The Quantitative Valuation of the Environment course will explore theory and methods of economically valuing environmental benefits and disbenefits, and how they can be applied in decision-making processes to improve stated outcomes. Specifically, it examines model specification for stated preference valuation, generating awareness of the theoretical and empirical questions being investigated in the area, generating awareness of environmental and resource issues currently being debated, and practical issues such as how these welfare economics measures can be used in efficiency measures such as benefit cost analysis.
This course introduces the history, strategy, and practice of human rights campaigning, with a focus on media-driven advocacy. Students will examine the foundations of campaigning journalism, explore modern digital mobilization tactics, and learn to develop and execute impactful advocacy campaigns. The course emphasizes the intersection of strategic communications, digital tools, and policy advocacy, and provides hands-on experience in campaign design, messaging, and evaluation.
Students will develop an original advocacy campaign on a contemporary human rights issue using the 2026 FIFA World Cup as a global platform. Course assignments include writing advocacy letters and op-eds, designing media strategies, and producing a final campaign pitch deck. Case studies will include successful campaigns addressing labor rights, gender equity, and corporate responsibility in sport.
The course is suitable for students interested in human rights, journalism, digital strategy, and public advocacy. Sessions include skill-building workshops, guest speakers, and applied project work in collaboration with Human Rights Watch and other advocacy professionals.
The Social Impact: Business, Society, and the Natural Environment course explores the relationship between corporations, society, and the natural environment. Specifically, it examines the ways in which governments, (for-profit and non-profit) organizations, and investors (fail to) have positive impact and manage issues where the pursuit of private goals is deemed inconsistent with the public interest.
A seminar on the growing fragmentation of the global economy. The course explores how the rise of geoeconomics—marked by the proliferation of sanctions, tariffs, export controls, and industrial policies—is reshaping the global financial system, energy markets, supply chains, and technology industry. Topics include dedollarization and digital currencies, the bifurcation of the global oil market, China’s dominance of critical minerals and clean-energy supply chains, and the race for leadership in artificial intelligence. The course also examines alternative futures for the world economic order as the era of globalization gives way to something new.
Pre-req: any Quant III course. Instructor Managed Registration. Join Vergil waitlist and apply at
https://forms.gle/fjM8zkoSx9encCo49
.
The main outcome of the course will be a complete, novel empirical research paper. During the first half of the course, you will review empirical methods, learn about the structure of a high-quality research paper, and process the data for your project. The focus will be on learning how empirical methods—including not only regression-based causal inference but also data processing and measurement—are used in practice. We will draw on examples of excellent applied economics research papers to highlight best practices. By the middle of the semester, you will be expected to have completed initial analysis of your project. The remaining portion of the semester will be spent revising and improving drafts of the research paper, culminating in a presentation of results and submission of a final, publication-quality research paper. An emphasis of the class will be on real-world practice of handling, cleaning, and processing data. To this end, students will help build and maintain a database of data sets used for their analyses. Over time, this database will become a resource that future students can draw on for their own analyses.
This course has two primary objectives: to develop your ability to negotiate in a purposeful, principled, and effective way, and to teach you how to build consensus and broker wise agreements. Centered on public policy and international affairs, the curriculum uses immersive simulations and active learning methods to translate theory into practice.
Learning happens dynamically through both in-class and out-of-class exercises. You will navigate a wide variety of negotiation challenges, including international conflicts on the brink of war, diplomatic negotiations over catastrophic environmental accidents, local government collective bargaining talks, environmental dispute settlements, and high-stakes trade negotiations.
This seminar critically examines the evolution and current trajectory of Russian security policy, with particular attention to the ongoing war in Ukraine and its broad strategic implications. The course explores the political, historical, and structural factors that shape Russia’s national security outlook, as well as its use of military force, energy policy, diplomacy, and information operations to advance its interests. The course discusses Russia’s relations with the United States, Europe, China, and the Global South; the role of nuclear strategy and arms control; and lessons from recent military interventions. Readings and case studies are regularly updated to reflect the rapidly changing geopolitical landscape.
