Prerequisites: (PSYC UN1001) Instructor permission required. A seminar for advanced undergraduate students exploring different areas of clinical psychology. This course will provide you with a broad overview of the endeavors of clinical psychology, as well as discussion of its current social context, goals, and limitations.
Presently, suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STBs) are on the rise, particularly among racially and
ethnically minoritized youth. The seminar is designed to enhance understanding of: (a)
prevalence, (b) etiology, (c) risk factors (d) mechanisms (e.g., phenotypes and biological
markers), (e) prevention and treatment approaches, and (f) ethical considerations
From its origins, and to the present, marriage has been transactional, arranged, and rarely concerned with the desires or interests of the wife. In the eighteenth-century, and especially through the genre of the novel, women began to insist on right to choose their spouse, and the possibility of marrying for love. Perversely, it is at this point that the descriptions of some of the most disastrous and repressive marriages enter literature, and in the twentieth century film. If “the course of true love never did run smooth” this seminar follows its path, investigating the shifts and transformations of marriage. While the focus of the seminar will be on women, we will also consider men, same-sex marriage, questions of marriage and race in the United States, and marriage in China.
This course will focus on one topic at the intersection of cognitive science and philosophy. Potential topics include free will, consciousness, modularity, mental representation, probabilistic inference, the language of thought, and the computational theory of mind.
Prerequisites: 20th Century Art recommended. The artistic phenomenon that came to be called Modernism is generally considered one of the most pivotal in the history of late nineteenth and twentieth century art. This course studies the emergence and development of Modernism in all of its complexity. Particular attention will be paid to the ways in which Modern artists responded to the dramatically changing notions of space, time and dimension in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. What impact did these dramatic changes have on existing concepts of representation? What challenges did they pose for artists? To what extent did Modernism contribute to an understanding of the full consequences of these new ideas of time and space? These concerns will lead us to examine some of the major critical and historical accounts of modernism in the arts as they were developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The course will focus specifically on the interrelationships between modernism and the expanding mass cultural formations of the industrial societies in Europe to address a wide range of historical and methodological questions. These include the emergence of modernism in the arts, the collapse of previous modes of representation, the development of new technologies of cultural production, the elaboration of the utopian projects of the avant-gardes, the unfolding of abstract art, the materialization of the readymade, as well as the transformation of concepts of artistic autonomy and cultural institutions. We will first investigate key modernist concepts developed in the late nineteenth century, as well as the crucial work of some of the artists of that moment. This will lead to an examination of the unfolding and consolidation of Cubism in the first decade of the twentieth century, followed by the development of Synthetic Cubism early in the 1910s. The third part of the course will study the impact of Cubism on artistic production in the following decade, focusing primarily on the Italian artists of Futurism, the German avant-garde in the context of Weimar culture, Dadaism, and the Russian and Soviet avant-gardes in the 1910s and 1920’s
Race has served as an enduring organizing principle of American politics. This course will
survey how race shapes politics and how politics shapes race in the United States. In the first of
the semester, we focus on the political processes and institutions that “make” race and
interrogate what we mean exactly when we say race is socially constructed. In the second half of
the semester, we turn to looking at how racialized groups engage in politics on multiple fronts,
paying particular attention to electoral politics and social movements. Throughout the course,
we grapple with both the challenges to and possibilities of diversity and racial justice in the
contemporary America. Topics include but are not limited to political representation, voting,
intersectionality, citizenship, immigration, community activisms, and solidarity.
Welcome to "Global Authoritarianism." Over the past two decades, scholars and policymakers have grown increasingly alarmed about the state of democracy worldwide. Freedom House, V-Dem, and other monitoring organizations have documented what many call a "democratic recession" in which authoritarian governance is expanding globally while the number of democracies shrinks and democratic institutions within liberal democracies weaken. This purely domestic framing, however, misses how authoritarian states now cooperate with and learn from one another, project power across borders into democracies, exploit the openness of democratic societies, and actively reshape international institutions and norms to serve their interests. Authoritarianism has gone global.
In this course, we will analyze the mechanisms, tools, and strategies that authoritarian states use to extend their reach beyond their borders and push back against the liberal international order. We also confront an uncomfortable reality: many of the networks, institutions, and professional services that enable authoritarian power are actually embedded within democracies themselves, including law firms, lobbyists, financial centers, think tanks, global media outlets and sports leagues based in New York, London and other democratic locations.
Guided exploration of chemistry research using modern library resources. Topics include: organization and evaluation of information, information ethics, the history of citation, and use of databases. Culminates in the creation of an online research guide on a specific chemistry topic, using a variety of carefully considered and annotated sources.
