Across the Strait of Gibraltar
To what extent has the Strait of Gibraltar—and by extension the broader Mediterraenean— connected the communities and nations that line its shores? Alternatively, is the channel better understood as a continental frontier, one that divides Europe and Africa? How has the medieval and early modern history of conquest, migration, and expulsion in the western Mediterranean shaped our understanding of the Mediterranean refugee crises of the past few decades? What is the relationship between the representation and management of these crises and the struggles of African immigrants—both Maghrebi and sub-Saharan—to assimilate into Spain and other Europe Union nations? In a parallel way, how might the contemporary crises, as experienced and documented by refugees, journalists, novelists, and filmmakers, prompt a critical reassessment of the history and representation of previous periods of migration and displacement across the Strait of Gibraltar?
Focusing on the Strait of Gibraltar, this class is an experiment in cultural history that foregrounds the Mediterranean’s present-day political and humanitarian crises. A mixture of history, drama, fiction, and legal texts comprise the majority of our primary-source readings. In addition, we will discuss a variety of material and visual culture, including monuments, antiquities, archeological sites, photographs, and films. Historical and critical readings will include essays and book- chapters culled from the field of Mediterranean studies, as well as more specialized scholarship on captivity, migration, displacement, and the interwoven cultural and political histories of Spain and Morocco.
- Department: Latin American and Iberian Cultures
- T 2 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Seth R Kimmel
CULPA: 7
Info
- 4 points
Theatre Historiography: (Re)Imagining Th
This course approaches the study of theatre practices and theories using historiographic methods that challenge canonical narratives about performance that have long dominated theater history curricula. It raises important questions such as: What constitutes a theatre history? Who has historically been responsible for narrating theatre’s past? What sources have been used? What biases have been present in attempts to construct a global theatre history narrative? Why is understanding histories of theatre and performance relevant today? Unlike a traditional theatre history course that follows a chronological and geographically organized structure, this course encourages students to act as historiographers, proposing unique and innovative genealogies of the past.
The course is structured following a
constellation
approach that organizes plays, performances, and theories from various places and times around a theme. The initial part of the course will serve as an introduction, exploring key, often competing concepts in theatre scholarship, such as history vs. historiography; canonical vs. decolonial, anti-racist, anti-ableist methodologies; and text-based traditions vs. embodied practices. We will then immerse ourselves in the study of constellations, including “Embodied Practice”, “Materialities: architecture, spaces and objects”, “Spectatorship”, “Colonial Past-Presents.” Constellations incorporate canonical and non-canonical dramatic texts and theories. Critical approaches, plays and performances within a constellation don't explicitly converse; instead, they exist in tension, responding to our object-formation and revealing a self-reflective dimension. Constellations focus on both the cases themselves and our epistemic procedures for examining the past.
- Department: Theatre Arts
- F 10 a.m.-12:50 p.m.
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Instructor:
Maria Jose Contreras
Info - 3 points
French Lecture Series
Graduate students attend and lead a series of lectures open to all members of the French department, including graduate students, faculty and undergraduate majors/concentrators. These lectures are planned in conjunction with graduate seminars occurring that year, and graduate students are expected to introduce the guest speakers and lead the discussion.
The lecture series exposes graduate students to new work in the field, including new methodologies and emerging areas of research and teaching, while enriching the cultural and intellectual life of the department. Students benefit from meeting important faculty in the field and from observing the different possible formats and styles of academic talks. By helping to prepare events, write speaker introductions and moderate Q&A sessions, they also develop important professional skills.
- Department: French
- 1-2 points
INTRO TO HUMAN RIGHTS
This course provides a wide-ranging survey of conceptual foundations and issues in contemporary human rights. The course examines the philosophical origins of human rights, their explication in the evolving series of international documents, questions of enforcement, and current debates. It also explores topics such as womens rights, development and human rights, the use of torture, humanitarian intervention, and the horrors of genocide. The broad range of subjects covered in the course is intended to assist students in honing their interests and making future course selections in the human rights field.
- Department: Institute for Study of Human Rights
- W 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
- M 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Glenn Mitoma
Info -
Instructor:
Daniela R Ikawa
Info - 3 points
MEDIEVAL/RENAISSANCE PHILOLOGY
MEDIEVAL/RENAISSANCE PHILOLGY
- Department: Medieval and Renaissance Studies
-
Instructor:
Susan Boynton
CULPA: 18 Info - 3 points
MEDIEVAL & RENAISSANCE PHILOLOGY
Medieval and Renaissance Philology for MA students.
