Advanced analog photography & darkroom printing. Students will work with analog cameras and learn how to refine black-and-white printing techniques, produce larger prints, etc. Emphasis will be placed on the editing, sequencing, and display of images while cultivating a theoretical and historical context to situate the work. Students will engage with an array of photographic practices through presentations, critiques, guest artist lectures and printing assignments. This course will explore critical issues in contemporary photography and advanced camera and production techniques through regular shooting assignments, demonstrations, critique, lectures, readings, and field trips. Prerequisites:
Intro Darkroom Photography
(Columbia) or equivalent experience
This course is an introduction to the medieval Middle East, starting from the Abbasid caliphate at its peak and ending with the establishment of the Timurid empire. It explores political, social, and intellectual trends that configured the region’s later history, emphasizing both its complexity and interconnectedness. The course will feature not only on the Middle East and North Africa, but also other regions such as North India and Andalusia, considering the role of the Islamicate world in global history. Special attention will be given to political formations, intellectual and social diversity, and Islam as a cultural system. Students will be introduced to a large number of primary sources from different regions, languages, and religious communities, including objects, art, and music. Students will learn to analyze these materials and understand how history is written and made. This course does not presume any foreknowledge of the topic.
There are over 800 distinct Native American nations currently within the borders of the United States. This course offers a broad introduction to the diversity of American Indian religious systems and their larger functions in communities and in history. We will explore general themes in the study of Native American religious traditions as well as look at some specific examples of practices, ideas, and beliefs. Of particular importance are the history and effects of colonialism and missionization on Native peoples, their continuing struggles for religious freedom and cultural and linguistic survival, and the ways in which American Indians engage with religion and spirituality, both past and present, to respond to social, cultural, political, and geographical change.
REQUIRED DISCUSSION SECTION FOR RELI UN2779
REQUIRED DISCUSSION SECTION FOR RELI UN2779
Prerequisites: PHYS UN2801 This accelerated two-semester sequence covers the subject matter of PHYS UN1601, PHYS UN1602 and PHYS UN2601, and is intended for those students who have an exceptionally strong background in both physics and mathematics. The course is preparatory for advanced work in physics and related fields. There is no accompanying laboratory; however, students are encouraged to take the intermediate laboratory, PHYS UN3081, in the following year.
A survey of the European novel in the era of its cultural dominance. Key concerns: the modern metropolis (London, Paris, St. Petersburg); the figures of bourgeois narrative (
parvenus
, adulterers, adolescents, consumers) and bourgeois consciousness (nostalgia,
ressentiment
, sentimentalism, ennui); the impact of journalism, science, economics on the ways novels represented the modern world. Authors to be drawn from: Goethe, Stendhal, Balzac, Dickens, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Turgenev, Zola.
This lecture course explores the Indian Ocean worlds of the nineteenth century and twentieth century by tracing networks of trade, labor, capital, pilgrimage and science. It offers an overview of how these networks were forged and who formed them, mapping their ebbs and flows across Mauritius, Madagascar, Kenya, Zanzibar, Oman, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Malaysia, Singapore, Fiji, Indonesia, and Australia. It begins with a brief overview of the premodern Indian Ocean and the seaborne empires of sixteenth centuries and the first encounters with Portuguese, Dutch, French and British colonization and then looks at a range of different topics from the spice trade and caravan routes in the age of sail to the abolition of slavery and establishment of indenture as steamships began to take over oceanic journeys. We look at the travels of botanical specimens scrounged from tropical forests in the nineteenth century to the surveying of the ocean floor in the twentieth. At the end of the lectures, which will also feature active learning components using primary sources, we will learn how to reframe regional histories through the lens of oceanic mobilities.
Why do certain mental illnesses only appear in specific regions of the world? What processes of translation, adaption, and “indigenization” take place when psychiatric diagnostic categories, pharmaceutical regimens, and psychodynamic treatments developed in the West travel to China, Japan and South Korea? How do contemporary East Asian therapeutic modalities destabilize biomedical assumptions about the origins and treatment of mental illness?
This course employs anthropological analysis to explore the paradoxes of “culture-bound syndromes”, examine how biomedical psychiatric practices have been received and transformed, and discuss the ways in which shamanistic rituals and Traditional Chinese Medicine clinical encounters understand their objects of intervention. Focusing on East Asia with a particular emphasis on China, we will employ interpretive and political economic anthropological analyses to explore experiences of people struggling with illness, the practices of health practitioners who treat them, and the broader social and historical contexts that shape these interactions.
A continuation of the study of the written and spoken language of Turkey, with readings of literary, historical, and other texts. No P/D/F or R credit is allowed for this class.
Participation in research is an essential component of a complete undergraduate science education, and is mandatory for those students wishing to go on to the PhD. This course is designed to introduce students to doing astronomy beyond the classroom. It will cover basic topics including but not limited to: coding in astronomy, utilizing international archives, manipulating data, running simulations, reading academic papers, making and giving presentations, academic culture, time management, working in collaborations, and career paths. Students will engage in first-hand research on a specific astronomical topic in order to put their skills to practice. By the end of the course, students should be fully prepared to enter a summer research internship and make the most of their time there. We encourage students considering majoring in Astronomy or Astrophysics who are interested in astrophysical research to take this course. Priority will be given to those interested in majoring in Astrophysics who have no prior research experience. Students should have taken at least one semester of college-level physics and have a knowledge of calculus. No prior experience in python coding is required.
