Over the past thousand years, modern capitalism has expanded from its European starting point to the entire world. Modern economic activity started with a commercial revolution in the late Middle Ages, concentrated in European city states like Venice and Genoa. From the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, European colonialism spread this commercial revolution around the globe. The Industrial Revolution in northwestern Europe led to unprecedented and sustained economic growth, which allowed European nations to dominate the rest of the world economically, politically, and militarily, with mixed results for the rest of the world. Over the past hundred years, global capitalism has continued to present countries, and the people in them, with enormous opportunities, crushing constraints, and major political dilemmas.
The course is an introductory overview of the economics and politics of international economic activity in historical and theoretical perspective.
Race has served as an enduring organizing principle of American politics. This course will
survey how race shapes politics and how politics shapes race in the United States. In the first of
the semester, we focus on the political processes and institutions that “make” race and
interrogate what we mean exactly when we say race is socially constructed. In the second half of
the semester, we turn to looking at how racialized groups engage in politics on multiple fronts,
paying particular attention to electoral politics and social movements. Throughout the course,
we grapple with both the challenges to and possibilities of diversity and racial justice in the
contemporary America. Topics include but are not limited to political representation, voting,
intersectionality, citizenship, immigration, community activisms, and solidarity.
Guided exploration of chemistry research using modern library resources. Topics include: organization and evaluation of information, information ethics, the history of citation, and use of databases. Culminates in the creation of an online research guide on a specific chemistry topic, using a variety of carefully considered and annotated sources.
Prerequisites: Instructor's permission. (Seminar). Theatre typically exceeds the claims of theory. What does this tell us about both theatre and theory? We will consider why theatre practitioners often provide the most influential theoretical perspectives, how the drama inquires into (among other things) the possibilities of theatre, and the various ways in which the social, spiritual, performative, political, and aesthetic elements of drama and theatre interact. Two papers, weekly responses, and a class presentation are required. Readings include Aristotle, Artaud, Bharata, Boal, Brecht, Brook, Castelvetro, Craig, Genet, Grotowski, Ibsen, Littlewood, Marlowe, Parks, Schechner, Shakespeare, Sowerby, Weiss, and Zeami. Application Instructions: E-mail Professor Austin Quigley (aeq1@columbia.edu) with the subject heading Drama, Theatre, Theory seminar. In your message, include basic information: your name, school, major, year of study, and relevant courses taken, along with a brief statement about why you are interested in taking the course. Admitted students should register for the course; they will automatically be placed on a wait list, from which the instructor will in due course admit them as spaces become available.
Prerequisites: one course in philosophy. Corequisites: PHIL V3711 Required Discussion Section (0 points). This course is mainly an introduction to three influential approaches to normative ethics: utilitarianism, deontological views, and virtue ethics. We also consider the ethics of care, and selected topics in meta-ethics.
Initially, the emphasis is on understanding the challenges confronting leaders and developing skills to effectively deal with these obstacles. Beyond intelligence and technical know-how, what separates effective leaders from other team members is a set of social skills (e.g. impression management, self-awareness). This course identifies these critical leadership skills and provides ideas and tools for improving them. Then, the course considers how social intelligence skills fit the needs of managers at different stages of their careers. In early stages, managers need to achieve a good person-job fit, find mentors, and build an effective social network. At the mid-career stage, managers need to lead an effective unit with increasing complexity and responsibilities. Finally, the course examines challenges managers face at later career stages as they become partners, CFOs, CEOs, etc.
This course provides students with a rigorous foundation in capital markets and investments, emphasizing asset valuation from an applied perspective. It covers valuation techniques for financial securities, essential to portfolio management and risk management applications. Key topics include arbitrage, the term structure of interest rates, portfolio theory, diversification, equilibrium asset pricing models such as the CAPM, market efficiency and inefficiencies, performance evaluation, analysis of common pooled investment vehicles, behavioral finance, and tax-aware investment strategies. Through interactive activities, case studies, and simulations utilizing real-world market data, students will acquire analytical skills and foundational knowledge required for advanced finance courses and practical roles within the investment industry.
