Prerequisites: () Enrollment is limited to 16; must attend first lab to hold place. Studies of the structure, ecology, and evolution of plants. Laboratory exercises include field problems, laboratory experiments, plant collections and identification, and examination of the morphology of plant groups.
Why do certain mental illnesses only appear in specific regions of the world? What processes of translation, adaption, and “indigenization” take place when psychiatric diagnostic categories, pharmaceutical regimens, and psychodynamic treatments developed in the West travel to China, Japan and South Korea? How do contemporary East Asian therapeutic modalities destabilize biomedical assumptions about the origins and treatment of mental illness?
This course employs anthropological analysis to explore the paradoxes of “culture-bound syndromes”, examine how biomedical psychiatric practices have been received and transformed, and discuss the ways in which shamanistic rituals and Traditional Chinese Medicine clinical encounters understand their objects of intervention. Focusing on East Asia with a particular emphasis on China, we will employ interpretive and political economic anthropological analyses to explore experiences of people struggling with illness, the practices of health practitioners who treat them, and the broader social and historical contexts that shape these interactions.
The bildungsroman is the modern, realist version of the hero’s quest. Instead of slaying dragons and weaving spells, the protagonist of the bildungsroman struggles with what it means to become an adult – or to refuse to. Also known as the novel of development or coming-of-age novel, the bildungsroman typically focuses on growth and development, the cultivation of the self, marriage and vocation. It is a form marked by conflicts and tensions: between the individual and society, between idealism and realism, rebellion and compromise, dreamy inertia and future-oriented action.
The reading list spans works from Europe and the United States, from the 1790s through the 2010s. Lectures will focus on the novel as a literary form in dialogue with other literary works, with historical events, and with ideas drawn from philosophy, psychology, and sociology.
Lectures will address: What fosters human development and what thwarts it? What is a self and what is a life course? How do coming-of-age novels engage with social norms concerning love, work, personhood, and maturity? And how has this literary genre itself changed and developed over time?
This is a 3-point lecture course. In accordance with university guidelines, you should expect to spend about six hours per week outside of class doing the course reading, which will consist entirely of novels and vary from ~150 to ~200 pages per week, and doing the assignments.
Focusing on South America, this course examines contemporary art produced in the region known as Latin America and its diasporas, roughly since mid-1940s to the present. The first half of the class attends to two tendencies of the 1940s–1970s, abstraction and conceptualism, lionized through a slew of acclaimed group and solo exhibitions organized across the hemisphere in the last twenty years. We will analyze these two tendencies in the distinct social, political, and economic contexts of their emergence in various “centers” of the continent paying special attention to the ideologies of modernization, progress, and economic development; political upheavals including violent dictatorships and other crises; artists’ relationship to Western European and U.S. cultural centers, and transnational circulation networks; and the role of art institutions. To this end, we will pay special attention to how these trends have been historicized to date, and to what ends. The second half of the class will examine practices since the mid-1970s to the present in a comparative perspective: one, through the lens of identity politics and, two, analyzing the dynamics of the increased global dissemination of works from Latin America and by Latin-American descendants. Several visits to art institutions in NYC will be required as a part of the course.
A continuation of the study of the written and spoken language of Turkey, with readings of literary, historical, and other texts. No P/D/F or R credit is allowed for this class.
This course is an introduction to the interplay between science, technology, and society. Unsettling Science invites students to: ask big questions about science and technology, interrupt preconceived ideas about what sicience is and who does it, and engage deeply with troubling social implications. By offering historical and contemporary perspectives, this course equips students with critical and methodological skills essential to exploring not only longstanding questions about the world but also urgent issues of our time. To do so, the course focuses on a series of fundamental and foundational questions (e.g., what is knowledge? what is prog that underpin the study of science, technology, and society from a variety of interdisicplinary perspectives.
Economic inequality characterizes virtually every human society, informing deep social dynamics. And yet scholars and lay people alike hold vastly differing opinions about the effects that inequality has on the social fabric, and the need to combat it. The question of how wealth and income are distributed among the members of a national community as well as among nations has acquired center stage in analyses about fundamental issues such as the causes of the progress and decline of societies and the dynamics of globalization. Inequality issues are at the heart of discussions about international economic relations, transnational phenomena such as migrations and the domestic economic platforms of political parties.
This course will provide students with the critical instruments with which to analyze the main interpretations of economic inequality from the eighteenth century to the present. We will read and discuss authors who have addressed the question of inequality and distribution: how did they frame the issue? What visions of society emerged from their analyses? We will see how the concept of inequality has changed historically, how different dimensions (e.g., national and international) have appeared and disappeared, and how visions of national, international and global inequality inform debates about the foundational elements of the social compact.
Required course for department majors. Not open to Barnard or Continuing Education students. Students must receive instructors permission. Introduction to different methodological approaches to the study of art and visual culture. Majors are encouraged to take the colloquium during their junior year.
The goal of this course is to gain an understanding of the chemical principles that govern biological systems. We will look at the structure and function of biomolecules (proteins, carbohydrates, nucleic acids, and lipids), with an emphasis on interactions between them, enzyme kinetics, and metabolic pathways. Key topics will include protein folding and function, enzyme mechanisms, bioenergetics, and the regulation of key metabolic cycles. In addition to lecture we will spend time examining case studies and selected articles from primary literature, and engaging in group discussions.
