Mapping Trade and Connecting Cultures

Mapping Trade Connect. Cu

This course will utilize New York City collections to show how the movement of luxury materials, made possible by nomads, was essential to the production of the canonical art works we now admire in museums. We will begin by studying nomadic cultures in the classroom and at the AMNH to better understand why tents are one of the oldest forms of architectural expression throughout the world. We then move to address how recent exhibitions have highlighted an interconnected globe in the premodern period, and what revelations these shows have brought to changing our perspective on how we make art into history and consider future directions in visualizing heretofore silent journeys. Students will get to know NYC collections, meet curators and conservators, and spend the entire semester with one object, which they will research in depth throughout the semester.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• TR 1 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Risham Majeed
  CULPA: 3 Info
• 4 points

ANIMAL BEHAVIOR THRU FIELDWORK

Why do birds sing? Why do wolves hunt in packs, but spiders hunt alone? Why are worker bees willing to die to protect the queen? Using evolutionary principles as the unifying theme, we will survey the study of animal behavior, including the history, basic principles, and research methods. 

Fieldwork as an important component of this course.  Through a range of approaches, students will gain familiarity with the scientific method, behavioral observation and research design.   Although this is listed as a 3000-level course, no prior biology experience is required. Fulfills the science requirement for most Columbia and GS undergraduates

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• MW 1 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Malcolm Rosenthal
  Info
• 3 points

INTRO TO VIDEO STORYTELLING

The Introduction to Video Storytelling course teaches students the basics of conceiving, researching, and reporting a story through video. Students will learn to think critically about what makes for a good video story--what makes it newsworthy, what makes video the proper medium for conveying that story--and how to execute using the latest technology. Students will learn how to use and handle a camera, how to best record sound, how to properly frame and light a subject or scene, as well as learn how to use Adobe Premiere editing software. Students will have one complete video story at the end of the 6-week course.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• MW 1 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Zoeann Murphy
  Info
• 3 points

Microbiology

This course introduces students to the physiology, morphology, pathogenicity, and genetics of microorganisms and their diverse applications. Topics include microbial evolution, cell structure and function, metabolic pathways, information flow and regulation, microbial systems, and the influence of microorganisms on health and disease. Core methods in microbiological research will be examined through the analysis of primary scientific literature and case studies.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• TR 1 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Ava E Brent
  Info
• 3 points

WAR REPORTING:THE COVERAGE OF

War Reporting: The Coverage of Armed Conflict explores the origins and roles of modern war reporting, examines the challenges journalists face, and discusses journalism's place in the public discourse of armed conflict and political violence, most notably terrorism. Taught by U.S. Marine corps veteran and Pulitzer Prize winning reporter and author, C.J. Chivers, class discussions will be lively and require student engagement. There will be guest lectures and seminars with leading journalists with experience in recent wars, as well discussions with security and legal professionals who assist and guide news organizations in their coverage of war. The examination of risks to journalists on conflict beats will include detailed case studies of real kidnappings and battlefield deaths, and study examples of risk mitigation and best practices in the field. The course is intended for students with a deep interest in war, terrorism and journalism, including both news consumers and aspiring practitioners. It aims to promote skepticism of official narratives and critical thinking about journalism itself.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• MW 9 a.m.-12:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Christopher J Chivers
  Info
• 3 points

SUPERHERO MOVIES AND NEW YORK

In
The Super Mario Bros. Movie
, plumes of dust fill the New York City streets as the monster Bowser attacks the city. Mario, seemingly beaten, hides in a pizzeria. What inspires him to keep fighting? He sees himself in a TV ad for his plumbing business, wearing a superhero cape and flying next to the Freedom Tower. He finds solace in the representation of himself as a superhero and in a city that refused to concede that the game was over after 9/11. Such a scene is emblematic of a seminar that will explore the superhero’s relationship to the city’s history and its traumas. Our eye will move between Hollywood blockbusters and global art cinema to help us mull how the superhero exemplifies, for some, the excesses of the U.S. during the global War on Terror. We will see Batman’s alter-ego Bruce Wayne run towards what looks like an imploding World Trade Center on 9/11 (
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
) and witness the superhero framed as an ideological smokescreen for the callous administration of George W. Bush who used the attacks to justify an endless war (
The Broken Circle Breakdown
).

While strongly focused on the post-9/11 superhero and its links to New York City, the cross-media seminar will track the superhero’s initial rise in popularity during the trauma of World War II. It will mobilize the archival resources of Columbia's Rare Book & Manuscript Library collections around the papers of noted
X-Men
writer Chris Claremont, so students can read how the artist conceived of bringing histories around the Holocaust into his spectacular stories. Such dips into the archives will help us assess how such empowered figures offer surprising routes of representation for the disenfranchised. We will also consider the authoritarian possibilities of the vigilante Batman, situating Frank Miller’s
The Dark Knight Returns
against a cultural study that draws links between the comic and Bernhard Goetz who killed four black teenagers in a Manhattan subway in 1984. To further frame how the superhero serves as a potent means of socio-political critique, acclaimed artists and writers will be invited into the classroom. These include Paul Pope whose
Batman: Year 100
(2006) presents a dystopian superhero that allegorizes the oppressive aspects of the War on Terror’s surveillance regime. A culminating field trip to the National September 11 Memorial Museum will be organized. There, students will visit “The World Trade Center

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• TR 1 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Fareed Ben-Youssef
  Info
• 3 points

VIDEO GAMES AND FILM

Cinema and videogames are moving-image-based media, and, especially over the past two decades, they have been credited with influencing each other. But how deep do their similarities actually go? In what way do the possibilities available to game developers differ from those available to filmmakers? How does each medium segment and present space, time, and action? What aesthetic effects are open to games that are not open to cinema, and vice versa? This course offers a comprehensive exploration of the dynamic relationship between cinema and video games. Through a combination of film screenings, gameplay, theoretical reading/discussions, and practical assignments, students will examine the historical, cultural, aesthetic, and narrative connections between these two influential media forms. The course aims to foster an understanding of how cinema and video games intersect, inform, and influence one another, providing a unique perspective on storytelling techniques within these mediums. The course will culminate in a final presentation where students will adapt an existing intellectual property, preferably a film or TV show, into a video game (or vice versa), justifying their creative choices.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• MW 2 p.m.-5:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Nick Braccia III
  Info
• 3 points

FINANCIAL ECONOMICS

Prerequisites: STAT UN1201, ECON UN3211 Intermediate Microeconomics and ECON UN3213 Intermediate Macroeconomics. Equivalent to ECON UN3025. Institutional nature and economic function of financial markets. Emphasis on both domestic and international markets (debt, stock, foreign exchange, Eurobond, Eurocurrency, futures, options, and others). Principles of security pricing and portfolio management; the capital asset pricing model and the efficient markets hypothesis.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• MW 9 a.m.-12:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Lucas Rosso
  Info
• 3 points

Narrative Design for Games and Interacti

Narr Design for Games & I

Traditionally, stories have followed a linear path, with a clear distinction between teller and audience. Yet, since the late 20th century, this model is shifting. Today, postmodern fiction, video games, interactive films, VR, participatory theater and immersive experiences offer audiences agency, creating a challenge for creators: how do they uphold narrative integrity while allowing for choice, collaboration, and remixing?

In this class, we’ll examine how modern narrative designers craft stories across media that invite audience participation. Through history, analysis, and workshops, we’ll explore how creators design for interaction while preserving tone and themes, turning audiences into active participants.

For the final assignment, students will develop a 12-15 minute pitch presentation for an original story concept, adapting it into an interactive format that balances strong authorial vision with audience agency.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• TR 10 a.m.-1:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Barrie Adleberg
  Info
• 3 points

WHAT IS CREATIVE WRITING FOR? PROSE WRIT

PROSE WRITING IN PARIS

​​​​​​
WRIT3043OC: 
What is Creative Writing For? Prose Writing in Paris
, 3 credits. 
Instructor:  
Nellie Hermann
, Adjunct Associate Professor, Barnard College; Core Faculty, Narrative Medicine; Creative Director, Columbia Narrative Medicine; Course Director, Narrative Medicine Certificate.

This course will plot a journey through a series of themes designed to examine what creative writing might be
for
as an applied practice (not only as an art): how can the tools of creative work connect us more deeply to the world around us, and therefore potentially transform any other endeavor we take on? Throughout the month, we will write and read – each week will feature a few different texts (all of them by French writers or by writers who lived in Paris)  which will form the background of the week’s work, and a particular piece of prose writing will be due at the end of that week. We will rely heavily on the city of Paris to be our teacher and guide in these various themes, and will involve the city in our explorations. In addition to the reading and generative exercises through each week, students will share one longer-form piece of writing with the group, and we will spend at least four class sessions workshopping these pieces as a group, with formal workshop letters due from students to underscore the attention they are giving to each other’s work. 

To enroll in this course, you must apply to the
 
Columbia Summer Creative Writing in Paris
 
program through the Center for Undergraduate Global Engagement (UGE).
 