What is the relationship of the production of scientific knowledge to Black life in the Americas? What can thinking that arises out of the intellectual traditions of Black Studies contribute to our understandings of the many genres of science (social, physical, earth, life) and their relationship to justice? Building from these essential questions, this course offers a framework for considering the ways that canonical sciences have constrained, categorized, and delimited Black lives, exploring such themes as: technoscientific constructions of race difference, epigenetic theories about the heritability of trauma, histories of biomedical experimentation, the long durée of eugenicist thinking, and the relationship of racialized (and gendered) bodies to their environments. We will also explore scientific scripts emergent from “below,” like: folk healing, speculative fictions, and Black nationalist origin stories, that have and continue to be sources of imaginative and emancipatory promise. In addition to developing the capacity to read widely across genres of science and critical studies thereof, students will develop skills in the deconstruction and speculative refiguring of scientific discourse.
This course provides an introduction to the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP) at an undergraduate level. We will discuss properties of human language at different levels of representation (morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics), and will learn how to create systems that can analyze, understand, and generate natural language. We will study machine learning methods used in NLP such as various forms of Neural networks and will focus particularly on conceptual and technical advances of frontier Large Language Models based NLP technologies (think ChatGPT) that are revolutionizing classical computational linguistics and NLP fields. We will also discuss applications such as question answering, summarization, language generation and as well as data, benchmarks and evaluation frameworks. We will discuss ethical aspects of NLP research and applications. Homework assignments will consist of programming projects in Python as well as written interpretation and analysis of the results. Class will also have a midterm and a mini final project instead of a final exam. Prerequisite(s): COMS W3134 or W3136 or W3137 (or equivalent). Background in probability/statistics and linear algebra is also required and experience with Python programming is strongly encouraged. Some previous or concurrent exposure to AI and machine learning is beneficial, but not required.
Please note: Due to significant overlap in content, only one of COMS BC3705 or COMS W4705 may be taken for credit.
This course explores techniques to harness the power of “big data” to answer questions related to political science and/or American politics. We will teach students how to use R—a popular open-source programming language—to obtain, clean, analyze, and visualize data. We will focus on applied problems using real data wherever possible, with a particular focus on R’s “Tidyverse.” In total, in this course we will cover concepts such as reading data in various formats (including “cracking” atypical government data sources and pdf documents); web scraping; data joins; data manipulation and cleaning (including string variables and regular expressions); data mining; making effective data visualizations; using data to make informed prediction, and basic text analysis. We will also cover programming basics including writing functions and loops in R. Finally, we will discuss how to use R Markdown to communicate our results effectively to outside audiences. No previous knowledge of R is required.
Students who wish to do an independent study project (I.S.P.), should speak with a Political Science faculty member willing to serve as sponsor, then fill out a Request for Approval of Credit for Independent Study (see Registrars link below) and obtain signatures from the sponsor and from our Department Chair. File this form with the Committee on Programs and Academic Standing, which must approve all requests. (It must be filed with the C.P.A.S. well before the Registrars program-filing deadline for the semester of the I.S.P.) Note that no credit is given for an internship or job experience in or by itself, but credit is given for an academic research paper written in conjunction with an internship, subject to the procedures outlined above. The internship and the I.S.P. can be in the same semester, or you may do the I.S.P. in the semester following the internship. A project approved for three or four points counts as an elective course for the purpose of the ten-course major or five-course minor requirement. No more than two such three- or four-point projects may be used for the major, and no more than one for the minor. An independent study project may not be used to satisfy either the colloquium or senior seminar requirement. Each instructor is limited to sponsoring one independent study project per semester. The Registrar will assign a POLS BC 3799 section and call number unique to the faculty sponsor. The Registrars ISP form: http://www.barnard.edu/sites/default/files/inline/indstudy.pdf. The Political Science faculty: http://polisci.barnard.edu/faculty-directory.
