Category Archives: Uncategorized

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

Like most other Columbia undergraduates, I was first introduced to the work of Immanuel Kant halfway through my sophomore year. Kant’s slim-but-dense ethical treatise, the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, is the second text that students read in Contemporary … Continue reading →

When I first learned about the Humanities Research Scholars Program during winter break of my sophomore year, I felt both daunted and excited. I had never done any kind of research before, and I had no idea of what topic … Continue reading →

This summer, my research project centers on islands as crucial protagonists in investigating the literary representation of “foreignness” in early modern East Asian and Mediterranean contexts. I derived my fascination with the topic of “islands” as alternative spaces where civilizations … Continue reading →

At Columbia, it quickly becomes clear that “underrepresented” doesn’t always mean “poor.” While addressing the issue of “underrepresentation” is often framed as a moral imperative for diversity programs aimed at recruiting the next generation of scholars of color, those who … Continue reading →