This course provides an interdisciplinary perspective on Native peoples of present-day New York and New England and their interactions with colonial empires (French, Spanish, British, US). Most of the reading will be by Native authors. In order to provide a firm historical foundation for understanding the dynamics of Indigenous and colonial history our emphasis will be on the period between European settlement and the nineteenth century. Coverage will not be exhaustive; there are too many Native nations in this region for that to be possible. Our focus rather will be on major turning points in Native history which have become flashpoints for controversy among scholars and in the broader public sphere: the relationship between Native nations and Pilgrims, King Philip’s War, the so-called Indian Great Awakening, and others. The course will cover topics in literary and religious history, politics, law, and anthropology, and should appeal to students in any of those fields, while providing an introduction to the history and methods of Indigenous Studies.
Beginning in the 1980s, border crossing became an academic rage in the humanities and the social sciences. This was a consequence of globalization, an historical process that reconfigured the boundaries between economy, society, and culture; and it was also a primary theme of post-modernist aesthetics, which celebrated playful borrowing of multiple and diverse historical references. Within that frame, interest in the US-Mexican border shifted dramatically. Since that border is the longest and most intensively crossed boundary between a rich and a poor country, it became a paradigmatic point of reference. Places like Tijuana or El Paso, with their rather seedy reputation, had until then been of interest principally to local residents, but they now became exemplars of post-modern “hybridity,” and were meant to inspire the kind of transnational scholarship that is required in today’s world. Indeed, the border itself became a metaphor, a movable imaginary boundary that marks ethnic and racial distinction in American and Mexican cities. This course is an introduction to the historical formation of the US-Mexican border.
From the Daoist philosophical text Zhuangzi to the famous novel The Journey to the West, the "fantastic" has always been part of Chinese literature that pushes human imagination and questions the boundary of reality. Readers and writers created fantastic beasts (though not always knowing where to find them), passed down ghost stories, rationalized bizarre occurrences, and dismissed, sometimes embraced, tales that could potentially subvert their established framework of knowledge. The fantastic is also historically and culturally contingent. What one regards as fantastic reveals more about the perceiving subjects---their values, judgment, anxiety, identity, and cultural burdens. How do fantastic texts problematize the definition of humanity? How does the fantastic complicate our understanding of narrative, truth, and epistemology? How did premodern Chinese writers use the fantastic to approach and propose solutions to pressing social issues? Using “fantastic” literature as a critical lens, this course takes a thematic approach to the masterpieces of Chinese literature from the first millennium BCE up until late imperial China. The topics that we will explore include shifting human/non-human boundaries, representations of the foreign land (also the “underworld”), the aestheticization of female ghosts, and the fantastic as social criticism and allegory. All materials and discussions are in English.
The point is to examine democracy not as a political system, but as a historical phenomenon characterized by a specific culture: a body of ideas and values, stories and myths. This culture is not homogenous; it has a variety of historical manifestations through the ages but remains nonetheless cohesive. The objective is twofold: 1) to determine which elements in democratic culture remain fundamental, no matter what form they take in various historical instances; 2) to understand that the culture of democracy is indeed not abstract and transcendental but historical, with its central impetus being the interrogation and transformation of society. Special emphasis will be placed on the crisis of democratic institutions in the era of globalization and, as specific case-study in point, the democratic failure in the Mediterranean region in light of the challenges of the assembly movements (Spain, Greece, Arab Spring) and the current migrant/refugee 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.
Prerequisites: EEEB UN1011 or the equivalent. Critical in-depth evaluation of selected issues in primate socioecology, including adaptationism, sociality, sexual competition, communication, kinship, dominance, cognition, and politics. Emphasizes readings from original literature.
The concepts of democratic backsliding, regime cycles (between oligarchy and populism, democracy and dictatorship), hybrid regimes and reverse waves, were devised with regard to newly democratized and/or insufficiently institutionalized democratic regimes. Yet today even long consolidated, wealthy western democracies seem to be at risk. This course will focus on the case of the United States. While domestic and external threats to American constitutional democracy are not new, there is widespread concern today that both liberal constitutionalism and American democracy are at grave risk. Our inquiry will involve an in-depth study of the political theory and American politics literature on the relevant concepts and dynamics. In the first part of the course, we will discuss the basic concepts and theories regarding democracy, oligarchy, constitutionalism and regime cycles developed in classical and early modern political thought. The second part of the course will focus on the U.S., the oldest constitutional representative democracy and typically deemed the exemplar of a successfully consolidated democratic regime. We analyze the processes, dynamics, reversals and limits to democratization in the US focusing on key tipping points from the founding to the present. Our focus will be on four sets of factors and modes of explanation for the relevant shifts: constitutional, political, socio-cultural, and economic. We conclude with analysis of the contemporary conjuncture and current threats to American constitutional democracy.
