INDEPENDENT STUDY

This course can be worth 1 to 4 credits (each credit is equivalent to approximately three hours of work per week), and requires a Barnard faculty as a mentor. The course will be taken for a letter grade, regardless of whether the student chooses 1, 2, 3, or 4 credits. The expectations for each of these options are as follows: 1 credit, 3h/week commitment, 5-10 page "Research Report" at the end of the term; 2 credits, 6h/week commitment, 5-10 page "Research Report" at the end of the term; 3 credits, 9h/week commitment, 15-20 page "Research Report" at the end of the term; 4 credits, 12h/week commitment, 15-20 page "Research Report" at the end of the term. "Research Report" is a document submitted to the person grading the student, the instructor of record for the section in which the student has enrolled. If a student is working off-site, then input from the off-site research mentor will inform the grading. The "Research Report" can take a variety of forms: progress reports on data collected, training received, papers read, skills learned, etc.; or organized notes for lab notebooks, lab meetings, etc.; or manuscript-like papers with Intro, Methods, Results, Discussion; or some combination thereof, depending on the maturity of the project.  Ultimately, this will take different forms for different students/labs.

• Department: Psychology @Barnard
• Instructor: Anna Shusterman
  Info
• Instructor: Ann Senghas
  CULPA: 17 Info
• Instructor: Katherine Thorson
  CULPA: 4 h-index: 7 Info
• Instructor: Lisa K Son
  CULPA: 25 Info
• Instructor: Mariel Roberts
  h-index: None Info
• Instructor: Erica Musser
  Info
• Instructor: Kathleen M Taylor
  CULPA: 78 Info
• Instructor: Tara Well
  CULPA: 4 Info
• Instructor: E'Mett McCaskill
  CULPA: 38 Info
• Instructor: Kate M Turetsky
  Info
• Instructor: Alexandra C Horowitz
  CULPA: 23 Wikipedia Info
• 1-4 points

THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM OF CO

US JOURNALISM OF CONSCIEN

From Frederick Douglass’s The North Star, which insisted that journalism could be a tool for liberation and collective conscience, to today’s digital-first platforms, American journalism has always been a site of struggle over truth, power, and representation. This course explores the power of journalism to shape public conscience — from the days when print was the Twitter of its time to the rise of radio, television, and digital media. At its core, this seminar centers the voices of journalists of conscience — those who speak truth to power, challenge dominant narratives, and reflect the full spectrum of human experience. We will approach journalism through a lens that foregrounds the perspectives of people of color, recognizing how mainstream media has historically erased, distorted, or marginalized their voices while also highlighting the powerful traditions of resistance and self-representation in journalism.

To foster meaningful connection and collaboration, students will be split into groups for the semester. These groups will meet in breakout rooms during each class session to workshop ideas, respond to prompts, and sometimes collaborate on short journalistic pieces. The goal is to make a large seminar feel intimate and to encourage peer-to-peer dialogue throughout the course.

Through weekly readings, in-class discussions, site visits, guest speakers, and multimedia projects, students will examine how journalism has both reflected and resisted dominant narratives across history. Students will also create original work that embodies conscience-based journalism.

• Department: English @Barnard
• TR 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Maria D Hinojosa
  Info
• 3 points

ADVANCED OPTIMIZATION

For undergraduates only. Required for all undergraduate students majoring in IE, OR:EMS, OR:FE, and OR. This is a follow-up to IEOR E3608 and will cover advanced topics in optimization, including integer optimization, convex optimization, and optimization under uncertainty, with a strong focus on modeling, formulations, and applications.

• Department: Industrial Engineering and Operations Research
• MW 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Bento Natura
  Info
• 3 points

MATERIALS/PROCESSES IN MANUFAC

Introduction to microstructures and properties of metals, polymers, ceramics and composites; typical manufacturing processes: material removal, shaping, joining, and property alteration; behavior of engineering materials in the manufacturing processes.

• Department: Mechanical Engineering
• MW 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Chaoqun Dong
  Info
• 3 points

THIRD YEAR MODERN TIBETAN II

For those whose knowledge is equivalent to a student whos completed the Second Year course. The course develops students reading comprehension skills through reading selected modern Tibetan literature. Tibetan is used as the medium of instruction and interaction to develop oral fluency and proficiency.

• Department: East Asian Languages and Cultures
• TR 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Sonam Tsering
  Info
• 4 points

SENIOR RESEARCH THESIS

Discussions of the student's Independent Research project during the fall and spring terms that culminate in a written and oral senior thesis. Each project must be supervised by a scientist working at Barnard or at another local institution.

• Department: Psychology @Barnard
• M 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Lisa K Son
  CULPA: 25 Info
• 1 points

NAT'L & CONTEMP WORLD POLITICS

The causes and consequences of nationalism. Nationalism as a cause of conflict in contemporary world politics. Strategies for mitigating nationalist and ethnic conflict.

• Department: Political Science
• MW 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Jack L Snyder
  CULPA: 27 Info
• 3 points

INTRO CONTEMP CHINESE POLITICS

This undergraduate course is designed to introduce to students who have limited knowledge of China some basic aspects of political institutions and processes as well as major events in Chinese political life under the communists since 1949, focusing on the post-Mao reform period since 1978. It examines economic and political development in China--their causes, patterns, consequences, and implications--in a broader context of transition from authoritarianism and state socialism. In this class, we will apply some concepts and theories in comparative politics in analyzing Chinese politics. By taking this class, students are expected to gain substantial knowledge about contemporary Chinese politics and acquire some basic ability to apply such knowledge to relate to and analyze current affairs concerning China.

• Department: Political Science @Barnard
• TR 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Xiaobo Lu
  CULPA: 4 Info
• 4 points

SEM-DEVELOPMNTL PSYCHOPATHOLGY

Prerequisites: at least two of the following courses: (UN1001, UN1010, UN2280, UN2620, UN2680, UN3280) and the instructor's permission. Developmental psychopathology posits that it is development itself that has gone awry when there is psychopathology. As such, it seeks to understand the early and multiple factors contributing to psychopathology emerging in childhood and later in life. We will use several models (e.g. ones dominated by biological, genetic, and psychological foci) to understand the roots of mental illness.

• Department: Psychology
• T 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Hannah E Hoch
  CULPA: 27 Info
• 4 points

TOPICS IN CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY

Prerequisites: (PSYC UN1001) Instructor permission required. A seminar for advanced undergraduate students exploring different areas of clinical psychology. This course will provide you with a broad overview of the endeavors of clinical psychology, as well as discussion of its current social context, goals, and limitations.

• Department: Psychology
• R 10:10 a.m.-noon
• W 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• F 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Usha Barahmand
  Info
• Instructor: Irit Felsen
  Info
• Instructor: Jeffrey M Cohen
  h-index: 5 Info
• 4 points

Muslim India: Islam in Colonial South As

This course will study Muslim communities and cultures in South Asia, a global demographic center of Islam. Our focus will be on the British colonial period and Muslim resistance and engagement with European colonialism. The class, however, will also cover earlier and later periods. We will study, for example, ideas about the “origins” of Islam in the Indian subcontinent as well as the development of majority-minority politics in independent India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Throughout the course, we will analyze a variety of primary source materials including historical texts, literature, music and visual materials. The class pays particular attention to Muslim interactions with other religious communities and the Muslim influence on the arts, literature, and legal traditions of the region.

