Prerequisites: ECON BC3033 or ECON BC3035, and ECON BC2411 or STAT W1111 or STAT W1211, or permission of the instructor. Specification, estimation and evaluation of economic relationships using economic theory, data, and statistical inference; testable implications of economic theories; econometric analysis of topics such as consumption, investment, wages and unemployment, and financial markets.
Prerequisites: ECON BC3035, or permission of the instructor. Factors affecting the allocation and remuneration of labor; population structure; unionization and monopsony; education and training, mobility and information; sex and race discrimination; unemployment; and public policy.
Prerequisites: one year of calculus. Prerequisite: One year of Calculus. Congruences. Primitive roots. Quadratic residues. Contemporary applications.
Designed to provide students with an understanding of the fundamental marketing concepts and their application by business and non-business organizations. The goal is to expose students to these concepts as they are used in a wide variety of settings, including consumer goods firms, manufacturing and service industries, and small and large businesses. The course gives an overview of marketing strategy issues, elements of a market (company, customers, and competition), as well as the fundamental elements of the marketing mix (product, price, placement/distribution, and promotion).
Prerequisites: FREN BC3021 may be taken for credit without completion of FREN BC3022. The Age of Enlightenment, Romanticism, Realism, and Symbolism. FREN BC1204: French Intermediate II or the equivalent level is required.
Prerequisites: (Econ BC 3035) or (Econ BC 3033) This course examines a wide variety of topics about migration and its relationship to economic development, globalization, and social and economic mobility. At its core, this course reflects a key reality: that the movement of people--within regions, within countries, and across borders--is both the result of and impetus for economic change.
Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 and STAT UN1201 Institutional nature and economic function of financial markets. Emphasis on both domestic and international markets (debt, stock, foreign exchange, eurobond, eurocurrency, futures, options, and others). Principles of security pricing and portfolio management; the Capital Asset Pricing Model and the Efficient Markets Hypothesis.
This seminar engages students in an exploration of how schools prepare students to be literate across multiple subject areas. Engaging students with theory and practice, we will look at how students learn to read and write, considering approaches for literacy instruction from early childhood through adolescence. Understanding that schools are required to meet the needs of diverse learners, we will explore literacy instruction for K-12 students with special needs, multilingual learners, and students from diverse cultural backgrounds. This course requires 60 hours of clinical experience (fieldwork).
Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 16 students. One year of college-level science. Primarily for Environmental Majors, Concentrators and Minors. This class looks at the response of wildlife (birds and plants) to climate change and land-use issues from the end of the last glaciation to the present. Case study topics are: (1) land-use and climate change over time: a paleoenvironmental perspective, (2) environmental transformations: impact of invasive plants and birds and pathogens on local environments and (3) migration of Neotropical songbirds between their wintering and breeding grounds: land-use, crisis and conservation. We visit wildlife refuges along a rural-suburban-urban gradient in order to observe and measure the role refuges play in conservation. Format: lecture, student presentations, short labs, data collection/analysis and field trips (some on a weekend day in April in place of the week day meeting).
Prerequisites: (MATH UN2010 and MATH UN2030) or the equivalent introduction to partial differential equations. First-order equations. Linear second-order equations; separation of variables, solution by series expansions. Boundary value problems.
This course focuses on the ecology, geology, and sustainability of Bermuda. Students will explore the local flora, fauna, geology and hydrology of various habitats in the context of environmental change brought on by issues such as rising global temperatures, invasive species, and development. Students will also look into sustainability issues, such as energy, drinking water, solid waste, and wastewater issues, some of which the country addresses in unique ways. The course will also contrast some of these topics with those in the NYC area and other subtropical and tropical islands.
Classes will meet during the spring semester at Barnard in preparation for a field trip to Bermuda for five days during spring break.
Students and faculty will use the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS) field station for both lodging and laboratory facilities. BIOS will provide bus and boat-based transportation.
The excursions to caves, volcanic and pink sand beaches, outcrops, rare plant habitats and bird conservation areas in addition to engagement with the local experts at BIOS will provide an authentic opportunity to study the natural history of and environmental threats to an offshore island compared to our local environment in NYC.
Students will take detailed field notes in Bermuda. After returning from the trip, they will focus on one or two aspects of the field trip and research related issues in depth. Topics will include: transportation, energy acquisition, electricity generation, wind energy, solar power, carbon capture and storage, drinking water, waste management, sewage treatment and disposal, biological conservation, ecological restoration, social & environmental justice, economy, and food supply. Students are also encouraged to compare issues in Bermuda with NYC and other islands.
