Frequencies and modes of discrete and continuous elastic systems. Forced vibrations-steady-state and transient motion. Effect of damping. Exact and approximate methods. Applications.
This class takes a social movement perspective to analyze and understand the international human rights movement. The course will address the evolution of the international human rights movement and focus on the NGOs that drive the movement on the international, regional and domestic levels. Sessions will highlight the experiences of major human rights NGOs and will address topics including strategy development, institutional representation, research methodologies, partnerships, networks, venues of engagement, campaigning, fundraising and, perhaps most importantly, the fraught and complex debates about adaptation to changing global circumstances, starting with the pre-Cold War period and including some of the most up-to-date issues and questions going on in this field today.
Prerequisites: (MDES UN2201) and (MDES UN2202) $10 Arabic Materials Fee; $15 Language Resource Fee. This is an introductory course to Levantine Arabic for students who have completed two years of Standard Arabic studies, at the Intermediate level. The course is designed to further develop fluency in oral communication, through building students’ familiarity with a less formal register of Arabic, namely the Levantine dialect. The course will convert and recycle some of the previous Standard Arabic knowledge to the dialect, by comparing their prior knowledge to its dialectal counterpart; while at the same time developing students’ new communicative skills in a diverse range of contexts that are essential in any conversational interaction. The course will build students abilities to interact effectively in various areas where Levantine Arabic is spoken. In addition to varied thematic topics, the course exposes students to cultural aspects specific to the region. Additionally, the course will work on both constructing students’ knowledge of dialectal diction as well as other grammatical features of the dialects. Even though the course is designed for communication in the four skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking), the emphasis will be mostly on speaking and listening. No P/D/F or R credit is allowed for this class.
Fundamental of power system economics over which the current electricity markets are designed. Formulation of unit commitment and economic dispatch as mathematical optimization. Modeling of thermal generators, renewable generators, energy storage, and other grid resources in power system optimization. Introduction of equilibriums in electricity markets. Introduction of ancillary service markets. Overview of current energy system research topics.
Prerequisites: At least a year of calculus and physics; any 1000-level or 2000-level EESC course. Recommended: EESC2100 (Climate System), EESC2200 (Solid Earth), EESC3201 (Solid Earth Dynamics). Experience using MATLAB, Python/Numpy. This course examines processes controlling how glaciers and ice sheets grow, retreat, modify their landscape and interact with the rest of the Earth system. We focus on what controls surface mass balance, the transformation from snow to ice, ice deformation, basal sliding, the temperature and age of ice, the flow of water through ice sheets and glaciers, and the two-way interactions between ice and the oceans, atmosphere and solid earth. Weekly lectures are accompanied by practical computer sessions that equip students with key numerical and data analysis skills used in research of glacial processes.
Prerequisites: elementary physical chemistry. Basic quantum mechanics: the Schrodinger equation and its interpretation, exact solutions in simple cases, methods or approximations including time-independent and time-dependent perturbation theory, spin and orbital angular momentum, spin-spin interactions, and an introduction to atomic and molecular structure.
This is not a class in Theology. It is a class dealing with the
Qur’an
as a text and its linguistic and cultural significance. The readings will cover various
Suwar
(chapters) and excerpts dealing with a logical sequence of themes, starting with how the
Qur’an
defines itself, addresses its audiences, depicts and dialogues with other religions and religious groups, refers to itself as a historical source, especially through storytelling, and ending with how it legislates. They will also cover a choice of Hadiths. By being exposed to such a range of texts, students will gain a basic knowledge of types and structure of Hadith and a general sense of Qur’anic styles, textual arrangements, terminology and concepts. Specifically, the assignments will guide students toward an ability to read these texts in detail by expanding their vocabulary, deepening their understanding of advanced grammar points, and by providing an opportunity to discuss the texts and write about them. Student will also acquire research skills by identifying and working with sources and references.
Prerequisites: STAT GU4205 or the equivalent. Least squares smoothing and prediction, linear systems, Fourier analysis, and spectral estimation. Impulse response and transfer function. Fourier series, the fast Fourier transform, autocorrelation function, and spectral density. Univariate Box-Jenkins modeling and forecasting. Emphasis on applications. Examples from the physical sciences, social sciences, and business. Computing is an integral part of the course.
What was American poetry before Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman? In this advanced undergraduate seminar, we will survey the diverse poetic forms and traditions from the British North American colonies to Dickinson’s and Whitman’s Civil War-era writings. Most class sessions will be devoted to the poetry of a single author, including the Puritan epics of Anne Bradstreet, the colonial satires of Ebenezer Cooke, the antislavery ballads of George Moses Horton, the Ojibwe verse of Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, and the historical lyrics of Herman Melville. Our course will consider historically-specific theories of poetry and ask how these theories lead to varying conceptions of the aesthetic merit and spiritual and/or social purpose of poetry. Through discussion-based close readings, we will approach these poems with an eye toward the capacities of their formal qualities for absorbing and reflecting the social and political issues of early America.
This seminar asks what Chinese history tells us about global history and vice versa. Taking a long-term and multiregional approach, it invites you to develop your own answers to this question from perspectives such as trade and economy, migration and immigration, empire and imperialism, war, religion, science, gender, ideology, and modern state- and nation-building, and contemporary international relations. We will not only challenge Eurocentric and Sinocentric methodologies, but push toward new conceptual vocabularies that aspire to the genuinely global.