• Department: Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies
• M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Isabel Huacuja Alonso
  Info
• 3 points

Rewriting History: Queer-Feminist Art fr

Rewriting History: Queer

In 1987, the queer-feminist Chicana scholar and poet Gloria Anzaldúa reflected on the politics of writing and rewriting histories. Mobilized by the social revolutions of the 1970s and 1980s, Anzaldúa sought to intervene in contemporary history, arguing that the act of retrieval—mining and sifting through our past—is necessary for sensing and creating uninhibited possibilities. Drawing on Anzaldúa’s understanding of the stakes of historiography, this course explores how artists have sought to reimagine queer-feminist pasts and enact latent futures. It focuses on the period from the 1970s onward, when the proliferation of mnemonic, time-based media, such as video, sound, slides, and photography, as well as ephemeral forms like performance and participation, emerged as significant material and conceptual foci for artists. Artists’ engagements with institutions crucial to the creation and circulation of history, memory, and knowledge—such as universities, the mass media, AI companies, and museums—are examined alongside enduring queer-feminist themes of education, motherhood, family, home, exile, kin, and futurity. Students will become cognizant of how contemporary art influences cultural, political, and social traditions and institutions, and how “old” and “new” ideas co-exist and conflict. The course offers an art historical perspective on contemporary art, mapping its relations to late modern art, while also foregrounding the question: how can we, as “contemporaries,” engage with art and art history in a way that responds to the demands of the present? Artists we examine include Mary Kelly, Ana Mendieta, Magali Lara, Jenny Holzer, Emily Kame Kngwarray, Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich, D. Harding, Simone Leigh, and Jesse Darling. Writers include Anzaldúa, Rosalyn Deutsche, Tina Campt, Aileen Moreton Robinson, and Ruha Benjamin.

• Department: Art History @Barnard
• MW 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Veronica Tello
  Info
• 3 points

LIT & AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP

Prerequisites: Permission of instructor. (Seminar).

Who is a citizen? How has the notion of citizenship changed in American history? Questions of American citizenship—who can claim it and what it entails—have been fiercely contested since the founding of the United States. Scholars have articulated various ways of conceptualizing citizenship: as a formal legal status; as a collection of state-protected rights; as political activity; and as a form of identity and solidarity. In this seminar, we’ll explore the role that literature and literary criticism have played in both shaping and responding to the narratives and civic myths that determine what it means to be an American citizen.

Because literature dwells in the ambiguity and ambivalence that legal definitions seek to avoid, an examination of literature across American history can illuminate otherwise-hidden aspects of citizenship. We’ll see that the American promise of citizenship—the idea that citizens of the United States can experience personal sovereignty—has been compromised and unfulfilled for many; definitions of citizenship have often exerted economic, religious, racial, and sexual power.

By looking at literature that wrestles with questions of citizenship, we will strive to uncover the ways that legal, abstract notions of citizenship reveal themselves in the everyday lives of individuals. We will investigate how literary texts shape citizens, whose lives may be determined not only by political boundaries and legal definitions but also by emotional affiliations and psychological allegiances. As we read American literary texts alongside political theory and historical writing, we’ll ask a number of questions about the relationship between literature and citizenship, including:


What is the political power of literature?

How does writing call into being certain kinds of citizens? Who is included and who is left out?

How are texts political agents?

• Department: English and Comparative Literature
• T 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Aaron Ritzenberg
  CULPA: 4 h-index: 4 Info
• 4 points

A Literary History of Marriage

From its origins, and to the present, marriage has been transactional, arranged, and rarely concerned with the desires or interests of the wife. In the eighteenth-century, and especially through the genre of the novel, women began to insist on right to choose their spouse, and the possibility of marrying for love. Perversely, it is at this point that the descriptions of some of the most disastrous and repressive marriages enter literature, and in the twentieth century film. If “the course of true love never did run smooth” this seminar follows its path, investigating the shifts and transformations of marriage. While the focus of the seminar will be on women, we will also consider men, same-sex marriage, questions of marriage and race in the United States, and marriage in China.

• Department: English @Barnard
• W 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Daphne Miriam Merkin
  Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

OBSERVATIONAL ASTRONOMY

Prerequisites: one year of general astronomy Introduction to the basic techniques used in obtaining and analyzing astronomical data. Focus on ground-based methods at optical, infrared, and radio wavelengths. Regular use of the telescope facilities atop the roof of the Pupin Labs and at Harriman Observatory. The radio-astronomy portion consists mostly of computer labs, In research projects, students also work on the analysis of data obtained at National Observatories.

• Department: Astronomy
• R 7 p.m.-9:30 p.m.
• Instructor: Kishalay De
  Info
• 3 points

Literatures of the Americas before 1492

Lits of Americas before 1

This course surveys the literatures of the Americas before the arrival of the Spanish in 1492. Proceeding from Inca political histories to Aztec poetry and philosophy to Ojibwe sacred narratives, this course offers students the opportunity to study and discuss some of the most significant and challenging literary works of the pre-Columbian Americas. Reading closely and in translation, we will consider the difficult questions posed by these texts, such as: What is the world? What is the human’s place in it? How does one find that place? And how does one lose it? Because many of these texts were transcribed during the colonial period, we will trouble the boundary line of “1492” by examining issues of translation, tradition, periodization, hybridization, appropriation, and resurgence. Throughout the semester, we will also explore recent engagements with Indigenous literary and philosophical traditions by reading contemporary poetry and scholarship by Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, David Damrosch, Louise Erdrich, Jack D. Forbes, Edgar Garcia, Beth Piatote, Arthur Sze, Cecilia Vicuña, Gerald Vizenor, and Sylvia Wynter.

• Department: English and Comparative Literature
• M 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Ethan A Plaue
  Info
• 4 points

TOPICS IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE AND PHILOSOP

TOPICS IN COG SCI & PHILO

This course will focus on one topic at the intersection of cognitive science and philosophy. Potential topics include free will, consciousness, modularity, mental representation, probabilistic inference, the language of thought, and the computational theory of mind.

• Department: Cognitive Science @Barnard
• Instructor: Tyler Knowlton
  Info
• 3 points

PROBABILITY FOR ENGINEERS

Introductory course to probability theory and does not assume any prior knowledge of subject. Teaches foundations required to use probability in applications, but course itself is theoretical in nature. Basic definitions and axioms of probability and notions of independence and conditional probability introduced. Focus on random variables, both continuous and discrete, and covers topics of expectation, variance, conditional distributions, conditional expectation and variance, and moment generating functions. Also Central Limit Theorem for sums of random variables. Consists of lectures, recitations, weekly homework, and in-class exams.

• Department: Industrial Engineering and Operations Research
• MW 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Daniel Lacker
  CULPA: 4 h-index: 13 Info
• 3 points

The Politics of Work

In this class we will examine the politics, organization, and experience of work. In the first three weeks we will get our bearings and consider some basic (but difficult!) questions about work, including: What counts as work and who counts as a worker? How important are our jobs to our survival in the world, and what makes for a good or bad job? In this section you will start thinking about and analyzing your own work experiences. In weeks four and five we will read what sociology’s founders had to say about work, and consider some of the important shifts to work that accompanied industrialization. Then we will turn to 20th century transformations, including the rise of the service economy and worker-customer relations, changes in forms of managerial control and worker responses to these changes, globalization, and the proliferation of precarious work. Finally, we will turn to examining gender, class and race in labor markets and on the job, paid and unpaid reproductive labor, the construction of selves at work, and the job of fashion modeling. Throughout the course we will examine how the sociology of work is bound up with other key institutions including gender, race, class, and the family.

• Department: Sociology
• W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Teresa Sharpe
  CULPA: 14 Info
• 4 points

Heretics and Heathens: The Politics of D

From Salem witches to QAnon conspiracy theories, deviant and heretical behaviors take various forms. But who holds the power to label someone a heretic, a heathen, or a deviant? For what purposes? And with what consequences? Heretics and Heathens: The Politics of Deviance in America explores these questions by analyzing the social dynamics that position outsiders and insiders and the underlying logics that inform and justify social positioning. Through case studies in U.S. history, including the Salem witch trials, the Red Scare, and the People’s Temple, we will examine how categories of deviance are socially constructed and used to stigmatize beliefs, practices, and individuals, and the material consequences of casting individuals and groups into these social roles. Students will analyze media and discourse to evaluate how these roles function, and to understand why and when they are deployed. The course will conclude with students developing their own case studies examining how categories of deviance are used to position an individual or group as beyond the threshold of cultural acceptability.

