The Business and Human Rights Clinic provides a space for students to deepen their knowledge and experience of business and human rights. Through student education, skills training, and collaborative, rigorous and self-reflective project work, students will learn to be strategic and creative advocates in partnership with NGOs and communities, while advancing business and human rights methodologies and scholarship. The Clinic is also a laboratory for testing and modeling new and innovative modes of business and human rights work, with a focus on enhancing human rights methods through interdisciplinary partnerships. Our subject for 2015-2016, investment chain mapping, is a cutting edge, highly technical skill taught nowhere else and with strong career potential. Through direct contact with the Client, Inclusive Development International, and its international and local partners, and through possible site visits, the Clinic will provide a unique opportunity for students to acquire the skills to put into practice an innovative and timely advocacy approach to holding transnational corporations and development finance institutions accountable for human rights harms. This expertise will position them strongly to become leaders in the field. In future years, the Clinic will continue to engage in projects at the cutting edge of the evolving business and human rights field, as it aims to establish successful long-term relationships with clients. Instructor permission required for registration. Please join the waitlist is SSOL and follow instructions on the waitlist to be considered.
In the first semester a series of workshops will introduce the field of international history and various research skills and methods such as conceptualization of research projects and use of oral sources. The fall sessions will also show the digital resources available at Columbia and how students can deploy them in their individual projects. In the second semester students will apply the skills acquired in the fall as they develop their proposal for the Master's thesis, which is to be completed next year at the LSE. The proposal identifies a significant historical question, the relevant primary and secondary sources, an appropriate methodology, what preliminary research has been done and what remains to be done. Students will present their work-in-progress.
Prerequisites: the department's permission.
Topics chosen in consultation between members of the staff and students.
Subjects a well defined body of theory to scrutiny and assessment. Examples: The Warburg School of Aesthetic Theory (E. Cassirer, E. Panofsky, E. Gombrich, R. Wittkower, etc.); Phenomenological Theory in relation to architecture dealing with the theoretical work (E. Mach, M. Merleau-Ponty, G. Bachelard, C. Norberg-Schulz, A. Perez-Gomez); tracing the impact of the evolution of Post-Structuralist/Deconstructionist Theory on architecture (P. de Mann, J. Derrida, M. Wigley, P. Eisenman).
This course will study the materials, techniques, settings, and meanings of skilled craft and artistic practices in the early modern period (1350-1750), in order to reflect upon a series of issues, including craft knowledge and artisanal epistemology; the intersections between craft and science; and questions of historical methodology and evidence in the reconstruction of historical experience. The course will be run as a "Laboratory Seminar," with discussions of primary and secondary materials, as well as hands-on work in a laboratory. This course is one component of the Making and Knowing Initiative of the Center for Science and Society (short description attached). Thus, in its first years, this course contributes to the collective production of a critical edition of a late sixteenth-century manuscript, Ms. Fr. 640. Students are encouraged to take this course for both semesters (or more) but will only receive full credit once. SPRING 2016 ONLY: This course will also be open to a small number of select undergraduates, with professor instruction and an add/drop form ONLY.
This course will be a central part of the Columbia History Department's History in Action Program, a pilot program of the American Historical Association / Mellon Foundation initative Career Diversity for Historians. One of the central aims of the program is to provide graduate students in History with training that will allow for engagement outside the academy; the yearly clinic course is an opportunity to put this sort of training into practice. (In Spring 2015, the clinic course was built around workshops and projects supervised by practitioners in various fields such as journalism, filmmaking, and museum work; the 2016-17 iteration will be run in conjunction with Teacher's College and focus on pre-college history education.) The current course will focus on engagement with NGOs. Memory of historical violence and victimization plays an increasing role in international and intra-national conflicts. Numerous countries have focused on historical crimes and atrocities that occurred in prior regimes or during historical conflicts, but other states, including both new and established democracies, ignore past atrocities. In general, a demand to redress atrocities has become routine, and is framed as appeal to an international norm. In some cases, the memory of historical violence provides a foundation for reconciliation, but in many more it remains a continuous site of conflict and contention. Why this difference? How does a focus on the past incite conflict or contribute to reconciliation? These issues are particularly vexing in cases of historical atrocities: What are the standards for historical responsibility? How do efforts at reconciliation around historical conflicts differ from calls for immediate accountability for the past in newly democratic societies? The course examines these political and ethical dilemmas in comparative historical perspective.
