Strategic Management of Information and Communication Technologies for the Public Good” addresses the spectrum of policy issues, options, and critical decisions confronting senior managers in the public sphere. Classes will be taught by a combination of lecture, readings, and case. Each class will address policy, technical, and managerial challenges for a particular domain of practice from the introduction or use of established and leading-edge information and communication technologies (ICTs), among them cloud, mobile and social. Arenas may include, for example, health, education, energy, economic development, transportation, civic engagement, law enforcement, human resources, social services, transportation, or compliance and regulatory affairs. The cases will involve a variety of managerial dilemmas and decisions, from governance to transparency, performance management to project management, and be generalizable across multiple domains, arenas, and technologies. Our goal is to expose students to the broadest range of policy challenges, and technologies comprising ICTs in use in the principal domains of practice, giving students a comprehensive exposure to the issues and opportunities as managers encounter them today - and will in the very near future. The course is intended for general, non-technical managers and assumes no engineering capability greater than plugging in a USB stick.
Prerequisites: STAT GR6102 or instructor permission. The Deparatments doctoral student consulting practicum. Students undertake pro bono consulting activities for Columbia community researchers under the tutelage of a faculty mentor.
MIA Politics I Core.
This course introduces MIA students to foundational theories and analytical frameworks used to understand international affairs and the global political economy. Drawing on literature from international relations, comparative politics, political sociology, and economics, the course examines the evolution of international relations scholarship and key debates shaping the field. Through weekly discussions, case-based readings, and structured debates, students will critically engage with competing perspectives on power, institutions, regimes, markets, and global order. Special attention is given to American scholarly traditions and real-world applications, including contemporary issues such as war, climate change, and global inequality.
Prerequisites: Required course for first year Ph.D. students and second year M.A. students on academic track. Covers foundational topics and developments in many branches of ecology, including population, community, and ecosystems ecology.
This course is intended for MA students in Religion who are writing and completing a thesis or other paper of similar length and scope. Enrolled students will work with the instructor to develop, research, and write a thesis. Preparation and prerequisites: Instructor’s permission is required to enroll. Students are strongly encouraged to discuss the feasibility of potential thesis topics with a faculty member in Religion (preferably their advisor or other suitable faculty member), and if relevant, also strive to identify key primary texts or sources, in advance of the semester.
MPA Politics I Core.
This course provides an introduction to American political institutions and their role in shaping public policy. Students will examine how policy decisions, and inaction, affect critical aspects of daily life, including health care, education, public safety, and environmental protection. The course explores the structure and function of U.S. political institutions such as Congress, the presidency, courts, and federalism, and how these compare to other democracies. It also analyzes the influence of actors including interest groups, social movements, the media, and bureaucrats. Through case studies, group work, and applied analysis, students will gain a foundational understanding of the policymaking process, key trends in American politics, and the skills needed to engage with public policy in practice.
Public policy shapes how our environment, both natural and built, is managed and regulated. Policy not only creates the infrastructure and regulatory frameworks needed to support sustainability goals, but is also critical in establishing an equitable foundation that supports individual and collective change in pursuit of those goals.
This course will serve as an introduction to equity in sustainability policy: We will survey federal, state, and local policies and proposals to understand how we use policy to enhance urban resilience, mitigate environmental impacts, and also promote social and economic justice. Using an interdisciplinary approach that draws from economics, sociology, urban studies, critical theory, and more, students will develop their capacities to read and interpret policy, enhance their understanding of current policy frameworks, and strengthen their ability to engage with emerging policy developments.
Building on contemporary efforts in public policy, we will use an equity lens to focus on the human dimension of sustainability. We will explore policy frameworks and dialogues that foster more equitable outcomes, increase engagement of people most impacted, and contribute to sustainability goals. As an entry point, the course will focus on policies related to climate adaptation and urban sustainability transitions, setting the stage for students to explore equity in urban resilience efforts and to examine intersections of race, class, and other social factors with access to resources.
The course will be discussion-based and center participatory activities (e.g., student-led discussions, paired analyses, team exercises) designed to encourage students to consider policy issues from multiple perspectives—including identifying disparities and assessing opportunities for increasing equity in the sustainability policy sector. The course will also invite scholars and practitioners to share expertise and experience from the field. Students are not expected or required to have any previous experience with policy or law.
This seven-week elective is taught online. It is open to 2nd year Screen/TV Writers and Directors, will serve as an incubator for story ideas not currently being developed in any full-semester core classes.