Students who wish to do an independent study project (I.S.P.), should speak with a Political Science faculty member willing to serve as sponsor, then fill out a Request for Approval of Credit for Independent Study (see Registrars link below) and obtain signatures from the sponsor and from our Department Chair. File this form with the Committee on Programs and Academic Standing, which must approve all requests. (It must be filed with the C.P.A.S. well before the Registrars program-filing deadline for the semester of the I.S.P.) Note that no credit is given for an internship or job experience in or by itself, but credit is given for an academic research paper written in conjunction with an internship, subject to the procedures outlined above. The internship and the I.S.P. can be in the same semester, or you may do the I.S.P. in the semester following the internship. A project approved for three or four points counts as an elective course for the purpose of the ten-course major or five-course minor requirement. No more than two such three- or four-point projects may be used for the major, and no more than one for the minor. An independent study project may not be used to satisfy either the colloquium or senior seminar requirement. Each instructor is limited to sponsoring one independent study project per semester. The Registrar will assign a POLS BC 3799 section and call number unique to the faculty sponsor. The Registrars ISP form: http://www.barnard.edu/sites/default/files/inline/indstudy.pdf. The Political Science faculty: http://polisci.barnard.edu/faculty-directory.
Guided, independent, in-depth research culminating in the senior thesis in the spring. Includes discussion about scientific presentations and posters, data analysis, library research methods and scientific writing. Students review work in progress and share results through oral reports. Weekly seminar to review work in progress and share results through oral and written reports.
What is punishment, and what might attention to punitive practices teach us about the cultures in which they are used? Modern American culture is so saturated with punishment that it is difficult to know where to begin such an investigation. From childhood education to mass incarceration and from the crafting of financial futures to the training of horses and dogs, punishment is ubiquitous and often unquestioned. In many cases, punishment is the thread that connects allegedly disparate institutions and produces allegedly unforeseen forms of violence. In this course we will question both the practice and its prevalence, combining a genealogy of the concept with case studies in its modern use.
Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 12 students. Permission of the instructor required. Interested students should complete the application at:
https://bit.ly/AFEN3815
. A poet, performance artist, playwright and novelist, Shange’s stylistic innovations in drama, poetry and fiction and attention to the untold lives of black women have made her an influential figure throughout American arts and in feminist history. We will examine Shange’s works through the dual lenses of “embodied knowledge” and historical context. In conjunction with our multidisciplinary analysis of primary texts, students will be introduced to archival research in Ntozake Shange’s personal archive at Barnard College. Thus the seminar provides an in-depth exploration of Shange's work and milieu as well as an introduction to digital tools, public research and archival practice. Students should have taken a course beyond the intro level from ONE of the following areas: American Literature (through the English Department), Africana Studies, American Studies, Theatre or Women's Studies. You can find more information and apply for the course at
https://bit.ly/AFEN3815
.
This course provides a panoramic, but intensive, inquiry into the ways that archaeology and its methods for understanding the world have been marshaled for debate in issues of public interest. It is designed to examine claims to knowledge of the past through the lenses of alternative epistemologies and a series of case-based problems that range from the academic to the political, legal, cultural, romantic, and fraudulent.
Prerequisites: Open to undergrad majors; others with the instructors permission. Across a range of cultural and historic contexts, one encounters traces of bodies - and persons - rendered absent, invisible, or erased. Knowledge of the ghostly presence nevertheless prevails, revealing an inextricable relationship between presence and absence. This course addresses the theme of absent bodies in such contexts as war and other memorials, clinical practices, and industrialization, with interdisciplinary readings drawn from anthropology, war and labor histories, and dystopic science fiction.
This seminar explores how psychological theory and research—particularly from social, cognitive, and developmental psychology—can illuminate, inform, and challenge legal institutions, practices, norms, and debates. The course examines how people think about, interact with, and are affected by the legal system in roles such as defendants, jurors, judges, lawyers, and citizens. Topics include legal decision-making, responsibility and intent, bias and discrimination, forensic assessment, mental illness and legal capacity, eyewitness testimony, interrogations and false confessions, punishment, and stigma.
We will consider how psychological insights help explain how the law operates in practice and critically assess how legal policies align with—or diverge from—psychological evidence. While grounded in psychological science, the course also draws on interdisciplinary work from law and legal scholarship, sociology, public health, and neuroscience. We will read empirical studies and legal analyses that address psychological issues relevant to the law. The principal goal is to understand the legal system not only as a body of rules, but as a human institution shaped by cognitive, emotional, and social dynamics.
Over the course of the semester we will (1) analyze how core concepts in psychology apply to legal contexts; (2) assess psychological studies by examining the strength of their research design and considering their implications for legal concepts and practices; (3) examine how developmental, cognitive, and affective processes affect legal decision-making; (4) identify and critique the use of psychological evidence in courts and policy debates; and (5) explore how neuroscience is reshaping legal understandings of responsibility, culpability, and sentencing, while critically examining its ethical and evidentiary limitations.
