Prerequisites: L course: enrollment limited to 15 students. Completion of language requirement, third-year language sequence (W3300). Provides students with an overview of the cultural history of the Hispanic world, from eighth-century Islamic and Christian Spain and the pre-Hispanic Americas through the late Middle Ages and Early Modern period until about 1700, covering texts and cultural artifacts from both Spain and the Americas.
Prerequisites: L course: enrollment limited to 15 students. Completion of language requirement, third-year language sequence (W3300). Provides students with an overview of the cultural history of the Hispanic world, from eighth-century Islamic and Christian Spain and the pre-Hispanic Americas through the late Middle Ages and Early Modern period until about 1700, covering texts and cultural artifacts from both Spain and the Americas.
This course surveys cultural production of Spain and Spanish America from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries. Students will acquire the knowledge needed for the study of the cultural manifestations of the Hispanic world in the context of modernity. Among the issues and events studied will be the Enlightenment as ideology and practice, the Napoleonic invasion of Spain, the wars of Spanish American independence, the fin-de-siecle and the cultural avant-gardes, the wars and revolutions of the twentieth century (Spanish Civil War, the Mexican and Cuban revolutions), neoliberalism, globalization, and the Hispanic presence in the United States. The goal of the course is to study some key moments of this trajectory through the analysis of representative texts, documents, and works of art. Class discussions will seek to situate the works studied within the political and cultural currents and debates of the time. All primary materials, class discussion, and assignments are in Spanish. This course is required for the major and the concentration in Hispanic Studies.
This course surveys cultural production of Spain and Spanish America from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries. Students will acquire the knowledge needed for the study of the cultural manifestations of the Hispanic world in the context of modernity. Among the issues and events studied will be the Enlightenment as ideology and practice, the Napoleonic invasion of Spain, the wars of Spanish American independence, the fin-de-siecle and the cultural avant-gardes, the wars and revolutions of the twentieth century (Spanish Civil War, the Mexican and Cuban revolutions), neoliberalism, globalization, and the Hispanic presence in the United States. The goal of the course is to study some key moments of this trajectory through the analysis of representative texts, documents, and works of art. Class discussions will seek to situate the works studied within the political and cultural currents and debates of the time. All primary materials, class discussion, and assignments are in Spanish. This course is required for the major and the concentration in Hispanic Studies.
This course surveys cultural production of Spain and Spanish America from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries. Students will acquire the knowledge needed for the study of the cultural manifestations of the Hispanic world in the context of modernity. Among the issues and events studied will be the Enlightenment as ideology and practice, the Napoleonic invasion of Spain, the wars of Spanish American independence, the fin-de-siecle and the cultural avant-gardes, the wars and revolutions of the twentieth century (Spanish Civil War, the Mexican and Cuban revolutions), neoliberalism, globalization, and the Hispanic presence in the United States. The goal of the course is to study some key moments of this trajectory through the analysis of representative texts, documents, and works of art. Class discussions will seek to situate the works studied within the political and cultural currents and debates of the time. All primary materials, class discussion, and assignments are in Spanish. This course is required for the major and the concentration in Hispanic Studies.
Prerequisites: one philosophy course. A survey of Eurpoean social philosophy from the 18th to the 20th century, with special attention to theories of capitalism and the normative concepts (freedom, alienation, human flourishing) that inform them. Also: the relationship between civil society and the state.
Prerequisites: Organic II lab (CHEM BC3333, BC3335, or equivalent); Quantitative analysis lab (BC3338, BC3340, or equivalent); Biochemistry (CHEM BC3282y, CHEM C3501, or equivalent).
Theory and application of fundamental techniques for the isolation, synthesis and characterization of biological macromolecules including proteins, lipids, nucleotides and carbohydrates. Techniques include spectroscopic analysis, gel electrophoresis, chromatography, enzyme kinetics, immunoblotting, PCR, molecular cloning and cell culture, as well as modern laboratory instrumentation, such as UV-Vis, GC-MS and HPLC.
This undergraduate seminar is offered to students interested in the anthropological analysis of extractive economies and the social and political forms associated with them, as well as the arts through which they have been made the object of both investment and resistance. The course this semester will be focused on mining, and is organized along three axes: 1) mineral object; 2) socioeconomic form; and 3) aesthetics, with the latter including the arts of artisanal extraction, and literary, visual and media artistic practice.
This course will explore developing topics in mammalian reproductive biology. Using textbooks and primary literature sources we will explore the molecular and physiological nature of reproduction, including fertilization, assisted reproductive technologies, and physiological changes to the reproductive system during and after birth. These topics will be further discussed in the context of medicine and society, with a particular focus on healthcare disparities in local communities.
This course examines how societies grapple with the legacy of mass violence through an exploration of historical texts, memoirs, novels, films, textbooks, litigation, and media reports and debates. Focusing on case studies of the Herero Genocide, the Armenian genocide during WWI, and the Holocaust and “Comfort Women” during WWII, students will investigate the crime and its sequelae. We will explore how societies deal with skeletons in their closets (from engaging in a conspiracy of silence, trivialization, rationalization, and denial to acknowledgment and reparations); analyze texts of official apologies and non-apologies; survey responses of survivors and their descendants (with particular attention to post-memory, multidirectional memory, forgiveness, anger and resentment, and the pursuit of redress); and dissect public debates on modern day issues that recall past atrocities.
Prerequisites: CHEM BC3333, CHEM BC3271, and CHEM BC3338 Corequisites: CHEM BC3253 Multistep and multi-day experiments in organic and inorganic synthesis via advanced synthetic methods. Experiments include solution phase, solid state, and photochemical syntheses. Products will be analyzed and characterized by a variety of methods, including: IR, NMR, and UV-Vis spectroscopy, and also by polarimetry, chiral GC, and GC/MS.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required. Social and cultural history of London from the Great Fire of 1666 to the 1960s. An examination of the changing experience of urban identity through the commercial life, public spaces, and diverse inhabitants of London. Topics include 17th-century rebuilding, immigrants and emigrants, suburbs, literary culture, war, and redevelopment.
This upper-level lecture course provides an in-depth analysis of neuroscience at the molecular and cellular levels. Topics include: the structure and function of neuronal membranes, the ionic basis of the membrane potential and action potential, synaptic transmission, synaptic plasticity, and sensory transduction.
