This course covers the history of Zionism in the wake of the Haskala in mid nineteenth century Europe and its development at the turn of the century through the current 'peace process' between the state of Israel and the Palestinian national movement. The course examines the impact of Zionism on European Jews and on Asian and African Jews on the one hand, and on Palestinian Arabs on the other --in Israel, in the Occupied Territories, and in the Diaspora.
This seminar looks at the narrative and the historical context for an extraordinary event: the conquest of the Persian empire by Alexander III of Macedonia, conventionally known as “Alexander the Great”. We will explore the different worlds Alexander grew out of, confronted, and affected: the old Greek world, the Persian empire, the ancient near-east (Egypt, Levant, Babylonia, Iran), and the worlds beyond, namely pre-Islamic (and pre-Silk Road) Central Asia, the Afghan borderlands, and the Indus valley. The first part of the course will establish context, before laying out a narrative framework; the second part of the course will explore a series of themes, especially the tension between military conquest, political negotiation, and social interactions. Overall, the course will serve as an exercise in historical methodology (with particular attention to ancient sources and to interpretation), an introduction to the geography and the history of the ancient world (classical and near-eastern), and the exploration of a complex testcase located at the contact point between several worlds, and at a watershed of world history.
An inquiry into the nature and implications of justice in areas ranging from criminal justice to social justice to the circumstances of war and peace, considering issues such as abortion, the criminalization of behavior, the death penalty, climate change, global poverty, civil disobedience, and international conflict.
Capitalism shapes every aspect of our daily lives. Thinkers on both the left and the right of the political spectrum agree that capitalism structures our economic, social, and political relationships. Yet, there is little agreement as to the definition of capitalism and its normative implications. The definition and interpretation of capitalism differs across time and space, always evolving in response to challenges, crises, and contradictions. The aim of this course is to provide students with analytical tools to think critically and historically about the concept of capitalism. By studying how philosophers, economists, and political theorists have defined and described the concept of capitalism throughout its history (from the early seventeenth century to the present), students will be provided with a set of terminologies and analytical frameworks that enable them to interrogate the various dimensions of capitalism. The readings in the course are selected to illustrate the fact that capitalism has always been controversial. We will read texts authored by both proponents and critics of capitalism. We will explore how various canonical figures have thought about private property, markets, money, economic growth, injustice, inequality, alienation, and socialism.
This is an intensive, six-week class moving from the basics of paint materials, techniques, issues of color, light, narrative and most of all representation. Students will begin working from still life set-ups in the studio and gradually move towards more ambitious approaches including figure painting from a model. Towards the end of the class students will be encouraged to work on a project or projects that more closely reflect their personal ideas.
Prerequisites: MATH UN1101 and ECON UN1105 or the equivalent; one term of calculus. Corequisites: MATH UN1201. This course covers the determination of output, employment, inflation and interest rates. Topics include economic growth, business cycles, monetary and fiscal policy, consumption and savings and national income accounting.
Discussion section for ECON UN3213 Intermediate Macro. Student must register for a section.
Prerequisites: No prerequisites. Department approval NOT required. In this course, we will look at some of the most dynamic examples of "visual writing." To begin, we will look at writers writing about art, from the Romantic period through the present. The modes of this art writing we will consider include: the practice of ekphrasis (poems which address or derive their inspiration from a work of art); writers such as Ralph Ellison, Amiri Baraka, John Ashbery, and Eileen Myles, who for periods of their lives worked as art critics; writers such as Etel Adnan and Alexander Kulge, who have produced literature and works of art in equal measure; as well as numerous collaborations between writers and visual artists. We will also look at artists who have written essays and poetry throughout their careers, like artists Robert Smithson, Glenn Ligon, David Wojnarowicz, Moyra Davey, Paul Chan, and Hannah Black, as well as professional critics whose work has been elevated to the status of literature, such as Hilton Als, Janet Malcolm, and Susan Sontag. Lastly, we will consider what it means to write through a “milieu” of sonic and visual artists, such as those associated with Dada, the Harlem Renaissance, the New York School, and Moscow Conceptualism. Throughout the course, students will also be prompted to write with and about current art exhibitions and events throughout the city. They will produce original works in various of the modes described above and complete a final writing project that incorporates what they have learned.
All of us have spent many years in school and understand that schools impact our lives in important ways. But how exactly does formal schooling shape young people? And how do students make sense of their lives in the context of schools and educational systems more broadly? In this class we will examine education as a central institution in modern society, and we will grapple with an important question: What role does education play in reinforcing or challenging broader patterns of social inequality and mobility? Particular emphasis will be placed on higher education as a critical site in which these processes take shape.
This course is an introduction to American constitutional law. We examine key historical debates surrounding the constitution’s framing, ratification, and subsequent amendments, and study several major court decisions that have elaborated the constitution’s meaning over time. We will explore competing theories of how the constitution should be interpreted, how the constitution distributes and limits the power of different branches of government, and which fundamental political and civil rights the constitution guarantees (see the schedule of readings for specific topics). Students will regularly discuss, debate, and write about these issues.
A major learning goal of the course is to practice the skills needed to understand a legal argument and to articulate our own. Students will learn how to identify the different elements of a legal opinion, how to formulate a legal opinion, and how to conduct basic legal research.
This urban politics course examines the evolving intergovernmental structure of political power in and relative to American cities. It includes factors that range from globalization to national and state policies and politics, down through the local level where - to misquote former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill - “all politics used to be local.“ It focuses on the context and drivers of local government politics, structures, and decision-making frameworks and on the evolution of cities’ patterns of relationships with state and national governments. Themes include power and decision-making, the leadership and administration of cities, present day problems and strategies to deal with them, the historical origins of urban politics, past federal and state policies toward cities and the contemporary consequences of these patterns. The survivability of the city in the face of contemporary overlapping crises will be addressed. Among other topics, students can expect to focus on urban political economy, political machines and urban reform, immigration, race and ethnicity in urban politics, regional efforts to contend with economic development and crisis, federal laws and policies that have shaped today’s urban environment, the day to day administration of cities, and urban problems such as fiscal strain, poverty, the burden of growth and attracting economic investment, the costs and consequences of urban terror, disaster, extreme political lability, and the evolving global city.