The course provides an overview of the scenario analysis and climate risk modeling process for corporate issuers and government entities. There is a brief introduction to the climate models utilized by the IPCC, both global and regional. There is a description of the scenario generation and analysis process, with linkages to benchmark scenarios outlined by international bodies. This is followed by a review of the linkages between climate models and socio-economic variables in the form of integrated assessment models, Ricardian models and economic input-output analysis. There is one module on the information systems needed to ensure good adaptation and a review of best practices and guidelines for climate risk management strategies. Integrated examples of climate risk and opportunities for specific issuers are discussed in the last 2 classes. The problem sets and exercises are designed to provide practice in applying high-level guidelines and climate damage relationships to the strategies and operations of specific countries, industries and companies.
Interaction of light with nanoscale materials and structures for purpose of inducing movement and detecting small changes in strain, temperature, and chemistry within local environments. Methods for concentrating and manipulating light at length scales below the diffraction limit. Plasmonics and metamaterials, as well as excitons, phonos, and polaritons and their advantages for mechanical and chemical sensing, and controlling displacement at nanometer length scales. Applications to nanophotonic devices and recently published progress in nanomechanics and related fields.
From Prince Valdimir’s Rus’ to the Post-Soviet Russia of Vladimir Putin, religion has remained a key factor in the making and remaking of Russian polity and culture. This course will explore how Orthodox Christianity—whether privileged or persecuted—came to dominate the Russian religious scene and shape Russian institutions, discourses, and lived experiences. Students will draw from a variety of primary and secondary sources—chronicles, saints’ lives, travel narratives, memoirs, letters, legal documents, icons and other ritual objects, films and fictional texts, as well as a large body of scholarly works and contemporary media materials—to examine how Russia’s Orthodox past and its rewriting into competing “histories” have been used over time as “legacies” shaping the present and the future.
This interdisciplinary seminar examines the role of multinational energy companies in the context of international human rights, corporate responsibility, and global governance. Drawing on case studies and legal frameworks, the course explores how extractive industries intersect with political, environmental, and social systems, particularly in transitional and emerging economies.
Key themes include the development of international human rights law, the evolving definition of corporate responsibility, environmental and minority rights, corruption and transparency, and the geopolitics of natural resource extraction. Students will investigate how transnational corporations operate in weak governance zones, how investment treaties shape state-corporate relations, and how disputes over pipelines and land use affect communities and nations alike.
The course emphasizes real-world case analysis, including the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, Canadian mining projects in Latin America, and recent developments in sovereign debt, investor-state arbitration, and standards for corporate conduct. Students will also evaluate the effectiveness of voluntary standards, multilateral codes, and legal instruments in shaping corporate behavior.
In this class, we will build up the actor’s physical and mental muscles via exercises, games, and assignments that rediscover uncensored child-like wonder. We will attempt to relax our brains, open up our hearts and move our bodies with great pleasure together, which will cultivate an intrinsic appetite for an open, vulnerable, generous, ferocious, playful, rigorous, surprising and impulsive presence. This state of flow, hopefully, will be able to find its rightful place in any role and in any medium you pursue.
Most of this semester will be spent on exercises in pursuit of your unique individual clowns as we necessarily soften and shed physical and emotional holds by inviting a sense of play and imagination. These exercises will gradually allow your latent clown-within (i.e. your talent / humanity) to show up in the room. Towards the end of this introductory class, we will encounter the smallest mask on earth – the Red Nose! – which not only doesn't mask, but instead draws attention to and magnifies YOU.
We will invite your generous openness, ferocious abandon, insistent honesty and gleeful mischief to make a larger footprint in your work, so the top layer of the iceberg that is your socially-conditioned selves can slowly melt away. You will sweat. You will make songs. You will listen deeper and harder. You will be engaged and relaxed at the same time. You will release some glorious ha-ha’s and emotional wa-wa’s into the ether. This all will be silly. You will make something disastrous and messy. You will confront fears and conjure bravery. You will make something wonderful and surprising – as you unearth the engine behind all that makes you interesting, that which makes you authentic. What makes you YOU. Your clown – the one and only.
MIA and MPA Politics II Core.
This seven-week course introduces students to some of the central concepts, theories, and analytical tools used in contemporary social science to understand and explain world politics. The theoretical literature is drawn from different fields in the social sciences, including comparative politics, international relations, political sociology and economics. The course introduces students to debates around race and international relations, state-making and state-failing, authoritarianism and democratization, inequality and models of globalization, America primacy and the “rise of the Asia.”
