Major technologies to store carbon dioxide, geological, ocean, and in the carbon chemical pool. Carbon dioxide transport technologies also covered. In addition to basic science and engineering challenges of each technology, full spectrum of economic, environmental, regulatory, and political/policy aspects, and their implication for regional and global carbon management strategies of the future. Combination of lectures, class debates and breakout groups, student presentations, and independent final projects.
Advanced classical thermodynamics. Availability, irreversibility, generalized behavior, equations of state for nonideal gases, mixtures and solutions, phase and chemical behavior, combustion. Thermodynamic properties of ideal gases. Applications to automotive and aircraft engines, refrigeration and air conditioning, and biological systems.
Prerequisites: BIOL W4300 or the instructors permission. A weekly seminar and discussion course focusing on the most recent development in biotechnology. Professionals of the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and related industries will be invited to present and lead discussions.
Introduction to various CO2 utilization and conversion technologies that can reduce the overall carbon footprint of commodity chemicals and materials. Fundamentals of thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, reaction kinetics, catalysis and reactor design will be discussed using technological examples such as enhanced oil recovery, shale fracking, photo and electrochemical conversion of CO2 to chemical and fuels, and formation of solid carbonates and their various uses. Life cycle analyses of potential products and utilization schemes will also be discussed, as well as the use of renewable energy for CO2 conversion.
Provides elementary introduction to fundamental ideas in stochastic analysis for applied mathematics. Core material includes: (i) review of probability theory (including limit theorems), and introduction to discrete Markov chains and Monte Carlo methods; (ii) elementary theory of stochastic process, Ito's stochastic calculus and stochastic differential equations; (iii) introductions to probabilistic representation of elliptic partial differential equations (the Fokker-Planck equation theory); (iv) stochastic approximation algorithms; and (v) asymptotic analysis of SDEs.
Principles of flight, incompressible flows, compressible regimes. Inviscid compressible aerodynamics in nozzles (wind tunnels, jet engines), around wings (aircraft, space shuttle) and around blunt bodies (rockets, reentry vehicles). Physics of normal shock waves, oblique shock waves, and explosion waves.
Mysticism and philosophy are often seen as opposing modes of thought. Yet while Kabbalah emerged partly in response to Jewish philosophy, it bears clear traces of Neoplatonic and Aristotelian influence. This course explores the origins and core principles of both traditions, their roles within Judaism, and their intersections with non-Jewish thought. Particular attention will be given to key moments in Jewish intellectual history and to differing treatments of concepts such as myth, law, heresy, evil, and the divine.
The basic thesis of the course is that all viruses adopt a common strategy. The strategy is simple:
1. Viral genomes are contained in metastable particles.
2. Genomes encode gene products that promote an infectious cycle (mechanisms for genomes to enter cells, replicate, and exit in particles).
3. Infection patterns range from benign to lethal; infections can overcome or co-exist with host defenses.
Despite the apparent simplicity, the tactics evolved by particular virus families to survive and prosper are remarkable. This rich set of solutions to common problems in host/parasite interactions provides significant insight and powerful research tools. Virology has enabled a more detailed understanding of the structure and function of molecules, cells and organisms and has provided fundamental understanding of disease and virus evolution.
The course will emphasize the common reactions that must be completed by all viruses for successful reproduction within a host cell and survival and spread within a host population. The molecular basis of alternative reproductive cycles, the interactions of viruses with host organisms, and how these lead to disease are presented with examples drawn from a set of representative animal and human viruses, although selected bacterial viruses will be discussed.
This course provides an overview of experimental film and video since the early 20th century European art movements (abstract, Dada, Surrealism), including the emergence of American experimental film in the 1940s, post-World War II underground experimental films, structuralist films and early video art in the 1960s and 70s, post-1960s identitarian experimental work, the emergence of digital video in museums and online in the 1990s to the present. The course surveys and analyses a wide range of experimental work, including the artists Hans Richter, Luis Bunuel, Salvador Dali, Joseph Cornell, Maya Deren, Andy Warhol, Stan Brakhage, Michael Snow, Martha Rosler, Vito Acconci, Barbara Hammer, Su Friedrich, Julie Dash, Isaac Julien, Matthew Barney, Ilana Harris-Babou, and others. The course will study the structural, aesthetic and thematic links between mainstream and avant-garde cinema, theater, and art movements, and will place the films in their economic, social, and political contexts.
This course deals with a fundamental question of sustainability management: how to change organizations and more complex systems, such as communities, industries, and markets, by integrating sustainability concerns in the way that they operate. The course poses this question to a dozen leading sustainability practitioners, who answer it by discussing management strategies that they use in their own work. Through these guest lectures, extensive class discussion, readings, and writing assignments, students identify and simulate applying practical ways for transforming how organizations and complex systems work. The practitioners, who work in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors and in a wide variety of organizations, make presentations in the first hour of the course. Students then have time to ask questions and speak informally with the guest practitioners, and will participate in an instructor-led class discussion, geared toward identifying management strategies, better understanding their application, and considering their effectiveness. By the end of the course, the students gain an understanding of management tools and strategies that they, themselves, would use to integrate sustainability in organizations.
The course complements the M.S. in Sustainability Management program’s required course, Sustainability Management (SUMA K4100). In that course, students study management and organization theory. In the Practicum, students learn directly from leading practitioners, who confront sustainability management issues daily.