Introduces fundamental ideas and algorithms on networks of information collected by online services. It covers properties pervasive in large networks, dynamics of individuals that lead to large collective phenomena, mechanisms underlying the web economy, and results and tools informing societal impact of algorithms on privacy, polarization and discrimination.
This course introduces the Bayesian paradigm for statistical inference. Topics covered include prior and posterior distributions: conjugate priors, informative and non-informative priors; one- and two-sample problems; models for normal data, models for binary data, Bayesian linear models; Bayesian computation: MCMC algorithms, the Gibbs sampler; hierarchical models; hypothesis testing, Bayes factors, model selection; use of statistical software.
Prerequisites: A course in the theory of statistical inference, such as STAT GU4204 a course in statistical modeling and data analysis, such as STAT GU4205.
This course draws a map of Arab thought and culture in its multiple engagements with other cultures. It works globally along two lines: a theoretical one that accommodates conceptualizations of self-narrative in relation to shifting categories of center and margin; and a thematic one that selects a number of Arabic autobiographical texts with strong thematic concerns that cut across multiple cultures. Although Europe sounds at times more conspicuous in early 20th century autobiography, the Afro-Asian and Latin American topographical and historical itinerary and context are no less so, especially in writings we associate with societal and cultural transformations. More than historical accounts, these intellectual itineraries speak for the successes and failures of the secular ideology of the Arab nation-state. They convey the struggle of intellectuals-- as self-styled leaders, for an ideal state on the ruins of the past. The course studies a number of autobiographical works; memoirs and reminiscences that are meant to rationalize and reproduce a writer’s experience. Probably self-censored, these serve nevertheless as trajectories for a secular journey rather than one from denial to affirmation. Staunchly established in modernity and its nahdah paradigms, most of these writings are secular itineraries that rarely end in a search for faith. They are the journeys of a generation of Arab intellectuals who are facing many crises, but not the crisis of faith. They provide another look at the making of the Arab intelligentsia- and probably the Afro-Asian and Latin American one, since the early 20th century, and help us discern not only achievements on the level of education and public service , but also the mounting discontent with failures that have been wrapping the formation of the nation state. No prior knowledge of Arabic language is required.
This is a seminar for advanced undergraduates and master’s degree students, which explores the socioeconomic consequences of China’s development of a boom, urban residential real-estate market since the privatization of housing at the end of the 1990s. We will use the intersecting lenses of gender/sexuality, class and race/ethnicity to analyze the dramatic new inequalities created in arguably the largest and fastest accumulation of residential-real estate wealth in history. We will examine topics such as how skyrocketing home prices and state-led urbanization have created winners and losers based on gender, sexuality, class, race/ethnicity and location (hukou), as China strives to transform from a predominantly rural population to one that is 60 percent urban by 2020. We explore the vastly divergent effects of urban real-estate development on Chinese citizens, from the most marginaliz4d communities in remote regions of Tibet and Xinjiang to hyper-wealthy investors in Manhattan. Although this course has no formal prerequisites, it assumes some basic knowledge of Chinese history. If you have never taken a course on China before, please ask me for guidance on whether or not this class is suitable for you. The syllabus is preliminary and subject to change based on breaking news events and the needs of the class.
Prerequisites: elementary physical chemistry. Corequisites: CHEM G4221. Topics include the classical and quantum statistical mechanics of gases, liquids, and solids.
Prerequisites: (COMS W3134 or COMS W3136COMS W3137) and (COMS W3203) Introduction to the design and analysis of efficient algorithms. Topics include models of computation, efficient sorting and searching, algorithms for algebraic problems, graph algorithms, dynamic programming, probabilistic methods, approximation algorithms, and NP-completeness.
Design of concrete beams for combined torsion, shear and flexure; moment-curvature relation; bar cut-off locations; design of two-way slabs; strut-and-tie method for the design of deep beams and corbels; gravity and shear wall design; retaining wall design.
Fundamental considerations of wave mechanics; design philosophies; reliability and risk concepts; basics of fluid mechanics; design of structures subjected to blast; elements of seismic design; elements of fire design; flood considerations; advanced analysis in support of structural design.
This course is an introduction to Causal Inference at the masters and advanced undergraduate
level. Students will be introduced to a broad range of causal inference methods including randomized
experiments, observational studies, instrumental variables, di?erence-in-di?erences,
regression discontinuity design, and synthetic controls. In addition, the course will cover modern,
controversial debates regarding the foundations and limitations of causal inference.
The primary learning goal of this course will be to familiarize students with a variety of the
most popular causal inference methods: which causal e?ects they seek to estimate, basic assumptions
required for identi?cation and estimation, and their practical implementation. To
this end, the course will focus both on developing the pre-requisite statistical / methodological
theory and as well as gaining hands-on experience through implementation exercises with
real datasets. By the end of the course, students should have deep familiarity of various causal
inference methods and—more importantly—be able to determine which method is most appropriate
for a given applied problem and to judge whether the pre-requisite identifying conditions
are appropriate.
Develops a quantitative theory of the computational difficulty of problems in terms of the resources (e.g. time, space) needed to solve them. Classification of problems into complexity classes, reductions, and completeness. Power and limitations of different modes of computation such as nondeterminism, randomization, interaction, and parallelism.
Develops a quantitative theory of the computational difficulty of problems in terms of the resources (e.g. time, space) needed to solve them. Classification of problems into complexity classes, reductions, and completeness. Power and limitations of different modes of computation such as nondeterminism, randomization, interaction, and parallelism.