This course provides an introduction to Shakespeare through a combination of reading his plays and viewing them in performance. On the one hand, we approach each play as a written, published text: our in-class conversation consist primarily in close analysis of key passages, and, in one class period, we visit Rare Books to examine the earliest printed versions of the plays in light of English Renaissance print technology. On the other hand, we view performances of each assigned play, including the attendance as a group of at least one Shakespeare production on an NYC stage. Our semester’s through line is to trace, from his earliest plays to Hamlet, Shakespeare’s remarkable development of the techniques of characterization that have made generations of both playgoers and readers feel that his dramatis personae are so modern, real, human. We will also devote attention to exploring the value of each play in our present moment and on our local stages. We read 8 plays in all, including Titus Andronicus, Midsummer Night's Dream, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Merchant of Venice, and Hamlet.
This is the required discussion section for
POLS S3233.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 or the equivalent. Introduction to the principles of money and banking. The intermediary institutions of the American economy and their historical developments, current issues in monetary and financial reform.
Walt Whitman was not the first to write about New York. But he was the first of many to let New York write him. By age 43, Whitman had composed most of his best poetry, published three editions of Leaves of Grass, and left New York only twice. How did the second son of an unsuccessful farmer, a grammar school dropout and hack writer become America’s greatest poet? This course offers a response to this perennial mystery of literary scholarship by proposing that “Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son” was indeed a product of his environment. Coming of age as a writer at the same time the city was emerging as a great metropolis, he received his education and inspiration from New York itself. Course time is equally divided between discussions of Whitman’s antebellum poetry, journalism, and prose (including the newly recovered Life and Adventures of Jack Engle) in their cultural and geographical contexts, and on-site explorations that retread Whitman’s footsteps through Brooklyn and his beloved Mannahatta. Experiential learning is further encouraged through assignments based in archives, museums, and at historic sites throughout the city.
Introduction to and analysis of major myths in classical literature. Topics include the changing attitudes and applications of myth from Greek epic to tragedy, as well as modern approaches to myth. Readings include Homer, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. All readings in English.
A topical approach to the concepts and practices of music in relation to other arts in the development of Asian civilizations.
This course is a topical (not comprehensive) survey of some of the musical traditions of South and West Asia, and of their diasporas. Each tradition will be described locally, connecting it to critical themes that the course aims to explore. The purpose of the course is to introduce you to a range of indigenous and diasporic “Asian” musical styles, ideas, traditions, and artists through an interdisciplinary approach to the study of music as culture. No previous background in music is required.
A survey of major themes of Existentialist philosophy in Europe from the mid 19th century to the mid 20th century, this class will focus on Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Sartre and their influences on philosophical conceptions of the human being and the form of its freedom, and the consequences of anxiety, nihilism, and despair in the face of death.
New media is nothing new. New media historians trace rich record of the moments when some new textual technology entered the public sphere and provoked responses ranging from widespread anxiety and to revolutionary fervor. We will examine the cultural anxieties that attend new media, stretching from Plato’s
Phaedrus
—where Socrates warns that the advent of writing will destroy people’s memories—to today, when Nicholas Carr asks “Is Google making us stupid?” The clay tablet, the codex, the printing press, the chalkboard, the telegraph, the typewriter, the pdf, computer coding, and the smart phone have each promised to revolutionize the reading and writing publics, access to power, and even how people think. This course examines those promises within their historical contexts, through critical study, and using hands-on experiences. For instance, we will study the role of clay tablets in upholding ancient empires at the same time that we craft our own clay tablet texts. We will take notes with ink pens while we study the role of Medieval scribes in spreading Christianity and Islam. We will create ‘zines while studying the Riot Grrl movement. And we will create our own html hypertexts (no prior coding experience required) as we read the earliest hypertext fiction. These hands-on experiences move arguments about the dangers and revelations of writing technologies out of the realm of the hypothetical and into the realm of the experiential. The class will visit Columbia’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library (RBML) and Barnard’s Zine Archive, where we will look at textual artifacts, from ancient papyri to early print and digital texts. Our approach will prepare you to situate the contemporary textual technologies you take for granted (IMs, Twitter, Google Docs, and so on) within the long history of new media. And it will teach those pursuing literary studies, new media studies, and computer science research methods required to examine a text as a technology.
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.
Introduction to the fundamentals of silkscreen techniques. Students gain familiarity with the technical processes of silkscreen and are encouraged to use the processes to develop their visual language. Students are involved in a great deal of drawing for assigned projects. Portfolio required at end.
Prerequisites: STAT UN1201 Intro to Stats w/Calculus, MATH UN1201 Calculus III, and either intermediate micro or macro (UN3211 or UN3213). Equivalent to ECON UN3412. 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.
Required discussion section for ECON UN3412: Intro to Econometrics
Coming on the heels of the MoMA's blockbuster exhibit, this seminar will trace the rise and fall of Abstract Expressionism, from its pre-World War II precipitates in Europe (Surrealism) and in America (Regionalism), to the crucial moment when, as scholar Serge Guilbaut has argued, New York 'stole' the idea of modern art, and finally, through the decade when Pop Art rendered Abstract Expressionism obsolete. Although special emphasis will be given to Jackson Pollock, whose persona and work reside at the literal and figurative center of the movement, we will also look closely at works by Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, Willem DeKooning, Lee Krasner, Louise Bourgeois, Helen Frankenthaler, Eva Hesse, Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Cy Twombly. Class lectures and presentations will be supplemented with trips to New York's world-renowned museums.
This lecture examines how the American presidency evolved into the most important job on earth. It examines how major events in US and world history shaped the presidency. How changes in technology and media augmented the power of the president and how the individuals who served in the office left their marks on the presidency. Each class will make connections between past presidents and the current events involving today's Commander-in-Chief. Some topics to be discussed: Presidency in the Age of Jackson; Teddy Roosevelt and Presidential Image Making; Presidency in the Roaring ‘20s; FDR and the New Deal; Kennedy and the Television Age; The Great Society and the Rise of the New Right; 1968: Apocalyptic Election; The Strange Career of Richard Nixon; Reagan's Post Modern Presidency; From Monica to The War on Terror.
