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.
Approved application through the History Department is required to join this seminar.
- Department: History
- R 10:10 a.m.-noon
- M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
- R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Tunc Sen
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Instructor:
James Stafford
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Instructor:
Michael F Stanislawski
CULPA: 66 Wikipedia 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.
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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)
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Instructor:
Faculty
h-index: 37 Info - 4 points
ANTHROP OF THE ANTHROPOCENE
This course focuses on the political ecology of the Anthropocene. As multiple publics become increasingly aware of the extensive and accelerated rate of current global environmental change, and the presence of anthropogenesis in ever expanding circumstances, we need to critically analyze the categories of thought and action being developed in order to carefully approach this change. Our concern is thus not so much the Anthropocene as an immutable fact, inevitable event, or definitive period of time (significant though these are), but rather for the political, social, and intellectual consequences of this important idea. Thus we seek to understand the creativity of The Anthropocene as a political, rhetorical, and social category. We also aim to examine the networks of capital and power that have given rise to the current state of planetary change, the strategies for ameliorating those changes, and how these are simultaneously implicated in the rhetorical creation of The Anthropocene.
- Department: Anthropology @Barnard
- W 10:10 a.m.-noon
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Instructor:
Paige West
CULPA: 41
h-index: 23
Info
- 4 points
ETHNOGRAPHIC FIELD RESEARCH IN NYC
This course provides the aspiring anthropologist with an array of primarily qualitative methodological tools essential to successful urban fieldwork. As such, it is a practicum of sorts, where regular field assignments help build one’s ability to record and analyze social behavior by drawing on several key data collection techniques. Because we have the luxury of inhabiting a large, densely populated, international city, this class requires that you take a head-first plunge into urban anthropology. The NYC area will define the laboratory for individually- designed research projects. Be forewarned, however! Ethnographic engagement involves efforts to detect social patterns, but it is often a self-reflexive exercise, too. Readings provide methodological, analytical, and personal insights into the skills, joys, and trials that define successful field research.
- Department: Anthropology @Barnard
- M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Kaya N Williams
Info - 4 points
SENIOR THESIS SEMINAR I
Prerequisites: Limited to Barnard Anthropology Seniors. Offered every Fall. 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. Limited to Barnard Senior Anthropology Majors.
- Department: Anthropology @Barnard
- M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
- 4 points
ECOCRITICISM FOR THE END TIMES
Prerequisites: the instructors permission. This seminar aims to show what an anthropologically informed, ecocritical cultural studies can offer in this moment of intensifying ecological calamity. The course will not only engage significant works in anthropology, ecocriticism, philosophy, literature, politics, and aesthetics to think about the environment, it will also bring these works into engaged reflection on living in the end times (borrowing cultural critic Slavoj Zizeks phrase). The seminar will thus locate critical perspectives on the environment within the contemporary worldwide ecological crisis, emphasizing the ethnographic realities of global warming, debates on nuclear power and energy, and the place of nature. Drawing on the professors long experience in Japan and current research on the aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster, the seminar will also take care to unpack the notion of end times, with its apocalyptic implications, through close considerations of works that take on the question of ecocatastrophe in our times. North American and European perspectives, as well as international ones (particularly ones drawn from East Asia), will give the course a global reach.
- Department: Anthropology
- T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
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Instructor:
Marilyn Ivy
CULPA: 11
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.
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Instructor:
Tiffany Tseng
Info - 1 points
INTRO TO CLASSICAL RHETORIC
- Department: English and Comparative Literature
- R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Susan Mendelsohn
CULPA: 5
h-index: 3
Info
- 4 points
READING ITALIANS - PRECEPT
The purpose of this precept is to read short selections of the readings for this course in the original Italian, closely comparing these texts with their English counterparts. Attention will be paid to stylistic, syntactical, and grammatical characteristics of both languages, carefully considering questions of tone, register, cadence, idiomatic expressions, archaisms, and other elements of the translator’s task. In addition to discussing the readings, we will work in class on translating specific passages from Italian into English. Depending on the makeup of the class, the discussions will take place either fully in Italian or in a mix of Italian and English.
- Department: English @Barnard
- W 4:10 p.m.-5 p.m.
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Instructor:
Jhumpa Lahiri
Wikipedia Info - 1 points
Research Training
Research training course. Recommended in preparation for laboratory related research.
