This course introduces the multi-faceted history of Islam and Muslim communities in China from the 7th century to the present. Though engaging a broad selection of primary sources of Chinese Islam and scholarly works, we will examine a variety of aspects of the Muslim experience in China, including religious syncretism, identity formation, and state-Muslim relations.
This course introduces the Bayesian paradigm for statistical inference. Topics covered include prior and posterior distributions: conjugate priors, informative and non-informative priors; one- and two-sample problems; models for normal data, models for binary data, Bayesian linear models; Bayesian computation: MCMC algorithms, the Gibbs sampler; hierarchical models; hypothesis testing, Bayes factors, model selection; use of statistical software.
Prerequisites: A course in the theory of statistical inference, such as STAT GU4204 a course in statistical modeling and data analysis, such as STAT GU4205.
Sex has always been a powerful and enigmatic force. Freud made it the centerpiece of psychoanalysis. Though many are familiar with his work on sexuality, few are aware of the development, elaboration and repudiation (in some instances) of these early ideas over the last century.
This course aims at presenting the evolution of psychoanalytic thinking on sex. We will examine a vast array of concepts in a modern context including desire, longing, genders, sexual fantasies, sexual orientations, BDSM, masturbation and polyamory among others. These presentations will also be enriched by an attention to the historical and cultural aspects of sexuality.
Modern theories attempt to characterize the human mind in terms of information processing. But machines that process information do not seem to feel anything; a computer may for instance receive inputs from a video camera, yet it would be hard to imagine that it sees or experiences the vividness of colors like we do. Nobody has yet provided a convincing theory as to how to explain the subjective nature of our mental lives in objective physical terms. This is called the problem of consciousness, and is generally considered to be one of the last unsolved puzzles in science. Philosophers even debate whether there could be a solution to this problem at all. Students in this course may be recruited for participation in a voluntary research study. Students who choose not to participate in the study will complete the same course requirements as those who do, and an individual's choice will not affect their grade or status as a student in the course.
Review of loads and structural design approaches. Material considerations in structural steel design. Behavior and design of rolled steel, welded, cold-formed light-gauge, and composite concrete/steel members. Design of multi-story buildings and space structures.
Detailed study of the chemical and physicochemical principles underlying separations in development of earth resources in a safe and sustainable manner. Covers wide-range of solid-solid, solid-liquid and liquid-liquid separations used in processing of mineral resources. Interfacial
science and engineering principles of important industrial processes of flotation, flocculation, dewatering, interfacial transport, magnetic/gravity/electrostatic separations, solvent extraction, solid-support extraction, crystallization and precipitation. Emphasis on concepts in interfacial chemistry and concepts associated with 'mines of the future' framework.
Reaction kinetics, applications to the design of batch and continuous reactors. Multiple reactions, non-isothermal reactors. Analysis and modeling of reactor behavior.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 and STAT Un1201 This course takes New York as our laboratory. Economics is about individual choice subject to constraints and the ways that choices sum up to something often much more than the parts. The fundamental feature of any city is the combination of those forces that bring people together and those that push them apart. Thus both physical and social space will be central to our discussions. The underlying theoretical and empirical analysis will touch on spatial aspects of urban economics, regional, and even international economics. We will aim to see these features in New York City taken as a whole, as well as in specific neighborhoods of the city. We will match these theoretical and empirical analyses with readings that reflect close observation of specific subjects. The close observation is meant to inspire you to probe deeply into a topic in order that the tools and approaches of economics may illuminate these issues in a fresh way.
Fundamentals and applications of solar energy conversion, especially technologies for conversion of sunlight into storable chemical energy or solar fuels. Topics include fundamentals of photoelectrochemistry, kinetics of solar fuels production, solar harvesting technologies, solar reactors, and solar thermal production of solar fuels. Applications include solar fuels technology for grid-scale energy storage, chemical industry, manufacturing, environmental remediation.
