UNDERGRAD RESEARCH OR PROJECT
Independent work involving experiments, computer programming, analytical investigation, or engineering design.
- Department: Industrial Engineering and Operations Research
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Instructor:
Soulaymane Kachani
CULPA: 12 Info -
Instructor:
Yaren Kaya
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Instructor:
Christian Kroer
h-index: 16 Info -
Instructor:
Daniel Lacker
CULPA: 4
h-index: 13
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Instructor:
Henry Lam
h-index: 17 Info -
Instructor:
Fabrizio Lecci
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Instructor:
Tianyi Lin
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Instructor:
Uday Menon
Info -
Instructor:
Bento Natura
Info -
Instructor:
Jay Sethuraman
CULPA: 10 Info -
Instructor:
Karl Sigman
CULPA: 15
Info
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Instructor:
Clifford Stein
CULPA: 31 Wikipedia h-index: 53 Info -
Instructor:
Wenpin Tang
h-index: 6 Info - 1-3 points
UNDERGRAD RESEARCH OR PROJECT
Independent work involving experiments, computer programming, analytical investigation, or engineering design.
- Department: Industrial Engineering and Operations Research
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Instructor:
Wenpin Tang
h-index: 6 Info -
Instructor:
Kaizheng Wang
CULPA: 1 h-index: 8 Info -
Instructor:
Lily Xu
Info -
Instructor:
David D Yao
CULPA: 5
Info
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Instructor:
Yi Zhang
CULPA: 2 Info - 1-3 points
SUPERVISED INDIVIDUAL RESEARCH
Prerequisites: Permission of the departmental representative required. For specially selected students, the opportunity to do a research problem in contemporary physics under the supervision of a faculty member. Each year several juniors are chosen in the spring to carry out such a project beginning in the autumn term. A detailed report on the research is presented by the student when the project is complete.
- Department: Physics
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Instructor:
Jeremy R Dodd
CULPA: 25
Info
- 1-5 points
SUPERVISED INDIVIDUAL RESEARCH
Prerequisites: Permission of the departmental representative required. For specially selected students, the opportunity to do a research problem in contemporary physics under the supervision of a faculty member. Each year several juniors are chosen in the spring to carry out such a project beginning in the autumn term. A detailed report on the research is presented by the student when the project is complete.
- Department: Physics and Astronomy @Barnard
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Instructor:
Timothy J Halpin-Healy
CULPA: 6 Info - 1-5 points
SENIOR THESIS I
Prerequisites: 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.
- Department: Visual Arts
- W 5:15 p.m.-10 p.m.
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Instructor:
Jon Kessler
CULPA: 5 Wikipedia Info - 2 points
INDEPENDENT STDY-UNDERGRADUATE
INDEPENDENT STUDY-UNDERGRAD
- Department: African American and African Diaspora
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Instructor:
Farah Griffin
CULPA: 10
Wikipedia
Info
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Instructor:
Brandi Summers
Info - 1-4 points
SENIOR SEMINAR
SR SEM: CURATING ARCH
See the Barnard and Columbia Architecture Department's website for the course description:
https://architecture.barnard.edu/architecture-department-course-descriptions
- Department: Architecture @Barnard
- W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Ignacio Gonzalez Galan
Info - 4 points
SENIOR HONORS THESIS
Weekly seminar to accompany Senior Honors Thesis Lab (CHEM BC3903). Focus is on scientific presentation and writing skills and research conduct.
- Department: Chemistry @Barnard
- F 10:10 a.m.-noon
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Instructor:
Jean Vadakkan
Info - 4 points
SENIOR HONORS THESIS
Weekly seminar to accompany Senior Honors Thesis Lab (CHEM BC3903). Focus is on scientific presentation and writing skills and research conduct.
- Department: Chemistry @Barnard
- F 10:10 a.m.-noon
- 4 points
Senior Project Seminar
SENIOR PROJECT SEMINAR
Discussion of senior research projects during the fall and spring terms that culminate in written and oral senior theses. Each project must be supervised by a cognitive scientist working at Barnard or Columbia.
- Department: Cognitive Science @Barnard
- TR 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
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Instructor:
John Morrison
CULPA: 12 h-index: 7 Info - 1 points
ENVIRONMENTAL MICROBIOLOGY
Fundamentals of microbiology, genetics and molecular biology, principles of microbial nutrition, energetics and kinetics, application of novel and state-of-the-art techniques in monitoring the structure and function of microbial communities in the environment, engineered processes for biochemical waste treatment and bioremediation, microorganisms and public health, global microbial elemental cycles.
- Department: Earth and Environmental Engineering
- TR 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
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Instructor:
Kartik Chandran
CULPA: 4
Wikipedia
h-index: 51
Info
- 3 points
SENIOR SEMINAR
Guided, independent, in-depth research culminating in the senior thesis in the spring. Includes discussion about scientific presentations and posters, data analysis, library research methods and scientific writing. Students review work in progress and share results through oral reports. Weekly seminar to review work in progress and share results through oral and written reports.