The seminar will focus on trends that have emerged over the past three decades in Jewish American women's writing in the fields of memoirs, fiction and Jewish history: the representation and exploration through fictive narratives of women's experiences in American Jewish orthodox communities; reinterpretation of Jewish history through gender analysis; the recording of migration and exile by Jewish women immigrants from the former Soviet Union, Morocco, Iran, and Egypt; and gender transformations. Texts will be analyzed in terms of genre structures, narrative strategies, the role of gender in shaping content and Jewish identity, and the political, cultural and social contexts in which the works were created. The course aims for students to discuss and critically engage with texts in order to develop the skills of analytical and abstract thinking, as well as the ability to express that critical thinking in writing. Prerequisites:
Both
one introductory WGSS course
and
Critical Approaches to Social and Cultural Theory,
or
Permission of the Instructor.
The goal of this course is to explore how chemical methods and concepts have impacted our ability to understand and manipulate protein structure and function. We will navigate this subject through a combination of lectures and structured discussions on research articles from the literature. The course is divided into three segments: (1) In the first part, we will review the rudiments of protein structure and function, then delve into various aspects of enzyme chemistry and polypeptide biosynthesis. (2) In the second part of the course, we will cover synthetic methods to produce and chemically modify peptides and proteins. (3) In the final part, we will discuss chemical approaches to control protein function and monitor protein activity, focusing on methods that use small molecules and mass spectrometry proteomics.
Historical co-evolution of building energy systems and fuels. Classifying existing buildings into typologies that are a prevalent combination of building size, age, fuels, equipment, distribution, and zoning controls. Fuels, electricity, furnaces, boilers, heat pumps. Overview of common heat
and hot water distribution systems. Case-study based approach to evaluate retrofit options for each typology. Considerations of location, stagingupgrades, envelope efficiency, retrofit cost structure, paybacks with a view towards decarbonization.
Principles of electronic circuits used in the generation, transmission, and reception of signal waveforms, as used in analog and digital communication systems. Nonlinearity and distortion; power amplifiers; tuned amplifiers; oscillators; multipliers and mixers; modulators and demodulators; phase-locked loops. An extensive design project is an integral part of the course.
The seminar will explore the genealogies, key debates, and transmutations of cinematic realism: the diverse “realisms” on which it draws, and the range of meanings, uses, and abuses of the term. Questions of realism have been carried over from the traditional arts and literature, but have undergone a sea-change with the advent of photography and cinematography. While the concept of realism seemed bracketed by post-modern discourses and digital culture, the realist aspiration still haunts the cinematic imagination and the media at large. The claim to presence; the cultural conventions of mimesis and illusionism; the shifting values of document, witness, testimony; the relation of the material and the referential, of the authentic and the simulated – all ensure the continued fascination with realism in its myriad forms through our time. Traversing fiction and documentaries, mainstream and experimental forms, the seminar will consider both classical cases and challenging examples from diverse cinemas and cultural moments, and examine the political implications of realism and its capacity for transmutation and revival. Screenings will include Wyler’s Best Years of our Lives, Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, Burnett’s Killer of Sheep, Kiarostami’s Life and Nothing More, Jia Zhangke’s The World, Leigh’s Meantime, Farocki’s Workers Leaving a Factory, and more.
This course explores transcontinental connections across Africa, Asia, and the Americas as
forged in the practices and movements of peoples, in the context of global colonial and
postcolonial orders. We will consider the intersections, crossings, and collaborations of
different communities of the global South across these continents in the course of their social,
cultural, and political struggles to shape and transform the worlds they live in. We will ask, how
might different narratives of these global South connections contribute to our imagination and
practice of global resistance and transformation? Topics include: colonialism, capitalism,
imperialism, Third Worldism, feminism.
This course explores the production of culture in the contemporary Maghreb. We consider how important dimensions of social and political life are explored in literature and film and, correspondingly, the role that these and other media play in shaping social and political dynamics. The focus is on Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco, but these nations are also situated in broader regional and global contexts. Former French colonies, these three nations have in common a multilingual cultural environment in which French coexists with Arabic and Amazigh languages.
The course begins in roughly 1990, a time of disenchantment when the political regimes established at Independence were challenged and in some cases replaced. We explore the dynamics of Algeria’s ‘Black Decade’ and Morocco’s emergence from the ‘Years of lead,’ then turn to more recent social and political dynamics, notably the ‘Arab spring’ of 2011-2012 and the ongoing Algerian
hirak
. Throughout the course we consider how the arts have responded to and contributed to change while also revisiting the past and reframing national narratives.
The course is interdisciplinary, combining historical, sociological and anthropological approaches with close reading of texts and films. The syllabus is organized both historically and thematically. We explore questions including the representation and memory of violence, the geographies and sociology of migration and globalization, and the changing landscape of media and publication. Several sessions explore the meaning of ‘modernity’ in conjunction with explorations of subjectivity and spirituality, gender and sexuality.
What is scripture? How is cannon created? How do particular communities find meaning in varying works of literature? In this seminar, we will explore a number of influential American texts not simply in order to understand how they address questions of the holy and divine presence but also for how they provide creative ways of considering questions that have dogged Americans for centuries. In so doing, we will place literary works in conversation with contemporary theological trends and present-day scholarship on these connections. The course’s main thematic focus will be on government and collective rights; racial difference and questions of theodicy; children’s literature and disciplinary formation; the American libertarian streak; how best to care for the self; and humanity’s connection to nature. Students will examine a variety of texts – from the Declaration of Independence to Carl Sagan and Moby Dick – to better understand what matters to Americans and what do the literary artifacts we leave behind say about our current civilizational moment.