Prerequisites: COMS W3134, COMS W3136, or COMS W3137, and COMS W3203. Introduction to the design and analysis of efficient algorithms. Topics include models of computation, efficient sorting and searching, algorithms for algebraic problems, graph algorithms, dynamic programming, probabilistic methods, approximation algorithms, and NP-completeness.
Prerequisites: (COMS W3134 or COMS W3136COMS W3137) and (COMS W3203) Introduction to the design and analysis of efficient algorithms. Topics include models of computation, efficient sorting and searching, algorithms for algebraic problems, graph algorithms, dynamic programming, probabilistic methods, approximation algorithms, and NP-completeness.
This seminar explores the Cold Wars impact on Eastern Europe (1940s-1980s) and Eastern Europes Cold War-era engagements with the wider world. We will address the methodologies used by historians to answer questions like these: What was the Cold War? What did it mean, and for whom? We will also look at the Cold War as something more than a series of events; we will consider its value, uses, and limits as a device for framing the second half of the twentieth century.
Introduces classic and modern algorithmic ideas that are central to many areas of Computer Science. The focus is on most powerful paradigms and techniques of how to design algorithms, and how to measure their efficiency. The intent is to be broad, covering a diversity of algorithmic techniques, rather than be deep. The covered topics have all been implemented and are widely used in industry. Topics include: hashing, sketching/streaming, nearest neighbor search, graph algorithms, spectral graph theory, linear programming, models for large-scale computation, and other related topics
Modern challenges in the design of large-scale building structures will be studied. Tall buildings, large convention centers and major sports stadiums present major opportunities for creative solutions and leadership on the part of engineers. This course is designed to expose the students to this environment by having them undertake the complete design of a large structure from initial design concepts on through all the major design decisions. The students work as members of a design team to overcome the challenges inherent in major projects. Topics include overview of major projects, project criteria and interface with architecture, design of foundations and structural systems, design challenges in the post 9/11 environment and roles, responsibilities and legal issues.
Prerequisites: STAT GU4204 or the equivalent. Introductory course on the design and analysis of sample surveys. How sample surveys are conducted, why the designs are used, how to analyze survey results, and how to derive from first principles the standard results and their generalizations. Examples from public health, social work, opinion polling, and other topics of interest.
Urban ecology is the study of both the interactions between organisms in an urban environment and the organisms' interactions with that environment. This course facilitates learning about 1) basic principles related to ecological interactions of life on Earth, 2) the causes and consequences of biological patterns and processes in urban environments, and 3) how ecology can inform land use decisions and applied management strategies of natural resources (e.g. water, air, biodiversity), particularly in urban environments. This course aims to provide students with an understanding of the ways in which ecological perspectives can contribute to an interdisciplinary approach to solving environmental problems facing human society. Towards that end, this course covers topics ranging from applied ecology and conservation biology to sustainable development. It uses a cross disciplinary approach to understand the nature of ecology and biological conservation, as well as the social, philosophical and economic dimensions of land use strategies. Although in some ways cities may seem to be isolated from what we would otherwise call "nature," they are not, and this is a major theme of this course. This course includes discussion of biodiversity, ecosystem function, evolutionary processes, nutrient cycling, and natural resource availability in cities. Students will acquire an understanding of the ecology of human-dominated landscapes, the theory and study of urban ecology, and the application of ecological principles to building sustainable urban communities. Students will also explore timely and important urban ecology issues including ecological restoration, invasive species, and biodiversity conservation.
Urban ecology is the study of both the interactions between organisms in an urban environment and the organisms' interactions with that environment. This course facilitates learning about 1) basic principles related to ecological interactions of life on Earth, 2) the causes and consequences of biological patterns and processes in urban environments, and 3) how ecology can inform land use decisions and applied management strategies of natural resources (e.g. water, air, biodiversity), particularly in urban environments. This course aims to provide students with an understanding of the ways in which ecological perspectives can contribute to an interdisciplinary approach to solving environmental problems facing human society. Towards that end, this course covers topics ranging from applied ecology and conservation biology to sustainable development. It uses a cross disciplinary approach to understand the nature of ecology and biological conservation, as well as the social, philosophical and economic dimensions of land use strategies. Although in some ways cities may seem to be isolated from what we would otherwise call "nature," they are not, and this is a major theme of this course. This course includes discussion of biodiversity, ecosystem function, evolutionary processes, nutrient cycling, and natural resource availability in cities. Students will acquire an understanding of the ecology of human-dominated landscapes, the theory and study of urban ecology, and the application of ecological principles to building sustainable urban communities. Students will also explore timely and important urban ecology issues including ecological restoration, invasive species, and biodiversity conservation.