- Department: Earth and Environmental Sciences
- R 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
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Instructor:
Maureen Raymo
Wikipedia h-index: 62 Info - 3 points
SOCIOLOGY OF CULTURE
Prerequisites: SOCI BC1003 or equivalent social science course and permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15 students. Drawing examples from popular music, religion, politics, race, and gender, explores the interpretation, production, and reception of cultural texts and meanings. Topics include aesthetic distinction and taste communities, ideology, power, and resistance; the structure and functions of subcultures; popular culture and high culture; and ethnography and interpretation.
- Department: Sociology @Barnard
- T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
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Instructor:
Jonathan Rieder
CULPA: 17
Info
- 4 points
SENIOR THESIS II
Prerequisites: VIAR UN3900 Department approval required. See requirements for a major in visual arts. VIAR UN3900 is the prerequisite for VIAR UN3901. Corequisites: VIAR UN3911 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.
- Department: Visual Arts
- W 5:15 p.m.-10 p.m.
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Instructor:
Jon Kessler
CULPA: 5 Wikipedia Info - 2 points
SENIORS HONORS THESIS LAB
Corequisites: CHEM BC3901 Guided research in Chemistry or Biochemistry, under the sponsorship of a faculty member, leading to the senior thesis. A minimum of 8 hours of research per week, to be arranged.
- Department: Chemistry @Barnard
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Instructor:
Christian Rojas
CULPA: 24
Info
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Instructor:
Marisa C Buzzeo
CULPA: 2 Info -
Instructor:
Dina C Merrer
CULPA: 24
Info
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Instructor:
Andrew C Crowther
CULPA: 1 Info -
Instructor:
Michael Campbell
Info -
Instructor:
Rachel Austin
CULPA: 18
Wikipedia
h-index: 28
Info
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Instructor:
Christina Vizcarra
CULPA: 1 Info -
Instructor:
Rebecca Donegan
Info - 0 points
SENIORS HONORS THESIS LAB
Corequisites: CHEM BC3901 Guided research in Chemistry or Biochemistry, under the sponsorship of a faculty member, leading to the senior thesis. A minimum of 8 hours of research per week, to be arranged.
- Department: Chemistry @Barnard
- 0 points
INDEPENDENT RESEARCH IN CLIMATE SYSTEM S
INDEP RESEARCH IN CLIM SY
In this course, students develop and complete a one-semester independent research project in an area of Climate System Science. Each student works closely with a research Mentor, and the course experience for all students is coordinated with a course Instructor. This course fulfills the Capstone experience for the Climate System Science major in DEES. This course cannot be combined with one semester of Senior Seminar UN3901, which is designed as a 1-year course.
- Department: Earth and Environmental Sciences
- R 8:40 a.m.-9:55 a.m.
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Instructor:
Jacqueline Austermann
h-index: 18 Info - 3 points
COMMUNITIES AND SOCIAL CHANGE
Examines how changes in the economy, racial composition, and class relations affect community life-how it is created, changed and sometimes lost-with a specific focus on the local urban context. Student research projects will address how contemporary forces such as neoliberalization, gentrification and tourism impact a communitys social fabric.
- Department: Sociology @Barnard
- R 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
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Instructor:
Dominic T Walker
Info - 4 points
The Dirty Work: Histories of Domestic La
Histories of Domestic Lab
Domestic work - including food preparation, caring for children, and cleaning and maintaining a home - is essential to sustaining human life. Yet this work is often socially invisible. When paid workers undertake domestic labor, it has historically been one of the lowest-paid, most vulnerable and exploited forms of labor. In this course, we will explore how household labor itself and the people who do it have evolved over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, focusing on Britain and the United States as case studies. The course pays particular attention to the gender, class, and racial inequalities that have characterized this work and examples of how both paid and unpaid domestic workers have challenged their exploitation and invisibility in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
- Department: History
- W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Lucy R Sharp
Info - 4 points
BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING DESIGN
A two-semester design sequence to be taken in the senior year. Elements of the design process, with specific applications to biomedical engineering: concept formulation, systems synthesis, design analysis, optimization, biocompatibility, impact on patient health and comfort, health care costs, regulatory issues, and medical ethics. Selection and execution of a project involving the design of an actual engineering device or system. Introduction to entrepreneurship, biomedical start-ups, and venture capital. Semester I: statistical analysis of detection/classification systems (receiver operation characteristic analysis, logistic regression), development of design prototype, need, approach, benefits and competition analysis. Semester II: spiral develop process and testing, iteration and refinement of the initial design/prototype and business plan development. A lab fee of $100 each is collected.