Drawing on the co-instructors' experience at MERL Tech Initiative and Dalberg Design, this course challenges the notion that technology alone can solve complex development problems and that a human-centered ecosystem approach is critical. While innovations like mobile money and AI are often hailed as silver bullets, history shows that their impact depends on context, users, and systems. Drawing on lessons from decades of “tech for good” — from community radio to drones — we encourage students to question technological determinism and instead focus on the lived realities and needs of users.
To do so, the course adopts a human-centered design (HCD) and systems-thinking approach. We start the course with UX principles and how they are applied in digital development, and follow this with weekly case studies in class, e.g., designing a digital ID for refugee camps, AI chatbots for low-income women entrepreneurs, participatory digital campaigns, capacity building in communities, community health worker tablets/iPads and so on.
Students will learn how to design relevant solutions by understanding users — such as refugees, entrepreneurs, or health workers — within their social, cultural, and institutional contexts. Emphasizing empathy, participation, and sustainability, the course moves from abstract theory to practical, user-driven design methods, supported by tools and case studies from Savita’s experience in digital development with clients including Mastercard Foundation, Gates Foundation and many others, and Claudia’s experience at Dalberg Design. Assessment is through a combination of participation in class, case study design and a group project.
This course analyzes the impact of domestic and regional conflicts in the Middle East on global security. Key concepts include: regime change, revolution, civil war, conflict management, security sector reform, arms transfers, nuclear proliferation, counterterrorism, and international criminal justice. These conceptual tools are used for comparative analysis of three sub-regional conflict zones: Saudi Arabia / Iran / Iraq, Egypt / Syria / Lebanon, and Palestine / Jordan / Israel. Each of these regions has galvanized substantial global engagement.
Gender equality, and women’s and girls’ empowerment, are now widely accepted as development goals in their own right, and essential to inclusive and sustainable development. But despite progress in many areas, gender gaps and discrimination persist. How did gender equality move from the periphery to the center of development discourse, and what difference has this made? Is gender equality a human right, an essential aspect of human development, or “smart economics”? What are the implications of a gender equality agenda for men and boys, and for broader understandings of gender identities and sexualities? What policies, strategies and practices have been effective – or ineffective – in narrowing gender gaps and improving outcomes for both women and men in particular development settings? And what are possible responses to the "gender backlash" that has emerged in some countries and institutions?
In this course, we approach gender, politics and development in terms of theory, policy and practice. We explore multiple constructions of gender in development discourse; the intersection of gender with race, ethnicity, caste, class, sexual orientation, disability and other social categories, and with dominant economic and political trends; and the ways in which gender norms inform the different approaches of governments, development agencies, civil society organizations, and the private sector. We apply a critical gender lens to a wide range of development sectors and issue areas, including economic development, political participation, education and health, environment and climate change, and conflict and displacement. We also consider current debates and approaches related to gender mainstreaming and gender metrics in development practice. Students engage with the course material through class discussion, exercises and case studies, and the development of a gender-related project proposal. Guest speakers share practical strategies for advancing gender equality in the current environment.
This course aims at familiarizing students with major issues surrounding global economic governance, exploring both the issues that have been or are now subject to current debates, as well as the institutional questions involved. “Global economic governance” is understood in a broad sense, and thus includes not only global but also regional frameworks, and both formal institutions as well as informal groupings of countries (such as the G7/8 and the G20) and rules of international transactions that have been left to bilateral agreements or are under the domain of national sovereignty but do have global implications. “Economics” is also understood in a broad sense, to include social and environmental issues.
