Courses
Start building your summer today by selecting from hundreds of Columbia courses from various topics of interest. Courses for Summer 2024 are now available, with new offerings being added throughout the winter into early spring. Key to Course Listings | Course Requirements
Course Options
This course delves into drawing as an expansive, exploratory practice that underpins all forms of visual art. Designed primarily as a hands-on workshop, the class is enriched with slide lectures, video presentations, and field trips. Throughout the semester, students will engage in individual and group critiques, fostering dialogue about their work. Beginning with still life and progressing to drawings of artworks, artifacts, and figure studies, the course investigates drawing as a dynamic practice connected to a wide array of visual cultures.
Instructor
Jozefina Chetko
Day/Time
Mo 09:00-12:10
We 09:00-12:10
Enrollment
1 of 10
This course delves into drawing as an expansive, exploratory practice that underpins all forms of visual art. Designed primarily as a hands-on workshop, the class is enriched with slide lectures, video presentations, and field trips. Throughout the semester, students will engage in individual and group critiques, fostering dialogue about their work. Beginning with still life and progressing to drawings of artworks, artifacts, and figure studies, the course investigates drawing as a dynamic practice connected to a wide array of visual cultures.
Instructor
Jozefina Chetko
Day/Time
Mo 09:00-12:10
We 09:00-12:10
Enrollment
2 of 10
Today’s cell phones are equipped with cameras that far surpass those used by the pioneers of digital photography, offering superior resolution and multi-sensor capabilities that revolutionize how we capture and process images. This course explores the creative and technical potential of smartphone photography, focusing on accessible tools and workflows that empower students to produce compelling digital works. The curriculum emphasizes post-production and digital media techniques over traditional camera mastery. Students will develop foundational skills in Adobe Suite applications, including Lightroom and Photoshop for photo editing and After Effects and Premiere for video production. We will also discuss the integration of artificial intelligence in modern photography, examining how AI enhances editing processes and opens new creative possibilities. A significant part of the course will address fundamental questions of light in photography, the use of RAW formats—offered by many smartphones but seldom understood—and the structure of digital image files. Students will also learn about post-production techniques for preparing images for print, as well as for projection or display on digital screens, ensuring a comprehensive understanding of the end-to-end digital photography workflow. Thinking Locally: Street photography serves as a central theme in this course, encouraging students to document the vibrant life of New York City through weekly assignments. A guided photo walk in Harlem will provide hands-on experience in capturing unique, candid moments. Ethical considerations will be a key focus, addressing topics like consent, privacy, and best practices for interacting with subjects. Discussions will be complemented by readings, critiques, and a guest lecture from a professional street photographer. By the end of the course, students will have transformed their understanding of smartphone photography, creating works that push the boundaries of accessible technology while building a strong foundation in contemporary digital media.
Instructor
Jozefina Chetko
Day/Time
Tu 09:00-12:10
Th 09:00-12:10
Enrollment
1 of 15
Today’s cell phones are equipped with cameras that far surpass those used by the pioneers of digital photography, offering superior resolution and multi-sensor capabilities that revolutionize how we capture and process images. This course explores the creative and technical potential of smartphone photography, focusing on accessible tools and workflows that empower students to produce compelling digital works. The curriculum emphasizes post-production and digital media techniques over traditional camera mastery. Students will develop foundational skills in Adobe Suite applications, including Lightroom and Photoshop for photo editing and After Effects and Premiere for video production. We will also discuss the integration of artificial intelligence in modern photography, examining how AI enhances editing processes and opens new creative possibilities. A significant part of the course will address fundamental questions of light in photography, the use of RAW formats—offered by many smartphones but seldom understood—and the structure of digital image files. Students will also learn about post-production techniques for preparing images for print, as well as for projection or display on digital screens, ensuring a comprehensive understanding of the end-to-end digital photography workflow. Thinking Locally: Street photography serves as a central theme in this course, encouraging students to document the vibrant life of New York City through weekly assignments. A guided photo walk in Harlem will provide hands-on experience in capturing unique, candid moments. Ethical considerations will be a key focus, addressing topics like consent, privacy, and best practices for interacting with subjects. Discussions will be complemented by readings, critiques, and a guest lecture from a professional street photographer. By the end of the course, students will have transformed their understanding of smartphone photography, creating works that push the boundaries of accessible technology while building a strong foundation in contemporary digital media.
Instructor
Jozefina Chetko
Day/Time
Tu 09:00-12:10
Th 09:00-12:10
Enrollment
3 of 15
Instructor
Lindsey Schneider
Modality
In-Person
Day/Time
Tu 13:00-16:10
Th 13:00-16:10
Enrollment
1 of 12
Culture and History in NYC
Visiting students can take this course as part of a Focus Area.
The Culture and History in NYC Focus Area leverages the artistic hub of NYC with insights from Columbia’s faculty, making it ideal for students who are interested in art history, creative arts, and those who are interested in enhancing their portfolio for an MFA program or graduate studies. Students enhance their academic experience through specialized co-curricular activities exclusive to the city and may earn a Certification of Participation.