Continuation of MATH GR6151x (see Fall listing).
Prerequisites: MATH GR6151 MATH G4151 Analysis & Probability I. Continuation of MATH GR6152x (see fall listing).
MIA and MPA Politics II Core.
Global Politics & International Organizations
introduces the actors, coalitions, institutions, and processes of global politics. It creates the conceptual foundations for understanding the role of international organizations in today’s multipolar and complex (or, ‘multiplex’) world. It sheds light on how states, non-state actors, and international bureaucracies act within international organizations and how they negotiate international agreements. The discussions will focus on formal and informal decision-making processes, working methods, and power in international relations. It will highlight processes within Bretton Woods institutions (the World Bank and the IMF), as well as at the United Nations, including bargaining processes at the UN Security Council. As a spillover from global politics, the course will also explore the role of international organizations in domestic policymaking processes.
In addition to critical scholarship on international organizations and global governance, the course relies on students’ analysis of relevant proceedings and debates at the UN, original policy documents, as well as expert testimony from a range of guest speakers, who share their extensive first-hand observations as actors of global governance processes. By these means,
Global Politics & International Organizations
offers insights into the processes, challenges, and impacts of activities by international organizations to make global governance regimes stronger, more effective, and hold actors more accountable.
This course will survey the history of Latin manuscript books and Latin scripts from late Antiquity to the early years of printing (4th -15th century). Students will study the questions that have driven the field of paleography since its inception, and the canonical history of the main scripts used in Western Europe through the end of the Middle Ages. We will consider the manuscript book as a physical artifact, in a codicological approach; and we will look at the production of books in their social and political settings. Students will develop practical skills in reading and transcription, and will begin to recognize the features that allow localization and dating of manuscripts. We will use original materials from the Rare Book and Manuscript Library whenever possible.
MIA and MPA Politics II Core.
This course examines the evolution of American foreign policy within the context of U.S. political institutions, domestic dynamics, and historical experiences. It emphasizes the interplay between foreign and domestic policy, considering how American identity, political culture, and internal debates have shaped international engagement. While grounded in key moments in U.S. history, the course also addresses recent shifts in America's global role and examines the strategic, ideological, and institutional forces that continue to influence foreign policy decisions.
This course critically examines some of the moral and historical arguments for the justification of reparations for New World slavery. We explore the state of the debate about such historical injustices -- inquiring into questions of cultural trauma, memory, and generations. Our main concern will be to connect a moral claim about repair to an understanding of the injury of slavery in the Americas. Open to graduate students only. Permission is required.
MIA and MPA Politics II Core.
This course examines the development and dynamics of political parties in the United States, with a focus on the evolution of the two-party system and its influence on American politics and policymaking. Students will explore the historical foundations of party formation, ideological shifts over time, and the distinct roles parties play at national and subnational levels. The course also analyzes the structure and impact of party primaries, as well as recent technological and communication changes that have transformed modern electoral strategy and campaign practices.
Topics in Software engineering arranged as the need and availability arises. Topics are usually offered on a one-time basis. Since the content of this course changes, it may be repeated for credit with advisor approval. Consult the department for section assignment.
MIA and MPA Politics Core II. Instructor: Peter Jaffe.
This course explores how sudden disruptions—such as elections, economic shocks, natural disasters, and conflict—can challenge or derail long-term policy efforts. Using analytical tools from game theory, economics, management, and law, students will assess how policy responses are developed under pressure and how to design adaptive programs capable of withstanding unexpected change. The course combines discussion, interactive exercises, and real-world case studies to build the strategic, ethical, and communication skills needed to lead through uncertainty. Guest speakers with firsthand experience in policymaking during crises will offer practical insights into decision-making when the stakes are high. Students will learn to anticipate and manage change, balance competing demands, and identify opportunities to advance policy goals even amid disruption.
Archaeology is a sprawling, messy discipline and the role that theory does, should, and might play in the process of archaeological data collection, analysis, and interpretation has been highly contested. Archaeologists argue over whether there is such a thing as a stand-alone ‘archaeological theory’ and what kinds of theory from other disciplines should (or should not!) be imported. This course explores a range of recent theoretical conversations, orientations, and interventions within archaeology, with an eye to understanding what is currently at stake – and what is contested – in how archaeologists think about making archaeological knowledge in the contemporary moment. In doing so, this course encourages students to think about theory in archaeology as an important form of “practical knowledge” or “know how” for archaeologists (cf. Lucas 2018).