An introduction to prototyping techniques needed for medical device development, including computer-aided design (CAD), 3D printing, laser cutting, circuit design, and microcontrollers. Students will work collaboratively to design, fabricate, and evaluate a medical device, demonstrating competency in fabrication methods and iterative engineering design.
This course examines the landscapes of urban public health from the medieval era to the 19th century using spatial analysis. It has two objectives. Thematically, it introduces students to the concept and study of “urban healthscapes” in Europe and the Americas before the age of modern bacteriology. Weekly lectures advance through a sequence of four related themes: (1) medieval and early modern communal, infrastructural, and regulatory spatial practices of public health; (2) urban mortality regimes, epidemics, and societal responses; (3) the relationships between urban form, spatial governance, planning, and public health; and (4) problems of environmental justice, including unequal exposure to health risks and access to health amenities. Methodologically, the course approaches these topics via the lens of historical Geographic Information Systems. In weekly labs, students acquire technical skills of GIS mapping. They learn how to work with spatial data, create GIS maps, conduct spatial analysis, and develop spatial historical arguments and narratives. Labs integrate recently released public hGIS datasets on a variety of cities—such as medieval Bologna and 19th-century New York—directly relevant to the themes covered in lectures. For course assignments, students use these datasets to conduct spatial analyses of urban healthscapes. The course is open to all undergraduates. Previous GIS knowledge is not needed.
The course investigates the relation between politics and technology in the Unites States during the twentieth century. Following the telegraph, radio, the mainframe computer, the internet, and online platforms, the course asks how have Americans conceptualized the relation between technological developments and democratic ideals starting in the late nineteenth century? Are new technologies forms of control or of liberation? Do they enhance or curtail free speech? Has the public sphere been strengthened or weakened by new communication technologies? What has been the rule of government regulation in the adoption of these technologies? Students will be introduced to basic ideas and methodologies in the history of technology, while focusing on the relation between politics of technology.
Required course for department majors. Not open to Barnard or Continuing Education students. Students must receive instructors permission. Introduction to different methodological approaches to the study of art and visual culture. Majors are encouraged to take the colloquium during their junior year.
What is so fascinating about outlaws and tricksters? They can be alluring and terrifying, creative and destructive. They wear disguises, upend the plans of their fellow humans, and bend societies to their will. They are unsettled and unsettling. But this course suggests that there is no single figure of the trickster. Rather, the significance of writing about tricksters and outlaws varies from text to text and from place to place. In this course, we will explore texts, mostly from the pre-modern period, written in Arabic (and sometimes Persian and Sanskrit) that depict outlaws and tricksters. We will ask after what texts are doing in the world when they tell stories that seem to celebrate and delight in the subversive, the strange, and the sinister. To help us think through these questions, we will also read divergent theories about outlaws, tricksters, and other subversives. At the end of the course, we will read the award-winning Iraqi novel Frankenstein in Baghdad.
Basic scientific and engineering principles used for the design of buildings, bridges, and other parts of the built infrastructure. Application of principles to analysis and design of actual large-scale structures. Coverage of the history of major structural design innovations and of the engineers who introduced them. Critical examination of the unique aesthetic/artistic perspectives inherent in structural design. Consideration of management, socioeconomic, and ethical issues involved in design and construction of large-scale structures. Introduction to recent developments in sustainable engineering, including green building design and adaptable structural systems.
This course explores the photographic essay as a distinct visual language. We will examine how photographic artists and photojournalists use sequences of images to construct narratives that communicate complex ideas about the past. In an age when nearly everyone carries a camera to capture the present, many photographers have turned their lenses toward the past to illuminate personal histories and collective memories. Through weekly seminars, we will explore how contemporary photographers around the world challenge national narratives and reimagine history. We will consider how photography—often seen as the medium most bound to the present—can evoke what is absent or lost. Focusing on artists from Asia, Africa, Latin America, North America, and the Middle East, we will explore how their work engages collective memory in relation to dictatorship, state violence, and contested histories. Finally, we will investigate how artists have used re-enactment, commemoration, re-imaging, and inclusive archiving to engage with history and memory through visual practice.
Required of all majors. Introduces theories of culture particularly related to the Middle East, South Asia. and Africa. Theoretical debates on the nature and function of culture as a symbolic reading of human collectivities. Examines critical cultural studies of the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa. Enables students to articulate their emerging knowledge of Middle East, South Asian, and African cultures in a theoretically informed language.
Prerequisites: Sophomore standing. Required for all sociology majors. Prerequisite: at least one sociology course of the instructor's permission. Theoretical accounts of the rise and transformations of modern society in the19th and 20th centuries. Theories studied include those of Adam Smith, Tocqueville, Marx, Durkheim, Max Weber, Roberto Michels. Selected topics: individual, society, and polity; economy, class, and status: organization and ideology; religion and society; moral and instrumental action.
Dismissed, mocked, feared or loved for decades, video games have become a staple of contemporary media, art, and popular culture, studied alongside literature and film. They eclipse the global yearly revenue of both film and music industries combined, leaving their financial significance undeniable. What remains understudied, however, is the political and cultural significance of the medium as they relate to literature and other forms of cultural production.