Global Learning Scholarships 
available. 
Tuition 
charges apply. Please note the program dates are different from the Summer Sessions Terms. Visit the
UGE
website for the start and end dates for this program. Please email
uge@columbia.edu
with any quest

• Department: Global Programs
• Instructor: Nellie G Hermann
  Info
• 3 points

Film Criticism & Story Development

Criticism is an important skill to have, to appreciate and understand film more. But criticism isn’t black and white, and most importantly, it can help inform us of how to shape, tell, and develop a story that resonates with the audience.

This course will begin by exploring the basics of film criticism and film appreciation, as students develop their skills in analyzing and identifying components that make a film work (or fall short). As they approach the second half of the course, students will transform their skills in critiquing into productive feedback and use what they’ve learned to form and develop stories of their own, write a 1-2 page treatment, and finally pitch their story ideas in front of the class.

Everyone is interested in telling a story, but through the lens of film criticism, students will appreciate the creative process and learn how it is empowered by what we watch and most importantly, how we watch. Students will use this summer course to identify and prepare for areas of focus that they might be interested in pursuing (screenwriting, directing, producing) in their academic career.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• TR 2 p.m.-5:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Kevin L Lee
  Info
• 3 points

WRITING THROUGH ART: POETRY IN PARIS

WRIT3045OC: 
Writing Through Art: Poetry in Paris
, 3 credits.

Instructor: 
Dorothea Lasky
, Director of MFA in Poetry Program; Associate Professor of Writing, Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

At least since the Greek poet Simonides of Ceos called "painting silent poetry and poetry painting that speaks," creative writing has existed in conversation with a variety of other art forms, particularly visual art. In this class, we will explore creative writing as an interdisciplinary practice, with an emphasis on the work of artists who create in both the visual and textual fields. Among other key critical questions, we will consider:

1. How has an intersection with visual art been important to creative writing historically?

2. How does visual experience relate to particular aspects of creative writing?

3. How can we use visual art towards our own creative process in the future, either by using visual art in writing or by incorporating illustration in the presentation of our written work?

A mix of texts—classic and contemporary poetry and prose, illuminated manuscripts, children’s picturebooks, literature that we might consider 
visually-driven
, and related scholarship­­––form the basis for our investigations, discussions, and creative work.

To enroll in this course, you must apply to the
 
Columbia Summer Creative Writing in Paris
 
program through the Center for Undergraduate Global Engagement (UGE).
 
Global Learning Scholarships 
available. 
Tuition 
charges apply.

Please note the program dates are different from the Summer Sessions Terms. Visit the 
UGE
 website for the start and end dates for the Columbia Summer Creative Writing in Paris program. Please email 
uge@columbia.edu
 with a

• Department: Global Programs
• Instructor: Dorothea S Lasky
  Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

British Literature to 1500

This course will introduce some of the most fascinating texts of the first eight hundred years of English literature, from the period of Anglo-Saxon rule through the Hundred Years’ War and beyond—roughly, 700–1500 CE. We’ll hit on some texts you’ve heard of – 
Beowulf
 and selections from Chaucer’s 
Canterbury Tales
 – while leaving time for some you may not have encountered – Marie de France’s 
Lais
 and Margery of Kempe’s 
Book
. Along the way, we’ll also hone skills of reading, writing, and oral expression crucial to appreciating and discussing literature in nuanced, supple ways. 

If you take this course, you’ll discover how medieval literature is both a mirror and a foil to modern literature. You’ll explore the plurilingual and cross-cultural nature of medieval literary production and improve (or acquire!) your knowledge of Middle English. Plus, you’ll flex your writing muscles with two papers.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• MW 1 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Hannah Weaver
  Info
• 3 points

Victorian Crime Stoppers

Who were the crime stoppers of the nineteenth century, a century marked by the establishment of the police force?
In 1829, Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel founded the Metropolitan Police, giving rise to the slang nicknames “Bobbies” for constables in England and “Peelers” in Ireland, terms that are still recognized today. In this course we move from the seemingly absent institutionalized justice system in representations of crime in fiction (
Oliver Twist
) to its codification in the press (
The Illustrated Police News, Penny Dreadfuls,
and the infamous case of Jack the Ripper). This leads us to look in depth at the rise of detective fiction, sensation fiction, and the gothic in the long 19th century. From medicine, psychology, criminology to phrenology, mesmerism, and studies on hysteria, we examine scientific and pseudo-scientific discourses that framed and questioned the nature of crime, morality, policing, and the boundaries of good and evil. We consider how Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle pioneered the detective genre, but also how crime appeared, not just as theft or murder, but as (proto-)crimes against humanity (
The Island of Doctor Moreau
and the question of vivisection) or the denunciations of the crimes of the British empire (Joseph Conrad’s
Heart of Darkness
). We also examine gothic and sensational reactions to crime alongside the rise of psychoanalysis, spiritualism, and questions of gender and sexuality. Throughout, the course asks students to consider moral, ethical, and cultural questions in Victorian literature: how do literature and science construct notions of good and evil? How are race, gender, class, empire, and sexuality implicated in ideas of crime and criminality? Why were the Victorians and why are we still drawn to stories of transgression and detection?

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• MW 9 a.m.-12:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Alice Clapie
  Info
• 3 points

Law and Literature

In contemporary American culture, legal practice and literary studies share a commitment to careful use of language, rigorous interpretation, and a deep and imaginative engagement with meaning. Scholars and practitioners have been debating for decades how the two practices can reinforce each other, improve each other, critique each other, and refute each other. (As this debate shows, both communities also love to argue.) In this course, we will read and discuss a classic set of literary texts that speak to certain preoccupations within the legal tradition. We will also look at certain debates and controversies within legal discourse to see how the tools and insights of literary and cultural analysis can change our perspective. We won’t be focusing on literary history nor legal doctrine – no previous knowledge of either is required. Instead, we will look at texts where shared concerns – about interpretation, about evidence, about empathy, and about justice and fairness – allow us to use both literary and legal thinking to advance our own understanding of these ongoing debates.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• MW 5:30 p.m.-8:40 p.m.
• Instructor: Jon J Connolly
  Info
• 3 points

The 1990s A Literary History

The 1990s A Literary Hist

How should we write the literary history of the 1990s—the decade in which history briefly died, the Internet arrived, and everything became “global”? The central gamble of this class is that the 1990s are now far enough away from us in time that a new sort of cultural and historical perspective is becoming possible. What kind of critical judgments can we make about the literature of the 1990s and how confident can we be about our objectivity? Can we identify trends that emerged, or ended, in the period? What body of texts, or group of authors or forms, should we use in writing the literary history of the 1990s – and what criteria should we use for their selection?

Our class meetings will feature extended discussion of significant literary works published in Britain and the US during the 1990s. Authors include major poets and novelists from the period: Thom Gunn, Harryette Mullen, Cormac McCarthy, Hanif Kureishi, Toni Morrison, W. G. Sebald, and Anne Carson. Literary discussion will be mixed with readings from criticism (academic and popular), literary theory, and literary sociology. Students will complete a variety of assignment types, including book reviews, short in-class essays, bibliographic projects, and creative options.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• TR 9 a.m.-12:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Matthew Hart
  CULPA: 6 Info
• 3 points

Reading and Writing Memoir

This seminar has two central goals: first, to teach you how to write a clear, indeed eloquent essay, a skill that will prove useful throughout your life.  Second, to read some of the greatest (or most interesting) examples of the literary genre of memoir, with the goal of creating at the end of the course a memoir (of some aspect of your life) that responds to the history of the genre (second goal) and is well written (the first).   

The seminar will read excerpts from Augustine, Cellini, Montaigne, Rousseau, Casanova, Wollstonecraft, Proust, Jacobs, Arenas, Erneaux, Lous, Knausgaard, Sebald, and Ferrante.   We will analyze the memoirs in terms of the creation, and transformation, of the genre of autobiography, and its relation to the novel form.   And as we shift from one assignment to other, more complex ones, we will emphasize clarity of expression as the beginning of a personal style.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• TR 1 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Ross T Hamilton
  CULPA: 25 Info
• 3 points

Sex and Gender across Long Time

The idea of gender is a relatively recent formulation, often complicated by the ferocity division between the sexes found across history.  This course uses art objects, literary texts, philosophy, psychology and finally film and digital media to interrogate the ideas of sex and gender, to explore the violent ways in which female sexuality has been denied or constrained, that same-sex desire was erased or pathologized, and how transgenderism, even as it works to deny sexual difference, complicates the relations between both sex and gender.  

