The Columbia College curriculum and its academic policies are determined by the following faculty committees:
Committee on Instruction
The Committee on Instruction (COI) is responsible for approving proposals for new majors and other academic programs, new courses, and policy changes. The COI also provides leadership on a range of academic matters, consulting with a broad range of faculty, students, and administrators where relevant. The COI is a joint Columbia College and School of General Studies committee. Questions? Contact cc-gs-coi@columbia.edu.
Committee on Instruction Members: 2017-2018
- Co-Chair: Dean James J. Valentini, Dean of Columbia College
- Co-Chair: Dean Peter Awn, Dean of the School of General Studies
- Professor Yinon Cohen, Department of Sociology
- Professor Michael Como, Department of Religion
- Professor Zoe Crossland, Department of Anthropology
- Professor Patricia Denison, Associate Provost, Barnard College
- Professor Steve Goldstein, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
- Professor Robert Hymes, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures
- Professor Laura Kaufman, Department of Chemistry
- Professor Elizabeth Ladenson, Department of French and Romance Philogy
- Assistant Professor Dorothea Lasky, School of the Arts
- Professor Szabolcs (Szabi) Marka, Department of Physics
- Professor Barclay Morrison, Department of Biomedical Engineering; Vice Dean of Undergraduate Programs, School of Engineering and Applied Science
- Professor Maria Uriate, Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Environmental Biology
- Professor Mark Van De Mieroop, Department of History
- Professor Katja Vogt, Department of Philosophy
Student Representatives:
TBD
Ex-Officio:
- Thomas Harford, Dean of Students, School of General Studies
- Lisa Hollibaugh, Dean of Academic Planning and Administration, Columbia College
- Andrew Plaa, Dean of Advising for Columbia College and Columbia Engineering
- Victoria Rosner, Dean of Academic Affairs, School of General Studies
New Approved Courses
The following new courses have been approved for the 2017-2018 academic year. As new courses are added to the list frequently, please visit this site for updates. Additional courses and major/concentration requirements may be found in the Columbia College Bulletin.
Last updated September 7, 2017.
Fall 2017
| DEPARTMENT/PROGRAM | COURSE NO. & DESIGNATOR | TITLE |
|---|---|---|
| Anthropology | ANTH UN2001 | Nationalism, Populism, Democracy |
| Anthropology | ANTH UN2026 | On Precarity |
| Anthropology | ANTH UN2031 | Corpse Life: Anthropological Histories of the Dead |
| Anthropology | ANTH UN3151 | Living/Thinking/Doing with Animals: Human-Animal Relationships in the Past, Present, and Future |
| Anthropology | ANTH UN3701 | Crime and Punishment |
| Anthropology | ANTH UN3803 | Language Matters |
| Anthropology | ANTH GU 4407 | Mass Violence and Its Aftermaths in Southeast Asia |
| Art History and Archaeology | AHIS UN2414 | In and Around Abstract Expressionism |
| Art History and Archaeology | AHIS UN3432 | The Global Division of Documentary Labor |
| Art History and Archaeology | AHIS UN3433 | Enlightenment and Archaeology |
| Art History and Archaeology | AHIS UN3434 | Diplomacy by Ceramics: Introduction to the Soft Power of One Medium Across World Cultures |
| Art History and Archaeology | AHIS UN3602 | Death and Afterlife in East Asian Buddhist Art |
| Art History and Archaeology | AHIS UN3309 | Virtual Space: Renaissance Perspective (1400-1750) |
| Art History and Archaeology | AHIS GU4583 | The Craft of Ivory |
| Art History and Archaeology | CLST GU4514 | Roman Coins and History: A Hands-On Seminar on an Unpublished Collection |
| Art History and Archaeology | AHCL GU4541 | Post-War Critical Theory: Re-inventions |
| Biology | BIOL UN2700 | Past and Future of the Human Genome |
| Center for the Study of Human Rights | HRTS GU4650 | Children's Rights and Advocacy |
| Classics | CLCV UN3005 | Race and Ethnicity in the Greco-Roman World |
| Classics | GRKM UN3935 | Hellenism and the Topographical Imagination (formerly The World Responds to the Greeks) |
| Earth Institute | SDEV UN3550 | Environmental Policy and Sustainable Development |
| East Asian Languages and Cultures | ASCE UN1367 | Introduction to East Asian Civilizations: Vietnam |
| East Asian Languages and Cultures | EAAS GU4244 | Chinese Internet Culture |