This course is a seminar for seniors to either write a formal proposal for a capstone project or to begin the research process for a Senior Thesis, which will be written in the Spring semester. This interdisciplinary course provides the necessary structure needed to complete either goal. This will be an interactive class in which students are required to participate and actively engage in each meeting.
This course explores the interdisciplinary challenges of establishing a human society on Mars. Students explore a number of challenges that are involved in reaching the Red Planet and setting up a functional social habitat for the long term. This includes both the numerous logistical hurdles of traveling to and surviving on Mars, as well as the social, political, and ethical considerations of establishing a new society on the planet. Through analysis and discussion of scientific research, social science texts, and popular media, students will gain a deep understanding of the physiological, psychological, and strategic challenges of long-duration space travel and human habitation on another planet.
The course is not scientific or overly technical in nature. Instead, the perspective being adopted is that of a social scientist seeking to understand how humans can travel to another planet and live together. The first half of the course focuses on the practical, physiological, and psychological challenges of traveling to and surviving on Mars while maintaining contact withEarth. In the first part of the course, students will study the unique environmental conditions of Mars, the health risks of space travel, and how to maintain communication and connectivity with Earth despite vast distances. Students will also engage with how sustainable living on Mars—through food, energy, and resource management—could shape the future of human expansion in space.
The second half delves into the complexities of building social, legal, and economic systems in a new extraterrestrial society. Students will critically evaluate how to create a self-sustaining, functional civilization on Mars. Given the social science focus of the class, there will be emphasis placed on topics such as governance, establishing social contracts and property rights, and building economic systems for an entirely new world.
This course is meant to attract a small group of 10-15 students interested in space exploration. The small size and intensive four-hour class format is intended to foster creative problem-solving and interdisciplinary thinking (see below for discussion of non-traditional format). By the end of the course, students will not only understand the practicalities of space colonization but also develop skills in envisioning and designing innovative solutions for humanity’s future beyond Earth.
What is global health? Where do global health disease priorities come from, and how do the ways that we understand disease shape how we respond to it? What happens when good ideas and good intentions go wrong? This course critically examines the politics of global health and its impact on local institutions and people. Drawing on social science research, the course will address three main themes: 1) how global health priorities are defined and constructed, 2) how our understandings of disease influence our response to that disease, and 3) how efforts to respond to disease intersect with people on the ground, sometimes in unexpected ways. We will examine the global health industry from the vantage point of different institutions and actors – international organizations, governments, local healthcare institutions, healthcare workers, and people living with or at risk of various illnesses like HIV/AIDS, malaria, cancer, and Ebola. A primary goal of this course is to help you to develop skills in critical thinking in relation to global health issues and their impact on society. Students will demonstrate their knowledge through individual writing, class discussion, presentations, and a final research project.
This seminar examines transgender people’s lives through a sociological lens, investigating how social structures, institutions, and everyday interactions shape trans people’s lives and identities. Students will analyze the intersectional nature of transgender experience, exploring how gender, race, class, disability, nation, and citizenship status create diverse lived realities within transgender communities. Topics include family dynamics, violence, resistance, space, work, legal recognition, and visions of transgender futures.
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.
Prerequisites: Two years of calculus, at least one year of additional mathematics courses, and the director of undergraduate studies permission. The subject matter is announced at the start of registration and is different in each section. Each student prepares talks to be given to the seminar, under the supervision of a faculty member or senior teaching fellow.
Prerequisites: POLS V1501 or the equivalent, and the instructors permission. Pre-registration is not permitted. Please see here for detailed seminar registration guidelines: http://polisci.columbia.edu/undergraduate-programs/seminar-registration-guidelines. Seminar in Comparative Politics. Students who would like to register should join the electronic wait list.
Prerequisites: POLS V1501 or the equivalent, and the instructors permission. Pre-registration is not permitted. Please see here for detailed seminar registration guidelines: http://polisci.columbia.edu/undergraduate-programs/seminar-registration-guidelines. Seminar in Comparative Politics. Students who would like to register should join the electronic wait list.
Surveillance has become a ubiquitous term that either conjures images of George Orwell’s
1984
, the popular series
Black Mirror,
or is dismissed as an inconvenience and a concern of only those who engage in criminal activity or have something to hide. Using sociological theories of power, biopower, racialization, and identity formation,
Surveillance
explores the various ways we are monitored by state authorities and corporations and our role in perpetuating the system (un)wittingly.
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.
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.
Prerequisites: POLS UN2601 or the equivalent, and the instructor's permission. Seminar in International Politics. Students who would like to register should join the electronic wait list.
Prerequisites: POLS UN2601 or the equivalent, and the instructor's permission. Seminar in International Politics. Students who would like to register should join the electronic wait list.