This course will introduce students to the history of museums and display practices through New York collections. The birth of the museum as a constitutive element of modernity coincides with the establishment of European nation states. Throughout the course of the nineteenth century, museums were founded in major European and American cities to classify objects, natural and manmade, from plants and fossils to sculpture and clothing. This course presents the alternate art history that can be charted through an examination of the foundation and development of museums from cabinets of curiosity to the collection-less new museums currently being built in the Middle East and beyond. We will consider broad thematic issues such as nationalism, colonialism, canon formation, the overlapping methods of anthropology and art history, and the notion of 'framing' from the architectural superstructure to exhibition design. We will visit a wide variety of museums from the American Museum of Natural History to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the National September 11 Memorial and Museum as in-depth case studies of more general concepts. Students will have the opportunity to meet museum educators, conservators and curators through on site teaching in a variety of institutions.
Through an examination of painting, sculpture, decorative arts, photography. fashion and visual culture of the United States from 1750 to 1914, the course will explore how American artists responded to and operated within the wider world, while grappling with issues of identity at home. Addressing themes shared in common across national boundaries, the class will consider how American art participated in the revolutions and reforms of the "long" nineteenth century, and how events of the period continue to impact our country today. The period witnessed the emergence of new technologies for creating, using and circulating images and objects, the expansion and transformation of exhibition and viewing practices, and the rise of new artistic institutions, as well as the metamorphosis of the United States from its colonial origins to that of a world power, including the radical changes that occurred during the Civil War. With many sessions taking place at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the class will investigate how American art engaged with international movements while constructing national identity during a period of radical transformation both at home and abroad.
America's wars in context, from King Philip's War in 1675 to present conflicts in Afghanistan and the Middle East. This course charts the expansion of U.S. military power from a band of colonists to a globe-girdling colossus with over two million personnel, some 800 bases around the world, and an annual budget of approximately $686 billion - about 57 percent of federal discretionary spending, and more than the next 14 nations combined. It introduces students to the history of American military power; the economic, political, and technological rise of the military-industrial complex and national security state; the role of the armed services in international humanitarian work; and the changing role of the military in domestic and international politics. A three-point semester-long course compressed into six weeks. Syllabus is located here: http://www.bobneer.com/empireofliberty/.
The social, cultural, economic, political, and demographic development of America's metropolis from colonial days to present. Slides and walking tours supplement the readings.
In the late seventeenth century, a new genre appears across Europe: the novel. It told the stories – not of the princes and princesses – but of ordinary people on extraordinary voyages, from villages to the Metropolis, from England to Africa and the Americas. In their travels, they encountered not the dragons or giants of romance, but the people and things that made up everyday life in the eighteenth century – country houses and whorehouses, aristocrats and the merchants, pirates and slaves, and a vast array of enticing goods (shoes and coats, silks and ribbons, coffee and opium) produced in early capitalism. Why does the novel appear? What role does it play, in personal psychology as well as society? Can we account for its increasing popularity as well as its transformations across the eighteenth century? To puzzle these questions, we will place the development of the novel within the history of art, philosophy and science, as well as psychology and literary theory. Writers include Mme. de La Fayette, Aphra Behn, Daniel Defoe, Eliza Heywood, Henry Fielding, John Cleland, William Godwin, and Jane Austen. Critical readings include selections from Benjamin, Adorno,
Foucault, Elias, Moretti, and others. Note: we will read primarily novellas (short novels) or selections from longer novels in this course.
As a population, Latino, Latina, Latine, and Latinx peoples have been prominent in the public sphere in popular culture, the media, and especially around discussions of immigration. Though individuals with a tapestry of Spanish-Indian-African ancestry (who may be described as “Latinas/os” “Hispanics” or “Latinxs” today) explored the lands of present-day Florida and New Mexico long before English colonizers reached Plymouth Rock, Latina/o/x communities are continually seen as foreigners, immigrants, and “newcomers” to American society. This course aims to place Latina/o populations in the United States within historical context. We begin by asking: Who are Latinas/os in the U.S. and how did they become part of the American nation-state? Why are they identified as a distinct group? How have they participated in American society and how have they been perceived over time? The course will familiarize students with the broad themes, periods, and questions raised in the field of Latinx History. Topics include conquest and colonization, immigration, labor recruitment, education, politics, popular culture, and social movements. The course emphasizes a comparative approach to Latinx history aiming to engage histories from the Southwest, Midwest, and Eastern United States and across national origin groups—Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Dominicans, Central Americans, and South Americans. This class is taught in mostly the modern period (after 1750) within United States history so it can count toward the history major or concentration. Where the course points may be applied depends on a student’s field of specialization within their major or concentration. The course can also count toward the
Global Core
requirement, which is reflected on the Columbia online registry. The class can, moreover, serve as three elective points toward degree progress or as non-technical elective credits. Finally, the course is regularly
cross-listed
with both the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and the Institute for the Study of Human Rights as well as with American Studies.
This course will survey topics in contemporary metaphysics. We will focus on material objects, time, modality, causation, properties, and natural kinds. We will begin by considering what objects there are in general (ontology) and what to say about certain puzzling entities (such as holes). Then we will turn to debates about material objects and puzzles about composite objects and the notion of parthood. Next is the issue of how material objects persist over time and survive change in their parts. We shall consider two important views on persistence. We then turn to two issues related to persistence: personal identity over time, and puzzles about time travel. This will lead us into the next part of the course on modality and causation, which concerns the notions of possibility, necessity, laws of nature, and causation. We will consider different views about 'possible worlds'. We will then consider the nature of laws and causation and then turn to the problem of free will. We will look at debates in the metaphysics of properties between realists and nominalists about properties. Then we'll consider causal powers, dispositions, and natural kinds. The section will conclude with problems about the metaphysics of socially constructed kinds such as race or gender.
A seminar for advanced undergraduate students exploring different areas of clinical psychology. The specific focus within clinical psychology may differ each time the course is offered, so it is possible for the course to be retaken for additional credit.
Prerequisites: the instructor's permission required; contact emccaski@barnard.edu. An introductory course in neuroscience like PSYC 1001 or PSYC 2450. Analysis of the assessment of physical and psychiatric diseases impacting the central nervous system, with emphasis on the relationship between neuropathology and cognitive and behavioral deficits.
This course examines questions in international political economy, asking what we know and how we know it. It addresses questions such as: Why do some countries promote globalization while others resist it? What do IOs do in international politics? Who runs our system of global governance? We will explore these questions and others by focusing on topics such as international trade, foreign aid, investment, and the environment. For each topic, we will use a variety of theoretical lenses and then investigate the evidence in favor of each. More generally, the course will consider the challenges of drawing casual inferences in the field of international political economy. There are no prerequisites for this course but an introductory economy course would be helpful. Students will write a short reading response each week and produce a research proposal for studying a topic related to international political economy, though they do not need to actually conduct this research.