This course will survey historical and modern developments in machine intelligence from fields such as psychology, neuroscience, and computer science, and from intellectual movements such as cybernetics, artificial intelligence, neural networks, connectionism, machine learning, and deep learning. The emphasis is on the conceptual understanding of topics. The course does not include, nor require background in, computer programming and statistics. A crucial aspect of the seminar is for students to become informed consumers of applications of artificial intelligence.
Course Overview
Often described as “twin crises,” climate change and biodiversity loss are among the most urgent sustainability challenges to be addressed in our modern era. While much focus has rightfully been placed on climate change mitigation actions at local, regional, and global scales, biodiversity loss is less often addressed by governments, institutions, industries, and individuals as a critical piece of the sustainability puzzle. In 2021, COP 15, the fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, received far less media attention than COP 26, the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Climate Change. Yet climate change and biodiversity loss are inextricably linked, and without biodiversity and the associated ecosystem services and biospheric resilience upon which human society relies, a sustainable world is not possible. Moreover, certain climate change mitigation actions can actually be to the detriment of biological diversity.
Unlike a traditional conservation biology course geared towards ecologists and biologists, this course will be taught through the lens of sustainability management, equipping sustainability managers with the knowledge and direction needed to begin integrating biodiversity conservation and restoration into their professions. This course will illuminate the critical importance of biodiversity to sustainability and human well-being, the science and politics behind the current biodiversity crisis, and proposals, policies, and actions for bending the curve of biodiversity loss to create more sustainable and equitable outcomes for both humans and the non-humans with which we share our planet.
Students who seek to deepen their understanding of ecological sustainability and address the biodiversity crisis through the lens of sustainability management are encouraged to take this course. This course is an on-campus (or Hy-Flex) elective offered during the Fall semester and fulfills 3 credits within the Physical Dimensions of Sustainability Management curriculum area in the Master of Science in Sustainability Management program. Cross-registration is available to students outside of the Master of Science in Sustainability Management program, space permitting.
Prerequisites: STAT GU4206. The course will provide an introduction to Machine Learning and its core models and algorithms. The aim of the course is to provide students of statistics with detailed knowledge of how Machine Learning methods work and how statistical models can be brought to bear in computer systems - not only to analyze large data sets, but to let computers perform tasks that traditional methods of computer science are unable to address. Examples range from speech recognition and text analysis through bioinformatics and medical diagnosis. This course provides a first introduction to the statistical methods and mathematical concepts which make such technologies possible.
This seminar will consider the evolution of language at the levels of the word and grammar, in each instance, phylogenetically and ontogenetically. Since humans are the only species that use language, attention will be paid to how language differs from animal communication.
This course is designed to give students the tools necessary to conduct research that involves
Classical Arabic Texts. Students will translate selected passages from al-Jurjani's Dala'il al-I'jaz and
other texts on Arabic poetics. Each week, students will also complete a small research task, such as
locating a biographical entry, anecdote, or poem within the encyclopedic works of the medieval
period.
Students must be prepared to read aloud and translate Classical Arabic texts.
Prerequisites: Pre-requisite for this course includes working knowledge in Statistics and Probability, data mining, statistical modeling and machine learning. Prior programming experience in R or Python is required. This course will incorporate knowledge and skills covered in a statistical curriculum with topics and projects in data science. Programming will be covered using existing tools in R. Computing best practices will be taught using test-driven development, version control, and collaboration. Students finish the class with a portfolio of projects, and deeper understanding of several core statistical/machine-learning algorithms. Short project cycles throughout the semester provide students extensive hands-on experience with various data-driven applications.