War Games
is a course dedicated to the intersection of literature and video games with political violence (both real and imaginary) in a global and particularly post-Cold War context.
Students will learn the fundamentals of narratology as they explore the formal mechanisms of literature and its relation to digital games. Through this, they will learn to recognize patterns of ideological communication in both literary texts and video games while developing close reading skills of traditional and digital media. We combine the study of literature and video games with broader inquiries into the media that circulate through the game mediaverse. Reading books and playing games, we pose the following questions: How do writers and readers imagine war through literary texts, how do players “perform” war in games, and how might they resist or subvert expected performances? What themes and ideas are revealed effectively through one medium versus another? What are the political implications for the ideologies present in a video game given the globalized position of the medium? Assigned readings will include novels, short stories, news media, and internet forums alongside a range of scholarly secondary materials. Students will have the opportunity to play each game on the syllabus in a group environment. All readings, materials, and discussions will be in English.
Evolution of the theory and content of human rights; the ideology and impact of human rights movements; national and international human rights law and institutions; their application with attention to universality within states, including the U.S. and internationally.
This course provides an in-depth examination of the physiological bases of behavior and the development, organization, and function of the nervous system. Specific topics include methods used in behavioral neuroscience, development of the nervous system, sensory and motor systems, homeostasis, sexual differentiation, biological rhythms, stress, learning and memory, psychopathology, and neurological disorders.
Discussion section for Social Theory (SOCI UN3000).
Discussion section for Social Theory (SOCI UN3000).
Discussion section for Social Theory (SOCI UN3000).
Discussion section for Social Theory (SOCI UN3000).
Prerequisites: the departments permission. Required for all thesis writers.
Mythologies of the ancient Mediterranean are inextricably bound to geography, from conceptual spaces to specific places. While their relationship is extensive and diverse, it can be divided into six main categories: the specific places that the narratives of myth were believed to have occurred; the metamorphic shaping and divine animation of landscapes; places that memorialize the events of myth in ritual; ties between the events and individuals of myth and real-world toponyms; places that myths are depicted in public and private spaces; and the harnessing and manipulation of myth in human activities and interactions, from poetic performance to civic propaganda to identity politics. In this course, we explore myth through the various spatial lenses that these categories afford, while learning to use the spatial systems software QGIS and some methods of spatial analysis. Depending on the semester, this course will focus on either Greek or other Mediterranean mythologies; see course note.
Corequisites: Course either taken before or after GERM V3001. Intensive practice in oral and written German. Discussions, oral reports, and weekly written assignments, based on material of topical and stylistic variety taken from German press and from literary sources.
In this course, you will conduct independent projects in photography in a structured setting under faculty supervision. You are responsible for arranging for your photographic equipment in consultation with the instructor.
This course will afford you a framework in which to intensively develop a coherent body of photographs, critique this work with your classmates, and correlate your goals with recent issues in contemporary photography.
Students are required to enroll in an additional fifteen contact hours of instruction at the International Center for Photography. Courses range from one-day workshops to full-semester courses.
Permission of instructor only. The class will be limited to 20 students.
Prerequisites: general physics, and differential and integral calculus. Newtonian mechanics, oscillations and resonance, conservative forces and potential energy, central forces, non-inertial frames of reference, rigid body motion, an introduction to Lagranges formulation of mechanics, coupled oscillators, and normal modes.
How have artists been informed and influenced by the natural world? This course will examine how photographic artists have responded to nature, ecology, and the environment. Augmented by literary texts by artists, scientists, poets, and ecologists, we will explore how close-looking might inform an artist’s practice regarding the living environment - its bounty - and its degradation. Readings include texts by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Masanobu Fukuoka, Robert Macfarlane, Terry Tempest Williams, Rebecca Solnit, Barry Lopez, John McPhee, Akira Hasegawa, and others. Calling on a canon of photographic works from around the globe, students will study book-length photographic essays whose makers have seen art as a form of praise of the natural world and those who investigate the relationship between art and environmental activism. Susan Derges; Meghann Riepenhoff; Masahisa Fukashe; Pedro David; Stephen Gill; Ron Jude; Dornith Doherty; David Maisel, Zhao Renhui; Mandy Barker; Pablo Lopez Luz are some of the artists studied. The course will start by exploring techniques photographers have used over the past two centuries to respond to the natural world’s beauty and complexity. During the second half of the term, we will examine how artists have depicted shrinking natural landscapes, environmental destruction, and global warming and why they might question human centrality in the sentient world. Students will produce a semester-long photographic project on an ecological theme. This course will start by exploring techniques photographers have used over the past century to respond to the natural world’s beauty and complexity. During the second half of the term, we will examine how contemporary photographers are depicting shrinking natural landscapes, environmental destruction, and global warming and why some artists are beginning to question human centrality in the sentient world.
This course offers an expansive journey into the Chinese language and culture. It focuses on essential semi-formal and formal writing skills while refining discourse-level competency. Students will enhance their linguistic abilities and communication skills in Chinese through reading and writing assignments, oral presentations, and discussions. This approach fosters adept communication and a deeper connection with the complexities of Chinese culture, preparing students to engage thoughtfully with contemporary issues and traditions.
