magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) with focus on brain. Covers all aspects of in vivo MRS from theory to experiment, from data acquisition to the derivation of metabolic signatures, from study design to clinical interpretation. Includes theoretical concepts, hands-on training in MRS data literacy and direct experimental experience using a 3T MR scanner.
This course will provide an overview of the field of parental and social biology, with an emphasis on changes in the adult rodent brain surrounding childbirth and caretaking behavior. We will explore how the experience of parenthood prepares the brain for survival of offspring. We will also discuss the dynamic between caregivers and parents in order to provide the structure necessary to rear young. This course will illustrate the fortitude of molecular, behavioral and circuit level investigations in concert to unveil mechanisms of social learning.
Prerequisites: basic background in neurobiology (for instance PSYC UN1010, UN2450, UN2460, UN2480, and GU4499) and the instructors permission. This course will provide an overview of the field of epigenetics, with an emphasis on epigenetic phenomena related to neurodevelopment, behavior and mental disorders. We will explore how epigenetic mechanisms can be mediators of environmental exposures and, as such, contribute to psychopathology throughout the life course. We will also discuss the implications of behavioral epigenetic research for the development of substantially novel pharmacotherapeutic approaches and preventive measures in psychiatry.
Introduces approaches for the functional genomic analysis of biological systems and their use to define genotype-phenotype relationships. Genetic variation, gene expression and regulation at the epigenome, chromatin organization level, and link between gene and protein expression covered. Case studies covered: study of cancer and cancer-associated processes, neuro-biology, and organismal development. The presented methods study these events at the genome, epigenome, transcriptome, and proteome levels.Approaches that increase the resolution of functional genomic assays to the level of individual cells, spatial profiling, integration with genetic and chemical screening methods, and their application to chemical genomic approaches also studied. Programming assignments and a final project required.
The practical application of chemical engineering principles for the design and economic evaluation of chemical processes and plants. Use of ASPEN Plus for complex material and energy balances of real processes. Students are expected to build on previous coursework to identify creative solutions to two design projects of increasing complexity. Each design project culminates in an oral presentation, and in the case of the second project, a written report.
The course addresses selected issues in the protection of socio-economic rights in an international and comparative perspective. Socio-economic rights have emerged from the margins into the mainstream of human rights. The course will take this status as its starting point and examine the human rights to housing, food, water, health and sanitation in depth. We will explore conceptual issues through the lens of specific rights which will help us ground these principles and ideas in concrete cases. We will discuss developments on socioeconomic rights and examine their relevance in the United States as well as selected other countries, particularly those with progressive legislation, policies and jurisprudence. What is the meaning and scope of the rights to housing, food, water, health and sanitation? What is the impact of discrimination and inequalities on the enjoyment of socio-economic rights? How can governments be held accountable for the realization of human rights? What machinery is there at the international level to ensure that the rights are protected, respected and fulfilled? How can this machinery be enhanced? How can judicial, quasijudicial, administrative and political mechanisms be used at the domestic level? What is the role of different actors in the context of human rights, the role of States and individuals, but also (powerful) non-State actors and civil society? How have activists and policymakers responded to challenges? And what lies ahead for the human rights movement in addressing economic and social rights in a multilateral, globalized world?
In this course, we will explore the basic biochemistry of living systems and how this knowledge can be harnessed to create new medicines. We will learn how living systems convert environmental resources into energy through metabolism, and how they use this energy and these materials to build the molecules required for the diverse functions of life. We will discuss the applications of this biochemical knowledge to mechanisms of disease and to drug discovery. We will look at examples of drug discovery related to neurodegeneration, cancer, and the SARS-CoV-2 COVID19 pandemic. This course satisfies the requirement of most medical schools for introductory biochemistry, and is suitable for advanced undergraduates, and beginning graduate students. This course is equivalent to and replaces the prior course named UN3501, and is equivalent to the course offered in the summer.
Aimed at seniors and graduate students. Provides classroom experience on chemical engineering process safety as well as Safety in Chemical Engineering certification. Process safety and process control emphasized. Application of basic chemical engineering concepts to chemical reactivity hazards, industrial hygiene, risk assessment, inherently safer design, hazard operability analysis, and engineering ethics. Application of safety to full spectrum of chemical engineering operations.
Prerequisites: (MDES GU4510) and (MDES GU4511) 3RD Year Modern Hebrew or the instructor's permission. This course focuses on central identities shaping Israeli society and is designed to give students extensive experience in reading Hebrew. Through selected readings of contemporary literary works and media texts, students will increase their proficiency in Hebrew and enhance their understanding of Israeli culture and society. All readings, written assignments, and class discussions are in Hebrew. No P/D/F or R credit is allowed for this class.
An interdisciplinary investigation into Italian culture and society in the years between Unification in 1860 and the outbreak of World War I. Drawing on novels, historical analyses, and other sources including film and political cartoons, the course examines some of the key problems and trends in the cultural and political history of the period. Lectures, discussion and required readings will be in English. Students with a knowledge of Italian are encouraged to read the primary literature in Italian.
Covers fundamental engineering design tools for creating and testing physical products. Includes basics of computer-aided design, circuit design and use of microcontrollers, Internet of Things, and computational modeling and simulation. Additional hands-on exposure to tools for high-fidelity physical prototyping in Makerspace. Mini-project design involving an engineering device or system incorporated tools.