The course will start with three general lectures that will place the debates on global governance in relation to those on globalization, and will give a first look at the objectives of international cooperation, the historical evolution of the current governance, and typologies of the different rules, organization,s and governance structures that have been created at varied times. It will then deal in detail with major issues that involve international cooperation: the role of the UN system, development cooperation, global monetary and financial management, trade and investment, international tax cooperation, and climate change. It will end with discussion of the governance of the system, and a recapitulation of governance issues and reform proposals in light of global economic developments in the 2008-2019 period, during COVID-19, and during the current crisis that mixes geopolitical issues with an economic crisis.
Instructor permission required. Join the waitlist in Vergil to request registration.
The class compares a variety of proposals that have been advanced to promote constitutional world order. We begin with traditional conceptions of the balance of power among independent “Westphalian” states and then explore arrangements designed to produce alternative forms of constituted international and world order. These include liberal and authoritarian internationalism, collective security through the League Covenant and the United Nations Charter, John Rawls’s
Law of Peoples
and various other contemporary models of international law, global governance networks and global democratization.
In addition to assessing the particular merits and limitations of these visions of world order, we will examine the underlying principles of international politics, ethics and constitutional design that characterize these efforts to establish rules for the globe.
This course examines the foreign policy of the People’s Republic of China from 1949 to the present, analyzing the political, strategic, and economic drivers of Beijing’s engagement with the world. Topics include China’s relations with the United States, Russia, Asia, and the Global South; key historical turning points such as the Cold War, reform era, and post-Tiananmen period; and contemporary challenges including cross-Strait relations, great power competition, and global governance. Emphasis is placed on the causes and consequences of China’s external behavior and how domestic politics, nationalism, and leadership shape policy. Graduate students participate in additional precepts and complete analytic memos designed to build policy-relevant skills.
This course examines the foreign policy of the People’s Republic of China from 1949 to the present, analyzing the political, strategic, and economic drivers of Beijing’s engagement with the world. Topics include China’s relations with the United States, Russia, Asia, and the Global South; key historical turning points such as the Cold War, reform era, and post-Tiananmen period; and contemporary challenges including cross-Strait relations, great power competition, and global governance. Emphasis is placed on the causes and consequences of China’s external behavior and how domestic politics, nationalism, and leadership shape policy. Graduate students participate in additional precepts and complete analytic memos designed to build policy-relevant skills.
This course is the second half of the year-long International Fellows Program (IFP) seminar examining the United States’ evolving role in global affairs. Building on themes from the fall, the spring semester focuses on the challenges confronting a new U.S. presidential administration and the strategic decisions that will shape American leadership in a contested international environment. Through a combination of seminar discussions, case studies, guest speakers, and two regional crisis simulations, students will examine U.S. policy responses to geopolitical competition, regional instability, and transnational threats. Enrollment is limited to students in the International Fellows Program (IFP).
Fieldwork is integral to the academic preparation and professional development of doctoral students. This course provides the academic framework for fieldwork experience required for the student’s program of study. Fieldwork documentation and faculty adviser approval is required prior to registration. A final written report must be submitted. This course will count toward the degree program and cannot be taken for pass/fail credit or audited. With approval from the department chair or the doctoral program director, doctoral students can register for this course at most twice. In rare situations, exceptions may be granted by the Dean's Office to register for the course more than twice (e.g., doctoral students funded by industrial grants who wish to perform doctoral fieldwork for their corporate sponsor). The doctoral student must be registered for this course during the same term as the fieldwork experience.
Climate & Perception
From Aristotle to TikTok: How Biology, Culture, and Technology Shape How We See
Odds are there are microplastics in your blood right now. You’ve read that. Have you ever felt it? Today’s biggest threats, from the slow vanishing of old-growth forests to the CO₂ in the room you’re sitting in, unfold at scales of time and space no human body was built for, which is why they are so hard to see. We know about them. We don’t perceive them. And what we don’t perceive, we can’t value, let alone protect. Perception sits upstream of every law ever written to protect anything. Attention is the part of perception we choose. That makes attention a moral act, and most of us give ours away for free. In this class we trace our perceptual blind spots through biology, culture, and technology. We ask why it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, why we keep placing ourselves at the center of everything, and how the same satellites that track carbon from orbit turn a living forest into data we can know but never feel. We look at how language decides whether the living world is an object or a subject, and why a corporation can sue you while a river, almost everywhere, cannot. The course is taught by an artist, built as a collision between the humanities and the sciences, and fed by film clips, readings, and guests: scientists, philosophers, and writers whose work bears on how we see. Robin Wall Kimmerer sits next to David Foster Wallace and NASA data. Arguments rarely change minds. Stories do. Once you’ve come to know a forest through story, you can no longer see it as timber.