This course gives students an opportunity to learn about the history of Argentine culture by studying the fifty-year long career of Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), the most important Latin American writer of the twentieth century. Students must read complex texts, discuss them in Spanish, and write about them in Spanish. After taking this course, a student should be able to study or work in Argentina with confidence. Heritage Spanish-speakers will be able to hone their language skills as well since the course requires a good deal of writing. Thus these students as well will be able to study, travel, and work in Argentina and not find themselves in an alien culture.
Prerequisites: BIOL BC1502 + BIOL BC1503, and either BIOL BC1500 + BIOL BC1501 or NSBV BC1001 or permission from the instructor. Structure and function of neural membranes; ionic basis of membrane potential and action potential; synaptic transmission and neurochemistry; sensory transduction and processing; reflexes and spinal cord physiology; muscle structure and function; neuronal circuitry; and nervous system development.
Prerequisites: (PSYCH BC2141) and (PSYCH BC1001) This course presents an in depth investigation of anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and OCD-related disorders, from a primarily psychological perspective. The course will focus on the phenomenology, correlates, and contributing factors of these conditions. Students will also learn about the current psychological treatments for these disorders. Emphasis will be placed on recent empirical research findings.
The lyric has often been conceived of as timeless in its content and inwardly-directed in its mode of address, yet so many poems with lasting claim on our attention point unmistakably outward, addressing the particulars of their times. This course will examine the ways in which an array of 21st poets have embraced, indicted, and anatomized their cultural and historical contexts, diagnosing society’s ailments, indulging in its obsessions, and sharing its concerns. Engaging with such topics as race, class, war, death, trauma, feminism, pop culture and sexuality, how do poets adapt poetic form to provide meaningful and relevant insights without losing them to beauty, ambiguity, and music? How is pop star Rihanna a vehicle for discussing feminism and isolation? What does it mean to write about Black masculinity after Ferguson? In a time when poetry’s cultural relevancy is continually debated in academia and in the media, how can today’s poets use their art to hold a mirror to modern living? This class will explore how writers address present-day topics in light of their own subjectivity, how their works reflect larger cultural trends and currents, and how critics as well as poets themselves have reflected on poetry’s, and the poet’s, changing social role. In studying how these writers complicate traditional notions of what poetry should and shouldn’t do, both in terms of content and of form, students will investigate their own writing practices, fortify their poetic voices, and create new works that engage directly and confidently with the world in which they are written.
This course concerns the regulation of energy, energy resources, and energy facilities. Among the topics will be the regulation of rates and services; the roles of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the state public utility commissions; and the interaction with environmental law. Attention will be devoted to energy resources (such as oil, natural gas and coal) and to generating, transmission and distribution facilities. The current and future roles of renewable energy, energy efficiency, and nuclear energy will receive special attention, as will the regulation and deregulation of electricity.
Prerequisites: BC1001 and BC1128/1129 Developmental (lab and lecture taken together) or BC1129 (only lecture). Or permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15 students. Analysis of human development during the fetal period and early infancy. Review of effects of environmental factors on perinatal perceptual, cognitive, sensory-motor, and neurobehavioral capacities, with emphasis on critical conditions involved in both normal and abnormal brain development. Other topics include acute and long term effects of toxic exposures (stress, smoking, and alcohol) during pregnancy, and interaction of genes and the environment in shaping the developing brain of high-risk infants, including premature infants and those at risk for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
Through special attention to translation method and practice, this course aims to develop a solid foundation on which to build the full set of competences required to become thoughtful, alert, self-critical translator while extending and improving the students competence of Spanish through complex translation tasks of a wide range of texts presented with a progressive overall structure and thematic organization. With a professional approach, it focuses on translation as a cross-cultural and crosslinguistic communicative activity that integrates areas such as interlanguage pragmatics, discourse analysis and transfer.
Vertebrates have been around for millions of years. In that time, they have evolved morphological attributes to live in the sea, on land, and in the air; hunt or scavenge food; escape from predation; and more. Yet despite the vast differences that have evolved, vertebrates (including humans) share many common traits. In this course, we will explore the evolution of the vertebrate body plan, focusing specifically on the evolution of form and function in many body systems. We will examine the evolution of homologous structures and identify how vertebrates have evolved a wide array of adaptations within the constraints of evolution. Though anatomy courses necessitate memorization of some key structures, we will focus more on the function of those structure, the broad principles of evolution, and the research techniques used in the related field of functional morphology rather than memorizing large lists of terms.
This seminar will explore neurobehavioral development throughout pubertal and adolescent stages of development. Specifically, topics will include how neuroendocrine changes induce pubertal onset, structural and functional changes in the adolescent brain, and how these developmental changes influence normal and abnormal psychophysiological processes.
This class explores the relationship between water and society in history. How did water shape human and environmental histories around the globe? On one hand, oceans and rivers affected the characteristics and resources of different civilizations. Throughout history, every community depended on access to water resources, developed local practices of water management, and produced cultural and scientific understandings of “water.” On the other hand, human attempts at regulating water flows aimed at controlling life itself, as water is essential for life. Hydro-power, before being a renewable source energy, required exerting political power over humans and nature alike.
Grounded in the interdisciplinary approach of the environmental humanities, this class will explore the politics of water management thanks to a wide range of case studies. Starting with the first environmental history of the Mediterranean in the early modern period, we will focus on the last two centuries to examine the roots of the current environmental crisis. By following the politics of water flows, the class will introduce students to key themes in global environmental history, such as the role of geography, climate, race, energy, labor, technology, cities, animals, diseases, and empires in the transformation of human societies. Finally, the class provides foundational historical knowledge to understand the importance of water in contemporary debates about environmental justice and climate change.
Prerequisites: (PSYC BC1001) Permission of the instructor. Review of current literature from experimental social psychology pertaining to stereotyping and prejudice. Topics include: functions and costs of stereotyping, the formation and maintenance of stereotypes, and stereotype change. Recent research concerning the role of cognitive processes in intergroup perception will be emphasized.
Prerequisites: BC1001 and BC1129 Developmental Psychology or permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 20 senior majors. Barnard students receive priority. Examines adolescent development in theory and reality. Focuses on individual physiological, sexual, cognitive, and affective development and adolescent experiences in their social context of family, peers, school, and community. Critical perspectives of gender, race and ethnicity, sexuality, and teen culture explored.
