Language and Pop Culture in Contemporary

Language & Pop Culture: F

What are French people
actually
saying to each other? You’ve taken French for 3+ years, have been reading literature, watching films and writing about them in sophisticated analyses. Yet, conversations among native speakers may still elude you. This course is designed to help you bridge that gap, and gain a better understanding of the slang (
argot
) and the pop culture references that contribute to French’s vibrancy. Together we will review a variety of contemporary French popular art forms, from music, film and graphic novels to street art, film, and food culture. We will explore the history of these genres, and the ways in which French identity is continuously (re)-established in its popular culture with and against the influences of decolonization, Americanization and globalization. The course is conducted in French.

• Department: French @Barnard
• Instructor: Karen Santos da Silva
  CULPA: 4 Info
• 3 points

PLAYWRITING I

Writing sample required to apply. Instructions and the application form can be found here:
https://english.barnard.edu/english/creative-writing-courses
.

What is the difference between a play and a film? No two playwrights will have the same response, but all must address the question. This is a class that revels in that distinction, encouraging students to explore the idiosyncrasy, strangeness, and power of the form. For half the semester, students will be writing in response to prompts that are designed to teach fundamental principles of the form. In addition to writing their own work, every week students will choose two plays from a collection of 150 to read and comment briefly on. During the second half of the semester, students develop a longer work, to be submitted as either a completed one act or a partial draft with notes for a full-length work. Classes are spent reading and discussing students’ work. No previous experience in playwriting is necessary.

• Department: English @Barnard
• Instructor: Ellen McLaughlin
  CULPA: 4 Info
• 3 points

STORY WRITING

Writing sample required to apply. Instructions and the application form can be found here:
https://english.barnard.edu/english/creative-writing-courses
.
 
A workshop in writing, with emphasis on the short story.

Story Writing I is an advanced workshop in prose writing, with emphasis on the short story. Some experience in the writing of fiction is required. Students will share at least two pieces of their own work with the class over the course of the semester. In addition, each week we will read and analyze a variety of published short stories with an eye for craft and writerly decisions that might be applied to our own work. Exercises and in-depth workshop letters will push students to think more deeply about their own choices and the many layers that make up their work. Conference hours to be arranged.

• Department: English @Barnard
• Instructor: Nellie G Hermann
  Info
• 3 points

FICTION WRITING

Writing sample required to apply. Instructions and the application form can be found here:
https://english.barnard.edu/english/creative-writing-courses
. 

Section 1 (taught by Sarah Wang in Spring 2026)
 
Narrative Strategies: 
This course will explore the different ways that stories can be told. How a story is written is as important as what a story is about. Is there a turn at the end that changes everything you thought you knew? Is the narrator speaking from inside experience, reportage from the front lines of another world? How can the epistolary form be utilized to effect? Students will workshop their own stories, participate in four in-class generative writing sessions, and read weekly short stories demonstrating various strategies for style, voice, setting, dialogue, form, and point of view. Particular focus will be placed on writing from the margins and writing as an act of bearing witness.

Section 2 (taught by Gina Apostol in Spring 2026):
 
This course will focus particularly on crafting the literary technique of point of view in fiction. Students will craft work with this question in mind: in what ways are art and ethics combined in the crafting of point of view? Students will practice writing from different narration modes: third person limited and omniscient, free indirect discourse, first person, and so on. They will consider the ethics of point of view by reading short stories, among them stories from Borges’s 
Labyrinths
, John Keene’s 
Counternarratives
, and Angela Carter’s 
Saints and Strangers.
 Some theoretical matters will include: postcoloniality in narration; identity in narration; ‘queering’ history; and critical race thought. Students will write three different pieces with the crafting of point of view in mind. Students will workshop each other’s pieces as well as discuss the texts in relation to their practice of the art of fiction.

• Department: English @Barnard
• Instructor: Weike Wang
  CULPA: 1 Info
• Instructor: Idra L Novey
  CULPA: 2 Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

ADVANCED POETRY WRITING

Writing sample required to apply. Instructions and the application form can be found here:
https://english.barnard.edu/english/creative-writing-courses
. 

What drives the music of a poem? How does one create rhythm and song? In what ways do chunks of language sort and arrange the perception of our readers? The purpose of this advanced poetry workshop is to closely study syntax, or in the words of Ellen Bryant Voigt, “the order of the words in each human utterance.” To further build upon our technical foundation as writers, we will also engage in other elements of craft, such as deep imagery, grammatical moods, tone, and poetic closure. We will be reading a variety of poets, including Etel Adnan, Rita Dove, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, John Murrillo, Choi Seungja, and Yuki Tanaka. Be prepared to generate new material independently for peer workshops where you will gain valuable feedback and constructive criticism. 

Apart from challenging your poetics on a technical level, I expect you to come to class with a strong desire to create meaning out of your daily lives, your personal or collective histories, and the futures that you are actively imagining. Your openness and willingness to grow as a human, poet, and critical thinker are fundamental to fostering a kind and supportive community in the classroom. Not only will you be writing poems, you will also learn to translate your soul’s language and help others do the same.

• Department: English @Barnard
• Instructor: Patricia S Jones
  Info
• Instructor: Faculty
  h-index: 37 Info
• 3 points

SCREENWRITING FUNDAMENTALS

SCREENWRITING FUNDMENTALS

Prerequisites: FILM BC3201 or equivalent. Enrollment limited to 12 students. Priority is given to Film Studies majors/concentrations in order of class seniority. Corequisites: (Since this is a Film course, it does not count as a writing course for English majors with a Writing Concentration.)

This course is ideal for writers of their FIRST, SECOND AND THIRD screenplays. The first several weeks will focus on STORY: What it is, what it isn’t, how to recognize the difference. How to find your own individual stories that nobody else in the universe can tell.

From there we will make the transition to the highly individualized techniques, the strengths and limitations, the dynamics of telling a SCREEN STORY; what to leave in, what to leave out. As Michelangelo puts it—starting with a block of marble and chipping away everything that isn’t David.  Through studies of existing screenplays and films in coordination with and hands-on writing exercises which we will share in class, we will develop our skills in all aspects of screenwriting; building fascinating characters, dialogue, story construction (The BIG PICTURE) and scene construction (The Small Picture)

Perfection is not the goal; but rather it is to be able to say truly at the end of each day’s writing, “I did the best I could with what I had at the time. (Phillip Roth quoting heavyweight champion Joe Louis)

• Department: Film @Barnard
• Instructor: Peter Nickowitz
  Info
• 3 points

CITY,LANDSCAPE, & ECOLOGY

City, Landscape, Ecology 
is a thematically driven course that centers on issues and polemics related to landscape, land settlement and ecology over the past two centuries. The class looks at changing attitudes to the natural world from the eighteenth century to the present, tracing important historical shifts in the consideration of nature across the ecological sciences, conservation practices, landscape design, and environmental activism, law and policy. Lectures focus on the critical role that artists and architects have played, and are to play, in making visible the sources of environmental degradation and in developing new means of mitigating anthropogenic ecological change.

City, Landscape, Ecology 
is divided into three parts. Part I explores important episodes in the history of 
landscape
: picturesque garden theory, notions of “wilderness” as epitomized in national and state parks in the United States, Modern and Postmodern garden practices, and place of landscape in the work of artists from the 1960s to the present. The purpose here is to better understand the role that territorial organization plays in the construction of social practices, human subjectivities, and technologies of power. Lectures in this part are shaped around a dialectical pair of historical episodes–– for example, the picturesque garden is paired with the enclosure of the commons, and American national parks are discussed in relation to the systematic removal of native peoples.