Quantitative introduction to hydrologic and hydraulic systems, with a focus on integrated modeling and analysis of the water cycle and associated mass transport for water resources and environmental engineering. Coverage of unit hydrologic processes such as precipitation, evaporation, infiltration, runoff generation, open channel and pipe flow, subsurface flow and well hydraulics in the context of example watersheds and specific integrative problems such as risk-based design for flood control, provision of water, and assessment of environmental impact or potential for non-point source pollution. Spatial hydrologic analysis using GIS and watershed models.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 The study of industrial behavior based on game-theoretic oligopoly models. Topics include pricing models, strategic aspects of business practice, vertical integration, and technological innovation.
Engineering aspects of problems involving human interaction with the natural environment. Review of fundamental principles that underlie the discipline of environmental engineering, i.e. constituent transport and transformation processes in environmental media such as water, air, and ecosystems. Engineering applications for addressing environmental problems such as water quality and treatment, air pollution emissions, and hazardous waste remediation. Presented in the context of current issues facing the practicing engineers and government agencies, including legal and regulatory framework, environmental impact assessments, and natural resource management.
Ukraine in New York is a multidisciplinary exploration of the Ukrainian-American community in New York City from its beginning in the late 19th century to the present. The course focuses on the history, demographics, economics, politics, religion, education, and culture of the community, devoting particular attention to the impact thereon of the New York setting, shifting attitudes towards American politics and culture and homeland politics and culture, the tensions encountered in navigating between American, Soviet Ukraine, and independent Ukraine...
Introduction parametric and non-parametric statistical models applied to climate and environmental data analysis. Time and space data analysis methods will be focused, including clustering, autoregressive models, trend analysis, Bayesian analysis, missing data imputation, geostatistics, principal components analysis. Application to problems of climate variation and change; hydrology; air, water and soil pollution dynamics; disease propagation; ecological change; and resource assessment. The class requires the use of R with hands-on programmings and a term project applied to a current environmental data analysis problem.
This course works along a number of axial structures that aim to let texts voice their informing theoretical, political, and poetic strategies. It draws on war narratives in other parts of the world, especially Vietnam, insofar as these find their way into Arabic writing. A poetics of prose gives these narratives the power of literary production that makes them more readable, appealing, and provocative than ordinary journalistic reporting.
Through close readings of a number of Arabic war novels and some long narrative poems, this course proposes to address war in its varieties not only as liberation movements in Algeria and Palestine, but also as an engagement with invasions, as in Iraqi narratives of war, or as conflict as was the case between Iran and Iraq, 1980-1988, as proxy wars in other parts of the region , or ‘civil’ wars generated and perpetuated by big powers. Although writers are no longer the leaders of thought as in the first half of the 20th century, they resume different roles of exposition, documentation, reinstatement of identities, and geographical and topographical orientation. Narrators and protagonists are not spectators but implicated individuals whose voices give vent to dreams, desires, intimations, and expectations. They are not utterly passive, however. Behind bewilderment and turbulence, there is a will to expose atrocity and brutality. Writing is an effort to regain humanity in an inhuman situation.
The course is planned under thematic and theoretical divisions:
one
that takes writing as a deliberate exposure of the censored and repressed;
another
as a counter shock and awe strategy implemented under this name in the wars on Iraq whereby brutalities are laid bare; and a
third
that claims reporting in order to explore its limits and complicity. On the geographical level, it takes Algeria, Palestine as locations for liberation movements; Iraq as a site of death; Egypt as the space for statist duplicity and camouflage; and Lebanon as an initial stage for a deliberate exercise in a seemingly civil war.
A number of films will be shown as part of students’ presentations.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 and STAT UN1201 This course uses modern microeconomic tools for understanding markets for indivisible resources and exploring ways to improve their design in terms of stability, efficiency and incentives. Lessons of market design will be applied to developing internet platforms for intermediating exchanges, for auctions to allocate sponsored search advertising, to allocate property rights such as public lands, radio spectrums, fishing rights, for assigning students to public schools, and for developing efficient kidney exchanges for transplantation.