The First World War has often been thought of as a European War, but it was fought on four continents and reverberated around the world. This course examines the global nature and impact of the war, paying particular attention to the way it destabilized or affected imperial, national, and ethnic/racial solidarities and hierarchies, and ushered in new transnational norms, hazards, movements and practices. Students will read selected recent historical work on the war, and will delve into and contextualize a wide array of primary materials: diplomatic treaties or declarations; collective petitions or claims; combatants’ diaries; observer accounts; official and humanitarian investigations; and novels, poetry, photography, and paintings. This seminar will function as a collaboration among its members, with the aim of producing not only individual work but a handbook of primary materials for a lecture-course version of the course which will be offered as a Global Core in 2023-4.
Prerequisites: BC1001 and one of the following: Neurobiology, Behavioral Neuroscience, Fundamentals of Neuropsychology, or permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 20 students. Recent advancements in neuroscience raise profound ethical questions. Neuroethics integrates neuroscience, philosophy, and ethics in an attempt to address these issues. Reviews current debated topics relevant to the brain, cognition, and behavior. Bioethical and philosophical principles will be applied allowing students to develop skill in ethical analysis.
This course is a seminar designed to enhance students understanding of the methods used in primary research to inform how we study and understand the neural basis of both normative and pathological behavior in humans through the use of model systems. Through this course students will read and discuss primary research papers, debate the merits, limitations, and applicability of various approaches for advancing our understanding of the human condition, gain skills in presentation of scientific data, and a richer understanding of the scientific process. Topics covered will include the study of depression, anxiety, aging, memory, evolution, developmental disorders, and genetics (among others).
Perception is often taken as the most striking proof of something factual: when we perceive something, we interpret it as real. In this seminar we will challenge this assumption by taking into consideration states of altered perception, wherein the brain creates perceptual experiences that do not correspond to sensory input. Specifically, we will review a number of experiments showing changes in brain activity accompanying illusions, hallucinations, and dreaming across sensory modalities (i.e., vision, hearing, touch), and in both clinical and non-clinical populations. We will examine the similarities and differences between these states of altered perception both at the level of phenomenology and underlying biological mechanisms, specifically focusing on neural oscillations. Using the latest research findings in clinical, cognitive, and computational neuroscience, this seminar offers a great opportunity to learn more about how the brain creates perceptual experiences and why sometimes we perceive something that isn’t real.
Prerequisites: PSYC BC1001 and one other Psychology course. Enrollment limited to 15 students. Permission of the instructor is required. An examination of the scientific study of the domestic dog. Emphasis will be on the evolutionary history of the species; the dogs social cognitive skills; canid perceptual and sensory capacities; dog-primate comparative studies; and dog-human interaction.
This course is designed to provide students with a comprehensive overview of theoretical concepts underlying GIS systems and to give students a strong set of practical skills to use GIS for sustainable development research. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are a system of computer software, data and analysis methods used to create, store, manage, digital information that allow us to create maps and dynamic models to analyze the physical and social processes of the world. Through a mixture of lectures, readings, focused discussions, and hands-on exercises, students will acquire an understanding of the variety and structure of spatial data and databases, gain knowledge of the principles behind raster and vector based spatial analysis, and learn basic cartographic principles for producing maps that effectively communicate a message. Student will also learn to use newly emerging web based mapping tools such as Google Earth, Google Maps and similar tools to develop on-line interactive maps and graphics. The use of other geospatial technologies such as the Global Positioning System will also be explored in this class. Case studies examined in class will draw examples from a wide ranges of GIS applications developed to assist in the development, implementation and evaluation of sustainable development projects and programs. On completion of the course, students will: 1. use a variety of GIS software programs to create maps and reports; 2. develop a sound knowledge of methods to search, obtain, and evaluate a wide variety of spatial data resources; 3. develop skills needed to determine best practices for managing spatial data resources; 4. use GIS to analyze the economic, social and environmental processes underlying the concept of building a sustainable world; 5. Gain an understanding of the limits of these technologies and make assessments of uncertainty associated with spatial data and spatial analysis models. Offered in the fall and spring.
Prerequisites: Open to Barnard College History Senior Majors. Individual guided research and writing in history and the presentation of results in seminar and in the form of the senior essay. See Requirements for the Major for details.
Prerequisites: BC1001, BC1127/1129, BC2156, or permission of the instructor. Seniors are given priority. This course provides an overview of psychological intervention processes in the field of developmental disabilities. Course content includes discussions of clinical and ethical issues related to diagnosis and treatment, and in-depth review of procedures used to teach appropriate behavior repertoires to individuals with developmental disabilities such as Autism Spectrum Disorders.
Design project planning, written and oral technical communication, the origin and role of standards, engineering ethics, and practical aspects of engineering as a profession, such as career development and societal and environmental impact. Generally taken fall of senior year just before ELEN E3390.
Prerequisites: Required: at least a semester of calculus and physics; any 1000-level or 2000-level EESC course. Computer models are essential for understanding the behavior of complex natural systems in geosciences. This course is an introduction to writing computer models to simulate Earth processes. Students will learn methods for numerical modeling of a variety of geoscience topics, such as nonlinear systems of air chemistry, ocean currents, atmospheric dispersion, and more. Simulations will be created by learning to program with a user-friendly language (Python). Student learning will be facilitated through a combination of lectures, in-class exercises, homework assignments and a final project on a student-selected topic.
This course seeks to approach the study of music and society by comparatively studying repertories from different parts of the world, how the history of ideas and methods of studying such repertoires shaped them, the practices that constitute them and the ways they are understood and used by different peoples. Central to this course is the interrelationship between the constitution of a repertoire and the history of the construction of knowledge about it.
Prerequisites: Permission of instructor given at first class meeting. Studies the art and practice of designing sound and scoring music for dramatic performance. Students study the relationship between concert and incidental music, and read plays toward the production of a score for live theatre. Students also read broadly in the fields of sound, music, acoustics, and the cultural analysis of sound as a component of performance. Background in music or composition not essential. .