Prerequisites: CHEM UN2443 , or the equivalent. This is an introductory course to the emerging field macromolecular materials chemistry. The general topics will be based on the chemistry, self-assembly, and performance of block copolymers and conjugated polymers. Particular emphasis will be devoted to the demands required to drive materials from scientific curiosity to commercialization. At the fundamental level, the course will cover topics on polymerization techniques, electronic structure of organic semiconductors, characterization strategies, nanostructures and self-assembly.
Prerequisites: CHEM UN2443 , or the equivalent.
This class will describe the electronic and physical structure of inorganic materials with an emphasis on colloidal quantum dots and surface science.
The scenes selected for study and practice will come from dramatic works by playwrights of the 20th and 21st centuries. For the most part these writers will be American dramatists, but exceptions may sometimes be made. The scenes being used are assigned by the instructor, sometimes by way of suggestions by the student, if the student has a particular interest in a specific writer or character. Three scenes are presented each class. Each scene will be able to work with the teacher for approximately 50 minutes. The emphasis of the working session is on process, methods of rehearsal, engagement of body and voice, employment of principles of craft, and self-analysis.
Continuation of MATH GR6175x (see Fall listing).
Human–computer interaction (HCI) studies (1) what computers are used for, (2) how people interact with computers, and (3) how either of those should change in the future. Topics include ubiquitous computing, mobile health, interaction techniques, social computing, mixed reality, accessibility, and ethics. Activities include readings, presentations, and discussions of research papers. Substantial HCI research project required.
In the production of immersive experiences, technology is used in creative ways to promote interactivity with an audience. Imagine creating performances where effects are magically triggered by participants, bespoke props can be controlled through theatrical cueing systems and online experiences are connected to the physical world. The Internet of Things (IoT) can be much more than smart toaster ovens - connected devices open up the possibility for unique storytelling opportunities beyond the screen.
This course provides a hands-on introduction to programming and the development of physical computing devices. We will explore various sensors, outputs, communication protocols and methods for connecting internet services together to create interactive prototypes for your immersive concepts.
Prerequisites: ANTH G6352 Museum Anthropology: history and theory / ANTH G6353 Politics and Practice of Museum Exhibitions; G9110, G9111 and the instructors permission. Corequisites: ANTH G6353. This course addresses the practical challenges entailed in the process of creating a successful exhibition. Developing an actual curatorial project, students will get an opportunity to apply the museum anthropology theory they are exposed to throughout the program. They will be given a hands-on approach to the different stages involved in the curation of a show, from the in-depth researching of a topic to the writing, editing and design of an exhibition that will be effective for specific audiences.
HRGE Concentration Registration Priority.
This course introduces the legal frameworks, institutions, and advocacy strategies that underpin the international human rights system. With a practitioner’s lens, students will explore civil, political, economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights through treaties, customary law, and jurisprudence. Emphasis is placed on understanding where and how the law offers avenues for redress, and the evolving role of human rights advocacy in confronting modern challenges, including corporate accountability, gender discrimination, and climate justice.
Students will examine the structure and operation of key international and regional human rights mechanisms, the limits and opportunities of legal enforcement, and the relationship between international human rights law and international humanitarian law. The course integrates doctrinal learning with applied analysis through case studies, reflections, and simulations.
Attendance in the first class session is mandatory.
MPA Financial Management Core I and II.
This course introduces the principles and practices of financial reporting, with the goal of enabling students to become informed users of financial information in both public and private sector contexts. Emphasis is placed on understanding the three primary financial statements: the balance sheet, income statement, and statement of cash flows; and the accounting concepts and rules that shape them. Students will examine how financial information is prepared, disclosed, and interpreted, and will develop analytical tools to assess an organization’s financial health and operational effectiveness. Real-world financial statements will be used throughout the course to build fluency in the language and application of accounting.
Prerequisites: STAT GR6201 Continuation of STAT G6201
This course introduces students to the literature on globalization and the diffusion of culture and institutions. It covers literatures in sociology and political science as well as some anthropology and history. This course will not discuss economic, financial, or migratory globalization in depth. In the first part, we will survey the major theories of the global diffusion of culture and institutions: world polity theory, global field theory, the policy diffusion literature, etc. In the second part, we discuss select topics, such as the role of local power relations in diffusion processes or the consequences of diffusion for patterns of cultural similarity and difference across the world.
