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The CCRA blog is authored by Columbia undergraduate researchers, who are invited to reflect on all aspects of the research process and their own undergraduate research experiences, beginning (but not ending) with the Core.
Author Archives: cw2770
Canonization in the End Times
Since it was first taught in the years following World War I, Contemporary Civilization has navigated the tension between debates of the past and challenges of the present. Students read Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, and Machiavelli before tackling Martin Luther King, … Continue reading
Posted in Climate Change, The Core
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On Looking Closely
At the beginning of my semester abroad at Oxford, my tutor summoned me and the two other visiting students studying English to his office to give us some advice. We were going to be writing papers much more regularly than … Continue reading
Posted in Study Abroad, Uncategorized
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A Speaking, Bleeding Book: The Relevance of the Core Outside the West
My faith in the value of the Core has wavered on some occasions: during exam periods, while slogging through an exceptionally-dense reading, and in the last half-hour of any seminar discussion on a warm spring afternoon (to name a few … Continue reading
Posted in Summer Research, The Core, Uncategorized, Writing
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Interdisciplinary Beginnings: Getting Started with Research
In such an interdisciplinary field as urban studies, it can be hard to determine exactly one place or department in which to house or even propose a research project. In fact, the broad disciplinary foundations of the urban studies program—ranging … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
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Learning the Core Personally
We’ve all been in that room. Maybe it was your closest class friend. Maybe it was your unspoken class nemesis. Or maybe it was even you. But we’ve all been there when the professor cold calls someone in LitHum or … Continue reading
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The Art of the Research Interview
Conducting interviews for a research project can be difficult. As an undergraduate, you’ve only just started to learn about your topic—whether industrial-labor relations in the Old West or modern-day separatist movements in Catalonia and Quebec. Your respondents, on the other … Continue reading
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Starting the Core Paper
When I was assigned my first paper in Literature Humanities three years ago, I felt somewhat overwhelmed. The paper could be about any aspect of the Iliad, a topic that seemed incredibly rich yet also strangely sterile—what new perspective or … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
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Reflections on Taking Research Abroad
I didn’t come to Columbia with aspirations of traveling abroad– New York City already felt like a foreign country to me, and its museums, languages, and libraries have enough to occupy ten lifetimes’ worth of curiosity. In my sophomore year, … Continue reading
Posted in Laidlaw Scholars, Study Abroad
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Researching Publics and Public Research
Imagine for a minute all the spaces that define your life at Columbia: the classrooms where seminars unfold, the lecture halls alive with presentations, the labs buzzing with quiet concentration, and libraries where the daytime hours bleed into the night. … Continue reading
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The Art of the Missing: An Interdisciplinary Retreat
Last spring, I was scrambling a bit for a summer internship, as many fellow second-semester juniors find themselves. While I was already planning to work at a law firm in New York City, it was only a part-time commitment. Not … Continue reading
Posted in Art, Museums, New York City
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