Required discussion section for PHIL UN3701 Ethics
This class aims to introduce students to the logic of social scientific inquiry and research design. Although it is a course in political science, our emphasis will be on the science part rather than the political part — we’ll be reading about interesting substantive topics, but only insofar as they can teach us something about ways we can do systematic research. This class will introduce students to a medley of different methods to conduct social scientific research.
This is the required discussion section for
POLS UN3720.
Asylum/Asile
is an experiential learning class conducted in collaboration with Project Rousseau, a holistic non-profit organization that helps young people in communities with the greatest need.
Since migrant youth and families began arriving in New York by bus from the southern border, Project Rousseau has been on the frontlines serving them. A large proportion of these migrants are Francophone asylum seekers who need support with their application. This class will teach the theory and practice of asylum law, the specific sociohistorical, cultural, and political contexts that motivates Francophone asylum seekers, especially in the case of Mauritania and Guinea, and the ways in which translation is critical to this process. The class will culminate in students assisting Project Rousseau’s Francophone clients with their asylum applications.
The class is offered in the Fall. Interested students will be able to apply for internships with Project Rousseau in the Spring Semester.
This course explores themes that have shaped Anthropology’s (often fraught) engagement with Black life. We will critically examine texts that reveal the ways that the discipline and its practitioners have sought to interface with people and populations of African descent—and have sought to define the constitution of Blackness itself—in the Americas. Plumbing the dynamic relationship between historical and ethnographic inquiry, we will ask pressing questions not only about conditions of Black life (and Black death), but also about the production of knowledge about the people who live under Blackness’ sign. Finally, we will turn our collective attention to key issues in the practice, ethics, and politics of ethnography, while also immersing ourselves in the archives produced through ethnographic and auto-ethnographic practice, including those found in various NYC collections.
This course focuses on the tumultuous 1930s, which witnessed the growth of anticolonial movements, the coming to power of totalitarian and fascist regimes, and calls for internationalism and a new world vision, among other major developments. Even as fascism laid down its roots in parts of Europe, the struggle for independence from European colonial rule accelerated in Asia and Africa, and former subjects engaged with ideas and images about the shape of their new nations, in essays, fiction, poetry, and theater. Supporters and critics of nationalism existed on both sides of the metropole-colony divide, as calls for internationalism sought to stem the rising tide of ethnocentric thinking and racial particularism in parts of Europe as well as the colonies. Ostensibly a gesture of resistance against imperial control, anti-colonialism also sparked debates about re-visioning gender relations, the place of minorities in the nation, religious difference and secularism, and models of world unity, among other issues. The course aims to consider the intersection of these debates with resistance to 1930s fascism: Did anti- fascist resistance in the metropole draw inspiration from anticolonial struggles? Conversely, did the spectre of fascism and authoritarianism present a cautionary tale to the project of nation-building in former colonies?
We will read works from both the metropole and the colonies to track the crisscrossing of ideas, beginning with writers whose works foreshadowed the convulsive events of the 1930s and beyond (H.G. Wells, E.M. Forster, Rabindranath Tagore), then moving on to writers who published some of their greatest work in the 1930s (Virginia Woolf, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Mulk Raj Anand, M.K. Gandhi, Raja Rao, C.L.R. James), and concluding with an author who reassessed the events of the 1930s from a later perspective (George Lamming).
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.
Prerequisite: Successful completion of URBS UN2200 Introduction to GIS Methods, or equivalent with instructor permission.