The goal of this course is to explore the transformations of notions of sex, and more recently gender, across history. We will engage in writing exercises designed to sharpen our interpretive and analytical abilities, and over the six weeks develop a research project of approximately 20 pages. Through our conversations, we hope that we will be able to understand the complex issues surrounding these explosive ideas – ideas that impact us in so many ways – and in so doing gain a powerful, intellectual voice.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• TR 5:30 p.m.-8:40 p.m.
• Instructor: Ross T Hamilton
  CULPA: 25 Info
• 3 points

Worlds of Alexander the Great

This course 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.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• MW 1 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Jazmin Novoa Lara
  Info
• 3 points

URBAN LATIN/X AMERICA: ETHNOGRAPHIC PERS

URBAN LATINX AMERICA: ETH

This seminar examines the social, economic, and political landscapes of Latin American cities and the Latinx urban experience through ethnographic analysis. It explores key themes such as rural to urban and transnational migration, urban poverty, theories of “marginality” and informality, violence and urban segregation, grassroots movements, urban citizenship and neoliberal urban governance. Students will read ethnographies to gain an in-depth understanding of how cities are lived and experienced, while we delve into theoretical debates important in the field of Latin American urban studies and Latinx studies. The course unsettles the category of Latin America, to introduce a discussion of the “Latinization” of U.S. cities, and engages the history and lived experience of Latinxs in New York City as a prime example of this phenomenon. We will interrogate ethnographic, audiovisual materials (included to complement the readings) and lived experience, from a postcolonial perspective. This means, discussing the politics of knowledge production and representation, the impact of colonialism in transnational flows of knowledge and labor, the contributions to urban theory from the perspective of cities located in the Global South, and the active efforts of Latinxs in New York city to transform space and carve out spaces of self-representation and sovereignty.

• Department: BARNARD SUMMER PROGRAMS
• TR 1 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Andreina Torres Angarita
  Info
• 3 points

URBAN LATIN/X AMERICA: ETHNOGRAPHIC PERS

URBAN LATINX AMERICA: ETH

This seminar examines the social, economic, and political landscapes of Latin American cities and the Latinx urban experience through ethnographic analysis. It explores key themes such as rural to urban and transnational migration, urban poverty, theories of “marginality” and informality, violence and urban segregation, grassroots movements, urban citizenship and neoliberal urban governance. Students will read ethnographies to gain an in-depth understanding of how cities are lived and experienced, while we delve into theoretical debates important in the field of Latin American urban studies and Latinx studies. The course unsettles the category of Latin America, to introduce a discussion of the “Latinization” of U.S. cities, and engages the history and lived experience of Latinxs in New York City as a prime example of this phenomenon. We will interrogate ethnographic, audiovisual materials (included to complement the readings) and lived experience, from a postcolonial perspective. This means, discussing the politics of knowledge production and representation, the impact of colonialism in transnational flows of knowledge and labor, the contributions to urban theory from the perspective of cities located in the Global South, and the active efforts of Latinxs in New York city to transform space and carve out spaces of self-representation and sovereignty.

• Department: BARNARD SUMMER PROGRAMS
• TR 1 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Andreina Torres Angarita
  Info
• 3 points

Harlem on My Mind: Harlem Renaissance Li

This course explores the cultural contexts and aesthetic debates surrounding the Harlem or New Negro literary renaissance, 1920s to 1930s. Through fiction, poetry, essays, and artwork, we will consider the movement within the context of American modernism and African American cultural history, focusing on the relationship or tension between art/literature and socio-political change.  Topics considered include: patronage, passing, primitivism, and the problematics of creating a “racial” art in/for a community comprised of differences in gender, class, sexuality, and geographical origin. In the summer of 2026, we will work with the Alexander Gumby Collection of Negroiana at the Columbia Rare Book and Manuscript Library to think through the era’s cultural history and the impact of different archival media on its historiography.

• Department: BARNARD SUMMER PROGRAMS
• TR 9 a.m.-12:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Monica L Miller
  CULPA: 10 Info
• 3 points

Harlem on My Mind: Harlem Renaissance Li

This course explores the cultural contexts and aesthetic debates surrounding the Harlem or New Negro literary renaissance, 1920s to 1930s. Through fiction, poetry, essays, and artwork, we will consider the movement within the context of American modernism and African American cultural history, focusing on the relationship or tension between art/literature and socio-political change.  Topics considered include: patronage, passing, primitivism, and the problematics of creating a “racial” art in/for a community comprised of differences in gender, class, sexuality, and geographical origin. In the summer of 2026, we will work with the Alexander Gumby Collection of Negroiana at the Columbia Rare Book and Manuscript Library to think through the era’s cultural history and the impact of different archival media on its historiography.

• Department: BARNARD SUMMER PROGRAMS
• TR 9 a.m.-12:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Monica L Miller
  CULPA: 10 Info
• 3 points

Endangered Languages in the Global City:

ENDANGERED LANGUAGES

LING3102W: Endangered Languages in the Global City: Lang, Culture, and Migration in Contempary NYC. 3 points.

Instructor 
Ross Perlin
, Lecturer, Department of Slavic Languages, Columbia University

Taught in English. This course counts as a 
Global Core Requirement 
at Columbia University.

Of the world’s estimated 7,000 languages – representing migrations and historical developments thousands of years old – the majority are oral, little-documented, and increasingly endangered under the onslaught of global languages like English. This course will take the unprecedented, paradoxical linguistic capital of New York City as a lens for examining how immigrants form communities in a new land, how those communities are integrated into the wider society, and how they grapple with linguistic and cultural loss. Interdisciplinary with an experiential learning component, the course will focus on texts, materials, encounters, and fieldwork with three of the city’s newest and least-studied indigenous immigrant communities (indigenous Latin Americans, Himalayans, and Central Asians).Indigeneity, though often invisible or perceived as marginal in global cities like New York, is in fact pervasive and fundamental. Cities now constitute a crucial site for understanding migration and cultural change, with language a vehicle for culture. Studying cultures only in situ (i.e. in their homelands) risks missing a crucial dimension. Students will be immersed in stateless, oral, immigrant cultures while also gaining a hands-on critical understanding of language endangerment and urban sociolinguistic research, first through field experiences and guest speakers (Endangered Language Alliance partners) and then by going out together into communities to work on projects in small teams. The Endangered Language Alliance (ELA), where the instructor is Co-Director, was formed as a non-profit research institute in 2010 as a forum for researchers, community members, activists, artists, and other New Yorkers to come together to support indigenous and minority languages. ELA’s video recordings provide first-hand testimony of endangered languages in the global city – in indigenous languages with English translation – available in few other places. Those texts will be central to this course, supplemented by the new,first-ever, detailed language map of New York City being pro

• Department: Global Programs
• 3 points

Applied Bayesian Analysis

This is a course in intermediate statistical inference techniques in the context of applied research
questions in data science. Assuming some prior exposure to probability and statistics, this course will
first introduce the student to the principles of Bayesian inference, then apply them in estimation and
prediction in the context of linear and generalized linear models, counting and classification, mixture and
multilevel models, including scientific computation (like MCMC methods). Students will also learn
about the main benefits of using Bayesian vs. frequentist methods, like naturally combining prior
information with the data; posterior probabilities as easier to interpret alternatives to p-values; parameter
estimation “pooling” in hierarchical model and so on.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• MTWR 1:30 p.m.-3:05 p.m.
• Instructor: Dobrin Marchev
  Info
• 3 points

Archaic Greek Ceramics

This course explores the functions and meanings of Greek painted ceramics made in the sixth century BCE, taking the collections of the Metropolitan Museum as its focus. Today these vessels are enshrined in display cases and elevated as art objects. But what roles did they play for the ancient people who used them? Who made them, and how? What substances did they hold? What did their decorations mean? Why were they acquired by people living thousands of miles away from where they were made? We will examine the overlapping roles of Archaic Greek vessels as functional containers, artistic creations, ancient commodities, and modern collectors’ items. Rather than foregrounding Athenian vases, we will consider them alongside Boeotian, Corinthian, Chalcidian, East Greek, and Laconian vessels to better understand the many roles ceramics played across the Greek world. The relationship between Greek ceramics and those created by neighboring cultures including the Etruscans and Egyptians will be discussed. Emphasis will be placed on understanding Greek vessels as objects that connected different cultures as they moved through the Mediterranean.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• TR 1 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Monica K Bulger
  Info
• 3 points

FICTION & PERSONAL NARRATIVE

Writing sample required to apply to the course. Please send a writing sample of up to 5 pages of prose (double spaced) to 
awatson@barnard.edu
. 

Spring 2026: Fiction and Personal Narrative: Crafting the Narrative "I"

In this workshop, we will practice taking creative risks, writing fiction and nonfiction. We will examine four key craft areas: voice, characterization, imagery, and arrangement, both in contemporary published writing and in the writing of the people in this class. In small and large group workshops, we will consider each writer’s work with care and attention to the writer’s vision. By discussing each work-in-progress on its own terms, we will help our fellow writers deepen the meaning and impact of their work. Through risk-taking, and building a creative community, we will also grow and deepen our personal relationships to craft. Model readings will be contemporary short stories or personal essays, mostly written in the first person, including work by Kali Fajardo-Anstine, Tony Tulathimutte, K-Ming Chang, Cleyvis Natera, Melissa Febos, Ling Ma, and Deesha Philyaw.