Course Overview
Often described as “twin crises,” climate change and biodiversity loss are among the most urgent sustainability challenges to be addressed in our modern era. While much focus has rightfully been placed on climate change mitigation actions at local, regional, and global scales, biodiversity loss is less often addressed by governments, institutions, industries, and individuals as a critical piece of the sustainability puzzle. In 2021, COP 15, the fifteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, received far less media attention than COP 26, the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention on Climate Change. Yet climate change and biodiversity loss are inextricably linked, and without biodiversity and the associated ecosystem services and biospheric resilience upon which human society relies, a sustainable world is not possible. Moreover, certain climate change mitigation actions can actually be to the detriment of biological diversity.
Unlike a traditional conservation biology course geared towards ecologists and biologists, this course will be taught through the lens of sustainability management, equipping sustainability managers with the knowledge and direction needed to begin integrating biodiversity conservation and restoration into their professions. This course will illuminate the critical importance of biodiversity to sustainability and human well-being, the science and politics behind the current biodiversity crisis, and proposals, policies, and actions for bending the curve of biodiversity loss to create more sustainable and equitable outcomes for both humans and the non-humans with which we share our planet.
Students who seek to deepen their understanding of ecological sustainability and address the biodiversity crisis through the lens of sustainability management are encouraged to take this course. This course is an on-campus (or Hy-Flex) elective offered during the Fall semester and fulfills 3 credits within the Physical Dimensions of Sustainability Management curriculum area in the Master of Science in Sustainability Management program. Cross-registration is available to students outside of the Master of Science in Sustainability Management program, space permitting.
Prerequisites: (PSYC UN1010 or Equivalent introductory course in neuroscience or cognitive psychology This seminar will provide a broad survey of how narrative stories, films, and performances have been used as tools to study cognition in psychology and neuroscience.
Bearing capacity and settlement of shallow and deep foundations; earth pressure theories; retaining walls and reinforced soil retaining walls; sheet pile walls; braced excavation; slope stability.
Prerequisites: Pre-requisite for this course includes working knowledge in Statistics and Probability, data mining, statistical modeling and machine learning. Prior programming experience in R or Python is required. This course will incorporate knowledge and skills covered in a statistical curriculum with topics and projects in data science. Programming will be covered using existing tools in R. Computing best practices will be taught using test-driven development, version control, and collaboration. Students finish the class with a portfolio of projects, and deeper understanding of several core statistical/machine-learning algorithms. Short project cycles throughout the semester provide students extensive hands-on experience with various data-driven applications.
Prerequisites: PSYC UN1001 and Preferably, an additional course in psychology, focusing on cognition, development, or research methods. Instructor permission required. This seminar explores the relationship between language and thought by investigating how language is mentally represented and processed; how various aspects of language interact with each other; and how language interacts with other aspects of cognition including perception, concepts, world knowledge, and memory. Students will examine how empirical data at the linguistic, psychological, and neuroscientific levels can bear on some of the biggest questions in the philosophy of mind and language and in psychology.
Description.
Unsupervised Learning is a masters level course on foundations, methods, practice, and applications in machine learning from data without associated labels or outcomes. This course will focus on dimension reduction and clustering techniques while also covering graphical models, missing data imputation, anomaly detection, generative models, and others. The course will also emphasize conceptual understanding and practical applications of unsupervised learning in data visualization, exploratory data analysis, data pre-processing, and data-driven discovery.
Methods for organizing data, e.g. hashing, trees, queues, lists,priority queues. Streaming algorithms for computing statistics on the data. Sorting and searching. Basic graph models and algorithms for searching, shortest paths, and matching. Dynamic programming. Linear and convex programming. Floating point arithmetic, stability of numerical algorithms, Eigenvalues, singular values, PCA, gradient descent, stochastic gradient descent, and block coordinate descent. Conjugate gradient, Newton and quasi-Newton methods. Large scale applications from signal processing, collaborative filtering, recommendations systems, etc.
Methods for organizing data, e.g. hashing, trees, queues, lists,priority queues. Streaming algorithms for computing statistics on the data. Sorting and searching. Basic graph models and algorithms for searching, shortest paths, and matching. Dynamic programming. Linear and convex programming. Floating point arithmetic, stability of numerical algorithms, Eigenvalues, singular values, PCA, gradient descent, stochastic gradient descent, and block coordinate descent. Conjugate gradient, Newton and quasi-Newton methods. Large scale applications from signal processing, collaborative filtering, recommendations systems, etc.
Methods for organizing data, e.g. hashing, trees, queues, lists,priority queues. Streaming algorithms for computing statistics on the data. Sorting and searching. Basic graph models and algorithms for searching, shortest paths, and matching. Dynamic programming. Linear and convex programming. Floating point arithmetic, stability of numerical algorithms, Eigenvalues, singular values, PCA, gradient descent, stochastic gradient descent, and block coordinate descent. Conjugate gradient, Newton and quasi-Newton methods. Large scale applications from signal processing, collaborative filtering, recommendations systems, etc.
Prerequisites: basic physical and organic chemistry. Molecular Biophysics is an advanced special topics course with four modules: Noise and fluctuations in biophysics (Arthur Palmer), Single molecule methods (Ruben Gonzalez), Membranes and membrane proteins (Alexander Sobolevsky), and Modeling cellular networks (Karlin). Students normally would take Biophysical Chemistry I and/or Biophysical Chemistry II as prerequisites for Molecular Biophysics.