Basic scientific and engineering principles used for the design of buildings, bridges, and other parts of the built infrastructure. Application of principles to analysis and design of actual large-scale structures. Coverage of the history of major structural design innovations and of the engineers who introduced them. Critical examination of the unique aesthetic/artistic perspectives inherent in structural design. Consideration of management, socioeconomic, and ethical issues involved in design and construction of large-scale structures. Introduction to recent developments in sustainable engineering, including green building design and adaptable structural systems.
Concepts of ethnicity and race – deeply complex and often fraught – are catalyzing forces in modern society. This seminar explores the changing definitions and resonances of these categories in ancient contexts. Course readings will cover a variety of societies but return repeatedly to Egypt and Nubia as a touchstone. Over the course of the semester, we will explore how Nubians and Egyptians viewed one another as well as how both Egyptians and Nubians experienced and were experienced by immigrants, colonizers, and travelers. Throughout the ancient Mediterranean, as we’ll see, self-definitions and cultural boundaries shifted radically according to changing power dynamics both within groups and between them.
In seminar discussions, we’ll pose the following questions: How and when did groups who saw themselves as distinct from one another cooperate and intermarry? Define themselves in opposition to other groups or actively blur boundaries? Mobilize concepts of ethnicity or race to justify oppression? Engage in competition or resistance? Where, we will ask, did societies fracture and/or integrate? And what role did bicultural individuals play in cultural conversations and mediations? We will also seek to understand how our conceptions of ethnicity and race in the past are influenced not only by the biases of the present but by the methodologies we employ. In our discussions and investigations this semester we will learn a great deal about Northeast Africa in antiquity – but, so too, about ethnicity, concepts of race, and power throughout the ancient Mediterranean.
This course explores the photographic essay as a distinct visual language. We will examine how photographic artists and photojournalists use sequences of images to construct narratives that communicate complex ideas about the past. In an age when nearly everyone carries a camera to capture the present, many photographers have turned their lenses toward the past to illuminate personal histories and collective memories. Through weekly seminars, we will explore how contemporary photographers around the world challenge national narratives and reimagine history. We will consider how photography—often seen as the medium most bound to the present—can evoke what is absent or lost. Focusing on artists from Asia, Africa, Latin America, North America, and the Middle East, we will explore how their work engages collective memory in relation to dictatorship, state violence, and contested histories. Finally, we will investigate how artists have used re-enactment, commemoration, re-imaging, and inclusive archiving to engage with history and memory through visual practice.
This course explores how dance and other forms of embodied performance adapt literature, as well as how dance serves as inspiration for the written word. What is retained, what is lost, and what is enhanced when moving bodies enliven literature, or when literature seeks to capture the motions of dance? How does choreography transform the constituent parts of literature, from characters and plot to the rhythms of language? How do words and movement collaborate to tell the stories of such disparate figures as lovers, monsters, migrants, and robots, and in modes that range from the pastoral to the autobiographical to the comic? To answer these and other questions, we will read short fiction, plays, and poems, focused largely on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and watch numerous genres of dance, including ballet, experimental dance, dance-theater, musical theater, hip hop, silent film, and puppetry. To explore the conceptual relationship of body and text, students will gain introductory exposure to theories of narrative, performance, adaptation, and more. "Page to Stage" welcomes, and is geared toward, students from any disciplinary background.
“Political friendship is not an emotion, but a practice, a set of hard-won, complicated habits that are used to bridge trouble, difficulty, and differences of personality, experience, and aspiration.” – Danielle Allen,
Talking to Strangers
What does it take to build community on a campus made up of diverse sets of experiences, backgrounds, and perspectives? What sorts of communities are possible under the conditions of pluralism where we cannot take for granted that people in our community share similar interests or are making the same assumptions about political, social, or cultural goods? Is it possible to build something we would call friendship among people who experience social and political complexities differently, especially given the welter of feelings--rage and compassion, joy, fear, and sorrow--that course through us all?
To claim, taking cues from the above quote from Danielle Allen, that building community requires learning practices or habits of engagement frames these questions in a particular way. It insists that communities are forged through embodied efforts and actions. What are the sorts of social practices and social habits--the doings--that help build communities marked by pluralistic cross-pressures? How does one learn these practices and habits? What traditions and examples can we call on?
In this class, we will through the explicit and implicit norms that qualitatively shape community, norms such as:
To what degree and how should the pain of others be recognized?
How important is a “hermeneutics of generosity” in community building, which begins with trying to understand the other’s intentions before judging or criticizing them?
How does self-criticism and criticism of others function in community?
How important is dialogue, and of what sorts, to building forms of political friendship? Exchange of ideas--dialogue--may be necessary, but our focus on practice and habits also casts a skeptical eye on the notion that community rests solely or primarily on evaluating the soundness of propositions. History is replete with other social practices--story-telling, song, listening, dance--that carry and convey real discursive value.
Informed by selected readings rooted in the themes of the Core Curriculum, students will envision and develop projects that appeal to their interests, which they will bring to fruiti
Required of all majors. Introduces theories of culture particularly related to the Middle East, South Asia. and Africa. Theoretical debates on the nature and function of culture as a symbolic reading of human collectivities. Examines critical cultural studies of the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa. Enables students to articulate their emerging knowledge of Middle East, South Asian, and African cultures in a theoretically informed language.