This is the second of two semester-long courses that provide graduate students with an overview of the scholarly study of American politics. G6210 and G6211 constitute the American politics field survey. The field survey is designed for political science doctoral students who intend to specialize in American politics, as well as for those students whose primary interests are comparative politics, international relations, or political theory, but who desire an intensive introduction to the American style of political science. In this course we will cover a range of topics related to American politics that, for the most part, are not covered in G6210. Our focus will be on public opinion and political behavior. The reading assignments are a mix of foundational contributions (i.e. the canons of American politics literature) and recent research. The first part of each seminar session will aim to clarify and probe enduring puzzles, theories, and debates highlighted in the foundational texts. The latter portion of the seminar session will focus on how recent studies contribute to ongoing debates and define the research agenda going forward.
Prerequisites: ANTH G4201 Principles and Applications of Social and Cultural Anthropology and the instructors permission. Focus on research and writing for the Masters level thesis, including research design, bibliography and background literature development, and writing. Prerequisites: ANTH G4201 Principles and Applications of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Prerequisites: the director of graduate studies permission. Corequisites: ECON G6410. Consumer and producer behavior; general competitive equilibrium, welfare and efficiency, behavior under uncertainty, intertemporal allocation and capital theory, imperfect competition, elements of game theory, problems of information, economies with price rigidities.
In all developed countries, the dominant demographic feature of our time is a steady and significant increase in life expectancy. This increase seems to continue unabated. This objective fact that is seen in most developed countries has a major public health implication: How to achieve healthy aging of the general population? This will be one of the main public health challenges facing our health care system in the 21st century. To effectively address this challenge requires that the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, like every leading institution in the country, expand its research effort in the biology of aging. The long-term goals of this research effort should be to achieve a better understanding of age-related degenerative diseases of all kind, of cancers and as a result to propose novel and adapted therapies for these diseases. As part of this broad-based effort aiming at strengthening the study of the cellular, molecular and genetic bases of aging, we need to train the next generation of researchers interested in the biology of aging. The purpose of the graduate course we propose is therefore to expose graduate students to the largely uncharted territory that the biology of aging still is in order to increase the numbers of talented scientists working on the biology of aging. The graduate course we propose will introduce students to invertebrates and vertebrate’s animal models, the cellular and molecular events that occur during aging in various organs, the consequences of the aging process on homeostasis of the entire organism and last but not least, the possible intervention strategies to fight the aging process.
This new class will provide Writing for Film & Television students with a foundational experience in TV Writing in the second semester of their first year at Columbia. They will have studied feature writing in their first semester, and this class will explore how TV is different from the feature form, the unique structure of TV when compared to features, plays, and novels, the key elements of a good TV show and pilot, the different worlds of network and streaming and the current marketplace, how to structure a TV pilot, and how to write and begin revising the pilot episode for an original TV show.
Prerequisites: the director of graduate studies permission. Concept of full employment. Models of underemployment and theory applicability, determinants of consumption and of investment, multiplier and accelerator analysis, an introduction to monetary macroeconomics, the supply side and inflation. Integration of macroeconomics with microeconomic and monetary analysis.
Principles of traditional and emerging sensors, data acquisition and signal processing techniques, experimental modal analysis (input-output), operational modal analysis (output-only), model-based diagnostics of structural integrity, data-based diagnostics of structural integrity, long-term monitoring and intelligent maintenance. Lectures and demonstrations, hands-on laboratory experiments.
Review of random variables. Random process theory: stationary and ergodic processes, correlation functions and power spectra, non-stationary, non-white and non-Gaussian processes. Uncertainty quantification and simulation of environmental excitations and material/media properties, even when subject to limited/incomplete data: joint time-frequency analysis, sparse representations and compressive sampling concepts and tools. Stochastic dynamics and reliability assessment of diverse engineering systems: complex nonlinear/hysteretic behaviors and/or fractional derivative modeling. Emphasis on solution methodologies based on Monte Carlo simulation, statistical linearization, and Wiener path integral. Examples from civil, marine, mechanical and aerospace engineering.
Prerequisites: CHEM GU4221 Atomic and molecular quantum mechanics: fundamentals of electronic structure, many-body wave functions and operators, Hartree-Fock and density functional theory, the Dirac equation.
Prerequisites: ECON G6216 and G6412, or the instructor's permission. This course deals with business cycle theories and methods for evaluating such theories. The course extends the canonical real business cycle model to analyze models with cyclical variation in markups, models of endogenous fluctuations, and models of news-driven short-run fluctuations. Attention is given to numerical methods to approximate the dynamics implied by stochastic general equilibrium models, with particular emphasis given to perturbation methods. The course will also include an operational introduction to full and limited-information approaches to the estimation of DSGE models.