Concepts and sensibilities surrounding time and temporality are major aspects of people’s sense of reality and “how the world works.” Questions that we will explore in this course include such as the following: How are concepts and senses of time shaped in different contexts? How do they change? What role do ritual practices as well as distinctions such as between sacred and profane times play in shaping senses of time? In what ways are times and temporalities experienceable and in what ways do they elude perception? How are concepts of time and space connected? How is time political and how do its political valences become tangible or remain elusive? In our inquiries we will pay attention to where practices and concepts that seem obviously associated with religion make their appearance and what assumptions make that classification seem obvious. We will also examine how conceptual tools of religious studies might aid us in understanding how conceptions and sensibilities regarding time and temporality emerge, are transmitted, and transformed in and through communities of practice.
While this seminar is open to interested students from all disciplines, our work in this course specifically falls into the “zone of inquiry” of “time and history” of the Religion Department’s graduate programs. “Zones of inquiry” seek to introduce students to a particular cluster of key concepts and various theoretical elaborations of those concepts, in order to aid students in honing their ability to reflect critically on and develop further the central concepts that they derive from and bring to the specific traditions and phenomena that they study in their own research. A main goal of this course will therefore be to deepen our conceptual and analytical acumen and expand our theoretical resources at the intersection of religious studies and theories of time and temporality.
Prerequisites: STAT GU4205 or the equivalent. A fast-paced introduction to statistical methods used in quantitative finance. Financial applications and statistical methodologies are intertwined in all lectures. Topics include regression analysis and applications to the Capital Asset Pricing Model and multifactor pricing models, principal components and multivariate analysis, smoothing techniques and estimation of yield curves statistical methods for financial time series, value at risk, term structure models and fixed income research, and estimation and modeling of volatilities. Hands-on experience with financial data.
The focus of this seminar will be novels by Arab writers. The course will explore the history of the Arabic novel: its rise, development, and evolution. We will read and analyze novels belonging to various periods in Arab history and representing diverse points of views, including gender, identities, and different sub-cultures and sub-genres. We will look into the connections therein between the novel and the historical backdrops of colonialism, decolonization, globalization, war, rights and personal independence from several perspectives and writers across the Arab world. We will also consider the modern Arabic novel’s engagement with the global, glocal, and local as well as its nod to the Arabic literary tradition; its engagement with technology, scientific progress, absurdity, loss, trauma, the human condition, as well as dystopic themes. No knowledge of Arabic is required.
Prerequisites: STAT GU4203. STAT GU4207 is recommended. Basics of continuous-time stochastic processes. Wiener processes. Stochastic integrals. Ito's formula, stochastic calculus. Stochastic exponentials and Girsanov's theorem. Gaussian processes. Stochastic differential equations. Additional topics as time permits.
This course will offer an introduction to the history of Jews in modern German culture from the Enlightenment to the late twentieth century with a focus on literary representations. Texts by Lessing, Heine, Franzos, Kafka, Freud, Celan and Sebald. All readings and discussions in English.
Prerequisites: STAT GU4264. Mathematical theory and probabilistic tools for modeling and analyzing security markets are developed. Pricing options in complete and incomplete markets, equivalent martingale measures, utility maximization, term structure of interest rates. This is a core course in the MS program in mathematical finance.
This course examines how changes in information and communications technology have, over the past two decades, fundamentally transformed the practices of civil society actors engaged with human rights issues. New communications tools such as Twitter, blogs, and Facebook have changed the ways that organizations communicate with their followers and seek to influence public debate. The increasing accessibility of analytic tools for researching and visualizing changing patterns of human rights abuse has empowered groups to better understand and respond more forcefully to these issues. Indeed, the use of social media as a communications tool has made it a data source for those monitoring and analyzing patterns of activity, in ways that draw increasingly on the techniques of big data analysis.