How do international and global perspectives shape and conceptualization, research, and writing of history? Topics include approaches to comparative history and transnational processes, the relationship of local, regional, national, and global scales of analysis, and the problem of periodization when considered on a world scale.
It is a common-place that the twentieth century ended with the establishment of capitalism and democracy as the “one best way”. In triumphalist accounts of the end of the Cold War the two are commonly presented as sharing a natural affinity. As never before the democratic formula was recommended for truly global application. To suggest the possibility of a contradiction between capitalism and democracy has come to seem like a gesture of outrageous conservative cynicism, or leftist subversion. And yet the convergence of capitalism and democracy is both recent and anything other than self-evident. It has been placed in question once again since 2008 in the epic crisis of Atlantic financial capitalism. This course examines the historical tensions between these two terms in the Atlantic world across the long 20th century from the 1890s to the present day.
This course gives students the opportunity to design their own curriculum: To attend lectures, conferences and workshops on historical topics related to their individual interests throughout Columbia University. Students may attend events of their choice, and are especially encouraged to attend those sponsored by the History Department (www.history.columbia.edu). (The Center for International History - cih.columbia.edu - and the Heyman Center for the Humanities - heymancenter.org/events/ - also have impressive calendars of events, often featuring historians.) The goal of this mini-course is to encourage students to take advantage of the many intellectual opportunities throughout the University, to gain exposure to a variety of approaches to history, and at the same time assist them in focusing on a particular area for their thesis topic.
Prerequisites: the instructor's and the adviser's permission.
Students may register for G8999, which represents 4 pts. of graduate colloquium credit, with permission of their adviser. Students then audit a lecture or an undergraduate seminar on a specialized topic, and fulfill the course requirements for G8999 by special arrangement with the instructor. To register for G8999, students must request a section number from the department’s graduate administrator.
All graduate students are required to attend the department colloquium as long as they are in residence. No degree credit is granted.
Prerequisites: the instructor's and the department's permission.
To register for G9000, students must request a section number from the department’s graduate administrator.
Theoretical or experimental study or research in graduate areas in mechanical engineering and engineering science.
Theoretical or experimental study or research in graduate areas in mechanical engineering and engineering science.
Theoretical or experimental study or research in graduate areas in mechanical engineering and engineering science.
Capstone workshops apply the practical skills and analytical knowledge learned at SIPA to a real-world issue. Students are organized into small consulting teams (typically 6 students per team) and assigned a substantive, policy-oriented project with an external client. Student teams, working under the supervision of a faculty expert, answer a carefully defined problem posed by the client. Each team produces an actionable report and an oral briefing of their findings at the close of the workshop that is designed to translate into real change on the ground. The Capstone is a graduation requirement for all Masters of Public Administration and Masters of International Affairs students; it is typically taken in the final semester at SIPA. Registration in this course requires an application, please visit: sipa.columbia.edu/academics/workshops/workshop-students for more information
Prerequisite: completion of all M.Phil. requirements, and approval of a research proposal by the supervising faculty adviser.
Required for all M.S. students in residence in their first semester. Topics related to professional development and the practice of chemical engineering. No degree credits granted. Intended for M.S./Ph.D. students or doctoral students.
Prerequisites: the permission of the instructor in charge of the student's field of research.
Individual research in the student's field of specialization. The research may lead to a doctoral dissertation or to contributions for publications.
Prerequisites: Requires approval by a faculty member who agrees to supervise the work.
Points of credit to be approved by the department. Requires submission of an outline of the proposed research for approval by the faculty member who is to supervise the work of the student. The research facilities of the department are available to qualified students interested in advanced study.