Prerequisites: three terms of biology (genetics and cell biology recommended).
Cancer is one of the most dreaded common diseases. Yet it is also one of the great intellectual challenges in biology today. How does a cell become cancerous? What are the agents that cause this to occur? How do current findings about genes, cells, and organisms ranging from yeast cells to humans inform us about cancer? How do findings about cancer teach us new biological concepts? Over the past few years there have been great inroads into answering these questions which have led to new ways to diagnose and treat cancer. This course will discuss cancer from the point of view of basic biological research. We will cover topics in genetics, molecular and cell biology that are relevant to understanding the differences between normal and cancer cells. These will include tumor viruses, oncogenes, tumor suppressor genes, cell cycle regulation, programmed cell death and cell senescence. We will also study some current physiological concepts related to cancer including angiogenesis, tumor immunology, cancer stem cells, metastasis and new approaches to treatment that are built on recent discoveries in cancer biology. The text book for this course is "The Biology of Cancer Second Edition by Robert A Weinberg (Garland Science). Additional and complementary readings will be assigned. SCE and TC students may register for this course, but they must first obtain the written permission of the instructor, by filling out a paper Registration Adjustment Form (Add/Drop form). The form can be downloaded at the URL below, but must be signed by the instructor and returned to the office of the registrar. http://registrar.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/content/reg-adjustment.pdf
Introduction to the comparative study of religion on dominant approaches to the conceptualization, interpretation, and explanation of religious phenomena and on key issues relating to the methodologies appropriate to such investigations.
Prerequisites: CHEE E3010.
Corequisites: EAEE E3255
Experiments on fundamental aspects of Earth and environmental engineering with emphasis on the applications of chemistry, biology and thermodynamics to environmental processes: energy generation, analysis and purification of water, environmental biology, and biochemical treatment of wastes. Students will learn the laboratory procedures and use analytical equipment firsthand, hence demonstrating experimentally the theoretical concepts learned in class.
Prerequisites: Senior majors (juniors with permission of instructor). Provides credit for the senior thesis. The Senior Research Seminar can be taken in the Spring/Fall or Fall/Spring sequence.
Guided, independent, in-depth research culminating in the senior thesis. Includes discussions about scientific presentations and posters, data analysis, library research methods, and scientific writing. Students review work in progress and share results through oral and written reports. Spring Semester Course Website.
Prerequisites: V 1501 or equivalent
Description: The semester-long course aims to study political and social factors behind economic development and exam empirical cases of the success and failure in economic growth in order to understand the key features of the development processes. In the last two centuries, some countries successfully achieved economic growth and development, while other failed to do so. Even in the post-WWII period, the world has witnessed the rise and decline of economies around the world. Why do nations succeed or fail in economic development? How do political institutions affect economic outcomes? What are the ways in which state and market interact and influence each other? Can democracy be considered a cause of development, an outgrowth of development, or neither and to which extent? How do external factors such as foreign aid encourage or discourage development? We will try to examine these questions by taking a historical-institutional and comparative approach and take a critical look at the role of political and other institutions by applying theoretical guidelines and empirical cases. We will explore competing explanations for the successes and failures of economic development in the world. Objective:1. Understand some important concepts and theories within the fields of comparative politics and political economy. To explore the interconnections between politics, economy, and society in the context of development policy and practice.2. Develop basic analytic skills to explore various factors that shape political, economic, and social development and underdevelopment in the world;3. Understand some country specific political economy processes and how these processes prove or disprove certain theories and policies.
Prerequisites: Completion of core chemical engineering curricula through the fall semester of senior year (includes: CHEN E3110, E3120, E4230, E3100, E3010, E3210, E4140, E4500), OR instructor's permission.