Prerequisites: Sophomore standing. Required for all sociology majors. Prerequisite: at least one sociology course of the instructor's permission. Theoretical accounts of the rise and transformations of modern society in the19th and 20th centuries. Theories studied include those of Adam Smith, Tocqueville, Marx, Durkheim, Max Weber, Roberto Michels. Selected topics: individual, society, and polity; economy, class, and status: organization and ideology; religion and society; moral and instrumental action.
This undergraduate seminar offers an in-depth exploration of the nonfiction work of the renowned African-American poet and playwright Ntozake Shange, whose archives are at Barnard College, her alma mater. Through readings, discussion, and visits to her archives, students will probe this lesser-examined aspect of Shange's oeuvre, including her essays on her life, the arts, food, and other artists and creators. This course invites participants to engage critically with Shange's essays and personal writings while delving into her archive.
Students will identify key themes and literary techniques in Shange's nonfiction and the historical and cultural context in which she wrote these works. We will examine how Shange's nonfiction contributes to her broader work and her perspectives on history, gender, feminism, and race as they intersect in her life as a Black woman artist. Students will develop critical thinking skills through close reading, analysis, and discussion of Shange's nonfiction and will improve their writing skills by composing reflections and essays on Shange's works. They will develop research skills and gain insights into Shange's creative process through firsthand engagement with Shange's archive at Barnard.
Black Speculative Fiction encompasses a whole range of Black subgenres from Science Fiction and Fantasy to Horror and Afrofuturism. For the duration of this course, we will attempt to begin the work of extrapolating the function of Blackness within these various genres—interrogating which syntactical elements are required to label a piece of fiction “Black” and how Blackness informs genre. Through formal analysis of texts and the application of various theories presented in class, we’ll begin to understand how Blackness moves through genre to understand its relationship to the world and in some cases, to the artform itself. We will look at various texts: Film, Television, Prose, and Music. By looking across genres, we will be able to honor the inherent intertextuality of Black work and the constant inter-discursive work done across genre, text, and time. Whether a critique of structural anti-Blackness writ large, an expression of the complexity of the positionality of Black persons, or a statement of the function of Blackness, these texts make a case for the theoretical rigor and provocative discourses that lies at the heart of Black Speculative Fiction.
This course provides an in-depth examination of the physiological bases of behavior and the development, organization, and function of the nervous system. Specific topics include methods used in behavioral neuroscience, development of the nervous system, sensory and motor systems, homeostasis, sexual differentiation, biological rhythms, stress, learning and memory, psychopathology, and neurological disorders.
Discussion section for Social Theory (SOCI UN3000).
Discussion section for Social Theory (SOCI UN3000).
Prerequisites: the departments permission. Required for all thesis writers.
Corequisites: Course either taken before or after GERM V3001. Intensive practice in oral and written German. Discussions, oral reports, and weekly written assignments, based on material of topical and stylistic variety taken from German press and from literary sources.
In this course, you will conduct independent projects in photography in a structured setting under faculty supervision. You are responsible for arranging for your photographic equipment in consultation with the instructor.
This course will afford you a framework in which to intensively develop a coherent body of photographs, critique this work with your classmates, and correlate your goals with recent issues in contemporary photography.
Students are required to enroll in an additional fifteen contact hours of instruction at the International Center for Photography. Courses range from one-day workshops to full-semester courses.
Permission of instructor only. The class will be limited to 20 students.
Prerequisites: general physics, and differential and integral calculus. Newtonian mechanics, oscillations and resonance, conservative forces and potential energy, central forces, non-inertial frames of reference, rigid body motion, an introduction to Lagranges formulation of mechanics, coupled oscillators, and normal modes.
This lecture course in political theory examines pressing questions related to borders, migration, exile, and displacement: Why do we have borders, and how are they constructed and governed? How do borders relate to political membership and rights? What can borders teach us about modern sovereign power? Are there any limits to state coercion and violence in border enforcement? In what ways do borders manifest racial hierarchies and divides within the global order? How do we rethink political responsibility in response to problems of rightlessness generated by borders? In addressing these questions, the course prioritizes borders as crucial sites for understanding and interrogating key political concepts such as sovereignty, membership, rights, and violence.
This course will introduce students to
Black geographies
as a spatial expression of Black studies. Black scholars have long recognized the complex spatialities of Black life, developing theories of diaspora, racial capitalism, and anti-/post-colonialism that are inherently geographical. In this course, we will think about space, place, landscape, and ecology through a Black geographic framework, paying attention to how scholars, activists, and artists engage the poetics and materiality of Black life to explore ideas about repair, inequality, resistance, and liberation. The questions that animate this course are: what are Black geographies? What is the future of Black geographies outside of academia? How can centering a “Black sense of place” in turn transform the way we think about space, place, and power? How does Black Studies account for and understand Black spatial condition, experience, and imaginaries?
The course will begin with an engagement of key works on Black geographies. We will come to see institutional Black geographies as concerned with the Black spatial imaginaries formed in the aftermath of enslavement and colonialism in the Western hemisphere. As such, our readings will center experiences in the United States. We will cover such topics as Black method(s), racial capitalism, regional geographies, carceral geographies, and Black home and infrastructure.