We then turn to 
ecology
 and related issues of climate, urbanization and sustainability in Part II. Here we will look at the rise of ecological thinking in the 1960s; approaches to the environment that were based on the systems-thinking approach of the era. In the session “Capitalism, Race and Population Growth” we examine the history of the “crisis” of scarcity from Thomas Robert Malthus, to Paul R. Ehrlich (
The Population Bomb
, 1968) to today and look at questions of environmental racism, violence and equity. 

The course concludes with Part III on 
Environmental Repair
. At this important juncture in the course, we will ask what is to be done today. We’ll examine the work of contemporary theorists, architects, landscape architects, policy makers and environmentalists who have channeled some of the lessons

• Department: Architecture @Barnard
• TR 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Ralph Ghoche
  CULPA: 1 h-index: 2 Info
• 3 points

PUBLIC SPEAKING

Open only to undergraduates. 


This course will introduce you to principles of effective public speaking and debate, and provide practical opportunities to use these principles in structured speaking situations. You will craft and deliver speeches, engage in debates and panel discussions, analyze historical and contemporary speakers, and reflect on your own speeches and those of your classmates. You will explore and practice different rhetorical strategies with an emphasis on information, persuasion and argumentation. For each speaking assignment, you will go through the speech-making process, from audience analysis, purpose and organization, to considerations of style and delivery. The key criteria in this course are content, organization, and adaptation to the audience and purpose. While this is primarily a performance course, you will be expected to participate extensively as a listener and critic, as well as a speaker.

• Department: English @Barnard
• Instructor: Daniela Kempf
  Info
• 3 points

RHETORICAL CHOICES: PUBLIC SPEAKING

RHETORICAL CHOICES:PBLC S

Enrollment restricted to Barnard students. Application process and instructor permission required:
https://speaking.barnard.edu/become-speaking-fellow
. Speaking involves a series of rhetorical choices regarding vocal presentation, argument construction, and physical affect that, whether made consciously or by default, project information about the identity of the speaker. In this course students will relate theory to practice: to learn principles of public speaking and speech criticism for the purpose of applying these principles as peer tutors in the Speaking Fellow Program.
Note: This course now counts as an elective for the English major.

• Department: English @Barnard
• 4 points

THE AMERICAN COWBOY AND THE ICONOGRAPHY

AMER COWBOY/ICONOG OF WES

This entertaining and edifying lecture-not-unmixed-with conversation course will
consider the icon of the American cowboy, with its signature embrace of
masculinity, stoicism, elegiac music, and identification with nature. We will read
Cormac McCarthy’s dazzling Border Trilogy and other works that emerge from
this icon, watch a curated series of cowboy movies, and write critical essays.

• Department: English @Barnard
• Instructor: Margaret R Ellsberg
  CULPA: 54 Info
• 3 points

GENDERED CONTROVERSIES

This seminar investigates the significance of contemporary and historical issues of social, political, and cultural conflicts conducted through the language of gender. How do such conflicts constitute social relations, and what do they tell us about societies, cultures, and politics? How do we understand gender analysis in relation to intersectionality? How to we read and analyze gender through contested social issues? How do we analyze the ethical discourses employed in such conflicts? How do we best create change in response to such conflicts?

• Department: Women's, Gender, Sexuality Studies @Barnard
• Instructor: Sandra Moyano-Ariza
  Info
• 4 points

CREATIVE NON-FICTION

Writing sample required to apply. Instructions and the application form can be found here:
https://english.barnard.edu/english/creative-writing-courses
.

Spring 2026: Drawing Cartoons and Comics

In this class, New Yorker cartoonist and graphic novelist Liana Finck will teach you the basics of making single-panel cartoons, writing and drawing comics, and generally expressing yourself in a mixture of words and pictures. You will learn to diagram your problems, craft jokes, and tell stories visually. You’ll get an overview of useful materials, programs and machines, and how to use all these things with a light enough touch that you can still focus on your art. You will get comfortable with processes for generating ideas and editing your work. We will read some graphic novels, look at lots of cartoons, and dip a toe into the history of colloquial visual storytelling. You will finish the semester with a large body of small-scale work, one serious longer piece, and a better understanding of your voice and what you have to say. My hope is that you’ll leave the class confident in your ability to work visually, and with a regular practice if you want one.

• Department: English @Barnard
• Instructor: Nina Sharma
  CULPA: 5 Info
• 3 points

BALLET V

This course is for the intermediate advanced dancer. Material presented will focus on healthy anatomical alignment in barre work, extended combinations in the center, fostering personal artistic expression, and integrating improvisation in combinations with the ballet vocabulary. Clarification, analysis and repetition are fundamental elements for a sound technique of any dancer and are the foundation of this course. Center work will include attention to shaping adagio work, multiple turns in the large poses, batterie, and extended grand allegro. You may be assigned the construction and presentation of exercises, which will be explained in detail further into the semester.

• Department: Dance @Barnard
• MW 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
• MW 8:40 a.m.-9:55 a.m.
• Instructor: Cynthia Anderson
  Info
• Instructor: Unity Phelan
  Info
• 2 points

INTRODUCTION VOCAL REPERTOIRE

This course is designed for developing singers. Group vocalizing, learning of songs and individual workshop performances are aimed at improving the students technical skill and the elements necessary to create a meaningful musical and dramatic experience. Attention to text, subtext, emotional and psychological aspects of a piece and the performers relationship to the audience are included in the work. Repertoire is predominantly in English and comes from both classical and popular traditions Individual coaching sessions are available with the class accompanist and help strengthen the students confidence and skill. The class culminates with an in-class performance.

• Department: Music @Barnard
• Instructor: Jean-Paul Bjorlin
  Info
• 3 points

BALLET VI

This course is for the intermediate advanced dancer. Material presented will focus on healthy anatomical alignment in barre work, extended combinations in the center, fostering personal artistic expression, and integrating improvisation in combinations with the ballet vocabulary. Clarification, analysis and repetition are fundamental elements for a sound technique of any dancer and are the foundation of this course. Center work will include attention to shaping adagio work, multiple turns in the large poses, batterie, and extended grand allegro. You may be assigned the construction and presentation of exercises, which will be explained in detail further into the semester. You will be assigned a grading exercise at the end of the shopping period and will get written observations from me

• Department: Dance @Barnard
• TR 8:40 a.m.-9:55 a.m.
• F 9 a.m.-10:50 a.m.
• Instructor: Antonio Carmena
  Info
• Instructor: Ashley Tuttle
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 2 points

VOCAL REPERTOIRE, TECHNIQUE

VOCAL REPERTOIRE TECHNIQUE

Vocal exercises and exploration of wide-ranging repertoires, styles, and languages of the Western European song tradition. The rich variety of English, French, Italian and German poetry and music from the Baroque period through the Twentieth Century allows the student to experience both the music and the cultural environment of each of these styles. Attention is given both to meaning oftext and musical interpretation. Individual coaching sessions are available with the class accompanist and help strengthen the students confidence and skill. The class culminates with an in-class performance.

• Department: Music @Barnard
• F 10 a.m.-1 p.m.
• Instructor: Coralie Gallet
  Info
• 3 points

PERFORMING WOMEN

Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 16 students. This course examines the category of "woman" as it is mobilized in performance, considering both a variety of contemporary performances chosen from a wide range of genres and a diversity of critical/theoretical perspectives. Course fulfills lecture/seminar "studies" requirement for Theatre/Drama and Theatre Arts major.