An in-depth, seminar-style course on the management of ticketing with a focus on practical strategies to maximize grosses efficiently while providing a seamless audience experience. The course includes a semester-long group project intended to demonstrate the various decisions that theater managers must make to ensure the financial stability of their productions and institutions.
This is a condensed, field-based travel course on disaster risk reduction, response, and long-term recovery, taught in Türkiye during Spring Break. Students work in teams with faculty and students from a partner university in Türkiye to produce a case study grounded in the recovery from the February 2023 Kahramanmaraş earthquakes, which caused catastrophic losses across the Hatay region.
The course runs in three parts. Before departure, one to two sessions and a working workshop establish the hazard and governance context, set each team's research question, and cover field methods, research ethics, and travel logistics. The travel week takes students from lectures and a comparative virtual workshop in Istanbul, to briefings, organizational meetings, and site visits in Hatay, and back to Istanbul for a public presentation with Turkish partners. A post-travel session closes the course with revised presentations and the final written case study.
Students see the systems in practice that are responsible for managing housing, debris, displacement, livelihoods, cultural heritage, and local government capacity as one connected problem rather than as separate sectors. They also have the opportunity to interact with those who are doing the work: national agencies, municipalities, humanitarian organizations, local civil society, and residents themselves.
Financial reporting provides a window into the operational and financial workings of a company. However, translating this information into actionable insights is anything but straightforward. It requires an understanding of: Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), the quality of financial information, and the adjustments and analyses used to assess profitability, risk, growth, and value.
The course starts with a short review of financial reporting and then focuses on various modules of fundamental analysis, including earnings quality analysis, performance evaluation, risk assessment, forecasting, and valuation. The remaining class meetings (approximately 14 out of 24) are devoted to a deeper dive into the reporting and analysis of key transactions (e.g., business combinations, leasing) and financial statement line items (e.g., revenue, income taxes).
To allow for dynamic progress, the class schedule is flexible:
Topic Approximate # of class meetings
1. Review of financial reporting 2
2. Financial statement analysis 4
3. Forecasting and valuation 4
4. Revenue and related items 2
5. Operating capacity 3
6. Estimated items 3.5
7. Financial instruments 2
8. Investments in businesses 2.5
9. Equity and related items 1
Total 24
While the course covers the theoretical underpinning of the various analyses, it focuses on implementation and practical uses. We will study many actual financial disclosures and cases of accounting abuses, and we will conduct fundamental-based valuation and other financial analyses, including using Excel tools that will be provided to the students. Studying financial disclosures will help you better understand the underlying assumptions and accounting choices the firm made in arriving at its accounting numbers. This information can be used to make earnings quality adjustments to the accounting numbers to make them more consistent across time or more comparable across companies. Studying cases of accounting abuses will help you improve your ability to “read between the lines” and develop a set of red flags to look for in analyzing financial statements. The class also incorporates insights from practitioner and academic research.
The primary objective of the course is to acquire a deep understanding of accounting information and how to intelligently use it in making investment, credit, and similar resource allocation decisions. Such knowledge is required of investors, consultants, analysts, banke
This course will provide students with hands-on experience analyzing financial statements. Students will learn about the general tools, theoretical concepts, and practical valuation issues of financial analysis. By the end of the course, students should be comfortable using firms' financial statements (along with other information) to assess firm performance and make reasonable valuation estimates.