Ultimately, students will be introduced to central themes, concepts and approaches that highlight the spatialization of race and the racialization of space through various technologies that signify places according to new rules of inclusion and exclusion. In this way, we will examine historical and contemporary macro-community and micro- sub-community (e.g., neighborhood) issues shaping the social, economic and political lives of Black people.
How have artists been informed and influenced by the natural world? This course will examine how photographic artists have responded to nature, ecology, and the environment. Augmented by literary texts by artists, scientists, poets, and ecologists, we will explore how close-looking might inform an artist’s practice regarding the living environment - its bounty - and its degradation. Readings include texts by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Masanobu Fukuoka, Robert Macfarlane, Terry Tempest Williams, Rebecca Solnit, Barry Lopez, John McPhee, Akira Hasegawa, and others. Calling on a canon of photographic works from around the globe, students will study book-length photographic essays whose makers have seen art as a form of praise of the natural world and those who investigate the relationship between art and environmental activism. Susan Derges; Meghann Riepenhoff; Masahisa Fukashe; Pedro David; Stephen Gill; Ron Jude; Dornith Doherty; David Maisel, Zhao Renhui; Mandy Barker; Pablo Lopez Luz are some of the artists studied. The course will start by exploring techniques photographers have used over the past two centuries to respond to the natural world’s beauty and complexity. During the second half of the term, we will examine how artists have depicted shrinking natural landscapes, environmental destruction, and global warming and why they might question human centrality in the sentient world. Students will produce a semester-long photographic project on an ecological theme. This course will start by exploring techniques photographers have used over the past century to respond to the natural world’s beauty and complexity. During the second half of the term, we will examine how contemporary photographers are depicting shrinking natural landscapes, environmental destruction, and global warming and why some artists are beginning to question human centrality in the sentient world.
This course offers an expansive journey into the Chinese language and culture. It focuses on essential semi-formal and formal writing skills while refining discourse-level competency. Students will enhance their linguistic abilities and communication skills in Chinese through reading and writing assignments, oral presentations, and discussions. This approach fosters adept communication and a deeper connection with the complexities of Chinese culture, preparing students to engage thoughtfully with contemporary issues and traditions.
Introduction to: (a) the infrastructure systems that support urban socioeconomic activities and (b) fundamental system design and analysis methods. Coverage of water supply, transportation, buildings, and energy infrastructure, as well as their interdependencies. Emphasis upon the process that these systems serve, the factors that influence their performance, the basic mechanisms that govern their design and operation, and the impacts that they have regionally and globally. Student teams complete a design/analysis project on a large-scale urban development site in New York City with equal emphasis given to water resources/environmental engineering, geotechnical engineering, and construction engineering and management topics.
Required discussion section for POLS-BC3003, Political Theory at the Border.
Prerequisite: Open to all Barnard and Columbia undergraduates. Permission of Instructor required; students admitted from Waiting List. Course develops physical, vocal, and imaginative range and skills needed to approach the text of a play: text analysis, speech exercises, non-verbal behavior, improvisation designed to enhance embodiment, movement, and projection.
Gateway course to advanced courses; transfer students who have previous college-level course may be exempted with approval of Chair
.
May be retaken for full credit.
Prerequisites: One year of biology, BIOL UN3004 or instructors permission in case the student hasn't take it. This course is the capstone course for the Neurobiology and Behavior undergraduate major at Columbia University. It is designed for advanced undergraduate and graduate students. Knowledge of Cellular Neuroscience (how an action potential is generated and how a synapse works) will be assumed. It is recommended that students take BIOL UN3004 Neurobiology I: Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience, or a similar course, or obtain instructors permission. Website for BIOLUN3005:
https://blogs.cuit.columbia.edu/rmy5/files/2022/01/syllabus.UN3005.2022.v4-lab.pdf
Prerequisite: Open to all Barnard and Columbia undergraduates. Permission of Instructor required; students admitted from Waiting List. Students must have taken Acting I or equivalent to be eligible for Acting II sections. Acting II will offer several different sections, focusing on a specific range of conceptual, embodiment, and physical acting skills. Please check with the Theatre Department website forspecific offerings and audition information. May be retaken for full credit. All sections of Acting II fullfull the “Arts and Humanities” Foundations requirement at Barnard College.
Prerequisite: Open to all Barnard and Columbia undergraduates. Permission of Instructor required; students admitted from Waiting List. Students must have taken Acting I or equivalent to be eligible for Acting II sections. Acting II will offer several different sections, focusing on a specific range of conceptual, embodiment, and physical acting skills. Please check with the Theatre Department website forspecific offerings and audition information. May be retaken for full credit. All sections of Acting II fullfull the “Arts and Humanities” Foundations requirement at Barnard College.
Prerequisite: Open to all Barnard and Columbia undergraduates. Permission of Instructor required; students admitted from Waiting List. Students must have taken Acting I or equivalent to be eligible for Acting II sections. Acting II will offer several different sections, focusing on a specific range of conceptual, embodiment, and physical acting skills. Please check with the Theatre Department website forspecific offerings and audition information. May be retaken for full credit. All sections of Acting II fullfull the “Arts and Humanities” Foundations requirement at Barnard College.