- Department: Medieval and Renaissance Studies
-
Instructor:
Susan Boynton
CULPA: 18 Info - 4 points
FOUNDATIONS OF PUBLIC HEALTH
Public health is a science-based discipline that depends on the analysis of empirical data to guide decision making. Public health decisions also involve value judgments and questions that cannot be answered solely, or primarily, with data. The goal of the Foundations Studio is to equip students with a set of conceptual frameworks and analytic tools for making those judgments and answering those questions. Comprising concentrations on history, ethics and human rights, this studio views public health practice and policy through a wide-angle lens and encourages students to think broadly about the social, political, cultural, legal, and economic drivers of public health outcomes. The studio is designed to help students grapple with challenging issues of justice, equity, individual rights and liberties, and collective action; and to develop a critical capacity for thinking broadly and deeply about public health issues.
- Department: Public Health
- W 5:30 p.m.-6:30 p.m.
- 2 points
In/disciplines of the Quotidian: Spanish
In/disciplines of Quotidi
“In/disciplines of the Quotidian: Spanish Still Lives and the Politics of the Overlooked” is an interdisciplinary cultural studies course that investigates how the ordinary becomes a site of tension, meaning, and critique across Spanish artistic traditions. Taking as its point of departure two productive contradictions—the paradox of still life/
Naturaleza muerta
(simultaneously immobile and vital) and the
bodegón
as both a lively social space and an emptied, object-filled scene—the course examines how the materiality of objects and backgrounds administer absence, presence and attention, reshape cultural narratives but also structure the political.
The course is grounded in a theoretical framework that treats materiality as inherently political, asking how objects participate in the organization of social life and regimes of value. Drawing on Thomas Lemke’s notion of the “government of things,” it considers how power operates not only through subjects but through arrangements of objects, infrastructures, and environments that shape conduct and perception. At the same time, it stages a dialogue between new materialist approaches—which emphasize the agency and vitality of matter—and Marxist materialisms, with their focus on labor, commodity relations, and historical conditions. Rather than opposing these traditions, the course explores their productive dialogue, showing how attention to lively matter can coexist with a critical social and political analysis ultimately reframing the overlooked object as both an active force, tool and sediment of social relations.
We will focus on very different contexts and objects of study from a comparative diachronic perspective, starting with seventeenth and eighteenth-century Spanish still life painting (Sánchez Cotán, Zurbarán, Meléndez, Goya) where everyday objects—food, vessels, tools—appear suspended in time yet charged with latent energy. These compositions negotiate life and stillness, abundance and austerity, the quotidian and the mystical, while also reflecting class structures, domestic labor, and consumption. The
bodegón
emerges here as a conceptual hinge: a trace of human interaction or monastic solitude, but also a script of its outside, and a religious and political pedagogy.
The course then turns to avant-garde literature and film of the 1920s, where writers and film-makers fragme
- Department: Latin American and Iberian Cultures
- R 3 p.m.-5 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Alberto Medina
Info - 4 points
JOURNALISM AND SOCIETY
Seminar surveying the history and the social, political, and economic impact of media from the birth of the newspaper forward.
- Department: Journalism
- T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Andie Tucher
Info - 3 points
FUNDAMENTALS OF DIRECTING
Directing is the art of articulating and sharing vision. This course will explore how directors locate the deep “why” behind their work, both their oeuvre and their individual projects, and how that “why” translates into every element of production: design, casting, direction of the actors, and producing choices. We will study the articulation of vision through both the macro and micro lens: how directors develop the big vision behind a project and also how directors communicate vision in the moment to moment work of a rehearsal process. The first part of every class will be devoted to the macro: articulation of vision. We will study master directors and the way they translate intention into aesthetic choices and process. We will learn a process of excavating the deepest intentions of the author (be that the playwright, an auteur director, or a collective) and integrating those intentions thoughtfully into all other production choices. And we will practice articulating the vision behind a dream project. The second part of each class will be a practicum exploring the communication directors use when working with actors to craft scenes. Students will apply fundamental directing skills through a progression from silent scenes to neutral scenes and finally scenes of their own choosing.