Course content and organization In the first half of the course, we will develop a valuation framework that integrates a firm’s strategy, its financial performance, and the credibility of its accounting. The framework consists of the following steps:
1. Understand the firm’s strategy. We will assess the firm’s value proposition and identify its key value drivers and risks.
2. Accounting Analysis. We will assess earnings quality and evaluate whether the firm's accounting policies capture the underlying business reality. If not, we will adjust the accounting to eliminate GAAP issues and management biases.
3. Financial Analysis. We will evaluate current performance with accounting data and financial ratios.
4. Prospective Analysis: Forecasting. We will assess whether current firm performance is sustainable, and we will forecast future performance. In our forecasts, we will consider growth, profitability, and future competitive advantage.
5. Prospective Analysis: Valuation. We will convert our forecasts of future earnings and book values into an estimate of the firm’s current value.
In the second half of the course, we will apply the above framework to a variety of business valuation contexts, including IPOs, mergers, and equity-investment analyses.
Across the international climate landscape, Paris occupies a distinctive position. As a city whose municipal government pursued an aggressive—and, at times, contested—program of urban greening and mobility transformation, Paris is an international leader in the green energy transition. As the namesake of the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement, the city has established itself as a major player in international climate diplomacy. And after a deadly 2003 heat wave, which killed over 15,000 people across France, the city refashioned itself a leader in urban climate adaptation through its efforts to prepare for future extreme heat events.
Over the course of a 5-day intensive in Paris, students will engage directly with the policymakers, practitioners, and academics who are actively shaping the city’s climate response. Through a combination of guest lectures, site visits, and self-organized expert meetings, students will gain a broad overview of the climate and energy political landscape in Western Europe, along with firsthand insights into how climate commitments are developed, implemented, and revised on the ground. Rather than treat the city as a fixed success story, the course approaches Paris as a “living laboratory,” in which ambitious policy commitments confront the practical constraints of urban governance, finance, and politics.
Prerequisites: Prerequisites; GR6011, another introductory astrophysics course or the instructor's permission; basic General Relativity or familiarity with tensors in flat space. A continuation of G6011. Likely topics include shocks and their application to supernovae; pulsar wind nebulae; atomic physics of astrophysical plasmas; accretion onto magnetized neutron stars and white dwarfs; thick accretion disks, non-thermal X-ray generation processes; particle acceleration and propagation; gravitational wave radiation; magnetars.
Western Macedonia is Greece’s historic lignite-mining and coal-power heartland, and is now undergoing one of Europe’s most consequential regional energy transitions — from coal-fired electricity generation toward renewable energy, storage, and a diversified regional economy. This field-based travel course immerses students directly in that transition through introductory lectures, site visits and stakeholder engagement in the city of Kozani, in academic partnership with the University of Western Macedonia (UoWM). Students explore the diversification of energy resources, renewable energy deployment, critical mineral recovery, and advanced manufacturing and the associated labor and community impacts in the region. The course is deliberately interdisciplinary, pairing technical and engineering analysis with policy, governance, and regional-development perspectives.
Research in an area of mechanical engineering culminating in a verbal presentation and a written thesis document approved by the thesis adviser. Must obtain permission from a thesis adviser to enroll. Recommended enrollment for two terms, one of which can be the summer. A maximum of 6 points of master’s thesis may count toward an M.S. degree, and additional research points cannot be counted. On completion of all master’s thesis credits, the thesis adviser will assign a single grade. Students must use a department-recommended format for thesis writing.
Finding the ground truth regarding the positioning, operations, and prospects of a company, country, resource pool, or investment opportunity is challenging. It is imperative to go beyond the numbers in financial statements with alternative data and information. In this course, we will learn to accept that no predefined formula exists to identify, quantify, and project a complex organization operating in a constantly evolving global environment.