Prerequisite: Open to all Barnard and Columbia undergraduates. Permission of Instructor required; students admitted from Waiting List. Students must have taken Acting I or equivalent to be eligible for Acting II sections. Acting II will offer several different sections, focusing on a specific range of conceptual, embodiment, and physical acting skills. Please check with the Theatre Department website forspecific offerings and audition information. May be retaken for full credit. All sections of Acting II fullfull the “Arts and Humanities” Foundations requirement at Barnard College.
In this primarily human physiology course, we will discuss how the major organ systems function, with an emphasis on cellular, molecular, and physical mechanisms. Organ systems covered include musculoskeletal, cardiovascular, respiratory, urinary, and digestive systems. Traditional lectures focus primarily on the normal functioning of organ systems, while pathophysiology is introduced through five case studies during the semester. After this course, students should be able to 1) describe the basic functioning of the major organ systems and how they contribute to homeostasis and health, 2) apply key concepts in physics and chemistry, such as flow, pressure/volume relationships, and mass action, to physiological systems, 3) use key concepts in molecular and cell biology to gain a mechanistic understanding of physiological processes, explain how organ systems work in an integrated way to achieve homeostasis and health, and 4) predict changes in organ function upon drug treatment, genetic mutation, or disease conditions.
Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 12 students. Discussions on contemporary issues and oral presentations. Creative writing assignments designed to improve writing skills and vocabulary development. FREN BC1204: French Intermediate II or the equivalent level is required.
Prerequisites: JPNS W4005 or the equivalent. Readings in authentic/semi-authentic texts, videos, and class discussions.
Prerequisites: KORN W1202 or the equivalent and consultation with instructor. (See Entrance to Language Courses Beyond the Elementary Level in the main bulletin under Department of Instruction -- East Asian Languages and Cultures.) Readings in modern Korean. Selections from modern Korean writings in literature, history, social sciences, culture, and videos and class discussions.
Prerequisites: BC3001 or C2601 or the equivalent. Wave-particle duality and the Uncertainty Principle. The Schrodinger equation. Basic principles of the quantum theory. Energy levels in one-dimensional potential wells. The harmonic oscillator, photons, and phonons. Reflection and transmission by one-dimensional potential barriers. Applications to atomic, molecular, and nuclear physics.
Prerequisites: MATH UN1202 An elementary course in functions of a complex variable. Fundamental properties of the complex numbers, differentiability, Cauchy-Riemann equations. Cauchy integral theorem. Taylor and Laurent series, poles, and essential singularities. Residue theorem and conformal mapping.(SC)
The category of labor is often understood as a secular concept – closely and inextricably intertwined with the logic and destiny of capital. In this paradigm the question of the human is teleologically bound to the transverse flows of capital, with the human emerging primarily as an economic subject. This course nudges us to think outside the framework where labor is primarily understood as an economic function, instead exploring how religious traditions have shaped alternative understandings of labor and the human experience. We turn to other imaginations – such as those embedded in and emerging from diverse religious traditions – and consider other trajectories and possibilities of labor. Across religious traditions, labor has been central to the definition of the human, in multiple, cacophonous ways. In this course, we will encounter various religious ideas of labor not only as the process through which world(s) are made, but also as the process through which the idea of the human is made, contested, and remade over and over again. Drawing from Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism, this course will explore how diverse religious traditions have used the concept of work to define, delineate, and defend what it means to be human. We will pair primary texts with films, short stories and secondary readings, 2 to understand how these traditions provide alternative ways of understanding labor – not merely as a mechanism of economic production but as a critical process through which we engage in the process of becoming human through our interactions with the divine, various non-human actors, and the natural world. In particular, we will examine how religious communities have historically mobilized around issues of labor justice, drawing from their theological and ethical frameworks to advocate for dignity, equity, and justice. These insights are particularly urgent in a time marked by widespread exploitation, the displacement of workers by automation, and the rapid rise of artificial intelligence, which challenge traditional understandings of human labor. This course hopes to facilitate a nuanced understanding of labor’s theological, ethical, and political dimensions and consider new possibilities for work and justice in a rapidly changing world.
The reign of the first Roman emperor, Augustus (27bce-14ce), has been seen as a Roman revolution, both political and cultural. Rome had for centuries been governed as a Republic, but a series of increasingly divisive civil wars allowed Augustus to create a new political system in which he exercised sole rule as the ‘first citizen’ within a ‘Restored Republic’. Augustus’ reign lasted more than 40 years, and established a model of autocratic rule that would last for four centuries. During this time there were profound changes in the political, social, and cultural structures of Rome. In this course, you will examine the nature of these changes, Augustus’ political strategies, military activities, and religious initiatives through his own writing, the accounts of (often hostile) historians and a range of literary and archaeological sources, including Roman poetry. Ultimately, we will address the question: how did Augustus achieve the seemingly paradoxical feat of becoming a monarch within a republican system?
Prerequisites: PHYS UN3008 Maxwells equations and electromagnetic potentials, the wave equation, propagation of plane waves, reflection and refraction, geometrical optics, transmission lines, wave guides, resonant cavities, radiation, interference of waves, and diffraction.
