Peqod :: Classes - Columbia University Catalog of Classes

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.

M 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
Instructor: Sudhir A Venkatesh
CULPA: 11 Wikipedia Info
4 points

Details

SOCI UN3943

Crime and Policing

M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
Instructor: Gerard Torrats-Espinosa
h-index: 6 Info
4 points

Details

SOCI UN3983

Race, Discrimination, and Racial Inequal

Race, Dscrmttion, Rac Inq

R 10:10 a.m.-noon
4 points

Details

SOCI UN3986

WORKSHP ON WEALTH & INEQUALITY

Participants may elect to enroll in the 1-credit CWI independent study offered through the Sociology Department. CWI takes place Thursdays from 2-4pm in Knox Hall, room 509. The course ID for Fall 2025 is SOCI4043GU.

The Center for Wealth and Inequality (CWI), in this course, is a forum for students interested in social science topics broadly related to inequality. In particular, it will provide an opportunity for students to read and discuss the works presented in the weekly CWI seminar series, while also sharing and refining their own works in progress. The CWI seminar series is sponsored by Columbia University’s Institute for Social and Economic Research Policy (ISERP) and is devoted to the investigation of social and economic inequality. The seminar invites speakers from both within and outside of Columbia to present recent papers covering a wide range of topics pertaining to inequality, such as poverty, labor market behavior, education, and the family. The research topics and methodologies are at the cutting edge of the interdisciplinary study of wealth and inequality, as the CWI seminar invites speakers from multiple social science disciplines and fields. Past speakers include Annette Lareau, Adam Gamoran, Timothy Smeeding, Lisa Kahn, Mario Small, Rob Warren and Florencia Torche, among numerous others.

The primary preparation for these gatherings is to read the papers slated for presentation, whether written by an outside speaker or a student within the course. Students will meet to constructively critique these papers collectively, raising key questions and concepts for discussion and debate. One student will serve as the discussion leader each week by kicking off the dialogue. This student also will have the opportunity to prepare a review of the paper, if desired. When discussing CWI seminar papers, the product of each meeting will be a shortlist of pertinent questions for the visiting speaker, which participants will be encouraged to ask during the Q&A following each seminar. When focusing on student papers, participants will provide detailed comments geared towards supporting further development of our peers’ work. We regularly will be joined by the CWI presenters.

The spirit behind the student independent study is one of collective student growth and learning through semi-structured discussion. While the course will pose a relatively

R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
1 points

Details

SOCI GU4043

Queer Theory

This course surveys the relationship between sociology as a discipline and the body of thought, action and critique that coheres under the term queer theory. Many people understand these two projects to be constitutionally at odds. Sociology as a discipline concerns itself with the empirical study of, as Norbert Elias wrote, “the problem of human societies.” How we do this is distinct. Sociologists have a defined set of technical skills that make use of social categories and classifications. We organize individuals by behavior and identity, document diverse cultural milieus, and even attempt to quantify the demographic details of sexual identities, practices and communities. Queer theory, on the other hand, emerged as a field of academic thought in the early 1990’s, at the apex of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The urgency of the political moment demanded new analytical tools for thinking about gender, sexuality, medicine and bodies. Queer theorists took to task the restrictive categories of gender and sexual life that relegated gay men and lesbians to sociological studies of “deviant” people and practices, in favor of rich and pointed critiques of the organization of culture, institutions and politics that renders some people and practices deviant in the first place. Queer theorists document their suspicion of methods, of categories, and of knowledge practices themselves. Social science is often the target of such critiques.

So, is there actually a way to do something we might call queer sociology? Or is it, fundamentally, an oxymoron? As what we think of as data becomes “bigger” and ever more categorically precise, what use has sociology for queer theory? How can a body of thought that operates from an anti-categorical impulse inform empirical work that seeks, at least in some part, to identify and observe particular types of people and particular forms of social life? In this course, we will read a set of foundational texts in the queer theoretical tradition alongside sociology that makes use of queer phenomena, frameworks and world-making projects. Expect to cover topics like ephemera, ghosts, messy affect, political lesbianism, perversion and a variety of other things you don’t typically see on a sociology syllabus. Each week, we will survey a select set of orienting ideas from queer theory–the heterosexual matrix, heteronormativity, antidisciplinarity, and homonormativity–and examine the ways in which sociologists of sexuality aim