• Department: Theatre @Barnard
• W 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Shayoni Mitra
  CULPA: 5 Info
• 4 points

Advanced R in Biology

This course serves as a continuation of BIOL2500 R for Scientists. The course will meet weekly. Students will explore a range of methods and resources used by contemporary computational biologists. These include advanced statistical modeling approaches, manipulating genomic and spatial data, and working in R outside of the RStudio environment (including git, bash, Shiny and high-performance computing). Students will have opportunities to explore diverse biological and statistical R packages in the context of homework assignments, and will analyze a dataset of their own choosing for a semester project.

• Department: Biological Sciences @Barnard
• F 10:10 a.m.-1 p.m.
• Instructor: Vincent D Fitzpatrick
  Info
• 3 points

CLASSIC VARIATIONS

Variations
 class is a course for the intermediate to advanced dancer.  As in all other ballet classes, there will be a focus on correct physical alignment, proper technique and musicality.  The added challenges in this course will be the pointe shoe technique, creative choreographic choices, and musical phrasing. The class will include variations based on works ranging from Petipa to Balanchine to today’s choreographers.  Dancers will explore personalizing already known works, pushing the boundaries of the pointe shoe, examining how choreography has evolved and developing the stamina required to execute a full variation. Learning material rapidly while paying attention to the stylistic demands of each choreographer’s works and being able to shift from one stylistic choice to another is simply expected.

• Department: Dance @Barnard
• MW 5:40 p.m.-6:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Ashley Tuttle
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 2 points

Black Women s Histories in the United

Black Women's Histories

In this course you will be examining paper tracings and other sources related to the lived experiences of Black women. You will be required to review and interrogate materials on triggering subjects; some of these items include violent descriptions, images, and acts. In order to join in our collective engagement with the history of Black women, within the context of the U.S., you will critically analyze items that have not been sanitized for popular consumption. Thus, we will not be “erasing history” in this course by avoiding the deployment of white supremacy and its vast, related violence(s) against Black women’s bodies and lives, as well as the various manifestations of resistance of Black women throughout the history of the United States.

• Department: Africana Studies (AFSB)
• W 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Celia E Naylor
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 4 points

Jews in the Christian Imagination

Jews in Christian Imagina

Since the beginning of the movement that would become Christianity, Jews have occupied a unique – and uniquely fraught – position in the Christian imagination. Why did so few of the very Jews to whom Jesus preached accept him as their messiah? Why, as the Church grew in wealth and influence, did Jews continue to live in Christian communities, and what was their proper place in Christian society? In our course, we will read early and medieval Christian narratives about Jews that are, in many ways, an attempt to answer these questions – dark imaginative visions of Jews as child-killers, cannibals, and devil worshippers. We will use narrative, psychological, and literary theory as tools to analyze these tales and to make sense of their complicated and continuing legacy.

• Department: English @Barnard
• Instructor: Wendy C Schor-Haim
  CULPA: 11 Info
• 4 points

CRITICAL HISTORIES OF DRAMA, THEATRE, AN

CRIT HIST DRAMA, THTR & P

This course undertakes a

dialectical approach to reading and thinking about the history of dramatic theatre, interrogating the ways writing inflects, and is inflected by, the material dynamics of performance. Course undertakes careful study of the practices of performance, and of the sociocultural, economic, political, and aesthetic conditions animating representative performance in “classical” theatres globally; course will also emphasize development of important critical concepts for the analysis of drama, theatre, and performance. Topics include the sociology of theatre, the impact of print on conceptions of performance, representing gender and race, the politics of intercultural performance, and the dynamics of court performance. Writing: 2-3 papers; Reading: 1-2 plays, critical and historical reading per week; final examination. Fulfills one (of two) lecture requirements for Theatre/Drama and Theatre Arts majors.

• Department: Theatre @Barnard
• MW 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: William B Worthen
  CULPA: 10 Info
• 4 points

SHAKESPEARE S SONNETS: AN EXPERIMENT I

SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS

This class is:


An introduction to Shakespeare’s Sonnets, and a chance to read through them all, slowly and carefully

An introduction to the way that Shakespeare’s mind worked, and to what he did with words

An introduction to the sonnet as a form, up to the present moment

A chance to explore how and why we read, and the difference that the pace of our reading makes

An opportunity to practice paying a particular kind of extended attention, and to explore what it does to our minds and our memories when we spend time with a body of poems over a series of weeks

• Department: English @Barnard
• Instructor: Faculty
  h-index: 37 Info
• 3 points

THEATRE TRAD GLOBAL CONTEXT

Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 50 students.

Provides a broad introduction to several traditions of nonwestern drama and theatrical practice, often placing recent and contemporary writing in relation to established conventions.  Taking up plays and performance traditions from Asia, South Asia, and various African traditions, it may also consider the relation between elite and popular culture (adaptations of Shakespeare, for example), and between drama, theatre, and film. Course fulfills lecture/seminar "studies" requirement for Theatre/Drama and Theatre Arts major.

• Department: Theatre @Barnard
• TR 12:10 p.m.-12:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Shayoni Mitra
  CULPA: 5 Info
• 4 points

THE CANTERBURY TALES

Chaucer as inheritor of late-antique and medieval conventions and founder of early modern literature and the fiction of character.  Selections from related medieval texts.

• Department: English @Barnard
• Instructor: Eugene A Petracca
  Info
• 3 points

MODERN ASIAN PERFORMANCE

This course studies contemporary Asian performance with a focus on modernity, covering most nations on the Asian continent. We will examine a variety of performance, ranging from dance to revolutionary theatre, from postdramatic staging to translated as well as made-in-Asia musicals. Theoretical questions under discussion include modernity, national/ethnic/gender identity, art and ideology, the Sinophone, global Asias, among others.  Fulfills lecture/seminar requirement in Theatre/Drama and Theatre Arts major and minor programs.

• Department: Theatre @Barnard
• W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Yizhou Huang
  Info
• 4 points

THE ENGLISH COLLOQUIUM

Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to Barnard English majors. In the Renaissance colloquium we will examine English and European imaginative and intellectual life from the sixteenth to mid-seventeenth centuries. Defined by humanism, the Protestant Reformation, and revolution, this was a period of ideological struggle on many levels. Long-held ways of ordering the world came under increasing strain-and sometimes ruptured irreparably. Writers discussed and debated the aims of human knowledge, retooled old literary forms for new purposes, scrambled to take account of an expanded awareness of the globe, and probed the tension between belief and doubt. Throughout this process, they experimented with new literary styles to express their rapidly changing worldviews. This is an intensive course in which we will take multiple approaches to a variety of authors that may include Petrarch, Erasmus, Machiavelli, Castiglione, More, Rabelais, Luther, Calvin, Montaigne, Spenser, Bacon, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Milton, and Behn, among others.

• Department: English @Barnard
• Instructor: Atefeh Akbari Shahmirzadi
  Info
• Instructor: Eugene A Petracca
  Info
• Instructor: Rachel Eisendrath
  CULPA: 6 Info
• Instructor: Faculty
  h-index: 37 Info
• 4 points

Fanon s Psychology of the Oppressed

Frantz Fanon’s ideas have been influential for decades among theorists, practitioners, and activists alike.  This seminar is focused on understanding Fanon’s particular perspective on the psychology of the oppressed and its relevance for examining the experience of past and present racialized inequality and its effects in society. The course is divided into four sections, which build cumulatively.

