Courses

Prerequisites: no previous knowledge of German required, but some background is strongly recommended. This accelerated survey of German grammar, reading techniques, and dictionary skills is designed primarily for graduate students preparing for reading proficiency exams or wishing to do research in German-language literature. In addition to translation, the course focuses on strategies for extracting general and specific information from German texts (skimming and scanning) and judging their relevance for a specific research purpose. Reading texts take students' fields of study into consideration. Although this course does not satisfy any part of the foreign language requirement for degree candidates, successful completion of the translation on the final exam fulfills the German reading proficiency requirement in most graduate programs. Students are advised that this course is a full-time commitment. Students should expect to study 2 hours every day for every hour spent in the classroom and additional time on weekends. Students who would like to gain speaking and listening skills are advised to enroll in the Intensive Elementary German I and II, or another appropriate German course. The Department of Germanic Languages will assist in selecting the appropriate course. 

Prerequisites: no previous knowledge of German required, but some background is strongly recommended. This accelerated survey of German grammar, reading techniques, and dictionary skills is designed primarily for graduate students preparing for reading proficiency exams or wishing to do research in German-language literature. In addition to translation, the course focuses on strategies for extracting general and specific information from German texts (skimming and scanning) and judging their relevance for a specific research purpose. Reading texts take students' fields of study into consideration. Although this course does not satisfy any part of the foreign language requirement for degree candidates, successful completion of the translation on the final exam fulfills the German reading proficiency requirement in most graduate programs. Students are advised that this course is a full-time commitment. Students should expect to study 2 hours every day for every hour spent in the classroom and additional time on weekends. Students who would like to gain speaking and listening skills are advised to enroll in the Intensive Elementary German I and II, or another appropriate German course. The Department of Germanic Languages will assist in selecting the appropriate course. 

This course is designed as travellers guide to medieval Europe. Its purpose is to provide a window to a long-lost world that provided the foundation of modern institutions and that continues to inspire the modern collective artistic and literary imagination with its own particularities. This course will not be a conventional history course concentrating on the grand narratives in the economic, social and political domains but rather intend to explore the day-to-day lives of the inhabitants, and attempts to have a glimpse of their mindset, their emotional spectrum, their convictions, prejudices, fears and hopes. It will be at once a historical, sociological and anthropological study of one of the most inspiring ages of European civilization. Subjects to be covered will include the birth and childhood, domestic life, sex and marriage, craftsmen and artisans, agricultural work, food and diet, the religious devotion, sickness and its cures, death, after death (purgatory and the apparitions), travelling, merchants and trades, inside the nobles castle, the Christian cosmos, and medieval technology. The lectures will be accompanied by maps, images of illuminated manuscripts and of medieval objects. Students will be required to attend a weekly discussion section to discuss the medieval texts bearing on that weeks subject. The written course assignment will be a midterm, final and two short papers, one an analysis of a medieval text and a second an analysis of a modern text on the Middle Ages.

Examines the shaping of European cultural identity through encounters with non-European cultures from 1500 to the post-colonial era. Novels, paintings, and films will be among the sources used to examine such topics as exoticism in the Enlightenment, slavery and European capitalism, Orientalism in art, ethnographic writings on the primitive, and tourism.

Examines the shaping of European cultural identity through encounters with non-European cultures from 1500 to the post-colonial era. Novels, paintings, and films will be among the sources used to examine such topics as exoticism in the Enlightenment, slavery and European capitalism, Orientalism in art, ethnographic writings on the primitive, and tourism.

Capitalism shapes every aspect of our daily lives. Thinkers on both the left and the right of the political spectrum agree that capitalism structures our economic, social, and political relationships. Yet, there is little agreement as to the definition of capitalism and its normative implications. The definition and interpretation of capitalism differs across time and space, always evolving in response to challenges, crises, and contradictions. The aim of this course is to provide students with analytical tools to think critically and historically about the concept of capitalism. By studying how philosophers, economists, and political theorists have defined and described the concept of capitalism throughout its history (from the early seventeenth century to the present), students will be provided with a set of terminologies and analytical frameworks that enable them to interrogate the various dimensions of capitalism. The readings in the course are selected to illustrate the fact that capitalism has always been controversial. We will read texts authored by both proponents and critics of capitalism. We will explore how various canonical figures have thought about private property, markets, money, economic growth, injustice, inequality, alienation, and socialism.

This 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.

As a population, Latino, Latina, Latine, and Latinx peoples have been prominent in the public sphere in popular culture, the media, and especially around discussions of immigration. Though individuals with a tapestry of Spanish-Indian-African ancestry (who may be described as “Latinas/os” “Hispanics” or “Latinxs” today) explored the lands of present-day Florida and New Mexico long before English colonizers reached Plymouth Rock, Latina/o/x communities are continually seen as foreigners, immigrants, and “newcomers” to American society. This course aims to place Latina/o populations in the United States within historical context. We begin by asking:  Who are Latinas/os in the U.S. and how did they become part of the American nation-state?  Why are they identified as a distinct group? How have they participated in American society and how have they been perceived over time?  The course will familiarize students with the broad themes, periods, and questions raised in the field of Latinx History.  Topics include conquest and colonization, immigration, labor recruitment, education, politics, popular culture, and social movements.  The course emphasizes a comparative approach to Latinx history aiming to engage histories from the Southwest, Midwest, and Eastern United States and across national origin groups—Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Dominicans, Central Americans, and South Americans. This class is taught in mostly the modern period (after 1750) within United States history so it can count toward the history major or concentration. Where the course points may be applied depends on a student’s field of specialization within their major or concentration. The course can also count toward the Global Core requirement, which is reflected on the Columbia online registry.  The class can, moreover, serve as three elective points toward degree progress or as non-technical elective credits. Finally, the course is regularly cross-listed with both the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and the Institute for the Study of Human Rights as well as with American Studies.

This course examines the processes of colonization and decolonization that define the making of a modern, integrated world (c. 1500 to the present). We will study primary source materials.  We focus on the instruments of colonization—the treaty, the charter, the map, the ethnology—and the engines of decolonization—the manifesto, the resistance, the solidarity with the colonial, the demand for self rule. We are interested in the processes and contents of social and cultural contact and exchange, the development of knowledge, and how they shape relations of power; the place of colonialism in the development of western capitalism; and the elements of colonial power and resistance, including ideologies of liberal political philosophy, social Darwinism, and nationalism.  We will consider how ideas about race, civilization, religion, self and other, and freedom have evolved over time and shaped the making of the modern world.