Prerequisites: a score of 0-279 on the department's Spanish as a Second Language Placement exam. An introduction to Spanish communicative competence, with stress on basic oral interaction, reading, writing, and cultural knowledge. Principal objectives are to understand and produce commonly used sentences to satisfy immediate needs; ask and answer questions about personal details such as where we live, people we know and things we have; interact in a simple manner with people who speak clearly, slowly and are ready to cooperate; and understand simple and short written and audiovisual texts in Spanish. All Columbia students must take Spanish language courses (UN 1101-3300) for a letter grade.
Prerequisites: intermediate high school algebra. Designed for students in fields that emphasize quantitative methods. Graphical and numerical summaries, probability, theory of sampling distributions, linear regression, analysis of variance, confidence intervals and hypothesis testing. Quantitative reasoning and data analysis. Practical experience with statistical software. Illustrations are taken from a variety of fields. Data-collection/analysis project with emphasis on study designs is part of the coursework requirement.
Essentials of grammar, basic vocabulary, practice in speaking and reading Swahili the most widely used indigenous language of East Africa. No P/D/F or R credit is allowed for this class.
Designed for students with little or no knowledge of Ukrainian. Basic grammar structures are introduced and reinforced, with equal emphasis on developing oral and written communication skills. Specific attention to acquisition of high-frequency vocabulary and its optimal use in real-life settings.
This course introduces students to the linguistic and grammatical structures of Vietnamese, a major language of Southeast Asia. Language skills include listening, speaking, reading and writing. Students will also be introduced to some aspects of Vietnamese life and culture.
Introduction to the basic grammatical structures of Wolof, a major language of West Africa spoken in Senegal and Gambia. No P/D/F or R credit is allowed for this class.
This course offers an introduction to the language that has been spoken by the Ashkenazi Jews for more than a millennium, and an opportunity to discover a fabulous world of Yiddish literature, language and culture in a fun way. Using games, new media, and music, we will learn how to speak, read, listen and write in a language that is considered one of the richest languages in the world (in some aspects of vocabulary). We will also venture outside the classroom to explore the Yiddish world today: through field trips to Yiddish theater, Yiddish-speaking neighborhoods, Yiddish organizations, such as YIVO or Yiddish farm, and so on. We will also have Yiddish-speaking guests and do a few digital projects. At the end of the two-semester course, you will be able to converse in Yiddish on a variety of everyday topics and read most Yiddish literary and non-literary texts. Welcome to Yiddishland!
This course is designed to bring students with no background to a point where they can perform most basic linguistic functions in Yoruba, including greetings, likes/dislikes, telling about yourself, describing places and situations, all in appropriate time frames. The class uses a highly interactive classroom style, supplemented by extensive use of video - both prepared and student-produced - and other computer-assisted tools. Please note this course is offered by videoconferencing from Cornell as part of the Shared Course Initiative.
Introduces students to the basic structures of Zulu, a Bantu language spoken in South Africa, especially in the Zululand area of KwaZulu/Natal province.
Bridge between the science-oriented, high school way of thinking and the engineering point of view. Fundamental concepts of math and science reviewed and re-framed in an engineering context; numerous examples of each concept drawn from all disciplines of engineering represented at Columbia. Non-technical issues of importance in professional engineering practice such as ethics, engineering project management, and societal impact.
Only open to Columbia Engineering first-year undergraduate students or second-year transfer students. Lab fee: $150.
The aim of the beginning French sequence (French 1101 and French 1102) is to help you to develop an active command of the language. Emphasis is placed on acquiring the four language skills--listening, speaking, reading and writing--within a cultural context, in order to achieve basic communicative proficiency.
Prerequisites: Primarily for students who need further instruction to qualify for the intermediate course. Credit cannot be granted for both FREN BC1002 and BC1102 (or its equivalent). Enrollment limited to 20 students per section. Oral and written review of basic grammar and syntax. Readings in modern French and Francophone literature.