This course will have succeeded in its goals if by its end your operative definition of religion has been significantly jumbled, challenged, and complicated. While many of our historical actors will use the term in different ways, this course is invested not in identifying what is or is not properly “religious,” but rather in examining how ideas operate in the world for the people to whom they’re important. To a certain extent, we must take seriously the claims made by religious actors of God acting in their lives. But in terms of analysis, religion for us will be a fluid concept, one that evades simple definition, and that is always “real” in terms of its effects on belief, action, and identity.
This course is intended to be an opportunity to review the relation between the word “person” and plants and animals, with whom humans abide in a biosphere with no natural boundaries or territories. While personhood is a recognition of human capability and agency, we have not taken many steps in the direction of recognizing the capability and agency of plants and animals. Moreover, it is clear that we have diminished many of their functions and even annihilated many of their entire populations. Nonetheless, there is movement to change this. In our course, three major features of personhood are explored: standing, rights and identity. Each of these three features are divided into two types: legal and spiritual standing, juridical and birth rights, and empirical and narrative identities. Animals and plants are discussed in the context of each of the six types; and are discussed in that order (animals first and plants second) because the movement to change the existing conditions has been more active in relation to animals than to plants. The growing tendency to blend both plant personhood and animal personhood into environmental or Nature personhood will also be explored. The overall aim is to help reverse the deleterious conditions generated by the Anthropocene, in which we, and the plants and animals, struggle to live.
At once material and symbolic, our bodies exist at the intersection of multiple competing discourses, including the juridical, the techno-scientific, and the biopolitical. In this course, we will draw upon a variety of critical interdisciplinary literatures—including feminist and queer studies, science and technology studies, and disability studies—to consider some of the ways in which the body is constituted by such discourses, and itself serves as the substratum for social relations. Among the key questions we will consider are the following: What is natural about the body? How are distinctions made between presumptively normal and pathological bodies, and between psychic and somatic experiences? How do historical and political-economic forces shape the perception and meaning of bodily difference? And most crucially: how do bodies that are multiply constituted by competing logics of gender, race, nation, and ability offer up resistance to these and other categorizations?
Complex reactive systems. Catalysis. Heterogeneous systems, with an emphasis on coupled chemical kinetics and transport phenomena. Reactions at interfaces (surfaces, aerosols, bubbles). Reactions in solution.
This advanced elective equips economics majors with the tools to analyze the policy challenges and structural dynamics of Middle Eastern economies. Students will apply macroeconomic models and quantitative methods to understand topics such as oil and gas dependence, fiscal sustainability, inflation, trade, labor markets, demographic transition, institutional development, poverty, and the economics of conflict and reform. They will actively research and present case studies that illustrate the policy challenges in specific country settings. Readings are drawn from leading economics textbooks, research articles, policy reports, and multimedia sources, fostering collaboration, critical thinking, and data-driven discussions on contemporary regional development issues while remaining attentive to the human dimension and to the political economy context in which these policies unfold.
The ‘Terrestrial Paleoclimate-From Science to Justice' course teaches the close relation and inter-connections between paleoclimate processes, modern climate impacts and solution ideas, and the resulting climate justice challenge.
The course starts with an introduction of the inter-hemispheric patterns of climate changes on glacial-interglacial, millennial and centennial time-scales. We introduce the most prominent and robust climate archives - ice cores, speleothems, mountain glaciers, lake cores and pluvial lakes -, ranging from the polar regions to the tropics- and discuss the methods used to precisely date these records and the various techniques to extract the wealth of climatic information these archives contain.
We focus on the paleoclimate signals from the last glacial cycle, its termination and transition towards the current interglacial, the Holocene period, including the last millennium. This is a climate concept course and the overarching goal will be to highlight the striking harmony of inter-hemispheric climate changes over this period and the inter-connectivity of the various key-elements of the climate system in light of the profound relevance of these climate orchestrations to ongoing climate change.
In the second module of this course, we will discuss the state of the climate crises in the paleo-context, together with ideas and visions toward
transitions
to a more sustainable future, and the fundamental aspects of
Climate Justice
within these considerations. The final group project brings together all these aspects.
The course consists of formal lectures and discussion groups to recite and digest the new material, solve small problems and understand the connection to current climate events, solutions and Climate Justice.
Pre-requisites: any introductory level earth, environmental or climate course
The goal of the course is to introduce students to foundational texts, theories, and research in the field of sociology of education. In particular, we will focus on the role of schooling in social stratification and social reproduction in the United States.
This course is organized by broad topic and theme. We will begin with a discussion of the purpose of schooling before moving into a discussion of some theoretical perspectives on the role of schooling in our society. Next, we will discuss inequality in schooling across multiple socio-demographic categories, including social class, race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and religion (in addition to inequality at the intersection of multiple social categories). By the end of this course, you should have a strong foundation in research on education’s role in society.