I). An introductory section introduces Fanon’s central ideas (e.g., dialecticism, existentialism, post-colonialism) in their intellectual and socio-historical context (e.g., the Algerian revolution, African decolonization, South African Apartheid, the US civil rights and women’s rights movements).

II). A second section locates Fanon in psychological theory and therapeutic theory and practice.  The cultural and political (Eurocentric?) roots of psychological theory and practice are examined as are notions of oppression causing psychological and physical violence as well as psychopathology / psychological disorder.

III). A third section examines Fanon and others psychological approaches to identity with particular attention to the presumed “inferiority complex” of oppressed peoples, nationalist and other reconstructions of identity in opposition to oppression, sociological psychological conceptualizations of stigma, and Dubois’s influential ideas regarding double consciousness.

IV). A fourth and final section focuses on resistance and rebellion.  The focus here is on the psycho-moral implications of (violent, peaceful, non-disruptive) action against oppression with reference to the distinct perspectives of Fanon in comparison to influential figures like Gandhi and M.L.K Jr.  These issues are linked to a post-Fanon approach to the psychology of the oppressed called Liberation Psychology.

• Department: Africana Studies (AFSB)
• W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Colin Leach
  CULPA: 4 h-index: 41 Info
• 4 points

SHAKESPEARE I

A critical and historical introduction to Shakespeares comedies, histories, tragedies, and romances. Please note that you do not need to take ENGL BC3163: Shakespeare I and ENGL BC3164: Shakespeare II in sequence; you may take them in any order.

• Department: English @Barnard
• Instructor: Peter Platt
  CULPA: 23 Info
• 3 points

THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY NOVEL

In the seventeenth century, a new genre appears across Europe: the novel. Why does it appear? What accounts for its increasing popularity across the eighteenth century? What role does it play, in personal psychology as well as society? To puzzle these questions, we will place the development of the novel within the history of art, philosophy and science, as well as psychology and literary theory. Readings may include novels by Mme. de La Fayette, Aphra Behn, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, John Cleland, the Marquis de Sade, William Godwin, and Jane Austen, as well as essays by Benjamin, Adorno, Foucault, Elias, Moretti, and others.

• Department: English @Barnard
• Instructor: Monica F Cohen
  CULPA: 8 Info
• 3 points

AMERICAN LITERATURE TO 1800

This course surveys American literature written before 1800. While we will devote some attention to the literary traditions that preceded British colonization, most of our readings will be of texts written in English between 1620 and 1800. These texts--histories, autobiographies, poems, plays, and novels--illuminate the complexity of this period of American culture. They tell stories of pilgrimage, colonization, and genocide; private piety and public life; manuscript and print publication; the growth of national identity (political, cultural, and literary); Puritanism, Quakerism, and Deism; race and gender; slavery and the beginnings of a movement towards its abolition. We will consider, as we read, the ways that these stories overlap and interconnect, and the ways that they shape texts of different periods and genres.

• Department: English @Barnard
• Instructor: Lisa Gordis
  CULPA: 15 Info
• 3 points

CEPHALOPOD COGNITION

This seminar is designed to introduce you to the methods used to discern and describe the cognitive repertoire of novel, understudied, animals.  The animals which we will specifically examine in the class are octopuses and cuttlefish.  Over the course of the semester you will learn how we define cognitive abilities in humans and examine them in various animal species for modeling and comparison purposes.  Each week you will examine one specific ability in humans, a traditional animal model, and a cephalopod.  In this manner you will come to understand the historical process of understanding animal cognition, the current state of the literature in at least one area of cephalopod cognition and be capable of proposing a novel experiment as a way to extend our knowledge of that area of cephalopod cognition.

• Department: Psychology @Barnard
• Instructor: Ken Light
  CULPA: 17 h-index: 15 Info
• 4 points

AMERICAN LITERATURE 1871-1945

This interdisciplinary course situates late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American literature within the context of historical and cultural change. Students read works by Whitman, Twain, James, Griggs, Wharton, Faulkner, and Hurston alongside political and cultural materials including Supreme Court decisions, geometric treatises, composite photography and taxidermy.

• Department: English @Barnard
• Instructor: Jennie Kassanoff
  CULPA: 20 Info
• 3 points

AMERICAN LITERATURE SINCE 1945

In the wake of World War II, the so-called American Century rises out of the ashes of fascism, haunted by the specter of bombs blurring the boundary between victory and defeat. An ideological civil war ensues, punctuated by literary resistance to grand narratives and their discontents. Authors include Ellison, O’Connor, Ginsberg, Bishop, Pynchon, Robinson, Merrill, Morrison, Didion, and Wallace.

• Department: English @Barnard
• Instructor: Victor Zarour Zarzar
  Info
• 3 points

MODRN BRITISH & AMERCAN POETRY

Poetry written in English during the past century, discussed in the context of modernism, postmodernism, literary theory, and changing social and technological developments. Students will participate in shaping the syllabus and leading class discussion. Authors may include Yeats, Williams, Eliot, Moore, Bishop, Rich, Ginsberg, Stevens, O Hara, Plath, Brooks, Jordan, Walcott, Alexie, and many others.

• Department: English @Barnard
• Instructor: Michael C Dickman
  Info
• 3 points

CRITICAL WRITING

Open to all students.This course teaches clear writing and provides exposure to a range of interpretative strategies.  Frequent short papers. Required of all English majors before the end of the junior year. Sophomores are encouraged to take it in the spring semester even before officially declaring their major. Transfer students should plan to take it in the fall semester.

• Department: English @Barnard
• Instructor: Kristi-Lynn Cassaro
  Info
• Instructor: Eugene A Petracca
  Info
• Instructor: Jayne Hildebrand
  CULPA: 3 Info
• Instructor: Andrew L Lynn
  CULPA: 17 Info
• 4 points

LITERARY THEORY

In this course, we will trace the complex category of
imitation
from its ancient roots to some of its modern theoretical and literary manifestations. Interpreted differently by different thinkers, imitation can refer to the problem of art’s imitation of things in the world (e.g., your portrait looks like you), art’s imitation of other artistic works (e.g., your portrait looks like a Rembrandt), people’s imitation or even mimicry of one another (who does she think she is?). The latter form of imitation raises the most overtly socio-political questions, whether by replicating social power structures in order to “pass” in a potentially hostile environment or by subverting these same structures through mimicking, outwitting, critiquing, or mocking them. At its core, the category of imitation focuses our attention on what is so central to artmaking that it almost eludes our notice: the question of resemblance. Put in its simplest form: What are we doing (philosophically, artistically, socially) when we make one thing resemble another?

• Department: English @Barnard
• Instructor: Rachel Eisendrath
  CULPA: 6 Info
• 4 points

MODERNISM

A deeply ambivalent, transatlantic movement, Modernism grapples with revolutionary forces that defy traditional structures: the 19th-century Darwinian inversion to the old idea of order, the advent of psychoanalysis, the crisis of world war, and the anxiety and exuberance of shifting gender paradigms. The ensuing cultural upheaval dis-orders not only the content but also the literary forms of Modernism, giving rise to abstraction, fragmented narrative structures, stream-of-consciousness prose and the extreme erudition T.S. Eliot “shored against the ruins” of so-called civilization in “The Waste Land.”  Special attention will be devoted to how seminal manifestos, most notably "Tradition and the Individual Talent" and 
A Room of One's Own,
 frame the movement's embattled aesthetics.  Works by Djuna Barnes, T.S. Eliot, William Faulkner,  Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Muriel Rukeyser, Jean Toomer, Gertrude Stein, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams, Virginia Woolf, and W.B. Yeats.