What does it mean to be 20 years old in our rapidly changing, interconnected world? There are more youth (aged 15-25) in the world today than at any other time in history, with the majority living in the developing world. They approach adulthood as the world confronts seismic shifts in the geopolitical order, in the nature and future of work, and in the ways we connect with each other, express identity, engage politically, and create communities of meaning. What unique challenges and opportunities confront young people after decades of neoliberal globalization? What issues are most pressing in developing nations experiencing a “youth bulge” and how do they compare to developed nations with rapidly aging populations? How do young people envision their futures and the future of the world they are inheriting? This course will examine recent scholarship while engaging the young people in the class to define the agenda and questions of the course, and to conduct their own research. This course is part of the Global Core curriculum. “Global 20” complements a new research project of the Committee on Global Thought, “Youth in a Changing World,” which investigates from the perspective of diverse participants and of young people themselves, the most pressing issues confronting young people in the changing world today. The course will serve as an undergraduate “lab” for the project, and among other involvements, students in the course will help conceive, plan, and take part in a NYC-wide “Youth Think-In” sponsored by the CGT during the Spring 2018 semester. Within the course, students will become “regional experts” and examine the primary themes of the class through the prism of specific areas or nations of their choosing. A final class project includes a “design session” that will consider how universities might better train and empower youth to confront the challenges and embrace the opportunities of our interconnected world of the 21stcentury.
Antimicrobial resistant bacterial infections were estimated to account for 1.27 million deaths worldwide in 2019. The goal of the seminar is to provide an in-depth analysis of this ongoing threat. Discussions will include the molecular mechanisms, epidemiology of transmission and the consequences of antimicrobial resistant infections. It will also cover current efforts to reduce the spread and emergence of these difficult to treat pathogens, both in the community and the healthcare setting.
Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 12 students. Permission of instructor given at first class meeting. Introduction to designing for the theatre. The course will focus on set design, developing skills in script analysis, sketching, model making, storyboarding and design presentation. Some investigation into theatre architecture, scenic techniques and materials, and costume and lighting design.
UN3405 enables students to hone and perfect their reading and writing skills while improving their ability to express and organize thoughts in French. In this engaging advanced language class, students are exposed to major texts in fields as diverse as journalism, sociology, anthropology, politics, literature, philosophy and history. Stimulating class discussions, targeted reviews of key grammatical points in context, and an array of diverse writing exercises all contribute to strengthen students’ mastery of the French language. This course also works as a bridge class between Intermediate French II and courses that focus on French and Francophone cultures, history and literature (such as 3409 and 3410). Students who take this class will be fully prepared to take advanced content classes or spend a semester in a Francophone country. This class is required for the French major and minor.
UN3405 enables students to hone and perfect their reading and writing skills while improving their ability to express and organize thoughts in French. In this engaging advanced language class, students are exposed to major texts in fields as diverse as journalism, sociology, anthropology, politics, literature, philosophy and history. Stimulating class discussions, targeted reviews of key grammatical points in context, and an array of diverse writing exercises all contribute to strengthen students’ mastery of the French language. This course also works as a bridge class between Intermediate French II and courses that focus on French and Francophone cultures, history and literature (such as 3409 and 3410). Students who take this class will be fully prepared to take advanced content classes or spend a semester in a Francophone country. This class is required for the French major and minor.
Prerequisites: Some design experience is helpful, though not required. Enrollment limited to 12 students. Studio-based course explores the main elements of theatrical design: sets, costumes, lighting, and sound through objects, materials, theatrical and non-theatrical environments. Students examine these design elements as both individual and interrelated components within a performance. Fulfills one course in Design requirement for Theatre/Drama and Theatre Arts majors. Fulfills one of three courses in performance fields for Theatre/Drama and Theatre Arts majors: design.
Introduction to drafting, engineering graphics, computer graphics, solid modeling, and mechanical engineering design. Interactive computer graphics and numerical methods applied to the solution of mechanical engineering design problems.
This course offers an in-depth examination of depressive disorders, including major depressive disorder, persistant depressive disorder, post-partum depression, premenstrual dysmorphic disorder, and pediatric depression. Topics include historical perspectives, current understanding of diagnoses and symptoms, neural changes associated with the disorders, and research on effective treatments. Emphasis will be placed on the impact of depressive disorders on families and communities, as well as gender and cultural differences in diagnosis, treatment and outcomes.
This class provides an introduction to the history of France and of the francophone world since the Middle Ages. It initiates students to the major events and themes that have shaped politics, society, and culture in France and its former colonies, paying special attention to questions of identity and diversity in a national and imperial context. Modules include a combination of lecture and seminar-style discussion of documents (in French).
This course is part of a two-course sequence and is a core requirement the French and Francophone Studies major.
Computer-aided analysis of general loading states and deformation of machine components using singularity functions and energy methods. Theoretical introduction to static failure theories, fracture mechanics, and fatigue failure theories. Introduction to conceptual design and design optimization problems. Design of machine components such as springs, shafts, fasteners, lead screws, rivets, welds. Modeling, analysis, and testing of machine assemblies for prescribed design problems. Problems will be drawn from statics, kinematics, dynamics, solid modeling, stress analysis, and design optimization.
Broader impact of computers. Social networks and privacy. Employment, intellectual property, and the media. Science and engineering ethics. Suitable for nonmajors.
This class offers a survey of major works of French and francophone literature from the Middle Ages to the present. Emphasis will be placed on formal and stylistic elements of the works read and on developing the critical skills necessary for literary analysis. Works will be placed in their historical context.
Examination of human rights within the context of international migration. The course covers topics such as citizenship, state sovereignty, border control, asylum-seekers, refugees, and undocumented immigrants. (Cross-listed by the Human Rights Program.)
Corequisites: PHILV3413 Required Discussion Section (0 points). Advanced introduction to classical sentential and predicate logic. No previous acquaintance with logic is required; nonetheless a willingness to master technicalities and to work at a certain level of abstraction is desirable.
Prerequisites: (ECON UN3211 or ECON UN3213) and (MATH UN1201 or MATH UN1207) and STAT UN1201 Modern econometric methods; the general linear statistical model and its extensions; simultaneous equations and the identification problem; time series problems; forecasting methods; extensive practice with the analysis of different types of data.
Prerequisites: VIAR UN2420 or VIAR UN2430 note that VIAR UN2430 was formerly R3420. The objective of the course is to provide students with an interdisciplinary link between drawing, photography and printmaking through an integrated studio project. Students will use drawing, printmaking and collage to create a body of work to be presented in a folio format. In the course, students develop and refine their drawing sensibility, and are encouraged to experiment with various forms of non-traditional printmaking. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.