In this class we will study South-West Asian and North African (SWANA) diasporic populations, social movements and cultural production that have responded to the multi-faceted ramifications of the 21st century war on terror. We will focus on diverse Arab, Iranian, and Afghan diasporas in the United States, where 19th and 20th century legacies of racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia and Orientalism combined in new ways to target these groups after the September 11th, 2001 attacks. Drawing on an interdisciplinary array of texts, including ethnography, fiction, feminist and queer theory, social movement theory, and visual and performance art, we will look at how the “war on terror” has shaped the subjectivities and self-representation of SWANA communities. Crucially, we will examine the gender and sexual politics of Islamophobia and racism and study how scholars, activists and artists have sought to intervene in dominant narratives of deviance, threat, and backwardness attributed to Muslim and other SWANA populations. This course takes up the politics of naming, situating the formation of “SWANA” as part of an anti-colonial genealogy that rejects imperial geographies such as “Middle East.” We will ask how new geographies and affiliations come into being in the context of open-ended war, and what new political identities and forms of cultural production then become possible.
Prerequisites: BCRS UN2102 Further develops skills in speaking, reading, and writing, using essays, short stories, films, and fragments of larger works. Reinforces basic grammar and introduces more complete structures.
Why did millions of Ukrainians starve under Stalin? In this seminar, we will engage with the contentious historiography of the famine of 1932-34 – a defining event of Soviet and Ukrainian history, and an essential touchstone for understanding the Russo-Ukrainian War today. Without losing sight of the famine’s human tragedy, we will focus especially on questions of causality, intent, and agency at multiple levels, from the Kremlin to the village. Drawing on studies of other famines within and outside the Soviet context (Russia, Kazakhstan, and China), participants will develop a robust comparative toolkit. The seminar aims to highlight historiographical advances, explore newly-available primary sources, and identify the remaining gaps in our understanding.
In Fall 2014, medical students across the U.S. staged die-ins as part of the nationwide #blacklivesmatter protests. The intention was to create a shocking visual spectacle, laying on the line “white coats for black lives.” The images were all over social media: students of all colors, dressed in lab coats, lying prone against eerily clean tile floors, stethoscopes in pockets, hands and around necks. One prone student held a sign reading, “Racism is Real.” These medical students’ collective protests not only created visual spectacle, but produced a dynamic speculative fiction. What would it mean if instead of Michael Brown or Eric Garner or Freddie Gray, these other, more seemingly elite bodies were subjected to police violence? In another viral image, a group of African American male medical students from Harvard posed wearing hoodies beneath their white coats, making clear that the bodies of some future doctors could perhaps be more easily targeted for state-sanctioned brutality. “They tried to bury us,” read a sign held by one of the students, “they didn’t realize we were seeds.” Both medicine and racial justice are acts of speculation; their practices are inextricable from the practice of imagining. By imagining new cures, new discoveries and new futures for human beings in the face of illness, medicine is necessarily always committing acts of speculation. By imagining ourselves into a more racially just future, by simply imagining ourselves any sort of future in the face of racist erasure, social justice activists are similarly involved in creating speculative fictions. This course begins with the premise that racial justice is the bioethical imperative of our time. It will explore the space of science fiction as a methodology of imagining such just futures, embracing the work of Asian- and Afroturism, Cosmos Latinos and Indigenous Imaginaries. We will explore issues including Biocolonialism, Alien/nation, Transnational Labor and Reproduction, the Borderlands and Other Diasporic Spaces. This course will be seminar-style and will make central learner participation and presentation. The seminar will be inter-disciplinary, drawing from science and speculative fictions, cultural studies, gender studies, narrative medicine, disability studies, and bioethics. Ultimately, the course aims to connect the work of science and speculative fiction with on the ground action and organizing.
Practical aspects of computer hardware design through the implementation, simulation, and prototyping of a PDP-8 processor. High-level and assembly languages, I/O, interrupts, datapath and control design, pipelining, busses, memory architecture. Programmable logic and hardware prototyping with FPGAs. Fundamentals of VHDL for register-transfer level design. Testing and validation of hardware. Hands-on use of industry CAD tools for simulation and synthesis.
This course explores human adaptation from a biological, ecological and evolutionary perspective. From our earliest hominin ancestors in Africa to our own species' subsequent dispersal throughout the world, our lineage has encountered innumerable environmental pressures. Using morphological, physiological and behavioral/cultural evidence, we will examine the responses to these pressures that helped shape our unique lineage and allowed it to adapt to a diverse array of environments.
“Laboratory Methods in Archaeology” is an intensive introduction to the analysis of archaeological artifacts and samples in which we explore how the organic and inorganic remains from archaeological sites can be used to build rigorous claims about the human past. In 2023, this course will focus on pre-contact and post-contact assemblages from the New York-metro area, including materials from the legacy collections of Ralph Solecki. Participants will be introduced to the history, geology, and ecology of the New York area and specialized laboratory modules focus on the analysis of chipped stone artifacts, ceramics, animal bone, glass, and a range of post-contact artifacts.
The course only demands participation in the seminars and laboratory modules and successful completion of the written assignments, but all students are encouraged to develop specialized research projects to be subsequently expanded into either (1) a thesis project or (2) a conference presentation at the Society for American Archaeology, Society for Historical Archaeology, or Theoretical Archaeology Group meeting.
This course explores how Japan’s most enduring stories and cultural figures—from "The Tale of Genji" and Bashō’s poetry to Kaguya-hime, Momotarō, and beyond—have been continually reimagined across time. We will trace adaptations through literature, art, theater, film, anime, games, fashion campaigns and popular media, asking how each generation reshapes the classics for its own world.