• Department: English @Barnard
• Instructor: Kristi-Lynn Cassaro
  Info
• 3 points

FILM PRODUCTION

Prerequisites: FILM BC3201 or equivalent. Sophomore standing. Priority is given to Film Studies majors/concentrations in order of class seniority. If you are accepted into this course, attending the first day of class is mandatory. If you do not show up, you may be dropped.

This workshop introduces the student to all the cinematic tools necessary to produce their own short narrative work.  Using what the student has learned in film studies, we'll break down shot syntax, mise-en-scene and editing strategies. We'll include scheduling, budgeting, casting, working with actors and expressive camera work in our process as we build toward a final video project.

• Department: Film @Barnard
• Instructor: Julia L Thompson
  Info
• Instructor: Daniel F Pfeffer
  Info
• 3 points

DIRECTING I

Prerequisites: Permission of instructor given at first class meeting. Exploration of the evolution of the director's role in Europe and the US, including the study of important figures. Emphasis on text analysis, and varied schools of acting in relation to directing practice. Students gain a foundation in composing stage pictures and using stage movement to tell a story. All students will direct at least one fully-realized scene.

• Department: Theatre @Barnard
• TR 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Will Davis
  Info
• 3 points

ADVANCED ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN I

ADV ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN

Prerequisites: ARCH UN2101 and ARCH UN2103. Advanced Architectural Design I explores the role of architecture and design in relationship to climate, community, and the environment through a series of design projects requiring drawings and models. Field trips, lectures, and discussions are organized in relation to studio exercises. A portfolio of design work from the prerequisite courses ARCH UN2101 and ARCH UN2103 will be reviewed the first week of classes.

• Department: Architecture @Barnard
• MW 9 a.m.-11:50 a.m.
• 4.5 points

INTRO FILM & MEDIA STUDIES

Prerequisites: Open to first-year students.

We derive much of our information about the world from visual media. Social networks, television, cinema: all shape our aesthetic sensibilities and our political visions. Yet we often lack a basic understanding of what could be called “visual literacy.” This introductory course gives students the critical tools to analyze how film and other visual media
really
work – in order to appreciate their artistic and social achievements, as well as to guard against their insidious manipulative devices.

In the first part of the semester, we focus on
film analysis
through a detailed study of the different production phases of filmmaking – from screenwriting and mise-en-scène to editing and film scoring. We pay special attention to the way in which certain stylistic and narrative choices have particular ideological effects. The second part of the course looks at
film history

through a comprehensive, chronological overview of its main movements and periods, including the coming of sound in Hollywood cinema, post-war Italian Neorealism, the emergence of world
auteurs
, New Waves of the 1960s and 1970s, etc. Students will use the hermeneutical tools learnt in film analysis to intellectually engage with some masterworks of film history. In the third and final part of the semester, we study the major debates of
film theory
from perspectives such as auteurism, formalism, psychoanalysis, Marxism, feminism, postcolonial and queer studies, etc.   

Required screenings include
Nanook of the North
(Flaherty, 1922),
Sunrise
(Murnau, 1927),
Man with a Movie Camera
(Vertov, 1929),
Casablanca
(Curtiz, 1942),
Bicycle Thieves
(De Sica, 1948),
Rashomon
(Kurosawa, 1950),
Breathless
(Godard, 1960),
Belle de Jour
(Buñuel, 1967),
The Hour of the Furnaces
(Solanas, 1968),
Seven Beauties
(Wertmüller, 1974),
Blue Velvet
(Lynch, 1986),
Paris Is Burning
(Livingstone, 1990), and
Children of Men
(Cuarón, 2006).

• Department: Film @Barnard
• F 2:10 p.m.-5:30 p.m.
• Instructor: Jason R Lariviere
  Info
• 3 points

RELIGION IN EARLY AMERICA

This course examines religion in North America from the 1500s through the early 1800s with a focus on colonial projects, race and slavery, and gender. We begin with comparing Spanish and French Catholic and English Protestant colonies, missionary efforts, and systems of enslavement as well as how religion factored into Native Americans and African people’s survival and resistance. The second part of the class turns to the 1700s and the emergence of religious revivals and evangelicalism alongside increasing religious variety in the British colonies of North America. Finally, we examine the early United States (1790s-1850s) and ask how disestablishment, imperial ambitions, new religious movement, and debates over the “slavery question” transformed the religious landscape. While focused on religious history (and primarily different Christian traditions), the category of “religion” itself and theoretical frameworks for studying religion are also integral to the class.

• Department: Religion @Barnard
• TR 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Gale L Kenny
  CULPA: 5 Info
• 4 points

Structural Drivers of Health

STRUCTURAL DRIVERS OF HEA

The COVID-19 pandemic has made the underlying health disparities that exist in the United States more apparent. The traditional biomedical model places the responsibility of these disparities on the choices that an individual makes. The model assumes that one’s smoking, eating and exercising habits are based on personal choice. Therefore, the prevalence of morbidities such as high blood pressure, obesity and diabetes is the result of an individual’s poor decisions. This course will explore how the conditions under which individuals live, work, play and pray impact their health outcomes. Collectively these conditions are referred to as the Social Drivers of Health (SDoH) and often they reveal the systemic inequalities that disproportionately affect marginalized communities. This course will also call upon the need for a paradigm shift from the "Social" "Determinants" of Health to the “Structural” "Drivers" of Health. This shift is in recognition that it is the underlying structures (laws, material infrastructure) that impact  and drive health outcomes. The development of the SDoH has challenged health care providers to look beyond the biomedical model that stresses an individual’s behavior as the main predictor of adverse health conditions. Instead the SDoH focuses on an “upstream” approach that examines the underlying systemic and racial inequalities that impact communities of color and their health outcomes.

• Department: Sociology @Barnard
• Instructor: Maati Momplaisir
  Info
• 3 points

ADVANCED DIRECTING

Prerequisites: Open to students who have taken at least one course in directing. Required for students approved for Directing thesis, but open to all qualified students. Permission of instructor given at first class meeting. This course requires students to draw on all previous theatre training, synthesizing scholarship and research toward dynamic fully-realized scene work. Emphasis is on the director-actor relationship; students will direct at least three fully-realized scenes, typically drawn from Shakespeare, Chekhov, or other playwrights. Students may have the opportunity to make devised work, and will collaborate with students in the Advanced Acting class. Required for, but not limited to, students undertaking a senior thesis in directing.

• Department: Theatre @Barnard
• F 10:10 a.m.-1 p.m.
• Instructor: Alice A Reagan
  CULPA: 1 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

COLLABORATION:DIRCTNG/DESIGN

Prerequisites: Permission of instructors given at first meeting; enrollment limited to 24. Course focuses on developing both technical and collaborative skills of directors and designers.  Students are assigned to different roles in creative teams working on a series of at least three fully realized and designed scenes. Introduction to various design disciplines and directing practice.

• Department: Theatre @Barnard
• MW 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Kara M Feely
  Info
• 3 points

WHAT'S YOUR STORY ANYWAY? - TRAUMA RESIS

CREATIVE WRITING ON TRAUM

Writing sample required to apply. Instructions and the application form can be found here:
https://english.barnard.edu/english/creative-writing-courses
.
 