• Department: Religion
• R 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Gabriella Lee
  Info
• 3 points

The Organization of Diversity

This course examines diversity at the societal, organizational, and individual levels.  At the societal level, for example: How to measure the health of an economy? Growth in GDP is the current dominant metric. But organizational diversity might be a better measure if health is understood as the ability to adapt to sudden changes in the environment.  What is the relationship between wealth and diverse principles of worth?  At the organizational level: Under what conditions does racial and gender diversity contribute to higher team performance?  Can a complex organization be managed according to diverse principles of evaluation?  Moving to the individual level, how do we manage the multiple presentations of self in a diverse society?

• Department: Sociology
• W 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: David Stark
  CULPA: 15 Wikipedia h-index: 48 Info
• 4 points

The Rise of the Modern World Economy

Rise of Modern World Econ

Over the past thousand years, modern capitalism has expanded from its European starting point to the entire world. Modern economic activity started with a commercial revolution in the late Middle Ages, concentrated in European city states like Venice and Genoa. From the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, European colonialism spread this commercial revolution around the globe. The Industrial Revolution in northwestern Europe led to unprecedented and sustained economic growth, which allowed European nations to dominate the rest of the world economically, politically, and militarily, with mixed results for the rest of the world. Over the past hundred years, global capitalism has continued to present countries, and the people in them, with enormous opportunities, crushing constraints, and major political dilemmas. 

The course is an introductory overview of the economics and politics of international economic activity in historical and theoretical perspective.

• Department: Political Science
• TR 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Jeffry A Frieden
  Info
• 4 points

The Rise of the Modern World Economy Dis

Modern World Economy Disc

Over the past thousand years, modern capitalism has expanded from its European starting point to the entire world. Modern economic activity started with a commercial revolution in the late Middle Ages, concentrated in European city states like Venice and Genoa. From the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, European colonialism spread this commercial revolution around the globe. The Industrial Revolution in northwestern Europe led to unprecedented and sustained economic growth, which allowed European nations to dominate the rest of the world economically, politically, and militarily, with mixed results for the rest of the world. Over the past hundred years, global capitalism has continued to present countries, and the people in them, with enormous opportunities, crushing constraints, and major political dilemmas. 

The course is an introductory overview of the economics and politics of international economic activity in historical and theoretical perspective.

• Department: Political Science
• 0 points

Writing Desire: Sex and Sexual Politics

This seminar examines how French and francophone writers have given form to desire in novels, memoirs, poetry, polemic, and film from the nineteenth century to the present. French writing has been uniquely preoccupied with sexuality, its representation, its regulation, and the scandal that erupts when private life becomes public text. Flaubert was prosecuted for
Madame Bovary
, Colette scandalized and seduced in equal measure, and Duras made the novel a repository of erotic memory. In the twenty-first century, writers such as Édouard Louis, Abdellah Taïa, and Vanessa Springora have turned to memoir and autofiction to reckon with questions of queer desire, sexual violence, and consent. Moving across two centuries, we will read works that explore the boundaries between confession and fiction, between liberation and exploitation, and between secrecy and exposure. Authors include Flaubert, Baudelaire, Colette, Gide, Leduc, Duras, Ernaux, Taïa, Louis, and Springora alongside films by Malle and Campillo. This course will be taught in French.

• Department: French
• TR 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Rj McIntyre
  Info
• 3 points

Food, Race, and Migration

This course explores the intersectional histories of food, race, and migration in the U.S., with most of its focus on the period 1900 to the present. From food that migrated with colonists and enslaved laborers, to food created within ethnic communities trying to establish comfort and presence in the nation, to haute and fusion cuisines that cross racial, classed, and geographic borders—the things we see on our plates are the product of a myriad of movements of people, commodities, and ideas. How have factors such as race/ethnicity, migration, class, and gender impacted the foods available to us to eat, buy, and share? How have different waves of immigrants to North America shaped the nation’s culinary landscape, and conversely, how has the national culture shaped the diets of newcomers? How does food function to unite and separate people? How have food politics and activism developed over time in the U.S.? This class will explore all of these questions, and more.

• Department: History
• R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Lori Flores
  Info
• 4 points

Research Immersion in OR and Data Analyt

An overview of active research areas in Operations Research and Data Analytics, and an introduction to the essential components of research studies. This course helps students develop fundamental research skills, including paper reading, problem formulation, problem-solving, scientific writing, and research presentation. Classes are in seminar format, with students analyzing research papers, developing research projects, and presenting research findings.

• Department: Industrial Engineering and Operations Research
• F 10:10 a.m.-12:40 p.m.
• Instructor: Yuri Faenza
  h-index: 11 Info
• 3 points

STRATEGY FORMULATION

This class is an introduction to strategic management and the decisions that firms make in their historical context. We look at the growth of the large multi-product firm in almost all countries in the world and the the process by which they internationalized their activities and, very often, were also forced to retreat from their international positions.  We treat strategies as relation to two broad goals of the class: to understand why some companies are financially much more successful than others; and to analyze how managers can devise a set of actions (the strategy) and design processes and structures that allow their company to obtain a competitive advantage. You will learn the analytical tools developed in universities, in consulting and industrial firms, and even in the military.   These tools include what companies do to outperform their rivals; to analyze the competitive moves of rival firms by game-theoretic concepts; and when it makes sense for companies to diversify and globalize their business. Applications will be to Walmart and Apple, European firms and to Asian firms, and developing country firms.

• Department: Mendelson Center
• R 10:25 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Len Sherman
  Info
• 3 points

Modern Library Resources for Scientific

Library Science Research

Guided exploration of chemistry research using modern library resources. Topics include: organization and evaluation of information, information ethics, the history of citation, and use of databases. Culminates in the creation of an online research guide on a specific chemistry topic, using a variety of carefully considered and annotated sources.

• Department: Chemistry @Barnard
• Instructor: Michael Campbell
  Info
• 1 points

LATINX RACIAL IDENTITY & CULTURAL PRODUC

LATINX RACIAL CULTURAL PR

The course will investigate the impact of racial identity among Latinx in the U.S. on cultural production of Latinos in literature, media, politics and film. The seminar will consider the impact of bilingualism, shifting racial identification, and the viability of monolithic terms like Latinx. We will see how the construction of Latinx racial identity affects acculturation in the U.S., with particular attention to hybrid identities and the centering of black and indigenous cultures. Examples will be drawn from different Latinx ethnicities from the Caribbean, Mexico and the rest of Latin America.

• Department: Ethnicity and Race, Center for
• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Edward Morales
  Info
• 4 points

INTRO TO COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS

A basic course in communication theory, stressing modern digital communication systems. Nyquist sampling, PAM and PCM/DPCM systems, time division multipliexing, high frequency digital (ASK, OOK, FSK, PSK) systems, and AM and FM systems. An introduction to noise processes, detecting signals in the presence of noise, Shannons theorem on channel capacity, and elements of coding theory.