Introduction to: (a) the infrastructure systems that support urban socioeconomic activities and (b) fundamental system design and analysis methods. Coverage of water supply, transportation, buildings, and energy infrastructure, as well as their interdependencies. Emphasis upon the process that these systems serve, the factors that influence their performance, the basic mechanisms that govern their design and operation, and the impacts that they have regionally and globally. Student teams complete a design/analysis project on a large-scale urban development site in New York City with equal emphasis given to water resources/environmental engineering, geotechnical engineering, and construction engineering and management topics.
French for NGOs reimagines Barnard’s former Business French course to meet the needs of students pursuing careers with international NGOs and in diplomacy and humanitarian aid. The course develops the specialized vocabulary, communicative strategies, and cultural competencies students need to function effectively in Francophone professional settings, from collaborating with local ministries and conducting meetings to drafting reports and navigating institutional and cultural contexts. It responds to a documented shortage, reported by organizations such as Princeton in Africa, of candidates with the French proficiency required to work in Francophone regions. Supported by a grant from the French Embassy, and designed in consultation with NGO professionals and Barnard alumnae working in the field, the course forms part of a broader pilot initiative that includes practicums, guest lectures, a targeted job fair, and internship opportunities.
Prerequisite: Open to all Barnard and Columbia undergraduates. Permission of Instructor required; students admitted from Waiting List. Course develops physical, vocal, and imaginative range and skills needed to approach the text of a play: text analysis, speech exercises, non-verbal behavior, improvisation designed to enhance embodiment, movement, and projection.
Gateway course to advanced courses; transfer students who have previous college-level course may be exempted with approval of Chair
.
May be retaken for full credit.
This course is a broad survey of art from the Caribbean region, spanning indigenous Taíno, Kalinago, and Garifuna art, contemporary art of the Caribbean and its diaspora, and art from the colonial era. The course will cover the history of the region including indigenous cultures from first Columbian contact to today, European exploration, arrivals, and conceptions of the “New World,” plantation economies, the transatlantic slave trade, the Haitian Revolution, art of maroon communities, and the syncretism of Afro-Caribbean spiritual practices like Vodou, Santería, Palo Monte, and the Abakuá. Throughout the semester, we will examine definitions of the term “Caribbean.” We ask if the term should be limited geographically to the Caribbean basin or take on a more cultural valence, expanding to places like Louisiana and Brazil, both of which share significant historical and cultural similarities with the countries from the Caribbean basin. Major themes of the class will include the impacts of colonialism, the transatlantic slave trade, the formation of the Afro-Atlantic diaspora, and legacies of the colonial era in contemporary art.
Prerequisites: One year of biology, BIOL UN3004 or instructors permission in case the student hasn't take it. This course is the capstone course for the Neurobiology and Behavior undergraduate major at Columbia University. It is designed for advanced undergraduate and graduate students. Knowledge of Cellular Neuroscience (how an action potential is generated and how a synapse works) will be assumed. It is recommended that students take BIOL UN3004 Neurobiology I: Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience, or a similar course, or obtain instructors permission. Website for BIOLUN3005:
https://blogs.cuit.columbia.edu/rmy5/files/2022/01/syllabus.UN3005.2022.v4-lab.pdf
Prerequisite: Open to all Barnard and Columbia undergraduates. Permission of Instructor required; students admitted from Waiting List. Students must have taken Acting I or equivalent to be eligible for Acting II sections. Acting II will offer several different sections, focusing on a specific range of conceptual, embodiment, and physical acting skills. Please check with the Theatre Department website forspecific offerings and audition information. May be retaken for full credit. All sections of Acting II fullfull the “Arts and Humanities” Foundations requirement at Barnard College.
Prerequisite: Open to all Barnard and Columbia undergraduates. Permission of Instructor required; students admitted from Waiting List. Students must have taken Acting I or equivalent to be eligible for Acting II sections. Acting II will offer several different sections, focusing on a specific range of conceptual, embodiment, and physical acting skills. Please check with the Theatre Department website forspecific offerings and audition information. May be retaken for full credit. All sections of Acting II fullfull the “Arts and Humanities” Foundations requirement at Barnard College.
Prerequisite: Open to all Barnard and Columbia undergraduates. Permission of Instructor required; students admitted from Waiting List. Students must have taken Acting I or equivalent to be eligible for Acting II sections. Acting II will offer several different sections, focusing on a specific range of conceptual, embodiment, and physical acting skills. Please check with the Theatre Department website forspecific offerings and audition information. May be retaken for full credit. All sections of Acting II fullfull the “Arts and Humanities” Foundations requirement at Barnard College.
Prerequisite: Open to all Barnard and Columbia undergraduates. Permission of Instructor required; students admitted from Waiting List. Students must have taken Acting I or equivalent to be eligible for Acting II sections. Acting II will offer several different sections, focusing on a specific range of conceptual, embodiment, and physical acting skills. Please check with the Theatre Department website forspecific offerings and audition information. May be retaken for full credit. All sections of Acting II fullfull the “Arts and Humanities” Foundations requirement at Barnard College.