The course emphasizes active, experiment-based resolution of open-ended problems involving use, design, and optimization of equipment, products, or materials. Under faculty guidance students formulate, carry out, validate, and refine experimental procedures, and present results in oral and written form. The course develops analytical, communications, and cooperative problem-solving skills in the context of problems that span from traditional, large scale separations and processing operations to molecular level design of materials or products. Sample projects include: scale up of apparatus, process control, chemical separations, microfluidics, surface engineering, molecular sensing, and alternative energy sources. Safety awareness is integrated throughout the course.
Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 14 students.
Interpretive strategies for reading the Bible as a work with literary dimensions. Considerations of poetic and rhetorical structures, narrative techniques, and feminist exegesis will be included. Topics for investigation include the influence of the Bible on literature.
Prerequisites: None.
(No prerequisite.) We begin with the rise and fall of the Mughal Empire, and examine why and how the East India Company came to rule India in the eighteenth century. As the term progresses, we will investigate the objectives of British colonial rule in India and we will explore the nature of colonial modernity. The course then turns to a discussion of anti-colonial sentiment, both in the form of outright revolt, and critiques by early nationalists. This is followed by a discussion of Gandhi, his thought and his leadership of the nationalist movement. Finally, the course explores the partition of British India in 1947, examining the long-term consequences of the process of partition for the states of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. We will focus in particular on the flowing themes: non-Western state formation; debates about whether British rule impoverished India; the structure and ideology of anti-colonial thought; identity formation and its connection to political, economic and cultural structures. The class relies extensively on primary texts, and aims to expose students to multiple historiographical perspectives for understanding South Asia's past.
Biomedical experimental design and hypothesis testing. Statistical analysis of experimental measurements. Analysis of experimental measurements. Analysis of variance, post hoc testing. Fluid shear and cell adhesion, neuro-electrophysiology, soft tissue biomechanics, biomecial imaging and ultrasound, characterization of excitable tissues, microfluidics.
Prerequisites: an introductory programming course.
Fundamentals of computer organization and digital logic. Boolean algebra, Karnaugh maps, basic gates and components, flipflops and latches, counters and state machines, basics of combinational and sequential digital design. Assembly language, instruction sets, ALU’s, single-cycle and multi-cycle processor design, introduction to pipelined processors, caches, and virtual memory.
A study of landmarks of French cinema from its origins to the 1970s. We will pay particular attention to the relation between cinema and social and political events in France. We will study films by Jean Vigo, Jean Renoir, Rene Clair, Alain Resnais, Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. In English.
Prerequisites: No prerequisites. Department approval NOT required.
Flannery O'Connor famously said, "Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days." A child's or youth's journey-- whether through ordinary, universal rites of passage, or through extraordinary adventure or trauma-- compels an adult reader (and writer) to (re)inhabit the world as both naif and nature's savant. Through the knowing/unknowing eye of the child or adolescent, the writer can explore adult topics prismatically and poignantly -- "from the bottom up" -- via humor, terror, innocence, wonder, or all of the above. In this course, we will read both long and short form examples of childhood and youth stories, examining in particular the relationships between narrator and character, character and world (setting), character and language and narrator and reader (i.e. "reliability" of narrator). Students will write two papers. Short scene-based writing assignments will challenge student writers to both mine their own memories for material and imagine voices/experiences far from their own.
This course will examine through readings, class discussions, and in class debate, the complex politics and governing of New York City- the key political institutions, and who holds urban political power, voting and elections, and the changing roles of the electorate will be covered. We will examine the structure or New York City government and how the New York City Budget is developed and adopted; the interplay between Mayoral and City council powers, the city charter, the process of governing and the role of political parties, special interest groups, lobbyists and labor unions. We will look back in the City’s political history and consider that time in the mid 1970’s when New York City suffered a major fiscal crisis and was close to financial bankruptcy. In this context, New York City’s relationships with the state and federal governments will also be covered.