• Department: Electrical Engineering
• TR 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Irving Kalet
  CULPA: 3 h-index: 12 Info
• 3 points

MAJOR WOMEN FILMMAKERS

Traditional film history has consigned a multitude of cinema practices to an inferior position. By accepting Hollywood’s narrative model as central, film scholars have often relegated non-male, non-white, non-Western films to a secondary role. Often described as “marginal” or “peripheral” cinemas, the outcomes of these film practices have been systematically excluded from the canon. Yet… are these motion pictures really “secondary”? In relation to what? And according to whom? This course looks at major films by women filmmakers of the 20th Century within a tradition of political cinema that 1) directly confronts the hegemonic masculinity of the Hollywood film industry, and 2) relocates the so-called “alternative women’s cinema” at the core of film history. Unlike conventional feminist film courses, which tend to be contemporary and anglocentric, this class adopts a historical and worldwide perspective; rather than focusing on female directors working in America today, we trace the origins of women’s cinema in different cities of the world (Berlin, Paris, New York) during the silent period, and, from there, we move forward to study major works by international radical directors such as Lorenza Mazzetti, Agnès Varda, Forough Farrokhzad, Věra Chytilová, Chantal Akerman, Lina Wertmüller, Barbara Loden, Julie Dash, and Mira Nair. We analyse how these filmmakers have explored womanhood not only as a source of oppresion (critique of patriarchal phallocentrism, challenge to heteronormativity, etc) but, most importantly, as a source of empowerment (defense of matriarchy, equal rights, lesbian love, inter- and transexuality...). Required readings include seminal texts of feminist film theory by Claire Johnston, Laura Mulvey, Ann Kaplan, bell hooks, and Judith Butler. Among the films screened in the classroom are silent movies –
Suspense
(Lois Weber, 1913),
The Seashell and the Clergyman
(Germaine Dulac, 1928)—, early independent and experimental cinema –
Girls in Uniform
(Leontine Sagan, 1931),
Ritual in Transfigured Time
(Maya Deren, 1946)—, “new wave” films of the 1950s and 1960s –
Cléo from 5 to 7
(Varda, 1962),
Daisies
(Chytilová, 1966)–,
auteur
cinema of the 1970s –
Seven Beauties
(Wertmüller, 1974),
Jeanne Dielman
(Akerman, 1975)–, and documentary films –

• Department: Film @Barnard
• F 11 a.m.-2:40 p.m.
• Instructor: Sophia de Baun
  Info
• 3 points

Russia s Silver Age, 1890-1920

Russia's Silver Age, 1890

The end of a century and the beginning of a new one can be a moment of self-consciousness, when people pause in their usual activities to reflect on the direction of their civilization and to wonder what the future might hold. Usually, the 1917 Revolution dominates our consciousness of the first decades of the 20th century in Russia. This course offers a chance to take an in-depth look at a different aspect of Russian life: the turbulent world of ideas and culture, in many ways shared with other European capitals, that we have come to know as the Silver Age. One of the great novels of the age, Andrei Bely’s
Petersburg
(1913), will be our window into the artistic currents, philosophical discussions, apocalyptic moods and revolutionary stirrings of turn-of-the-century Russia. Since the creators of the Silver Age thought of themselves as drawing on the whole of Russian and world culture for inspiration, I also hope that our focus on these 30 years will propel us both backwards and forwards in time so we can discuss broad themes of Russian history and culture.

• Department: History
• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Catherine Evtuhov
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 4 points

SENIOR RESEARCH ESSAY SEMINAR

• Department: American Studies @Barnard
• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Jennie Kassanoff
  CULPA: 20 Info
• 4 points

LARGE LANGUAGE MODELS: FOUNDATIONS AND E

LLM FOUNDATIONS AND ETHIC

Large Language Models (LLMs) such as GPT-3, ChatGPT, LLaMA are models that are trained on large amounts of data and are adaptable to a wide range of tasks. They are the basis of most state-of-the-art systems in Natural Language Processing. While the potential of these technologies for social good is large, the risks are also comparable. In this course, the students will learn the fundamentals about the modeling, theory and ethical aspects of LLMs and their applications, while gaining experience working with them. The course will be structured as a seminar, where one class is dedicated to instructor-led lecture and one to studentled discussion of papers around topics covered in the lecture. Each paper discussion will be structured as a panel of 3-4 students, each with an assigned role. Each panel role covers one aspect of critically assessing an academic/industry paper. Everyone in the class should participate by commenting and asking questions from the panel. The class is project-based, meaning there will be a semester-long project focused on evaluating LLMs and/or building LLMs around a topic/problem/task you care about, with an end of semester final paper. The projects will be done by groups of 3-4 students.

Prerequisite(s): COMS W3134 or W3136 or W3137 (or equivalent). Background in probability/statistics and linear algebra is also required and experience with Python programming is strongly encouraged. Some previous or concurrent exposure to NLP, AI or machine learning is beneficial, but not required.

• Department: Computer Science @Barnard
• MW 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Smaranda Muresan
  h-index: 22 Info
• 3 points

Persuasion at scale: causal inference, m

Persuasion at Scale

By employing statistical and computational methods, including randomized controlled trials, natural experiments, and machine learning techniques, students will engage directly with real-world data to uncover the intricacies of persuasion across different sectors, including but not limited to quantifying the effects of partisan media, social media, and political campaigns. The course will also delve into the historical evolution of these persuasive techniques, providing students with a rich contextual background to better understand current trends and anticipate future developments. This course fulfills the quantitative methods requirement for the Political Science major.

• Department: Political Science
• MW 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• Instructor: chris wiggins
  CULPA: 12 Wikipedia h-index: 34 Info
• 3 points

The Secret Lives of Plants

An interdisciplinary seminar exploring the new science of plant intelligence alongside the colonial, racial, and ecological histories that have shaped human-plant relations. Drawing on plant biology, Indigenous knowledge systems, Black botanical legacies, critical race studies, and multispecies anthropology, the course asks what plants know, who has always known them, and what they have been made to do in the service of empire. Students purchase and maintain a living plant throughout the semester. Readings range from bench science to postcolonial theory to Caribbean literature.

• Department: Anthropology
• T 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Vanessa L Agard-Jones
  CULPA: 3 Info
• 4 points

RESEARCH DESIGN: SCOPE AND METHODS

RESEARCH DESIGN: SCOPE&ME

This class aims to introduce students to the logic of social scientific inquiry and research design. Although it is a course in political science, our emphasis will be on the science part rather than the political part — we’ll be reading about interesting substantive topics, but only insofar as they can teach us something about ways we can do systematic research. This class will introduce students to a medley of different methods to conduct social scientific research.

• Department: Political Science
• MW 5:40 p.m.-6:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Abdullah Aydogan
  h-index: 4 Info
• 4 points

SCOPE AND METHODS - DISC

This is the required discussion section for
POLS UN3720.

• Department: Political Science
• 0 points

AMERICAN MATERIAL CULTURE

• Department: Anthropology @Barnard
• W 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Severin Fowles
  CULPA: 24 Info
• 4 points

Auden

Poems and prose by W. H. Auden, at length and in depth. To apply for this seminar, send a brief email message to 
edward.mendelson@columbia.edu
 that includes: your year (senior, junior, etc.), the names of some English courses you have taken, and one sentence saying why you want to take the course.

• Department: English and Comparative Literature
• T 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Edward Mendelson
  CULPA: 64 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

The Thirties: Metropole and Colony

The Thirties: Metropole/C

This course focuses on the tumultuous 1930s, which witnessed the growth of anticolonial movements, the coming to power of totalitarian and fascist regimes, and calls for internationalism and a new world vision, among other major developments. Even as fascism laid down its roots in parts of Europe, the struggle for independence from European colonial rule accelerated in Asia and Africa, and former subjects engaged with ideas and images about the shape of their new nations, in essays, fiction, poetry, and theater. Supporters and critics of nationalism existed on both sides of the metropole-colony divide, as calls for internationalism sought to stem the rising tide of ethnocentric thinking and racial particularism in parts of Europe as well as the colonies. Ostensibly a gesture of resistance against imperial control, anti-colonialism also sparked debates about re-visioning gender relations, the place of minorities in the nation, religious difference and secularism, and models of world unity, among other issues. The course aims to consider the intersection of these debates with resistance to 1930s fascism: Did anti- fascist resistance in the metropole draw inspiration from anticolonial struggles? Conversely, did the spectre of fascism and authoritarianism present a cautionary tale to the project of nation-building in former colonies?