The final products of the semester will be a detailed field journal, a mini research project with an annotated bibliography and a poster summarizing the results.
This course explores education as a process through which critical consciousness and epistemic justice combat oppression in communities. Students will connect seminal work by critical pedagogues, such as Paolo Freire and bell hooks, to systemic educational challenges and lived experience. As a class, we will investigate power dynamics and structural inequalities at the systemic, institutional, interpersonal and individual levels. Students will problem-pose, dialogue and create pedagogical tools through praxis, by integrating the theory learned in the class to educational practice.
Prerequisites: An introductory course in economics and a functioning knowledge of high school algebra and analytical geometry or permission of the instructor. Systematic exposition of current macroeconomic theories of unemployment, inflation, and international financial adjustments.
Being young can often mean being (or feeling) powerless, particularly within the large
institutions that structure youth’s lives. Couple this with experiences of marginalization due to
race, class, gender, or other social identities, and young people may experience profound
constraints in their choices or pathways. At the same time, youth – both individually and in
groups – often develop strategies to resist these sources of literal and figurative confinement to
seek out dignity, joy, and justice. Using sociological and ethnographic texts as our foundation,
this course will explore the way experiences of confinement and constraint show up in the lives
of young people, particularly as they move through educational institutions – and how youth
work to resist those forms of subordination.
In the first half of the semester, we will focus on policing and prisons and examine the ways
schools play a role in funneling youth into different forms of confinement. In the second half of
the semester, we will investigate college and college preparatory contexts in an effort to
understand the ways they may constrain opportunities by creating or foreclosing particular
pathways for students’ futures. Throughout the semester, we will emphasize the role of socially
constructed identity categories – race, gender, class, in particular, as well as the category of
youth itself – in these processes of confinement and constraint. We will also highlight youth and
community practices of resistance against these social and institutional forces. Along the way,
we will consider (and practice) the affordances and limitations of ethnography as a mode of
social research for studying confinement, constraint, and practices of resistance in educational
contexts.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Through this course, students will:
● Use a range of sociological, ethnographic, and multimodal texts to analyze youth’s
experiences of confinement, constraint, and resistance (expansively defined) and the
ways they play out in different institutional, educational, and social contexts.
● Explore the methodological approach of ethnography – its affordances, challenges, and
some of the major dilemmas in the field – and practice it by conducting a series of
scaffolded ethnographic projects.
● Write for multiple purposes, including exploratory and dialogic writing shared with peers
The origin and development of the contemporary roles of the President as a decision maker and the
importance of the presidency in the American Political System. Studies examining the selection process
and the relationship between presidents and other decision- making actors, such as the Congress,
interest groups, the courts and the bureaucracy, will be used to inform the students to help critically
analyze both continuity and changes in the influence of the office.
This course examines the American presidency from both an academic and applied perspective. The
executive branch of government has changed more than the others, especially over the past century.
As America has moved from a legislative centered government to an executive centered one, it
becomes important to understand the intricacies of presidents and of the presidency. This course
examines the individuals who have held this office and stand as the head of state and government,
along with the institutional structure of the executive branch that consists of departments, agencies,
offices that employ over two million people. The course covers the complexities and struggles
administrations have in navigating internal politics, along with public expectations and approval,
influencing relations with Congress and the courts, and navigating global politics around security and
economic interests.
Prerequisites: An introductory course in microeconomics or a combined macro/micro principles course (ECON BC1003 or ECON W1105, or the equivalent) and one semester of calculus or ECON BC1007, or permission of the instructor. Preferences and demand; production, cost, and supply; behavior of markets in partial equilibrium; resource allocation in general equilibrium; pricing of goods and services under alternative market structures; implications of individual decision-making for labor supply; income distribution, welfare, and public policy. Emphasis on problem solving.
Dans ce cours, nous examinerons le phénomène qui domine—et révolutionne—le discours philosophique, religieux, sociologique et politique au 18e siècle en Occident: les Lumières. Visant les dogmes jusque-là incontestables d'un Etat monarchique et d'une Eglise catholique autoritaires, ce mouvement réclame la liberté de la pensée et du culte; condamne l'intolérance religieuse, l’iniquité politique et le préjugé culturel; expose et déplore l’inégalité sociale; examine les bases de l’autorité politique; et subvertit par ses propos l'idéo. A l'exception d'un texte de l'Allemand Immanuel Kant, nous nous bornerons à lire des écrits des principaux philosophes francophones des Lumières (Voltaire, Diderot, et Rousseau), aussi bien que deux romans "dystopiques” (Charrière et de Sade), et deux textes politiques parus durant la Révolution française.