Prerequisites: For undergraduates: one course in cognitive psychology or cognitive neuroscience, or the equivalent, and the instructors permission. Metacognition and control processes in human cognition. Basic issues include the cognitive mechanisms that enable people to monitor what they know and predict what they will know, the errors and biases involved in self-monitoring, and the implications of metacognitive ability for peoples self-determined learning, behavior, and their understanding of self.
Principles and practice of water treatment and utility management will be presented. Project-based class where students will work in teams to solve an issue for a water utility. Variety of external experts will lecture and serve as a resource for students for the project. Allows students to better understand the role of the water utility in providing safe drinking water in a sustainable manner. Students will become familiar with the challenges facing water utilities, gain knowledge in the design and operation of water treatment systems, and learn how to develop solutions to water supply and water quality issues which will allow them to pursue productive careers in the consulting, utility, or regulatory fields.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 and STAT UN1201 An introduction to the economics principles underlying the financial decisions of firms. The topics covered include bond and stock valuations, capital budgeting, dividend policy, market efficiency, risk valuation, and risk management. For information regarding REGISTRATION for this course, go to: http://econ.columbia.edu/registration-information.
Through exploring how the asymmetrical relationship between Eastern and Western Europe has transformed since the 1970s, this course aims to decenter and reconsider contemporary European history. We shall focus primarily on political-institutional change, socioeconomic matters, and questions of political culture. We will pay special attention to key themes – such as the end of empire and Europeanization, the contemporary meanings of democracy, changing gender regimes, patterns of migration, and ongoing contestations of how Europeans remember – through which this complex relationship can be grasped.
Prerequisites: (PSYC UN2235) or an equivalent course on judgment and decision making ,AND the instructors permission This course reviews current research in the domain of decision architecture: the application of research in cognitive and social psychology to real-world situations with the aim of influencing behavior. This seminar will discuss recent and classic studies, both of decision theory and of applied decision research, to explore the effectiveness—as well as the limitations—of a selection of these behavioral “nudges.”
Prerequisites: STAT GU4205 and at least one statistics course numbered between GU4221 and GU4261. This is a course on getting the most out of data. The emphasis will be on hands-on experience, involving case studies with real data and using common statistical packages. The course covers, at a very high level, exploratory data analysis, model formulation, goodness of fit testing, and other standard and non-standard statistical procedures, including linear regression, analysis of variance, nonlinear regression, generalized linear models, survival analysis, time series analysis, and modern regression methods. Students will be expected to propose a data set of their choice for use as case study material.
Programming experience in Python extremely useful. Introduction to fundamental algorithms and analysis of numerical methods commonly used by scientists, mathematicians and engineers. Designed to give a fundamental understanding of the building blocks of scientific computing that will be used in more advanced courses in scientific computing and numerical methods for PDEs (e.g. APMA E4301, E4302). Topics include numerical solutions of algebraic systems, linear least-squares, eigenvalue problems, solution of non-linear systems, optimization, interpolation, numerical integration and differentiation, initial value problems and boundary value problems for systems of ODEs. All programming exercises will be in Python.
An overview of the geophysical study of the Earth, drawing upon geodesy, gravity, seismology, thermal studies, geomagnetism, materials science, and some geochemistry. Covers the principal techniques by which discoveries have been made, and are made, in deep Earth structure. Describes fundamental properties and features of the crust, mantle, and core.
This course examines the historical and theoretical issues concerning the representation of African Americans in film and media. The course will provide a historical overview while focusing on key themes, concepts, and texts.
Numerical solution of differential equations, in particular partial differential equations arising in various fields of application. Presentation emphasizes finite difference approaches to present theory on stability, accuracy, and convergence with minimal coverage of alternate approaches (left for other courses). Method coverage includes explicit and implicit time-stepping methods, direct and iterative solvers for boundary-value problems.
This course examines the historical and theoretical issues concerning the representation of African Americans in film and media. The course will provide a historical overview while focusing on key themes, concepts, and texts.
Prerequisites: CHNS W3301: Classical Chinese I; completion of three years of modern Chinese at least, or four years of Japanese or Korean. Please see department. Prerequisites: CHNS W3301: Classical Chinese I; completion of three years of modern Chinese at least, or four years of Japanese or Korean.