Will cover some of the fundamental processes of atomic diffusion, sintering and microstructural evolution, defect chemistry, ionic transport, and electrical properties of ceramic materials. Following this, we will examine applications of ceramic materials, specifically, ceramic thick and thin film materials in the areas of sensors and energy conversion/storage devices such as fuel cells, and batteries. The coursework level assumes that the student has already taken basic courses in the thermodynamics of materials, diffusion in materials, and crystal structures of materials.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 The study of industrial behavior based on game-theoretic oligopoly models. Topics include pricing models, strategic aspects of business practice, vertical integration, and technological innovation.
This course will provide an introduction to Immanuel Kant’s aesthetics in conjunction with his philosophical anthropology and philosophy of history. Our readings will be guided by Hannah Arendt’s approach to Kant’s aesthetics as the foundation of a political philosophy in her posthumously published lectures on Kant. Both Kant’s and Arendt’s texts will not only be discussed in dialogue with each other, but also in view of their responses to Burke, Nietzsche, and Benjamin. Finally, particular attention will be given to forms of philosophical writing, such as the essay and the aphorism.
The course is intended for undergraduate students and graduate students. There are no pre-
requisites. All texts are available in English translation.
The principles of surfaces and colloid chemistry critical to range of technologies indispensable to modern life. Surface and colloid chemistry has significance to life sciences, pharmaceuticals, agriculture, environmental remediation and waste management, earth resources recovery, electronics, advanced materials, enhanced oil recovery, and emerging extraterrestrial mining. Topics include: thermodynamics of surfaces, properties of surfactant solutions and surface films, electrokinetic phenomena at interfaces, principles of adsorption and mass transfer and modern experimental techniques. Leads to deeper understanding of interfacial engineering, particulate dispersions, emulsions, foams, aerosols, polymers in solution, and soft matter topics.
Theoretical, computational, and data-driven/machine learning techniques to derive, test, and validate computer models for solid mechanics (e.g., soil, rubber, and metals). Machine learning and data-driven simulations enabled by deep learning.
Utilization of data in everyday civil infrastructure. Optimization of decision-making for owners, facility managers, and policy-makers based on predictive results. Provides students with basic understanding of machine learning concepts and methods to formulate civil engineering problems to prediction problems. Introduces students to classic machine learning algorithms, deep learning algorithms, algorithmic thinking, and probabilistic views, and their applications in existing civil engineering problems.
French colonialism in the 19th and 20th centuries was marked by a relentless and often oppressive pursuit of overseas territories. Colonial cities, the focal points of the French empire, were erected in the nation’s image and characterized by wide boulevards, impressive parks and squares, and monumental buildings echoing the elegance of Paris. These urban centers, scattered across Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Caribbean, often served as administrative, economic, and cultural hubs for the colonial administration. This seminar will explore the profound impact of colonial cities as laboratories for experimenting with new ideas in city planning, infrastructure, architecture, and civic governance. Once tried and tested in the colonies, these innovative “norms and forms” were often imported back to metropolitan France, where they helped shape various aspects of its society, culture, and economy. The seminar is chronologically structured around six French colonial cities: Cap-Français, Cairo, Algiers, Casablanca, Dakar, and Hanoi. Each city is examined through the lens of a distinct set of colonial policies and practices. Cap-Français is studied from the perspective of the universalist values of the French Enlightenment and the double standard evident in the terror of the Atlantic slave trade. Cairo, while colonized for only a brief period, ignited new passions for the East and is viewed as a repository of exotic fantasies and a site for infrastructural modernization. Algiers is studied through the policy of assimilation and the destruction of Algerian religious identity. Casablanca is considered in relation to new planning practices and colonial policies of association. Hanoi is examined through cultural and architectural forms of hybridity. Finally, Dakar is viewed through colonial theories of acclimatization and hygiene policies. As we traverse the diverse landscapes of these colonial cities, this seminar invites participants to critically reflect on the enduring echoes of French colonialism, exploring how the urban experiments of the past reverberate in the present and influence our perceptions of global cities and their histories.
Prerequisites: one year of calculus-based general physics. The goal of this course is to provide a basic hands-on introduction to the practice and theory of scientific computing with applications in astronomy and astrophysics. The course will include an introduction to programming, as well as a sampling of methods and tools from the field of scientific computing. The course will include a hands-on project in which students use numerical methods to solve a research problem. Students who are interested in participating in research projects are strongly encouraged to take the course in their sophomore or junior year.
This course deals with the proteome: the expressed protein complement of a cell, organelle, matrix, tissue, organ or organism. The study of the proteome (proteomics) is broadly applicable to life sciences research, and is increasingly important in academic, government and industrial research through extension of the impact of advances in genomics. These techniques are being applied to basic research, exploratory studies of cancer and other diseases, drug discovery and many other topics. Emphasis will be on mastery of practical techniques of sample preparation, liquid chromatography/ mass spectrometry (LC/MS) with electrospray ionization, and Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption and Ionization (MALDI-TOF) mass spectrometry. Database searching and interpretation for identification of proteins will be intensively studied, and practiced supported by background tutorials and exercises covering other techniques used in proteomics. Open to students in M.A. in Biotechnology Program (points can be counted against laboratory requirement for that program), Ph.D. and advanced undergraduate students with background in genetics or molecular biology. Students should be comfortable with basic biotechnology laboratory techniques as well as being interested in doing computational work in a Windows environment.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 and STAT UN1201 This course uses modern microeconomic tools for understanding markets for indivisible resources and exploring ways to improve their design in terms of stability, efficiency and incentives. Lessons of market design will be applied to developing internet platforms for intermediating exchanges, for auctions to allocate sponsored search advertising, to allocate property rights such as public lands, radio spectrums, fishing rights, for assigning students to public schools, and for developing efficient kidney exchanges for transplantation.