What can we learn from anthropological and ethnographic research in and about a damaged world, a world confronted by the violence and effects of war, climate change, transnational migration, post-industrial abandonment, and the lives and afterlives of colonialism and slavery? What are the ethnographic debates that address the catastrophes produced by capitalism and the lifeforms that emerge out of its ruins? What types of anthropological critique emerge in times enunciated as ‘the end of the world’? And what comes after this end? Ethnographies at the End of the World addresses these questions by paying close attention to some of the most relevant debates in contemporary anthropological theory and anthropological critique. These debates include, among others, discussions on violence and trauma, the politics of life and death, the work of memory and oblivion, and the material entanglements between human and non-human forms of existence. The aim of this seminar is to generate a discussion around the multiple implications of these theoretical arrangements and how anthropologists deploy them in their ethnographic understandings of the world we live in. In doing so, this course provides students with a fundamental understanding and conceptual knowledge about how anthropologists use and produce theory, and how this theoretical production is mobilized as a social critique. This course is reading intensive and operates in the form of a seminar. It is intended, primarily, for MA students in the department of anthropology and graduate students in other departments.
This seminar surveys the defining political economy issues of our time. It explores the interplay between politics and economics in the substantive issue areas of economic growth, industrial capitalist development, social welfare and inequality, financial crisis, and global migration. The seminar surveys the most provocative and influential contributions across multiple fields of study, drawing on a wide range of research methods. The course equips students with the conceptual and empirical tools to better understand current developments, provides exposure to multiple perspectives, and builds confidence in developing one’s own point of view. The course wraps up with a shared exploration of how political economy shapes the lives of marginalized communities.
This course provides an advanced introduction to core theories of international relations and their application to real-world policymaking in a global context. Students will examine foundational and contemporary analytical frameworks, including realism, liberalism, constructivism, game theory, selectorate theory, decision-making models, two-level game theory, and complex interdependence. Through a structured combination of lectures, discussions, and collaborative group analysis, students will apply these theories to contemporary global issues, with a focus on the U.S.–China relationship. The course culminates in a two-session policy forum, in which students present theory-based policy analyses they have developed over the semester. Emphasis is placed on practical application, clarity of analysis, and professional presentation.
This seminar is based entirely on the primary sources of Ṣūfism, including the writings of Qushayrī, Nūrī, Muḥāsibī, Sarrāj, Ghazālī, Hujwīrī, Ibn ʿArabī, Suhrawardī, Shaʿrānī, and al-Ḥakīm al-Tirmidhī. We will explore how the leading Ṣūfīs saw themselves and the ways in which they articulated their identity. This is also articulated in the ways they organized their works and constructed the biographies of their ethical exemplars. We will study their major concepts and descriptions of their own experiences, and then theorize their subjective formations as “hermeneutics of the subject.” Inasmuch as this seminar is about how we study and view Ṣūfism, it is also as much about the various ways this conception of the world can inform a basis of a set of critiques of modernity and its epistemologies and practices.
Instructor permission required. Join the waitlist in Vergil to request registration.
This is a course for thoughtful people who wish to influence actual policy outcomes related to sustainability challenges in major cities. Its objective is not to provide a primer on urban sustainability solutions; this is readily available from textbooks and will change by the time you are in a position to act. Rather, the course’s objective is to prepare you for the kind of challenges that will face you as a policy practitioner in the field of urban sustainability. Cities are increasingly recognized as a key level of government for environmental and sustainability policy. As at all levels, politics and policy are intensely intertwined, and perhaps more so at the local level because the decisions involved often affect constituents directly and intimately --in their neighborhoods, in their homes, in their commutes. This reading-heavy colloquium explores the politics and the policy of urban sustainability from the perspective of someone who wishes to effect change. It culminates in a team project in which students act as a sustainability policy team in a mayoral (or equivalent) office in one of the world’s major cities. The course considers key components of the city itself, with the objective of understanding what shapes the city and its impact on the environment. It mainly uses case studies from the twentieth-century United States, paired with international readings to allow a comparison with other experiences. The focus on deep case studies allows the consideration of the situations, constraints, and political dynamics of specific situations. It is intended to provide students with the ability to recognize patterns in urban political and policy dynamics related to sustainability. These are paired with an overview of leading solutions and how the professor believes practitioners should evaluate them for their own cities. The course also prominently features in-class presentations and discussions of the students’ main project: a team-based memo making a specific recommendation to solve a problem in a specific major world city, which is presented twice, once for a diagnosis of the problem in a given city and a second time with a policy recommendation. This project is the major portion of the overall grade for the class, and is used to allow the students to wrestle with the challenge of turning ideas from past and present into successful urban sustainability policies that can get implemented in a
This course is designed to explore nontraditional structures for the theater and beyond. We will read plays, stories, theories and watch movies that all utilize and explore nontraditional narrative structures. We will then write our own plays. Through small writing in the beginning of the semester, we will be looking at how story and structure work together to make drama. You will also find structure that excite you and you will write a final play using a structure of your choice. The course will also explore kinds of story, genre, and geometry of story.