• Department: BARNARD SUMMER PROGRAMS
• TR 1 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Alexandra P Watson
  CULPA: 16 Info
• 3 points

FICTION & PERSONAL NARRATIVE

Writing sample required to apply to the course. Please send a writing sample of up to 5 pages of prose (double spaced) to 
awatson@barnard.edu
. 

Spring 2026: Fiction and Personal Narrative: Crafting the Narrative "I"

In this workshop, we will practice taking creative risks, writing fiction and nonfiction. We will examine four key craft areas: voice, characterization, imagery, and arrangement, both in contemporary published writing and in the writing of the people in this class. In small and large group workshops, we will consider each writer’s work with care and attention to the writer’s vision. By discussing each work-in-progress on its own terms, we will help our fellow writers deepen the meaning and impact of their work. Through risk-taking, and building a creative community, we will also grow and deepen our personal relationships to craft. Model readings will be contemporary short stories or personal essays, mostly written in the first person, including work by Kali Fajardo-Anstine, Tony Tulathimutte, K-Ming Chang, Cleyvis Natera, Melissa Febos, Ling Ma, and Deesha Philyaw.

• Department: BARNARD SUMMER PROGRAMS
• TR 1 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Alexandra P Watson
  CULPA: 16 Info
• 3 points

Constructing the Sacred in Ancient Greec

This course examines the conception and spatialization of religious experience in ancient Greece through brief chronological surveys and thematic case studies. Definitions of “sacred,” “ritual,” and “divine” will frame lectures and class discussions on cult locations and religious architecture in mainland Greece and western Asia Minor from the Archaic (8th century BCE) to the Early Roman Imperial (2nd century CE) periods.

The architectural articulation of sanctuaries will be observed in relation to socio-political, historical, and artistic conditions in which these spaces were formed and existed. Case studies will involve both conventional (e.g., athletic) and idiosyncratic (e.g., healing, mystery performances) cult practices.

The second half of the summer session will focus on the materiality of the sacred through smallscale dedications and will make use of the vast collections of the Metropolitan Museum. Finally, we will observe NYC’s urban fabric in walking tours where we consider Greek Revival architecture and phenomena such as continuity, transformation, de-sacralization, and secularization.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• MW 1 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Muge Arseven
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 3 points

Clean Object-Oriented Design

A course in designing, documenting, coding, and testing robust computer software, according to object-oriented design patterns and clean coding practices. Taught in Java.Object-oriented design principles include: use cases; CRC; UML; javadoc; patterns (adapter, builder, command, composite, decorator, facade, factory, iterator, lazy evaluation, observer, singleton, strategy, template, visitor); design by contract; loop invariants; interfaces and inheritance hierarchies; anonymous classes and null objects; graphical widgets; events and listeners; Java's Object class; generic types; reflection; timers, threads, and locks.

• Department: Computer Science
• TR 1 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Chris Murphy
  Info
• 3 points

Undergraduate Mentored Research

Prerequisites: the project mentors permission. This course provides a mechanism for students who undertake research with a faculty member from the Department of Statistics to receive academic credit. Students seeking research opportunities should be proactive and entrepreneurial: identify congenial faculty whose research is appealing, let them know of your interest and your background and skills.

• Department: Statistics
• Instructor: Daniel Rabinowitz
  CULPA: 19 h-index: 34 Info
• 3 points

Democracy: Theory & Practice

The goal of this course is to provide students with an overview of constitutive debates over the theory and practice of democracy along three major lines: democracy as a word (with a time-honored ancestry and a tortuous trajectory across the centuries); democracy as a constellation of principles and values; and democracy as an array of institutions and procedures that instantiate the word and pursue the foundational principles of popular sovereignty and democratic self-rule. In doing so, we will read the work of major representatives of historical and contemporary political thought who assessed democracy’s shortcomings and potential, examined the relationship between its theory and its practice, and offered prominent resources for thinking about democracy’s future in our present.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• MW 1 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: David Ragazzoni
  Info
• 3 points

HISTORY OF CAPITALISM

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.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• MW 9 a.m.-1 p.m.
• Instructor: Carl Wennerlind
  CULPA: 30 Info
• 4 points

DATA STRUCTURES IN JAVA

Data types and structures: arrays, stacks, singly and doubly linked lists, queues, trees, sets, and graphs. Programming techniques for processing such structures: sorting and searching, hashing, garbage collection. Storage management. Rudiments of the analysis of algorithms. Taught in Java. Note: Due to significant overlap, students may receive credit for only one of the following three courses: COMS W3134, COMS W3136, COMS W3137.

• Department: Computer Science
• MW 5:30 p.m.-8:40 p.m.
• Instructor: Paul S Blaer
  CULPA: 46 h-index: 8 Info
• 3 points

France and the African Diaspora

France/African Diaspora

HIST3136OC. France and the African Diaspora, 3 points.

Insructor:  Frank Guridy, Dr. Kenneth and Kareitha Forde Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies.  

Taught in English. This course also counts as a
Global Core Requirement a
t Columbia University.

This course explores France’s complex racialized colonial history by encouraging students to examine the ways the country helped constitute a racialized colonial empire and the ways it created the conditions the conditions to challenge it. The course encourages students to contemplate how France has figured into the creation of the African Diaspora and how diasporic movements for freedom have shaped France. The course will build upon the concept of vernacular landscapes to encourage students to examine how these histories are memorialized, or not, in France today. Topics to be explored will include: the impact of slavery on France, including its port cities including Nantes; the intertwined character of the French and Haitian Revolutions; the convergence of anti-colonial movements in Paris during the interwar period and beyond, and the experiences of Black expatriates in the country during the twentieth century. The course’s location at Reid Hall in Paris will give students ample opportunities to students to examine the reciprocal impact between France and decolonization and freedom movements.

To enroll in this course, you must apply to the 
Columbia Summer in Paris: English Track
 program through the Center for Undergraduate Global Engagement (UGE).  
Global Learning Scholarships available.
  
Tuition 
charges apply. 

Please note the program dates are different from the Summer Session Terms. Visit the 
UGE
 website for the start and end dates for the Columbia in Summer in Paris program.

Please email uge@columbia.edu with any questions you may have.

• Department: Global Programs
• Instructor: Frank Guridy
  CULPA: 2 Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

How the Ancients Argued: The Global Rhet

Long before Aristotle’s Rhetoric and far from Athens and Rome, rhetoricians were teaching people how to communicate powerfully in politics, the law, and the street. This course surveys the ancient rhetorics of Egypt, China, the Americas, and the Arab world. We will examine a body of primary texts from 2,300 B.C.E. to 1,500 C.E. that teach people to wield language effectively.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• TR 1 p.m.-5 p.m.
• Instructor: Susan Mendelsohn
  CULPA: 5 h-index: 3 Info
• 4 points

ADVANCED PROGRAMMING

C programming language and Unix systems programming. Also covers Git, Make, TCP/IP networking basics, C++ fundamentals.

• Department: Computer Science
• TR 5:30 p.m.-8:40 p.m.
• Instructor: Brian Borowski
  Info
• 4 points

DISCRETE MATHEMATICS

Logic and formal proofs, sequences and summation, mathematical induction, binomial coefficients, elements of finite probability, recurrence relations, equivalence relations and partial orderings, and topics in graph theory (including isomorphism, traversability, planarity, and colorings).

• Department: Computer Science
• TR 10:10 a.m.-1:20 p.m.
• Instructor: Ansaf Salleb-Aouissi
  CULPA: 21 h-index: 16 Info
• 4 points

JUDICIAL POLITICS

This political science course provides an introduction to the politics of judges, courts, and law in the United States.  We will evaluate law and courts as political institutions and judges as political actors and policy-makers.

The topics we will study include what courts do; how different legal systems function; the operation of legal norms; the U.S. judicial system; the power of courts; constraints on judicial power; judicial review; the origin of judicial institutions; how and why Supreme Court justices make the decisions they do; case selection; conflict between the Court and the other branches of government; decision making and conflict within the judicial hierarchy; the place of courts in American political history; and judicial appointments.

We will explore some common but not necessarily true claims about how judges make decisions and the role of courts.  One set of myths sees judges as unbiased appliers of neutral law, finding law and never making it, with ideology, biography, and politics left at the courthouse door. Another set of myths sees the judiciary as the “least dangerous branch,” making law, not policy, without real power or influence.

Our thematic questions will be:  How much power and discretion do judges have in the U.S?  What drives their decision-making?

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• TR 9 a.m.-12:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Jeffrey R Lax
  CULPA: 32 h-index: 22 Info
• 3 points

PAINTING I

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.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• TWR 5:30 p.m.-8 p.m.
• 3 points

INTERMEDIATE MACROECONOMICS

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.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• MW 10:20 a.m.-11:55 a.m.
• Instructor: Rodrigo C Pacheco
  Info
• 4 points

INTER MACROECONOMICS-DISC

Discussion section for ECON UN3213 Intermediate Macro. Student must register for a section.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• 0 points

WRITING ABOUT ART

Prerequisites: No prerequisites. Department approval NOT required. 