This seminar course explores the intersection of human rights and populism, examining how the rise of populist movements, leaders, and ideologies impact democratic institutions, global politics, and the protection of fundamental human rights. Through a multidisciplinary approach, the course evaluates the sociological, economic, and cultural factors driving populist surges, as well as their consequences for civic culture, governance, and international relations. Students will analyze the implications of populism for human rights in the context of migration, authoritarianism, freedom of speech, minorities, and challenges to international and regional courts and institutions. The course will investigate both left-wing and right-wing populist movements, considering the threat they pose to human rights, their pursuit of socio-economic rights through the redistribution of wealth, and how the human rights project could and is being rethought in light of these challenges and opportunities.
Overview of electrochemical processes and applications from perspectives of materials and devices. Thermodynamics and principles of electrochemistry, methods to characterize electrochemical processes, application of electrochemical materials and devices, including batteries, supercapacitors, fuel cells, electrochemical sensor, focus on link between material structure, composition, and properties with electrochemical performance.
An introduction to modern cryptography, focusing on the complexity-theoretic foundations of secure computation and communication in adversarial environments; a rigorous approach, based on precise definitions and provably secure protocols. Topics include private and public key encryption schemes, digital signatures, authentication, pseudorandom generators and functions, one-way functions, trapdoor functions, number theory and computational hardness, identification and zero knowledge protocols.
Prerequisites: STAT GU4205 or the equivalent. A fast-paced introduction to statistical methods used in quantitative finance. Financial applications and statistical methodologies are intertwined in all lectures. Topics include regression analysis and applications to the Capital Asset Pricing Model and multifactor pricing models, principal components and multivariate analysis, smoothing techniques and estimation of yield curves statistical methods for financial time series, value at risk, term structure models and fixed income research, and estimation and modeling of volatilities. Hands-on experience with financial data.
Prerequisites: STAT GU4204 or the equivalent. STAT GU4205 is recommended. Modeling and inference for random processes, from natural sciences to finance and economics. ARMA, ARCH, GARCH and nonlinear models, parameter estimation, prediction and filtering. This is a core course in the MS program in mathematical finance.
Prerequisites: STAT GU4203. STAT GU4207 is recommended. Basics of continuous-time stochastic processes. Wiener processes. Stochastic integrals. Ito's formula, stochastic calculus. Stochastic exponentials and Girsanov's theorem. Gaussian processes. Stochastic differential equations. Additional topics as time permits.
Prerequisites: STAT GU4264. Mathematical theory and probabilistic tools for modeling and analyzing security markets are developed. Pricing options in complete and incomplete markets, equivalent martingale measures, utility maximization, term structure of interest rates. This is a core course in the MS program in mathematical finance.
Can the words “trauma” and “pleasure” be put in the same sentence? If trauma epitomizes suffering and pleasure represents enjoyment, is there any relation between these experiences? And yet, how else to explain that people seem endlessly addicted to negative experiences, or that traumatized people often try to recreate the damage they endured?
We are living in an age of endless trauma, and everywhere we go, we hear that trauma is destructive, anathema to pleasure, that it destroys our sense of self, our security, our stability, and identity. We are taught to avoid trauma at all costs because it is harmful and inimical to flourishing. New statistics routinely confirm that we are living through a trauma epidemic in which ordinary people experience symptoms of extreme distress, flashbacks, intrusive thoughts, nightmares, and difficulty sleeping. Every year, new memoirs are published in which protagonists detail their endless battles with traumatic adversity and most television shows, across a variety of genres, include trauma as a subplot to character development (
Ted Lasso
,
Euphoria
,
True Detective
, to name a few). Referring to its growing pervasiveness, the
New Yorker
critic Parul Sehgal wrote a controversial essay, “The Case Against the Trauma Plot” (2021) in which she criticizes our culture’s overreliance on trauma as a primary trope of character development, forcing us to ask: is trauma really as widespread as we think? how did trauma become such a popular ‘identity’? what work is trauma doing for us, as individuals and as a culture? Is it possible to recognize the ubiquity of trauma while also acknowledging that we often seek situations which are harmful, even traumatizing, that we might be attracted to suffering for reasons we don’t yet understand?
This course examines the complex relationship between trauma and pleasure by familiarizing students with the clinical and theoretical concepts at the core of contemporary trauma and critical theory. We will focus specifically on the topics of: sexuality, perversion, trauma, identity, relationality, narcissism, gender and attachment in order to explore how these concepts work today. Delving into theoretical writing by Foucault, Bersani, Edelman, Berlant, Butler, Dean and Preciado, as well as clinical writing by major psychoanalysts, Freud, Laplanche, Loewald, Lacan, Laplanche and Winnicott, we will redefine contemporary debates by exploring their clinica
Narrative competence is a crucial dimension of health-care delivery, the capacity to attend and respond to stories of illness, and the narrative skills to reflect critically on the scene of care and its contexts. Narrative Medicine explores and builds the clinical applications of literary knowledge.
The objectives of this foundations course include furthering close reading skills, and exploring theories of self-telling and relationality. At the center of this project is the medical encounter. In examining the complexities of this exchange, to help clinicians to fulfill their "receiving" duties more effectively, we will turn to narrative theory, autobiographical theory, psychoanalytic theory, trauma scholarship and witnessing literature. Classwork integrates didactic and experiential methodologies to develop a heightened awareness of self and others and build a practical set of narrative competencies.