Through close readings of majors texts, an examination of how these 19th-century poets brought about a "revolution" in language and thought that gave rise to the Modernism that transformed literature and the arts and whose influence is still with us today.
Prerequisites: ECON BC3033. Introduction to balance of payments and exchange rate theory; capital mobility and expectations; internal and external adjustment under fixed and flexible exchange rates; international financial markets; capital mobility and expectations; international policy coordination and optimum currency areas; history of the international monetary system.
Process-oriented introduction to the law and its use in environmental policy and decision-making. Origins and structure of the U.S. legal system. Emphasis on litigation process and specific cases that elucidate the common law and toxic torts, environmental administrative law, and environmental regulation through application and testing of statutory law in the courts. Emphasis also on the development of legal literacy, research skills, and writing.
Prerequisites: An introductory course in economics or permission of the instructor. Intellectual origins of the main schools of thought in political economy. Study of the founding texts in classical political economy, Marxian economics, neoclassicism, and Keynesianism.
Prerequisites: An introductory course in economics or permission of the instructor. Intellectual origins of the main schools of thought in political economy. Study of the founding texts in classical political economy, Marxian economics, neoclassicism, and Keynesianism.
Broadly, this course explores the relationship between gender, sexuality, and schooling across national contexts. We begin by considering theoretical perspectives, exploring the ways in which gender and sexuality have been studied and understood in the interdisciplinary field of education. Next, we consider the ways in which the subjective experience of gender and sexuality in schools is often overlooked or inadequately theorized. Exploring the ways that race, class, citizenship, religion and other categories of identity intersect with gender and sexuality, we give primacy to the contention that subjectivity is historically complex, and does not adhere to the analytically distinct identity categories we might try to impose on it.
Summer and
Semester version:
Making Change: Activism, Social Movements and Education will look at the ways people power has pushed for change in the United States educational landscape. We will study historical and current social political education movements to answer questions such as: What does education/teacher activism look like? Who engages in educational social activism, and why? What do different models for organizing look like, past to present? We will learn from the examples of the Freedom Schools, the Chicago Teachers Union, the Tucson Unified School District fight for ethnics studies, BLM at Schools, Teacher Activist Groups and more. We will engage in readings, watch documentaries and hear from education activist guest lecturers.
Learning Outcomes:
You will explore the historical relationships between and across social movements in education and its social contexts.
You will reflect on major educational justice movements from across the country and analyze its impact and importance.
You will evaluate the changing role of education and schools in our society and propose actions that could be taken to improve education and schools in the future.
In this course, we start from the premise that a failure to understand what social class is and how social class matters in daily life stops us from having conversations about the possibilities and limitations of schooling and, as such, prevents us from doing what we can to improve the schooling experiences of poor and working-class students. Throughout the semester, we will work to “complicate class”, reconsidering what class is, why class matters, and how we can best think about the relationship between social class and schooling. You will develop a language for talking about class, considering the affordances and constraints of various conceptions of class. You will also leave with critical questions about the possibilities and limitations of relying on schools as a solution to social problems. Recognizing restraints, we will conclude by reflecting on how we might work toward creating more equitable learning environments for poor and working-class students.
This course reviews the assumption of rationality in microeconomic theory and presents evidence (primarily from experimental psychology and economics) of how judgement and decision-making systematically deviate from what rationality predicts.
Health economics is an expansive and growing field within the larger microeconomic literature. From examining the impact of Medicaid on health care utilization to the public health consequences of marijuana legalization, health economics offers a variety of profound economic insights and policy recommendations. This course uses many familiar concepts from microeconomic theory and econometrics in order to better understand health and healthcare—with students engaging economic models describing the demand for health, addiction, medical care, health insurance, and risky behaviors in addition to interpreting important empirical evidence within these spaces.
Big Data is changing how we interact with and understand the environment. Yet analyzing Big Data requires new tools and methods. Students will learn to use Python programming to analyze and visualize large environmental and earths systems data sets in ways that Excel is not equipped to do. This will include both time series and spatial analyses with programming occurring interactively during class and assignments designed to strengthen methods and results. Students will learn to write code in Python, plot, map, sub-select, clean, organize, and perform statistical analyses on large global scale data sets, using the data in analysis, and take any data set no matter how large or complicated.
