Columbia, Mon Amour
The great Columbia University is my Alma Mater: M.Phil and Ph.D. in Sociology and Film (President’s Fellow)
I have also taught at Columbia’s Department of Sociology for about a decade, 1983-1991, courses such in the Sociology of Film, Film and Society, and Politics and Society.
I had spent several sabbaticals at Columbia’s School of the Arts (Film Division) and Sociology Department.
In 2010-2011, I was honored to replace my mentor, the great Andrew Sarris, when he was too ill-disposed to teach his classes in French New Wave and International Cinema of the 1930s.
Characters (in films and books) who attended Morningside Heights campus.
In the 2007 rom-com I Think I Love My Wife, Chris Rock plays Richard Cooper, a married banking professional who flirts with infidelity when he reconnects with an attractive old friend, played by Kerry Washington.
A Columbia diploma displayed in Cooper’s office reveals that he’s an alumnus.
At the end of The Nanny Diaries, a 2007 comedy based on the book by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus, Annie Braddock (Scarlett Johansson) leaves her stressful job as an Upper East Side nanny and applies to graduate school for a master’s in anthropology. Although Columbia isn’t explicitly mentioned, Braddock is shown holding application materials while sitting on a fountain outside Low Library.
It’s rare for Columbia to be mentioned in a Bollywood film, but in the 2007 Indian hit Ta Ra Rum Pum, Rani Mukerji plays Radhika Banerjee Singh, a pianist who meets her future racecar-driver husband while studying in the University’s music program.