In this primarily human physiology course, we will discuss how the major organ systems function, with an emphasis on cellular, molecular, and physical mechanisms. Organ systems covered include musculoskeletal, cardiovascular, respiratory, urinary, and digestive systems. Traditional lectures focus primarily on the normal functioning of organ systems, while pathophysiology is introduced through five case studies during the semester. After this course, students should be able to 1) describe the basic functioning of the major organ systems and how they contribute to homeostasis and health, 2) apply key concepts in physics and chemistry, such as flow, pressure/volume relationships, and mass action, to physiological systems, 3) use key concepts in molecular and cell biology to gain a mechanistic understanding of physiological processes, explain how organ systems work in an integrated way to achieve homeostasis and health, and 4) predict changes in organ function upon drug treatment, genetic mutation, or disease conditions.
Prerequisites: CHNS W4005 or the equivalent. Admission after Chinese placement exam and an oral proficiency interview with the instructor. Especially designed for students who possess good speaking ability and who wish to acquire practical writing skills as well as business-related vocabulary and speech patterns. Introduction to semiformal and formal Chinese used in everyday writing and social or business-related occasions. Simplified characters are introduced.
Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 12 students. Discussions on contemporary issues and oral presentations. Creative writing assignments designed to improve writing skills and vocabulary development. FREN BC1204: French Intermediate II or the equivalent level is required.
Prerequisites: JPNS W4005 or the equivalent. Readings in authentic/semi-authentic texts, videos, and class discussions.
Prerequisites: KORN W1202 or the equivalent and consultation with instructor. (See Entrance to Language Courses Beyond the Elementary Level in the main bulletin under Department of Instruction -- East Asian Languages and Cultures.) Readings in modern Korean. Selections from modern Korean writings in literature, history, social sciences, culture, and videos and class discussions.
Prerequisites: BC3001 or C2601 or the equivalent. Wave-particle duality and the Uncertainty Principle. The Schrodinger equation. Basic principles of the quantum theory. Energy levels in one-dimensional potential wells. The harmonic oscillator, photons, and phonons. Reflection and transmission by one-dimensional potential barriers. Applications to atomic, molecular, and nuclear physics.
Prerequisites: MATH UN1202 An elementary course in functions of a complex variable. Fundamental properties of the complex numbers, differentiability, Cauchy-Riemann equations. Cauchy integral theorem. Taylor and Laurent series, poles, and essential singularities. Residue theorem and conformal mapping.(SC)
Prerequisites: PHYS UN3008 Maxwells equations and electromagnetic potentials, the wave equation, propagation of plane waves, reflection and refraction, geometrical optics, transmission lines, wave guides, resonant cavities, radiation, interference of waves, and diffraction.
Conversational Chinese II is the continuation of Conversational Chinese I, both of which are designed for students with at least two years of college-level Chinese who wish to improve their conversational skills. It focuses on practical speaking and listening in real- world contexts, emphasizing fluency, vocabulary expansion, and cultural competence. Students will develop confidence in expressing opinions, narrating experiences, and engaging in spontaneous conversations on everyday andcontemporary topics.
Note: This Course CANNOT be used to fulfill the language requirement.
The centerpiece of this course is a geological field trip during Spring Break in Barbados. The class will meet weekly before the trip to prepare for it and after the trip to synthesize what was learned and to create a field guide. Subjects to be covered: plate tectonics, convergent plate margins and accretionary prisms, local Barbados geology; ice ages, Milankovitch cycles, sea level; introduction to coral reefs and fossil coral reef geology; Barbados terrestrial ecology; limestone caves, hydrology; dating methods; overview of Barbados history, economy, culture. In order to observe the modern-day coral reef (the modern day live analog to the fossil coral reefs we will see) the class will go snorkeling. In order to observe the effects of cave formation and water flow in limestone terrains the class will participate in an extensive visit to a cave. The class will also participate in an exercise in geological mapping of a series of coral reef terraces.
Priority: Priority is given to junior and senior majors and concentrators in Earth Science or Environmental Science at Columbia College and the School of General Studies, and Barnard College Environmental Science majors and minors. Others (non-DEES majors and non-Barnard Environmental Science students) may also be allowed to enroll if space permits. All students need permission of the instructor. Students who sign up will be put on a waitlist and will be considered after contacting the instructor.
Prerequisites: SOCI UN1000 The Social World or Instructor Permission Required for all Sociology majors. Introductory course in social scientific research methods. Provides a general overview of the ways sociologists collect information about social phenomena, focusing on how to collect data that are reliable and applicable to our research questions.
Prerequisites: (VIAR UN1000) (Formerly R3515) This course approaches drawing as an experimental and expressive tool. Students will explore the boundaries between drawing and sculpture and will be encouraged to push the parameters of drawing. Collage, assemblage and photomontage will be used in combination with more traditional approaches to drawing. The class will explore the role of the imagination, improvisation, 3-dimensional forms, observation, memory, language, mapping, and text. Field trips to artists’ studios as well as critiques will play an important role in the course. The course will culminate in a final project in which each student will choose one or more of the themes explored during the semester and create a series of artworks. This course is often taught under the nomenclature Drawing II - Mixed Media.