We will highlight the importance of sufficiently framing questions for intelligence gathering and analysis. The act of questioning serves as the very foundation of any investigation, project, or research endeavor. It sharpens our focus, guides our inquiry, and lays the groundwork for meaningful and actionable answers. The power to shape our understanding of the world, businesses, consumers, and individual actors lies in the answers and data we gather and the quality and direction of the questions we pose.
The confidence to ask the right questions and break down the subject of the analysis and associated materials will be a vital component of the learning. The student will work with real datasets and benefit from direct advice, experience, and practical insights from portfolio managers, research analysts, consulting data analysts, and others to derive value from the world of information within their reach.
The combination of traditional and alternative data with the right real-world questions serves to forecast future outcomes. The overarching framework for applied learning will be:
• Collection: Framing the appropriate questions and sourcing information and data in context of the subject being evaluated.
• Evaluation: Understating the reliability of the data and validity of the information value as presented.
• Analysis: Applying methodologies and frameworks, including financial frameworks to transform the data for concise decisions.
• Reporting: Frameworks for pushing the data to subject models, including financial models, presenting the derived intelligence in a useable format.
• Distribution: Informing user, including oneself and integrating feedback on the outcomes.
This course guides the student in acquiring alternative data, extracting insight from it, using it for projections, contextual business model evaluation, and determining “unknown unknowns”. The learning journey is intended to be insightful, engaging, empowering, and supplement traditional data, such as financial statements for st
The purpose of this course is to provide you with an overview of M&A strategies and an introduction to the structuring and accounting for deals. We will also learn how to model M&A transactions. This is an advanced and technical course. If reviewing arcane accounting and tax rules does not bring you joy, you are forewarned! You will see plenty of both in the course. During the course, we will focus on several themes:
1. Deal strategy
2. Deal valuations
3. Deal structuring – impact of tax and accounting rules
4. Common metrics used to evaluate deals and limitations of those metrics
5. Accounting and modeling of deals
This course is recommended for those who intend to work in the financial services area – it will be helpful for those looking for a career in banking, corporate advisory services, treasury or corporate/financial strategy.
Advising on M&A transactions requires a strong background in accounting and tax. This course will get into the minutiae of various accounting and tax aspects of M&A. I will expect you to be willing to do the deep dive, where required. It is expected that you
have already taken courses in financial accounting and corporate finance and are interested in accounting and tax. If you do not have a prior background in accounting and tax, you are strongly advised to check with the instructor before enrolling in this
course.
This is not a course in excel, excel tools/techniques or about excel add‐ins provided by data providers. There are many services provided by data providers and Wall Street Prep companies for those. This course will focus on the accounting, finance and
economics of evaluating deals and building models. Also, we assume that you are already proficient in Excel, since we will use a lot of Excel models in the course.
The purpose of this course is to provide you with an overview of LBO strategies and to introduce you to restructuring and the bankruptcy process. During the course, you will learn how to build a basic financial model and adapt it for LBO transactions. This is an advanced and technical course. If reviewing arcane accounting and legal rules does not bring you joy, you are forewarned! You will see plenty of both in the course. During the course, we will learn to:
1. Build a basic integrated financial models (IS, BS and CFS)
2. Adapt the financial model to study the effect of LBO transactions
3. Study the impact of different deal structures, accounting choices, operating assumptions and financing decisions on firm value, liquidity, profitability, returns and other financial metrics.
4. Learn about alternative exit and restructuring strategies.
5. Understand the bankruptcy process – debt restructuring and fresh start models.
Full time research for doctoral students.
Conflict Resilience. Developing the comfort and skills necessary to respond to disagreements and mis-alignments is essential for leaders and stage managers. Through a series of discussions, experienced guests, reading, role-playing, and in-class exercises, this workshop style class will present an overview of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) and Restorative Process theory and techniques with a practical focus on building our skills and comfort level to be able to reframe conflict as a chance for learning, understanding, and change.