- Department: Biomedical Engineering
- TR 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
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Instructor:
Lauren N Heckelman
Info - 4 points
GLOBAL POLITICS OF REPRODUCTION
- Department: History @Barnard
- M 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
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Instructor:
Nara Milanich
CULPA: 15
Wikipedia
Info
- 4 points
VISITING CRITIC I
Prerequisites: Department approval required. See requirements for a major in visual arts. VIAR UN3910 is the prerequisite for VIAR UN3911. Corequisites: VIAR UN3900 (Formerly R3921) Students are required to enroll in both semesters (VIAR UN3910 and VIAR UN3911). A second opinion is provided to the senior students regarding the development of their senior project. Critics consist of distinguished visitors and faculty. Issues regarding the premise, methodology, or presentation of the students ideas are discussed and evaluated on an ongoing basis.
- Department: Visual Arts
- W 5:15 p.m.-10 p.m.
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Instructor:
Emily C Henretta
Info - 2 points
SOCIAL CONTEXTS IMMIGRATN LAW
Examines the historical and contemporary social, economic, and political factors that shape immigration law and policy along with the social consequences of those laws and policies. Addresses the development and function of immigration law and aspects of the immigration debate including unauthorized immigration, anti-immigration sentiments, and critiques of immigration policy.
- Department: Anthropology @Barnard
- 4 points
SEMINAR IN POLITCAL THEORY
Arendt in 20th Century
Seminar in Political Theory. Students who would like to register should join the electronic wait list. For list of topics and descriptions see: https://polisci.columbia.edu/content/undergraduate-seminars
- Department: Political Science
- W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Clara Maier
Info - 4 points
VISITING CRITIC II
Prerequisites: VIAR UN3910 Department approval required. See requirements for a major in visual arts. Corequisites: VIAR UN3901 (Formerly R3922) Students are required to enroll in both semesters (VIAR UN3910 and VIAR UN3911). A second opinion is provided to the senior students regarding the development of their senior project. Critics consist of distinguished visitors and faculty. Issues regarding the premise, methodology, or presentation of the students ideas are discussed and evaluated on an ongoing basis.
- Department: Visual Arts
- W 5:15 p.m.-10 p.m.
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Instructor:
Emily C Henretta
Info - 2 points
SEMINAR
MAJOR SEMINAR IN PHILOSOPHY
Required of senior majors, but also open to junior majors, and junior and senior concentrators who have taken at least four philosophy courses. This exploration will typically involve writing a substantial research paper. Capped at 20 students with preference to philosophy majors.
- Department: Philosophy
- M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
- R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Michele Moody-Adams
CULPA: 20
Wikipedia
Info
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Instructor:
Melissa S Fusco
CULPA: 1 Info - 3 points
INEQUALITY, POVERTY & MOBILITY
INEQUALITY POVERTY & MOBILITY
This is an undergraduate seminar in social stratification. The course focuses on the current American experience with socioeconomic inequality and mobility. The goals of the course are to understand how inequality is conceptualized and measured in the social sciences, to understand the structure of inequality in the contemporary U.S. to learn the principal theories and evidence for long term trends in inequality, to understand the persistence of poverty and the impact of social policies on American rates of poverty, and to understand the forces that both produce and inhibit intergenerational social mobility in the U.S. Given the nature of the subject matter, a minority of the readings will sometimes involve quantitative social science material. The course does not presume that students have advanced training in statistics, and any readings sections that contain mathematical or statistical content will be explained in class in nontechnical terms as needed. In these instances, our focus will not be on the methods, but rather on the conclusions reached by the author concerning the research question that is addressed in the text.
- Department: Sociology
- T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Thomas DiPrete
CULPA: 7 Wikipedia Info - 4 points
ADVANCED FILM PRODUCTION PRACTICE
Advanced Film Production Practice is an advanced production and lecture course for students who wish to obtain a deeper understanding of the skills involved in screenwriting, directing and producing. Building on the fundamentals established in the Labs for Fiction and Non-Fiction Filmmaking, this seminar further develops each student’s grasp of the concepts involved in filmmaking through advanced analytical and practical work to prepare Thesis film materials.
- Department: Film
- W 6:10 p.m.-8:40 p.m.
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Instructor:
Hector Prats I Castro
Info - 3 points
GENDER, SEXUALITY & POWER IN TRANSNATION
GEND,SEX&POWER TRANSNATL
This course considers formations of gender, sexuality, and power as they circulate transnationally, as well as transnational feminist and queer movements that have emerged to address contemporary gendered and sexual inequalities. Topics include political economy, global care chains, sexuality, sex work and trafficking, feminist and queer politics, and human rights. If it is a small world after all, how do forces of globalization shape and redefine the relationship between gender, sexuality, and powerful institutions like the state? And, if power swirls everywhere, how are transnational power dynamics reinscribed in gendered bodies? How is the body represented in discussions of nationalism and in the political economy of globalization? These questions will frame this course by highlighting how gender, sexuality, and power coalesce to impact the lives of individuals in various spaces including workplaces, the academy, the home, religious institutions, the government, and civil society, and human rights organizations. This course will enable us to think transnationally, historically, and dynamically, using gender and sexuality as lenses through which to critique relations of power and the ways that power informs our everyday lives and subjectivities.