Prerequisites: No Prerequisites. Department approval NOT required. Flash fiction, micro-naratives and the short-short have become exciting areas of exploration for contemporary writers. This course will examine how these literary fragments have captured the imagination of writers internationally and at home. The larger question the class seeks to answer, both on a collective and individual level, is: How can we craft a working definition of those elements endemic to short prose as a genre? Does the form exceed classification? What aspects of both crafts -- prose and poetry -- does this genre inhabit, expand upon, reinvent, reject, subvert? Short Prose Forms incorporates aspects of both literary seminar and the creative workshop. Class-time will be devoted alternatingly to examinations of published pieces and modified discussions of student work. Our reading chart the course from the genres emergence, examining the prose poem in 19th-century France through the works of Mallarme, Baudelaire, Max Jacob and Rimbaud. Well examine aspects of poetry -- the attention to the lyrical, the use of compression, musicality, sonic resonances and wit -- and attempt to understand how these writers took, as Russell Edson describes, experience and made it into an artifact with the logic of a dream. The class will conclude with a portfolio at the end of the term, in which students will submit a compendium of final drafts of three of four short prose pieces, samples of several exercises, selescted responses to readings, and a short personal manifesto on the short prose form.
This course surveys some of the major historiographical debates surrounding the Second World War. It aims to provide student with an international perspective of the conflict that challenges conventional understandings of the war. In particular, we will examine the ideological, imperial, and strategic dimensions of the war in a global context. Students will also design, research, and write a substantial essay of 15-18 pages in length that makes use of both primary and secondary sources.
Prerequisites: VIAR R1000. (Formerly R4005) Students will connect with the very heart of the Western Art tradition, engaging in this critical activity that was the pillar of draftsmanship training from the Renaissance on through the early Modern Era. This pursuit is the common thread that links artists from Michelangelo and Rubens to Van Gogh and Picasso. Rigorous studies will be executed from plaster casts of antique sculptures, and pedagogical engravings. Students will confront foundational issues of academic training; assessing proportion and tonal value, structure and form. Hours will be spent on a single drawing pushing to the highest degree of accuracy in order develop a means for looking at nature. There is a focus on precision and gaining a thorough understanding of the interaction between light and a surface. This approach emphasizes drawing by understanding the subject and the physical world that defines it. While this training has allowed great representational artists of the past to unlock the poetry from the world around them and continues to inspire a surging new realist movement, it can also serve as a new way of seeing and a launching point for achieving creative goals. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.
This course introduces students to researching and writing African colonial history with a specific focus on Uganda. Students will be guided through the missionary sources available at Columbia and we will discuss how African voices can and cannot be found in these archives. At the end of the semester students will have produced an original primary source paper on Ugandan history.
This seminar explores Black musical history as a vital site of memory, archive, and storytelling, centering music within Black experience, history, and culture. Framed as a seminar on musical thought, the course begins in the early 1900s and moves to the present day, tracing how Black music in the United States has functioned as a vessel for preserving history, shaping Black intellectual traditions, and narrating lived experience. Through practices of deep listening, students critically examine not only what we hear, but how we hear—interrogating racialized listening and the ways Black sound has been interpreted, appropriated, and institutionalized. Drawing on the ideals of early twentieth-century Black intellectuals, the course positions Black music as a space of resistance and an archive in its own right. Students engage Black archive practices and explore their connection to Black intellectual history, considering how African diasporic lineages shape Black music as ancestral expression. The seminar asks: What is Black music’s function in the United States? How has it helped form the broader national narrative? Through close study of genres such as funk, Hip Hop, opera, jazz, and R&B, in connection with and artists and composers such as Duke Ellington, Beyonce, D’Angelo, and Betty Davis, students examine how Black musical forms carry cultural memory across generations. The course also interrogates how Black culture is displayed and curated in spaces not originally built for Blackness, challenging traditional frameworks of preservation and performance. Ultimately, the seminar invites students to understand black music not simply as sound, but as a intentional intellectual, cultural, and historical practice.
Prerequisites: ECON BC3035 or ECON BC3033, or permission of the instructor. Economic transformation of the United States from a small, open agrarian society in the late colonial era to the leading industrial economy of the 20th century. Emphasis is given to the quantitative, institutional, and spatial dimensions of economic growth, and the relationship between the changing structures of the economy and state.
Metallographic sample preparation, optical microscopy, quantitative metallography, hardness and tensile testing, plastic deformation, annealing, phase diagrams, brittle fracture of glass, temperature and strain-rate dependent deformation of polymers; written and oral reports. This is the second of a two-semester sequence materials laboratory course.
Prerequisites: At least one French course after completion of FREN BC1204: Intermediate II or permission of the instructor. Oral presentations and discussions of French films aimed at increasing fluency, acquiring vocabulary, and perfecting pronunciation skills.
This course is a survey of modern political theory (approximately the 16th-19th centuries), examining the revolutionary challenges to classical and medieval political philosophy posed by such writers as Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Burke, and Marx. Our work seeks to address themes and questions such as: what is modern about modern political theory? What is human nature? What is power and how is it deployed? What are the possibilities and limits of social contract theory? What are the nature and scope of rights, duties, freedom, and equality? What is the relation between the state and the individual? What are rights and do they authorize political resistance? What are the core modern political values and how do modern political theorists grapple with their implementation? Does modernity signify
an age of progress
in terms of knowledge about the world and freedom for human beings? Or do modern technological, political and social developments actually constitute
a new kind of prison
? How do modern political thinkers conceptualize or fail to conceptualize race and gender? In what ways can modern political thought animate thinking about contemporary politics?