| East Asian Languages and Cultures | EARL GU4010 | Buddhist Inspirations in 20th Century Japanese Thought |
| East Asian Languages and Cultures | EAAS GU4027 | Disability in East Asia and Beyond |
| East Asian Languages and Cultures | EAAS GU4553 | Survey of Tibetan Literature |
| East Asian Languages and Cultures | EARL GU4322 | Enlightenment or Salvation: Practices and Rituals of Korean Buddhism |
| East Asian Languages and Cultures | HSEA GU4847 | Modern Japan |
| English and Comparative Literature | CLEN UN3395 | Politics of Representation |
| English and Comparative Literature | CLEN GU4201 | Poetry of the African Diaspora |
| English and Comparative Literature | ENGL UN3203 | The Sonnet in English |
| English and Comparative Literature | ENGL UN3305 | Gender and Sexuality in the Irish Novel |
| English and Comparative Literature | ENGL UN3341 | Law and Disorder in Early Modern England |
| English and Comparative Literature | ENGL UN3506 | Sexuality in America: Poetic Encounters |
| English and Comparative Literature | ENGL UN3662 | African American Novelists and the Question of Justice |
| English and Comparative Literature | ENGL UN3689 | The Logic of Secular Confession |
| English and Comparative Literature | ENGL UN3726 | Virginia Woolf |
| English and Comparative Literature | ENGL UN3727 | Animal Modernisms |
| English and Comparative Literature | ENGL UN3744 | Edgar Allan Poe |
| English and Comparative Literature | ENGL OC3815 | London Theater from 1590 to 2017 |
| English and Comparative Literature | ENGL UN3852 | Temporal Relocations: Narrations of Time and Body in Early American Literature |
| English and Comparative Literature | ENGL UN3853 | Narratives of Contagion |
| English and Comparative Literature | ENGL UN3948 | Modern African Drama |
| English and Comparative Literature | ENGL UN3984 | Politics and American Film |
| English and Comparative Literature | ENGL UN3991 | Romantic Margins |
| English and Comparative Literature | ENGL UN3992 | Call to Adventure: The Lure of Romance from Camelot to Star Wars |
| English and Comparative Literature | ENTA UN3338 | Shakespeare and Film |
| English and Comparative Literature | ENTA UN3948 | African Drama |
| English and Comparative Literature | ENGL GU4091 | Introduction to Old English Language and Literature (formerly Anglo-Saxon Language and Literature) |
| English and Comparative Literature | ENGL GU4512 | Eliot, Dickens, Thackeray |
| French and Romance Philology | FREN UN3242 | French Language, Culture, and Society through the Discovery of Paris |
| French and Romance Philology | CLFR UN3617 | Writing Women in Medieval France and England |
| French and Romance Philology | FREN UN3817 | Contemporary French Literature |
| French and Romance Philology | FREN GU4625 | The 68 Effect in French Theory |
| Germanic Languages | GERM GU4670 | Marx, Nitezsche, Freud (in English) |
| Global Thought | CGTH UN3401 | Seminar in Global Thought: Inquiries into an Interconnected World |
| History | HIST UN2026 | Roman Social History |
| History | HIST UN2133 | Britain and the World Since World War II |
| History | HIST UN2215 | Modern Russian History (Since 1800) |
| History | HIST UN2447 | America, 1918- 1945: Prosperity, Depression, and War |
| History | HIST UN2488 | Warfare in the Modern World |
| History | HIST UN2533 | US Lesbian and Gay History |
| History | HIST UN2580 | The History of United States Relations with East Asia |
| History | HIST UN2948 | Capitalism in Crisis: A Global History of the Great Recession |
| History | HIST UN3061 | Islam and Europe in the Middle Ages |
| History | HIST UN3111 | The Environmental History of the Ancient Mediterranean, 800 BC to 700 AD |
| History | HIST UN3233 | From Liberalism to Illiberalism? Economic Ideas & Institutions in Central & Eastern Europe |
| History | HIST UN3401 | Does American Poverty have a History? |
| History | HIST UN3410 | Food and Inequality in the Twentieth-Century U.S. |
| History | HIST UN3500 | John Jay and the American Revolution |
| History | HIST UN3513 | U.S. Labor History |
| History | HIST UN3708 | Topics in Ottoman History, 1300-1700 |
| History | HIST UN3766 | African Futures |
| History | HIST UN3796 | Global Health in Africa |
| History | HIST UN3807 | Walking In and Out of the Archive |
| History | HIST GU4217 | Women as Cold War Weapons |
| History | HIST GU4233 | Reforming Communism- Crafting Capitalism: History of Collectivist Economic Thought and Practice in Eastern Europe and China |