- Department: Women's and Gender Studies
- W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Tara Gonsalves
Info - 4 points
MODES OF INQUIRY
Corequisites: CSER UN3921 This class, a combination of a seminar and a workshop, will prepare students to conduct, write up, and present original research. It has several aims and goals. First, the course introduces students to a variety of ways of thinking about knowledge as well as to specific ways of knowing and making arguments key to humanistic and social science fields. Second, this seminar asks students to think critically about the approaches they employ in pursuing their research. The course will culminate in a semester project, not a fully executed research project, but rather an 8-10 page proposal for research that will articulate a question, provide basic background on the context that this question is situated in, sketch preliminary directions and plot out a detailed methodological plan for answering this question. Students will be strongly encouraged to think of this proposal as related to their thesis or senior project. Over the course of the semester, students will also produce several short exercises to experiment with research techniques and genres of writing.
- Department: Ethnicity and Race, Center for
- W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Bahia Munem
Info - 4 points
TRADING NATURE
This course explores the scientific and theoretical conceptualization of nature as a market commodity, through the lens of conservation biology. Students will engage in critical analysis of the 'traditional' forms in which biodiversity has been appropriated as inputs into markets such as fisheries, resource extraction, bushmeat and medicine, as well as new market environmentalism.
- Department: Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology
- M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Mary E Blair
CULPA: 1 Info - 4 points
SENIOR SEMINAR
Open to senior chemistry, biochemistry, environmental chemistry, and chemical physics majors; senior chemistry concentrators; and students who have taken or are currently enrolled in CHEM UN3098. Senior seminar provides direct access to modern chemical research through selected studies by the students from active fields of chemical research. Topics to be presented and discussed draw from the current scientific literature and/or UN3098 research.
- Department: Chemistry
- F 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Milan Delor
h-index: 16 Info - 2 points
MEDIEVAL ENGLISH TEXTS
The class will read the poem
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
in the original Middle English language of its unique surviving copy of circa 1400, and will discuss both the poem's language and the poem's literary meritThe class will read the poem
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
in the original Middle English language of its unique surviving copy of circa 1400, and will discuss both the poem's language and the poem's literary merit.
- Department: English and Comparative Literature
- M 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
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Instructor:
David M Yerkes
CULPA: 41 Info - 4 points
SENIOR SEM IN SCREENWRITING
A seminar for senior film majors. Students will complete a step outline and minimum of 30 pages of their project, including revisions. Through reading/viewing and analyzing selected scripts/films, as well as lectures, exercises and weekly critiques, students will expand their understanding of dramatic writing and narrative-making for film and TV, including adaptations. They will learn appropriate structure for each specific screen-writing form, and endeavor to apply their understanding of drama, character, theme, and structure to their chosen narrative project.
- Department: Film
- F 2:10 p.m.-4:40 p.m.
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Instructor:
Loren-Paul Caplin
CULPA: 2 Info - 3 points
CONTEMP CULTURE IN ARAB WORLD
This seminar, designed for seniors, aims to acquaint students with the notion and theoretical understanding of culture and to introduce them to a critical method by which they can study and appreciate contemporary culture in the Arab World. The seminar will survey examples of written and cinematic culture (fiction and autobiography), as well as music, dance, and literary criticism in the contemporary Arab world. Students will be reading novels, autobioghraphies and literary criticism, as well as watch films and listen to music as part of the syllabus. All material will be in translation. Films will be subtitled. Songs will be in Arabic.
- Department: Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies
- W 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
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Instructor:
Joseph A Massad
CULPA: 23 Wikipedia Info - 3 points
ANTICOLONIALISM
The age of colonialism, so it seems, is long over. Decolonization has resulted in the emergence of postcolonial polities and societies that are now, in many instances, two generations old. But is it clear that the problem of colonialism has disappeared? Almost everywhere in the postcolonial world the project of building independent polities, economies and societies have faltered, sometimes run aground. Indeed, one might say that the anti-colonial dream of emancipation has evaporated. Through a careful exploration of the conceptual argument and rhetorical style of five central anti-colonial texts—C.L.R. James’ The Black Jacobins, Mahatma Gandhi’s Hind Swaraj, Aimé Cesairé’s Discourse on Colonialism, Albert Memmi’s Colonizer and Colonized, and Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth—this course aims to inquire into the image of colonialism as a structure of dominant power, and the image of its anticipated aftermaths: What were the perceived ill-effects of colonial power? What did colonialism do to the colonized that required rectification? In what ways did the critique of colonial power (the identification of what was wrong with it) shape the longing for its anti-colonial overcoming?
