4 courses with the subject CLEN UN, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
CLEN UN2122Marxism and Cultural Theory3.00
This course will not offer an intensive study of the writings of Karl Marx. It’s a course in the theory of culture which emphasizes what Marxism has and has not contributed to that theory and what a better cultural theory might require. After laying out some basic propositions of Marxist thought and some issues and challenges associated with them when applied to the study of culture, it proposes to develop conceptual coordinates which will enable students to make sense of recent cultural analysis both inside and outside the Marxist orbit, including competing theories of global capitalism and financial crisis. What are the models of the world which are implicitly appealed to by critics interpreting cultural objects and practices and advocating more or less drastic social change? What sorts of cultural interpretation do such models authorize? What are the problematic interfaces between Marxism and other discourses of social justice, like environmentalism, and the models of interpretation to which they appeal?
- Subject
- CLEN UN
- Credits (min)
- 3
- Credits (max)
- 3
- Credit unit
- points
- Type
- course
- Edition
- 2026-2027
- Catalog
- 2026-2027 Bulletin
- Source
- bulletin.columbia.edu
CLEN UN3125Medieval Encounters4.00
Though often thought of in mainstream culture as closed, conservative, and backwards, the medieval world was actually a place where the circulation of people and ideas resulted in generative encounters. This course will consider texts that brush up against the unfamiliar. We’ll read travelogues containing Western views of the East and Muslim views of Christian society, plus texts of questionable literary merit and difficult, artful poetry. Via our course readings, you’ll cross borders into strange lands with unaccountable customs, experience the possibilities of the marvelous, and interact with the afterlife and its denizens. Along the way, you’ll be having your own medieval encounter with worldview(s) that require contextual analysis to recuperate
- Subject
- CLEN UN
- Credits (min)
- 4
- Credits (max)
- 4
- Credit unit
- points
- Type
- course
- Edition
- 2026-2027
- Catalog
- 2026-2027 Bulletin
- Source
- bulletin.columbia.edu
CLEN UN3725Literary Guides to Living and Dying Well from Plato to Montaigne4.00
Surrounded by friends on the morning of his state-mandated suicide, Socrates invites them to join him in considering the proposition that philosophizing is learning how to die. In dialogues, essays, and letters from antiquity to early modernity, writers have returned to this proposition from Plato’s Phaedo to consider, in turn, what it means for living and dying well. This course will explore some of the most widely read of these works, including by Cicero, Seneca, Jerome, Augustine, Boethius, Petrarch, and Montaigne, with an eye to the continuities and changes in these meanings and their impact on the literary forms that express them. Application instructions: E-mail Prof. Eden (khe1@columbia.edu) with your name, school, major, year of study, and relevant courses taken, along with a brief statement about why you are interested in taking the course. Admitted students should register for the course; they will automatically be placed on a wait list from which the instructor will in due course admit them as spaces become available
- Subject
- CLEN UN
- Credits (min)
- 4
- Credits (max)
- 4
- Credit unit
- points
- Type
- course
- Edition
- 2026-2027
- Catalog
- 2026-2027 Bulletin
- Source
- bulletin.columbia.edu
Source: Columbia University in the City of New York's catalog, linked per course · table learning_unit · CourseShelf publish 61