This is the required discussion section for
POLS S3628.
Prerequisites: the instructor's permission. Main objective is to gain a familiarity with and understanding of recording, editing, mixing, and mastering of recorded music and sounds using Pro Tools software. Discusses the history of recorded production, microphone technique, and the idea of using the studio as an instrument for the production and manipulation of sound.
In this lecture, we will read
Romantic writers in their intellectual, historical, and political context, with reference to contemporary movements in philosophy, music, and the plastic arts. Authors include Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, P.B. Shelley, Keats, Mary Shelley and Austen. An emphasis not only on close reading of the poetry, but why we do close readings. If we are successful, we may understand more clearly the afterlife of “romantic” ideas in our present day.
This course provides a comprehensive introduction to the foreign relations of the People’s Republic of China from 1949 to the present. The course looks at the world from China’s point of view and is organized geographically, moving from China’s homeland to its borderlands and continents and sea lanes beyond Asia.
This course explores contemporary human rights issues in fiction, nonfiction, and film from Africa, Latin America, South Asia, the Caribbean, and the U.S., as well as humanitarian-inspired art, documentaries, television, and music circulated around the world. When decolonial and indigenous writers and cultural workers decide to represent violence in their countries, they risk reproducing racist stereotypes that permeate international media. And yet, human rights violations tied to war, slavery, sexual violence, religious fundamentalism, and ethnic strife are central features of turbulent national histories—including our own in America. How can twentieth- and twenty-first-century writers from the Global South and beyond undermine the harmful stereotypes and dominant narratives that predetermine their stories in the international public sphere without reproducing stereotypes? To better understand strife abroad, we will take an interdisciplinary feminist approach to the politics of representing human rights. Our readings, paired with options for extracurricular events like film screenings in New York City, will prompt us to reflect critically on the ambivalences surrounding human rights in global culture. We will engage literary representations of historical events ranging from the Holocaust to the Vietnam War and the Rwandan genocide, all the way up to extremism in our present moment. Final projects invite students to reflect on methods for representing human rights through creative writing. This course, which fulfills the University Global Core requirement, as well as English major requirements for prose fiction/narrative and comparative/global literature, will appeal to students of not only literature but also in human rights, history, political science, African studies, law, and gender and sexuality studies.
In this seminar, we will study “Sally Rooney.” In so doing, we will talk about the real author of that name: a thirty-year old Irishwoman whose three novels, each set in Ireland and concerning the social and erotic lives of attractive young people of European descent, have achieved remarkable commercial and critical success. We will talk about the pleasures of those texts, as well as their formal and generic features, their language and their relation to literary history. But we will also discuss the idea and institution named “Sally Rooney,” considering it as what Michel Foucault called an “author function,” or what Pierre Bourdieu dubbed a “space of possibilities” within the literary field. Our inquiry into “Sally Rooney” will, therefore, also be an inquiry into the meaning of literary authorship in the twenty-first century. Through secondary readings in criticism and theory, we will engage longstanding arguments about the relation between critical interpretation and authorial intention, as well as between social and historical “context” and authorial and aesthetic autonomy. We will examine how patterns of social exclusion — in this case, race — define the digitally-mediated literary field of the present. And we will ask how the rise of social media and online retail have altered ideas and institutions of authorship, audience, and literariness.
Prerequisites: One philosophy course This course is mainly an introduction to three influential approaches to normative ethics: utilitarianism, deontological views, and virtue ethics. We also consider the ethics of care, and selected topics in meta-ethics.
An introductory course in black-and-white photography, Photography I is a prerequisite for advanced photography classes held in the fall and spring. Students are initially instructed in proper camera use and basic film exposure and development. Then the twice weekly meetings are divided into lab days where students learn and master the fundamental tools and techniques of traditional darkroom work used in 8x10 print production and classroom days where students present their work and through the language of photo criticism gain an understanding of photography as a medium of expression. Admitted students must obtain a manually focusing 35mm camera with adjustable f/stops and shutter speeds. No prior photography experience is required.
Focusing on the politics of literary and performative cultural production while exploring the fashioning of New Negro identity, Harlem Crossroads analyzes Harlem Renaissance-era fiction, poetry, essays, artwork, and music in a cross-cultural, transnational context. Beginning with an exploration of the aesthetic debates and cultural contexts that animated Harlem in 1920s to 1930s, the course will also take up the legacy of Harlem as a location important in creating a “racial” art in/for a diverse, global community comprised of differences in gender, class, sexuality, geographic and national origin. In summer of 2022, the course will place relations between African American and New Negro cultural production in dialogue with Black European conceptions and experiences of race and belonging by exploring the work and lives of two AfroScandinavian artists in particular: African American and Danish writer Nella Larsen and AfroSwedish hip-hop artist, writer, and activist Jason Diakité. Author of the Harlem Renaissance novels Passing and Quicksand, Larsen dramatized the complexities of belonging in places with stark racial regimes that are inflected by gender, sexuality, and geography. Born in the 1970s to interracial American parents in Sweden (his father hails from Harlem) Diakité also grew up between worlds, riding a delicate cultural and racial divide. Diakité and Larsen share the task of unifying a complex system of family roots across continents, ethnicities, classes, colors, and eras; they both yearn for and problematize what it means to come home to Harlem. In June of 2022, Diakité will perform the stage version of his memoir, A Drop of Midnight at Harlem Stage— Diakité will visit the course to discuss his personal and artistic journey and we will also study and see a performance of A Drop of Midnight, in collaboration with Harlem Stage.
This seminar seeks to engage with materials that question personhood. Drawing on both fictional and non-fictional accounts, we will be involved with textual and visual documents as well institutional contexts in order to revisit such notion under contemporary capitalism. We will cover topics like rites of passage and life cycle, the role of the nation state and local communities in defining a person, the relation between self and non-self, between the living and the dead. We will likewise address vicarious forms of personhood through the prosthetic, the avatar or the heteronomous. But we will also look into forms of dissipation and/or enhancement of personhood through bodybuilding, guinea-piging and pharmo-toxicities. As a whole, the course will bring to light how the question of personhood cross-culturally relates to language, performativity, religion, technology, law, gender, race, class, care, life and death.
In a 2015 interview with David Simon (creator of
The Wire
) President Barak Obama offered that
The Wire
is, "one of the greatest -- not just television shows, but pieces of American art in the last couple of decades."