This course aims to explore performing Greek tragedy on the modern stage. It will include an introduction to original performance practices in ancient Greece (space, masking, choral performance, costume, acting techniques) and an examination of how artists from different contemporary theatrical traditions have adapted ancient texts in modern performances and new versions of the plays. The bulk of the course will be focused on the problems of acting, interpreting, and reinterpreting parts of three plays on the stage, Sophocles’
Antigone
, Euripides’
Medea
, and Sophocles’
Ajax
along with a new version by Ellen McLaughlin, who teaches playwriting at Barnard,
Ajax in Iraq
. Students will view all or parts of particularly interesting recent productions from various theatrical traditions, which will help them to tackle challenging issues such as choral performance and choral rhythms, masking, character work, dialogues and presenting formal political debates.
For contemporary actors training in Greek tragedy offers a unique opportunity to improve their performance on stage through ensemble work and representing character through speech. It enhances dramaturgical capacities that a contemporary theater practitioner must exercise in exploring theory in practice and vice versa.
This class is directed to students particularly interested in dramaturgy, directing, designing, translation, and Greek tragedy as well as acting.
Conversational Chinese II is the continuation of Conversational Chinese I, both of which are designed for students with at least two years of college-level Chinese who wish to improve their conversational skills. It focuses on practical speaking and listening in real- world contexts, emphasizing fluency, vocabulary expansion, and cultural competence. Students will develop confidence in expressing opinions, narrating experiences, and engaging in spontaneous conversations on everyday andcontemporary topics.
Note: This Course CANNOT be used to fulfill the language requirement.
The centerpiece of this course is a geological field trip during Spring Break in Barbados. The class will meet weekly before the trip to prepare for it and after the trip to synthesize what was learned and to create a field guide. Subjects to be covered: plate tectonics, convergent plate margins and accretionary prisms, local Barbados geology; ice ages, Milankovitch cycles, sea level; introduction to coral reefs and fossil coral reef geology; Barbados terrestrial ecology; limestone caves, hydrology; dating methods; overview of Barbados history, economy, culture. In order to observe the modern-day coral reef (the modern day live analog to the fossil coral reefs we will see) the class will go snorkeling. In order to observe the effects of cave formation and water flow in limestone terrains the class will participate in an extensive visit to a cave. The class will also participate in an exercise in geological mapping of a series of coral reef terraces.
Priority: Priority is given to junior and senior majors and concentrators in Earth Science or Environmental Science at Columbia College and the School of General Studies, and Barnard College Environmental Science majors and minors. Others (non-DEES majors and non-Barnard Environmental Science students) may also be allowed to enroll if space permits. All students need permission of the instructor. Students who sign up will be put on a waitlist and will be considered after contacting the instructor.
Prerequisites: SOCI UN1000 The Social World or Instructor Permission Required for all Sociology majors. Introductory course in social scientific research methods. Provides a general overview of the ways sociologists collect information about social phenomena, focusing on how to collect data that are reliable and applicable to our research questions.
Prerequisites: (VIAR UN1000) (Formerly R3515) This course approaches drawing as an experimental and expressive tool. Students will explore the boundaries between drawing and sculpture and will be encouraged to push the parameters of drawing. Collage, assemblage and photomontage will be used in combination with more traditional approaches to drawing. The class will explore the role of the imagination, improvisation, 3-dimensional forms, observation, memory, language, mapping, and text. Field trips to artists’ studios as well as critiques will play an important role in the course. The course will culminate in a final project in which each student will choose one or more of the themes explored during the semester and create a series of artworks. This course is often taught under the nomenclature Drawing II - Mixed Media.
Prerequisites: No Prerequisites. Department approval NOT required. Flash fiction, micro-naratives and the short-short have become exciting areas of exploration for contemporary writers. This course will examine how these literary fragments have captured the imagination of writers internationally and at home. The larger question the class seeks to answer, both on a collective and individual level, is: How can we craft a working definition of those elements endemic to short prose as a genre? Does the form exceed classification? What aspects of both crafts -- prose and poetry -- does this genre inhabit, expand upon, reinvent, reject, subvert? Short Prose Forms incorporates aspects of both literary seminar and the creative workshop. Class-time will be devoted alternatingly to examinations of published pieces and modified discussions of student work. Our reading chart the course from the genres emergence, examining the prose poem in 19th-century France through the works of Mallarme, Baudelaire, Max Jacob and Rimbaud. Well examine aspects of poetry -- the attention to the lyrical, the use of compression, musicality, sonic resonances and wit -- and attempt to understand how these writers took, as Russell Edson describes, experience and made it into an artifact with the logic of a dream. The class will conclude with a portfolio at the end of the term, in which students will submit a compendium of final drafts of three of four short prose pieces, samples of several exercises, selescted responses to readings, and a short personal manifesto on the short prose form.
Progressive social movements are often read as critiques of systemic injustice and calls to transform social arrangements. In this framework, activism is largely - if not exclusively - a
political
project that addresses issues of housing, education, employment, healthcare, elections, labor, sexual violence, immigration, war, and climate, to name a few. Of course, these efforts are central to the long history of freedom struggles. Largely missing from such mainstream conceptions of activism, however, is serious attention to its
spiritual
work. That is, the ways social movements can transform hearts, minds, and spirits as much as material conditions, public policies, and political arrangements.
This course explores the intersection of social liberation and spiritual transformation, with particular focus on black and multi-racial freedom struggles in the Americas from the 19th century to today. Conceptually, it covers scholarship that speaks broadly to questions of love, spirituality, ethics, and religion in progressive political movements. Practically, it considers how this rich tradition of spiritual activism may help us confront legacies of injustice and struggle toward a liberated world.