Prerequisites: Enrollment in the course is open to 18 undergraduates who have completed at least one core course in human rights and /or international law. This seminar introduces students to the field of health and human rights. It examines how to advocate for and implement public health strategies using a human rights framework. It takes note of current international and domestic debates about the utility of a ;human rights-based approach; to health, discusses methods and ethics of health-related human rights research, and examines case studies of human rights investigations to explore the role of human rights analysis in promoting public health.
This course focuses on the political ecology of the Anthropocene. As multiple publics become increasingly aware of the extensive and accelerated rate of current global environmental change, and the presence of anthropogenesis in ever expanding circumstances, we need to critically analyze the categories of thought and action being developed in order to carefully approach this change. Our concern is thus not so much the Anthropocene as an immutable fact, inevitable event, or definitive period of time (significant though these are), but rather for the political, social, and intellectual consequences of this important idea. Thus we seek to understand the creativity of The Anthropocene as a political, rhetorical, and social category. We also aim to examine the networks of capital and power that have given rise to the current state of planetary change, the strategies for ameliorating those changes, and how these are simultaneously implicated in the rhetorical creation of The Anthropocene.
This course provides the aspiring anthropologist with an array of primarily qualitative methodological tools essential to successful urban fieldwork. As such, it is a practicum of sorts, where regular field assignments help build one’s ability to record and analyze social behavior by drawing on several key data collection techniques. Because we have the luxury of inhabiting a large, densely populated, international city, this class requires that you take a head-first plunge into urban anthropology. The NYC area will define the laboratory for individually- designed research projects. Be forewarned, however! Ethnographic engagement involves efforts to detect social patterns, but it is often a self-reflexive exercise, too. Readings provide methodological, analytical, and personal insights into the skills, joys, and trials that define successful field research.
Prerequisites: Limited to Barnard Anthropology Seniors. Offered every Fall. Discussion of research methods and planning and writing of a Senior Essay in Anthropology will accompany research on problems of interest to students, culminating in the writing of individual Senior Essays. The advisory system requires periodic consultation and discussion between the student and her adviser as well as the meeting of specific deadlines set by the department each semester. Limited to Barnard Senior Anthropology Majors.
How did European-Christians justify the colonization of the Americas? Did these justifications vary between different European empires, and between the Protestant and Catholic faiths, and if so, how? Do these justifications remain in effect in modern jurisprudence and ministries? This class explores these questions by introducing students to the Doctrine of Discovery. The Doctrine of Discovery is the defining legal rationale for European Colonization in the Western Hemisphere. The Doctrine has its origins in a body of ecclesiastic, legal, and philosophical texts dating to the late-fifteenth century, and was summarized by Chief Justice John Marshall of the United States Supreme Court, in the final, unanimous decision the judiciary issued on the 1823 case
Johnson v. M’Intosh.
Students will be introduced to the major, primary texts that make up the Doctrine, as well as contemporary critical studies of these texts and the Doctrine in general.
Prerequisites: the instructors permission. This seminar aims to show what an anthropologically informed, ecocritical cultural studies can offer in this moment of intensifying ecological calamity. The course will not only engage significant works in anthropology, ecocriticism, philosophy, literature, politics, and aesthetics to think about the environment, it will also bring these works into engaged reflection on living in the end times (borrowing cultural critic Slavoj Zizeks phrase). The seminar will thus locate critical perspectives on the environment within the contemporary worldwide ecological crisis, emphasizing the ethnographic realities of global warming, debates on nuclear power and energy, and the place of nature. Drawing on the professors long experience in Japan and current research on the aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster, the seminar will also take care to unpack the notion of end times, with its apocalyptic implications, through close considerations of works that take on the question of ecocatastrophe in our times. North American and European perspectives, as well as international ones (particularly ones drawn from East Asia), will give the course a global reach.
Computer Science majors at Barnard can choose to pursue a year-long senior research thesis for their senior experience. A senior thesis is intended to be a substantial piece of work in which the student engages in independent and original research. They should register for two semesters of research projects in CS through their faculty advisor’s home department (Barnard or Columbia), each for at least 3 credits (one in Fall and one in the Spring). They should additionally register for this course. The main goal is to provide students with a venue to discuss their senior thesis projects with each other. In the seminar, students learn how to communicate and present their work. They also become more familiar with other students’ areas of research and other types of research projects that fall under the umbrella of computer science. The seminar sometimes also features guest speakers in various areas of CS; students participate and engage in discussion with the speaker, further developing their research communication skills. The instructor of this course functions as a secondary advisor for the students’ projects. At the end of the academic year, the students present their projects to the CS community at Barnard.