This course will introduce students to writing about visual art. We will take our models from art history and contemporary art discourse, and students will be prompted to write with and about current art exhibitions and events throughout the city. The modes of art writing we will encounter include: the practice of ekphrasis (poems which describe or derive their inspiration from a work of art); writers such as John Ashbery, Gary Indiana, Eileen Myles, and others who for periods of their life held positions as art critics while composing poetry and works of fiction; writers such as Etel Adnan, Susan Howe, and Renee Gladman who have produced literature and works of art in equal measure. We will also look at artists who have written essays and poetry throughout their careers such as Robert Smithson, Glenn Ligon, Gregg Bordowitz, Moyra Davey, and Hannah Black, and consider both the visual qualities of writing and the ways that visual artists have used writing in their work. Lastly, we will consider what it means to write through a “milieu” of visual artists, such as those associated with the New York School and Moscow Conceptualism. Throughout the course students will produce original works and complete a final writing project that enriches, complicates, and departs from their own interests and preoccupations.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• TR 1:30 p.m.-4:40 p.m.
• Instructor: Thomas A Donovan
  Info
• 3 points

LOGIC OF COLLECTIVE CHOICE

Much of politics is about combining individual preferences or actions into collective choices. We will make use of two theoretical approaches. Our primary approach will be social choice theory, which studies how we aggregate what individuals want into what the collective ;wants.; The second approach, game theory, covers how we aggregate what individuals want into what the group gets, given that social, economic, and political outcomes usually depend on the interaction of individual choices. The aggregation of preferences or choices is usually governed by some set of institutional rules, formal or informal. Our main themes include the rationality of individual and group preferences, the underpinnings and implications of using majority rule, tradeoffs between aggregation methods, the fairness of group choice, the effects of institutional constraints on choice (e.g. agenda control), and the implications for democratic choice. Most of the course material is highly abstract, but these abstract issues turn up in many real-world problems, from bargaining between the branches of government to campus elections to judicial decisions on multi-member courts to the allocation of relief funds among victims of natural disasters to the scoring of Olympic events. The collective choice problem is one faced by society as a whole and by the smallest group alike.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• MW 9 a.m.-12:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Jeffrey R Lax
  CULPA: 32 h-index: 22 Info
• 3 points

SHAKESPEARE

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.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• MW 1 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Douglas S Pfeiffer
  CULPA: 7 Info
• 3 points

GLOBAL HISTORIES OF THE BOOK

This class will consider the idea and history of “the book” through history and around the world.  Its primary objective is to introduce students to major topics and questions in “book history” while working to 1) resist the discipline’s traditional interest in modern European print culture and 2) situate that interest in global and transhistorical contexts.

Learning about the histories of books and writing in different eras and parts of the world will go hand-in-hand with critical examinations of how and why those histories have been periodized and narrativized the way they have.  Although “book” is a technological category, we will consider how helpful technological narratives and comparisons of book practice and culture are.  We will also engage not only in transhistorical and transnational comparisons of book culture and practice, but also examine the global book as a postcolonial phenomenon, marked by patterns of influence, appropriation and imposition across time and space.

This course will perforce be not comprehensive but instead oriented around case studies: we will be unable to examine every stage of every nation’s book history in detail.  Rather, we will focus on objects and scholarly case studies that illuminate both the history and methods involved, and on productive points of contact.  We will visit libraries and examine books both in person and through virtual simulacra.

What does it mean to tell “global” histories of the book?  For our purposes, it means not assuming that the terms, categories, or periods of modern western book history should be definitive for other times and places.  It also means examining the way that book cultures participated in and were shaped by patterns of exchange, conquest and colonization.  We will explore points of contact across time as well as space.

By the end of the semester, students will be able to speak to the history of the book across several cultures and linguistic traditions, speak comparatively to dimensions of book practice in two cultures, and be able to present the history and comparative dimensions of a chosen object from Columbia’s special collections. Students will also become acquainted with the use of special collections libraries.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• MW 1 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Joseph A Howley
  CULPA: 7 Info
• 3 points

Food & Society in Global Cities

Food Society in Global Ci

Culinary practices are intricate to how urban spaces are experienced in everyday life. This course explores the nuanced ways food practices transform global cities worldwide. It investigates how personal preferences of food shape social, cultural, and spatial boundaries. Throughout the course, students will analyze urban spaces in global cities from an intersectionality theory of capitalism lens to consider how power structures shape culinary practices in terms of race, gender, sexuality, citizenship, class, ethnicity, language, religion, caste, ability, and diet. For instance, immigrant cooking and eating practices help define ethnic enclaves. And gourmet food trucks for the middle-class can become tropes for spurring gentrification. Analyzing global North and South cities, course themes focus on the politics of street food, food trucks, restaurants, markets, farmers’ markets, food deserts, food assistance programs, urban farming and agriculture, gastronomic gentrification, and food delivery services. This course comprises a mixture of active teaching strategies, short lectures, a film, and several field trips throughout New York City. By the end of the course, students will garner a deep understanding of how food and societies influence, and are shaped by, contemporary global cities.

• Department: BARNARD SUMMER PROGRAMS
• MW 1 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Noah Allison
  Info
• 3 points

Food & Society in Global Cities

Food Society in Global Ci

Culinary practices are intricate to how urban spaces are experienced in everyday life. This course explores the nuanced ways food practices transform global cities worldwide. It investigates how personal preferences of food shape social, cultural, and spatial boundaries. Throughout the course, students will analyze urban spaces in global cities from an intersectionality theory of capitalism lens to consider how power structures shape culinary practices in terms of race, gender, sexuality, citizenship, class, ethnicity, language, religion, caste, ability, and diet. For instance, immigrant cooking and eating practices help define ethnic enclaves. And gourmet food trucks for the middle-class can become tropes for spurring gentrification. Analyzing global North and South cities, course themes focus on the politics of street food, food trucks, restaurants, markets, farmers’ markets, food deserts, food assistance programs, urban farming and agriculture, gastronomic gentrification, and food delivery services. This course comprises a mixture of active teaching strategies, short lectures, a film, and several field trips throughout New York City. By the end of the course, students will garner a deep understanding of how food and societies influence, and are shaped by, contemporary global cities.

• Department: BARNARD SUMMER PROGRAMS
• MW 1 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Noah Allison
  Info
• 3 points

COMPUTER SCIENCE THEORY

Regular languages: deterministic and non-deterministic finite automata, regular expressions. Context-free languages: context-free grammars, push-down automata. Turing machines, the Chomsky hierarchy, and the Church-Turing thesis. Introduction to Complexity Theory and NP-Completeness.

• Department: Computer Science
• MW 10:10 a.m.-1:20 p.m.
• Instructor: Xi Chen
  CULPA: 7 Wikipedia h-index: 64 Info
• 3 points

MONEY AND BANKING

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.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• TR 9 a.m.-12:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Ritsu Kitagawa
  Info
• Instructor: A. Vivette Ancona
  Info
• 3 points

WALT WHITMAN AND NEW YORK

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.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• TR 1 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Karen Karbiener
  CULPA: 7 Info
• 3 points

VOTING AND AMERICAN POLITICS

This course explores causes and effects of political behavior in the United States. “Political behavior” is a broad concept, and can include many areas of engagement with civic life. As we consider “behavior,” we must also take on its foundations: Public opinion, ideology, and partisanship. We will focus primarily on mass politics—beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of ordinary citizens rather than of activists or elites—in the United States. However, we will also explore some effects of elite behavior on mass behavior. We will also focus on the interconnections between social structure, culture, and politics. In short, this course will focus on developing an understanding of the mechanisms that drive voting and other political behaviors in the United States.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• TR 9 a.m.-12:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Yamil R Velez
  CULPA: 1 h-index: 8 Info
• 3 points

TYRANNY & AUTOCRACY-RUSS/SOV UNION

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• TR 1 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Michael F Stanislawski
  CULPA: 66 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

Third-Year Chinese I

Welcome to the Third Year Chinese course, designed for students who have completed two years of college-level Chinese or have equivalent proficiency. This course deepens your mastery of the Chinese language while exploring its rich cultural traditions. Through a variety of classical and contemporary texts, engage with literature, history, philosophy, and social issues that have shaped Chinese society. Strengthen your ability to interpret complex texts, distinguish between spoken and written styles, and communicate ideas clearly and confidently in both academic and real-world contexts. By connecting long-standing traditions with contemporary society, this course enhances advanced language skills while fostering cultural understanding and meaningful engagement with the language.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• MTWRF 10 a.m.-12:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Jia Xu
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 5 points

HISPANIC IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATE

The Hispanic population in the United States is changing rapidly due to various migration, education, and population growth trends. The Hispanic population in the United States reached a new record high in 2020 with 62.1 million people, a 23% increase since 2010, while the white population decreased by 8.6%. This course aims to study Hispanic immigration to the United States. We will begin with a historical overview of migration patterns in the U.S. in general, and then focus on the immigration laws that have affected Hispanics in this country today. Each class will begin with a discussion of the week's most important immigration news.