- Department: Theatre Arts
- M 2:10 p.m.-5 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Katherine Wilkinson
Info - 3 points
CONTESTING THE PAST
This course provides a panoramic survey of the ways that competing interest groups call on knowledge or narratives of the past and methods of its study in debates over controversial public issues. It is designed to examine claims about the past through the lenses of alternative knowledge frameworks and ideas about reality, in the context of specific contemporary problems: e.g., nationalist narratives; the basis for human rights for indigenous peoples; ownership or destruction of the world's patrimony; strife over disputed lands; investigations into mass human exploitation, murder and genocide; communities’ engagement with their own history; the antiquity of humanity on the planet; and interstellar communications and paranormal phenomena. The information that we will draw from balances historical sources, contemporary literature (e.g., newspapers and other periodicals), archaeology, sociocultural anthropology, oral accounts, and videos (both academic and popular).
- Department: Anthropology
- W 10:10 a.m.-noon
-
Instructor:
Terence N D'Altroy
CULPA: 37 Info - 3 points
HLTH PROM/DISEASE PREVNT CLRKSHIP II
HPDP CLERKSHIPS II
- Department: Dental and Oral Surgery
-
Instructor:
Folarin Odusola
h-index: 5 Info - 0 points
RESEARCH METHODS & APPLICATIONS
Qualitative Foundations
Successful public health studies, policies, and interventions rely on evidence to guide their design, development, implementation, and evaluation. Because public health is not a simple, reactive, “take the pill three times a day” solution, but a purposeful approach to preventing disease and promoting health, the tools of scientific inquiry to document, measure, evaluate, and understand all the consequences of health interventions are essential. Learning to identify, gather, and interpret evidence is therefore crucial for public health practitioners. The Research Methods & Applications studio provides an introduction to scientific inquiry and evidence and their relationships to public policy. Using an integrated approach spanning multiple disciplines, students will be provided with a basic introduction to quantitative and qualitative measurement and data collection, tenets of epidemiologic study design, statistical inference and data analysis techniques, and the tools of science. Views on the differences between scientific and other types of inquiry and knowledge, classical models of how science and evidence can inform policy and programs, and sources of tension at the science- policy interface will be explored and discussed. The methods introduced in this course will provide a toolkit with which to help measure and estimate the relationships between the smaller pieces that comprise the complex and dynamic web of systems in public health.
- Department: Public Health
- W 5:30 p.m.-6:30 p.m.
- 0-4.5 points
STATISTICAL MECHANICS
Prerequisites: PHYS W4021-W4022-W4023, or their equivalents. Fundamentals of statistical mechanics; theory of ensembles; quantum statistics; imperfect gases; cooperative phenomena.
- Department: Physics
- TR 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
-
Instructor:
Alfred H Mueller
CULPA: 2 Wikipedia Info - 4.5 points
QUANTUM MECHANICS I
Prerequisites: PHYS W4021-W4022, or their equivalents. The fundamental principles of quantum mechanics; elementary examples; angular momentum and the rotation group; spin and identical particles; isospin; time-independent and time-dependent perturbation theory.
- Department: Physics
- MW 8:40 a.m.-9:55 a.m.
-
Instructor:
Norman H Christ
CULPA: 34 Wikipedia Info - 4.5 points
DETERMINANTS OF HEALTH
This studio is concerned with
etiology
, or the “cause, set of causes, or manner of causation of disease or condition”. As such, we will explore the patterning (who/what) and determinants (why) of population health. The course will focus on determinants ranging from upstream features of the social and physical environment to downstream, proximal risk factors at the level of individual biology, as well as the interactions between them. While often we think about our health as a function of behaviors we can control and genetics we can’t, the reality is much more complex, involving dynamic interplay between biology and the environment over the life course. Where we live, what we are exposed to, and the social and economic positions we occupy are major influences on our health, becoming encoded in our biology and expressed in the diseases we develop (or avoid) and, ultimately, in our longevity. Identifying these factors and understanding their health consequences is central to public health.
In this studio, students become acquainted with a) the major environmental issues that we face, b) the social factors such as race/racism, socioeconomic status and gender that influence health, and c) the underlying biological basis of human disease. In addition, students will be presented with the approaches used to address the health consequences of these determinants.
- Department: Public Health
- R 6:30 p.m.-7:30 p.m.