Prerequisites: GERM UN1101 or the equivalent. If you have prior German outside of Columbia’s language sequence, the placement exam is required. German 1102 is the continuation of Elementary German I (1101). It is a four-skill language course taught in German, in which students continue to develop listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills in German and an understanding of German-speaking cultures. Emphasis is placed on acquiring the four language skills--listening, speaking, reading and writing--within a cultural context. Students expand their communication skills to include travel, storytelling, personal well- being, basic economics, recent historical events, and working with movie segments. Completion of daily assignments, which align with class content, and consistent work are necessary in order to achieve basic communicative proficiency.
Prerequisites: ITAL V1101 or the equivalent. Introduction to Italian grammar, with emphasis on reading, writing, listening and speaking skills.
Prerequisites: LATN UN1101. A continuation of LATN UN1101, including a review of grammar and syntax for students whose study of Latin has been interrupted.
Prerequisites: MATH UN1101 or the equivalent. Methods of integration, applications of the integral, Taylors theorem, infinite series. (SC)
Prerequisites: PORT W1101 or the equivalent. A course designed to acquaint students with the Portuguese verbal, prepositional, and pronominal systems. As a continuation of Elementary Portuguese I (PORT W1101), this course focuses on the uses of characteristic forms and expressions of the language as it is spoken and written in Brazil today.
Prerequisites: SPAN UN1101 or a score of 280-379 on the department’s Spanish as a Second Language Placement exam. An intensive introduction to Spanish language communicative competence, with stress on basic oral interaction, reading, writing and cultural knowledge as a continuation of SPAN UN1101. The principal objectives are to understand sentences and frequently used expressions related to areas of immediate relevance; communicate in simple and routine tasks requiring a direct exchange of information on familiar matters; describe in simple terms aspects of our background and personal history; understand the main point, the basic content, and the plot of filmic as well as short written texts. All Columbia students must take Spanish language courses (UN 1101-3300) for a letter grade.
This is only recitation for STAT UG1101. We are requesting 8 sections of recitation to align with the two sections of 1101 offered for Fall 2024.
Corequisites: ECON UN1155 How a market economy determines the relative prices of goods, factors of production, and the allocation of resources and the circumstances under which it does it efficiently. Why such an economy has fluctuations and how they may becontrolled.
This course is designed to teach students the process of identifying, setting, and achieving a specific health behavior change goal within the Wheel of Health. The course will consist of short lectures, discussions, and individual health coaching sessions. Action steps towards the health goal will be expected each week outside of class meeting times.
In this course, we will study the way culture influences how we make sense of what we see. We will examine how power is exercised by making people feel as though they are always being seen, how this surveillance polices the way gender, race, class, and sexuality are expressed, and how people perform their identities to reinforce or push back against this policing. Literary texts will include
Passing
by Nella Larsen, "The Husband Stitch" by Carmen Maria Machado,
Fantomina
by Eliza Haywood, and the films
Paris is Burning
and
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
. Secondary texts will include John Berger, Talia Bettcher, Judith Butler, W.E.B Dubois, Frantz Fanon, Michel Foucault, Jack Halberstam, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, and Laura Mulvey.
In our course, we'll examine the legacy of the body as a boundary that defines and separates categories like self and other, sanctioned and forbidden, and male and female. How and why has the body become the site of difference and distinction? What happens when a body crosses boundaries and collapses categories -- what is threatened, what made possible? Readings will likely include John Milton's
Paradise Lost,
Mary Shelley's
Frankenstein,
Nella Larsen's
Passing,
Akwaeke Emezi's "Who is Like God?", and essays and articles by scholars including Susan Stryker, bell hooks, Judith Butler, and Jeffrey Jerome Cohen.
Prerequisites: Scoring at this level on the department’s Spanish as a Heritage Language Placement test (https://columbia-barnard.vega-labs.com).