• Department: BARNARD SUMMER PROGRAMS
• MW 9 a.m.-12:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Maria E Lozano
  CULPA: 7 Info
• 3 points

HISPANIC IMMIGRATION TO THE UNITED STATE

The Hispanic population in the United States is changing rapidly due to various migration, education, and population growth trends. The Hispanic population in the United States reached a new record high in 2020 with 62.1 million people, a 23% increase since 2010, while the white population decreased by 8.6%. This course aims to study Hispanic immigration to the United States. We will begin with a historical overview of migration patterns in the U.S. in general, and then focus on the immigration laws that have affected Hispanics in this country today. Each class will begin with a discussion of the week's most important immigration news.

• Department: BARNARD SUMMER PROGRAMS
• MW 9 a.m.-12:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Maria E Lozano
  CULPA: 7 Info
• 3 points

CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY

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.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• TR 1 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Melody A Wauke
  Info
• 3 points

The Story, She Told: Women's Autofiction

In her 1975 essay
The Laughter of Medusa
, Hélène Cixous compared women’s writing—in French, “écriture féminine”—to the unexplored African continent. To date, literary criticism has been grappling with the distinct qualities of literary works, crafted by women. This course offers a survey of main autofictional works and memoirs, written originally in the Russian language within the last 100 years. We will start our journey with the tumults of the WW1 and the Bolshevik Revolution, the Civil War, through the WW2, the Soviet dissident movement, the emigration waves into Israel and the United States, the advent of a post-socialist Russia in 1991—in order to arrive at the two plus decades of Vladimir Putin’s presidency. We will consider  the ways in which each author transposes and conveys her own—and others’ memories—through the medium of autofiction, defined by Serge Doubrovsky, who coined the term in French, as “the adventure of the language, outside of wisdom and the syntax of the novel.” All selected works, with very few exceptions, are available in English;  no reading knowledge of Russian is required. No prerequisites.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• MW 5:30 p.m.-8:40 p.m.
• Instructor: Alex Pekov
  Info
• 3 points

MUSIC IN EAST ASIA

A topical approach to the concepts and practices of music in relation to other arts in the development of Asian civilizations.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• TR 9 a.m.-12:10 p.m.
• TR 1 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Kevin Fellezs
  CULPA: 4 Info
• Instructor: Laina Dawes
  Info
• 3 points

MUSICS OF INDIA & WEST ASIA

A topical approach to the concepts and practices of music in relation to other arts in the development of Asian civilizations.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• TR 1 p.m.-4 p.m.
• MW 9 a.m.-12:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Nina Fukuoka
  Info
• Instructor: Alessandra M Ciucci
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 3 points

Baroque Masters at the Met: Bernini, Vel

This course examines three masters of European Baroque art—Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), Diego Velázquez (1599-1660), and Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669)—artists who are all well represented in the permanent collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Through classroom discussions and museum visits, we will examine Baroque art as part of a continuing and developing accumulation of forms and ideas throughout the 17th century, and consider the impact these artists had on their contemporaries and in ensuing centuries. Roughly half of the class sessions take place at The Metropolitan Museum, a luxury that allows for close, firsthand analysis of art, but it is not an art appreciation course. It is a history course concerned with the study of ideas, artists, and visual facts and their application to emerging art forms within their cultural-historical context. In addition to developing a critical eye, the class is intended to cultivate analytical thinking and communication skills as well as knowledge of the subject matter.

No background in art history is necessary to do well in this course, but students are expected to read and listen closely and to write thoughtfully. Attendance is crucial. Students who attend class, take notes, and read everything will have no difficulty earning a satisfactory grade. Above all, never hesitate to ask questions and see me during office hours.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• TR 1 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Lindsey P Schneider
  Info
• 3 points

ANCIENT AND MODERN OLYMPICS

CLCV3330OC:  
ANCIENT AND MODERN OLYMPICS, 3 points 

Instructors: Paraskevi Martzavou, Lecturer in the Discipline of Classics, Department of Classics and Lien Van Geel, Lecturer in the Discipline of Classics, Department of Classics

This course introduces students to classical sports and its many aspects, from literary representations to geography and material culture. The choice of Athens as the location will allow the course to be enriched by extending the classroom experience to local museums, exhibits and multiple venues of the Olympic and Panhellenic Games. The interdisciplinary approach will allow students to explore the history and impact of ancient sports in conjunction with questions about sports and political and cultural identity and significance. An essential aspect of the course is the reception of athletic competitions in modern times, the Olympic movement, and the modern Olympics and Paralympic Games as a cultural, political, economic, and social phenomenon centered on the celebration of life, of diversity, and of inclusivity. ​



Course satisfies the Reception and Comparative Study requirement in the Classical & Ancient Civilizations and Classical Reception and the Classical Tradition tracks. May also satisfy the General Breadth requirement for other Classics tracks.



Pending approval to meet the requirements of the Global Core



Students may check with their departments to understand if this course can meet major/minor requirements.



To enroll in this course, you must apply to the 
Columbia Summer Global Core in Athens: Ancient and Modern Olympics
 program through the Center for Undergraduate Global Engagement (UGE).  
Global Learning Scholarships available.
  Tuition charges apply. 

Please note the program dates are different from the Summer Session Terms. Visit the 
UGE
 website for the start and end dates for the Columbia Summer Global Core in Athens: Ancient and Modern Olympics program.

Please email uge@columbia.edu with any questions you may have.

• Department: Global Programs
• 3-4 points

LOCAL DEMOCRACY

Although the media focuses on national politics, local government, policy, and electoral politics are critically important around the world. Local governments in the U.S., for example, manage the police, determine housing policies, provide basic public services such as garbage collection and water and sanitation; and implement national policies from welfare programs to climate change. Local governments in developing countries like India also have substantial powers including the implementation of large programs for the poor, deciding where a road will be built, and helping citizens access a distant and often unresponsive state. In this class, we will examine local democracies, or elected local governments, in a diverse array of contexts in developed and developing democracies. Unlike a course that examines one city in-depth, this course will identify patterns in local representation and policy across contexts with different institutions, demographics, and levels of development (e.g., US vs India).

This six-week course is also unique in that it has a focus on New York City itself. We will have opportunities to have experiences in NYC related to local democracy. All students will attend a city council or neighborhood council meeting and take notes on what you see and hear. We will meet organizers of local campaigns and/or local activists participating in local issues specific to NYC. And we will have a field assignment where you explore an issue in NYC government. We will explore the following questions:


What do local governments do and how does this vary across contexts?

“Who governs” at the local level—that is, what types of people run for and hold office, and what types of individuals, social groups, institutions, or interest groups influence local government decisions? 

When is local democracy most responsive to poor and marginalized groups? Specifically, in what types of social and political contexts does local democracy work best for the poor? 

What explains variation in policy outcomes (housing, policing, public services, climate efforts) across towns in the US and across contexts?

• Department: BARNARD SUMMER PROGRAMS
• MW 5:30 p.m.-8:40 p.m.
• Instructor: Mark A Schneider
  Info
• 3 points

LOCAL DEMOCRACY

Although the media focuses on national politics, local government, policy, and electoral politics are critically important around the world. Local governments in the U.S., for example, manage the police, determine housing policies, provide basic public services such as garbage collection and water and sanitation; and implement national policies from welfare programs to climate change. Local governments in developing countries like India also have substantial powers including the implementation of large programs for the poor, deciding where a road will be built, and helping citizens access a distant and often unresponsive state. In this class, we will examine local democracies, or elected local governments, in a diverse array of contexts in developed and developing democracies. Unlike a course that examines one city in-depth, this course will identify patterns in local representation and policy across contexts with different institutions, demographics, and levels of development (e.g., US vs India).

This six-week course is also unique in that it has a focus on New York City itself. We will have opportunities to have experiences in NYC related to local democracy. All students will attend a city council or neighborhood council meeting and take notes on what you see and hear. We will meet organizers of local campaigns and/or local activists participating in local issues specific to NYC. And we will have a field assignment where you explore an issue in NYC government. We will explore the following questions:


What do local governments do and how does this vary across contexts?

“Who governs” at the local level—that is, what types of people run for and hold office, and what types of individuals, social groups, institutions, or interest groups influence local government decisions? 

When is local democracy most responsive to poor and marginalized groups? Specifically, in what types of social and political contexts does local democracy work best for the poor? 

What explains variation in policy outcomes (housing, policing, public services, climate efforts) across towns in the US and across contexts?