What constitutes torture? Is it ever morally permissible? Are corporations (moral) persons? If they are, what rights and responsibilities do they have? How do our obligations to human beings across the globe differ from the obligations that we have to friends and family? This courses focuses on making and evaluating moral arguments about these and other challenging moral questions (so-called "hard cases") by drawing on normative ethical frameworks, including deontology, consequentialism, and virtue ethics. The course has three main theme_s- the first focuses on the moral responsibility of individual human agents, the second on the moral status of animals and group agents, and the third on dignity and the law. We move from a focus on individual moral deliberation and responsibility to group and institutional deliberation and responsibility. Dignity, responsibility, agency, rights, and consent will be recurring themes. In addition tc philosophical texts, we will also draw on legal documents, podcasts, and clips from film and literature to supplement our discussions. There are no formal prerequisites, but at least one previous philosophy class is recommended.
Prerequisites: Recommended:
HSEA W3862
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Korean history from the mid 19th century to the present, with particular focus on politics, society, and culture in the 20th century. Major Cultures Requirement: East Asian Civilization List B. Group(s): C
This course explores the power dynamics of gender relations in Chinese history and contemporary society. Specifically, we seek to understand how a range of women--rulers, mothers, teachers, workers, prostitutes, and activists--exercised power by utilizing available resources to overcome institutional constraints.
Prerequisites: Must complete ANTH BC3871x. Limited to Barnard Senior Anthropology Majors.
Offered every Spring. 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.
If a student wishes to pursue a research project or a course of study not offered by the department, he or she may apply for an Independent Study. Application: 1. cover sheet with signatures of the professor who will serve as the project sponsor and departmental administrator or director of undergraduate studies; 2. project description in 750 words, including any preliminary work in the field, such as a lecture course(s) or seminar(s); 3. bibliography of primary and secondary works to be read or consulted. Please visit the English and Comparative Literature Department website at http://english.columbia.edu/undergraduate/forms for the cover sheet form or see the administrator in 602 Philosophy Hall for the cover sheet form and to answer any other questions you may have.
Prerequisites: Permission of instructor.
(Seminar). A fugitive walks into Death Valley carrying stolen gold and a caged canary. A young black woman wears her politics in her fashion. A New Englander builds a house in the forest and leaves open the windows and doors. A modernist poem systematically materializes common household goods through the density of its language. In this seminar, we will discuss works that stage such scenes (by Henry David Thoreau, Henry James, Frank Norris, Nella Larsen, Gertrude Stein, Edith Wharton...) to understand how American literature has explored the contested meanings of objects. Do our things enchant, tyrannize, or mystify us? Do they help us construct embodied identities and relationships with one another? Are they dead and silent matter, or do they have some agency of their own? How does the aesthetic dimension play into all of this? We will also see how philosophers and theorists responded to these questions, from the time of mass production's expansion in the nineteenth century to today. We will explore how we, and our literary authors, think of objects in many ways: as commodity fetish, network actors, artwork, existential phenomena.... Learning and trying on some of these competing methods, participants in this seminar will practice "reading" not only literature, but also objects, using a collaborative Mediathread site. Application instructions: Students should register for the course; they will automatically be placed on a wait list from which the instructor will in due course admit them as spaces become available.
Prerequisites: the instructor's 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 Zizek's 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 professor's 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.
For much of the 20th century, the American political system excluded lesbians and gay men from full citizenship. This course seeks to understand the political and social forces shaping the transformation of these sex nonconformists from a pariah group into a viable social movement and eventually into a powerful constituency within the Democratic Party. Special emphasis will be placed on the state’s role in defining lesbian and gay identities, the ways in which gender and racial diversity have shaped the LGB movement, and the role that partisan electoral strategies played in ushering sexuality to the center of American political conflict.