We will read works from both the metropole and the colonies to track the crisscrossing of ideas, beginning with writers whose works foreshadowed the convulsive events of the 1930s and beyond (H.G. Wells, E.M. Forster, Rabindranath Tagore), then moving on to writers who published some of their greatest work in the 1930s (Virginia Woolf, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Mulk Raj Anand, M.K. Gandhi, Raja Rao, C.L.R. James), and concluding with an author who reassessed the events of the 1930s from a later perspective (George Lamming).

• Department: English and Comparative Literature
• T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Gauri Viswanathan
  CULPA: 9 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

LITERATURE ON DRUGS

Whether as sources of artistic creativity, symbols of moral decay, avenues of escape, or
foundations for alternative forms of sociality, drugs are an inexhaustible source of inspiration
for all manner of storytellers. Why is that? This course surveys the narrative history of
“literature on drugs” from three angles: first, we examine poetry and fiction composed under
the influence of mind-altering intoxicants; second, we study literature about drug-induced
experiences and the counter-cultures they have fueled; and we ask why literary criticism is
essential to articulate the danger and allure of drugs, past, present, and future. We will read
from literary psychonauts including William Blake, William S. Burroughs, Philip K. Dick, Allen
Ginsberg, Aldous Huxley, Anaïs Nin, and Hunter S. Thompson; historians of the highly weird like
Michel Foucault and Erik Davis; and an array of primary sources on the legal, therapeutic, and
psychological complexities of drug use, such as Billy Holiday, Sigmund Freud, William James,
and Margaret Mead. We also will consider the cinematic history of literature on drugs with
films like Altered States, Trainspotting, and Apocalypse Now. The course incorporates hands-on
archival work and includes a visit to Columbia’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

• Department: English @Barnard
• TR 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Nathan Gorelick
  Info
• 3 points

Mathematics for Machine Learning

MATH FOR MACHINE LEARNING

Mathematical foundations of machine learning: Linear algebra, multivariable calculus, and probability and statistics. Comprehensive review and additional treatment of
relevant topics used in the analysis and design of machine learning models. Preliminary exposure to core algorithms such as linear regression, gradient descent, principal
component analysis, low-rank approximations, and kernel methods.

• Department: Computer Science
• MW 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Tony B Dear
  CULPA: 17 Info
• 3 points

AFRICA AND FRANCE

This course endeavors to understand the development of the peculiar and historically conflictual relationship that exists between France, the nation-states that are its former African colonies, and other contemporary African states. It covers the period from the 19th century colonial expansion through the current ‘memory wars’ in French politics and debates over migration and colonial history in Africa. Historical episodes include French participation in and eventual withdrawal from the Atlantic Slave Trade, emancipation in the French possessions, colonial conquest, African participation in the world wars, the wars of decolonization, and French-African relations in the contexts of immigration and the construction of the European Union. Readings will be drawn extensively from primary accounts by African and French intellectuals, dissidents, and colonial administrators. However, the course offers neither a collective biography of the compelling intellectuals who have emerged from this relationship nor a survey of French-African literary or cultural production nor a course in international relations. Indeed, the course avoids the common emphasis in francophone studies on literary production and the experiences of elites and the common focus of international relations on states and bureaucrats. The focus throughout the course is on the historical development of fields of political possibility and the emphasis is on sub-Saharan Africa. Group(s): B, C Field(s): AFR, MEU

• Department: History
• M 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Gregory Mann
  CULPA: 15 h-index: 13 Info
• 4 points

BERL/ISTANBUL:MIGRATN,CLTR,VAL

BERL/ISTANBUL:MIGRATNCLTRVAL

An intensive seminar analyzing questions of migration, identity, (self-) representation, and values with regard to the Turkish minority living in Germany today. Starting with a historical description of the „guest worker“ program that brought hundreds of thousands of Turkish nationals to Germany in the 1960s and 1970s, the course will focus on the experiences and cultural production of the second and third generations of Turkish Germans, whose presence has profoundly transformed German society and culture. Primary materials include diaries, autobiographies, legal and historical documents, but the course will also analyze poetry, novels, theater plays and films. In German.

• Department: Germanic Languages
• M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Claudia Breger
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 3 points

INDEPENDENT STUDY

Students who wish to do an independent study project (I.S.P.), should speak with a Political Science faculty member willing to serve as sponsor, then fill out a Request for Approval of Credit for Independent Study (see Registrars link below) and obtain signatures from the sponsor and from our Department Chair. File this form with the Committee on Programs and Academic Standing, which must approve all requests. (It must be filed with the C.P.A.S. well before the Registrars program-filing deadline for the semester of the I.S.P.) Note that no credit is given for an internship or job experience in or by itself, but credit is given for an academic research paper written in conjunction with an internship, subject to the procedures outlined above. The internship and the I.S.P. can be in the same semester, or you may do the I.S.P. in the semester following the internship. A project approved for three or four points counts as an elective course for the purpose of the ten-course major or five-course minor requirement. No more than two such three- or four-point projects may be used for the major, and no more than one for the minor. An independent study project may not be used to satisfy either the colloquium or senior seminar requirement. Each instructor is limited to sponsoring one independent study project per semester. The Registrar will assign a POLS BC 3799 section and call number unique to the faculty sponsor. The Registrars ISP form: http://www.barnard.edu/sites/default/files/inline/indstudy.pdf. The Political Science faculty: http://polisci.barnard.edu/faculty-directory.

• Department: Political Science @Barnard
• Instructor: Faculty
  h-index: 37 Info
• 1-4 points

EARTH & ENVIR ENGIN LAB

EARTH & ENVIR ENGIN LAB I

Experiments on fundamental aspects of Earth and environmental engineering with emphasis on the applications of chemistry, biology and thermodynamics to environmental processes: energy generation, analysis and purification of water, environmental biology, and biochemical treatment of wastes. Students will learn the laboratory procedures and use analytical equipment firsthand, hence demonstrating experimentally the theoretical concepts learned in class.

• Department: Earth and Environmental Engineering
• TR 11 a.m.-1 p.m.
• Instructor: Luana Llanes
  Info
• 4 points

SEM IN CONTEMP ART PRACTICE

(Formerly R4601) New York City is the most abundant visual arts resource in the world. Visits to museums, galleries, and studios on a weekly basis. Students encounter a broad cross-section of art and are encouraged to develop ideas about what is seen. The seminar is led by a practicing artist and utilizes this perspective. Columbia College and General Studies Visual Arts Majors must take this class during their junior year. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

• Department: Visual Arts
• 3 points

ENVIR SCIENCE SENIOR SEM II

• Department: Environmental Sciences @Barnard
• R 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• 3 points

COLL:POLITICS OF DEVELOPMENT

Prerequisites: V 1501 or equivalent Description: The semester-long course aims to study political and social factors behind economic development and exam empirical cases of the success and failure in economic growth in order to understand the key features of the development processes. In the last two centuries, some countries successfully achieved economic growth and development, while other failed to do so. Even in the post-WWII period, the world has witnessed the rise and decline of economies around the world. Why do nations succeed or fail in economic development? How do political institutions affect economic outcomes? What are the ways in which state and market interact and influence each other? Can democracy be considered a cause of development, an outgrowth of development, or neither and to which extent? How do external factors such as foreign aid encourage or discourage development? We will try to examine these questions by taking a historical-institutional and comparative approach and take a critical look at the role of political and other institutions by applying theoretical guidelines and empirical cases. We will explore competing explanations for the successes and failures of economic development in the world. Objective:1. Understand some important concepts and theories within the fields of comparative politics and political economy. To explore the interconnections between politics, economy, and society in the context of development policy and practice.2. Develop basic analytic skills to explore various factors that shape political, economic, and social development and underdevelopment in the world;3. Understand some country specific political economy processes and how these processes prove or disprove certain theories and policies.