In this class we will explore the process of healing from trauma through the art of storytelling. We will ground ourselves in the writing of Latina authors whose work demonstrates the resistance from erasure in the United States. The goal of the class is to understand the connection between trauma and healing, through storytelling and creative writing. Moreover, we will develop three pieces of creative non-fiction that will encompass this relationship over the three different lenses of place, person and personal experience.

• Department: English @Barnard
• Instructor: Maria D Hinojosa
  Info
• 3 points

DRAMATURGY

Prerequisites: Permission of instructor, given at first class meeting; enrollment limited to 12. This course teaches the research skills and practices a production dramaturg develops as part of the conceptual work of theatrical production. Course is focused on a series of activities: analyzing dramatic text, comparing different versions of script, conducting archival and cultural research, and presenting it to the production team. Fulfills as a "studio" or "praxis" course toward the Theatre/Drama and Theatre Arts major.  Does not fulfill a "seminar or lecture" requirement. Recommended for students undertaking a senior thesis in directing prior to the thesis year.

• Department: Theatre @Barnard
• T 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Shannon M Sindelar
  Info
• 4 points

ADVANCED ARCHITECTURAL RESEARCH AND DESI

ADV ARCH RESEARCH & DESIG

Application required: A design portfolio and application is required for this course. The class list will be announced before classes start. Advanced Architectural Research and Design is an opportunity for students to consider international locations and address contemporary global concerns, incorporating critical questions, research methods, and design strategies that are characteristic of an architect’s operations at this scale.

• Department: Architecture @Barnard
• MW 9 a.m.-11:50 a.m.
• Instructor: Ignacio Gonzalez Galan
  Info
• 4.5 points

TOPICS IN ANCIENT DRAMA

This course is designed as an accompaniment to the Greek or Latin
play that is put on by the Barnard and Columbia Ancient Drama Group each year, though
it is open to any student interested in the aesthetics and politics of theater and drama.
Course focus and some content will rotate year to year, calibrated to serve the play or
plays chosen by the student director. We will read these and other relevant other plays or
similarly adjacent texts, as well as scholarly literature on topics centered around the body
in performance, including ancient theaters and stage space, costumes and masks,
deportment and gestures, proxemics, and so on. We will also explore aspects of ancient
drama and theatricality that relate to translation and reception, as well as inflections of
gender and status. Other topics may include the mythic background (e.g., in epic and/or
lyric), politics of aesthetics in ancient Athens, and gender-genre dynamics.
Each component will extend over three or four classes and consider the ancient
plays through readings of primary texts (in translation) and conceptual / contextual
backgrounds. There will be an additional class hour for those who wish to read the play
in the original language (signed up for as a 1-point directed reading).

• Department: Classics @Barnard
• Instructor: Nancy Worman
  CULPA: 23 Wikipedia Info
• 0-3 points

Religion In Early America- Discussion

RELIGION IN EARLY AMERICA

This course accompanies RELI UN3203: Religion in the Modern US to examine the history of religion in the United States from the Civil War to the present through thematic units focused on the legal structures of religious freedom; race, religion, and nationality; healing, aesthetics, and embodiment; and, finally, religion and politics. Over the course of the semester, students will explore various religious communities as well as the ways social, political, and economic factors have shaped those traditions – and how religious communities have in turn shaped US society, politics, and culture. Students will also be introduced to key themes and debates in the field of American religious studies.

• Department: Religion @Barnard
• F 10:10 a.m.-11 a.m.
• F 12:10 p.m.-1 p.m.
• 0 points

LATINX AND THE ICE/PRISON INDUSTRIAL COM

JOURNALISM: LATINX&ICE/PR

This course encompasses themes of race, ethnicity, mass incarceration, and immigration in the modern United States, with special attention to the stories of Latinx people. We will consider the roles of journalistic writing, documentaries, and personal narratives in shaping public policy and attitudes towards lives behind bars. Guest speakers will also provide personal experiences to help reframe our own narratives and perspectives on these issues. The course’s primary goal is to challenge the process of how stories of race, immigration, and mass incarceration are written, by developing scholarly pieces.

• Department: English @Barnard
• Instructor: Maria D Hinojosa
  Info
• 4 points

LAW & SOCIETY

Examines how people use law, how law affects people, and how law develops, using social scientific research. Covers law in everyday life; legal and social change; legal subjects such as citizens and corporations, and the legitimacy of law. Recommended for pre-law and social-science majors. No prerequisites or previous knowledge required.

• Department: Sociology @Barnard
• Instructor: Deborah Becher
  CULPA: 8 h-index: 4 Info
• 3 points

RACE, ETHNICITY & SOCIETY

Examines the social construction of race and ethnicity in the United States from colonial period to present. Analyzes how capitalist interests, class differences, gender, immigration, and who “deserves” the full rights and privileges of citizenship, shape boundaries between and within racial and ethnic groups. Also considers how racism affects resource access inequities between racial groups in education, criminal justice, media, and other domains. Explores factors underpinning major social change with an eye toward discerning social conditions necessary to create and sustain just social systems.

• Department: Sociology @Barnard
• Instructor: Angela Simms
  Info
• 3 points

LITERATURE & EMPIRE (19C LIT)

Explores the aesthetic and formal developments in Russian prose, especially the rise of the monumental 19th-century novel, as one manifestation of a complex array of national and cultural aspirations, humanistic and imperialist ones alike. Works by Pushkin, Lermonotov, Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov. Knowledge of Russian not required.

• Department: Slavic Languages @Barnard
• Instructor: John Wright
  CULPA: 1 h-index: 44 Info
• 3 points

ORGANIC CHEMISTRY II-LEC

Prerequisites: CHEM BC3230. Lecture: MWF 10:00-10:50. Extension of concepts from Organic Chemistry I to conjugated systems; chemistry of the carbonyl group; NMR and IR spectroscopy; bioorganic chemistry.

• Department: Chemistry @Barnard
• 3 points

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

Prerequisites: One introductory course in Sociology suggested. Social movements and the theories social scientists use to explain them, with emphasis on contemporary American activism. Cases include the Southern civil rights movement, Black Lives Matter, contemporary feminist mobilizations, LGBTQ activism, immigrant rights and more recent forms of grassroots politics.

• Department: Sociology @Barnard
• Instructor: Andrew S Anastasi
  Info
• 4 points

SEEING THE BODY

Seeing the Body: Movement and Physicality in Modern Visual Culture will examine how concepts of
movement, space, and time gained an outsized role in photographic and cinematic experimentation,
typography, interior design and exhibition, contributing a “choreographic voice” to the interwar age.

• Department: Dance @Barnard
• MW 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Marjorie Folkman
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 3 points

Transnationalism, Citizenship, and Belon

TRANSNTNL, CITIZEN, BELON

Transnationalism, Citizenship, and Belonging covers the myriad ways that transnationalism is experienced in both South to North and South to South migrations. Transnationalism and its contenders, globalization and nationalism, will be placed within a broader discussion of belonging based on sociological theories of citizenship, politics of exclusion, and boundary-making.

• Department: Sociology @Barnard
• Instructor: Faculty
  h-index: 37 Info
• 3 points

Environmental Sociology

ENVIRONMENTAL SOCIOLOGY

This course examines the social roots and impacts of environmental contamination and disasters, in order to understand how humans relate to nature in the context of global racial capitalism and the possibilities for creating a more sustainable world. We will also explore how racism is foundational to environmental exploitation and consider why global struggles for racial justice are crucial for protecting both people and the earth, paying particular attention to how environmental health inequalities are linked to race, class, gender, and nation. We will consider key theories, debates, and unresolved questions in the subfield of environmental sociology and discuss future directions for the sociological study of human/environment relations.