This course examines a diverse selection of social and aesthetic responses to the impacts of modernization and industrialization in nineteenth-century Europe. Using works of art criticism, fiction, poetry, and social critique, the seminar will trace the emergence of new understandings of collective and individual experience and their relation to cultural and historical transformations. Readings are drawn from Friedrich Schiller's Letters On Aesthetic Education, Mary Shelley's The Last Man, Thomas Carlyle's "Signs of the Time," poetry and prose by Charles Baudelaire, John Ruskin's writings on art and political economy, Flora Tristan's travel journals, J.-K. Huysmans's Against Nature, essays of Walter Pater, Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy and other texts.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor, given at first class meeting. This course explores the role of the stage manager and production manager in theatrical production. Students undertake hands-on exercises to develop the practical and collaborative skills essential to working both as a stage manager and production manager--script analysis; production timeline and rehearsal management; technical rehearsal; budgeting; working with directors and designers; working with unions; health and safety codes; house management; box office.
Introduction to the mechanics of solids with an emphasis on mechanical engineering applications. Stress tensor, principal stresses, maximum shear stress, stress equilibrium, infinitesimal strain tensor, Hooke’s law, boundary conditions. Introduction to the finite element method for stress analysis. Static failure theories, safety factors, fatigue failure. Assignments include finite element stress analyses using university-provided commercial software.
Examination of the development of U.S. carceral systems and logics from the late 18th century through the present. Through course readings and class discussion, students will explore the changes and continuities in technologies of punishment and captivity over time, interrogating how the purpose and political economy of captivity and policing shifted over time, and analyzing the relationship between carceral institutions and constructions of race, gender, and sexuality.
The ubiquity of computers and networks in business, government, recreation, and almost all aspects of daily life has led to a proliferation of online sensitive data: data that, if used improperly, can harm the data subjects. As a result, concern about the use, ownership, control, privacy, and accuracy of these data has become a top priority. This seminar course focuses on both the technical challenges of handling sensitive data, the privacy implications of various technologies, and the policy and legal issues facing data subjects, data owners, and data users.
A preliminary design for an original project is a prerequisite for the capstone design course. Will focus on the steps required for generating a preliminary design concept. Included will be a brainstorming concept generation phase, a literature search, incorporation of multiple constraints, adherence to appropriate engineering codes and standards, and the production of a layout drawing of the proposed capstone design project in a Computer Aided Design (CAD) software package. Note: MECE students only.
Prerequisites: VIAR UN2420 (Formerly R3402) Continues instruction and demonstration of further techniques in intaglio. Encourages students to think visually more in the character of the medium, and personal development is stressed. Individual and group critiques. Portfolio required at end. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.
This course explores human factors in computer security and privacy, primarily through in-class activities and discussions, research readings, and a course research project. In this course, we discuss fundamental concepts in the field of Usable Security and Privacy, including why we, as computer scientists, must understand users' security and privacy perceptions, experiences, and contexts in order to design and deploy security and privacy mechanisms. We explore both classical and current-day research, covering topics like usable authentication, developers as a user group, security and privacy advice for the "general population," user perceptions of and reactions to (in)security on the web, and security and privacy for vulnerable users. Throughout our study of research topics, we also cover human-centered research methodology (and the ethical application of these methods), focusing on interviews as a methodology for the final project. Homework assignments include reading, short writing assignments, and data analysis. Students propose and complete a course project, which will be a mini research project on a usable security and privacy topic of their choice.
This lecture class introduces the notion of global contemporary art through the history of exhibitions, chiefly biennials and other large-scale endeavors, and principal agents behind them. On the one hand, the course considers exhibitions as a crucial tool of cultural diplomacy, which seek to position and/or reposition cities, regions, and even entire nations or “peoples” on the international scene. Thus, we will explore how the artistic interests vested in exhibition-making intersect with other—political, economic, ideological, and cultural—interests. We will consider those intersections paying special attention to the shifts in political relations and tensions during and after the Cold War, including the moment of decolonization in Africa; the moment commonly understood as “globalization” and associated with the expansion of the neoliberal capitalism after 1989; and, finally, the current moment of the planetary crisis. This expansive view of the “global contemporary art” will allow us to distinguish different impetuses behind internationalism and globalism that not only seek to establish hegemony, artistic or otherwise, but also look for the means to forge transnational dialogues and solidarities. On the other hand, this class seeks to illuminate how certain artistic idioms and approaches developed after World War II achieved primacy that influences artistic production to this day. To this end, we will examine the rise of a “visionary curator” as a theorist and tastemaker. We will also explore how more recent exhibitions have sought to expand the geography of the “canonized” post-WWII art movements and valorize artistic production conceived outside of the so-called “West.”
In addition to weekly brief writing assignments (150–300 words each), both in and outside of class, the students in the course will reconceive the installation of one of MoMA’s permanent collection galleries (1940s-70s or 1970s-present) and produce a podcast that provides the rationale for the reinstallation in form of dialogue.
Prerequisites: RUSS V3430 or the instructor's permission. This course is designed to help students who speak Russian at home, but have no or limited reading and writing skills to develop literary skills in Russian. THIS COURSE, TAKEN WITH RUSS V3431, MEET A TWO YEAR FOREIGN LANGUAGE REQUIREMENT. Conducted in Russian.
Prerequisites: VIAR UN2430 (Formerly R3412) Printmaking II: Relief continues instruction and demonstration of further techniques in woodcut. Encourages students to think visually more in the character of the medium, and personal development is stressed. Individual and group critiques. Portfolio required at end. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.
Prerequisites: Admission by application through the Barnard Political Science Department only. Enrollment limited to 16 students. Requires POLS 1011 (Political Theory) or equivalent. This colloquium examines how the law can participate in the justification of various forms of violence, exclusion, and inequality. It focuses on the power of law to determine which subjects get recognized as persons entitled to rights. Possible topics include slavery, migration, gender, sexual orientation, disability, homelessness, and nonhuman animals.
From Nietzsche’s proclamation of the death of God to the horror of the trenches, the turn of the twentieth century appears as a moment when the status of the human needed total reconsideration. Such philosophical and cultural anxieties make their way on stage provocatively in this period. This course dives deeply into the vast, diverse, and complex theatre cultures of London and New York in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, framing it in light of the period’s deep tensions about the human condition propelled by the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859. We will read theatre textually, materially, and in conversation with scientific discourses of the time, covering a range of social, political, biopolitical, and existentialist questions.