Developments in architectural history during the modern period. Emphasis on moments of significant change in architecture (theoretical, economic, technological, and institutional). Themes include positive versus arbitrary beauty, enlightenment urban planning, historicism, structural rationalism, the housing reform movement, iron and glass technology, changes generated by developments external or internal to architecture itself and transformations in Western architecture.
Biophysical mechanisms of tissue organization
during embryonic development: conservation laws, reaction-diffusion, finite elasticity, and fluid mechanics are reviewed and applied to a broad range of topics in developmental biology, from early development to later organogenesis of the central nervous, cardiovascular, musculoskeletal, respiratory, and gastrointestinal systems. Subdivided into modules on patterning (conversion of diffusible cues into cell fates) and morphogenesis (shaping of tissues), the course will include lectures, problem sets, reading of primary literature, and a final project.
Russian filmmaker Andre Tarkovsky said that “the artist has no right to an idea in which he is not socially committed.” Argentine filmmaker Fernando Solanas and Spanish-born Octavio Getino postulated an alternative cinema that would spur spectators to political action. In this course we will ask the question: How do authoritarian governments influence the arts, and how do artists respond? We will study how socially committed filmmakers have subverted and redefined cinema aesthetics to challenge authoritarianism and repression. In addition, we will look at how some filmmakers respond to institutional oppression, such as poverty and corruption, even within so-called “free” societies. The focus is on contemporary filmmakers but will also include earlier classics of world cinema to provide historical perspective. The course will discuss these topics, among others: What is authoritarianism, what is totalitarianism, and what are the tools of repression within authoritarian/totalitarian societies? What is Third Cinema, and how does it represent and challenge authoritarianism? How does film navigate the opposition of censorship, propaganda and truth? How do filmmakers respond to repressive laws concerning gender and sexual orientation? How do they deal with violence and trauma? How are memories of repressive regimes reflected in the psyche of modern cinema? And finally, what do we learn about authority, artistic vision, and about ourselves when we watch these films?
This seminar is devoted to examining the work of writers who address the nature and course of history in their imaginative and non-fiction work. This semester we will be exploring the work of Robert Musil, in particular his great unfinished novel,
The Man Without Qualities
, with its imaginative account of Vienna in the lead up to World War I and an exploration into the fundamental historical dynamics of Western modernity.
This course introduces you to the rich history of international political economy in the nineteenth century, a period often described as the ‘first age of globalization’. You will gain a foundational grounding in classic theories of free trade, protectionism, and autarchy, from well-known thinkers like Adam Smith and Friedrich List. You will also, however, have a change to engage with a range of heterodox and critical voices in Marxist and anti-colonial economics, and explore some of the real-world, on-the-ground situations where economic theories were inspired, implemented and contested.
An introduction to mathematical concepts used in theoretical neuroscience aimed to give a minimal requisite background for NBHV G4360, Introduction to Theoretical Neuroscience. The target audience is students with minimal mathematical background who are interested in rapidly acquiring the vocabulary and basic mathematical skills for studying theoretical neuroscience, or who wish to gain a deeper exposure to mathematical concepts than offered by NBHV G4360. Topics include single- and multivariable calculus, linear algebra, differential equations, dynamical systems, and probability. Examples and applications are drawn primarily from theoretical and computational neuroscience.
This seminar will focus particularly on Pascal’s
humanistic
case for religious faith as a response to Montaigne’s skeptical portrayal of the self. The aim is to understand all the implications of this encounter for the history of Western thought about human psychology, religion, and politics.
This course provides a comprehensive introduction to modern investment analysis, integrating two distinct yet complementary approaches: fundamental value investing and quantitative investment strategies. The first half focuses on value investing, emphasizing the economic analysis and valuation of a firm's business operations to estimate its fundamental value. Students will learn to assess competitive advantages and barriers to entry, apply valuation frameworks beyond standard DCF models, and manage risk in concentrated portfolios. The methodology is grounded in identifying a 'margin of safety' by investing when a company's market value is significantly below its intrinsic worth.
The second half shifts to quantitative investment strategies, exploring the tools and techniques used in an environment of continuous financial innovation. Topics include hedging and risk management, single- and multi-period portfolio optimization, the use of factor models and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) for investment decisions, and the construction of systematic and volatility-based strategies. A hands-on approach is used to highlight the applications and limitations of these quantitative methods. Upon completion, students will have a rich and coherent view of investing that combines a sound understanding of business economics with robust quantitative and risk management techniques.
Approaches used in chemistry and chemical engineering to design green, sustainable products and processes; focus of using the tenets of green chemistry as a means for chemical innovation. Technical and design practice and measuring the impacts of green and conventional approaches emphasized. Themes of business, regulatory, ethical, and social considerations relevant to chemical engineering practice.
This course will examine practical issues, opportunities, tactics and strategies to advocate for economic and social rights. The course will incorporate central debates about economic and social rights, such as how to identify violators and define state responsibility, whether these rights can be litigated, and how to make implementable recommendations for change, measure implementation and measure impact. The course will also look more in depth at the standards and fulfillment challenges on several of the key rights including health, housing, education, and labor.
Throughout the course, you will focus on one economic and social rights topic of your choice. Through the lens of your chosen topic, you will review how organizations and social movements have engaged to affect change on similar issues, and use that research to explore many of the practical skills of advocacy and campaigning: framing recommendations and calls to action; drafting policy briefs; crafting media pitches and social media content; and designing and evaluating an overall advocacy strategy.