Prerequisites: Permission of instructor
(Seminar). The word "nature" has a bizarrely broad range of meanings. This single word can refer to the true character of any thing or being, animal and plant life in general, or a backyard. When referring to people, the concept of "nature" can be nefariously used to explain apparently essential differences between men and women, or people of different ethnicities. "Nature" is sometimes the antonym of "culture," sometimes of "science," sometimes of "nurture." How did we get here? In this course , we will take up the threads that tangle up into our concept of nature and follow them into the medieval period, in order to examine their origins in light of ecocriticism. We will be using www.medievalandmodernnature.tumblr.com to keep our thoughts and documents organized. I will distribute your readings in electronic form, but please always feel free to read beyond the excerpts. To apply for permission, please e-mail Aaron Robertson, (ar3488@columbia.edu) with "seminar application" as the subject heading. In your message, include basic information: your name, school, major, year of study, and relevant courses taken, along with a brief statement about why you are interested in taking the course. Admitted students should register for the course; they will automatically be placed on a wait list from which the instructor will in due course admit them as spaces become available.
Study of the role of the Mongols in Eurasian history, focusing on the era of the Great Mongol Empire. The roles of Chinggis and Khubilai Khan and the modern fate of the Mongols to be considered.
Prerequisites: The department's permission required through writing sample. Please go to 609 Kent for submission schedule and registration guidelines or see http://www.arts.columbia.edu/writing/undergraduate.
Seniors who are majors in creative writing are given priority for this course. Enrollment is limited, and is by permission of the professor. The senior workshop offers students the opportunity to work exclusively with classmates who are at the same high level of accomplishment in the major. Students in the senior workshops will produce and revise a new and substantial body of work. In-class critiques and conferences with the professor will be tailored to needs of each student.
Prerequisites: Written permission from instructor and approval from adviser.
This course may be repeated for credit, but no more than 6 points of this course may be counted toward the satisfaction of the B.S. degree requirements. Candidates for the B.S. degree may conduct an investigation in applied mathematics or carry out a special project under the supervision of the staff. Credit for the course is contingent upon the submission of an acceptable thesis or final report.
Prerequisites: Written permission from instructor and approval from adviser.
This course may be repeated for credit, but no more than 6 points of this course may be counted toward the satisfaction of the B.S. degree requirements. Candidates for the B.S. degree may conduct an investigation in applied physics or carry out a special project under the supervision of the staff. Credit for the course is contingent upon the submission of an acceptable thesis or final report.
Candidates for the B.S. degree may conduct an investigation of some problem in chemical engineering or applied chemistry or carry out a special project under the supervision of the staff. Credit for the course is contingent upon the submission of an acceptable thesis or final report. No more than 6 points in this course may be counted toward the satisfaction of the B.S. degree requirements.
Introduction to concepts and methods of comparative literature in cross-disciplinary and global context. Topics may include: oral, print, and visual culture; epic, novel, and nation; literature of travel, exile, and diaspora; sex and gender transformation; the human/inhuman; writing trauma; urban imaginaries; world literature; medical humanities. Open only to students intending to declare a major in Comparative Literature and Society or Medicine, Literature, and Society in Spring 2015.
This course may be repeated for credit, but no more than 3 points of this course may be counted towards the satisfaction of the B. S. degree requirements. Candidates for the B.S. degree may conduct an investigation in Earth and Environmental Engineering, or carry out a special project under the supervision of EAEE faculty. Credit for the course is contingent on the submission of an acceptable thesis or final report. This course cannot substitute for the Undergraduate design project (EAEE E3999x or EAEE E3999y)
This course may be repeated for credit, but no more than 3 points of this course may be counted towards the satisfaction of the B. S. degree requirements. Candidates for the B.S. degree may conduct an investigation in Earth and Environmental Engineering, or carry out a special project under the supervision of EAEE faculty. Credit for the course is contingent on the submission of an acceptable thesis or final report. This course cannot substitute for the Undergraduate design project (EAEE E3999x or EAEE E3999y)
This course may be repeated for credit, but no more than 3 points of this course may be counted towards the satisfaction of the B. S. degree requirements. Candidates for the B.S. degree may conduct an investigation in Earth and Environmental Engineering, or carry out a special project under the supervision of EAEE faculty. Credit for the course is contingent on the submission of an acceptable thesis or final report. This course cannot substitute for the Undergraduate design project (EAEE E3999x or EAEE E3999y)