Prerequisites: VIAR R2440. (Formerly R3414) Printmaking II: Silkscreen continues instruction and demonstration of further techniques in silkscreen. Encourages students to think visually more in the character of the medium, and personal development is stressed. Individual and group critiques. Portfolio required at end. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.
This course will examine key German literary texts in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Texts will be examined in a historical and social perspective, with occasional excursions into
related musical and artistic movements. Texts by Wedekind, Kafka, Thomas Mann, Irmgard
Keun, Bertolt Brecht, Paul Celan, Thomas Bernhard, Ingeborg Bachmann, W. G. Sebald and
Emine Özdamar.
This course will be taught in German.
Prerequisites: Third-year bridge course (W3300), and introductory surveys (W3349, W3350). This course will read Venezuela backwards in films, poems, novels and essays, from the present-tense struggle over the legacy of chavismo to the early days of independence. The constant thread will be the conflict between development and nature with special attention to natural resources and eco-critical approaches.
Prerequisites: PSYC UN1001, and the instructors permission.
A systematic review of the evolution language covering the theory of evolution, conditioning theory, animal communication, ape language experiments, infant cognition, preverbal antecedents of language and contemporary theories of language.
New York City is made up of more than 400 neighborhoods. The concept of neighborhoods in cities has had many meanings and understandings over time. Equally complex is the concept of community used to describe the people attached to or defined by neighborhood. While neighborhood can be interpreted as a spatial, social, political, racial, ethnic, or even, economic unit; community often refers to the group of stakeholders (i.e. residents, workers, investors) whose interests directly align with the conditions of their environment. Community development is “a process where these community members come together to take collective action and generate solutions to common problems” that result from the changing contexts in their neighborhoods. Using a variety of theories and approaches, residents organize themselves or work with community development practitioners on the ground to obtain safe, affordable housing, improve the public realm, build wealth, get heard politically, develop human capital, and connect to metropolitan labor and housing markets. To address the ever-changing contexts of neighborhoods, community development organizations are taking on new roles and adapting (in various cases) to larger forces within the city, region and nation such as disinvestment, reinvestment, increased cultural diversity, an uncertain macroeconomic environment, and changes in federal policy. For more than a century, city-dwellers—and especially New Yorkers—have been tackling these challenges. This course will examine both historic and contemporary community building and development efforts, paying special attention to approaches which were shaped by New York City. This urban center, often described as a “city of neighborhoods,” has long been a seedbed for community-based problem-solving inventions. The course will focus on the theories (why?), tools (how?), and actors (who?) within the field of community development practice and is organized around important sectors (housing, econom
This seminar course will take a deep dive into the complete works of Christopher Marlowe, the short-lived but massively influential playwright and poet of the 1580s and 1590s. Marlowe is best known for his innovative plays, including
Tamburlaine
(in two parts),
The Jew of Malta
,
Doctor Faustus
, and
Edward II
. We will examine these alongside the lesser known
The Massacre at Paris
and
Dido Queen of Carthage,
his poetry (including the erotic “epyllion”
Hero and Leander
), his translations from Lucan and Ovid, and the archival traces of his controversial life.
Admission to the seminar will be by application; preference will be given to English majors in their senior and junior years, but all are welcome to apply.
This course examines the evolution of pacifist thought in literature from the interwar years to the dawn of the atomic age. It seeks to study the literature of twentieth-century pacifism as a response to expanding technologies of modern warfare. The course asks the following questions, among others: What shape does pacifist thought take in the atomic age, and how does it compare with interwar pacifism? What similarities or differences are discernible? What role do literary representations of modern warfare play in the evolution of pacifist thought? Does pacifism gain persuasive power through these representations, or do they lay bare its limits? How might one understand pacifism’s conceptual relation to nonviolence, anti-war resistance, and anti-militarism?
The course begins with works by pacifist writers in the interwar years: Bertrand Russell,
Why Men Fight
(1917); the correspondence between Einstein and Freud in 1932; Aldous Huxley, “What Are You Going to Do About It?” (1936) and
Eyeless in Gaza
(1936); Virginia Woolf,
Three Guineas
(1938) and “Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid” (1940); Vera Brittain, “Women and Peace” (1940). The course then considers the evolution of pacifism in the shadow of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, focusing on novels, memoirs, essays, short stories, and films, including the following works: Aldous Huxley,
Ape and Essence
(1948); M. K. Gandhi,
For Pacifists
(1949); Pearl Buck,
Command the Morning
(1959); Alfred Coppel,
Dark December
(1960); Masuji Ibuse,
Black Rain
(1965); Kenzaburo Oe
, Hiroshima Notes
(1965) and
Fire from the Ashes
, ed. (1985); Anand Patwardhan,
War and Peace
(2002, documentary); Howard Zinn (ed.),
The Power of Nonviolence
(2002).
The course encourages students to view selected films probing pacifist and anti-war themes alongside literary and philosophical texts, with a view to grasping the themes’ adaptability across various genres. Students must apply to enrol in the seminar, providing information about year, school, relevant prior coursework, and reasons for wanting to take the course. Students from all disciplines are welcome to apply; prior coursework in literature is strongly recommended.
Working memory is our ability to retain information in mind in the absence of sensory stimuli. In this course we will gain a more thorough understanding of what working memory is and how the brain supports it.
This seminar will provide a broad survey of how principles of cognition are represented
in music and the ways music has been used to study those principles in the psychology
and neuroscience literature.
From a cognitive and operational point of view, this course aims to reflect on the theoretical and, mainly, practical limits of traditional grammar explanations, contributing with a new meaningful, experiential and representational understanding of Spanish as a human mean of communication. Within this framework, some of the most representative aspects of the grammar of Spanish will be studied from a fully practical perspective, favoring the comparison with the grammar of English. In each case, the reflection will lead to turn the traditional rules and their exceptions, into operational laws without exceptions, as well as to highlight the natural logic underlying every single grammar decision in the use of language.
PSYC BC1129/2129 (with or without lab) as well as permission of the instructor.
The Barnard Toddler Center provides the focus for this seminar and research in applied developmental psychology, an amalgam of developmental, educational, and clinical psychology. The seminar integrates theory and research and for AY 20-21 will use daily recordings of the toddler sessions as the centerpiece for understanding early development. The unique context of Covid19 will be used to understand risks in development, especially for vulnerable children and families. Second term students will also conduct research on parenting during the pandemic.