Simultaneously, we seek to critically engage with these classic texts about politics, political subjects, and political life in two ways. First, we will question what “modern” or “modernity” means historically and theoretically; in doing so, we will interrogate practices and theories of exclusion and violence that seek to grant only some subjects and collectivities access to the presumed progress of “modernity.” Second, and in a related vein, we will analyze these texts for the discourses of race and gender they produce, both explicitly and tacitly. We pursue these objectives by examining contemporary readings of this time period and of the theorists upon whom we will focus.
Prerequisites: ECON BC3033 or ECON BC3035, and ECON BC2411 or STAT W1111 or STAT W1211, or permission of the instructor. Specification, estimation and evaluation of economic relationships using economic theory, data, and statistical inference; testable implications of economic theories; econometric analysis of topics such as consumption, investment, wages and unemployment, and financial markets.
Prerequisites: ECON BC3035, or permission of the instructor. Factors affecting the allocation and remuneration of labor; population structure; unionization and monopsony; education and training, mobility and information; sex and race discrimination; unemployment; and public policy.
Why does literature turn to photography? In 1931, Walter Benjamin prophesied that “captions would become the essential component of pictures” — but just as much as text has accompanied photographs, literary works for the past 150 years have not only commented on, but also incorporated photographs as part of their creative project. Over the course of the semester, we will look at a set of literary texts (with an emphasis on poetry) in which photography plays a central part, from Breton’s surrealist novel
Nadja
to Eve Ewing’s
1919
, an exploration of the 1919 Chicago Race Riot. Together, we will ask how writing and photography can work together to document history, construct new kinds of intimacies between author, subject, and audience, and play with the limits of creative form. We will also take a field trip to the Guggenheim’s Taryn Simon exhibit, to see how a contemporary artist uses the interplay of text and image to comment on our world today. The course has no prerequisites, and fulfills the New Media, Poetry, and Comparative requirements for the English major.
Over the course of the semester, we will journey through a series of paired texts, touching on themes of the city, experimentation, intimacy, war, and archive. As we go from pair to pair, we will begin to hear echoes of these themes resonate across works we read earlier on and works we are just encountering, from Jacob A. Riis’s 1890s record of New York slums and André Breton’s surreal 1920s Paris, to Hervé Guibert’s fragile domestic spaces and Don Mee Choi’s reappropriation of her father’s photographs. We will end with the film
The Unbearable Lightness
of Being
, which brings together some of the strands running through our syllabus: the personal and the political, the gaze and the viewer, the past and the future.
Various concepts within the field of biomedical engineering, foundational knowledge of engineering methodology applied to biological and/or medical problems through modules in biomechanics, bioinstrumentation, and biomedical imaging.
Advance chemical-engineering problem-solving skills through the use of computational tools (primarily developed in Excel or Python). Examples are drawn from thermodynamics, transport phenomena, and chemical kinetics. The course is project based, emphasizing data analysis and report writing. Unstructured collaboration with peers is highly encouraged. Requisite numerical methods and Chemical Engineering concepts introduced.
Prerequisites: one year of calculus. Prerequisite: One year of Calculus. Congruences. Primitive roots. Quadratic residues. Contemporary applications.
Designed to provide students with an understanding of the fundamental marketing concepts and their application by business and non-business organizations. The goal is to expose students to these concepts as they are used in a wide variety of settings, including consumer goods firms, manufacturing and service industries, and small and large businesses. The course gives an overview of marketing strategy issues, elements of a market (company, customers, and competition), as well as the fundamental elements of the marketing mix (product, price, placement/distribution, and promotion).
Prerequisites: FREN BC3021 may be taken for credit without completion of FREN BC3022. The Age of Enlightenment, Romanticism, Realism, and Symbolism. FREN BC1204: French Intermediate II or the equivalent level is required.
“I believe
—
I know that ghosts
have
wandered the earth. Be with me always
—
take any form
—
drive me mad!”
—Emily Brontë
, Wuthering Heights
In this course we’ll expand our understanding of how writing is often the site of lingering, numinous, immaterial presences. We’ll begin with the tradition of
the ghost story
— a literary device beloved by writers for centuries across many genres. Beyond the consideration of the supernatural, we’ll also investigate more abstract capacities in which texts—and writers (and sometimes editors!)—are inevitably possessed by an
other
, a presence that lingers persistently, making itself known whether we welcome it or not. Memory and trauma are their own kinds of ghosts. Similarly, we’ll discover how traces of works by writers we admire, our teachers, even a specific text or image, can manifest as spectral forms inhabiting our work. We’ll address the complexities of those vestiges in terms of appropriation and originality—what Harold Bloom calls “the anxiety of influence.” Students will process and explore these ideas in both creative and analytical writings throughout the semester.
Course Books (available at Book Culture):
Eileen Myles
, Afterglow
Diana Khoi Nguyen,
Ghost Of
Lucie Brock Broido,
Trouble in Mind
Mary Reufle
, A Little White Shadow
Max Porter
, Grief is the Thing With Feathers
All other readings will be posted on Courseworks as PDFs.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 and STAT UN1201 Institutional nature and economic function of financial markets. Emphasis on both domestic and international markets (debt, stock, foreign exchange, eurobond, eurocurrency, futures, options, and others). Principles of security pricing and portfolio management; the Capital Asset Pricing Model and the Efficient Markets Hypothesis.