The principal aim of SPAN UN1108 is to build upon and further develop the informal knowledge of Spanish that heritage learners bring to the classroom—usually from family and neighborhood exposure to the language—and cultivate formal speaking, listening, reading, and writing abilities. Students are not expected to have any academic training in written Spanish prior to enrolling in this course.
Spanish heritage language courses at Columbia/Barnard focus on the development of communicative abilities and literacy from sociolinguistic and sociocultural approaches. Throughout the semester, students will be reviewing spelling patterns, building vocabulary, acquiring and effectively using learning strategies, and strengthening composition skills in Spanish. Cultural projects and readings reinforce learners’ understanding of the multiple issues related to Hispanic cultures in the United States and in other Spanish-speaking societies.
This introductory-level course teaches students the basic concepts of probability and statistics, and the logic of probabilistic reasoning. The course is designed for students with no prior knowledge in probability or statistics, its only prerequisite is basic algebra. We will discuss axioms of probability, random variables, useful distributions, law of large numbers and central limit theorem, confidence intervals, discrete-time Markov chains, Brownian motion, introduction to inference and hypothesis testing.
The course is specially designed for students of Chinese heritage and advanced beginners with good speaking skills. It aims to develop the student's basic skills to read and write modern colloquial Chinese. Pinyin system is introduced; standard Chinese pronunciation, and traditional characters. Classes will be conducted mostly in Chinese. Open to students with Mandarin speaking ability in Chinese only. CC GS EN CE
Per its mission statement, “Barnard College aims to provide the highest-quality liberal arts
education to promising and high-achieving young women… They graduate prepared to lead
lives that are professionally satisfying and successful, personally fulfilling, and enriched by a love
of learning.” This course finds its roots in the connection posited here, between undergraduate
study and professional life. Students will be asked to revisit a foundational text they have
encountered in their major, and use it as a mode of exploration and reflection on an internship.
They will consider how the text’s themes and ideas can be reinterpreted and recontextualized in
the working world, and think about what practical, moral, political, aesthetic and personal
insights it affords. More broadly, students will be prompted to consider the relationship of the
liberal arts degree (which purports to prepare students for no particular career) to their chosen
career path. This course will further hone the critical thinking and writing skills that are
translatable to any profession, and enables a Barnard student to put into practice the
complexities they have learned in the classroom, by encouraging them to analyze the
professional world from different perspectives, and in the context of other ideas and traditions.
The text will be selected from a list provided by the student’s major department, and will be
subject to approval from the course instructor.
On a weekly basis, in this discussion-based class, the student shares their ideas about their text
and how it relates to their internship. They respond to and engage with their classmates. They
are required to spend about two hours with their text per week. They are also required to
create a three to five minute presentation, to be shared with the full group. The group is also
responsible for providing feedback on the presentation. The presentation ultimately evolves
into a final paper of 8-10 pages that explores the line of inquiry from their text as it is
instantiated in their work experience. Students are graded on their discussion (40%),
presentation (25%), and final paper (35%).
This is a course designed for the students enrolled in the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Research Fellowship Program. It should be taken fall and spring semesters of a student's third and fourth years at the college (for a total of 6 course credits total over the two years). The goal of this course is to become familiar with academic research and writing, as well as the culture of colleges/ universities in order to prepare students to apply to graduate school and earn the PhD.. The program hones academic writing skills (research papers, project and grant proposals, academic reflections designed to facilitate intentional goal setting and planning), teaches skills related to scholarly presentations (oral and written), as well as familiarizes students with academic culture in particular diversity, equity and inclusion issues and concerns in the academy. Students are expected to attend all the events and meetings associated with the program.