This course surveys some of the major historiographical debates surrounding the Second World War. It aims to provide student with an international perspective of the conflict that challenges conventional understandings of the war. In particular, we will examine the ideological, imperial, and strategic dimensions of the war in a global context. Students will also design, research, and write a substantial essay of 15-18 pages in length that makes use of both primary and secondary sources.
Prerequisites: SOCI UN1000
Discussion section for SOCI UN3010: METHODS FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH
Prerequisites: SOCI UN1000
Discussion section for SOCI UN3010: METHODS FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH
Prerequisites: VIAR R1000. (Formerly R4005) Students will connect with the very heart of the Western Art tradition, engaging in this critical activity that was the pillar of draftsmanship training from the Renaissance on through the early Modern Era. This pursuit is the common thread that links artists from Michelangelo and Rubens to Van Gogh and Picasso. Rigorous studies will be executed from plaster casts of antique sculptures, and pedagogical engravings. Students will confront foundational issues of academic training; assessing proportion and tonal value, structure and form. Hours will be spent on a single drawing pushing to the highest degree of accuracy in order develop a means for looking at nature. There is a focus on precision and gaining a thorough understanding of the interaction between light and a surface. This approach emphasizes drawing by understanding the subject and the physical world that defines it. While this training has allowed great representational artists of the past to unlock the poetry from the world around them and continues to inspire a surging new realist movement, it can also serve as a new way of seeing and a launching point for achieving creative goals. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.
Prerequisites: One college level science course or permission of the instructor. Anyone who has taken EESC BC1002 Introduction to Environmental Science cannot take this course. Brownfields considers interconnections between groundwater contamination, toxics, human health, government, economics, and law using the award-winning interactive learning simulation Brownfield Action, Through a semester-long, laboratory exploration of a simulated brownfield, students engage in an environmental site assessment and development of a plan for remediation and revitalization.
Metallographic sample preparation, optical microscopy, quantitative metallography, hardness and tensile testing, plastic deformation, annealing, phase diagrams, brittle fracture of glass, temperature and strain-rate dependent deformation of polymers; written and oral reports. This is the second of a two-semester sequence materials laboratory course.
Discussion/recitation section for BIOL UN3005 Neurobiology II
Prerequisites: At least one French course after completion of FREN BC1204: Intermediate II or permission of the instructor. Oral presentations and discussions of French films aimed at increasing fluency, acquiring vocabulary, and perfecting pronunciation skills.
Prerequisites: One year of college science or EESC V2100 or permission of the instructor. Acquisition, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of environmental data, assessment of spatial and temporal variability. Focus on water quality issues and storm surges. Uses existing and student-generated data sets. Basic principles of statistics and GIS, uses standard software packages including EXCEL and ArcGIS. Includes a half-day field trip on a Saturday or Sunday. General Education Requirement: Quantitative and Deductive Reasoning (QUA).
Prerequisites: ECON BC3033 or ECON BC3035, and ECON BC2411 or STAT W1111 or STAT W1211, or permission of the instructor. Specification, estimation and evaluation of economic relationships using economic theory, data, and statistical inference; testable implications of economic theories; econometric analysis of topics such as consumption, investment, wages and unemployment, and financial markets.
Various concepts within the field of biomedical engineering, foundational knowledge of engineering methodology applied to biological and/or medical problems through modules in biomechanics, bioinstrumentation, and biomedical imaging.
Advance chemical-engineering problem-solving skills through the use of computational tools (primarily developed in Excel or Python). Examples are drawn from thermodynamics, transport phenomena, and chemical kinetics. The course is project based, emphasizing data analysis and report writing. Unstructured collaboration with peers is highly encouraged. Requisite numerical methods and Chemical Engineering concepts introduced.
Course Overview/Short Description
This course will consider various ways that changing environmental conditions put stress on humans and our societies and political systems, with an emphasis on conditions in the Global South. Among other topics it will consider influences of climate change on violent conflict migration and impacts of heat and air pollution on human health and wellbeing. Students will develop data analysis skills to explore these relationships and complete projects on environmental security cases and questions of their own choosing.
Longer Description/Purpose/Intention of the Course
Variation and shifts in environmental conditions have challenged societies throughout human history. Today, climatic variability and change, along with resource extraction, pollution and other forms of environmental degradation, influence society in myriad ways, through water resources and agriculture, storms, sea level rise, and direct impacts of heat on living things, among others. Moreover, different human populations, across race, ethnicity, class, gender, age, occupation and other lines face different levels of exposure and vulnerability to climatic and other environmental stressors and tend to experience them inequitably. Students will consider the influence and disparate impacts of environmental conditions on human security, through pathways such as human health, food and water security and education; various sectors of the economy from agriculture to mining to manufacturing; governance and social capacities; and broader social and political conditions like conflict, leadership change and migration. We will also consider the various approaches humans are taking to adapt to these stressors, mitigate their harms and build resilience. Throughout, emphasis will be placed on how natural and social scientists studying these phenomena engage in the research process to learn about and detect these impacts and the disparities among them.