This course examines some of the key moments of architectural modernity in the twentieth century in an attempt to understand how architecture participated in the making of a new world order. It follows the lead of recent scholarship that has been undoing the assumption that modern twentieth-century architecture is a coherent enterprise that should be understood through avant-gardist movements. Instead, architectural modernity is presented in this course as a multivalent, and even contradictory, entity that has nonetheless had profound impact on modernity. Rather than attempting to be geographically comprehensive, it focuses on the interdependencies between the Global North and the South; instead of being strictly chronological, it is arranged around a constellation of themes that are explored through a handful of projects and texts. Reading primary sources from the period under examination is a crucial part of the course.
Instructor
Zeynep Celik Alexander
Modality
In-Person
Day/Time
Mo 13:00-16:10
We 13:00-16:10
Enrollment
3 of 12
Culture and History in NYC
Visiting students can take this course as part of a Focus Area.
The Culture and History in NYC Focus Area leverages the artistic hub of NYC with insights from Columbia’s faculty, making it ideal for students who are interested in art history, creative arts, and those who are interested in enhancing their portfolio for an MFA program or graduate studies. Students enhance their academic experience through specialized co-curricular activities exclusive to the city and may earn a Certification of Participation.
Instructor
Lynn Catterson
Modality
In-Person
Day/Time
Mo 13:00-16:10
We 13:00-16:10
Enrollment
1 of 12
Culture and History in NYC
Visiting students can take this course as part of a Focus Area.
The Culture and History in NYC Focus Area leverages the artistic hub of NYC with insights from Columbia’s faculty, making it ideal for students who are interested in art history, creative arts, and those who are interested in enhancing their portfolio for an MFA program or graduate studies. Students enhance their academic experience through specialized co-curricular activities exclusive to the city and may earn a Certification of Participation.
Instructor
Lynn Catterson
Modality
In-Person
Day/Time
Mo 13:00-16:10
We 13:00-16:10
Enrollment
1 of 12
Culture and History in NYC
Visiting students can take this course as part of a Focus Area.
The Culture and History in NYC Focus Area leverages the artistic hub of NYC with insights from Columbia’s faculty, making it ideal for students who are interested in art history, creative arts, and those who are interested in enhancing their portfolio for an MFA program or graduate studies. Students enhance their academic experience through specialized co-curricular activities exclusive to the city and may earn a Certification of Participation.
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.
Instructor
Muge Arseven
Modality
In-Person
Day/Time
Mo 13:00-16:10
We 13:00-16:10
Enrollment
0 of 15
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.
Instructor
Kent Minturn
Modality
In-Person
Day/Time
Tu 13:00-16:10
Th 13:00-16:10
Enrollment
0 of 12
Culture and History in NYC
Visiting students can take this course as part of a Focus Area.
The Culture and History in NYC Focus Area leverages the artistic hub of NYC with insights from Columbia’s faculty, making it ideal for students who are interested in art history, creative arts, and those who are interested in enhancing their portfolio for an MFA program or graduate studies. Students enhance their academic experience through specialized co-curricular activities exclusive to the city and may earn a Certification of Participation.
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.
Instructor
Kent Minturn
Modality
In-Person
Day/Time
Tu 13:00-16:10
Th 13:00-16:10
Enrollment
0 of 12
Culture and History in NYC
Visiting students can take this course as part of a Focus Area.
The Culture and History in NYC Focus Area leverages the artistic hub of NYC with insights from Columbia’s faculty, making it ideal for students who are interested in art history, creative arts, and those who are interested in enhancing their portfolio for an MFA program or graduate studies. Students enhance their academic experience through specialized co-curricular activities exclusive to the city and may earn a Certification of Participation.
This course will focus on the reception and influence of medieval European architecture in New York City through the buildings and monuments that revive, replicate, and preserve it. We will examine the architectural as well as the social, historical, and political environment of nineteenth and twentieth century New York City, in which medieval architecture came to symbolize not only religion but also erudition, exoticism, heritage, education, civic pride, and even hygiene. Alongside Gothic Revival churches, skyscrapers, campuses, and parks, this course will consider other forms of medieval architectural revivalism (including Moorish Revival synagogues and Romanesque Revival rowhouses) as well as projects that physically relocated medieval buildings to New York City both for private collections and public display. We will combine regular field trips to sites around the city with readings and discussions and will make use of the archives of several prominent revivalist architects in Avery Library’s collections.
Instructor
Daniel Smith
Modality
In-Person
Day/Time
Tu 09:00-12:10
Th 09:00-12:10
Enrollment
1 of 12
Culture and History in NYC
Visiting students can take this course as part of a Focus Area.
The Culture and History in NYC Focus Area leverages the artistic hub of NYC with insights from Columbia’s faculty, making it ideal for students who are interested in art history, creative arts, and those who are interested in enhancing their portfolio for an MFA program or graduate studies. Students enhance their academic experience through specialized co-curricular activities exclusive to the city and may earn a Certification of Participation.