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.
Introduces the basics of theory, design, selection and applications of turbomachinery. Turbomachines are widely used in many engineering applications such as energy conversion, power plants, air-conditioning, pumping, refrigeration and vehicle engines, as there are pumps, blowers, compressors, gas turbines, jet engines, wind turbines, etc. Applications are drawn from energy conversion technologies, HVAC and propulsion. Provides a basic understanding of the different kinds of turbomachines.
Study of a single deity in the Hindu pantheon as illuminated in art, music, dance, drama, theological treatises, patterns of ritual, and texts both classic and modern. Special attention to Krishna's consort Radha, to Krishna's reception in the West, and to his portrayal on Indian television.
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.
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.
Principles of propulsion. Thermodynamic cycles of air breathing propulsion systems including ramjet, scramjet, turbojet, and turbofan engine and rocket propulsion system concepts. Turbine engine and rocket performance characteristics. Component and cycle analysis of jet engines and turbomachinery. Advanced propulsion systems. Columbia Engineering interdisciplinary course.
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.
In recent decades, the study of the so-called “Buddho-Daoism” has become a burgeoning field that breaks down the traditional boundary lines drawn between the two Chinese religious traditions. In this course we will read secondary scholarship in English that probes the complex relationships between Buddhism and Daoism in the past two millennia. Students are required not only to be aware of the tensions and complementarity between them, but to be alert to the nature of claims to either religious purity or mixing and the ways those claims were put forward under specific religio-historical circumstances. The course is organized thematically rather than chronologically. We will address topics on terminology, doctrine, cosmology, eschatology, soteriology, exorcism, scriptural productions, ritual performance, miracle tales and visual representations that arose in the interactions of the two religions, with particular attention paid to critiquing terms such as “influence,” “encounter,” “dialogue,” “hybridity,” “syncretism,” and “repertoire.” The course is designed for both advanced undergraduate and graduate students in the fields of East Asian religion, literature, history, art history, sociology and anthropology. One course on Buddhism or Chinese religious traditions is recommended, but not required, as background.
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.
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.
No future, there’s no future, no future for you…or me…What happens after the end of the future? If England’s dreaming in 1977 looked like a dead-end, how do we dream of futures in a moment so much closer to the reality of worlds’ end? In this class, we will read a range of ambiguous utopias and dystopias (to use a term from Ursula LeGuin) and explore various models of temporality, a range of fantasies of apocalypse and a few visions of futurity. While some critics, like Frederick Jameson, propose that utopia is a “meditation on the impossible,” others like José Muñoz insist that “we must dream and enact new and better pleasures, other ways of being in the world, and ultimately new worlds.” Utopian and dystopian fictions tend to lead us back to the present and force confrontations with the horrors of war, the ravages of capitalist exploitation, the violence of social hierarchies and the ruinous peril of environmental decline. In the films and novels and essays we engage here, we will not be looking for answers to questions about what to do and nor should we expect to find maps to better futures. We will no doubt be confronted with dead ends, blasted landscapes and empty gestures. But we will also find elegant aesthetic expressions of ruination, inspirational confrontations with obliteration, brilliant visions of endings, breaches, bureaucratic domination, human limitation and necro-political chaos. We will search in the narratives of uprisings, zombification, cloning, nuclear disaster, refusal, solidarity, for opportunities to reimagine world, ends, futures, time, place, person, possibility, art, desire, bodies, life and death.
In 1935, WEB Dubois wrote about abolition democracy: an idea based not only on breaking down unjust systems, but on building up new, antiracist social structures. Scholar activists like Angela Davis, Ruth Gilmore and Mariame Kaba have long contended that the abolition of slavery was but one first step in ongoing abolitionist practices dismantling racialized systems of policing, surveillance and incarceration. The possibilities of prison and police abolition have recently come into the mainstream national consciousness during the 2020 resurgence of nationwide Black Lives Matters (BLM) protests. As we collectively imagine what nonpunitive and supportive community reinvestment in employment, education, childcare, mental health, and housing might look like, medicine must be a part of these conversations. Indeed, if racist violence is a public health emergency, and we are trying to bring forth a “public health approach to public safety” – what are medicine’s responsibilities to these social and institutional reinventions?