• Department: Sociology @Barnard
• Instructor: Andrew S Anastasi
  Info
• 3 points

AMERICAN TELEVISION DRAMA

Between prestige and streaming, the medium of television has never covered a wider breadth of narratives, voices, and concerns. This course will take a closer look at the format of the American Drama and how it has served as a cultural tool since its inception, reflecting the concerns of the time in one form or another. Through theoretical readings and sociological texts, the course will survey and sharpen our understanding of the power of the medium when placed in conversation with the greater American discourse.

• Department: Film @Barnard
• T 2:40 p.m.-6:10 p.m.
• Instructor: Ben Alexander
  Info
• 3 points

JAZZ DANCE III

This class explores Advanced contemporary jazz movement using music from both American and Diasporic pop culture.

• Department: Dance @Barnard
• MW 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Ehizoje J Azeke
  Info
• 2 points

THE MARRIAGE PLOT

This upper-level research-oriented seminar will engage with literary expressions of the universally interesting topic of marriage. Tony Tanner in his famous
Adultery in the Novel
characterizes marriage as “the structure which supports all structure.” Contemporary critics have seen marriage as essential to maintaining the “family values” of the bourgeoisie; feminists and Marxists have challenged the economic assumptions of patriarchally-defined marriage. Folklorists have treated marriage as the endpoint of the search for a safe domestic space.

Starting in ancient times with classic fairy tales and the Hebrew Bible, moving on to a famous medieval poem, a medieval memoir, and three nineteenth-century novels, we will encounter cultural expressions which address intimate partnerships with an emphasis on marriage as a defining condition.

• Department: English @Barnard
• Instructor: Margaret R Ellsberg
  CULPA: 54 Info
• 4 points

FLAMENCO

The study of contemporary flamenco dance technique with special emphasis on improvisation and performance. Through video and reading assignments and attendance at live performances, students will also develop a context for understanding flamenco art, pedagogy, and culture.

• Department: Dance @Barnard
• F 11 a.m.-12:50 p.m.
• Instructor: Nelida Tirado
  Info
• 2 points

ADAPTATION

In the same way that there can never be a single objective account of an historical event, using one medium to convey a story first told in another is never as straightforward as it might seem. Translating the essence of an existing story to the screen may require making significant changes to the events or characters as they were originally presented. As a screenwriter faced with such an adaptation, you must understand the idiosyncrasies of your craft well enough to recognize what to keep, what to change, and what to leave behind. This course will explore what makes a screen story work, balancing faithfulness and invention.

• Department: Film @Barnard
• Instructor: Danielle T Douge
  Info
• 3 points

CONTEMPORARY MEDIA THEORY

Sophomore standing required. Attend first class for instructor permission. Registering for the course only through Student Planning or SSOL will NOT ensure your enrollment. Explores the transformation of sociality, consciousness and geo-politics by and as media technologies during the long 20th century. Students will read influential works of media analysis written during the past century, analyze audio-visual analog and digital media, and explore political theory and media theory written since the rise of the internet. Final projects on contemporary media forms.

• Department: English @Barnard
• Instructor: Jonathan L Beller
  CULPA: 4 Info
• 4 points

QUANTUM CHEMISTRY

Prerequisites:  2 semesters of calculus-based introductory physics, Calculus II, BC3242 Quantitative Analysis, or permission of instructor. Exact and approximate solutions to the Schrodinger equation. The structure of atoms and molecules. Chemical bonding and spectroscopy. Computer-based molecular modeling.

• Department: Chemistry @Barnard
• 4 points

WRITING FOR TELEVISION: SHORT FORM

Prerequisite: FILM BC3201 or equivalent. Please note that since this is a Film Studies course, it does not count as a creative writing course for English majors with a creative writing concentration. This course will focus on the primary pillar of television production: the teleplay. Through a number of creative exercises, students will learn the intricacies of the unique screenwriting formats that are the half-hour and hour-long teleplays. Together we will cover the differences between an episode arc and a seasonal one, the requirements of A/B/C story plotting, and how to write an effective show bible. We will survey the existing pantheon of great television writing in order to help students narrow in on their individual sensibilities. By the end of the course, students will have a written original pilot and a mini series bible.

• Department: Film @Barnard
• Instructor: Faculty
  h-index: 37 Info
• 3 points

MONEY AND BANKING

Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 or the equivalent. Introduction to the principles of money and banking. The intermediary institutions of the American economy and their historical developments, current issues in monetary and financial reform.

• Department: Economics @Barnard
• MW 10:10 a.m.-12:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Martina Jasova
  CULPA: 7 h-index: 7 Info
• 3 points

DIGITAL PRODUCTION

Prerequisites:
both
FILM BC3201 (or equivalent)
and
FILM BC3200 (or equivalent). Digital Production offers visual storytellers an incredible medium to connect and build an audience. It is an inexpensive, accessible platform to launch micro-budget concepts. Developing the storytellers voice  inexpensively is critical to the evolution of any student, no matter their starting point. The Digital Series course is intended to take students from story ideation through creation of an independent digital series. Emanating from a writers room setting, all steps of the process will be explored and supported by in-class discussion, examples and workshops. This hands-on class revolves around the TV series production model: breaking story, writing pages, preproduction planning, filming and post-production review. We will emphasize the writers voice, construction of series storytelling, and establishing realistic scopes of production.

• Department: Film @Barnard
• Instructor: Danielle T Douge
  Info
• 3 points

UNSEEN MASTERWORKS OF WORLD CINEMA

MASTERWORKS: ARAB CINEMA

This course examines the portrayal of significant themes in international cinema. Through a selection of diverse cinematic works from various countries, students will analyze different cultural, historical, and political perspectives. The course aims to enhance students' understanding of complex topics, their impact on individuals and societies, and the ethical questions they evoke. Through critical analysis and discussion, students will engage with a range of cinematic works that offer alternative narratives and perspectives.

• Department: Film @Barnard
• M 4:10 p.m.-7:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Sam Abbas
  Info
• 3 points

BIOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY

Prerequisites: (CHEM BC3230) and (CHEM BC3231) BIOL BC1502. Introduction to biochemical building blocks, macromolecules, and metabolism. Structures of amino acids, lipids, carbohydrates, nucleic acids. Protein structure and folding. Enzyme mechanisms, kinetics, allostery. Membranes and biosignaling. Catabolism and anabolism with emphasis on chemical intermediates, metabolic energy, catalysis by specific enzymes, regulation.

• Department: Chemistry @Barnard
• 3 points

WORKSHOP SUSTAINABLE DEVEL

Students address real-world issues in sustainable development by working in groups for an external client agency. Instruction in communication, collaboration, and management; meetings with and presentations to clients and academic community. Projects vary from year to year. Readings in the course are project-specific and are identified by the student research teams.

• Department: Environmental Sciences @Barnard
• TR 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Faculty
  h-index: 37 Info
• 4 points

ADV LANGUAGE THROUGH CONTENT

Prerequisites: SPAN UN2102 or AP score of 4 or 5; or SAT score. An intensive exposure to advanced points of Spanish grammar and structure through written and oral practice, along with an introduction to the basic principles of academic composition in Spanish. Each section is based on the exploration of an ample theme that serves as the organizing principle for the work done in class (Please consult the Directory of Classes for the topic of each section.) This course is required for the major and the concentration in Hispanic Studies. Formerly SPAN W3200 and SPAN BC3004. If you have taken either of these courses before you cannot take SPAN UN3300. All Columbia students must take Spanish language courses (UN 1101-3300) for a letter grade.