MPA Financial Management I Core.
This course provides a practical introduction to budgeting as a critical tool for planning, decision-making, and leadership across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. Students will develop hands-on skills in budget creation, financial analysis, and cash flow management while exploring how budgets shape organizational strategy and operations.
Vacuum basics, deposition methods, nucleation and growth, epitaxy, critical thickness, defects properties, effect of deposition procedure, mechanical properties, adhesion, interconnects, and electromigration.
MPA Financial Management II Core.
This course introduces students to budgeting and financial management in the public sector, with an emphasis on real-world application and analytical skill development. Drawing on current and historical challenges—including the 2008 financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic—students will explore the political, technical, and managerial dimensions of public budgeting in the United States.
Topics include the structure and function of operating and capital budgets, principles of revenue generation, deficit spending, and debt financing. Students will work with actual federal, state, and local budgets, gaining experience in constructing, analyzing, and presenting budgets in a government context. By the end of the course, students will be able to evaluate budget proposals and make data-informed recommendations grounded in public policy goals and financial feasibility.
Prerequisites: ECON G6211 and ECON G6212. This course provides an overview of topics in industrial organization (IO) economics. Its goals are to survey the main outlines of modern IO, to develop key theoretical ideas, to demonstrate important techniques, to link theory to empirical work, and to relate theoretical and empirical results to policy issues. Empirical two-period models. Empirical single-agent and multiple-agent dynamic models.
Prerequisites: ECON G6211 and ECON G6212. This is an empirical course comprised of two parts. The first part examines single agent dynamics, and multi-agent dynamics (dynamic games). Both methodological advances and empirical applications will be discussed. Some of the topics that will be covered include: investment and replacement problems, durable goods, consumer learning, price dispersion and search costs, learning by doing, and networks and switching costs. There will be a strong focus on estimation details of dynamic oligopoly models. The second part of the course will review empirical models of imperfect information including auctions, moral hazard, and adverse selection.
MPA Financial Management II Core.
This course introduces nonprofit and social enterprise finance, financial management, and budgeting. The course is practical and hands-on. The course will examine how financial management principles assist nonprofit and social enterprise leaders make operating, program, and long-term financial and strategic decisions. Students will learn underlying concepts and practical skills through readings, discussions, Case Studies, and assignments. The course is designed to give students a range of core financial and managerial skills that are especially relevant to students who want to go on to establish, manage, or work in nonprofit organizations or social enterprises.
This course introduces the students to the field of Organizational Economics. We combine theoretical and empirical methods to study the nature, design, and performance of organizations. Organizations, such as firms, bureaucracies, and political parties, live in a second-best world, where inefficiencies are inevitable. Our goal is to understand and measure these inefficiencies, study their causes and how to minimize them. This course is divided in two parts of equal length. The first part introduces a few of the main theoretical models and findings from the organizational-economics literature. The second part focuses on how to bring the models to the data. By design, the course is intended for a broad set of students: those who are theoretically inclined, those who are empirically inclined, and those who are both. Many of the tools and skills that are developed in this course will be useful not only within organizational economics but, more broadly, to other fields such as industrial organization, political economy, development economics. Our ultimate goal is to accelerate the students' transition toward conducting their own independent research.
MPA Financial Management Core II.
This course provides students with a foundational understanding of financial accounting, with an emphasis on interpreting financial statements. Students will study the three core financial statements—the balance sheet, income statement, and statement of cash flows—and learn the accounting principles and rules that shape how financial data is recorded and presented.