Exceeding EDI. The impact of incorporating Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, Accessibility and Belonging into the commercial theater industry in a post George Floyd era. As stage managers, it is crucial that there is a framework for supporting the evolving identities and needs of the many populations present in a theater setting. Through a series of articles, in-class discussions, written reflections and conversations with working professionals, we will develop an understanding of a variety of social issues that currently exist in the industry while building a toolkit on how to navigate them.
Conflict Resilience. Developing the comfort and skills necessary to respond to disagreements and mis-alignments is essential for leaders and stage managers. Through a series of discussions, experienced guests, reading, role-playing, and in-class exercises, this workshop style class will present an overview of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) and Restorative Process theory and techniques with a practical focus on building our skills and comfort level to be able to reframe conflict as a chance for learning, understanding, and change.
Exceeding EDI. The impact of incorporating Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, Accessibility and Belonging into the commercial theater industry in a post George Floyd era. As stage managers, it is crucial that there is a framework for supporting the evolving identities and needs of the many populations present in a theater setting. Through a series of articles, in-class discussions, written reflections and conversations with working professionals, we will develop an understanding of a variety of social issues that currently exist in the industry while building a toolkit on how to navigate them.
As a Stage Manager, collaborative leadership is a both a skill and an art. It is crucial to the success of any production. This involves understanding human behavior, developing effective communication skills, and fostering a holistic workplace environment. Contemporary stage managers need to develop “next practice” skills
in order to actively calibrate their important contribution to the art of creating theater. With practice and refinement, these skills become the foundation for stage managers to lead the people and the production.
The goal of the course is to explore a variety of forward-thinking topics that focus on the process of leading theatrical teams; by the end of the semester, students should have not only a better understanding of next practice theory, but methodologies and competencies that they can deploy in practice.
Prerequisites: JPNS W4007-W4008 or the equivalent, and the instructors permission.
.
Advanced topics at the discretion of the instructor, including string theory, supersymmetry and other aspects of beyond-standard-model physics.
TBD
TBD
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Prerequisites: PHYS G6037-G6038. Basic aspects of particle physics, focusing on the Standard Model.
In this course, we will examine a series of key writings on cinema and visual culture in Japan from the 1910s to the late 1960s. Major topics will include:
1. Cinema and its technology/technics (sound, color, and film form)
2. Cinema and its intersection with politics and aesthetics (Marxism and the Proletarian Film Movement, cinematic realism, colonialism, Third Worldism, and Japanese New Wave)
3. The articulations of cinema in broader intellectual, technological, socio-cultural, and institutional discourse (film education, documentary, and
bunka eiga
)
In an attempt to explore the transitional position of cinema and media culture in Japanese cultural history, the course also critically approaches contact points between cinema, theatre (especially
shingeki
), literature, photography, and television. All mandatory readings each week will be primary sources in Japanese, and additional scholarly and/or theoretical writings in English will also be assigned or provided for reference.
In this seminar, we will examine the elements of a history of gender and sexuality in the
Hellenistic period. The topic of gender and history has been extensively studied for Archaic
and Classical Greece, but not for the Hellenistic: symptomatic (and influential) is the way M.
Foucault moves from Plato to Plutarch, erasing the intervening four centuries. We will
examine the consolidation and evolution of a particular “normal” form of sexuality (centred
on the structural opposition between marriage and “queer spaces”), then examine a particular
region (Ptolemaic Egypt) to try to reconceive in terms of gender familiar themes such as
monarchy, colonization, and Hellenization.
Collaboration Studio is meant to foster and encourage creative relationships between and among the six concentration that comprise the Columbia MFA Theatre Program.
The goal of the class is to celebrate the process and presentation of new work.
Success is defined by a desire by all participants for working relationships to extend beyond the class and into the world-at-large.
Sec. 1: Ethnomusicology; Sec. 2: Historical Musicology; Sec. 3: Music Theory; Sec. 4: Music Cognition; Sec. 5: Music Philosophy.