- 3 points
Historical Approaches in the Social Scie
Historical Aprchs Scl Scn
This course introduces students to historical approaches in sociology and political science (and some economics). In the first part, the course surveys the major theoretical approaches and methodological traditions. Examples of the former are classic comparativist work (e.g. Skocpol’s study of revolutions), historist approaches (such as Sewell’s), or the historical institutionalist tradition (Mahoney, Thelen, Wimmer, etc.). In terms of methodological approaches, we will discuss classical Millean small-N comparisons, Qualitative Comparative Analysis, process tracing, actor-centered modeling, quantitative, large-N works, and causal inference type of research designs. In the second part, major topics in macro-comparative social sciences are examined, from world systems and empire to the origins of democracy.
- Department: Sociology
- M 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Andreas Wimmer
Wikipedia h-index: 41 Info - 4 points
INVENTING THE ANCIENTS
This course brings together the history of collecting and archaeology with biography. By examining the fascinating, entertaining, and often improbable lives of individuals who helped shape modern archaeology and the public museum, it explores the blurred boundaries between professionalism and amateurism, as well as between the fictive and the authentic. Students will read biographies of Hans Sloane, Giovanni Belzoni, Heinrich Schliemann, Luigi and Alessandro Palma di Cesnola, Constantine Simonides, among others, and will engage with themes such as biographical writing; collecting in the age of Enlightenment and empire; the museumization of the past; the reinvention of the ancient Mediterranean; the dream of the East; forgery and the illusion of authenticity; and archaeology, race, and nationalism.
- Department: Italian
- M 10:10 a.m.-noon
-
Instructor:
Konstantia Zanou
Info - 3 points
CAPSTONE: Conflict Analysis Models
Conflict analysis is central to understanding the context and content of any conflict. It is also critical for the person doing the conflict analysis to have a good understanding of who they are as a conflict resolution practitioner, including the frames with which they view the conflict analysis. Our worldviews, assumptions, values, and beliefs shape how we frame and create meaning from conflicts that we choose to examine, and how we understand the dynamics of those conflicts. Therefore, to conduct an impartial analysis of any conflict, and add value for the stakeholders involved, self-awareness is crucial.
This course is the foundation for developing the necessary mindset for conflict analysis. We want you to be able to enter any situation and ask the question, “What is really going on here?” and to use that inquiry to uncover underlying needs, issues, and assumptions. In this course, in addition to increasing your self-awareness as a conflict resolution practitioner, you will explore and become familiar with diverse conflict analysis approaches and tools, beginning with creating a conflict map to identify the actors, dynamics, and structures that are creating, escalating, and perpetuating the conflict. You will work with a variety of conflict analysis tools to examine the stakeholder perspectives and will be asked to identify issues that surfaced as a result of this analysis. You will define goals for your inquiry that correspond to the conflict issues you have identified and coalesce thematically around a specific purpose of appropriate scope for your capstone study. You will utilize the Coordinated Management of Meaning and Case Study frameworks to engage in desk-based qualitative inquiry using secondary sources. You will put theory into practice by interpreting the secondary data through the lens of applicable theory. The data will be further analyzed using CMM models and conflict analysis tools as a means of surfacing several needs to be addressed in your intervention design (in the next capstone course).
This course is the first of three (3) required courses of the capstone sequence.
In 6050, students will complete conflict analysis for their capstone case study.
In 6250, students will design an intervention that addresses the needs identified in their earlier analysis. In 6350, students will consider sustainability, as well as monitoring and evaluation strategies for their proposed intervention.
- Department: Negotiation & Conflict Resolution
- S 9 a.m.-5 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Amy E Sereday
Info - 3 points
Methods and Problems: Theoretical Philos
Methds/Probs:Theoretical
This class covers classic readings in contemporary philosophy, selections from historical authors that bear on today’s debates, and influential recent contributions in a range of subfields such as metaphysics, philosophy of mind, epistemology, logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of cognitive science.
- Department: Philosophy
- R 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Melissa S Fusco
CULPA: 1 Info - 4 points
PARTICLE PHENOMENOLOGY
Prerequisites: PHYS G6037 or the equivalent. The elementary particles and their properties; interactions of charged particles and radiation with matter; accelerators, particle beams, detectors; conservation laws; symmetry principles; strong interactions, resonances, unitary symmetry; electromagnetic interactions; weak interactions; current topics.
