Courses

Readings in translation and discussion of texts of Middle Eastern and Indian origin. Readings may include the Quran, Islamic philosophy, Sufi poetry, the Upanishads, Buddhist sutras, the Bhagavad Gita, Indian epics and drama, and Gandhis Autobiography.

Introduces distinctive aesthetic traditions of China, Japan, and Korea--their similarities and differences--through an examination of the visual significance of selected works of painting, sculpture, architecture, and other arts in relation to the history, culture, and religions of East Asia.

A topical introduction to the architecture and arts of the Islamic cultures of North Africa, Spain, Arabia, Turkey, Iran and Central Asia, from their origins in late antiquity to 1400 CE. A wide variety of media will be explored as we look at artistic accomplishments in both the religious and secular realms. We will study architectural monuments from palaces to mosques as well as small-scale luxury items like textiles, metalwork, ceramics, and illuminated manuscripts.  There will be at least one mandatory class trip to the Metropolitan Museum.

Introduction to 2000 years of art on the Indian subcontinent. The course covers the early art of Buddhism, rock-cut architecture of the Buddhists and Hindus, the development of the Hindu temple, Mughal and Rajput painting and architecture, art of the colonial period, and the emergence of the Modern.

This course aims to introduce students to the Chinese language and cultivate their basic communicative competence by providing a comprehensive training in listening, speaking, reading and writing in Chinese. In addition, the course will bring real life tasks into classroom and prepare students to use Chinese language to function in an immersive environment. 

In this course students will continue to develop basic communicative competence in Chinese. More emphasis will be given to reading and writing Chinese characters than First Year Chinese (I). In addition to bringing real life tasks into classroom and preparing students to use Chinese language to function in an immersive environment, the course also aims to cultivate inter-cultural communication awareness among students.   

As the first half of a one-year program for intermediate Chinese learners, this course helps students consolidate and develop language skills used in everyday communication. Texts are presented in the form of dialogues and narratives that provide language situations, sentence patterns, word usage, and cultural information. This course will enable students to conduct everyday tasks such as shopping for cell phone plans, opening a bank account, seeing a doctor, or renting a place to live. At the end of the course, students will be ready to move on to the second half of the program, which focuses on aspects of Chinese culture such as the social norms of politeness and gift-giving. Semi-formal and literary styles will also be introduced as students transition to more advanced levels of Chinese language study. While providing training for everyday communication skills, Second Year Chinese aims to improve the student's linguistic competence in preparation for advanced studies in Mandarin.

As the second half of a one-year program for intermediate Chinese learners, this course helps students consolidate and develop everyday communicative skills in Chinese, as well as introducing aspects of Chinese culture such as the social norms of politeness and gift-giving. Semi-formal and literary styles will also be introduced as students transition to more advanced levels of Chinese language study. While providing training for everyday communication skills, Second Year Chinese aims to improve the student's linguistic competence in preparation for advanced studies in Mandarin.

This course is for students with at least two years of college-level Chinese, aiming to enhance their oral and written proficiency. It covers key issues China faces, such as balancing historic preservation with local needs, integrating traditional and foreign cultures, and improving education in underdeveloped areas. Additionally, the course includes popular topics related to Chinese college students and their lifestyles.

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.

 

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.

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.