• Department: BARNARD SUMMER PROGRAMS
• MW 5:30 p.m.-8:40 p.m.
• Instructor: Mark A Schneider
  Info
• 3 points

Anatomy with Laboratory

This is an intermediate lecture plus laboratory course focusing on using virtual reality to study human anatomy. Selected topics will emphasize physiological function and cellular mechanisms. The course is organized around a systems-based framework to the study of human anatomy. Lectures will also emphasize the clinical correlates and case studies of disease. All anatomical systems will be explored using a virtual reality laboratory. Potential examples include the skeletal, muscular, arterial, venous, lymphatic, nervous, respiratory, digestive, urinary, endocrine, reproductive, and integumentary systems. This course engages students with the contemporary and emerging field of virtual reality. Students will use and critically analyze advanced virtual and augmented reality technologies through scientific analysis and experimentation. This course will also expose students to empirical analysis and structural models of anatomy for problem solving. Students will develop basic competence in the use of deductive methods involving biological mechanisms of clinical disease.

• Department: BARNARD SUMMER PROGRAMS
• TR 9 a.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Jj L Miranda
  CULPA: 3 Info
• 4 points

Anatomy with Laboratory

This is an intermediate lecture plus laboratory course focusing on using virtual reality to study human anatomy. Selected topics will emphasize physiological function and cellular mechanisms. The course is organized around a systems-based framework to the study of human anatomy. Lectures will also emphasize the clinical correlates and case studies of disease. All anatomical systems will be explored using a virtual reality laboratory. Potential examples include the skeletal, muscular, arterial, venous, lymphatic, nervous, respiratory, digestive, urinary, endocrine, reproductive, and integumentary systems. This course engages students with the contemporary and emerging field of virtual reality. Students will use and critically analyze advanced virtual and augmented reality technologies through scientific analysis and experimentation. This course will also expose students to empirical analysis and structural models of anatomy for problem solving. Students will develop basic competence in the use of deductive methods involving biological mechanisms of clinical disease.

• Department: BARNARD SUMMER PROGRAMS
• TR 9 a.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Jj L Miranda
  CULPA: 3 Info
• 4 points

Bilingual Minds: Language, Brain & Cultu

This discussion-based seminar explores how bilingualism shapes the developing brain, cognitive processes, communication, and cultural identity. Students will engage with research from psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, and anthropology to understand how bilingual experiences differ across individuals, communities, and cultures. Through weekly reflections and student-led discussions, we will examine both foundational theories and contemporary debates, including the bilingual advantage, code-switching, gesture, neuroplasticity, language socialization, bilingualism in autism, and sociopolitical dimensions of bilingualism.

• Department: BARNARD SUMMER PROGRAMS
• MW 1 p.m.-5 p.m.
• Instructor: Armita Ghobadi
  Info
• 4 points

Bilingual Minds: Language, Brain & Cultu

This discussion-based seminar explores how bilingualism shapes the developing brain, cognitive processes, communication, and cultural identity. Students will engage with research from psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, and anthropology to understand how bilingual experiences differ across individuals, communities, and cultures. Through weekly reflections and student-led discussions, we will examine both foundational theories and contemporary debates, including the bilingual advantage, code-switching, gesture, neuroplasticity, language socialization, bilingualism in autism, and sociopolitical dimensions of bilingualism.

• Department: BARNARD SUMMER PROGRAMS
• MW 1 p.m.-5 p.m.
• Instructor: Armita Ghobadi
  Info
• 4 points

TOPICS IN NEUROETHICS

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.

• Department: BARNARD SUMMER PROGRAMS
• MW 9 a.m.-1 p.m.
• Instructor: E'Mett McCaskill
  CULPA: 38 Info
• 4 points

TOPICS IN NEUROETHICS

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.

• Department: BARNARD SUMMER PROGRAMS
• MW 9 a.m.-1 p.m.
• Instructor: E'Mett McCaskill
  CULPA: 38 Info
• 4 points

INTRO TO SYMBOLIC LOGIC

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.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• MW 9 a.m.-12:10 p.m.
• 3 points

PRINTMAKING I

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.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• TR 6:15 p.m.-9:25 p.m.
• MW 6:15 p.m.-9:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Jeannie Rhyu
  Info
• Instructor: Alejandro Valencia
  Info
• 3 points

INTRO TO ECONOMETRICS

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.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• MW 10:20 a.m.-11:55 a.m.
• Instructor: Seyhan Erden
  CULPA: 7 Info
• 4 points

INTRO TO ECONOMETRICS-DIS

Required discussion section for ECON UN3412: Intro to Econometrics

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• 0 points

JACKSON POLLOCK & THE NY SCHOOL

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.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• TR 1 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Kent M Minturn
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 3 points

JACKSON POLLOCK & THE NY SCHOOL

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.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• TR 1 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Kent M Minturn
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 3 points

US PRESIDENCY WASHINGTON TO TRUMP

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.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• TR 9 a.m.-12:10 p.m.
• Instructor: David Eisenbach
  CULPA: 24 Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

CONTEMPORARY ART AND ARCHITECTURE AT THE

ART/ARCH VENICE BIENNALE

AHIS3431 Contemporary Art and Architecture at the Venice Biennale. 3 points

Prerequisites: None

Instructor:  Julia Bryan-Wilson

This course introduces the relationship between contemporary artistic practices and the Venice Biennale. The Biennale has become one of the most important international contemporary art and architecture fairs. This course will expose students to the historical, political, and cultural developments linked to the biennale from its inception in 1895 to present day. In addition to regular class meetings with slide lectures and seminar-style discussion in the classroom, students will visit exhibition spaces located in the historical pavilions of the giardini (fair gardens), the arsenale (a 16th century warehouse space now used to host sections of this contemporary art installations), and other temporary venues located throughout the city as we investigate not only the art, but also the unique spaces in which we encounter it. Beyond a focus on the history of the Venice Biennale, the course will introduce some of the key concepts of contemporary art as they have developed in the past three or so decades.

Counts toward the Art History Major/Concentration at Columbia.

To enroll in this course, you must apply to the
 
Columbia in Venice
 
program through the Center for Undergraduate Global Engagement (UGE).
 
Global Learning Scholarship
 available. 
Tuition
 charges apply.

Please note the program dates are different from the Summer Sessions Terms. Visit the
UGE

website for the start and end dates for the Columbia in Venice program.

• Department: Global Programs
• Instructor: Julia Bryan-Wilson
  Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

Prenatal Programming

This seminar course will focus on the
impact of the prenatal period in programming lifelong health and development through
altering physiology starting from the molecular level.

We will start by defining the characteristics of the prenatal period and discuss history
and perspectives related to developmental programming. As our first main theme, we
will continue with discussing the effects of this developmental programming on
lifelong health and developmental outcomes. As the second main theme, we will cover
the physiological mechanisms underlying prenatal programming by focusing on the
changes in the nervous, endocrine and immune systems. As our third main theme, we
will further go into the molecular mechanisms associated with these physiological
changes, including epigenetic mechanisms and their potential intergenerational
transmission. We will end with discussing more recent topics in the field together with
policy implications of the topics discussed during the semester.

By covering these topics, students are expected to gain a better understanding of a) how
our physiology, behavior and health is programmed starting from the prenatal period,
b) the mechanisms of prenatal programming, and c) the impact of prenatal
programming on our perspective on the prenatal environment. With this, the students
are expected to place behavior and health in a lifelong perspective with potential
intergenerational effects.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• MW 1 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Elif A Duman
  Info
• 3 points

NYC AND THE HISTORY OF MUSEUM

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.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• TR 1 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Risham Majeed
  CULPA: 3 Info
• 4 points

American Art at the Met, 1750 1914

American Art, 1750-1914

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.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• TR 9 a.m.-12:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Page S Knox
  CULPA: 14 Info
• 4 points

Theories, Methods, and Experiments in Ar

Theories in Art and AI

The use of artificial intelligence—propelled by deep learning techniques—to analyze, curate, and generate digital images is having a profound influence on visual culture, one that well exceeds Jacques Derrida's anticipations of the effects of technology on society as he described them in Archive Fever. While regulation around emerging technologies such as AI is being formulated across the globe with much urgency, a problematic concept of “tech ethics” is being espoused by the leading technology companies that imposes a simplistic moralistic framework on potential policies. Through examination of the creative applications of AI, the aim of this seminar is to foster a nuanced critical discourse on AI art that places the ethics of emerging technologies at center stage. This course provides students with an introduction to the history of AI art and explores the challenges and opportunities that this burgeoning field faces, especially in regard to the regulation of technology. Class visits to Mercer Labs, Artechouse, MoMA, and the Whitney will allow students to directly engage with the core concepts of the seminar.

The course begins with reflection on Adorno’s prescient statement that technical rationality is “the rationality of domination,” and challenges both the cynicism and optimism around emerging technologies and their effect on visual culture. We will question the accountability that art history and other fields of study have, if any, to steer the ethics debates spurred by today’s “culture industry” of digital images, and ask what the custodianship of this space entails by examining its structures of power, conveyed visually or through automated processes enabled by computer vision science. By interrogating the socio-cultural effects of the use of machine learning on images—such as algorithmic biases that lend to discrimination, or surveillance and privacy concerns in regard to facial recognition technologies—new and diverse perspectives on visual culture are investigated. Although the mechanisms that enable technology to develop may be lending to the commodification and homogenization of visual culture, the seemingly democratic promises that big tech touts keep us captivated yet surprisingly uncritical. If the transformative role of AI on our visual culture is constituting a new type of archaeology of knowledge, how do we critically lend to its discourse through the theories, methods, and experiments surrounding art and AI?