Readings will include works by Toni Morrison, W.G. Sebald, Lucy Grealy, Kazuo Ishiguro, Alison Bechdel, Arthur Frank, Paul Ricoeur, Jonathan Shay and Jens Brockmeier.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 and STAT UN1201 An introduction to the economics principles underlying the financial decisions of firms. The topics covered include bond and stock valuations, capital budgeting, dividend policy, market efficiency, risk valuation, and risk management. For information regarding REGISTRATION for this course, go to: http://econ.columbia.edu/registration-information.
Prerequisites: PSYC UN1001 or equivalent introductory psychology course What is curiosity and how do we study it? How does curiosity facilitate learning? This course will explore the various conceptual and methodological approaches to studying curiosity and curiosity-driven learning, including animal and human studies of brain and behavior.
Prerequisites: STAT GU4205 and at least one statistics course numbered between GU4221 and GU4261. This is a course on getting the most out of data. The emphasis will be on hands-on experience, involving case studies with real data and using common statistical packages. The course covers, at a very high level, exploratory data analysis, model formulation, goodness of fit testing, and other standard and non-standard statistical procedures, including linear regression, analysis of variance, nonlinear regression, generalized linear models, survival analysis, time series analysis, and modern regression methods. Students will be expected to propose a data set of their choice for use as case study material.
Co-taught by Met curator Dr. Melanie Holcomb and Prof. Eliza Zingesser (Columbia, French) in conjunction with the exhibit “Spectrum of Desire” at the Cloisters, this course considers conceptions of gender, the body, and eroticism in medieval French-speaking territories. Surveying literary texts in their manuscript contexts, sculptures, paintings, and personal items, we will attend to “queer” sexual practices, non-normative conceptions of gender, the homosocial within “courtly love,” all while learning to look askance or queerly at what might initially seem to be resolutely heteronormative. We will consider the following questions, among others:
- In an era in which all non-procreative sex was conceived as sinful, does the opposition between homosexual and heterosexual still hold?
- Was gender assigned based on the body or on some other factor? Was it conceived as binary or spectral, natural or cultural?
- Does the use of modern categories help or hinder our understanding of gender and sexuality in a historically distant period?
- What might medieval categories be able to teach us about the limitations of our contemporary understanding of gender and sexuality?
- Where do literature and the visual arts align in their modes of engagement with/representations of queerness and where do they diverge?
Class taught in English with readings available in English translation. French majors or concentrators/minors should complete the readings in French, whenever possible. Several class sessions will be held at The Met.
Enrollment in this course is by application. Please send an email to
eliza.zingesser@columbia.edu
with information on your class year, major or main topic of research, and the reasons for your interest in this course.
Latina/o/x populations constitute over 19% of the U.S. population as of 2020, one of the fastest
growing groups in the U.S. with a long and rich history in the U.S while maintaining transnational ties.
In this course students are invited to critically analyze the social histories of and contemporary
experiences of a diverse range of Latino/a/x populations from across the Americas. Over the course of
the semester, we will discuss how Latino/a/x populations come to reside in and transform New York
City, how Latina/o/x populations contend with everyday life and, how they shape and reshape the
communities they resettle in. Although the focus is on New York City, we will also examine the
movement of peoples from the Caribbean and Latin America. Topics include histories of migration,
labor recruitment, citizenship, coloniality and racialization, neoliberalism and the rise of
financialization in NYC, environmental racism, community formation and Latino/a/x political
activism. We will critically examine a variety of text and genres ranging from anthropological,
historical, poetry, documentary, films, media, and art to shift away from homogeneous categorization
of Latino/a/x populations to understanding populations as dynamic and complex. Students are
invited to bring their stories to class as this is a collaborative learning environment.
Programming experience in Python extremely useful. Introduction to fundamental algorithms and analysis of numerical methods commonly used by scientists, mathematicians and engineers. Designed to give a fundamental understanding of the building blocks of scientific computing that will be used in more advanced courses in scientific computing and numerical methods for PDEs (e.g. APMA E4301, E4302). Topics include numerical solutions of algebraic systems, linear least-squares, eigenvalue problems, solution of non-linear systems, optimization, interpolation, numerical integration and differentiation, initial value problems and boundary value problems for systems of ODEs. All programming exercises will be in Python.
Programming experience in Python extremely useful. Introduction to fundamental algorithms and analysis of numerical methods commonly used by scientists, mathematicians and engineers. Designed to give a fundamental understanding of the building blocks of scientific computing that will be used in more advanced courses in scientific computing and numerical methods for PDEs (e.g. APMA E4301, E4302). Topics include numerical solutions of algebraic systems, linear least-squares, eigenvalue problems, solution of non-linear systems, optimization, interpolation, numerical integration and differentiation, initial value problems and boundary value problems for systems of ODEs. All programming exercises will be in Python.
Overview of properties and interactions of static electric and magnetic fields. Study of phenomena of time dependent electric and magnetic fields including induction, waves, and radiation as well as special relativity. Applications are emphasized.
Prerequisites: four semesters of biology with a firm foundation in molecular and cellular biology. Introduces students to the current understanding of human diseases, novel therapeutic approaches and drug development process. Selected topics will be covered in order to give students a feeling of the field of biotechnology in health science. This course also aims to strengthen students’ skills in literature comprehension and critical thinking.