- Department: Anthropology
- W 10:10 a.m.-noon
-
Instructor:
David Scott
CULPA: 6
h-index: 72
Info
- 4 points
AMERICAN POLITICS SEMINAR
POLIT PARTIES IN US POLITICS
Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Pre-registration is not permitted. Seminar in American Politics Seminar. Students who would like to register should join the electronic wait list. For list of topics and descriptions see: https://polisci.columbia.edu/content/undergraduate-seminars
- Department: Political Science
- T 10:10 a.m.-noon
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Instructor:
Shigeo Hirano
CULPA: 3
Info
- 4 points
AMERICAN POLITICS SEMINAR
BUREAUCRATIC POLITICS
Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Pre-registration is not permitted. Seminar in American Politics Seminar. Students who would like to register should join the electronic wait list. For list of topics and descriptions see: https://polisci.columbia.edu/content/undergraduate-seminars
- Department: Political Science
- W 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
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Instructor:
Michael Ting
CULPA: 4 Info - 4 points
AMERICAN POLITICS SEMINAR
20TH C AFR AMER POLIT THOUGHT
Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Pre-registration is not permitted. Seminar in American Politics Seminar. Students who would like to register should join the electronic wait list. For list of topics and descriptions see: https://polisci.columbia.edu/content/undergraduate-seminars
- Department: Political Science
- T 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
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Instructor:
Fredrick Harris
Wikipedia Info - 4 points
HIGHER EDUCATION AND INEQUALITY
Prerequisites: (SOCI UN1000) Higher education in the U.S. is going through a period of rapid change. State support is shrinking, student debt is increasing, full-time faculty are being replaced by adjuncts, and learning outcomes are difficult to measure, at best. This class will try to makes sense of these changes. Among other questions, it will ask whether higher education is a source of social mobility or a means of class reproduction; how the college experience differs by race, class, and type of college attended; how the economics of higher education have led to more expensive college and more student loans; and how we might make college better. We will consider several different points of view on the current state of U.S. higher education: that of students who apply to and attend college, that of colleges and universities, and that of society at large. As part of this course, students will conduct research on their own universities: Columbia College or Barnard College.
- Department: Sociology
- W 10:10 a.m.-noon
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Instructor:
Teresa Sharpe
CULPA: 14
Info
- 4 points
RACE&REPRESENTATION IN ASIAN AMER CINEMA
RACE&REPRSNTATN IN ASAM CINEMA
This seminar focuses on the critical analysis of Asian representation and participation in Hollywood by taking a look at how mainstream American cinema continues to essentialize the Asian and how Asian American filmmakers have responded to Hollywood Orientalist stereotypes. We will analyze various issues confronting the Asian American, including yellowface, white patriarchy, male and female stereotypes, the “model minority” myth, depictions of “Chinatowns,” panethnicity, the changing political interpretations of the term Asian American throughout American history, gender and sexuality, and cultural hegemonies and privileging within the Asian community.
- Department: Ethnicity and Race, Center for
- R 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
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Instructor:
Eric Gamalinda
CULPA: 9 Wikipedia Info - 4 points
LATIN MUSIC AND IDENTITY
LATIN MUSIC AND IDENITY
Latin music has had a historically strained relationship with mainstream music tastes, exploding in occasional boom periods, and receding into invisibility in others. What if this were true because it is a space for hybrid construction of identity that directly reflects a mixture of traditions across racial lines in Latin America? This course will investigate Latin musics transgression of binary views of race in Anglo-American society, even as it directly affects the development of pop music in America. From New Orleans jazz to Texas corridos, salsa, rock, and reggaeton, Latin music acts as both as a soundtrack and a structural blueprint for the 21st centurys multicultural experiment. There will be a strong focus on studying Latin musics political economy, and investigating the story it tells about migration and globalization.
- Department: Ethnicity and Race, Center for
- T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Edward Morales
Info - 4 points
ARABIC PRISON WRITING
This course studies the genealogy of the prison in Arab culture as manifested in memoirs, narratives, and poems. These cut across a vast temporal and spatial swathe, covering selections from the Quran, Sufi narratives from al-Halllaj oeuvre, poetry by prisoners of war: classical, medieval, and modern. It also studies modern narratives by women prisoners and political prisoners, and narratives that engage with these issues. Arabic prison writing is studied against other genealogies of this prism, especially in the West, to map out the birth of prison, its institutionalization, mechanism, and role. All readings for the course are in English translations.
- Department: Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies
- T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Muhsin Al-Musawi
CULPA: 8
Info
- 3 points
COLONIZATION/DECOLONIZATION
Prerequisites: Open to CSER majors/concentrators only. Others may be allowed to register with the instructors permission. This course explores the centrality of colonialism in the making of the modern world, emphasizing cross-cultural and social contact, exchange, and relations of power; dynamics of conquest and resistance; and discourses of civilization, empire, freedom, nationalism, and human rights, from 1500 to 2000. Topics include pre-modern empires; European exploration, contact, and conquest in the new world; Atlantic-world slavery and emancipation; and European and Japanese colonialism in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. The course ends with a section on decolonization and post-colonialism in the period after World War II. Intensive reading and discussion of primary documents.