The purpose of this precept is to read short selections of the readings for this course in the original Italian, closely comparing these texts with their English counterparts. Attention will be paid to stylistic, syntactical, and grammatical characteristics of both languages, carefully considering questions of tone, register, cadence, idiomatic expressions, archaisms, and other elements of the translator’s task. In addition to discussing the readings, we will work in class on translating specific passages from Italian into English. Depending on the makeup of the class, the discussions will take place either fully in Italian or in a mix of Italian and English.
“In Italy, literary fiction has long been considered a man’s game.” So began a
2019 New York Times article discussing the growing international attention being
paid to Italian women writers, particuarly on the heels of Elena Ferrante’s
phenomenal global success. This course will center the female voice and
subjectivity in the Italian literary tradition, with a focus on celebrated prose writers
active from the early twentieth century to the present. Some, recently republished
and reconsidered for the Italian market, have also been re-translated and re-
introduced to a wider English readership. We will trace the reception of female
authors within the Italian critical establishment and abroad, and the role
translation might play in broadening and amplifying their reputation and reach.
We will focus on one author per week, paying special attention to themes of
resistance, rebellion, and self-fashioning. All readings will be in English.
The Senior Thesis Seminar is a one-semester requirement for all Barnard College students majoring in Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures (AMEC). This is a working research seminar devoted to helping students produce a substantive piece of writing that will eventually be part of their senior thesis project, the culmination of their work in the major. Students will participate in the seminar as thesis writers and as peer editors. In addition to working with the instructor in the seminar, students will also consult with a faculty member who specializes in the student's area of interest within the AMEC department.
Prerequisites: Permission of the departmental representative required. For specially selected students, the opportunity to do a research problem in contemporary physics under the supervision of a faculty member. Each year several juniors are chosen in the spring to carry out such a project beginning in the autumn term. A detailed report on the research is presented by the student when the project is complete.
See the Barnard and Columbia Architecture Department's website for the course description:
https://architecture.barnard.edu/architecture-department-course-descriptions
Discussion of senior research projects during the fall and spring terms that culminate in written and oral senior theses. Each project must be supervised by a cognitive scientist working at Barnard or Columbia.
Prerequisites: The written permission of the faculty member who agrees to act as sponsor (sponsorship limited to full-time instructors on the staff list), as well as the permission of the Director of Undergraduate Studies. The written permission must be deposited with the Director of Undergraduate Studies before registration is completed. Guided reading and study in mathematics. A student who wishes to undertake individual study under this program must present a specific project to a member of the staff and secure his or her willingness to act as sponsor. Written reports and periodic conferences with the instructor.
Supervising Readings do NOT count towards major requirements, with the exception of an advanced written approval by the DUS.
Prerequisites: SOCI BC1003 or equivalent social science course and permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15 students. Drawing examples from popular music, religion, politics, race, and gender, explores the interpretation, production, and reception of cultural texts and meanings. Topics include aesthetic distinction and taste communities, ideology, power, and resistance; the structure and functions of subcultures; popular culture and high culture; and ethnography and interpretation.
Corequisites: CHEM BC3901 Guided research in Chemistry or Biochemistry, under the sponsorship of a faculty member, leading to the senior thesis. A minimum of 8 hours of research per week, to be arranged.
Corequisites: CHEM BC3901 Guided research in Chemistry or Biochemistry, under the sponsorship of a faculty member, leading to the senior thesis. A minimum of 8 hours of research per week, to be arranged.
Examines how changes in the economy, racial composition, and class relations affect community life-how it is created, changed and sometimes lost-with a specific focus on the local urban context. Student research projects will address how contemporary forces such as neoliberalization, gentrification and tourism impact a communitys social fabric.
Comparative, cross-cultural examination of social organization and historical construction of human reproduction, with emphasis on 20th century. Topics include role of states and local and transnational "stratification" of reproduction by race, class, and citizenship; eugenics; population politics; birth control; kinship as social and biological relationship; maternity; paternity; new reproductive technologies.
Examines the historical and contemporary social, economic, and political factors that shape immigration law and policy along with the social consequences of those laws and policies. Addresses the development and function of immigration law and aspects of the immigration debate including unauthorized immigration, anti-immigration sentiments, and critiques of immigration policy.
Required of senior majors, but also open to junior majors, and junior and senior concentrators who have taken at least four philosophy courses. This exploration will typically involve writing a substantial research paper. Capped at 20 students with preference to philosophy majors.