This course is open to all graduate students in English and Comparative Literature in year 5 and beyond. The course, which students may take for R-credit, has several aims. It will help you: sharpen the focus of your dissertation and clarify the nature of its contribution; expand your scholarly profile, illuminating the breadth of what you have to offer academic life; and launch activities that can make your potential contributions visible and legible. We will look closely at the kinds of materials you will circulate on the job market: cover letters,
CVs
, teaching statements, research statements, portfolios showing “evidence of teaching effectiveness,” and more. We will workshop these in the seminar, while also practicing the oral forms you will encounter in the job market: interviews, presentations, job talks. At the same time, one of the central aims of the seminar is to help you develop your sense of who you are as a scholar, teacher, and member of the profession more broadly, expand the universe of professional possibilities, and highlight the richness of your potential contributions.
Preparing yourself for the academic job market can be emotionally wrenching, but it can also be exciting. The seminar will serve not only as a workshop but as a supportive community of scholars, teachers, readers, and writers helping one another envision the work they might do and, at the same time, remember why it matters.
This class brings business operations and management science classes to the field with real-world experience. Through experiential learning, we will bridge the gap between theory and practice with international case discussions, conversations with guest speakers and hands-on company sponsored projects. Different to most classes in the school, in this class students will be exposed to a series of international cases and examples based on medium-sized, fast-growing entrepreneurial ventures. Each session will also include a guest speaker, often times the protagonist of the case studied, giving the students the opportunity to learn directly from successful entrepreneurs and senior executives.
Additionally, students will put into practice the concept of process improvement by working on a company-sponsored applied project. Teams of 4-5 people, 3-4 MBA/EMBA students and 1-2 engineering (SEAS) students, will work hand in hand with the instructors and company representatives to achieve company goals. For example, teams may be tasked with re-designing the logistical strategy of distribution of the company to get rid of inefficiencies, or identify and find strategies to eliminate areas of waste within the companies’ processes, or analyze customer feedback and design operational solutions to increase customer satisfaction, etc.
Enrollment in this course is by application only. To apply, please follow this link: https://forms.gle/EG6buNZqQYEgN2EH9
This seminar explores key texts of twentieth-century anticolonial political thought and its postcolonial interpretation. It is an advanced course in political theory for graduate students. Over the last twenty years, postcolonial approaches to political theory have challenged many of the traditional categories and assumptions of western political thought. Some contend that theories inherited from Western social and political thought cannot adequately speak to the political experiences of the non-Western world. Others have been sharply critical of the complicity of Western political thought and modern practices of imperialism, slavery, and global inequality. This seminar aims to investigate the various challenges that postcolonial theorists pose to political theory and to offer critical assessments of the possibilities and limitations of this perspective. We will do so by reading key anticolonial texts alongside major postcolonial interpretations of these texts. We will compare how anticolonial texts and their postcolonial interpreters engage with questions of political theory – such as the relationship between universality and freedom, revolution and history, violence and power, progress and emancipation – in light of the legacy of colonialism and the promise of decolonization.
Students meet with the professor and pave the transition from graduate students to seeing themselves as artists with a long term working creative perspective beyond academia. The professor will work to contextualize the students body of work in the arena of an international art conversation. VISUAL ART LAB will be led by Sarah Sze in the Spring.
Schedule:
Priority will be given to all second-year students who submit a short presentation of their work. Should there be remaining room for first year students they will be admitted upon review. To apply please submit a brief description of work, current research and interest in taking the seminar, along with 5 - 10 images. There will be one half hour meeting for each student with professor Sze throughout the Spring Semester.
Requirements:
Rigorous development of students' own body of work.
This course extends and deepens the material you learned in business analytics. We will apply these methods in more unstructured and diverse situations, introduce new analytics tools and methods (including Tableau Visualization, text mining, and random forests), and study a modern framework for overfitting reduction called regularization that underlies much of modern machine learning. This course does not require coding or knowledge beyond Business Analytics, but the mathematical sophistication level will be somewhat more advanced.