The Wire
combines hyperrealism (from a-quasi anthropological capture of syntax and dialect that recalls the language of Langston Hughes and Zora Neal Hurston to a preference for actors who lived “the game” in Baltimore’s inner city) with the reinvention of fundamental American themes (from picaresque individualisms, to coming to terms with the illusory “American dream”, to a fundamental loss of faith in American institutions), and engages in a scathing expose of the shared dysfunction among the bureaucracies (police, courts, public schools etc.) that manage a troubled American inner city. On a more macro level
The Wire
humanizes (and therefore vastly problematizes) assumptions about the individual Americans’ who inhabit America’s most dangerous urban environments from gang members to police officers to teachers and even ordinary citizens.
The Wire
, of course, did not single-handedly reshape American television. Scholars like Martin Shuster refer to this period of television history as “new television.” That is, the product of new imaginations that felt television had exhausted its normative points of reference, subject matter and narrative technique. Many of the shows from this period sought to reinvent television for interaction with an evolving zeitgeist shaped by shared dissolution with 21st century American life: “I’d been thinking: it’s good to be in a thing from the ground floor, I came too late for that, I know. But lately I’m getting the feeling I might be in at the end. That the best is over,” Tony Soprano confides to Dr. Malfi in S1.E1 of the Sopranos. Series that fall within this rubric include (in chronological order):
The Sopranos
;
The Wire
;
Deadwood
;
Madmen
; and
Breaking Bad.
What distinctions must be made between US-black American fantasies of Paris and realities for Blacks in Paris? What are the historical linkages between black Americans and Paris? Between black Americans and black French women and men? How is this relationship different from and contingent on the relationship between the “French” and their colonial “others?” How is “blackness” a category into which all non-white racial others are conscripted? (e.g. Arab and Roma communities)? Using an internationalist (specifically transatlantic) approach and covering the 20th and 21st centuries, this course explores these and other questions over the course of the semester through a close consideration of the literature, arts, culture, history and politics emanating from or dealing with Black France. The texts and artifacts examined in this course will consider “race” as both fact and fantasy in the unique, long-historical relationship between the United States, Paris, and the wider French empire.
This practical lab focuses on the fundamental aspects of development, planning and preparation for low budget films. While using a short film script as their own case study – students will learn pitching, development, script breakdown, scheduling, budgeting and fundraising. Discussion of legal issues, location scouting, deliverables, marketing, distribution and film festival strategy will allow students to move forward with their own projects after completing the class. Using weekly assignments, in-class presentations and textbook readings to reinforce each class discussion topic, students will complete the class having created a final prep/production binder for their project, which includes the script breakdown, production schedule, line item budget, financing/fundraising plan and film festival strategy for their chosen script.
Our critical examination of the aesthetics of literary modernism will seek out history even in those works of high modernism that have traditionally been viewed as ahistorical. We will take up questions of nationalism, empire, and imperialism apparent in a number of the works. Syllabus: Selected Poems of W.B. Yeats, Conrad's Nostromo, Woolf's The Voyage Out, Rebecca West's Return of the Soldier, T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland, Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, Forster's A Passage to India, Kafka's The Castle, Stein's Tender Buttons, Selected Cantos of Ezra Pound.
This class will focus on John Milton’s 1667 epic poem about the creation of the world and the fall of humanity; Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel about a scientist’s creation of life; and Toni Morrison’s 1997 novel about a small, rural, all-black town in Oklahoma. In addition to the explicit echoes between these books, each work is interested in the relationship between the natural world and human beings; gender difference, relations between the sexes, and the reproduction of human life; and the bases of, and threats to, an ideal society. By reading these three works of art in sequence, we will thus look at how authors engage similar issues in different ways, paying particular attention to the role of of history, nation, genre, politics, literary tradition, and authorial identity. Finally, we will consider the ways in which authors’ revising, refuting, and re-envisioning of “source” texts affects our readings of the “source” texts as much as the new.
If a student wishes to pursue a research project or a course of study not offered by the department, he or she may apply for an Independent Study. Application: 1. cover sheet with signatures of the professor who will serve as the project sponsor and departmental administrator or director of undergraduate studies; 2. project description in 750 words, including any preliminary work in the field, such as a lecture course(s) or seminar(s); 3. bibliography of primary and secondary works to be read or consulted. Please visit the English and Comparative Literature Department website at http://english.columbia.edu/undergraduate/forms for the cover sheet form or see the administrator in 602 Philosophy Hall for the cover sheet form and to answer any other questions you may have.
If a student wishes to pursue a research project or a course of study not offered by the department, he or she may apply for an Independent Study. Application: 1. cover sheet with signatures of the professor who will serve as the project sponsor and departmental administrator or director of undergraduate studies; 2. project description in 750 words, including any preliminary work in the field, such as a lecture course(s) or seminar(s); 3. bibliography of primary and secondary works to be read or consulted. Please visit the English and Comparative Literature Department website at http://english.columbia.edu/undergraduate/forms for the cover sheet form or see the administrator in 602 Philosophy Hall for the cover sheet form and to answer any other questions you may have.
If a student wishes to pursue a research project or a course of study not offered by the department, he or she may apply for an Independent Study. Application: 1. cover sheet with signatures of the professor who will serve as the project sponsor and departmental administrator or director of undergraduate studies; 2. project description in 750 words, including any preliminary work in the field, such as a lecture course(s) or seminar(s); 3. bibliography of primary and secondary works to be read or consulted. Please visit the English and Comparative Literature Department website at http://english.columbia.edu/undergraduate/forms for the cover sheet form or see the administrator in 602 Philosophy Hall for the cover sheet form and to answer any other questions you may have.
Prerequisites: The written permission of the faculty member who agrees to act as sponsor (sponsorship limited to full-time instructors on the staff list), as well as the permission of the Director of Undergraduate Studies. The written permission must be deposited with the Director of Undergraduate Studies before registration is completed. Guided reading and study in mathematics. A student who wishes to undertake individual study under this program must present a specific project to a member of the staff and secure his or her willingness to act as sponsor. Written reports and periodic conferences with the instructor. Supervising Readings do NOT count towards major requirements, with the exception of an advanced written approval by the DUS.
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?
This course will chart a history of postwar cinema through exemplary films of
mauvais goût,
or bad taste
.