- Department: Physics
- MW 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Mark Ross-Lonergan
Info - 3 points
PSYCHOPHYSIOLGCL METH/ANALYSIS
- Department: Psychology
- MW 10:10 a.m.-noon
-
Instructor:
Niall Bolger
CULPA: 4 h-index: 55 Info - 4 points
Proseminar in Religion I
The Proseminar in Religion is designed to support PhD students within the department as they work on various aspects of professional development. Meeting three times per semester, the sessions will focus on both academic and non-academic career paths, coordinated by a member of the faculty and with guest speakers from both within and beyond the department. The emphasis will be on concrete outputs and skills training. The proseminar will require preparation and active participation from enrolled students, including background reading and writing assignments connected to the monthly topic. After each session focused on a piece of writing (fellowship applications; CVs and cover letters; publishing), students should come away from the proseminar with strong drafts of the relevant texts.
The proseminar is required for all ABD students in year 5 or 6 and can be taken sequentially or not. ABD students are encouraged to speak about the timing of enrollment with the DGS and their dissertation sponsor.
- Department: Religion
- W 7 p.m.-9:30 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Matthew Engelke
CULPA: 3 Wikipedia h-index: 25 Info - 1 points
SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY: THE ORIGINS
Prerequisites: this course is intended for sociology Ph.D. and SMS students. No others without the instructors written permission. Foundational sources and issues in sociological theory: Adam Smith, Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Simmel, Mead, Mauss, others; division of labor, individualism, exchange, class and its vicissitudes, social control, ideas and interests, contending criteria of explanation and interpretation.
- Department: Sociology
- T 9 a.m.-noon
-
Instructor:
Gil Eyal
CULPA: 15
h-index: 26
Info
- 3 points
Adaptation
This is a fast-paced writing, survey and workshop course that will empower writers to define the formal ideals of screenwriting by investigating film adaptations of novels and short stories. The course will culminate in the writing of a short pitch document. This course is at once a survey of the twentieth century American Film, a survey of the Twentieth Century American novel, and a course for writers. We will distill the craft of screenwriting by looking through the prism of adaption in order to understand which elements of the novel translate into film, and why. We will consider novels with the mercenary detachment of a screenwriter, scouring for scraps with value for a screenplay. As we compare the original text with the finished film, we will distill the essence of the screenplay form. What is plot, action, dialog, metaphor? How do we converge these goals? We will decipher, with the clinical eye of a detective, what the screenwriter took from the novel and what they left behind. And in doing this, we will reach an understanding of the formal tenets of an American film.
- Department: Film
- R 10 a.m.-1 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Galt V Niederhoffer
Info - 3 points
ATOMIC PHYSICS
Recent progress in control of atoms with lasers has led to creating the coldest matter in the universe, constructing ultra precise time and frequency standards, and capability to test high energy theories with tabletop experiments. This course will cover the essentials of atomic physics including the resonance phenomenon, atoms in magnetic and electric fields, and light-matter interactions. These naturally lead to line shapes and laser spectroscopy, as well as to a variety of topics relevant to modern research such as cooling and trapping of atoms. It is recommended for anyone interested in pursuing research in the vibrant field of atomic, molecular, and optical (AMO) physics, and is open to interested students with a one year background in quantum mechanics. Both graduate students and advanced undergraduates are welcome.
- Department: Physics
- MW 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Zhenjie Yan
Info - 3 points
MAKING ETHNOG:METHOD & WRITING
This course begins with two central and related epistemological problems in conducting ethnographic research: first, the notion that objects of scientific research are ‘made’ through adopting a particular relational stance and asking certain kinds of questions. From framing a research problem and choosing a ‘research context’ story to tell, to the kinds of methods one selects to probe such a problem, the ‘how’ and ‘what’ – or means and content – are inextricably intertwined. A second epistemological problem concerns the artifice of reality, and the nebulous distinction between truth and fiction, no less than the question of where or with whom one locates such truth.
With these issues framing the course, we will work through some key themes and debates in anthropology from the perspective of methodology, ranging from subject/object liminality to incommensurability and radical alterity to the politics of representation. Students will design an ethnographic project of their choosing and conduct research throughout the term, applying different methodological approaches popular in anthropology and the social sciences more generally, such as participant observation, semi-structured interview, diary-keeping and note-taking.