| History | HIST GU4756 | Istanbul: Places, People, and Everyday Life |
| History | HIST GU4800 | Global History of Science |
| History | HIST GU4904 | Writing Lives: A Survey of Historical Approaches and Techniques |
| History | HIST GU4969 | Secrecy, Privacy, and Surveillance |
| History and African-American Studies | HSAF UN3504 | Columbia 1968 |
| Institute for Comparative Literature and Society | CPLS UN3915 | Reading the Multilingual City: New York, Urban Landscapes & Urban Multilingualism |
| Institute for Comparative Literature and Society | CPLS UN3959 | Pan-Africanism and Postcolonialism |
| Institute for Comparative Literature and Society | CPLS GU4220 | Psychoanalysis and Writing (Freud, Schreber, Lacan) |
| Italian | ITAL UN3645 | Grand Tour in Italy |
| Italian | ITAL GU4022 | The Qur'an in Europe |
| Italian | ITAL GU4043 | Italian Renaissance Literature and Culture |
| Italian | ITAL GU4185 | The Making of Italy: The Risorgimento in Global Context |
| Latin American and Iberian Cultures | NAHU UN2101 | Intermediate Nahuatl I |
| Latin American and Iberian Cultures | SPAN UN2103 | Health Related Topics in the Spanish-Speaking World |
| Latin American and Iberian Cultures | CPLS UN3454 | Staging the Early Modern Mediterranean [in English] |
| Latin American and Iberian Cultures | PORT UN3327 | Visual Cultures and Ethnicities of Latin America |
| Latin American and Iberian Cultures | SPAN UN3362 | What is Ideology? |
| Latin American and Iberian Cultures | SPAN UN3368 | The Spanish Inquisition |
| Latin American and Iberian Cultures | SPAN UN3731 | Environment and Citizenship: Cultures of Nature in the Iberian Peninsula |
| Latin American and Iberian Cultures | SPAN UN3391, Section 001 | Senior Seminar: Iberian Globalization |
| Linguistics | LING GU4172 | The Structure of Cambodian |
| Mathematics | MATH UN1205 | Acceleratated Multivariable Calculus |
| MESAAS | HSME UN2915 | Africa Before Colonialism: From Prehistory to the Birth of the Atlantic World |
| MESAAS | HSME UN3044 | From Colonial to Global Health |
| MESAAS | CLME UN3221 | Arabic Literature as World Literature |
| MESAAS | MDES UN3331 | Urban Space and Conflict in the Middle East |
| MESAAS | CLME UN3953 | Sufism: Primary Texts and Contexts |
| MESAAS | MDES GU4631 | Cinema and Colonialism |
| Music | MUSI UN3182 | Divas, Monster, and Material Girls: Women in Music Video |
| Music | MUSI UN3183 | Film Music: The History and Aesthetics of the Hollywood Film Score |
| Music | MUSI GU4468 | Transpacific Musicology: Monsters, Princesses, and Bombs at Sea |
| Philosophy | PHIL UN3856 | Political Realism and Social Injustice |
| Philosophy | PHIL UN3867 | Philosophy and Literature: Jane Austen and Moral Philosophy |
| Political Science | POLS UN3648 | Governing the Global Economy |
| Political Science | POLS GU4835 | Formal and Informal Terrorist Actors |
| Psychology | PSYC UN1490/1491 | Experimental Psychology: Thinking and Decision Making - Lecture and Lab |
| Psychology | PSYC UN3445 | The Brain and Memory |
| Psychology | PSYC UN3655 | Field Experimentation Methods for Social Psychology |
| Psychology | PSYC GU4287 | Decision Architecture |
| Psychology | PSYC GU4682 | FAQs about Life: Applications of Psychological Research to Everyday Experiences |
| Religion | RELI UN3204 | Foucault on Christianity |
| Religion | RELI UN3406 | Space, Narrative, and Religion in India |
| Religion | RELI GU4202 | Time, Modernity, Death |
| Religion | RELI GU4220 | Political Theology |
| Sociology | SOCI UN3982 | Social and Political Development in Contemporary China |
| Sociology | SOCI GU4800 | Proseminar in Sociology |
| Statistics | STAT GU4500 | Advanced Machine Learning |
| Theatre (Barnard) | THTR UN3406 | Media Production and Design |
| Women’s and Gender Studies | WMST UN3125 | Introduction to Sexuality Studies |
| Women’s and Gender Studies | WMST UN3450 | Topics in Sexuality and Gender Law |
| Women’s and Gender Studies | WMST UN3785 | Narrating Rape: Literature, Gender, and Violence |
| Writing | WRIT UN3124 | The Competitive Body: Literary Portrayals of Sports and Athleticism |
| Writing | WRIT UN3317 | Trauma and Its Aftermath: Poetry, Memory, Hybridity |
| Writing | WRIT GU4014 | Through a Glass Darkly: German Romantic Tales of Wonder and Horror |
Committee on the Core
The Committee on the Core (COC) is responsible for all matters regarding the Core Curriculum. Questions? Contact Toni Gunthrope-Hardee: tg2030@columbia.edu.