• Department: Political Science @Barnard
• W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Xiaobo Lu
  CULPA: 4 Info
• 4 points

CHEM ENG & APPLIED CHEM LAB

Emphasizes active, experiment-based resolution of open-ended problems involving use, design, and optimization of equipment, products, or materials. Under faculty guidance students formulate, carry out, validate, and refine experimental procedures, and present results in oral and written form. Develops analytical, communications, and cooperative problem-solving skills in the context of problems that span from traditional, large scale separations and processing operations to molecular level design of materials or products. Sample projects include: scale up of apparatus, process control, chemical separations, microfluidics, surface engineering, molecular sensing, and alternative energy sources. Safety awareness is integrated.

• Department: Chemical Engineering
• MW 1 p.m.-5 p.m.
• 3 points

Knowledge, Practice, Power

Knowledge, Practice, Power is a practical and multi-disciplinary exploration of research methods and interpretive strategies used in feminist scholarship, focusing on larger questions about how we know what we know, and who and what knowledge is for. Open to non-majors, but sophomore and junior majors in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) are encouraged to enroll in this course as preparation for Senior Seminar I. This course is required for students pursuing the concentration or minor in Feminist/Intersectional Science and Technology Studies. Prerequisite: 
Either
 one introductory WGSS course 
or
 Critical Approaches to Social and Cultural Theory 
or
 Permission of the Instructor.

• Department: Women's, Gender, Sexuality Studies @Barnard
• M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Casidy Campbell
  Info
• 4 points

BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING LAB II

Biomedical experimental design and hypothesis testing. Statistical analysis of experimental measurements. Analysis of experimental measurements. Analysis of variance, post hoc testing. Fluid shear and cell adhesion, neuro-electrophysiology, soft tissue biomechanics, biomecial imaging and ultrasound, characterization of excitable tissues, microfluidics.

• Department: Biomedical Engineering
• R 1:10 p.m.-3:45 p.m.
• W 1:10 p.m.-3:45 p.m.
• 3 points

Workshop in Sustainable Development: Eco

WORKSHOP IN SDEV SOUTH AF

This course is a client-based workshop in which students apply their experience and knowledge to address critical, real-world sustainability challenges. The primaryclient is Wild Tomorrow, a non-profit conservation organization focused on ecosystem restoration and community development in a biodiversity hotspot in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Students will contribute to the sustainable protection, rewilding, and expansion of a 4,600-acre wildlife corridor adjacent to the UNESCO World Heritage iSimangaliso Wetland Park. Over spring break, students will travel to the Greater Ukuwela Nature Reserve to learn from local experts while gaining practical experience in restoring habitat for threatened species, addressing human-wildlife conflict, and exploring the intersection of conservation and community development. Post-trip class sessions will consist of focused teamwork on the final report and presentations.

• Department: Earth Institute
• M 2 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Jenna M Lawrence
  CULPA: 6 Info
• 4 points

FUNDAMENTALS OF COMPUTER SYSTS

Fundamentals of computer organization and digital logic. Boolean algebra, Karnaugh maps, basic gates and components, flipflops and latches, counters and state machines, basics of combinational and sequential digital design. Assembly language, instruction sets, ALU’s, single-cycle and multi-cycle processor design, introduction to pipelined processors, caches, and virtual memory.

• Department: Computer Science
• TR 8:40 a.m.-9:55 a.m.
• TR 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Zishen Wan
  Info
• Instructor: Stephen A Edwards
  CULPA: 21 h-index: 35 Info
• 3 points

Citizenship: Regional and Global Histori

Citizenship in South Asia

This seminar explores the making and unmaking of citizenship, adopting regional and global histories from South Asia. Beginning with a brief overview of early twentieth century debates over imperial citizenship involving the Britain, its colonies, and North America and the making of a global color line in the years leading up to the formal end of empires, we look at how important political events (the 1947 Partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan, the 1971 War of independence for Bangladesh among others) were important inflection points in the rethinking of the relationship between national identity, belonging and formal-legal citizenship and its impact on people’s understanding of citizenship. Our discussions of citizenship after empire will include readings on citizenship debates involving the former Portuguese and French possessions in India in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as a discussion of the broader debates over citizenship and belonging involving the South Asian diaspora in Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. We will also look at how debates over indigeneity and authenticity mark citizenship debates in Nepal, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka as well as parts of Southeast Asia, and how this shapes global citizenship and refugee regimes. Returning to India, we consider how unmaking citizenship affects both people who stay behind and engage with state structures as well as those who are on the move, pursuing education or employment opportunities beyond it, shaped by uneven access to rights and shaping their social and political identities.

• Department: History
• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Kalyani Ramnath
  Info
• 4 points

COLL ON MODERN EAST ASIA TEXTS

Prerequisites: AHUM UN3400 is recommended as background. Introduction to and exploration of modern East Asian literature through close reading and discussion of selected masterpieces from the 1890s through the 1990s by Chinese, Japanese, and Korean writers such as Mori Ogai, Wu Jianren, Natsume Soseki, Lu Xun, Tanizaki Jun’ichiro, Shen Congwen, Ding Ling, Eileen Chang, Yi Sang, Oe Kenzaburo, O Chong-hui, and others. Emphasis will be on cultural and intellectual issues and on how literary forms manifested, constructed, or responded to rapidly shifting experiences of modernity in East Asia.

• Department: East Asian Languages and Cultures
• T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Iris Kim
  Info
• 4 points

SENIOR THESIS SEMINAR

A year-long course for outstanding senior majors who want to conduct research in primary sources on a topic of their choice in any aspect of history, and to write a senior thesis possibly leading toward departmental honors. Field(s): ALL

• Department: History
• R 10:10 a.m.-noon
• M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Tunc Sen
  Info
• Instructor: James Stafford
  Info
• Instructor: Michael F Stanislawski
  CULPA: 66 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

Beyond the Great Wall: Nomadic Empires a

Since Antiquity, the Great Wall has become both a geographical and socio-cultural fault line between steppe nomads and the Chinese. More than a physical and territorial boundary, the Great Wall also functions as a powerful conceptual metaphor, symbolizing the gap between insiders and outsiders. The intellectual discourses of “frontier” and “border” embodied by the Wall have kept alive well into modern China.
The course follows a broadly chronological order from the Xiongnu Empire through the Mongols to modern times. Additionally, it incorporates thematic explorations such as nomadic culture, Sinitic concepts of unity, ethno-cultural diversity, multi-linguistic empires, and so on. We will make use of Chinese literature and art on the one hand, and primary sources from Central Asia on the other, to develop a comprehensive and comparative understanding of both sides of the Great Wall. As such, we ask how the nomads served as agents of change in Eurasian and even world history, and in turn, we problematize some enduring challenges faced by the Chinese state from the past to the present.
Listed as a Global Core, this course assumes no background of Chinese or Central Asian language and literature. Students are expected to engage thoughtfully and critically with course materials, including primary sources translated into English and secondary scholarship. Readings will include classical texts from Sinitic culture as well as diverse literary sources on nomadic peoples, such as The Secret History of the Mongols and travelogues by Marco Polo. These primary texts will be examined alongside secondary scholarship, with visual and material objects integrated to complement the written texts.

• Department: Asian and Middle East @Barnard
• M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Lili Xia
  Info
• 4 points

Seminar on Law and Psychology

Psychology and Law Semina

This seminar explores how psychological theory and research—particularly from social, cognitive, and developmental psychology—can illuminate, inform, and challenge legal institutions, practices, norms, and debates. The course examines how people think about, interact with, and are affected by the legal system in roles such as defendants, jurors, judges, lawyers, and citizens. Topics include legal decision-making, responsibility and intent, bias and discrimination, forensic assessment, mental illness and legal capacity, eyewitness testimony, interrogations and false confessions, punishment, and stigma.