This is a highly collaborative and project-based course that aims to offer students the power to choose the resources they want to use and the topics and cases they want to study. There will be no exams, outside of possible brief quizzes to determine whether students are engaging with the course material. Instead, in the first portion of the course, the instructor will guide students through the study of a collection of key topics and cases in environmental security AND the development of key skill sets for gathering and proce
Prerequisites: one year of calculus. Prerequisite: One year of Calculus. Congruences. Primitive roots. Quadratic residues. Contemporary applications.
Designed to provide students with an understanding of the fundamental marketing concepts and their application by business and non-business organizations. The goal is to expose students to these concepts as they are used in a wide variety of settings, including consumer goods firms, manufacturing and service industries, and small and large businesses. The course gives an overview of marketing strategy issues, elements of a market (company, customers, and competition), as well as the fundamental elements of the marketing mix (product, price, placement/distribution, and promotion).
Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 16 students. One year of college-level science. Primarily for Environmental Majors, Concentrators and Minors. Lecture, laboratory and field study of regional forest types from upland to coast and from urban to rural, forest ecosystem services, impacts of land-use and climate change on forests, reconstruction of past forests, forest pests, forest fires and forest conservation (corridors). Field trip sites for data collection may include: maritime, pine barrens, eastern deciduous and NYC urban forests. Format: lecture, student presentations, short labs, data collection/analysis and field trips (some on a weekend day in April in place of the week day meeting).
This course explores the history and the present of African American political theory and practice, through an analysis of theoretical texts, pamphlets/manifestos, and popular culture from the periods of the abolitionist movement, Reconstruction, civil rights, late 20th century Black feminist thought, and contemporary Black politics and culture. This course emphasizes the way that Black activists, scholars, and/or artists have responded to eternal questions in political thought about freedom, oppression, resistance, citizenship, democracy, etc., from the standpoint of Blackness in the United States. Moreover, the course is not just African-American Political Thought, it is also American Political Thought, insofar as Black theorizations and experiences of America provides a vital framework for interrogating the American experiment, citizenship and non-citizenship, American slavery and its afterlives, inclusion and exclusion, liberation and domination, and ultimately what “America” is and what it does (and perhaps could) mean to be American.
Prerequisites: FREN BC3021 may be taken for credit without completion of FREN BC3022. The Age of Enlightenment, Romanticism, Realism, and Symbolism. FREN BC1204: French Intermediate II or the equivalent level is required.
This course courses engages the interdisciplinary study of religion online and provides practical training to students on developing digital humanities projects, in partnership with the Digital Humanities Center and the Empirical Reasoning Center, and will incorporate analysis and critical reflection into their research on religious communities. The first portion of the course focuses on understanding methodologies in studying digital religion and exploring religious communities online. Case studies focus on ascriptive and affirmative identifications of religious communities, including how religious communities use online space to redefine their public
perceptions. The latter part of the course utilizes tools of digital humanities to develop projects responsive to student interests and that allows them to analyze digital expressions of religion.
Prerequisites: (Econ BC 3035) or (Econ BC 3033) This course examines a wide variety of topics about migration and its relationship to economic development, globalization, and social and economic mobility. At its core, this course reflects a key reality: that the movement of people--within regions, within countries, and across borders--is both the result of and impetus for economic change.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 and STAT UN1201 Institutional nature and economic function of financial markets. Emphasis on both domestic and international markets (debt, stock, foreign exchange, eurobond, eurocurrency, futures, options, and others). Principles of security pricing and portfolio management; the Capital Asset Pricing Model and the Efficient Markets Hypothesis.
This seminar engages students in an exploration of how schools prepare students to be literate across multiple subject areas. Engaging students with theory and practice, we will look at how students learn to read and write, considering approaches for literacy instruction from early childhood through adolescence. Understanding that schools are required to meet the needs of diverse learners, we will explore literacy instruction for K-12 students with special needs, multilingual learners, and students from diverse cultural backgrounds. This course requires 60 hours of clinical experience (fieldwork).
What is the relationship between religion and medicine in the United States? How have ideas about bodies and bodily difference shaped American public life? This course takes a historical approach to these questions from the colonial era to the present day. Working at the intersection of religious studies and the history of medicine, we will explore critical shifts in the medical thought and practice alongside changing ideas about bodies and bodily difference (both real and perceived), spanning gender, race, disability, age, sickness and health, and sex, sexuality, and reproduction.
Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 16 students. One year of college-level science. Primarily for Environmental Majors, Concentrators and Minors. This class looks at the response of wildlife (birds and plants) to climate change and land-use issues from the end of the last glaciation to the present. Case study topics are: (1) land-use and climate change over time: a paleoenvironmental perspective, (2) environmental transformations: impact of invasive plants and birds and pathogens on local environments and (3) migration of Neotropical songbirds between their wintering and breeding grounds: land-use, crisis and conservation. We visit wildlife refuges along a rural-suburban-urban gradient in order to observe and measure the role refuges play in conservation. Format: lecture, student presentations, short labs, data collection/analysis and field trips (some on a weekend day in April in place of the week day meeting).
The course is an introduction to the economic developments that gave rise to capitalist economies and economic globalization from 1500 to the 20th century. We apply economic and empirical reasoning to examine many transformations that have shaped the economies of the modern era—demographic, technological, and institutional changes. We compare the rise of Europe and other Eurasian civilizations, especially China. We examine the role of slavery and imperialism in global economic integration. We examine how the rise of modern capitalism influenced human material well-being and conflict and has led to the convergence and divergence of nations in the global economy.