- Department: Ethnicity and Race, Center for
- W 10:10 a.m.-noon
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Instructor:
Karl Jacoby
CULPA: 2 h-index: 8 Info - 4 points
SLAVERY/ABOLITION-ATLANTC WRLD
This seminar investigates the experiences of slavery and freedom among African-descended people living and laboring in the various parts of the Atlantic World. The course will trace critical aspects of these two major, interconnected historical phenomena with an eye to how specific cases either manifested or troubled broader trends across various slaveholding societies. The first half of the course addresses the history of slavery and the second half pertains to experiences in emancipation. However, since the abolition of slavery occurs at different moments in various areas of the Atlantic World, the course will adhere to a more thematic and less chronological structure, in its examination of the multiple avenues to freedom available in various regions. Weekly units will approach major themes relevant to both slavery and emancipation, such as racial epistemologies among slaveowners/employers, labor regimes in slave and free societies, cultural innovations among slave and freed communities, gendered discourses and sexual relations within slave and free communities, and slaves’ and free people’s resistance to domination. The goal of this course is to broaden students’ comprehension of the history of slavery and freedom, and to promote an understanding of the transition from slavery to freedom in the Americas as creating both continuities and ruptures in the structure and practices of the various societies concerned.
- Department: History
- T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Natasha J Lightfoot
CULPA: 5
Info
- 4 points
TOPICS IN AMERICAN STUDIES
GENDER HISTORY AND AMER FILM
Please refer to the Center for American Studies website for course descriptions for each section.
americanstudies.columbia.edu
- Department: American Studies
- T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Hilary-Anne Hallett
CULPA: 2 Info - 4 points
TOPICS IN AMERICAN STUDIES
LANGUAGES of AMERICA
Please refer to the Center for American Studies website for course descriptions for each section.
americanstudies.columbia.edu
- Department: American Studies
- W 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
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Instructor:
John H McWhorter
CULPA: 26
Wikipedia
Info
- 4 points
TOPICS IN AMERICAN STUDIES
SHAKESPEARE IN AMERICA
Please refer to the Center for American Studies website for course descriptions for each section.
americanstudies.columbia.edu
- Department: American Studies
- T 10:10 a.m.-noon
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Instructor:
James Stephen Shapiro
Info - 4 points
TOPICS IN AMERICAN STUDIES
SUPREME COURT IN AMER HISTORY
Please refer to the Center for American Studies website for course descriptions for each section.
americanstudies.columbia.edu
- Department: American Studies
- M 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
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Instructor:
Benjamin Rosenberg
CULPA: 1 Info - 4 points
TOPICS IN AMERICAN STUDIES
Tocqueville: Democratic Mind
Please refer to the Center for American Studies website for course descriptions for each section.
americanstudies.columbia.edu
- Department: American Studies
- R 10:10 a.m.-noon
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Instructor:
Mark Lilla
CULPA: 57
Wikipedia
Info
- 4 points
Psychology/Neuroscience Senior Thesis Ad
Advanced Research Seminar
The seminar component of the Psych/Neuro Senior Thesis Advanced Research program. Students admitted to the research program should plan to take this seminar in the spring of their junior year and in the fall and spring semesters of their senior year. Students are expected to be working in a lab as part of their participation in this program. In addition to supporting students throughout their independent research project, this seminar will introduce students to some of the big questions in the field through its connection with the Psychology Department Colloquium and will train students in reading and evaluating scientific research and communicating their own research findings.
- Department: Psychology
- W 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
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Instructor:
Alfredo Spagna
CULPA: 3
h-index: 15
Info
- 1-3 points
ADVANCED TOPICS RACE & ETHNICITY
Discusses theories of race and ethnicity, distinctions between prejudice, discrimination, and racism, and the intersectionality paradigm. Under instructors guidance students design a research proposal, conduct their own fieldwork and write a research paper on a sociological question relating to race and/or ethnicity.
- Department: Sociology @Barnard
- W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Mignon R Moore
CULPA: 9 h-index: 17 Info - 4 points
SOC JUSTICE & HUM RIGHTS
Corequisites: Students must have an internship related to social justice or human rights during This class is intended to complement and enhance the internship experience for students working in internships that relate to social justice and human rights during the Spring 2016 semester. This course will meet bi-weekly to provide an academic framing of the issues that students are working on and to provide an opportunity for students to analyze their internship experience.