This seminar engages students in an exploration of how schools prepare students to be literate across multiple subject areas. Engaging students with theory and practice, we will look at how students learn to read and write, considering approaches for literacy instruction from early childhood through adolescence. Understanding that schools are required to meet the needs of diverse learners, we will explore literacy instruction for K-12 students with special needs, multilingual learners, and students from diverse cultural backgrounds. This course requires 60 hours of clinical experience (fieldwork).
Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 16 students. One year of college-level science. Primarily for Environmental Majors, Concentrators and Minors. This class looks at the response of wildlife (birds and plants) to climate change and land-use issues from the end of the last glaciation to the present. Case study topics are: (1) land-use and climate change over time: a paleoenvironmental perspective, (2) environmental transformations: impact of invasive plants and birds and pathogens on local environments and (3) migration of Neotropical songbirds between their wintering and breeding grounds: land-use, crisis and conservation. We visit wildlife refuges along a rural-suburban-urban gradient in order to observe and measure the role refuges play in conservation. Format: lecture, student presentations, short labs, data collection/analysis and field trips (some on a weekend day in April in place of the week day meeting).
Looking at both historical and lived realities of Muslims in the US, we will cover sites from the African Burial Ground in lower Manhattan to the Women’s Mosque in California. The course will engage both with cultural production, such as music, plays, and street art, and living communities around the country. The course will attempt to cover a diversity of voices and perspectives. It is important to understand how context plays a role in the interpretation and practice of religion, as well as to witness the tension between theology and manifestation of belief.
We are not interested in determining if a particular understanding is right or wrong. Rather, we want to understand the roles religion plays in society and for the individual. You will be expected to be critical and engaged. My hope is that you will also be creative and daring, and push us all into a better understanding of the material.
Prerequisites: (MATH UN2010 and MATH UN2030) or the equivalent introduction to partial differential equations. First-order equations. Linear second-order equations; separation of variables, solution by series expansions. Boundary value problems.
Experiments in engineering and physical phenomena: aerofoil lift and drag in wind tunnels, laser Doppler anemometry in immersed fluidic channels, supersonic flow and shock waves, Rankine thermodynamical cycle for power generation, and structural truss mechanics and analysis.
Experiments in engineering and physical phenomena: aerofoil lift and drag in wind tunnels, laser Doppler anemometry in immersed fluidic channels, supersonic flow and shock waves, Rankine thermodynamical cycle for power generation, and structural truss mechanics and analysis.
This course focuses on the ecology, geology, and sustainability of Bermuda. Students will explore the local flora, fauna, geology and hydrology of various habitats in the context of environmental change brought on by issues such as rising global temperatures, invasive species, and development. Students will also look into sustainability issues, such as energy, drinking water, solid waste, and wastewater issues, some of which the country addresses in unique ways. The course will also contrast some of these topics with those in the NYC area and other subtropical and tropical islands.
Classes will meet during the spring semester at Barnard in preparation for a field trip to Bermuda for five days during spring break.
Students and faculty will use the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS) field station for both lodging and laboratory facilities. BIOS will provide bus and boat-based transportation.
The excursions to caves, volcanic and pink sand beaches, outcrops, rare plant habitats and bird conservation areas in addition to engagement with the local experts at BIOS will provide an authentic opportunity to study the natural history of and environmental threats to an offshore island compared to our local environment in NYC.
Students will take detailed field notes in Bermuda. After returning from the trip, they will focus on one or two aspects of the field trip and research related issues in depth. Topics will include: transportation, energy acquisition, electricity generation, wind energy, solar power, carbon capture and storage, drinking water, waste management, sewage treatment and disposal, biological conservation, ecological restoration, social & environmental justice, economy, and food supply. Students are also encouraged to compare issues in Bermuda with NYC and other islands.
The final products of the semester will be a detailed field journal, a mini research project with an annotated bibliography and a poster summarizing the results.
This course explores education as a process through which critical consciousness and epistemic justice combat oppression in communities. Students will connect seminal work by critical pedagogues, such as Paolo Freire and bell hooks, to systemic educational challenges and lived experience. As a class, we will investigate power dynamics and structural inequalities at the systemic, institutional, interpersonal and individual levels. Students will problem-pose, dialogue and create pedagogical tools through praxis, by integrating the theory learned in the class to educational practice.
Operation of imagery and form in dance, music, theater, visual arts and writing; students are expected to do original work in one of these arts. Concepts in contemporary art will be explored.
Prerequisites: BIOL UN2005 and BIOL UN2006. General genetics course focused on basic principles of transmission genetics and the application of genetic approaches to the study of biological function. Principles will be illustrated using classical and contemporary examples from prokaryote and eukaryote organisms, and the experimental discoveries at their foundation will be featured. Applications will include genetic approaches to studying animal development and human diseases. SPS and TC students must obtain the written permission from the instructor, by filling out a Registration Adjustment Form (Add/Drop form). https://www.registrar.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/content/reg-adjustment.pdf