- Department: Biomedical Engineering
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Instructor:
Gerard A Ateshian
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Instructor:
Tal Danino
Wikipedia h-index: 18 Info -
Instructor:
X. Edward Guo
CULPA: 2 h-index: 70 Info -
Instructor:
Henry Hess
CULPA: 1 h-index: 45 Info -
Instructor:
Clark T Hung
CULPA: 5 h-index: 65 Info -
Instructor:
Lance Kam
CULPA: 7
h-index: 38
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Instructor:
Andrew Laine
Wikipedia h-index: 43 Info -
Instructor:
Elisa Konofagou
Wikipedia h-index: 71 Info -
Instructor:
Kam W Leong
h-index: 126 Info -
Instructor:
Helen Lu
CULPA: 1 h-index: 54 Info -
Instructor:
Barclay Morrison
CULPA: 9 h-index: 42 Info -
Instructor:
Elizabeth Olson
h-index: 28 Info -
Instructor:
Paul Sajda
CULPA: 3 h-index: 47 Info -
Instructor:
Samuel Sia
CULPA: 1 h-index: 39 Info -
Instructor:
Stavros Thomopoulos
h-index: 63 Info -
Instructor:
John T Vaughan
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Instructor:
Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic
Wikipedia h-index: 132 Info -
Instructor:
Qi Wang
h-index: 24 Info -
Instructor:
Nandan L Nerurkar
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Instructor:
Stephen H Tsang
Wikipedia h-index: 58 Info -
Instructor:
Elham Azizi
h-index: 10 Info -
Instructor:
Jose McFaline-Figueroa
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Instructor:
Treena L Arinzeh
Wikipedia Info -
Instructor:
Sanja Vickovic
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Instructor:
Santiago Correa
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Instructor:
Parisa Yousefpour
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Instructor:
Lauren N Heckelman
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Instructor:
Grace McIlvain
Info - 0 points
DADA AND SURREALISM
- Department: Comparative Literature and Society @Barnard
- M 11 a.m.-12:50 p.m.
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Instructor:
Caroline Weber
CULPA: 8
Wikipedia
Info
- 3 points
READING ITALIANS: HER SIDE OF THE STORY
READING ITALIANS: HER STO
“In Italy, literary fiction has long been considered a man’s game.” So began a
2019 New York Times article discussing the growing international attention being
paid to Italian women writers, particuarly on the heels of Elena Ferrante’s
phenomenal global success. This course will center the female voice and
subjectivity in the Italian literary tradition, with a focus on celebrated prose writers
active from the early twentieth century to the present. Some, recently republished
and reconsidered for the Italian market, have also been re-translated and re-
introduced to a wider English readership. We will trace the reception of female
authors within the Italian critical establishment and abroad, and the role
translation might play in broadening and amplifying their reputation and reach.
We will focus on one author per week, paying special attention to themes of
resistance, rebellion, and self-fashioning. All readings will be in English.
- Department: English @Barnard
- TR 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
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Instructor:
Jhumpa Lahiri
Wikipedia Info - 3 points
AMEC Senior Thesis Seminar
The Senior Thesis Seminar is a one-semester requirement for all Barnard College students majoring in Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures (AMEC). This is a working research seminar devoted to helping students produce a substantive piece of writing that will eventually be part of their senior thesis project, the culmination of their work in the major. Students will participate in the seminar as thesis writers and as peer editors. In addition to working with the instructor in the seminar, students will also consult with a faculty member who specializes in the student's area of interest within the AMEC department.
- Department: Asian and Middle East @Barnard
- M 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
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Instructor:
Matthew L Keegan
CULPA: 8 Info - 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
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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
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Instructor:
Jingguang Chen
Wikipedia h-index: 89 Info -
Instructor:
Neil D Dolinski
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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 -
Instructor:
Lauren E Marbella
Info - 0-6 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
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Instructor:
Lauren E Marbella
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Instructor:
Allie Obermeyer
h-index: 16 Info -
Instructor:
Ben O'Shaughnessy
CULPA: 3 Info -
Instructor:
Mijo Simunovic
CULPA: 1 h-index: 17 Info -
Instructor:
Dan Steingart
CULPA: 1 Wikipedia h-index: 36 Info -
Instructor:
Alexander Urban
h-index: 24 Info -
Instructor:
Venkat Venkatasubramanian
h-index: 58 Info -
Instructor:
Alan West
CULPA: 3 h-index: 48 Info -
Instructor:
Asher Williams
Info - 0-6 points
SENIOR SEMINAR IN FILM STUDIES
A seminar for senior film majors planning to write a research paper in film history/theory/culture. Course content changes yearly.