We will consider how psychological insights help explain how the law operates in practice and critically assess how legal policies align with—or diverge from—psychological evidence. While grounded in psychological science, the course also draws on interdisciplinary work from law and legal scholarship, sociology, public health, and neuroscience. We will read empirical studies and legal analyses that address psychological issues relevant to the law. The principal goal is to understand the legal system not only as a body of rules, but as a human institution shaped by cognitive, emotional, and social dynamics.

 

Over the course of the semester we will (1) analyze how core concepts in psychology apply to legal contexts; (2) assess psychological studies by examining the strength of their research design and considering their implications for legal concepts and practices; (3) examine how developmental, cognitive, and affective processes affect legal decision-making; (4) identify and critique the use of psychological evidence in courts and policy debates; and (5) explore how neuroscience is reshaping legal understandings of responsibility, culpability, and sentencing, while critically examining its ethical and evidentiary limitations.

• Department: Psychology
• T 8:10 p.m.-10 p.m.
• Instructor: Michael J Naft
  Info
• 4 points

HUMAN RIGHTS & PUBLIC HEALTH

Prerequisites: Enrollment in the course is open to 18 undergraduates who have completed at least one core course in human rights and /or international law. This seminar introduces students to the field of health and human rights. It examines how to advocate for and implement public health strategies using a human rights framework. It takes note of current international and domestic debates about the utility of a ;human rights-based approach; to health, discusses methods and ethics of health-related human rights research, and examines case studies of human rights investigations to explore the role of human rights analysis in promoting public health.

• Department: Human Rights (HRTB)
• W 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Kayum Ahmed
  Info
• 4 points

INDIAN WRITING IN ENGLISH

Prerequisites: the instructor's permission. (Seminar). As the great imperial powers of Britain, France, and Belgium, among others, ceded self-rule to the colonies they once controlled, formerly colonized subjects engaged in passionate discussion about the shape of their new nations not only in essays and pamphlets but also in fiction, poetry, and theatre. Despite the common goal of independence, the heated debates showed that the postcolonial future was still up for grabs, as the boundary lines between and within nations were once again redrawn. Even such cherished notions as nationalism were disputed, and thinkers like the Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore sounded the alarm about the pitfalls of narrow ethnocentric thinking. Their call for a philosophy of internationalism went against the grain of ethnic and racial particularism, which had begun to take on the character of national myth. The conflict of perspectives showed how deep were the divisions among the various groups vying to define the goals of the postcolonial nation, even as they all sought common cause in liberation from colonial rule. Nowhere was this truer than in India. The land that the British rulers viewed as a test case for the implementation of new social philosophies took it upon itself to probe their implications for the future citizenry of a free, democratic republic. We will read works by Indian writers responding to decolonization and, later, globalization as an invitation to rethink the shape of their societies. Beginning as a movement against imperial control, anti-colonialism also generated new discussions about gender relations, secularism and religious difference, the place of minorities in the nation, the effects of partition on national identity, among other issues. With the help of literary works and historical accounts, this course will explore the challenges of imagining a post-imperial society in a globalized era without reproducing the structures and subjectivities of the colonial state. Writers on the syllabus include Rabindranath Tagore, M.K. Gandhi, B.R. Ambedkar, Mulk Raj Anand, Raja Rao, Mahasweta Devi, Bapsi Sidwa, Rohinton Mistry, Amitav Ghosh, and Arundhati Roy. Application Instructions: E-mail Professor Viswanathan (gv6@columbia.edu ) with the subject heading Indian Writing in English seminar. In your message, include basic information: your name, school, major, year of study, and relevant courses taken, along with a brief statement about why you are interested in taking the course.

• Department: English and Comparative Literature
• W 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Gauri Viswanathan
  CULPA: 9 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

THE HISTORY OF KOREA TO 1900

This course traces Korean history from the earliest recorded kingdoms to 1900, situating the development of Korean civilization within both East Asian and global contexts. Students will explore major political, social, intellectual, cultural, and diplomatic issues of premodern Korea through diverse interpretive approaches and a wide range of primary sources that illuminate both everyday life and broader historical transformations. No prior knowledge of Korean history is required, and all readings are in English.

• Department: East Asian Languages and Cultures
• R 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Jungwon Kim
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 4 points

Signals: Networks, Publics, and Performa

This visual arts seminar explores the pirating, transformation, and circulation of media from the 1960s to the present. It examines the ways that media artists question public participation, democratic commitment, and collective memory. During the 1960s in the United States and abroad, the promise of networked communication prompted a consideration of global connectivity that brought artists and artworks outside of the gallery into the public sphere. Artist, often activists, explored the dissemination of information, and they commandeered messaging. Many of these artists positioned their output against mainstream media, while other artists seized existing media streams with the aim, optimistically, to alter them. Case studies include Stan VanDerBeek, Dara Birnbaum, Black Audio Collective, Tiffany Sia, Sondra Perry, and CAMP.  This course brings together seminar discussions, the practice of making, and the hosting of practitioners; it is designed to offer students an introduction to various aspects of media as it is crafted and curated within and without museum environments.

• Department: Art History @Barnard
• W 1:10 p.m.-5 p.m.
• Instructor: Janina P Marshall
  Info
• 4 points

OUT OF PLACE

Literature has always attracted the outsider, and literature itself seems to demand from its writers to momentarily step out of the fray in order to hope to observe it. The modern age has offered different examples of this. When Bernard Levin described V.S. Naipaul as an ‘inquiline’ author — meaning, a guest or a lodger, an animal that lives in another's nest — Naipaul responded:

‘When I see the sun set here at Stonehenge, there is a way that it is somebody else’s sun, somebody else’s landscape, it has somebody’s else's history connected with it. I can't avoid that: that's the way I think.’

When Virginia Woolf received news of the death of Joseph Conrad, she sat down and penned an admiring obituary that opens with what might be read as a presumptuously arrogant statement:

‘Suddenly, without giving us time to arrange our thoughts or prepare our phrases, our guest has left us; and his withdrawal without farewell or ceremony is in keeping with his mysterious arrival, long years ago, to take up his lodging in this country.’

Despite Woolf’s English snobbishness, her words reveal something true about Conrad’s situation, and about the place of many other writers who were, for one reason or another, obliged to operate in foreign lands, inside other languages or states of being, authors such as V.S. Naipaul, Ovid, Robert Louis Stevenson, Joseph Conrad, Jean Rhys, Waguih Ghali and David Malouf.

Through the close analysis of a narrow selection of works, this class will chart the ways in which such works reveal the nature and imaginative location of the artist out of place. We will be interested in the question of to what extent is writing a process of mapping an intellectual, aesthetic, psychic or geographical territory. We will be motivated by close reading, interpretation, and the adventure of comparing different portraits of being an outsider-insider.

We may refer to fragments by travellers and explorers such as Leo Africanus, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Bartolomé de las Casas, and Ibn Battuta, or look at the work of artists who crossed boundaries, such as the 15th century Venetian painter Gentile Bellini and the impact of his visit to Mehmed II’s court in 1479, or the influence of the Arabesque on the music of Claude Debussy.

We will explore what it is about literature and, in particular, the novel that has made it so well-suited for por

• Department: English @Barnard
• TR 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Hisham Matar
  CULPA: 2 Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

Photo as Material: A Studio Lab in Inter

Photo as Material:A Studi

Images today can feel increasingly unstable, untethered to physical and interpersonal experience, and also unstoppable, generating and proliferating at accelerating speeds. What do we do with all this material? What are the global consequences of the mass circulation of images? And how do artists specifically make sense of the contemporary state of photography? This course invites students into a non-conventional, interdisciplinary approach to making, reading, critiquing, and relating to images. We begin with the fundamentally physical elements of photography—space, light, and lens—and end with the embedded histories, social relations, and personal narratives that photographs can trace or carry. We discuss case studies and readings by and about artists and theorists who research and make work across international contexts, exploring, for example, how early colonial histories of photography prefigure its contemporary conditions, and how images can echo or challenge patterns of displacement and resistance. We create artworks informed by this research, exploring how to physically manipulate, present, and disseminate images in hands-on thematic projects that push photography beyond the screen or frame and into the material world.