With the veritable explosion of urban data alongside the continued proliferation of new tools for its consideration, this course allows students to develop specialized approaches to spatial analysis while introducing a series of common advanced techniques and nuanced methodological questions. Aimed at covering a variety of topics with immediate relevance to urbanism in practice and in research, the course operates with a two-fold mission: (1) to critically discuss the theories, concepts, and research methods involved in spatial analysis and (2) to learn the techniques necessary for engaging those theories and deploying those methods. The class will work to meet this mission with a dedicated focus on the urban environment and the spatial particularities and relationships that arise from the urban context.
Among others, this course takes as a foundational premise that spatial analysis within geographic information systems is an incredibly powerful and double-edged weapon: it provides both the methods for answering complex spatial questions and the means for effectively communicating the results. Like any other weapon it can serve many ends, and as such an advanced course in spatial analysis must frame its use within the developing discourse on professional practice and responsibility.
The course is designed with a combination format. Early weeks are predominantly lecture-style presentations supplemented with discussion and technical demonstration and exercises. Students are expected to complete these exercises outside of class (as homework), bringing their questions to our discussion. The latter half of the course is a project-based seminar. Seminar-style presentation and discussion will rely heavily on student participation and preparation to consider the variety of spatial methods available and their implications on urban research and intervention. Woven throughout the semester is the development of a self-driven research project, through which students will engage and compare the methodological advantages and disadvantages of several assumptions, approaches, analyses, and datasets.
(Formerly R4601) New York City is the most abundant visual arts resource in the world. Visits to museums, galleries, and studios on a weekly basis. Students encounter a broad cross-section of art and are encouraged to develop ideas about what is seen. The seminar is led by a practicing artist and utilizes this perspective. Columbia College and General Studies Visual Arts Majors must take this class during their junior year. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.
Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 12 students. Permission of the instructor required. Interested students should complete the application at:
https://bit.ly/AFEN3815
. A poet, performance artist, playwright and novelist, Shange’s stylistic innovations in drama, poetry and fiction and attention to the untold lives of black women have made her an influential figure throughout American arts and in feminist history. We will examine Shange’s works through the dual lenses of “embodied knowledge” and historical context. In conjunction with our multidisciplinary analysis of primary texts, students will be introduced to archival research in Ntozake Shange’s personal archive at Barnard College. Thus the seminar provides an in-depth exploration of Shange's work and milieu as well as an introduction to digital tools, public research and archival practice. Students should have taken a course beyond the intro level from ONE of the following areas: American Literature (through the English Department), Africana Studies, American Studies, Theatre or Women's Studies. You can find more information and apply for the course at
https://bit.ly/AFEN3815
.
Prerequisites: Open to undergrad majors; others with the instructors permission. Across a range of cultural and historic contexts, one encounters traces of bodies - and persons - rendered absent, invisible, or erased. Knowledge of the ghostly presence nevertheless prevails, revealing an inextricable relationship between presence and absence. This course addresses the theme of absent bodies in such contexts as war and other memorials, clinical practices, and industrialization, with interdisciplinary readings drawn from anthropology, war and labor histories, and dystopic science fiction.
Since Antiquity, the Great Wall has become both a geographical and socio-cultural fault line between steppe nomads and the Chinese. More than a physical and territorial boundary, the Great Wall also functions as a powerful conceptual metaphor, symbolizing the gap between insiders and outsiders. The intellectual discourses of “frontier” and “border” embodied by the Wall have kept alive well into modern China.
The course follows a broadly chronological order from the Xiongnu Empire through the Mongols to modern times. Additionally, it incorporates thematic explorations such as nomadic culture, Sinitic concepts of unity, ethno-cultural diversity, multi-linguistic empires, and so on. We will make use of Chinese literature and art on the one hand, and primary sources from Central Asia on the other, to develop a comprehensive and comparative understanding of both sides of the Great Wall. As such, we ask how the nomads served as agents of change in Eurasian and even world history, and in turn, we problematize some enduring challenges faced by the Chinese state from the past to the present.