Medicine has a long and fraught history of racial violence. It was, after all, medicine and pseudoscientific inquiry that helped establish what we know as the racial categorizations of today: ways of separating human beings based on things like skin color and hair texture that were used (and often continue to be used) to justify the enslavement, exclusion, or genocide of one group of people by another. Additionally, the history of the professionalization of U.S. medicine, through the formation of medical schools and professional organizations as well as and the certification of trained physicians, is a history of exclusion, with a solidification of the identity of “physician” around upper middle class white masculinity. Indeed, the 1910 Flexner Report, whose aim was to make consistent training across the country’s medical schools, was explicit in its racism. From practices of eugenic sterilization, to histories of experimentation upon bodies of color, medicine is unfortunately built upon racist, sexist and able-ist practices.
This course is built on the premise that a socially just practice of medicine is a bioethical imperative. Such a practice cannot be achieved, however, without examining medicine’s histories of racism, as well as learning from and building upon histories of anti-racist health practice. The first half of the semester will be dedicated to learning about histories of medical racism: from eugenics and racist experiment
This advanced seminar builds on the Introduction to Music Cognition (MUSIC UN2320) with an in-depth inquiry into selected key topics in the field of Music Cognition. Specific topics vary each year, depending on interest and availability of instructors, and include human development; evolution; communication and music’s relation to language; embodied knowledge; first-person awareness; metaphor; ineffability; neuroscience; mental representations; memory and anticipation; cross-cultural studies; emotions; musical aesthetics; artificial intelligence; agency; creativity; and music’s relation to other art forms. Each semester the course delves into recent research on 3–4 of these topics, focusing in particular on how this research can be applied to questions of musical knowledge. Advanced readings are drawn from fields as diverse as music theory, psychology, biology, anthropology, philosophy, and neuroscience. They include general works in cognitive science, theoretical work focused on specific musical issues, and reports of empirical research.
Sufism or
tassawuf
has misleadingly been described as the mystical side of Islam, implying that it is somehow detached from the material world. Throughout the history of Islam, Sufi ideas, practices, and institutions have borne a complex, intimate, and sometimes fraught relationship with other aspects of Islamic tradition and practice, a relationship that has also been profoundly impacted by Orientalist scholarship in the colonial period and by global reformist currents in the postcolonial period. This seminar for advanced undergraduates and graduate students is an interdisciplinary investigation of how Sufism has been affected by the historical, sociocultural, political, and everyday environments in which is it experienced and practiced, with a particular focus on South Asia. Eclectic in approach, we will begin by considering how Sufism has been construed and even constructed by scholars, considering how modern notions of the self, religion, and the political have shaped scholarly understandings of what Sufism is. Focusing on bodily practices and well known individual Sufis who lived in South Asia during different historical periods, we will use them as a vehicle for understanding Sufi experience within the context of the evolving Sufi orders within specific local spaces. We will consider why Sufism has become such a target of controversy and ambivalence among Muslims in the modern world and trace some of the changing controversies and tensions that Sufis have struggled with over time, focusing on their understandings of self, society and reality.
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.
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.
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.
Prerequisites: two years of college Czech or the equivalent. A close study in the original of representative works of Czech literature. Discussion and writing assignments in Czech aimed at developing advanced language proficiency.
Covering a period from the 7th century to the present, this class draws on Japanese literature, folklore, painting, performance, and anime, to explore the world of the supernatural, particularly the role of ghosts, gods, demons, animals, and nature. Students are introduced to various strands of popular religion, including Buddhist cosmologies and native beliefs about nature and human life, with special attention to the relationship between the living and the dead, and explore the role of human intermediaries. The course looks at these texts and media in relationship to the local community, gender, social and occupational status, environment (both natural and urban), and historical period, exploring issues of social identity and power.