Whether they were explicitly banned or censured, deemed too grotesque, pornographic, or violent, or quite simply panned or labeled unwatchable, the films in this course come up against received expectations of what a film could or should . We will begin with Louis Malle’s
Les amants
(1958), which was famously banned in the US, and sparked an important legal debate about the nature of the pornography in the US (Judge Potter Stewart’s famous claim: “I know it when I see it”). We will move into lesser-known examples of French New Wave of the 1960s and ‘70s, notably a concert-film by Jean-Luc Godard,
Sympathy for the Devil
(1968)
,
which far from serving up the raucous, blues-rock tunes of the Rolling Stones, performed an extended critique of the Vietnam War, and Agnes Varda’s documentary about the Black Panthers
and her
Le Bonheur
(1965)
,
a film much disliked by contemporary feminists. Our consideration of 1960s cinema will continue with Marguerite Duras’s
India Song
(1975)
,
a film adored by critics but deemed almost universally unwatchable by subsequent viewers, as well as Roger Vadim’s
Barbarella
(1968)
,
the quintessential pop science fiction film, which launched Jane Fonda’s career as an iconic sex symbol. We will then explore cult classics like Jean-Jacques Beineix’s hyperstylized thriller
Diva
(1981), part of the commercially successful
cinéma du look,
as well as René Laloux’s experimental animated film
La Planète sauvage
(1973). Exemplary of low-tech cinema of the 1990s, Hervé Guibert’s
La pudeur ou l’impudeur
(1992) is a homemade documentary film about succumbing to AIDS. Turning to the ‘00s and early ’10s, we will consider quasi-pornographic films like Catherine Breillat’s works, or others that were controversial for the conditions of production, notably
La vie d’Adèle
by Franco-Tunisian filmmaker Abdellatif Kechiche. Finally, the course will close with a couple of very recent films that delve into grotesque or bizarre imagery, like Julia Ducourneau’s narratives of sexual
This course will chart a history of postwar cinema through exemplary films of
mauvais goût,
or bad taste
.
Whether they were explicitly banned or censured, deemed too grotesque, pornographic, or violent, or quite simply panned or labeled unwatchable, the films in this course come up against received expectations of what a film could or should . We will begin with Louis Malle’s
Les amants
(1958), which was famously banned in the US, and sparked an important legal debate about the nature of the pornography in the US (Judge Potter Stewart’s famous claim: “I know it when I see it”). We will move into lesser-known examples of French New Wave of the 1960s and ‘70s, notably a concert-film by Jean-Luc Godard,
Sympathy for the Devil
(1968)
,
which far from serving up the raucous, blues-rock tunes of the Rolling Stones, performed an extended critique of the Vietnam War, and Agnes Varda’s documentary about the Black Panthers
and her
Le Bonheur
(1965)
,
a film much disliked by contemporary feminists. Our consideration of 1960s cinema will continue with Marguerite Duras’s
India Song
(1975)
,
a film adored by critics but deemed almost universally unwatchable by subsequent viewers, as well as Roger Vadim’s
Barbarella
(1968)
,
the quintessential pop science fiction film, which launched Jane Fonda’s career as an iconic sex symbol. We will then explore cult classics like Jean-Jacques Beineix’s hyperstylized thriller
Diva
(1981), part of the commercially successful
cinéma du look,
as well as René Laloux’s experimental animated film
La Planète sauvage
(1973). Exemplary of low-tech cinema of the 1990s, Hervé Guibert’s
La pudeur ou l’impudeur
(1992) is a homemade documentary film about succumbing to AIDS. Turning to the ‘00s and early ’10s, we will consider quasi-pornographic films like Catherine Breillat’s works, or others that were controversial for the conditions of production, notably
La vie d’Adèle
by Franco-Tunisian filmmaker Abdellatif Kechiche. Finally, the course will close with a couple of very recent films that delve into grotesque or bizarre imagery, like Julia Ducourneau’s narratives of sexual awakening through cannibalism or a woman impregnated by a Cadillac. Bruno Dumont’s murder mystery film and TV series
P’tit Q
1-4 points. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Except by special permission of the director of undergraduate studies, no more than 4 points of individual research may be taken in any one term. This includes both PSYC UN3950 and PSYC UN3920. No more than 8 points ofPSYC UN3950 may be applied toward the psychology major, and no more than 4 points toward the concentration. Readings, special laboratory projects, reports, and special seminars on contemporary issues in psychological research and theory.
1-4 points. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisites: the instructors permission. Except by special permission of the director of undergraduate studies, no more than 4 points of individual research may be taken in any one term. This includes both PSYC UN3950 and PSYC UN3920. No more than 8 points ofPSYC UN3950 may be applied toward the psychology major, and no more than 4 points toward the concentration. Readings, special laboratory projects, reports, and special seminars on contemporary issues in psychological research and theory.
Prerequisites: A good working knowledge of calculus, including derivatives, single and double, limits, sums and series. Life is a gamble and with some knowledge of probability / statistics is easier evaluate the risks and rewards involved. Probability theory allows us take a known underlying model and estimate how likely will we be able to see future events. Statistical Inference allows us to take data we have seen and estimate the missing parts of an unknown model. The first part of the course focus on the former and the second part the latter.
This course will provide a wide-ranging survey of conceptual foundations and issues in contemporary human rights. The class will examine the philosophical origins of human rights, contemporary debates, the evolution of human rights, key human rights documents, and the questions of human rights enforcement. This course will examine specific civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights and various thematic topics in human rights.
Modern feature-length screenplays demand a specific architecture. In this class students will enter with an idea for a film, and during the first eight sessions build a coherent treatment; that is, a summary of the events and major emotional arcs of the film's three acts. In the final four sessions students will begin and complete the first act of their feature-length screenplay.
Prerequisites: MATH S1202, MATH S2010, or the equivalent. Students must have a current and solid background in the prerequisites for the course: multivariable calculus and linear algebra. Elements of set theory and general topology. Metric spaces. Euclidian space. Continuous and differentiable functions. Riemann integral. Uniform convergence.