This course aims to familiarise students with the extraordinarily rich historiography on fascism. Its goal is to enable a more critical approach to the subject, to parse its conceptual and historical ambiguities and to engage with theoretical framings of the subject through an immersion in the main case studies. Focusing on the emergence of fascist regimes in interwar Italy and Germany, it will range across countries and time, distinguishing fascism from other forms of the authoritarian Right, exploring the extent to which the Second World War marked a watershed in fascism’s fortunes, and asking to what extent the term remains a useful one in the early twenty-first century. Course readings will include contemporary documents, classic articles and major monographs on the subject. Students will be expected to read widely.
The politics of what and who counts as worthy, good, or pure mediates possibilities for political and legal life. This course takes as its central question: how do certain ideas around purity and innocence come to appear natural? By considering a wide range of topics including carceral studies, immigration, race-making, settler colonialism, gender and sexuality and cultural studies, we will uncover the ways that cultural objects circulate and do political work. How are notions of race, crime, and purity produced, policed, and lived? And finally, how might we live otherwise—against innocence?
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213. This course examines labor markets through the lens of economics. In broad terms, labor economics is the study of the exchange of labor services for wages—a category that takes in a wide range of topics. Our objective in this course is to lay the foundations for explaining labor market phenomena within an economic framework and subsequently apply this knowledge-structure to a select set of questions. Throughout this process we will discuss empirical research, which will highlight the power (as well as the limitations) of employing economic models to real-world problems. By the end of this course we will have the tools/intuition to adequately formulate and critically contest arguments concerning labor markets.
This travel course will give students the opportunity to explore what sustainable development means in the context of Sub-Saharan Africa. Satisfying the workshop requirement for SDEV majors, the course is organized around two projects that students will tackle in teams. Ahead of traveling to Rwanda, three main activities will structure the course. First, students will learn about colonial history and current sustainable development efforts in Sub-Saharan Africa. Second, they will be organized into teams to pursue preliminary research on one of two projects. Third, they will be paired with an undergraduate student at the University of Rwanda and begin regular correspondence using WhatsApp. The travel week will be held over spring break. We will be based in the capitol city Kigali, with some in-country travel to explore beyond the urban core. Students will work in teams alongside their University of Rwanda peers to advance the goals of their project. When we return to the U.S., the final weeks of the class will be devoted to focused team work, as students complete their projects.
Prerequisites: VIAR R2420, or VIAR R2430. (Formerly R3415) Designed for students who have already taken one semester of a printmaking course and are interested in continuing on an upper level. Students are encouraged to work in all areas, separate or combined, using their own vocabulary and imagery to create a body of work by the end of the semester. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.
Introduction to kinematic analysis and design of machines and robots. Analytical and graphical synthesis of four-bar linkages. Planar displacements of rigid bodies. Spherical displacements of rigid bodies. Spatial displacements of rigid bodies. Rigid body velocities and wrenches. Concepts of kinematics of open-chain linkages.
We will aim for practical understanding of the fundamentals of Python programming, image visualization & rendering tools and common image processing tasks, including image segmentation, measurements of features and registration.
Interpret financial statements, build cash flow models, value projects, value companies, and make Corporate Finance decisions. Additional topics include: cost of capital, dividend policy, debt policy, impact of taxes, Shareholder/Debtholder agency costs, dual-class shares, using option pricing theory to analyze management behavior, investment banking activities, including equity underwriting, syndicated lending, venture capital, private equity investing and private equity secondaries. Application of theory in real-world situations: analyzing financial activities of companies such as General Electric, Google, Snapchat, Spotify, and Tesla.
Generation of random numbers from given distributions; variance reduction; statistical output analysis; introduction to simulation languages; application to financial, telecommunications, computer, and production systems. Graduate students must register for 3 points. Undergraduate students must register for 4 points. Note: Students who have taken IEOR E4703 Monte Carlo simulation may not register for this course for credit. Recitation section required.
Required for undergraduate students majoring in IE and OR. Job shop scheduling: parallel machines, machines in series; arbitrary job shops. Algorithms, complexity, and worst-case analysis. Effects of randomness: machine breakdowns, random processing time. Term project.
Fourier analysis. Physics of diagnostic ultrasound and principles of ultrasound imaging instrumentation. Propagation of plane waves in lossless medium; ultrasound propagation through biological tissues; single-element and array transducer design; pulse-echo and Doppler ultrasound instrumentation, performance evaluation of ultrasound imaging systems using tissue-mimicking phantoms, ultrasound tissue characterization; ultrasound nonlinearity and bubble activity; harmonic imaging; acoustic output of ultrasound systems; biological effects of ultrasound.
This class traces Egypt's evolving integration into the Classical World from the Saite Dynasty (c. 685 BCE) to the suppression of paganism by the Coptic church. We'll pay close attention to the flashpoints that created conflicts between pagan Egyptians, Greeks, Jews, and Christians and also to integrative aspects of society.
Comparative political economy is the study of the relations between economy and politics, and how these relations vary geographically and temporally. In this seminar we will examine the way in which the political context | domestic and international | a?ects the formulation of economic policies and their outcomes, and also the means by which economic conditions in uence the stability and quality of democratic regimes, with a particular focus on Latin American countries. Topics include representation, accountability, and democracy; competing views on inequality and the role of the state; the constraints of globalized financial markets; and the
dynamics of populism and clientelism. We will also consider pressing contemporary debates in the region, such as rising violence, democratic backsliding, far-right mobilization, and the challenges of development in the context of climate change. The course will be of interest to students curious about politics, economics, and international a?airs, as well as those seeking a deeper understanding of democracy and development, and the challenges facing societies in a globalized world.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 Introduction to the systematic treatment of game theory and its applications in economic analysis.