This course considers formations of gender, sexuality, and power as they circulate transnationally, as well as transnational feminist and queer movements that have emerged to address contemporary gendered and sexual inequalities. Topics include political economy, global care chains, sexuality, sex work and trafficking, feminist and queer politics, and human rights. If it is a small world after all, how do forces of globalization shape and redefine the relationship between gender, sexuality, and powerful institutions like the state? And, if power swirls everywhere, how are transnational power dynamics reinscribed in gendered bodies? How is the body represented in discussions of nationalism and in the political economy of globalization? These questions will frame this course by highlighting how gender, sexuality, and power coalesce to impact the lives of individuals in various spaces including workplaces, the academy, the home, religious institutions, the government, and civil society, and human rights organizations. This course will enable us to think transnationally, historically, and dynamically, using gender and sexuality as lenses through which to critique relations of power and the ways that power informs our everyday lives and subjectivities.
This research and writing-intensive seminar is designed for senior majors with a background and interest in the sociology of gender and sexuality. The goal of the seminar is to facilitate completion of the senior requirement (a 25-30 page paper) based on ;hands on; research with original qualitative data. Since the seminar will be restricted to students with prior academic training in the subfield, students will be able to receive intensive research training and guidance through every step of the research process, from choosing a research question to conducting original ethnographic and interview-based research, to analyzing and interpreting ones findings. The final goal of the course will be the production of an original paper of standard journal-article length. Students who choose to pursue their projects over the course of a second semester will have the option of revisiting their articles further for submission and publications.
The age of colonialism, so it seems, is long over. Decolonization has resulted in the emergence of postcolonial polities and societies that are now, in many instances, two generations old. But is it clear that the problem of colonialism has disappeared? Almost everywhere in the postcolonial world the project of building independent polities, economies and societies have faltered, sometimes run aground. Indeed, one might say that the anti-colonial dream of emancipation has evaporated. Through a careful exploration of the conceptual argument and rhetorical style of five central anti-colonial texts—C.L.R. James’ The Black Jacobins, Mahatma Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj, Aimé Cesairé’s Discourse on Colonialism, Albert Memmi’s Colonizer and Colonized, and Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth—this course aims to inquire into the image of colonialism as a structure of dominant power, and the image of its anticipated aftermaths: What were the perceived ill-effects of colonial power? What did colonialism do to the colonized that required rectification? In what ways did the critique of colonial power (the identification of what was wrong with it) shape the longing for its anti-colonial overcoming?
This course studies the genealogy of the prison in Arab culture as manifested in memoirs, narratives, and poems. These cut across a vast temporal and spatial swathe, covering selections from the Quran, Sufi narratives from al-Halllaj oeuvre, poetry by prisoners of war: classical, medieval, and modern. It also studies modern narratives by women prisoners and political prisoners, and narratives that engage with these issues. Arabic prison writing is studied against other genealogies of this prism, especially in the West, to map out the birth of prison, its institutionalization, mechanism, and role. All readings for the course are in English translations.
Ubiquitous computing is creating new canvases and opportunities for creative ideas.
This class explores the use of microprocessors, distributed sensor networks, IoT,
and intermedia systems for the purposes of creative expression. The course is delivered
in a mixed lecture and lab format that introduces the fundamental concepts
and theory behind embedded systems as well as issues particular to their creative
employment. The key objective of the course is for students to conceive of and
implement creative uses of computation.
The seminar component of the Psych/Neuro Senior Thesis Advanced Research program. Students admitted to the research program should plan to take this seminar in the spring of their junior year and in the fall and spring semesters of their senior year. Students are expected to be working in a lab as part of their participation in this program. In addition to supporting students throughout their independent research project, this seminar will introduce students to some of the big questions in the field through its connection with the Psychology Department Colloquium and will train students in reading and evaluating scientific research and communicating their own research findings.
The seminar component of the Psych/Neuro Senior Thesis Advanced Research program. Students admitted to the research program should plan to take this seminar in the spring of their junior year and in the fall and spring semesters of their senior year. Students are expected to be working in a lab as part of their participation in this program. In addition to supporting students throughout their independent research project, this seminar will introduce students to some of the big questions in the field through its connection with the Psychology Department Colloquium and will train students in reading and evaluating scientific research and communicating their own research findings.
Corequisites: Students must have an internship related to social justice or human rights during This class is intended to complement and enhance the internship experience for students working in internships that relate to social justice and human rights during the Spring 2016 semester. This course will meet bi-weekly to provide an academic framing of the issues that students are working on and to provide an opportunity for students to analyze their internship experience.