- Department: Human Rights (HRTB)
- R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Widney Brown
CULPA: 4
Info
- 3 points
INDEPENDENT STUDY
Prerequisites: the department chairs permission. (Formerly R3932)
- Department: Visual Arts
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Instructor:
Matthew E Buckingham
Wikipedia Info -
Instructor:
David A Cruz
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Instructor:
Delphine A Fawundu
Wikipedia Info -
Instructor:
Jon Kessler
CULPA: 5 Wikipedia Info -
Instructor:
Naeem Mohaiemen
Wikipedia h-index: 8 Info -
Instructor:
Sable Smith
Wikipedia Info -
Instructor:
Rirkrit Tiravanija
Wikipedia Info -
Instructor:
Tomas Vu Daniel
CULPA: 4
Info
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Instructor:
Daphne Arthur
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Instructor:
Kenny Rivero
Info -
Instructor:
Miya Masaoka
Wikipedia Info - 1-3 points
Seeking Sanctuary in New York City
In a renewed age of anti-immigrant fervor, the last few years have seen attention focused on people seeking asylum – the process under international law by which people fleeing persecution can seek protection in a country not of their citizenship. New York has become a particular flashpoint with a large influx of asylum seekers, most of them from Latin America. Often, they have arrived on buses sent here by southern governors intending to make the border “problem” that of a so-called “sanctuary city.” How has New York responded? And how does this fit into the city’s long history of refuge?
This course will offer students an introduction to the theory, ethics, and history of the idea of international protection. We will look specifically at how Latin American citizens have engaged with the US asylum system over time and how this engagement has changed the shape of US immigration laws. We will study the origins of the ideas of international protection, who is understood to qualify and why, how the system has changed over time, and what these developments mean for a broader understanding of human rights across borders. We will also take a critical look at asylum, examine ideas of deservingness and innocence and their intersection with categories of race, class and gender, and question what it means for certain people to be constructed as victims and others to be seen as not eligible – or worthy – of protection.
This is an engaged pedagogy course. The class will be organized around a close collaboration with a NY legal organization that has taken on the work of representing many asylum seekers in the city. Students will learn the complexities of US asylum law and will work collectively to use this knowledge, while developing their research skills, to put together reports to be used in active asylum cases.
- Department: Human Rights (HRTB)
- WF 10:10 a.m.-noon
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Instructor:
Jennifer Trowbridge
Info - 5 points
The Native Northeast
This course provides an interdisciplinary perspective on Native peoples of present-day New York and New England and their interactions with colonial empires (French, Spanish, British, US). Most of the reading will be by Native authors. In order to provide a firm historical foundation for understanding the dynamics of Indigenous and colonial history our emphasis will be on the period between European settlement and the nineteenth century. Coverage will not be exhaustive; there are too many Native nations in this region for that to be possible. Our focus rather will be on major turning points in Native history which have become flashpoints for controversy among scholars and in the broader public sphere: the relationship between Native nations and Pilgrims, King Philip’s War, the so-called Indian Great Awakening, and others. The course will cover topics in literary and religious history, politics, law, and anthropology, and should appeal to students in any of those fields, while providing an introduction to the history and methods of Indigenous Studies.
HIST OF THE US-MEXIC0 BORDER
Beginning in the 1980s, border crossing became an academic rage in the humanities and the social sciences. This was a consequence of globalization, an historical process that reconfigured the boundaries between economy, society, and culture; and it was also a primary theme of post-modernist aesthetics, which celebrated playful borrowing of multiple and diverse historical references. Within that frame, interest in the US-Mexican border shifted dramatically. Since that border is the longest and most intensively crossed boundary between a rich and a poor country, it became a paradigmatic point of reference. Places like Tijuana or El Paso, with their rather seedy reputation, had until then been of interest principally to local residents, but they now became exemplars of post-modern “hybridity,” and were meant to inspire the kind of transnational scholarship that is required in today’s world. Indeed, the border itself became a metaphor, a movable imaginary boundary that marks ethnic and racial distinction in American and Mexican cities. This course is an introduction to the historical formation of the US-Mexican border.
- Department: Ethnicity and Race, Center for
- M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Claudio Lomnitz
CULPA: 3 Wikipedia Info - 4 points
THE CULTURE OF DEMOCRACY
The point is to examine democracy not as a political system, but as a historical phenomenon characterized by a specific culture: a body of ideas and values, stories and myths. This culture is not homogenous; it has a variety of historical manifestations through the ages but remains nonetheless cohesive. The objective is twofold: 1) to determine which elements in democratic culture remain fundamental, no matter what form they take in various historical instances; 2) to understand that the culture of democracy is indeed not abstract and transcendental but historical, with its central impetus being the interrogation and transformation of society. Special emphasis will be placed on the crisis of democratic institutions in the era of globalization and, as specific case-study in point, the democratic failure in the Mediterranean region in light of the challenges of the assembly movements (Spain, Greece, Arab Spring) and the current migrant/refugee crisis.
- Department: Classics
- R 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
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Instructor:
Stathis Gourgouris
CULPA: 4
Wikipedia
Info
- 3 points
ANIME EFFECT: JAPANESE MEDIA
Culture, technology, and media in contemporary Japan. Theoretical and ethnographic engagements with forms of mass mediation, including anime, manga, video, and cell-phone novels. Considers larger global economic and political contexts, including post-Fukushima transformations. Prerequisites: the instructor's permission.