- Department: Film
- R 10:10 a.m.-12:40 p.m.
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Instructor:
Racquel Gates
Info - 3 points
SUPERVISED INDIVIDUAL RESEARCH
Prerequisites: Permission of the departmental representative required. For specially selected students, the opportunity to do a research problem in contemporary physics under the supervision of a faculty member. Each year several juniors are chosen in the spring to carry out such a project beginning in the autumn term. A detailed report on the research is presented by the student when the project is complete.
- Department: Physics and Astronomy @Barnard
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Instructor:
Timothy J Halpin-Healy
CULPA: 6 Info - 1-5 points
SENIOR SEMINAR
SR SEM: ARCHITECTRL CRITICISM
See the Barnard and Columbia Architecture Department's website for the course description:
https://architecture.barnard.edu/architecture-department-course-descriptions
- Department: Architecture @Barnard
- W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Suzanne Stephens
Info - 4 points
SENIOR HONORS THESIS
Weekly seminar to accompany Senior Honors Thesis Lab (CHEM BC3903). Focus is on scientific presentation and writing skills and research conduct.
- Department: Chemistry @Barnard
- F 10:10 a.m.-noon
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Instructor:
Jean Vadakkan
Info - 4 points
SENIOR HONORS THESIS
Weekly seminar to accompany Senior Honors Thesis Lab (CHEM BC3903). Focus is on scientific presentation and writing skills and research conduct.
- Department: Chemistry @Barnard
- F 10:10 a.m.-noon
- 4 points
Senior Project Seminar
SENIOR PROJECT SEMINAR
Discussion of senior research projects during the fall and spring terms that culminate in written and oral senior theses. Each project must be supervised by a cognitive scientist working at Barnard or Columbia.
- Department: Cognitive Science @Barnard
- T 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
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Instructor:
John Morrison
CULPA: 12 h-index: 7 Info - 1 points
SENIOR SEMINAR
Guided, independent, in-depth research culminating in the senior thesis in the spring. Includes discussion about scientific presentations and posters, data analysis, library research methods and scientific writing. Students review work in progress and share results through oral reports. Weekly seminar to review work in progress and share results through oral and written reports.
- Department: Earth and Environmental Sciences
- R 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
- 3 points
SUPERVISED READINGS I
Prerequisites: The written permission of the faculty member who agrees to act as sponsor (sponsorship limited to full-time instructors on the staff list), as well as the permission of the Director of Undergraduate Studies. The written permission must be deposited with the Director of Undergraduate Studies before registration is completed. Guided reading and study in mathematics. A student who wishes to undertake individual study under this program must present a specific project to a member of the staff and secure his or her willingness to act as sponsor. Written reports and periodic conferences with the instructor.
Supervising Readings do NOT count towards major requirements, with the exception of an advanced written approval by the DUS.
- Department: Mathematics @Barnard
- 1-3 points
SOCIOLOGY OF CULTURE
Prerequisites: SOCI BC1003 or equivalent social science course and permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15 students. Drawing examples from popular music, religion, politics, race, and gender, explores the interpretation, production, and reception of cultural texts and meanings. Topics include aesthetic distinction and taste communities, ideology, power, and resistance; the structure and functions of subcultures; popular culture and high culture; and ethnography and interpretation.
- Department: Sociology @Barnard
- T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
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Instructor:
Jonathan Rieder
CULPA: 17
Info
- 4 points
SENIORS HONORS THESIS LAB
Corequisites: CHEM BC3901 Guided research in Chemistry or Biochemistry, under the sponsorship of a faculty member, leading to the senior thesis. A minimum of 8 hours of research per week, to be arranged.