While the existence of processes of anthropogenic climate change is well established, predictions regarding the future consequences of these processes are far less certain. In no area is the uncertainty regarding near and long term effects as pronounced as in the question of how climate change will affect global migration. This course will address the issue of climate migration in four ways. First, the course will examine the theoretical and empirical literatures that have elucidated the nature of international migration in general. Second, the course will consider the phenomena of anthropogenic climate change as it relates to migration. Third, the course will consider how human rights and other legal regimes do or do not address the humanitarian issues created by anthropogenic climate change. Fourth, the course will synthesize these topics by considering how migration and climate change has arisen as a humanitarian, political, and economic issue in the Pacific. Human Rights elective.
This seminar examines the ways in which the body is discursively constituted, and itself serves as the substratum for social life. Key questions include: How are distinctions made between normal and pathological bodies, and between the psychic and somatic realms? How do historical forces shape bodily experience? How do bodies that are racialized, gendered, and classed offer resistance to social categorization?
In a renewed age of anti-immigrant fervor, the last few years have seen attention focused on people seeking asylum – the process under international law by which people fleeing persecution can seek protection in a country not of their citizenship. New York has become a particular flashpoint with a large influx of asylum seekers, most of them from Latin America. Often, they have arrived on buses sent here by southern governors intending to make the border “problem” that of a so-called “sanctuary city.” How has New York responded? And how does this fit into the city’s long history of refuge?
This course will offer students an introduction to the theory, ethics, and history of the idea of international protection. We will look specifically at how Latin American citizens have engaged with the US asylum system over time and how this engagement has changed the shape of US immigration laws. We will study the origins of the ideas of international protection, who is understood to qualify and why, how the system has changed over time, and what these developments mean for a broader understanding of human rights across borders. We will also take a critical look at asylum, examine ideas of deservingness and innocence and their intersection with categories of race, class and gender, and question what it means for certain people to be constructed as victims and others to be seen as not eligible – or worthy – of protection.
This is an engaged pedagogy course. The class will be organized around a close collaboration with a NY legal organization that has taken on the work of representing many asylum seekers in the city. Students will learn the complexities of US asylum law and will work collectively to use this knowledge, while developing their research skills, to put together reports to be used in active asylum cases.
This course examines the way particular spaces—cultural, urban, literary—serve as sites for the production and reproduction of cultural and political imaginaries. It places particular emphasis on the themes of the polis, the city, and the nation-state as well as on spatial representations of and responses to notions of the Hellenic across time. Students will consider a wide range of texts as spaces—complex sites constituted and complicated by a multiplicity of languages—and ask: To what extent is meaning and cultural identity, sitespecific? How central is the classical past in Western imagination? How have great metropolises such as Paris, Istanbul, and New York fashioned themselves in response to the allure of the classical and the advent of modern Greece? How has Greece as a specific site shaped the study of the Cold War, dictatorships, and crisis?
Culture, technology, and media in contemporary Japan. Theoretical and ethnographic engagements with forms of mass mediation, including anime, manga, video, and cell-phone novels. Considers larger global economic and political contexts, including post-Fukushima transformations. Prerequisites: the instructor's permission.
This course focuses on the long history of Black Americans going (and sometimes returning from) abroad. Our exploration will unfold chronologically from the 19th century to the present day, as we trace our subjects’ myriad reasons for setting out beyond their country’s shores. Each week of the course will be devoted to grappling with a set of travelers and international departures characteristic of a given era, including:
Enslaved people’s quests for freedom
Entertainers, creatives, and scientists’ pursuit of professional opportunities during the era of Jim Crow
Scholars, journalists, and diplomats’ search for knowledge and cultural understanding
Modern nomads and expats’ journeys of self-actualization
Our goal is to consider Black Americans’ evolving relationship to the United States and the world at large.
1-4 points. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Except by special permission of the director of undergraduate studies, no more than 4 points of individual research may be taken in any one term. This includes both PSYC UN3950 and PSYC UN3920. No more than 8 points ofPSYC UN3950 may be applied toward the psychology major, and no more than 4 points toward the concentration. Readings, special laboratory projects, reports, and special seminars on contemporary issues in psychological research and theory.