Ordinary differential equations including Laplace transforms. Reactor Design. An introduction to process control applied to chemical engineering through lecture and laboratory. Concepts include the dynamic behavior of chemical engineering systems, feedback control, controller tuning, and process stability.
Introduction to natural and anthropogenic carbon cycle, and carbon - climate. Rationale and need to manage carbon and tools with which to do so (basic science, psychology, economics and policy background, negotiations - society; emphasis on interdisciplinary and inter-dependent approach). Simple carbon emission model to estimate the impacts of a specific intervention with regards to national, per capita and global emissions. Student-led case studies (e.g. reforestation, biofuels, CCS, efficiency, alternative energy) to illustrate necessary systems approach required to tackle global challenges.
This course examines the historical and theoretical issues concerning the representation of African Americans in film and media. The course will provide a historical overview while focusing on key themes, concepts, and texts.
This course seeks to build upon (or expand) skills learned in sculpture I. This workshop based course allows students more access to the shops to continue to develop those introductory skills while focusing on specific materials and processes. In this course students will complete one self directed project and a number of inclass short assignments and exercises providing a greater exposure to sculptural practice and processes. Acting as both a bridge to and support for more advanced inquiry into making.
Prerequisites: completion of three years of modern Chinese at least, or four years of Japanese or Korean.
This course is intended to provide a quantitative introduction to storage of carbon derived from greenhouse gases, mainly CO2, with a focus on geological carbon storage and mineralization in saline aquifers, depleted hydrocarbon reservoirs, and “reactive” subsurface formations (rocks rich in Fe, Ca, and Mg) as well and other natural and engineered storage reservoirs (e.g., terrestrial storage, ocean storage, building materials). Course modules cover fundamental processes such as geochemical fluid-rock interactions and fluid flow, transport, and trapping of supercritical and/or dissolved CO2 in the context of pore-scale properties to field-scale example storage reservoirs and specific integrative problems such as reservoir characterization and modeling techniques, estimating storage capacity, and regulations and monitoring.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 Empirical findings on economic development, theoretical development models; problems of efficient resource allocation in a growing economy; balanced and unbalanced growth in closed and open economic systems; the role of capital accumulation and innovation in economic growth.
This course examines the historical and theoretical issues concerning the representation of African Americans in film and media. The course will provide a historical overview while focusing on key themes, concepts, and texts.
General experimental techniques in materials science, including X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopies, atomic force microscopy, materials synthesis and thermodynamics, characterization of material properties (mechanical, electrochemical, magnetic, electronic). Additional experiments at discretion of instructor.
This seminar introduces students to histories of abolition through constructed environments and artistic, material, and spatial practices. We study abolition of slavery, prisons, and borders during a period from the eighteenth century to the present. Attending to the distinct social movements and discourses sparked by these very different abolitionist targets, we examine the political, ethical, and aesthetic intersections that emerge.
We investigate these problems through architecture, landscapes, material culture, and art, studying primary works, secondary texts, and methods. The course emphasizes study through historical reasoning as well as analysis of sensorial and affective material. This multimodal approach is necessary in studying forms of injustice in order to comprehend
unfreedom
, a paradoxical concept that produces cognitive dissonance and counters liberal reason.
The course draws on architectural history as crucial to illuminating how place, space, design, and planning of built environments have enacted and archived people’s unfreedom, and relies on intersectional feminist and critical race frameworks to understand abolition as part of a tradition of emancipatory thought and teaching. We study practices and institutions that have produced and shaped enclosure and incarceration in contexts around the world, placing abolition in dialogue with the anticolonial. The course illuminates the roles that both reform and radical refusal have played in abolitionist struggles for spatial justice, and maintains attention to material, spatial, and aesthetic practices throughout.
This seminar has no prerequisites and all assignments are guided. Readings consider the formation of space, power, and knowledge together, in aesthetic and cultural analyses of the abolition of enslavement, incarceration, and border regimes. Students lead discussion, based on exercises in collective annotation of full books, including:
Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration
by Nicole Fleetwood;
Witnessing Slavery: Art and Travel in the Age of Abolition
by Sarah Thomas; and
Departures: An Introduction to Critical Refugee Studies,
by Yến Lê Espiritu, Lan Duong, Ma Vang, Victor Bascara, Khatharya Um, Lila Sharif, and Nigel Hatton. These texts are contextualized in relation to other books and articles, study of works of art and architecture, visits to archives, and guest lectures. Each student produces
Principles of propulsion. Thermodynamic cycles of air breathing propulsion systems including ramjet, scramjet, turbojet, and turbofan engine and rocket propulsion system concepts. Turbine engine and rocket performance characteristics. Component and cycle analysis of jet engines and turbomachinery. Advanced propulsion systems. Columbia Engineering interdisciplinary course.
This advanced seminar examines historical, social, cultural, and theoretical propositions for decolonizing praxis and their complex relations to feminist critique. How do we understand Western European colonialism and coloniality as modes, conditions, and institutions of power, dispossession, subjugation, and subjection continuing into the present? What are the methods, practices, and vision enacted and proposed by the colonized for undoing and radically transforming the determinate logics, instruments, and structures of colonialism as these persist in the present moment? We will consider how gender and sexuality as well as race – as technologies of social organization, codes of valuation, and modes of survival – shape colonialism and the struggles against it. We will inquire into their significance to projects of decolonization. How might decolonization envision and make possible other ways of life?
Descriptive statistics, central limit theorem, parameter estimation, sufficient statistics, hypothesis testing, regression, logistic regression, goodness-of-fit tests, applications to operations research models.