Prerequisites: POLS UN2601 or the equivalent, and the instructor's permission. Seminar in International Politics. Students who would like to register should join the electronic wait list.
Prerequisites: POLS UN2601 or the equivalent, and the instructor's permission. Seminar in International Politics. Students who would like to register should join the electronic wait list.
Prerequisites: POLS UN2601 or the equivalent, and the instructor's permission. Seminar in International Politics. Students who would like to register should join the electronic wait list.
Prerequisites: POLS UN2601 or the equivalent, and the instructor's permission. Seminar in International Politics. Students who would like to register should join the electronic wait list.
Prerequisites: POLS UN2601 or the equivalent, and the instructor's permission. Seminar in International Politics. Students who would like to register should join the electronic wait list.
This course is a seminar on contemporary art criticism written by artists in the post war period. Such criticism differs from academic criticism because it construes art production less as a discrete object of study than as a point of engagement. It also differs from journalistic criticism because it is less obliged to report art market activity and more concerned with polemics. Art /Criticism I will trace the course of these developments by examining the art and writing of one artist each week. These will include Brian ODoherty/Patrick Ireland, Allan Kaprow, Robert Morris, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Smithson, Art - Language, Dan Graham, Adrian Piper, Mary Kelly, Martha Rosler, Judith Barry and Andrea Fraser. We will consider theoretical and practical implications of each artists oeuvre.
Prerequisites: Barnard Art History Major Requirement. Enrollment limited only to Barnard Art History majors. Introduction to critical writings that have shaped histories of art, including texts on iconography and iconology, the psychology of perception, psychoanalysis, social history, feminism and gender studies, structuralism, semiotics, and post-structuralism.
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.
After World War II, the question of the development of so-called underdeveloped countries became an international priority. The timing was not casual: the demise of the colonial empires and the birth of new countries propagated the ideals of modernization worldwide. Moreover, in a world divided between two superpowers, the fate of less developed countries became a matter of foreign policy concern in the developed ones. Since then, development has become a major challenge for the contemporary world. The new relevance of the issue has also prompted, in the years after World War II, the birth of a new disciplinary field, namely, development economics, which is increasingly at the core of the economics profession, as demonstrated by the Nobel prizes in Economics to W. Arthur Lewis in 1979, to Amartya Sen in 1998, and to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer in 2019, as well as the work on development of other prominent economists such as Dani Rodrik, William Easterly, Jeffrey Sachs, and Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz.
This seminar will explore the trajectory of the idea of development from World War II to the present, with a particular focus on how it has been discussed within the disciplinary field of development economics. We will discuss how different analyses of development processes—how they can be put in motion, how they evolve, and what are their potential outcomes—have intersected debates about dynamics of social and economic change, how the whole development field has been interpreted alternatively as a progressive endeavour or an ideological construct fostering a neocolonial agenda, and how development policies have been judged to strengthen democratic institutions or, on the contrary, as a mechanism reinforcing domestic and international inequality, to be opposed with revolution.
Although the focus of this seminar will be on understanding the history of development rather than shaping its future, graduate students from outside of history (including business, anthropology, political science, economics, human rights, law, sociology, and area studies) are welcomed to register, as this is a topic that would benefit greatly from an interdisciplinary perspective.
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.
This course will introduce students to the literature on crime and policing. Readings for the course will be from a broad range of disciplines, including sociology, criminology, law, and public policy. Most weeks, the readings will include relevant “popular press” articles that will help situate the literature in the context of current debates. The course is organized in two parts. The first half will focus on the problems of crime and violence in urban environments. We will review classic and modern ideas and theories explaining crime and violence, and we will look at the evidence describing patterns and trends in crime in recent history. The second half of the course will focus on the approaches to confront crime and violence, with a strong emphasis on policing. We will review the literature on the relationship between crime and policing, and we will learn about the impact that policing practices have on individuals and their communities.
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.
This course focuses on race, discrimination, and racial inequalities. The course will address three key questions: (1) What is race as perceived in the U.S. and Europe, and what are the sources of racial inequalities? (2) What does social science research tell us about patterns and trends of racial inequalities? (3) What policies can alleviate racial inequalities? The course will systematically adopt comparative perspectives focusing on the North American and European contexts. We will also address research on race and racial inequality within an interdisciplinary lens particularly building on sociology, economics, and social psychology.
This course is designed for advanced undergraduate students from Columbia University and Science Po (Paris). We aim for a class of 30 students (15 from each partner university). Class will take place once a week (for 2 hours). In addition, the Columbia TA will conduct a discussion section once a week in which Columbia and Sciences Po students will work together in small groups on class projects that will be presented over the course of the semester. The classes will be organized in a hybrid format. In each campus, the professor will teach his/her class in person and the two classes will be connected via Zoom. The Columbia and Science Po professors will thus co-teach a virtually connected class. The professors will closely coordinate and alternate in leading the lecture and discussion parts of each class.