Prerequisites: MATH S4061, or the equivalent with the instructor's permission. Equicontinuity. Contraction maps with applications to existence theorems in analysis. Lebesgue measure and integral. Fourier series and Fourier transform
The world economy is a patchwork of competing and complementary interests among and between governments, corporations, and civil society. These stakeholders at times cooperate and also conflict over issues of global poverty, inequality, and sustainability. What role do human rights play in coordinating the different interests that drive global economic governance? This seminar will introduce students to different structures of global governance for development, trade, labor, finance, the environment, migration, and intellectual property and investigate their relationship with human rights. Students will learn about public, private, and mixed forms of governance, analyze the ethical and strategic perspectives of the various stakeholders and relate them to existing human rights norms. The course will examine the work of multilateral organizations such as the United Nations and the International Financial Institutions, as well as international corporate and non-governmental initiatives.
This course is an ethnographic and historical introduction to the construction of gender and feminist theory in the South Asian context. We will focus on textual and visual material, primarily ethnographies and films, to provide a critique of normative representations of the 'South Asian woman'. These readings will be used to reveal the complex social and historical configurations that institute and obscure gendered experiences and representations within the colonial imagination and their colonized others. A significant motif of this course will be to develop alternative ways of knowing and understanding gender construction, sexual relations, and community formation in South Asia.
Prerequisites: MATH V1101 Calculus I and MATH V1102 Calculus II, or the equivalent, and STAT W1111 or STAT W1211 (Introduction to Statistics). Corequisites: MATH V1201 Calculus III, or the equivalent, or the instructor's permission. This course can be taken as a single course for students requiring knowledge of probability or as a foundation for more advanced courses. It is open to both undergraduate and master students. This course satisfies the prerequisite for STAT W3107 and W4107. Topics covered include combinatorics, conditional probability, random variables and common distributions, expectation, independence, Bayes' rule, joint distributions, conditional expectations, moment generating functions, central limit theorem, laws of large numbers, characteristic functions.
Prerequisites: STAT W3105 Intro. to Probability or STAT W4105 Probability, or the equivalent. Calculus-based introduction to the theory of statistics. Useful distributions, law of large numbers and central limit theorem, point estimation, hypothesis testing, confidence intervals, maximum likelihood, likelihood ratio tests, nonparametric procedures, theory of least squares and analysis of variance.
Prerequisites: STAT GU4204 or the equivalent, and a course in linear algebra. Theory and practice of regression analysis. Simple and multiple regression, testing, estimation, prediction, and confidence procedures, modeling, regression diagnostics and plots, polynomial regression, colinearity and confounding, model selection, geometry of least squares. Extensive use of the computer to analyse data.
Prerequisites: STAT GU4204 and GU4205 or the equivalent. Introduction to programming in the R statistical package: functions, objects, data structures, flow control, input and output, debugging, logical design, and abstraction. Writing code for numerical and graphical statistical analyses. Writing maintainable code and testing, stochastic simulations, paralleizing data analyses, and working with large data sets. Examples from data science will be used for demonstration.
Documentaries are increasingly proliferating across small and large screens around the world. They circulate as market commodities, forms of entertainment, and vehicles for social change. In this seminar we will compare different national and regional contexts of contemporary documentary production, including projects created within the media industries of Mexico, Peru, India, China, Cambodia, and Israel. We will also examine how documentaries resonate locally, but can still transcend geographic borders and engage viewers across the globe. Crucial to our course will be the close analysis of how documentaries actively address civil rights struggles, oppressive government regimes, cultural trends, environmental crises, and progressive social movements to create more inclusive, equitable communities. So, too, will we examine emerging technologies (such as VR/AR), strategies of international co-production, star-studded film festivals, as well as the global reach and impact of mega studios such as Netflix and Wanda. This course fulfills the Global Core requirement.
The human rights movement is one of the most successful social justice movements of our time, establishing universal principles that govern how states should treat citizens and non-citizens. The movement strengthens, and is strengthened by, a complex web of institutions, laws, and norms that constitute a functioning global system that builds on itself progressively, animated by strong NGOs. The course will address the evolution of the international human rights movement and on the NGOs that drive the movement on the international, regional and domestic levels. Sessions will highlight the experiences of major human rights NGOs and will address topics including strategy development, institutional representation, research methodologies, partnerships, networks, venues of engagement, campaigning, fundraising and, perhaps most importantly, the fraught and complex debates about adaptation to changing global circumstances.
We will be looking at the rich legacy of the Off-Broadway theater – the groups, writers, directors, actors and other theater artists who were nurtured and sustained in its fertile soil, and who continue to shape the landscape of contemporary theater: Off-Broadway, regional theater, and Broadway itself. We will look at the two churches and two cafes where the movement in the 60’s kickstarted as well as the numerous venues, theaters, producing organizations, and producers who continue to sustain the Off Broadway innovative sensibility. We also read and view examples of seminal theater artists and their works: Maria Irene Fornes, David Greenspan, Ntozake Shange, Larry Kramer, Tony Kushner and others. This is a whirlwind journey through Off-Broadway history taught by someone who has been a part of it since the 1970s and has worked with and known many of its players!
This course introduces the fundamental concepts and problems of international human rights law. What are the origins of modern human rights law? What is the substance of this law, who is obligated by it, and how is it enforced? The course will cover the major international human rights treaties and mechanisms and consider some of today's most significant human rights issues and controversies. While the topics are necessarily law-related, the course will assume no prior exposure to legal studies.
Prerequisites: STAT GU4205 or the equivalent. Prerequisites: STAT GU4205 or the equivalent. Least squares smoothing and prediction, linear systems, Fourier analysis, and spectral estimation. Impulse response and transfer function. Fourier series, the fast Fourier transform, autocorrelation function, and spectral density. Univariate Box-Jenkins modeling and forecasting. Emphasis on applications. Examples from the physical sciences, social sciences, and business. Computing is an integral part of the course.
This course introduces the Bayesian paradigm for statistical inference. Topics covered include prior and posterior distributions: conjugate priors, informative and non-informative priors; one- and two-sample problems; models for normal data, models for binary data, Bayesian linear models; Bayesian computation: MCMC algorithms, the Gibbs sampler; hierarchical models; hypothesis testing, Bayes factors, model selection; use of statistical software. Prerequisites: A course in the theory of statistical inference, such as STAT GU4204 a course in statistical modeling and data analysis, such as STAT GU4205.
Prerequisites: STAT GU4206 The course will provide an introduction to Machine Learning and its core models and algorithms. The aim of the course is to provide students of statistics with detailed knowledge of how Machine Learning methods work and how statistical models can be brought to bear in computer systems - not only to analyze large data sets, but to let computers perform tasks that traditional methods of computer science are unable to address. Examples range from speech recognition and text analysis through bioinformatics and medical diagnosis. This course provides a first introduction to the statistical methods and mathematical concepts which make such technologies possible.