In recent decades, the study of the so-called “Buddho-Daoism” has become a burgeoning field that breaks down the traditional boundary lines drawn between the two Chinese religious traditions. In this course we will read secondary scholarship in English that probes the complex relationships between Buddhism and Daoism in the past two millennia. Students are required not only to be aware of the tensions and complementarity between them, but to be alert to the nature of claims to either religious purity or mixing and the ways those claims were put forward under specific religio-historical circumstances. The course is organized thematically rather than chronologically. We will address topics on terminology, doctrine, cosmology, eschatology, soteriology, exorcism, scriptural productions, ritual performance, miracle tales and visual representations that arose in the interactions of the two religions, with particular attention paid to critiquing terms such as “influence,” “encounter,” “dialogue,” “hybridity,” “syncretism,” and “repertoire.” The course is designed for both advanced undergraduate and graduate students in the fields of East Asian religion, literature, history, art history, sociology and anthropology. One course on Buddhism or Chinese religious traditions is recommended, but not required, as background.
Applications of continuum mechanics to the understanding of various biological tissues properties. The structure, function, and mechanical properties of various tissues in biolgical systems, such as blood vessels, muscle, skin, brain tissue, bone, tendon, cartilage, ligaments, etc. are examined. The establishment of basic governing mechanical principles and constitutive relations for each tissue. Experimental determination of various tissue properties. Medical and clinical implications of tissue mechanical behavior.
This course examines historical narratives and record-keeping in premodern Korea, focusing on the Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1910). It explores writing as a medium of power that shaped politics, social order, gender relations, and cultural identity. Through diverse texts, including official chronicles, didactic texts, memoirs, and (auto)biographies, students will analyze how individuals and institutions used writing to assert authority, express dissent, and document their lives.
Advanced instruction in the Armenian dialect. No P/D/F or R credit is allowed for this class.
This course deals with a fundamental question of sustainability management: how to change organizations and more complex systems, such as communities, industries, and markets, by integrating sustainability concerns in the way that they operate. The course poses this question to a dozen leading sustainability practitioners, who answer it by discussing management strategies that they use in their own work. Through these guest lectures, extensive class discussion, readings, and writing assignments, students identify and simulate applying practical ways for transforming how organizations and complex systems work. The practitioners, who work in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors and in a wide variety of organizations, make presentations in the first hour of the course. Students then have time to ask questions and speak informally with the guest practitioners, and will participate in an instructor-led class discussion, geared toward identifying management strategies, better understanding their application, and considering their effectiveness. By the end of the course, the students gain an understanding of management tools and strategies that they, themselves, would use to integrate sustainability in organizations.
The course complements the M.S. in Sustainability Management program’s required course, Sustainability Management (SUMA K4100). In that course, students study management and organization theory. In the Practicum, students learn directly from leading practitioners, who confront sustainability management issues daily.
This course deals with a fundamental question of sustainability management: how to change organizations and more complex systems, such as communities, industries, and markets, by integrating sustainability concerns in the way that they operate. The course poses this question to a dozen leading sustainability practitioners, who answer it by discussing management strategies that they use in their own work. Through these guest lectures, extensive class discussion, readings, and writing assignments, students identify and simulate applying practical ways for transforming how organizations and complex systems work. The practitioners, who work in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors and in a wide variety of organizations, make presentations in the first hour of the course. Students then have time to ask questions and speak informally with the guest practitioners, and will participate in an instructor-led class discussion, geared toward identifying management strategies, better understanding their application, and considering their effectiveness. By the end of the course, the students gain an understanding of management tools and strategies that they, themselves, would use to integrate sustainability in organizations.
The course complements the M.S. in Sustainability Management program’s required course, Sustainability Management (SUMA K4100). In that course, students study management and organization theory. In the Practicum, students learn directly from leading practitioners, who confront sustainability management issues daily.
Prerequisites: VIAR UN2300 (Formerly R3302) Laboratory in Relational Art; Sculpture without Objects The purpose of this class will be to explore the function of Relational Aesthetics in contemporary art practice and to develop ideas about the role of context in art, as the students develop their own site-specific works and research historical precedents for art designed to be exhibited in non-traditional venues. This course will also prepare students for professional work preparing art for venues of that type. This class will be structured around studio work, with an emphasis on the development and production of a final site-specific project. In order to foster students’ growth and ongoing investigation into the nature of contemporary sculpture, the class will also be comprised of slide lectures, visits to local artists’ studios, and galleries, as well as various public art projects throughout the city. As the semester progresses, the emphasis will gradually be shifted from research to intensive studio work on a final project, often a proposal for a site-specific work in a non-traditional venue. Generally, the first half of each class session will be dedicated to lecture and discussion, while the second half will be dedicated to individual studio work and critique.
Prerequisites: (CHEM UN2443 and CHEM UN2444) and (CHEM UN3079 and CHEM UN3080) and (BIOC UN3501) , or the equivalent. Development and application of chemical methods for understanding the molecular mechanisms of cellular processes. Review of the biosynthesis, chemical synthesis, and structure and function of proteins and nucleic acids. Application of chemical methods--including structural biology, enzymology, chemical genetics, and the synthesis of modified biological molecules--to the study of cellular processes--including transcription, translation, and signal transduction.
Differential and multistage amplifiers; small-signal analysis; biasing techniques; frequency response; negative feedback; stability criteria; frequency compensation techniques. Analog layout techniques. An extensive design project is an integral part of the course.