- Department: Anthropology
- R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Nicholas Glastonbury
Info - 3 points
INTEGRATION OF SCIENCE & PRACTICE
INTEGR OF SCI & PRACT
The different studios in the Mailman Core teach a set of foundational perspectives, knowledge, and skills. But the practice of public health requires applying this education in a context characterized by uncertainty, risk, competing interests, conflicting values, and systems of oppression that perpetuate racism and drive inequities across multiple dimensions of society
The Integration of Science and Practice (ISP) uses case studies of actual events to help students analyze the complicated nature of public health practice. The course immerses students in the complex arena of public health decision-making and debate, placing them in the role of stakeholders and policymakers who must marshal both their core knowledge and disciplinary perspectives to explore different options and create and justify interdisciplinary responses to public health challenges. The cases also provide an opportunity to identify crosscutting themes and questions (e.g. knowledge gaps; used of evidence; trade-offs in public health decision making, inequities and inequalities; discrimination; public health ethics; politics; interest group agendas; funding and available resources; organization; public perception, etc.).
Fundamental to all the cases, ISP provides a structured space to explore systems of oppression, our relationship to these systems, and their impact on public health.
In the Fall semester these cases are based upon classic public health dilemmas, and links are made to their relevance to current public health issues. The cases serve as an archive of sorts, a library of examples to draw on as points of comparison when they encounter similar problems and issues in other classes or during their careers.
- Department: Public Health
- W 6:40 p.m.-8:20 p.m.
- 1.5 points
STUDIES IN DANTE
Inferno
A variable-content course that rotates through various texts of Dante's and various areas of Dante studies. The fall 2026 course will be an in-depth reading of
Inferno
.
- Department: Italian
- R 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Teodolinda Barolini
CULPA: 7
Wikipedia
Info
- 3 points
READING, WRITING, ETHNOGRAPHY
READING WRITING ETHNOGRAPHY
Anthropology GR6079x READING WRITING ETHNOGRAPHY. Reading, Writing, Ethnography” asks students to imagine learning to read and then to write anew. It explores a series of exemplary texts in order to explore the histories, genre conventions and experimental forms for writing ethnography. The course is especially concerned with the ways in which empirical observation is made the ground of theoretical abstraction and generalizing claims. Additionally, it examines the relationship between different theoretical and aesthetic movements as these have influenced the writings of anthropologists and those whose work can be considered to have an anthropological ambition—even when they have not been formally trained in anthropology.
- Department: Anthropology
- W 10:10 a.m.-noon
-
Instructor:
Rosalind Morris
CULPA: 20 Wikipedia Info - 3 points
Personal Leadership in Public Health
PERSONAL LEADERSHIP IN P
- Department: Public Health
- 1.5 points
Personal Leadership in Public Health
PERSONAL LEADERSHIP IN P
- Department: Public Health
- 1.5 points
THING THEORY
Anthropology GR6085x THING THEORY. The ‘material turn’ is a shorthand for the vast and messy literature on things/objects/materials/ stuff/matter that crosses between and interweaves anthropology, archaeology, art history, science & technology studies (STS), political science, philosophy, and literary studies. Material cultural studies, of varying sorts, ask how things make us. This course explores the turn towards things across the humanities and social sciences over the past few decades. Engaging with the material of worlds, scholars have generated new questions, new modes of analysis, and new accounts of subjectivity, agency, and being. We will read a variety of texts from anthropology, STS, and other disciplines, in order to trace some of the ways in which material objects have become important to scholars in the humanities and social sciences.
- Department: Anthropology
- T 10:10 a.m.-noon
-
Instructor:
Hannah Chazin
Info - 3 points
INTRO TO INTL PLANNING
- Department: Architecture, Planning and Preservation
- M 1 p.m.-3 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Ebru A Gencer
Info - 3 points
Waste and Leftovers
Generations of anthropologists have seized upon waste as an object to think through issues as wide-ranging as labor divisions, religious devotion, and processes of social classification and value production. In recent years the discipline has renewed attention to this object by way of puzzling through how apparently intensifying global processes of industrialization, consumption, and extraction shape contemporary politics and ecological sensibilities. This seminar charts some of these moves within and beyond our discipline by inviting students to consider how and to what ends societies work through wasted things but also other kinds of durable leftovers (i.e. “ruins,” “byproducts,” “rubble,” “remainders” etc). Of particular concern for us will be the production and (re)appropriation of things that defy strict classification as “waste,” that is, as things imagined to be readily and permanently ejected from a social group or order. Students will read seminal texts on waste, excess, abjection, and reappropriation alongside ethnographic and historical monographs that take up these themes.