- Department: Chemistry @Barnard
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Instructor:
Christian Rojas
CULPA: 24
Info
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Instructor:
Marisa C Buzzeo
CULPA: 2 Info -
Instructor:
Dina C Merrer
CULPA: 24
Info
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Instructor:
Andrew C Crowther
CULPA: 1 Info -
Instructor:
Michael Campbell
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Instructor:
Rachel Austin
CULPA: 18
Wikipedia
h-index: 28
Info
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Instructor:
Christina Vizcarra
CULPA: 1 Info -
Instructor:
Rebecca Donegan
Info - 0 points
SENIORS HONORS THESIS LAB
Corequisites: CHEM BC3901 Guided research in Chemistry or Biochemistry, under the sponsorship of a faculty member, leading to the senior thesis. A minimum of 8 hours of research per week, to be arranged.
- Department: Chemistry @Barnard
- 0 points
COMMUNITIES AND SOCIAL CHANGE
Examines how changes in the economy, racial composition, and class relations affect community life-how it is created, changed and sometimes lost-with a specific focus on the local urban context. Student research projects will address how contemporary forces such as neoliberalization, gentrification and tourism impact a communitys social fabric.
- Department: Sociology @Barnard
- R 11 a.m.-12:50 p.m.
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Instructor:
Andrew S Anastasi
Info - 4 points
BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING DESIGN
A two-semester design sequence to be taken in the senior year. Elements of the design process, with specific applications to biomedical engineering: concept formulation, systems synthesis, design analysis, optimization, biocompatibility, impact on patient health and comfort, health care costs, regulatory issues, and medical ethics. Selection and execution of a project involving the design of an actual engineering device or system. Introduction to entrepreneurship, biomedical start-ups, and venture capital. Semester I: statistical analysis of detection/classification systems (receiver operation characteristic analysis, logistic regression), development of design prototype, need, approach, benefits and competition analysis. Semester II: spiral develop process and testing, iteration and refinement of the initial design/prototype and business plan development. A lab fee of $100 each is collected.
- Department: Biomedical Engineering
- TR 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
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Instructor:
Lauren N Heckelman
Info - 4 points
GLOBAL POLITICS OF REPRODUCTION
Comparative, cross-cultural examination of social organization and historical construction of human reproduction, with emphasis on 20th century. Topics include role of states and local and transnational "stratification" of reproduction by race, class, and citizenship; eugenics; population politics; birth control; kinship as social and biological relationship; maternity; paternity; new reproductive technologies.
- Department: History @Barnard
- M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Nara Milanich
CULPA: 15
Wikipedia
Info
- 4 points
SOCIAL CONTEXTS IMMIGRATN LAW
Examines the historical and contemporary social, economic, and political factors that shape immigration law and policy along with the social consequences of those laws and policies. Addresses the development and function of immigration law and aspects of the immigration debate including unauthorized immigration, anti-immigration sentiments, and critiques of immigration policy.
- Department: Anthropology @Barnard
- M 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
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Instructor:
J.C. Salyer
CULPA: 1 Info - 4 points
SEMINAR
Required of senior majors, but also open to junior majors, and junior and senior concentrators who have taken at least four philosophy courses. This exploration will typically involve writing a substantial research paper. Capped at 20 students with preference to philosophy majors.
- Department: Philosophy @Barnard
- R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Karen Lewis
CULPA: 12 h-index: 7 Info - 3 points
INEQUALITY, POVERTY & MOBILITY
INEQUALITY POVERTY & MOBILITY
This is an undergraduate seminar in social stratification. The course focuses on the current American experience with socioeconomic inequality and mobility. The goals of the course are to understand how inequality is conceptualized and measured in the social sciences, to understand the structure of inequality in the contemporary U.S. to learn the principal theories and evidence for long term trends in inequality, to understand the persistence of poverty and the impact of social policies on American rates of poverty, and to understand the forces that both produce and inhibit intergenerational social mobility in the U.S. Given the nature of the subject matter, a minority of the readings will sometimes involve quantitative social science material. The course does not presume that students have advanced training in statistics, and any readings sections that contain mathematical or statistical content will be explained in class in nontechnical terms as needed. In these instances, our focus will not be on the methods, but rather on the conclusions reached by the author concerning the research question that is addressed in the text.