Committee on the Core Members: 2017-2018
Chair: Professor Julie Crawford, Department of English and Comparative Literature, Chair of Literature Humanities
Professor Giuseppe Gerbino, Department of Music, Chair of Music Humanities
Professor Patricia Grieve, Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures, Chair of the Committee on the Global Core
Professor David Helfand, Department Astronomy, Chair of Frontiers of Science
Professor Patricia Kitcher, Department of Philosophy, Chair of Contemporary Civilization
Professor Matthew McKelway, Department of Art History and Archaeology, Chair of Art Humanities
Professor Nicole Wallack, Department of English and Comparative Literature, Director of the Undergraduate Writing Program
Student Representatives:
Danny Li CC’18
Ex-Officio:
James J. Valentini, Dean of Columbia College
Toni Gunthrope-Hardee, Associate Director of the Center for the Core Curriculum
Lisa Hollibaugh, Dean of Academic Planning and Administration
Ivana N. Hughes, Director, Frontiers of Science
Roosevelt Montás, Associate Dean of Academic of Academic Planning and Administration, Director of the Center for the Core Curriculum
Victoria P. Rosner, Dean of Academic Affairs, School of General Studies
Committee on Science Instruction
The Committee on Science Instruction (COSI) is responsible for all matters relating to the science requirement and providing leadership on matters related to undergraduate science education. Questions? Contact Amy Kohn: ask130@columbia.edu
Committee on Science Instruction Members: 2017-2018
- Chair: Professor Kevin Griffin, Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology
- Professor Tulle Hazelrigg, Department of Biological Sciences
- Professor David Helfand, Department of Astronomy
- Professor Jae Woo Lee, Department of Computer Science
- Professor Shaw-Hwa Lo, Department of Statistics
- Professor Peter Keleman, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences
- Professor Caroline Marvin, Department of Psychology
- Professor Vishal Misra, Department of Computer Science
- Professor Jonathan Owen, Department of Chemistry
- Professor John Parsons, Department of Physics
- Professor Karen Phillips, Department of Chemistry
- Professor Mary Putnam, Department of Astronomy
- Professor Ovidiu Savin, Department of Mathematics
Student Representatives:
TBD
Ex-Officio:
- James J. Valentini, Dean of Columbia College
- Lisa Hollibaugh, Dean of Academic Planning and Administration
- Ivana Hughes, Department of Chemistry, Director of Frontiers of Science
- Victoria Rosner, Dean of Academic Affairs, School of General Studies
- Roosevelt Montás, Associate Dean of Academic Planning and Administration, Director of the Core Curriculum
- Amy Kohn, Assistant Director of Academic Planning and Administration
Committee on the Global Core
The Committee on the Global Core (CGC) is responsible for all matters relating to the Global Core requirement, including determining the list of courses approved for the requirement. Questions? Contact globalcore@columbia.edu.
Faculty interested in proposing new courses for the Global Core requirement can view information regarding the process.
Committee on Global Core Members: 2017-2018
Chair: Professor Patricia Grieve, Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures
Professor Muhsin Al-Musawi, Department of Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies
Professor Courtney Bender, Department of Religion
Professor Madeleine Dobie, Department of French and Romance Philology
Professor Stathis Gourgouris, Department of English and Comparative Literature
Professor David Lurie, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures
Professor Andrew Nathan, Department of Political Science
Professor Avinoam Shalem, Department of Art History and Archaeology
Professor Wei Shang, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures
Student Representative:
TBA
Ex-Officio:
James J. Valentini, Dean of Columbia College
Victoria P. Rosner, Dean of Academic Affairs, School of General Studies
Lisa Hollibaugh, Dean of Academic Planning and Administration, Columbia College
Roosevelt Montás, Associate Dean of Academic Planning and Administration, Columbia College