- Department: Anthropology
- F 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Catherine Fennell
Info - 3 points
ELECTROMAGNETIC THEORY
Prerequisites: PHYS W3008 or its equivalent. Fundamentals of electromagnetism from an advanced perspective with emphasis on electromagnetic fields in vaccum with no bounding surfaces present. A thorough understanding of Maxwells equations and their application to a wide variety of phenomena. Maxwells equations (in vacuum) and the Lorentz force law - noncovariant form. Scalar and vector potentials, gauge transformations. Generalized functions (delta functions and their derivatives), point changes. Fourier transforms, longitutdinal ad transverse vector fields. Solution of Maxwells equations in unbounded space for electrostatics and magnetostatics with given charge and current sources. Special relativity, Loretnz transformations, 4-momentum, relativistic reactions. Index mechanics of Cartesian tensor notation. Covariatn formulation of Maxwells equations and the Lorentz force law, Lorentz transformation properties of E and B. Lagrangian density for the electromagnetic field, Langrangian density for the Proca field. Symmetries and conservation laws, Noethers theorem. Field conservation laws (energy, linear momentum, angular momentum, stress tensor). Monochromatic plane wave solutions of the time-dependent source-free Maxwell equations, elliptical polarization, partially-polarized electromagnetgic waves, Stokes parameters. Solution of the time-dependent Maxwell equations in unbounded space with given chare and current sources (retarded and advanced solutions). Properties of electromagnetic fields in the radiaion zone, angular distribution of radiated power, frequency distribution of radiated energy, radiation form periodic and non-periodic motions. Radiation from antennas and antenna arrays. Lienard-Wiechert fields, the relativistic form of the Larmor radiation forumla, synchrotron radiation, bremsstrahlung, undulator and wiggler radiation. Electric dipole and magnetic dipole radiation. Scattering of electromagnetic radiation, the differential scattering cross-section, low-energy and high-energy approximations, scattering from a random or periodic array of scatterers. Radiation reaction force, Feynman-Wheeler theoryy. The macroscopic Maxwell equations (spatial averaging to get P, M, D, H). Convolutions, linear materials (permittivity, permeability, and conductivity), causality, analytics continuation, Kramers-Kronig relations. Propagation of monochromatic plane waves in isotropic and non-isotropic linear materials, ordinary ad extraordinary waves. Cherenkov radiation, transition radiation.
- Department: Physics
- MW 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
-
Instructor:
Brian Metzger
CULPA: 5 h-index: 77 Info - 4.5 points
DESIGNS OF SOCIAL RESEARCH
Required of all incoming sociology doctoral students. Prepares students who have already completed an undergraduate major or its equivalent in some social science to evaluate and undertake both systematic descriptions and sound explanations of social structures and processes.
- Department: Sociology
- W 9 a.m.-noon
-
Instructor:
Peter Bearman
CULPA: 19
Wikipedia
h-index: 54
Info
- 4 points
AF-AM: PRO SEMINAR
This course introduces students to central questions and debates in the fields of African American Studies, and it explores the various interdisciplinary efforts to address them. The seminar is designed to provide an interdisciplinary foundation and familiarize students with a number of methodological approaches. Toward this end we will have a number of class visitors/guest lecturers drawn from members of IRAAS's Core and Affiliated Faculty.
- Department: African American and African Diaspora
- T 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Brandi Summers
Info - 4 points
RESEARCH SEMINAR
An M.S. degree requirement. Students attend at least three Applied Mathematics research seminars within the Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics and submit reports on each.
- Department: Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics
- T 4:10 p.m.-5 p.m.
- 0 points
MA SEMINAR IN GLOBAL THOUGHT
This course explores the challenges of understanding the global world in which we live, a world that demands new conceptual approaches and ways of thinking. The objectives are:
To examine multidisciplinary approaches to key global issues through readings, class discussions, and conversations with select CGT faculty members as guest speakers. This will take place through multi-week modules that center on a critical issue, asking students to familiarize themselves with key questions and context, engage with an expert on the topic, and apply their insights to a specific case or question.
To develop a focused and feasible research project and hone the practices of scholarly data collection, analysis, and communication through workshops and assignments. This work begins in the fall and continues to completion in the spring semester of the seminar. The perspectives and skills developed in M.A. Seminar will support students in the development and completion of their thirty-five page M.A. essays, which they will present to each other and to CGT faculty at the Spring Symposium.