• Department: Art History @Barnard
• R 10:10 a.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Mira Dayal
  Info
• 3 points

CHINA'S FOREIGN RELATIONS

This course will review and analyze the foreign policy of the People's Republic of China from 1949 to the present. It will examine Beijing's relations with the Soviet Union, the United States, Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Third World during the Cold War, and will discuss Chinese foreign policy in light of the end of the Cold War, changes in the Chinese economy in the reform era, the post-Tiananmen legitimacy crisis in Beijing, and the continuing rise of Chinese power and influence in Asia and beyond.

This lecture course will analyze the causes and consequences of Beijing’s foreign policies from 1949 to the present.

Students must register for a mandatory discussion section.

• Department: Political Science
• TR 8:40 a.m.-9:55 a.m.
• Instructor: Thomas J Christensen
  CULPA: 2 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

SENIOR THESIS SEMINAR II

Prerequisites: Must complete ANTH BC3871x. Limited to Barnard Senior Anthropology Majors. Offered every Spring. Discussion of research methods and planning and writing of a Senior Essay in Anthropology will accompany research on problems of interest to students, culminating in the writing of individual Senior Essays. The advisory system requires periodic consultation and discussion between the student and her adviser as well as the meeting of specific deadlines set by the department each semester.

• Department: Anthropology @Barnard
• M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• 4 points

Introduction to Classical Chinese Philos

Classical Chinese Philoso

Many of China’s most influential philosophical traditions emerge within the context of war and harsh living conditions following the collapse of the Zhou dynasty, during the historical period known as the Warring States (6th-3rd c. BCE). In response to the political turmoil they lived through, thinkers of the Confucian, Daoist, Mohist, Zhuangist, and Legalist schools of thought each posited their own diagnostic, emerging with radically different philosophical views. Their disagreements included issues such as the origin of virtues, the function of ritual, the appropriate extension of moral feelings, the demands of good governance, the proper human place in the natural world, cosmology, and the aim of argumentation. This course will introduce students to these seminal figures and themes in early Chinese thought. We will occasionally consider philosophical issues overlapping with the Western canon, but our primary focus is on the unique concepts and context which guided the inquiry of Chinese thinkers. Our inquiry will be grounded in primary texts, with secondary materials as supplements. Readings will be entirely in English, and no knowledge of Classical Chinese is required (though we will sometimes discuss issues in translation which require reference to Chinese terms). Please note that as this course is centered on intellectual traditions indigenous to early China, we will not systematically consider comparable issues through the lens of Buddhist thought. 

As this course is designed to be accessible to students beginning their philosophical studies (and not just as an extension or application of ideas acquired through the Western canon), there are no prerequisites. As with any philosophy course, success in this class does not rely heavily on prior knowledge or reading, but rather on the continued exercise and refinement of the philosophical skills of critical thinking, writing, discussion and argumentation. A typical session will include an introductory lecture from me and a brief student presentation in the first hour, before transitioning to group discussion in the second hour. In this small, seminar format class you are expected to not only read all the assigned material and attend classes, but actively engage in and contribute to discussion.

• Department: Philosophy
• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Helen Luo
  Info
• 3 points

LISTENINGS: AN ETHNOG OF SOUND

LISTENING: AN ETHNOG OF SOUND

We explore the possibilities of an ethnography of sound through a range of listening encounters: in resonant urban soundscapes of the city and in natural soundscapes of acoustic ecology; from audible pasts and echoes of the present; through repetitive listening in the age of electronic reproduction, and mindful listening that retraces an uncanniness inherent in sound. Silence, noise, voice, chambers, reverberation, sound in its myriad manifestations and transmissions.  From the captured souls of Edison’s phonography, to everyday acoustical adventures, the course turns away from the screen and dominant epistemologies of the visual for an extended moment, and does so in pursuit of sonorous objects.  How is it that sound so moves us as we move within its world, and who or what then might the listening subject be?

• Department: Anthropology
• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: John Pemberton
  CULPA: 15 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

SENIOR THESIS SEMINAR

Computer Science majors at Barnard can choose to pursue a year-long senior research thesis for their senior experience. A senior thesis is intended to be a substantial piece of work in which the student engages in independent and original research. They should register for two semesters of research projects in CS through their faculty advisor’s home department (Barnard or Columbia), each for at least 3 credits (one in Fall and one in the Spring). They should additionally register for this course. The main goal is to provide students with a venue to discuss their senior thesis projects with each other. In the seminar, students learn how to communicate and present their work. They also become more familiar with other students’ areas of research and other types of research projects that fall under the umbrella of computer science. The seminar sometimes also features guest speakers in various areas of CS; students participate and engage in discussion with the speaker, further developing their research communication skills. The instructor of this course functions as a secondary advisor for the students’ projects. At the end of the academic year, the students present their projects to the CS community at Barnard.

• Department: Computer Science @Barnard
• W noon-1:50 p.m.
• Instructor: Tiffany Tseng
  Info
• 1 points

BEOWULF

This course will primarily consist in the task of translating the remarkably challenging poem
Beowulf
.  We will be reading (smaller) portions of the vast quantity of secondary texts as we negotiate and debate issues raised by our readings and contemporary scholarship.  As we work through the language of the text, comparing translations with our own, we will also be tracking concepts. Each student will be using our communal site (location tbd) for posting translations as well as for starting individual projects on word clusters / concepts.

• Department: English and Comparative Literature
• M 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: David M Yerkes
  CULPA: 41 Info
• 4 points

THE MONGOLS IN HISTORY

Study of the role of the Mongols in Eurasian history, focusing on the era of the Great Mongol Empire. The roles of Chinggis and Khubilai Khan and the modern fate of the Mongols to be considered.

• Department: East Asian Languages and Cultures
• T 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Morris Rossabi
  CULPA: 12 Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

Research Training

Research training course. Recommended in preparation for laboratory related research.

• Department: Mechanical Engineering
• Instructor: Matei T Ciocarlie
  Info
• 0 points

UNDERGRAD RESRCH-APPLD PHYSICS

This course may be repeated for credit, but no more than 6 points of this course may be counted toward the satisfaction of the B.S. degree requirements. Candidates for the B.S. degree may conduct an investigation in applied physics or carry out a special project under the supervision of the staff. Credit for the course is contingent upon the submission of an acceptable thesis or final report.

• Department: Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics
• Instructor: Carlos Paz Soldan
  h-index: 28 Info
• 0-4 points

UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH PROJECT

Candidates for the B.S. degree may conduct an investigation of some problem in chemical engineering or applied chemistry or carry out a special project under the supervision of the staff. Up to 6 points may be counted toward the technical elective content requirement. (Note that if more than 3 points of research are pursued, an undergraduate thesis is required.)

• Department: Chemical Engineering
• Instructor: Scott Banta
  CULPA: 1 h-index: 36 Info
• Instructor: Kyle Bishop
  h-index: 42 Info
• Instructor: Christopher M Boyce
  h-index: 17 Info
• Instructor: Juliana Silva Alves Carneiro
  Info
• Instructor: Christopher J Durning
  CULPA: 3 Info
• Instructor: Daniel Esposito
  h-index: 22 Info
• Instructor: Oleg Gang
  h-index: 45 Info
• Instructor: Jingyue Ju
  h-index: 77 Info
• Instructor: Sanat Kumar
  CULPA: 4 h-index: 79 Info
• 0-6 points