Listed as a Global Core, this course assumes no background of Chinese or Central Asian language and literature. Students are expected to engage thoughtfully and critically with course materials, including primary sources translated into English and secondary scholarship. Readings will include classical texts from Sinitic culture as well as diverse literary sources on nomadic peoples, such as The Secret History of the Mongols and travelogues by Marco Polo. These primary texts will be examined alongside secondary scholarship, with visual and material objects integrated to complement the written texts.
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.
This course is designed as an introduction to the 19th-century French novel, taught in English. We will read and discuss some of the greatest hits of 19th-century French fiction: Hugo,
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
; Sand,
Indiana
; Balzac,
Père Goriot
; Dumas,
The Man in the Iron Mask
; Flaubert,
Madame Bovary
; Zola,
Pot-Bouille
. Our century will conclude with two scandalous bestsellers of 1900: Octave Mirbeau’s
Diary of a Chambermaid
and Colette’s
Claudine at School
. Discussion in English. Works may be read, and papers written, in English or French.
This course addresses the articulation between theatricality and the political from a cross-cultural and trans-historical perspective. From the Renaissance theater to the profuse baroque, to the modernizing logics and aesthetics, to so-called “neo-baroque”, the course addresses logics and grammars within past and present dramaturgies of the social. How do certain theatrical traditions articulate with various power formations? How do these connect and complicate the relation between power and resistance, colonialism and liberation, center and periphery, particular and universal, actors and audiences? What technical apparatuses, cultural structures, ethical dispositions and bodily repertoires are mobilized? And how do old and new media technologies reconfigure protocols of stage-form in ancient and contemporary political theater?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
At the crossroads of social media, social movements, and the arts, the present course offers a comprehensive genealogy of recent cultural interventions embodying the most pressing issues for feminisms in Spain today. For this endeavor, the syllabus is organized around three thematic axes: memory, bodies, and territories. By deploying an open consideration of arts, activism, and their creators, the case-studies here introduced unfold a polyphonic nature in both content and form. In this light, problematics such as ecology, technology, love, violence, healthcare, labor, or collective trauma will be navigated through the genres of performance, essay, poetry, graphic novel, photography, documentary, music, or the videoclip. These will shape the singularities of the later socio-political cycle in the country, distinguished by the internationalist expansion of feminisms; an interconnected and intersectional approach to social justice; the emergence of a globalized and domestic far-right; and the shifting of the institutional left. Such a background will nurture a series of feminist interventions claiming radical imaginaries in the favor of the 99%.
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.
Research training course. Recommended in preparation for laboratory related research.
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.
Supervised individual research in Cognitive Science. 1-4 points. May be repeated for credit.
A seminar for senior film majors planning to write a research paper in film history/theory/culture. Course content changes yearly.
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.
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 approval required. See requirements for a major in visual arts. VIAR UN3900 is the prerequisite for VIAR UN3901. Corequisites: VIAR UN3910 (Formerly R3901) Students must enroll in both semesters of the course (VIAR UN3900 and VIAR UN3901). The student is required to produce a significant body of work in which the ideas, method of investigation, and execution are determined by the student. A plan is developed in consultation with the faculty. Seminars; presentations. At the end, an exhibition or other public venue is presented for evaluation. Studio space is provided with a refundable deposit of $150.
Weekly seminar to accompany Senior Honors Thesis Lab (CHEM BC3903). Focus is on scientific presentation and writing skills and research conduct.
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.
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.
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 approval required. See requirements for a major in visual arts. VIAR UN3900 is the prerequisite for VIAR UN3901. Corequisites: VIAR UN3910 (Formerly R3901) Students must enroll in both semesters of the course (VIAR UN3900 and VIAR UN3901). The student is required to produce a significant body of work in which the ideas, method of investigation, and execution are determined by the student. A plan is developed in consultation with the faculty. Seminars; presentations. At the end, an exhibition or other public venue is presented for evaluation. Studio space is provided with a refundable deposit of $150.
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.
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.
Senior Project in Cognitive Science.