- Department: Committee on Global Thought
- M 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
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Instructor:
Kevin Funk
h-index: 6 Info -
Instructor:
Vishakha Desai
Wikipedia Info - 4 points
ADVANCED MECHANICS OF FLUIDS
Eulerian and Lagrangian descriptions of motion. Stress and strain rate tensors, vorticity, integral and differential equations of mass, momentum, and energy conservation. Potential flow.
- Department: Mechanical Engineering
- W 1:10 p.m.-3:40 p.m.
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Instructor:
Gerard A Ateshian
Info - 3 points
INTRODUCTION TO SLAVIC LITERARY THEORY
INTRO TO SLAVIC LITERARY
This course introduces graduate students to the major 20th-century literary theories that emerged in Russia and Eastern Europe. The course's main purpose is to familiarize students with these approaches and teach them how to use theoretical models as tools for analyzing literary texts.
By the end of the course, students will be required to write a paper investigating the theoretical aspects of one or more literary texts discussed in class. This paper will test not only students' mastery of literary analysis through the prism of multiple theoretical models, but also their ability to challenge a literary text through theory and vice versa.
Writing the paper will include a workshop-style class in which students design their thesis and outline. The course will also introduce students to the Bahmeteff Archive and Columbia's library holdings.
This course counts as Proseminar for Slavic graduate students but is also open to students in other disciplines, which is why all readings are in English.
- Department: Slavic Languages
- T 10:10 a.m.-noon
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Instructor:
Mark Lipovetsky
Wikipedia Info - 4 points
PLASMA PHYSICS I
Debye screening. Motion of charged particles in space- and time-varying electromagnetic fields. Two-fluid description of plasmas. Linear electrostatic and electromagnetic waves in unmagnetized and magnetized plasmas. The magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) model, including MHD equilibrium, stability, and MHD waves in simple geometries.
- Department: Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics
- MW 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
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Instructor:
Ben Zhu
Info - 3 points
Proseminar for PhD and MA Students
Offered in both semesters, the weekly seminar is for incoming PhD students (required) and for MA students of the first year (required) and second year (optional). MA students can take the class at any stage during their studies for the MA. The class is graded Pass/Fail. Every two weeks, the seminar will be co-led by the instructor and an invited member of the department who will select a reading for discussion, historical or contemporary, from their area of expertise. Students will submit responses to the readings. The alternate weeks will be divided into an hour for the PhD cohort and an hour for the MA students. Here, research skills in reading, writing, and conversing will be developed through a range of intellectual exercises.
- Department: Philosophy
- T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
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Instructor:
Lydia Goehr
CULPA: 26
Wikipedia
Info
- 3 points
ISSUES IN POLITICAL THEORY
Prerequisites: the instructors permission prior to registration. A survey of selected issues and debates in political theory. Areas of the field discussed include normative political philosophy, history of political thought, and the design of political and social institutions.
- Department: Political Science
- R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Turkuler Isiksel
CULPA: 3
h-index: 9
Info
- 4 points
THEORY & METHOD-STUDY OF RELIG
“Theories and Methods” courses in any field are commonly unwieldy beasts. They cannot but be a compromise-formation between contemporary questions and texts, ideas, and definitions (alongside a whole lot of problems) that we have inherited as “canonical” in a field. In the best case, such a course is a passageway into deeper engagement with a field, its histories, its complexities, and its possibilities from which we might wrest and build viable futures. Disciplinary fields are structures where power and knowledge are produced and reproduced. The study of religion is no exception. The questions of “how is ‘religion’ constructed as a category here?” and “what work does the designation of something or someone as ‘religious’ do?” will, therefore, accompany us throughout our work over the course of this semester. We will also examine how different methodological commitments shape what objects of study and which questions come to the fore for the study of religion. This course will explore how the study of religion is not reducible to the study of traditions and communities that are readily recognized as “religious.” However, the vexed histories of the construction of “religion” as a category of knowledge production does also not negate that there are large, varied, and flourishing communities of practice beyond the university for whom whether or not “religion” exists is not at all a question. Holding these layers of complexity in play, this course seeks to introduce students exemplarily to key texts and concepts that have shaped the study of religion as we encounter it today as an academic discipline.
- Department: Religion
- M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Yannik Thiem
h-index: 1 Info - 3 points
APPLIED STATISTICS I
First semester of the doctoral program sequence in applied statistics.
- Department: Statistics
- MW 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
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Instructor:
Ming Yuan
h-index: 45 Info - 4 points