Technology, economic and policy aspects of the Internet. Summarizes how the Internet works technically, including protocols, standards, radio spectrum, global infrastructure and interconnection. Micro-economics with a focus on media and telecommunication economic concerns, including competition and monopolies, platforms, and behavioral economics. US constitution, freedom of speech, administrative procedures act and regulatory process, universal service, role of FCC. Not a substitute for CSEE4119. Suitable for non-majors.
Music and Property is an advanced lecture/discussion course wherein we will consider the philosophical questions of whether and how an individual, a culture, an institution, or a community can "own" music, for the most part by examining several raging current disputes and debates over the appropriation and enforcement of musical "property" rights. While the course will begin with a theoretical overview of these issues, most of the course will consist of examining key case studies where rights to the ownership of music have been disputed, litigated, or subject to legislative or disciplinary revision. This course raises the questions: 1) What does it mean to "own" music? 2) In what senses can music be conceptualized as "property?" 3) How do divergent understandings of music's status as "property" shape contemporary debates and discourses in the particular areas of disputes over "illegal downloading" of copyrighted music and the "repatriation" of Native American musical recordings as "cultural property?"
Fundamental principles of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), including the underlying spin physics and mathematics of image formation with an emphasis on the application of MRI to neuroimaging, both anatomical and functional. The examines both theory and experimental design techniques.
Various forms of ethnic politics have characterized politics in many states throughout Eurasia since 1991, from nationalist separatism to violent conflict to political competition among ethnic minorities and majorities. This course is designed to encourage students to think deeply about the relationship between ethnicity and politics. We will consider several questions. First, why does ethnicity become politicized? We investigate this question by examining nationalist secessionism and ethnic conflict—phenomena that mushroomed at the end of the Cold War. We will focus on East Central Europe and the former Soviet Union, devoting special attention to the cases of Yugoslavia, the USSR, Moldova, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and Chechnya. However, we will also study cases in which the dog didn’t bark, i.e. places where nationalist mobilization and ethnic violence either did not occur, or emerged and then receded as in the ethnic republics of the Russian Federation (including the “Muslim” regions of Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, etc.). In the second part of the course, we will analyze ethnic politics after independent statehood was achieved throughout the post-Soviet space. How do nationalist state-builders try to construct a nation and a state at the same time? Have they incorporated or discriminated against minorities living within “their” states? How have ethnic minorities responded? We will study Ukraine, the Baltics and Kazakhstan where ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking populations form large portions of the population, devoting particular attention to the crisis in Ukraine. We will also examine how the post-conflict regions of Bosnia and Kosovo have dealt with ethnic pluralism. These cases allow us to gain greater understanding of how multi-ethnic states use forms of federalism, consociationalism, and power-sharing as state-building strategies.
Prerequisites: RUSS W4334 or the equivalent or the instructor's permission. Prerequisite: four years of college Russian or instructor's permission. The course will focus on theoretical matters of language and style and on the practical aspect of improving students' writing skills. Theoretical aspects of Russian style and specific Russian stylistic conventions will be combined with the analysis of student papers and translation assignments, as well as exercises focusing on reviewing certain specific difficulties in mastering written Russian.
This course examines the transatlantic sounds of African music, including Afrobeat, Afrobeats, Amapiano, Chimurenga, Highlife, Kwaito, Makossa, Reggae, and more, to explore the rich cultural roots of African musical traditions and how they navigate and assimilate within the global popular culture sphere. From migration and collaborations to the rise of African artists in the era of advanced technology, the course uncovers how these genres transcend borders, inspire cross-cultural innovation, and influence the global music scene in contemporary times. Critical issues such as cultural appropriation, commodification, gender, health, and authenticity in the ever-evolving global music industry will be explored. By the end of the course, you will have a deep understanding of the complex dynamics driving the influence and dissemination of African music across the world.
Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Examines current topics in neurobiology and behavior.
Scientific and economic analysis of real-world technologies for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Partner with students from the business school to assess and assigned technology based on technical viability, commercial opportunity, and impact on mitigating or adapting to climate change. Assigned technologies provided by the investment community to teams of four, with expectations for independent research on the technologies, with deliverables of written and oral presentations.
This seminar explores the literary representation of the child and childhood. It focuses on three key areas, which will be examined through a selection of texts by authors including Hoffmann, Keller, Busch, James, Proust, Rilke, Benjamin, and March.
(1)
Figures
: The seminar will analyze literary depictions of the foreign, mysterious, anarchic, and, most importantly, the evil child, a figuration that began to displace the Romantic image of the "divine child" by the 19th century.
(2)
Theories
: The seminar will consider the pedagogical and developmental psychological theories of the time, which underpin this shift in discourse, alongside foundational historical and theoretical reflections on childhood, including those by Ariès and Agamben.
(3)
Poetics
: Central to the selected texts is the question of how childhood can be grasped in literary form—what kinds of memory are invoked, and how the recalled experience of childhood can be articulated in language.