This seminar is an opportunity to do original sociological research with the support of a faculty member, a teaching assistant, and your fellow classmates. Over the next two semesters you will formulate a research question; design a research strategy; collect and analyze data; and write up your findings. At the end of the academic year, you will submit a completed thesis.
The class is intended as scaffolding to support you in what can sometimes feel like a lonely and disorienting process. The goal is to balance structure to facilitate your work with freedom to develop your projects independently.
This seminar is open only to Sociology majors. Please email the professor for permission to join the course.
This course is intended to provide a focal point for undergraduate majors in East Asian Studies. It introduces students to the analysis of particular objects of East Asian historical, literary, and cultural studies from various disciplinary perspectives. The syllabus is composed of a series of modules, each centered around an object, accompanied by readings that introduce different ways of understanding its meaning.
May be repeated for credit, but no more than 3 total points may be used for degree credit. Only for Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering undergraduate students who include relevant off-campus work experience as part of their approved program of study. Final report and letter of evaluation required. May not be used as technical or nontechnical electives or to satisfy any other Electrical Engineering or Computer Engineering major requirements. May not be taken for pass/fail credit or audited.
Working with her advisor, a student will expand the research project initiated in the Fall Senior Seminar for Music Majors (BC3992x). In order to satisfy the requirement, the student will complete a fifty page research paper.
This course is a requirement for all majors and is taken in the
Fall
semester of the Senior year; students may register for the Barnard or Columbia (3991) section. In this academic writing workshop students develop individual research projects under the guidance of the course’s instructor and in dialogue with the other participants’ projects. The final assignment of the senior seminar (6000 words) is the
senior essay
. It is written in Spanish.
N/A
N/A
Prerequisites: CPLS UN3900 The senior seminar is a capstone course required of all CLS/MedHum majors and CLS concentrations. Only ICLS students may register. The seminar provides students the opportunity to discuss selected topics in comparative literature and society and medical humanities in a cross-disciplinary, multilingual, and global perspective. Students undertake individual research projects while participating in directed readings and critical dialogues about theory and research methodologies, which may culminate in the senior thesis. Students review work in progress and share results through weekly oral reports and written reports.
Guided, independent, indepth research experience culminating in the senior essay. Weekly meetings are held to review work in progress, to share results through oral and written reports, and to consider career options for further work in this field.
British literature of the Romantic period, from the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth
century, displays a fascination with what is on the margins. This manifests itself most
memorably in the unprecedented focus on socially marginalized figures – the beggars,
madmen, abandoned women, and solitary wanderers who populate the pages of Romantic
poetry and fiction. The author too is often figured as an outsider in this period, someone
whose authority derives specifically from his or her position of marginality, looking in
from the fringes. Geographically, the peripheries of the island of Great Britain (Wales
and especially Scotland) were major sites of literary experimentation in the Romantic era,
while the south coast of England attracted particular interest because of the constant
threat of invasion from France during these years. And of course Romantic writers
famously exploited textual margins: many of the major literary works of the period make
innovative use of footnotes, glosses, and other paratextual apparatus. This course
considers these various aspects of Romantic marginality and the intersections between
them. In addition to the work of more canonical authors (William Wordsworth, Samuel
Taylor Coleridge, Walter Scott, Mary Shelley), we will be reading poems, novels, essays,
and letters by writers, especially women, whose work has historically been marginalized.
British literature of the Romantic period, from the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth
century, displays a fascination with what is on the margins. This manifests itself most
memorably in the unprecedented focus on socially marginalized figures – the beggars,
madmen, abandoned women, and solitary wanderers who populate the pages of Romantic
poetry and fiction. The author too is often figured as an outsider in this period, someone
whose authority derives specifically from his or her position of marginality, looking in
from the fringes. Geographically, the peripheries of the island of Great Britain (Wales
and especially Scotland) were major sites of literary experimentation in the Romantic era,
while the south coast of England attracted particular interest because of the constant
threat of invasion from France during these years. And of course Romantic writers
famously exploited textual margins: many of the major literary works of the period make
innovative use of footnotes, glosses, and other paratextual apparatus. This course
considers these various aspects of Romantic marginality and the intersections between
them. In addition to the work of more canonical authors (William Wordsworth, Samuel
Taylor Coleridge, Walter Scott, Mary Shelley), we will be reading poems, novels, essays,
and letters by writers, especially women, whose work has historically been marginalized.
Working with her advisor, a student will develop a vocal or instrumental recital program with representative musical works from a variety of historical periods. In order to satisfy the requirement, the student will present an hour long public performance of the recital program. Students may also satisfy this requirement by composing original vocal or instrumental works.