We make decisions countless times a day. Computational models have been developed that improve our understanding of how these decisions are made. This course is organized in three parts: perceptual decision-making, value-based decision-making, and computational psychiatry. In part one, perceptual decision-making, we will focus on computational models that can capture and explain decisions in perception, such as categorizing an orientation, or discriminating the direction of moving dots, or estimating the magnitude of a stimulus (e.g., time). We will start by laying the foundations of signal detection theory and Bayesian inference under uncertainty and build to models that incorporate confidence ratings and reaction times. In part two, value-based decision-making, we will move on to decisions that incorporate our values (e.g., ‘Should I go out or stay in and study?’, ‘Should I eat a burger or a salad?’). We will learn the basics of a computational modeling framework that captures how we learn values from rewards and punishments, reinforcement learning, as well as about model-free and model-based learning. Lastly, we will learn how impairments in decision-making that occur in psychopathology (e.g., addiction, anorexia nervosa, anxiety) have been conceptualized and quantified in the relatively new field of computational psychiatry.
Advances in artificial intelligence carry potential for both social good and ethical danger. The purpose of this course is to explore both foundational and applied debates in the philosophy of computing, with a focus on machine learning technologies. Drawing from works in philosophy, computer science, literature, and policy, this course will comprehensively examine the conceptual and normative challenges artificial intelligence presents. The course analyzes present-day challenges through the prism of specific technologies and tools, namely predictive analytics, computer vision, and large language models, and also investigates moral and social questions on the horizon, with an eye to how advancements in computing will impact responsibility, moral status, and relationships.
Prerequisites: Course open to Barnard Art History majors only. Independent research for the senior thesis. Students develop and write their senior thesis in consultation with an individual faculty adviser in art history and participate in group meetings scheduled throughout the senior year.
One of the glaring forms of inequalities that persists today is the race-based gap in access to health care, quality of care, and health outcomes. This course examines how institutionalized racism and the structure of health care contributes to the neglect and sometimes abuse of racial and ethnic minorities. Quite literally, how does race affect one’s life chances? This course covers a wide range of topics related to race and health, including: racial inequalities in health outcomes, biases in medical institutions, immigration status and health, racial profiling in medicine, and race in the genomic era.
Prerequisites: minimum GPA of 3.5 in MESAAS courses. The MESAAS honors seminar offers students the opportunity to undertake a sustained research project under close faculty supervision. The DUS advises on general issues of project design, format, approach, general research methodologies, and timetable. In addition, students work with an individual advisor who has expertise in the area of the thesis and can advise on the specifics of method and content. The thesis will be jointly evaluated by the adviser, the DUS, and the honors thesis TA. The DUS will lead students through a variety of exercises that are directly geared to facilitating the thesis. Students build their research, interpretive, and writing skills; discuss methodological approaches; write an annotated bibliography; learn to give constructive feedback to peers and respond to feedback effectively. The final product is a polished research paper in the range of 40-60 pages. Please note: This is a one-year course that begins in the fall semester (1 point) and continues through the spring semester (3 points). Only students who have completed both semesters will receive the full 4 points of credit.
This course provides students with an introduction to the study of genocide.
In this class, we will take a
critical approach
to understanding genocide, meaning:
we will try to avoid easy moralizing and distancing of genocide;
we won’t take existing legal and political definitions of genocide for granted; and
we will think about
power
in relation to genocide perpetration and prevention.
Our strategy will be
interdisciplinary
, meaning:
we will explore the ways historians, psychologist, lawyers, political scientists, and others have tried to understand genocide; and
we will reflect on the limits on what and how we can know about genocide as a human experience.
This course aspires to be
practical
and
applied
, meaning
this course fundamentally
anti-genocidal
in its purpose, and
students will have the opportunity to contribute to and/or develop practical efforts commemorate, advocate against, or prevent the perpetration of genocide.
This seminar aims to provide students in the post-baccalaureate certificate program with opportunities 1) to (re-)familiarize themselves with a selection of major texts from classical antiquity, which will be read in English, 2) to become acquainted with scholarship on these texts and with scholarly writing in general, 3) to write analytically about these texts and the interpretations posed about them in contemporary scholarship, and 4) to read in the original language selected passages of one of the texts in small tutorial groups, which will meet every week for an additional hour with members of the faculty.
This seminar aims to provide students in the post-baccalaureate certificate program with opportunities 1) to (re-)familiarize themselves with a selection of major texts from classical antiquity, which will be read in English, 2) to become acquainted with scholarship on these texts and with scholarly writing in general, 3) to write analytically about these texts and the interpretations posed about them in contemporary scholarship, and 4) to read in the original language selected passages of one of the texts in small tutorial groups, which will meet every week for an additional hour with members of the faculty.
Contemporary exhibitions studied through a selection of great shows from roughly 1969 to the present that defined a generation. This course will not offer practical training in curating; rather it will concentrate on the historical context of exhibitions, the theoretical basis for their argument, the criteria for the choice in artists and their work, and exhibitions internal/external reception.