This seminar examines two intertwined propositions. One is the undisputable fact that the global HIV/AIDS pandemic is ongoing and that the disease continues to shape the way artists and activists grapple with public health, national policy, and medical injustice. The other is my own polemic-in-formation, which is that the eruption of AIDS in the 1980s was
the
threshold event that inaugurated what is now understood to be “the contemporary” within the art world. Rather than periodize the start of “the contemporary” with the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, as has become conventional, we will investigate how the AIDS crisis precipitated a sudden urgency that more decisively marks this transition, in particular around the promiscuous inclusion of non-fine art forms such as demonstration posters, zines, and handmade quilts. We will read foundational texts on HIV/AIDS organizing and look at interventions with graphic design, wheat-pasting, ashes action protests, body maps, embroidery, performance-based die-ins, voguing, film/video, and photography.
We will consider: the inextricability of queer grief, anger, love, and loss; lesbian care; the trap of visibility; spirituality and death; activist exhaustion; the role played by artists of color within ACT-UP; and dis/affinities across the US, Latin America, and South Africa. Our investigations will be bookended by two critical exhibitions,
Witness: Against Our Vanishing
(Artists Space, 1989) and
Exposé-es
(Palais de Tokyo, 2023). Authors and artists/collectives include: Aziz + Cuchar, Bambanani Women’s Group, Felicano Centurion, Douglas Crimp, Ben Cuevas, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Darrel Ellis, fierce pussy, Elisabeth Lebovici, José Leonilson, Nicolas Moufarrege, Marlon Riggs, Matthew Wong, and the Visual AIDS archive. We will conclude with feminist, queer, and collaborative artistic work made during the (also ongoing) Covid-19 pandemic. In small groups, students will lead discussions of our texts and the final project will be a collectively curated virtual exhibition.
This course explores the intersection of the French language, culture, and environmental issues, using readings, discussions, multimedia resources, and projects to enhance language skills. Students will study and debate topics such as climate change, sustainability, and conservation within the Francophone world, while expanding their vocabulary and improving their ability to analyze and discuss complex issues in French.
Students will apply their knowledge through hands-on assignments and projects, engaging with practical environmental challenges. They will also interact directly with environmental professionals through guest speakers, deepening their understanding of these issues and gaining valuable connections. Additionally, the Department of French is exploring the possibility of offering internships in New York during Spring 2026, related to environmental studies, as an extension of the course.
Since September 11, 2001, there has been an avalanche of immigration enforcement policies and initiatives proposed or implemented under the guise of national security. This course will analyze the domino effect of the Patriot Act, the Absconder Initiative, Special Registration, the Real I.D. Act, border security including the building of the 700-mile fence along the U.S./Mexico border, Secured Communities Act-that requires the cooperation of state and local authorities in immigration enforcement, the challenge to birthright citizenship, and now the congressional hearings on Islamic radicalization. Have these policies been effective in combating the war on terrorism and promoting national security? Who stands to benefit from these enforcement strategies? Do immigrant communities feel safer in the U.S.? How have states joined the federal bandwagon of immigration enforcement or created solutions to an inflexible, broken immigration system?
Each week, a historical period is studied in connection to a particular theme of ongoing cultural expression. While diverse elements of popular culture are included, fiction is privileged as a source of cultural commentary. Students are expected to assimilate the background information but are also encouraged to develop their own perspective and interest, whether in the social sciences, the humanities (including the fine arts), or other areas.
In this course, we’ll be studying a subgenre of U.S. literature known as “the novel of slavery,” and we’ll be reading fictions by literary artists who attempted, in their various and distinctive ways, to come to terms with the atrocity of human bondage. In the first half of the course, we’ll read authors who wrote in the period before the legal abolition of slavery in the U.S., and whose works made direct contributions to the abolitionist cause. In the second half of the course, we’ll read authors who wrote in the years after the Civil Rights Movement, and whose works treated slavery as a historical phenomenon. But regardless of whether we’re discussing literature from the nineteenth century or the twentieth in our meetings, we’ll always be studying novels that condemn slavery as a legal, moral, and social institution; and that explore the wounds that slavery left upon individual and collective psyches; and that ask whether and how slavery’s tremendous wrongs could ever be redressed.
The aim of this course is to examine the biological bases of individual differences in behavior. We will start by examining how individual differences in behavior and health are shaped by gene-environment interactions. We will complement these studies with the endophenotype approach and discuss its role in our contemporary views of complex disorders. We will then introduce behavioral epigenetics studies that are suggested to mediate the effects of gene-environment interactions at different levels of analysis. We will continue by discussing how these topics shape and are shaped by developmental programming. We will end the semester by discussing the major debates around these topics as well as their implications in real life and public policies. By covering these topics, students are expected to gain a better understanding of how our behavior is i) formed and shaped by gene-environment interactions over time, ii) influenced by the underlying physiological and epigenetic mechanisms, and iii) changed by developmental processes. With this information, the students are expected to view individual differences in behavior in a perspective that is highly interdisciplinary and dynamic.
Prerequisites: Concurrent with registering for this course, a student must register with the department and provide a written invitation from a mentor; details of this procedure are available at http://www.columbia.edu/cu/biology/courses/w3500/index.htm. Students must register for recitations UN3510 or consult the instructor. Corequisites: BIOL UN3510 The course involves independent study, faculty-supervised laboratory projects in contemporary biology. Concurrent with registering for this course, a student must register with the department, provide a written invitation from a mentor and submit a research proposal; details of this procedure are available at http://www.columbia.edu/cu/biology/courses/w3500/index.htm. A paper summarizing results of the work is required by the last day of finals for a letter grade; no late papers will be accepted. See the course web site (above) for more details. Students can take anywhere from 2-4 points for this course.
Prerequisites: the written permission of the faculty member who agrees to act as supervisor, and the director of undergraduate studies permission. Readings in a selected field of physics under the supervision of a faculty member. Written reports and periodic conferences with the instructor.