Through hands-on exercises and case examples from service, manufacturing, and retail operations, students will learn to apply double-entry bookkeeping, distinguish between key accounting treatments such as capitalizing and expensing, and evaluate how management’s assumptions and estimates influence reported outcomes. The course aims to build financial fluency for policy professionals and prepare students to critically assess financial information to support evidence-based decision-making.
Affine and projective varieties; schemes; morphisms; sheaves; divisors; cohomology theory; curves; Riemann-Roch theorem.
Ruling powers of various shapes and sizes tend to prosecute those people whom they fear because of their identity, class, craft, or convictions. Often, the object of accusation, inquiry, prosecution, and persecution includes not just one (or more) individual persons, but a set of relationships that these ruling powers see as anathema to the social order they seek to establish or maintain, and on which their power depends. Specters can personify residuals of antediluvian political or cosmological order (heretics and witches, officers of toppled regime, Catholics after the reformation, idolatry trials in the new world, mafiosi after their criminalization, Bundists in Soviet Russia) or emergent forms (emancipated Jews, dissidents, or anarchists). All share that role in social dramas that cast them as enemies of The State, The Church, The People, or Humanity. In this seminar we will begin to explore the array of social rituals, routinized practices (like rumors and media-oriented lynching) and institutions that have been developed specifically in order to name such specters and summon them publicly. We will examine, among others: trials, conspiracy theories (as a mode of recounting a presence that is constantly putting the specter back in), investigative committees, inquisitorial tribunals. We will examine how such social rituals and routinized practices and institutions give us unique opportunities to examine what conceptions of society, of relationships good and evil, and of justice underlie political orders, how they codify and pursue them, and what historical processes these enactments trigger or shape. We’ll focus on cases from early modern and modern societies, with an eye towards the emergence and stabilization of republican order.
Throughout their careers, scientists are expected to communicate their ideas and report their results in writing to the scientific community. Researchers who can make themselves understood tend to get funded, get published, and have more successful careers. PhD graduates who decide to go into STEM fields outside academic research often find scientific communication skills among the most sought after in industry, foundation work, and other areas. In this course, we will explore the choices a writer can make to achieve clarity of thought and clear prose style while communicating complex scientific ideas to other scientists. To that end, we will read examples of scientific writing from the recent literature, consider the strategies used by successful writers, and workshop student writing. All the writing you do in this course will be geared toward producing your written Qualifying Exam in Biological Sciences. By the end of the semester, you will have a complete, revised draft of your written Qualifying Exam.
This seminar will focus on theorizing the particular contours of knowledge production among politically radical African diasporic intellectuals in the twentieth century. We will read some of the key texts of the Black Radical Tradition with particular attention to the relations between politics and poesis, and to the ways that the exigencies of revolutionary social transformation have provoked methodological innovation in historiography. The course is not only meant to serve as an introduction to that tradition of thought, however, but more pointedly as a consideration of the implications of black radicalism for theories of the archive. To this end the class will meet in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and students will be expected to pursue their own hands-on research in some of the relevant holdings at Columbia, including the papers of Hubert Harrison, Alexander Gumby, C. L. R. James, Yuri Kochiyama, and Amiri Baraka. While we will use a variety of archival materials (including scrapbooks, manuscript drafts, typescripts, handwritten notes and outlines, diaries, correspondence, audio and video recordings, photographs, etc.) to contextualize these authors’ published work, our main aim in turning to the collections will be to approach these intellectuals as collectors and archivists themselves, in a manner that highlights their archival practice—their own commitment to historical documentation, classification, and preservation—as integral to their political radicalism.
Prerequisites: degree in biological sciences. Lectures by visiting scientists, faculty, and students; specific biological research projects; with emphasis on evolution, ecology, and conservation biology.
This proseminar, which meets alternate weeks for the full academic year, is required for third-year PhD students in the Department of English and Comparative Literature. The seminar will help you prepare for orals, develop your dissertation ideas, expand your research skills, produce articles for publication, and generally extend your professional skills. While we will read some practical “how to” literature and models, the focus will be on writing, workshopping material, and discussing process (time-management, organization, etc). Both out-of-class assignments and in-class writing exercises should serve to extend your ideas—or shake them loose—and bring you closer to a dissertation that represents your vision, makes others want to read your work, and reminds you why you care. By the end of the year, you will have a polished dissertation prospectus and should have submitted at least one article for publication (or have one close-to-ready for submission). Above all, the seminar offers a supportive community, an opportunity to try out ideas (cooked or still raw), and encouragement from your fellow scholar-writer-thinkers as you progress toward your orals and dissertation.