- Department: Anthropology
- M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Marilyn Ivy
CULPA: 11
Wikipedia
Info
- 4 points
CUR CONTROV-PRIMATE BEHAV&ECOL
Prerequisites: EEEB UN1011 or the equivalent. Critical in-depth evaluation of selected issues in primate socioecology, including adaptationism, sociality, sexual competition, communication, kinship, dominance, cognition, and politics. Emphasizes readings from original literature.
- Department: Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology
- W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Marina Cords
CULPA: 19 Info - 4 points
Democracy and De-Democratization, Theory
Democracy & De-Democratiz
The concepts of democratic backsliding, regime cycles (between oligarchy and populism, democracy and dictatorship), hybrid regimes and reverse waves, were devised with regard to newly democratized and/or insufficiently institutionalized democratic regimes. Yet today even long consolidated, wealthy western democracies seem to be at risk. This course will focus on the case of the United States. While domestic and external threats to American constitutional democracy are not new, there is widespread concern today that both liberal constitutionalism and American democracy are at grave risk. Our inquiry will involve an in-depth study of the political theory and American politics literature on the relevant concepts and dynamics. In the first part of the course, we will discuss the basic concepts and theories regarding democracy, oligarchy, constitutionalism and regime cycles developed in classical and early modern political thought. The second part of the course will focus on the U.S., the oldest constitutional representative democracy and typically deemed the exemplar of a successfully consolidated democratic regime. We analyze the processes, dynamics, reversals and limits to democratization in the US focusing on key tipping points from the founding to the present. Our focus will be on four sets of factors and modes of explanation for the relevant shifts: constitutional, political, socio-cultural, and economic. We conclude with analysis of the contemporary conjuncture and current threats to American constitutional democracy.
- Department: American Studies
- M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Jean L Cohen
CULPA: 7 Wikipedia h-index: 63 Info - 4 points
Senior Pro Seminar
SENIOR PRO SEMINAR
This course is a seminar for seniors to either write a formal proposal for a capstone project or to begin the research process for a Senior Thesis, which will be written in the Spring semester. This interdisciplinary course provides the necessary structure needed to complete either goal. This will be an interactive class in which students are required to participate and actively engage in each meeting.
- Department: African American and African Diaspora
- W 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
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Instructor:
Farah Griffin
CULPA: 10
Wikipedia
Info
- 4 points
Life on Mars: Building a New Society in
Life on Mars: Society & S
This course explores the interdisciplinary challenges of establishing a human society on Mars. Students explore a number of challenges that are involved in reaching the Red Planet and setting up a functional social habitat for the long term. This includes both the numerous logistical hurdles of traveling to and surviving on Mars, as well as the social, political, and ethical considerations of establishing a new society on the planet. Through analysis and discussion of scientific research, social science texts, and popular media, students will gain a deep understanding of the physiological, psychological, and strategic challenges of long-duration space travel and human habitation on another planet.
The course is not scientific or overly technical in nature. Instead, the perspective being adopted is that of a social scientist seeking to understand how humans can travel to another planet and live together. The first half of the course focuses on the practical, physiological, and psychological challenges of traveling to and surviving on Mars while maintaining contact withEarth. In the first part of the course, students will study the unique environmental conditions of Mars, the health risks of space travel, and how to maintain communication and connectivity with Earth despite vast distances. Students will also engage with how sustainable living on Mars—through food, energy, and resource management—could shape the future of human expansion in space.
The second half delves into the complexities of building social, legal, and economic systems in a new extraterrestrial society. Students will critically evaluate how to create a self-sustaining, functional civilization on Mars. Given the social science focus of the class, there will be emphasis placed on topics such as governance, establishing social contracts and property rights, and building economic systems for an entirely new world.
This course is meant to attract a small group of 10-15 students interested in space exploration. The small size and intensive four-hour class format is intended to foster creative problem-solving and interdisciplinary thinking (see below for discussion of non-traditional format). By the end of the course, students will not only understand the practicalities of space colonization but also develop skills in envisioning and designing innovative solutions for humanity’s future beyond Earth.
- Department: Sociology
- M 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
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Instructor:
Sudhir A Venkatesh
CULPA: 11 Wikipedia Info - 4 points
GLOBAL HEALTH, POLITICS, AND SOCIETY
GLOBAL HEALTH, SOCIETY
What is global health? Where do global health disease priorities come from, and how do the ways that we understand disease shape how we respond to it? What happens when good ideas and good intentions go wrong? This course critically examines the politics of global health and its impact on local institutions and people. Drawing on social science research, the course will address three main themes: 1) how global health priorities are defined and constructed, 2) how our understandings of disease influence our response to that disease, and 3) how efforts to respond to disease intersect with people on the ground, sometimes in unexpected ways. We will examine the global health industry from the vantage point of different institutions and actors – international organizations, governments, local healthcare institutions, healthcare workers, and people living with or at risk of various illnesses like HIV/AIDS, malaria, cancer, and Ebola. A primary goal of this course is to help you to develop skills in critical thinking in relation to global health issues and their impact on society. Students will demonstrate their knowledge through individual writing, class discussion, presentations, and a final research project.