This course will contribute to enabling students to engage in advocacy for immigrant and refugee rights in the present debates over American immigration policy. Students will gain an understanding of how policy developments in the last half century have contributed to our present policy dilemmas. They will be able to articulate how the political party and interest group alliances/configurations have produced such policies. They will also be able to delineate the strengths and limits of a human rights approach in framing claims for a more humane immigration policy, particularly in contexts where national laws and domestic political considerations have constrained these choices.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 The study of industrial behavior based on game-theoretic oligopoly models. Topics include pricing models, strategic aspects of business practice, vertical integration, and technological innovation.
Prerequisites: STAT GU4204 and STAT GU4205 A fast-paced introduction to statistical methods used in quantitative finance. Financial applications and statistical methodologies are intertwined in all lectures. Topics include regression analysis and applications to the Capital Asset Pricing Model and multifactor pricing models, principal components and multivariate analysis, smoothing techniques and estimation of yield curves statistical methods for financial time series, value at risk, term structure models and fixed income research, and estimation and modeling of volatilities. Hands-on experience with financial data.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 and STAT UN1201 An introduction to the economic principles, theories and basic tools underlying the financial decisions of firms. The topics covered include financial statement analysis, net present value analysis, time value of money, valuation of perpetuities and annuities, opportunity cost of capital, weighted average cost of capital, valuation of bonds and stocks, capital budgeting, dividend policy, market efficiency, capital structure, Modigliani-Miller theorem, option valuation and risk management. Every effort would be made to relate the course material to real-world financial applications.
Prerequisites: (PSYC UN2235) or equivalent course on judgment and decision-making A seminar course exploring strategic decision making (also known as behavioral game theory). This course examines the psychology underlying situations in which outcomes are determined by choices made by multiple decision makers. The prime objective will be to examine the use of experimental games to test psychological theories.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213. Economic development is a complex and multifaceted process. Once considered a goal in itself, more recently it has become to be viewed as the fundamental means to world poverty alleviation. Today, about half of the world population still lives on less than $2 /day. Why? What does it mean to be poor? What are the forces that prevent so many people from enjoying a higher standard of living? The course opens on some fundamental macroeconomic models of economic growth and the recent debate on the geographical or institutional nature of the ultimate causes of growth or arrested development. Then we will move into the most recent microeconomic literature that sheds light on the lives of the poor and on the forces - in particular the market distortions and the market failures - that keep billions in poverty. Among others, we will discuss interesting topics like nutrition and health, the cultural origins of corruption, the effect of global warming, and the design of effective anti-poverty programs.
There are many misconceptions as to what makes an appealing story for children and how to get a story published. Many novice writers are simply relating an incident as opposed to creating a story. This course will show beginner and experienced writers how to mine their lives and imaginations for ideas and how to develop those ideas into children's stories-a step by step process from inspiration to finished manuscript for picture books, early readers, emerging readers and chapter books. Students will also learn the importance of reading their writing out loud-a process that helps both reader and listener develop a better ear for the story's pace, cadence and structure. Writing for children has become incredibly popular in the past fifteen years and publishing houses have been inundated with manuscripts. Many houses have ceased accepting unsolicited manuscripts all together. This course will disclose other avenues to getting your manuscript into the hands of agents and editors.
How does the traveler become the travel writer? What makes good travel writing? Why does it matter today? This course examines and breaks down the very specific craft of travel writing. Simply because we like to travel, does it qualify us to write about it? Everywhere has been written about, so how do we find something fresh to say about… Paris, or even Patagonia? In this course, we both dispel, and prove, some of the myths of travel writing. Students learn to find an angle in order to uncover destinations anew and make them personal— it’s in the personal that the universal is revealed. From crafting a compelling lede and understanding the need for a strong “nut graph,” to knowing the value of dialogue in propelling the story forward, and then finding the ideal kicker to send the reader away satisfied, students dissect published stories and are sent out into “the field” (of New York City) to craft their own. Travel writing is more than, “I went here, I did this, I ate that.” From front-of-book and service pieces, to destination features, we discuss magazine and newspaper travel writing in depth, as well as touch on longer form travel writing. Finally, through exercises and assignments, students learn to craft a compelling pitch in order to approach editors.
Young adult fiction is a relatively new category in book publishing, but it is growing fast. The readers of YA books are between 12 and 18 years of age. However, its popularity can sometimes extend well beyond the intended age range; Harry Potter being the best-known example. The YA category spans a number of subgenres, including paranormal romance, dystopian sci-fi, and coming-of-age realism. The best YA novels feature fully realized characters and a level of emotional complexity that appeal to teens. And yet, YA books can include frightful displays of violence and can be unabashed about sex. They also feature swiftly moving plots combined with a young person's unique world view-pairings that are unlike anything found in traditional literary fiction. In this workshop, we will embark on writing our own YA novels. With our work always at the center of discussion we will explore the essence of what makes it YA in terms of narrative point of view and subject matter while also challenging the conventions of genre fiction. By way of example, we will look at the work of Sherman Alexie, Lois Lowry and Megan McCafferty. For examples of 'new adult' or 'crossover' fiction we will read excerpts from books such as those by Curtis Sittenfeld, J.D. Salinger, and others. Course work will include selected readings, but the emphasis of the workshop will be on writing and critiquing our own work. Students will write up to three chapters of an original YA or crossover novel along with a partial chapter outline for their book in progress. The class will also include visits from published YA authors who will speak about craft, audience, and getting published.
Prerequisites: RUSS UN2101 and RUSS UN2102 or placement test $15.00= Language Resource Fee, $15.00 = Materials Fee , Curriculum evolves according to needs and interests of the students. Emphasis on conversation and composition, reading and discussion of selected texts and videotapes; oral reports required. Conducted entirely in Russian.
Prerequisites: RUSS GU4333 or placement test $15.00= Language Resource Fee, $15.00 = Materials Fee , Continuation of RUSS S4333H.
This course explores human adaptation from a biological, ecological and evolutionary perspective. From our earliest hominin ancestors in Africa to our own species' subsequent dispersal throughout the world, our lineage has encountered innumerable environmental pressures. Using morphological, physiological and behavioral/cultural evidence, we will examine the responses to these pressures that helped shape our unique lineage and allowed it to adapt to a diverse array of environments.