• Department: Spanish and Latin American Culture
• MW 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• None None-None
• Instructor: Maria E Lozano
  CULPA: 7 Info
• Instructor: Almudena Mar N-Cobos
  Info
• 3 points

ADV LANGUAGE THROUGH CONTENT

Prerequisites: SPAN UN2102 or AP score of 4 or 5; or SAT score. An intensive exposure to advanced points of Spanish grammar and structure through written and oral practice, along with an introduction to the basic principles of academic composition in Spanish. Each section is based on the exploration of an ample theme that serves as the organizing principle for the work done in class (Please consult the Directory of Classes for the topic of each section.) This course is required for the major and the concentration in Hispanic Studies. Formerly SPAN W3200 and SPAN BC3004. If you have taken either of these courses before you cannot take SPAN UN3300. All Columbia students must take Spanish language courses (UN 1101-3300) for a letter grade.

• Department: Spanish and Latin American Culture
• 3 points

PLAYWRITING WORKSHOP

Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor given at first class meeting. Students will create and workshop plays, with a focus on learning new approaches to language and structure. Recommended for students undertaking a senior thesis in playwriting.

• Department: Theatre @Barnard
• M 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Andrew Bragen
  Info
• 3 points

SOCIOLOGY OF GENDER

Prerequisites: One introductory course in Sociology suggested. Examination of factors in gender identity that are both universal (across time, culture, setting) and specific to a social context. Social construction of gender roles in different settings, including family, work, and politics. Attention to the role of social policies in reinforcing norms or facilitating change.

• Department: Sociology @Barnard
• Instructor: Nic Rios
  Info
• 3 points

LAB IN MOLECULAR BIOLOGY

Introduction to the use of molecular techniques to answer questions about subcellular biological phenomena. Techniques include isolation of genomic and plasmid DNAs, restriction enzyme analysis, DNA and protein electrophoresis, bacterial transformation, and plasmid subcloning.

• Department: Biological Sciences @Barnard
• W 1:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Stephen L Sturley
  CULPA: 3 Info
• 3 points

TOPICS IN MOLECULAR GENETICS

Selected topics in molecular genetics and gene regulation, with a focus on examples from human evolution, physiology, and disease. The course will be organized into four modules with combined lecture and journal club-style discussion. Module topics include molecular regulation of transcription, epigenetic regulation of the genome, gene regulatory networks, and genome architecture and evolution. We will draw from examples in the current literature and explore current experimental approaches in molecular genetics of humans and model organisms.

• Department: Biological Sciences @Barnard
• TR 8:40 a.m.-9:55 a.m.
• Instructor: Jennifer H Mansfield
  CULPA: 2 h-index: 15 Info
• 3 points

INTRO TO URBAN ETHNOGRAPHIES

INTRO/URBAN ETHNOGRAPHIES

What is ethnography and what makes ethnography “urban”? This course explores how social scientists use ethnography to analyze questions and dilemmas often associated with urban settings. We will combine close readings of ethnographies with field-based inquiry, including our own studies of urban public space. Through both our readings and our field exercises, we will focus on the methods at the heart of ethnography: observation and participant-observation.

As we read other scholars’ work, we will ask how the author uses ethnographic tools to explore issues that are suitable for intensive fieldwork. We will assess which kinds of research problems and theoretical perspectives are a good fit with ethnography and the roles that ethnography can play in transdisciplinary research projects. You will apply what you have learned about research to design your own pilot fieldwork. The ethnographies that we read together will examine intersections of housing, race, and class in urban communities. You are welcome to extend this focus to your own fieldwork, but it’s not required to do so. This is a writing-intensive course, and we will devote a considerable portion of class time to workshop your individual projects.

• Department: Urban Studies @Barnard
• Instructor: Dominic T Walker
  Info
• 3 points

LATIN LITERATURE SELECTIONS

Prerequisites: LATN UN2102 or the equivalent. Since the content of this course changes from year to year, it may be repeated for credit.

• Department: Classics @Barnard
• Instructor: Darcy Krasne
  h-index: 5 Info
• 3 points

CELL BIOLOGY

This course explores the components, systems, and regulatory mechanisms involved in eukaryotic cellular function. Topics include: signal transduction, translational and protein quality control, organellar and cytoskeletal dynamics, and some coordinated responses such as proliferation and programmed cell death. Throughout the course we will see how general cell biology can be specialized to achieve specific cellular functions through regulation of the basic machinery. We will also explore the cellular and molecular bases for a variety of human pathologies, with an emphasis on cancer. In addition to lecture, we will spend some time discussing the material, including selected articles from the primary literature, and learning through group presentations.

• Department: Biological Sciences @Barnard
• TR 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Jonathan Snow
  CULPA: 7 h-index: 18 Info
• 3 points

RACE. SPACE, URB SCHOOLS

RACE. SPACE URB SCHOOLS

Many people don’t think of themselves as having attended segregated schools. And yet, most of us went to schools attended primarily by people who looked very much like us. In fact, schools have become more segregated over the past 30 years, even as the country becomes increasingly multiracial. In this class, we will use public schools as an example to examine the role race plays in shaping urban spaces and institutions. We will begin by unpacking the concept of racialization, or the process by which a person, place, phenomenon, or characteristic becomes associated with a certain race. Then, we will explore the following questions: What are the connections between city schools and their local contexts? What does it mean to be a “neighborhood school”? How do changes in neighborhoods change schools? We will use ethnographies, narrative non-fiction, and educational research to explore these questions from a variety of perspectives. You will apply what you have learned to your own experiences and to current debates over urban policies and public schools. This course will extend your understanding of key anthropological and sociological perspectives on urban inequality in the United States, as well as introduce you to critical theory.

• Department: Education @Barnard
• Instructor: Faculty
  h-index: 37 Info
• 3 points

FEMINIST THEORY

Prerequisites: LIMITED TO 20 BY INSTRUC PERM; ATTEND FIRST CLASS

This course provides a theoretical itinerary to the emergence of contemporary queer theory and engagement with some contemporary legacies of the movement. The goal is not to be exhaustive nor to establish a correct history of queer theory but to engage students in the task of understanding and creating intellectual genealogies.

• Department: Women's, Gender, Sexuality Studies @Barnard
• Instructor: Janet Jakobsen
  CULPA: 6 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

SPECIAL TOPICS IN ARCHITECTURE

See the Barnard and Columbia Architecture Department website for the course description: 
https://architecture.barnard.edu/architecture-department-course-descriptions

• Department: Architecture @Barnard
• Instructor: Michael E Schissel
  Info
• Instructor: Clara Kraft Isono
  Info
• 3 points

MICROBIOLOGY

Prerequisites: BIOL BC1500, BIOL BC1501, BIOL BC1502, BIOL BC1503 or the equivalent, and BIOL BC2100. Survey of the diversity, cellular organization, physiology, and genetics of the major microbial groups. Also includes aspects of applied microbiology and biotechnology, the function of microorganisms in the environment, and the role of microbes in human diseases.

• Department: Biological Sciences @Barnard
• MW 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Stephen L Sturley
  CULPA: 3 Info
• 3 points