This course is a one-semester journey across cosmological history, from the beginning of time to something akin to its end. We will explore the origin of inanimate physical structures (the cosmos as a whole, as well as that of galaxies, stars, planets, particles, atoms and complex molecules), the origin of life (replicating molecules, the first cells, as well as more complex life forms), the origin of mind (self-reflective conscious awareness) and the origin of culture (language, myth, religion, art, and science). We will then consider what science in particular tells us about the very far future, where we will encounter the likely demise of all complex matter, all life and all consciousness. In the face of such disintegration we will examine the nature of value and purpose. We will recognize that the deepest understanding of reality emerges from blending all of the accounts we discuss—from the reductionist to the humanist to the cosmological—and only through such amalgamation can we fully grasp the long-standing human search for meaning.
This is a course designed for the students enrolled in the Barbara Silver Horowitz ’55 Scholars of Distinction program. It should be taken fall and spring semesters of a students first and second years at the college (for a total of 4 course credits total over the two years). Each month is organized around an outing (or several outings) with readings and guest speakers to complement the outing. Students are expected to attend all the events and meetings. Each student will also produce a blog post connected to or inspired by each event. These posts will appear on the Barnard College website dedicated to the program. Blog posts do not have to cover the event per se, they might, for example, attend to ancillary issues raised by the event or topics raised by the accompanying readings.
Required discussion section for MATH BC1110
Required discussion section for MATH BC1110
"The Future is Female" except in science fiction, where it still looks pretty white and male. What happens when women of color take on such tropes as space exploration, cybernetics, superpowers, and the end of the world? How can women of color change the way we not only think of the future, but think of the present as well? In this class we’ll look at how speculative literature looks at the intersections of race, gender, class, sexuality, technology, and environmental concerns. Readings will include work from such authors as Octavia Butler, Franny Choi, Sam Chanse, G Willow Wilson, and Tananarive Due with potential critical readings from Lisa Yaszek, Charlotte E Howell, and bell hooks.
An extensive introduction to the Catalan language with an emphasis on oral communication as well as the reading and writing practice that will allow the student to function comfortably in a Catalan environment.
We all have enemies, individual and collective, private and public, ephemeral or persistent. This seems increasingly true. But do we choose our enemies or do our enemies choose us? Do we invent the enemy? Is the enemy a “social construction,” a fiction or is the enemy a “fact”? Do we need to believe in the enemy or is it better to know the enemy? And once there are enemies, is it really possible to love them? All enemies? Is that a religious commandment? Does religion have a special relationship to enemies? And what about frenemies? This course will explore different kinds of enemies such as they appear in sacred texts (the Bible, the Qur’ān), novels, films and
popular culture. And yes, we will try to learn whether we can love our enemies.
This class focuses on the theme of translation and what happens when texts and people cross national, cultural, linguistic, racial or gendered borders. Through our classroom discussions and essays, we will explore the following questions: Why or how do texts lend themselves to or resist translation? How do encounters with dominant discourses necessitate acts of self-translation or resistance to translation, especially for people of color, immigrants or queer communities? How do literary narratives change when translated across cultures and time periods? What is the role of the translator in these acts of remaking? Drawing on postcolonial, feminist and translation theory, we will consider how writers have pushed back against dominant narratives through texts that cross and complicate linguistic, cultural and national borders. Readings are subject to change but will likely include a selection from following: a novel by Jean Rhys or Virginia Woolf, fiction and poetry by Sappho, Fatimah Asghar, Irena Klepfisz, Marjane Satrapi, as well as various English translations of the 1001 Nights; scholarly texts by Gloria Anzaldúa, Edward Said, bell hooks, Friedrich Schleiermacher and Jorge Luis Borges. Course costs will not exceed $20; access to books can also be made available to students who need them.
Covers all of Greek grammar and syntax in one term. Prepares the student to enter second-year Greek (GREK UN2101 or GREK UN2102).
Discussion and analysis of the artistic qualities and significance of selected works of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Parthenon in Athens to works of the 20th century.
Discussion and analysis of the artistic qualities and significance of selected works of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Parthenon in Athens to works of the 20th century.
Discussion and analysis of the artistic qualities and significance of selected works of painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Parthenon in Athens to works of the 20th century.