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• TR 1 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Emily Spratt
  Info
• 3 points

GLOBAL HIST OF THE US MILITARY

This course charts the expansion of U.S. military power from a band of colonists to a globe-girdling colossus with over 2.1 million personnel, some 750 bases around the world, and an annual budget of approximately $754 billion — almost half of federal discretionary spending, and more than the next nine 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; visit
bobneer.com
for a complete syllabus.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• TR 1 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Robert M Jr Neer
  Info
• 3 points

Psychedelic Neuroscience: From Molecules

Psychedellic Neuroscience

Psychedelics are receiving growing attention in the fields of psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscience for their therapeutic potential. Psychedelic compounds like psilocybin, LSD, and DMT produce a wide range of changes to perception, ranging from visual perception to alterations in one’s sense of self. When combined with psychological support or psychotherapy, psychedelics have been shown to lead to rapid and long-lasting therapeutic benefits for a wide range of mental health disorders, including major depression and alcohol use disorder. The acute alterations in perception and long-lasting clinical effects offer exciting insight into the relationship between the mind and the brain. This course will focus on the current state of research on the psychological and neurobiological effects of psychedelics. We will begin with a crash-course into the basics of neuroscience and research methodology. Next, the course will delve into how psychedelics alter brain functioning, both acutely during the drug effects as well as long after they have worn off. Studies covered will span molecular, cellular, and systems level analysis. A core element of the course will include reviewing methodological approaches and neuroscientific evidence for psychedelics interventions in the treatment of clinical/psychiatric disorders. We will also review the clinical data and link neurobiological findings to their practical application to move the field of psychedelic science forward. Throughout the course, there will be a specific focus on critical appraisal of research, identifying strengths and limitations surrounding current research, and important avenues for future research. Students should leave the class with an enhanced ability to evaluate research findings and a broad understanding of the mechanisms of action of psychedelics.

The format of the course will include lectures, class discussions and presentations, and guest speakers.

Prerequisites:
PSYC 1001 and any PSYC 2400-level neuroscience course or permission of the instructor.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• TR 9 a.m.-12:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Broc Pagni
  Info
• 3 points

Contemporary Art in New York

Contemporary Art in NY

Are you baffled by contemporary art, fascinated by it, or committed to becoming an artist? This course will prepare students to think and talk about contemporary art, by analyzing how curators, critics, and artists themselves understand the art made today. Students will learn how artists in New York conceive and produce their work, about the types of spaces in which new works are first exhibited, and common terms used to discuss art. The course will include numerous field trips––to artists’ studios, commercial galleries on the Lower East Side, and contemporary art exhibitions, particularly the
2026 Whitney Biennial
. By the end of the course, students will feel confident both navigating the New York contemporary art world on their own as well as guiding others through it. Students will be able to encounter artworks being shown for the first time, to make sense of them, and to spark urgent conversations about them.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• MW 1 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: John M Beeson
  Info
• 3 points

Broadway s New York: A Cultural Histor

Broadways New York

This course explores the intertwined histories of Broadway and New York City, examining the theater as both a cultural stage and a lens for imagining urban life. By analyzing landmark musicals and plays set within the five boroughs, students will investigate how the "Great White Way" reflects shifting social landscapes and operates as a central pillar of the city's economics, tourism, and cultural identity. Students will engage with the material through traditional lectures and screenings, supplemented by immersive field experiences including museum, archive, and theater tours.

• Department: BARNARD SUMMER PROGRAMS
• TR 10 a.m.-1:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Paul A Scolieri
  CULPA: 19 Info
• 3 points

Broadway s New York: A Cultural Histor

Broadways New York

This course explores the intertwined histories of Broadway and New York City, examining the theater as both a cultural stage and a lens for imagining urban life. By analyzing landmark musicals and plays set within the five boroughs, students will investigate how the "Great White Way" reflects shifting social landscapes and operates as a central pillar of the city's economics, tourism, and cultural identity. Students will engage with the material through traditional lectures and screenings, supplemented by immersive field experiences including museum, archive, and theater tours.

• Department: BARNARD SUMMER PROGRAMS
• TR 10 a.m.-1:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Paul A Scolieri
  CULPA: 19 Info
• 3 points

COLONIAL GOTHAM

This class is not a “pre-history” of the modern metropolis, but rather a stand-alone story of Gotham’s growth from a tiny Dutch trading post in the midst of hundreds of Native villages into a key port of the first British Empire. We will close at the dramatic moment when the colonial society at the tip of Manhattan was torn apart and partially destroyed in the inter-imperial civil war we know as the American Revolution.

Even when its skyline was made of wooden masts and steeples, New York City was a diverse and dangerous place. Major topics will include frontier wars, slave conspiracies, religious revivals, and conflicts between the legitimate and contraband economies. All along, we will try to balance local and global perspectives, and blend social, cultural, political, and economic analyses. The course will also consider this colonial town’s place in American national memory, and critically approaching the many self-congratulatory and silly stories people like to believe about this long-lost island town.

The central texts in this course are a combination of secondary sources and primary texts. Our weekly meetings will mostly focus on the assigned reading, with each student submitting six (6) short reading responses on Courseworks before 9 am on the day of class. Students will also develop an original fifteen-to-twenty-page research paper on a colonial New York topic of their own choosing, and will be strongly encouraged to use archival resources held at Columbia or one of the city’s other major archives (NYPL, N-YHS, NMAI, Schomburg Center, Municipal Archives).

• Department: BARNARD SUMMER PROGRAMS
• MW 1 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Andrew C Lipman
  CULPA: 5 Info
• 3 points

COLONIAL GOTHAM

This class is not a “pre-history” of the modern metropolis, but rather a stand-alone story of Gotham’s growth from a tiny Dutch trading post in the midst of hundreds of Native villages into a key port of the first British Empire. We will close at the dramatic moment when the colonial society at the tip of Manhattan was torn apart and partially destroyed in the inter-imperial civil war we know as the American Revolution.

Even when its skyline was made of wooden masts and steeples, New York City was a diverse and dangerous place. Major topics will include frontier wars, slave conspiracies, religious revivals, and conflicts between the legitimate and contraband economies. All along, we will try to balance local and global perspectives, and blend social, cultural, political, and economic analyses. The course will also consider this colonial town’s place in American national memory, and critically approaching the many self-congratulatory and silly stories people like to believe about this long-lost island town.

The central texts in this course are a combination of secondary sources and primary texts. Our weekly meetings will mostly focus on the assigned reading, with each student submitting six (6) short reading responses on Courseworks before 9 am on the day of class. Students will also develop an original fifteen-to-twenty-page research paper on a colonial New York topic of their own choosing, and will be strongly encouraged to use archival resources held at Columbia or one of the city’s other major archives (NYPL, N-YHS, NMAI, Schomburg Center, Municipal Archives).

• Department: BARNARD SUMMER PROGRAMS
• MW 1 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Andrew C Lipman
  CULPA: 5 Info
• 3 points

HIST OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK

The social, cultural, economic, political, and demographic development of America's metropolis from colonial days to present. Slides and walking tours supplement the readings.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• MW 9 a.m.-12:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Stephen J Sullivan
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 3 points

PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

Philosophical problems within science and about the nature of scientific knowledge in the 17th-20th centuries. Sample problems: causation and scientific explanation; induction and real kinds; verification and falsification; models, analogies and simulations; the historical origins of the modern sciences; scientific revolutions; reductionism and supervenience; differences between physics, biology and the social sciences; the nature of life; cultural evolution; human nature; philosophical issues in cosmology.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• TR 5:30 p.m.-8:40 p.m.
• 3 points

HIST OF LATINOS/AS IN THE U.S.

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.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• MW 1 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Darius V Echeverria
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 3 points

Topics in Clinical Psychology - Summer

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.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• TR 9 a.m.-12:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Usha Barahmand
  Info
• 3 points

ENDING WAR & BUILDING PEACE

This course provides an introduction to the politics of war termination and peace consolidation. The course examines the challenges posed by ending wars and the process by which parties to a conflict arrive at victory, ceasefires, and peace negotiations. It explores how peace is sustained, why peace lasts in some cases and breaks down in others and what can be done to make peace more stable, focusing on the role of international interventions, power-sharing arrangements, reconciliation between adversaries, and reconstruction.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• TR 9 a.m.-12:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Gilbert Lai
  Info
• 3 points

CLINICAL NEUROPSYCHOLOGY SEM

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.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• TR 5:30 p.m.-8:40 p.m.
• Instructor: E'Mett McCaskill
  CULPA: 38 Info
• 3 points

ADVANCES IN IPE

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.

• Department: Summer Session (SUMM)
• TR 1 p.m.-4:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Sharyn L O'Halloran
  Info
• 4 points