- Department: Sociology
- T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
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Instructor:
Thomas DiPrete
CULPA: 7 Wikipedia Info - 4 points
GENDER, SEXUALITY & POWER IN TRANSNATION
GEND,SEX&POWER TRANSNATL
This course considers formations of gender, sexuality, and power as they circulate transnationally, as well as transnational feminist and queer movements that have emerged to address contemporary gendered and sexual inequalities. Topics include political economy, global care chains, sexuality, sex work and trafficking, feminist and queer politics, and human rights. If it is a small world after all, how do forces of globalization shape and redefine the relationship between gender, sexuality, and powerful institutions like the state? And, if power swirls everywhere, how are transnational power dynamics reinscribed in gendered bodies? How is the body represented in discussions of nationalism and in the political economy of globalization? These questions will frame this course by highlighting how gender, sexuality, and power coalesce to impact the lives of individuals in various spaces including workplaces, the academy, the home, religious institutions, the government, and civil society, and human rights organizations. This course will enable us to think transnationally, historically, and dynamically, using gender and sexuality as lenses through which to critique relations of power and the ways that power informs our everyday lives and subjectivities.
- Department: Women's, Gender, Sexuality Studies @Barnard
- T 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
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Instructor:
Manijeh Moradian
Info - 4 points
SENIOR SEMINAR
Open to senior chemistry, biochemistry, environmental chemistry, and chemical physics majors; senior chemistry concentrators; and students who have taken or are currently enrolled in CHEM UN3098. Senior seminar provides direct access to modern chemical research through selected studies by the students from active fields of chemical research. Topics to be presented and discussed draw from the current scientific literature and/or UN3098 research.
- Department: Chemistry
- F 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Laura J Kaufman
CULPA: 15 Wikipedia Info - 2 points
ADV TOPICS GENDER & SEXUALITY
This research and writing-intensive seminar is designed for senior majors with a background and interest in the sociology of gender and sexuality. The goal of the seminar is to facilitate completion of the senior requirement (a 25-30 page paper) based on ;hands on; research with original qualitative data. Since the seminar will be restricted to students with prior academic training in the subfield, students will be able to receive intensive research training and guidance through every step of the research process, from choosing a research question to conducting original ethnographic and interview-based research, to analyzing and interpreting ones findings. The final goal of the course will be the production of an original paper of standard journal-article length. Students who choose to pursue their projects over the course of a second semester will have the option of revisiting their articles further for submission and publications.
ANTICOLONIALISM
The age of colonialism, so it seems, is long over. Decolonization has resulted in the emergence of postcolonial polities and societies that are now, in many instances, two generations old. But is it clear that the problem of colonialism has disappeared? Almost everywhere in the postcolonial world the project of building independent polities, economies and societies have faltered, sometimes run aground. Indeed, one might say that the anti-colonial dream of emancipation has evaporated. Through a careful exploration of the conceptual argument and rhetorical style of five central anti-colonial texts—C.L.R. James’ The Black Jacobins, Mahatma Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj, Aimé Cesairé’s Discourse on Colonialism, Albert Memmi’s Colonizer and Colonized, and Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth—this course aims to inquire into the image of colonialism as a structure of dominant power, and the image of its anticipated aftermaths: What were the perceived ill-effects of colonial power? What did colonialism do to the colonized that required rectification? In what ways did the critique of colonial power (the identification of what was wrong with it) shape the longing for its anti-colonial overcoming?
- Department: Anthropology
- W 10:10 a.m.-noon
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Instructor:
David Scott
CULPA: 6
h-index: 72
Info
- 4 points
HIGHER EDUCATION AND INEQUALITY
Prerequisites: (SOCI UN1000) Higher education in the U.S. is going through a period of rapid change. State support is shrinking, student debt is increasing, full-time faculty are being replaced by adjuncts, and learning outcomes are difficult to measure, at best. This class will try to makes sense of these changes. Among other questions, it will ask whether higher education is a source of social mobility or a means of class reproduction; how the college experience differs by race, class, and type of college attended; how the economics of higher education have led to more expensive college and more student loans; and how we might make college better. We will consider several different points of view on the current state of U.S. higher education: that of students who apply to and attend college, that of colleges and universities, and that of society at large. As part of this course, students will conduct research on their own universities: Columbia College or Barnard College.
- Department: Sociology
- W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Teresa Sharpe
CULPA: 14
Info
- 4 points
RACE&REPRESENTATION IN ASIAN AMER CINEMA
RACE&REPRSNTATN IN ASAM CINEMA
This seminar focuses on the critical analysis of Asian representation and participation in Hollywood by taking a look at how mainstream American cinema continues to essentialize the Asian and how Asian American filmmakers have responded to Hollywood Orientalist stereotypes. We will analyze various issues confronting the Asian American, including yellowface, white patriarchy, male and female stereotypes, the “model minority” myth, depictions of “Chinatowns,” panethnicity, the changing political interpretations of the term Asian American throughout American history, gender and sexuality, and cultural hegemonies and privileging within the Asian community.