Intro to Moving Image: Video, Film & Art is an introductory class on the production and editing of digital video. Designed as an intensive hands-on production/post-production workshop, the apprehension of technical and aesthetic skills in shooting, sound and editing will be emphasized. Assignments are developed to allow students to deepen their familiarity with the language of the moving image medium. Over the course of the term, the class will explore the language and syntax of the moving image, including fiction, documentary and experimental approaches. Importance will be placed on the decision making behind the production of a work; why it was conceived of, shot, and edited in a certain way. Class time will be divided between technical workshops, viewing and discussing films and videos by independent producers/artists and discussing and critiquing students projects. Readings will be assigned on technical, aesthetic and theoretical issues. Only one section offered per semester. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.
Mass Extinctions are caused by catastrophic shifts in the earth's climate, solid earth, and life systems. These major inflection points in the history of life leave lasting impacts and require study across a variety of disciplines. In this course we will use these 'system breakdowns' to take a bird's eye view of the history of life. We'll study what happens when vast magmatic provinces spew gases into a darkened sky and try to pick up the pieces as asteroid impacts desecrate the world around them. Along the way, we'll consider how our own actions have the potential to shape the world around us, and the nature of our relationship with an ever-changing earth system. Over the course of the semester students will practice integrating paleontological data from a variety of sources to study both evolutionary hypotheses and the causes of climate change in deep time. We will incorporate foundational ideas from geochronology and stratigraphy as a group, to place fossils into a broader geologic context. Students from all backgrounds who have taken at least one of the three "Systems" courses or Dinosaurs and the History of Life are welcome.
In this course you will be asked to re-think American history. That is, we will approach the history of America as a continental history. This will require that we think of North America as a New World space, a place that was inhabited and occupied by indigenous peoples, and then remade by the arrival and settlement of Europeans. You will be asked to imagine a North America that was indigenous and adaptive, as well as colonial and Euro-American. This approach to the study of North American history is designed to challenge the epistemology and literature of the history of colonization and American expansion, which displaces Native peoples from the central narrative of American history by placing them at the physical margins of colonial and national development. Instead we will explore the intersection and integration of indigenous and Euro-American national identity and national space in North America and trace their co-evolution from first contact through the early nineteenth century.
Unlike any other medium, animation provides unmatched suspicion of disbelief. Moreover, one can exercise one's imagination in digital space beyond material and physical limitations. Combining the two provides the permissive space to manifest our wildest reveries: utopias, dystopias, thought experiments, psi-fic scenarios, or dollhouses for amphibians.
In this course, students will receive a general survey on a range of methods in animation production. From the most traditional hand-drawn animation and cel animation to digital animation employing Photoshop, After Effects, and Blender (3D animation). Although this class can be technically involved; software mastery the end goal of the course is using these techniques to produce animations as a means of expression. These are only tools to help students form and realize their creative visions. Designed for both the digitally inclined and those who hate computers, students can try and then choose the method most agreeable to their temperament and ideas. They can also combine and mix different methods, maximizing creative freedom.
The course will introduce projects from animation history (early experimental animation, Disney, Soviet experimental animation, etc.) and contemporary art examples (Pierre Huyghe, Ian Chang, Wong Ping. etc.). However, the aim is to go beyond the Western art canon and expose students to other facets of culture. We will also study examples from popular culture (music videos) and Japanese anime (Hideaki Anno, Satoshi Kon, Masaaki Yuasa, etc.). One of the most essential responsibilities the students will take on is expanding our collective references by bringing in and presenting works that genuinely inspire and interest them.
Animation is an exceptionally permissive medium; it facilitates all of your prior skills and interests. Whether it is drawing, painting, music, poetry, fiction, or using a yoyo, there is a way for it to exist in animation. Students will be asked to keep a sketchbook for the duration of the semester. It will serve a landing pad for ideas and an anchor point to manage the project. The course will cover the entire production process, from idea development, concept design, character design, writing, storyboarding, foley, voice, music, editing, and final publication. Much of the class time will be dedicated to working, punctured by presentations, technical workshops, and critiques. At the end of the semester, students will have completed three shorts (30 seconds-2 minutes) and one fully developed pr
This undergraduate seminar examines the social, political, and cultural transformations of the 1960s through the lens of local history. The course is centered on the student and community protests that took place at Columbia University and in Morningside Heights in 1968. Scholarly and popular histories have underscored the ways 1968 was a watershed moment in the history of the 20th century. Although the protest is one of the touchstone events from the year and the decade, reliable historical treatment is still lacking. This class encourages students to examine and craft histories of the university and the surrounding community in this period. Designed to work in tandem with the “Columbia and Slavery” course, this course is a public-facing seminar designed to empower students to open up a discussion of all the issues connected with the protests, its global, national, and local context, and its aftermath. The course aims to raise questions, elicit curiosity, and encourage students and those interested in Columbia and Morningside Heights history to investigate one of the most important events to take place in the university’s history. The recent 50th anniversary of those events, and the availability of new sources & publications on the protests, have presented opportunities to prompt fresh answers to old questions: What were the factors that led to the protests? How did student and community mobilization shape, and were shaped by, national and international forces? What are the local, national, and international legacies of Columbia 1968? The recent graduate student strike is a very tangible legacy of the protests. This seminar is part of an on-going, multiyear effort to grapple with such questions and to share our findings with the Columbia community and beyond. Working independently, students will define and pursue individual research projects. Working together, the class will create digital visualizationsof these projects.
Course Objectives:
1. To explore, document, and contextualize the Columbia/Morningside Heights protests of 1968.
2. To practice the “historian’s craft” by conducting research, analyzing primary material, and making coherent arguments based on an interrogation of evidence.
3. To analyze, engage in, and reflect on the relationship between archival research and the produ
Love and sex have long been studied as historical constructs influenced by social, political, and economic dimensions. This course aims to expand this discourse by incorporating the often-overlooked lens of technological mediation. Beginning with the premise that romantic love is deeply shaped by the affordances of the technology of the time, a critical awareness of technological mediation in romance –especially of digital technologies, i.e. online dating, social media, or cybersex— allows for a deeper understanding of how social categories such as gender, race, class, ability, or sexuality are technologically-mediated, thereby informing our societal and cultural perceptions of love, dating, and sex.
Sandra Moyano-Ariza is Term Assistant Professor of WGSS and Research Director at BCRW. Her research works at the intersection of pop culture, philosophy, and digital technologies, with interests in the fields of media studies and digital scholarship, contemporary feminist theory, critical race theory, posthumanism, and affect theory.