Through an interdisciplinary approach, this seminar will engage with both the evolution of childhood as a cultural construct and the aesthetic challenges of representing it in literature. We will be reading both German and English literature; the reading load typically amounts to 30-50 pages per week, with the exception of two sessions in which we will discuss two English novel(la)s.
Course readings and discussions will be in German.
Introduction to methods in deep learning, with focus on applications to quantitative problems in biomedical imaging and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in medicine. Network models: Deep feedforward networks, convolutional neural networks and recurrent neural networks. Deep autoencoders for denoising. Segmentation and classification of biological tissues and biomarkers of disease. Theory and methods lectures will be accompanied with examples from biomedical image including analysis of neurological images of the brain (MRI), CT images of the lung for cancer and COPD, cardiac ultrasound. Programming assignments will use tensorflow / Pytorch and Jupyter Notebook. Examinations and a final project will also be required.
Team project centered course focused on principles of planning, creating, and growing a technology venture. Topics include: identifying and analyzing opportunities created by technology paradigm shifts, designing innovative products, protecting intellectual property, engineering innovative business models.
All supervisors will be Columbia faculty who hold a PhD. Students are responsible for identifying their own supervisor and it is at the discretion of faculty whether they accept to supervise independent research. Projects must be focused on Hellenic Studies and can be approached from any disciplinary background. Students are expected to develop their own reading list in consultation with their supervisor. In addition to completing assigned readings, the student must also write a Hellenic studies paper of 20 pages. Projects other than a research paper will be considered on a case-by-case basis. Hellenic Studies is an interdisciplinary field that revolves around two main axes: space and time. Its teaching and research are focused on the study of post-classical Greece in various fields: Language, Literature, History, Politics, Anthropology, Art, Archaeology, and in various periods: Late Antique, Medieval, Byzantine, Modern Greek etc. Therefore, the range of topics that are acceptable as a Hellenic Studies seminar paper is broad. It is upon each supervisor to discuss the specific topic with the student. The work submitted for this independent study course must be different from the work a student submits in other courses, including the Hellenic Studies Senior Research Seminar.
The unfolding climate emergency occurs at the confluence of three global systems of domination – capitalism, racialized imperialism, and patriarchy. Premised as they are on exploitation, competition, and inequality rather than consideration, cooperation and balance, these systems of domination not only have caused the crisis but are seemingly unable to resolve it. Among the injustices of the contemporary impasse is the likelihood the people who have least benefited from the global (dis)order, and especially minorities in the global south, will be the worst affected casualties of climate change.
Encompassing a focus on equity and frameworks for accountability and redress, the human rights paradigm is a useful lens through which to analyze the emergency, exert accountability, and imagine better futures. It is against this backdrop that this interdisciplinary (climate science, law, politics, social science, development studies and anthropology) course on Climate Justice has been introduced to the Human Rights Studies MA program.
This 3-credit course addresses contemporary issues in the evolving discourse and epistemology of climate justice. How should we understand the climate emergency from a social justice perspective? What terminologies, discourses and paradigms are useful? How have individuals, non-government organizations and social movements sought to overcome climate change vulnerabilities and advance climate justice? What litigation, law and policy initiatives have been brought, and with what level of success? And what alternative models of living, working and being are conceivable for a more socially, ecologically, and existentially sustainable world?
Mechanics of nonlinear mechanical behavior of elastomeric and elastomeric-like solids. Overview of structure and behavior of elastomers. Kinematics of large deformation. Constitutive models for equilibrium stress-strain behavior, using invariant measures of deformation and statistical mechanics of molecular networks. Hysteretic aspects of structure and behavior due to time dependence and structural evolution with deformation. Review of experimental data and models to capture and predict observations. Time permitting: behavior of particle-filled, thermoplastic and biomacromolecular elastomers.
This class will focus on early modern literature’s fascination with the relationship between women, gender, and political resistance in the early modern period. The works we will read together engage many of the key political analogies of the period, including those between the household and the state, the marital and the social contract, and rape and tyranny. These texts also present multiple forms of resistance to gendered repression and subordination, and reimagine sexual, social, and political relationships in new and creative ways.
Readings will include key classical and biblical intertexts, witchcraft and murder pamphlets, domestic conduct books, defenses of women, poetry (by William Shakespeare, Aemilia Lanyer and Lucy Hutchinson), drama (
Othello
,
The Winter’s Tale
, and
Gallathea
), and fiction (by Margaret Cavendish). The class will also include visits to The Morgan Library, Columbia’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 Types of market failures and rationales for government intervention in the economy. Benefit-cost analysis and the theory of public goods. Positive and normative aspects of taxation. The U.S. tax structure.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 This course studies gender gaps, their extent, determinants and consequences. The focus will be on the allocation of rights in different cultures and over time, why women's rights have typically been more limited and why most societies have traditionally favored males in the allocation of resources.
This course examines how Americans have used culture as a means to respond to, interpret, and remember acute social crises over the last century. Why do some periods of social upheaval create breaks in cultural forms and practices while others encourage an impetus to defend cultural practices, thereby facilitating the “invention of tradition”? How are the feelings released in such moments—whether trauma, outrage, rage, insecurity, or fear—turned into cultural artifacts? What is at stake in how they get memorialized? To answer these questions, this course examines responses to the lynching of black Americans, the Great Depression, World War II and the black freedom struggle during the postwar period. We will examine a wide range of individually and collectively produced artifacts about these events, including photography, plays, songs, movies, comic books, novels, government sponsored programs, and world fairs.