- Department: Ethnicity and Race, Center for
- R 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
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Instructor:
Eric Gamalinda
CULPA: 9 Wikipedia Info - 4 points
LATIN MUSIC AND IDENTITY
LATIN MUSIC AND IDENITY
Latin music has had a historically strained relationship with mainstream music tastes, exploding in occasional boom periods, and receding into invisibility in others. What if this were true because it is a space for hybrid construction of identity that directly reflects a mixture of traditions across racial lines in Latin America? This course will investigate Latin musics transgression of binary views of race in Anglo-American society, even as it directly affects the development of pop music in America. From New Orleans jazz to Texas corridos, salsa, rock, and reggaeton, Latin music acts as both as a soundtrack and a structural blueprint for the 21st centurys multicultural experiment. There will be a strong focus on studying Latin musics political economy, and investigating the story it tells about migration and globalization.
- Department: Ethnicity and Race, Center for
- T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Edward Morales
Info - 4 points
ARABIC PRISON WRITING
This course studies the genealogy of the prison in Arab culture as manifested in memoirs, narratives, and poems. These cut across a vast temporal and spatial swathe, covering selections from the Quran, Sufi narratives from al-Halllaj oeuvre, poetry by prisoners of war: classical, medieval, and modern. It also studies modern narratives by women prisoners and political prisoners, and narratives that engage with these issues. Arabic prison writing is studied against other genealogies of this prism, especially in the West, to map out the birth of prison, its institutionalization, mechanism, and role. All readings for the course are in English translations.
- Department: Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies
- T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Muhsin Al-Musawi
CULPA: 8
Info
- 3 points
COLONIZATION/DECOLONIZATION
Prerequisites: Open to CSER majors/concentrators only. Others may be allowed to register with the instructors permission. This course explores the centrality of colonialism in the making of the modern world, emphasizing cross-cultural and social contact, exchange, and relations of power; dynamics of conquest and resistance; and discourses of civilization, empire, freedom, nationalism, and human rights, from 1500 to 2000. Topics include pre-modern empires; European exploration, contact, and conquest in the new world; Atlantic-world slavery and emancipation; and European and Japanese colonialism in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. The course ends with a section on decolonization and post-colonialism in the period after World War II. Intensive reading and discussion of primary documents.
- Department: Ethnicity and Race, Center for
- W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Natasha J Lightfoot
CULPA: 5
Info
- 4 points
SLAVERY/ABOLITION-ATLANTC WRLD
This seminar investigates the experiences of slavery and freedom among African-descended people living and laboring in the various parts of the Atlantic World. The course will trace critical aspects of these two major, interconnected historical phenomena with an eye to how specific cases either manifested or troubled broader trends across various slaveholding societies. The first half of the course addresses the history of slavery and the second half pertains to experiences in emancipation. However, since the abolition of slavery occurs at different moments in various areas of the Atlantic World, the course will adhere to a more thematic and less chronological structure, in its examination of the multiple avenues to freedom available in various regions. Weekly units will approach major themes relevant to both slavery and emancipation, such as racial epistemologies among slaveowners/employers, labor regimes in slave and free societies, cultural innovations among slave and freed communities, gendered discourses and sexual relations within slave and free communities, and slaves’ and free people’s resistance to domination. The goal of this course is to broaden students’ comprehension of the history of slavery and freedom, and to promote an understanding of the transition from slavery to freedom in the Americas as creating both continuities and ruptures in the structure and practices of the various societies concerned.
- Department: History
- T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Natasha J Lightfoot
CULPA: 5
Info
- 4 points
TOPICS IN AMERICAN STUDIES
AMER. CULTURAL CRITICISM
- Department: American Studies
- R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Casey Blake
CULPA: 22
Wikipedia
Info
- 4 points
TOPICS IN AMERICAN STUDIES
SUPREME COURT IN AMER HISTORY
- Department: American Studies
- M 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
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Instructor:
Benjamin Rosenberg
CULPA: 1 Info - 4 points