Prerequisites: (MATH UN1102 and MATH UN1201) or (MATH UN1101 and MATH UN1102 and MATH UN1201) and MATH UN2010 Recommended: MATH UN3027 (or MATH UN2030 and SIEO W3600). Elementary discrete time methods for pricing financial instruments, such as options. Notions of arbitrage, risk-neutral valuation, hedging, term-structure of interest rates.
Municipal jails are one of the most impactful institutions of criminal justice in the United States; and yet many Americans do not even know the difference between a prison and a jail. This course will investigate the conditions of mass incarceration in America by centering the municipal jail. Taking as objects of study both the jail itself and the practice of incarcerating people in local jails, this course will combine scholarly work on U.S. criminal justice with a variety of non-academic texts including legal decisions, contemporary journalism, and documentary film. The course is focused on jails writ large, but as we are living in New York City, we will pay particular attention throughout the semester to our own municipal jail system.
Prerequisites: the instructors permission. In partnership with NYC public school teachers, students will have opportunities to engage in mathematical learning, lesson study, curriculum development, and implementation, with a focus on using the City as a resource. Students will explore implications for working with diverse populations. Non-math majors, pre-service elementary students and first-year students welcome. Fieldwork and field trips required. Note: Students in the Childhood Urban Teaching Program may use this course as a pedagogical elective.
Using the theme of “Arts and Humanities in the City”, this seminar will build participants’ knowledge of critical literacy, digital storytelling methods, and ways to use New York City as a resource for teaching the Arts (Dance, Theatre, Music, and Visual Arts), Social Studies, and English Language Arts in grades K-12. Critical literacy is an approach to teaching and learning that focuses on developing students’ abilities to read, analyze, understand, question, and critique hidden perspectives and socially-constructed power relations embedded in what it means to be literate in a content area.
Permission of the instructor and the completion of all courses (except for the senior requirement) required for the economics department majors. Exceptions to these prerequisites may be granted by the chair of the department only. Tutorials and conferences on the research for and writing of the senior thesis. This is the 2nd semester of a two-semester course sequence.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor and the completion of all courses (except for the senior requirement) required for the economics department majors. Exceptions to these prerequisites may be granted by the chair of the department only. Seminar sections are limited to 16 students. A topic in economic theory or policy of the instructors choice. See department for current topics and for senior requirement preference forms.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor and the completion of all courses (except for the senior requirement) required for the economics department majors. Exceptions to these prerequisites may be granted by the chair of the department only. Seminar sections are limited to 16 students. A topic in economic theory or policy of the instructors choice. See department for current topics and for senior requirement preference forms.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor and the completion of all courses (except for the senior requirement) required for the economics department majors. Exceptions to these prerequisites may be granted by the chair of the department only. Seminar sections are limited to 16 students. A topic in economic theory or policy of the instructors choice. See department for current topics and for senior requirement preference forms.
Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor and the completion of all courses (except for the senior requirement) required for the economics department majors. Exceptions to these prerequisites may be granted by the chair of the department only. Seminar sections are limited to 16 students. A topic in economic theory or policy of the instructors choice. See department for current topics and for senior requirement preference forms.
Prerequisites: completion of EDUC BC2052 or EDUC BC2062 and EDUC BC2055, with grades of B or better. NYCDOE Fingerprinting. Corequisites: EDUC BC3064. Enrollment limited. Supervised student teaching in elementary schools includes creating lesson plans, involving students in active learning, using cooperative methods, developmentally appropriate assessment, and meeting the needs of diverse learners in urban schools. Teaching skills developed through weekly individual and/or group supervision meetings (to be scheduled at the beginning of the semester), conferences, and portfolio design. Requires 100 hours of teaching at two different grade levels, full-time for one semester. Note: Students are only permitted to leave their student teaching placements early twice a week, once for EDUC BC3064 and one other day for one additional course having a start time of 2 pm or later. Students are only permitted to take one additional course while enrolled in EDUC BC3063 and EDUC BC3064.
Prerequisites: Completion of EDUC BC2052 or EDUC BC2062 and EDUC BC2055, with grades of B or better. NYCDOE Fingerprinting required. Corequisites: EDUC BC3064. Enrollment limited. Supervised student teaching in secondary schools includes creating lesson plans, involving students in active learning, using cooperative methods, developmentally appropriate assessment, and meeting the needs of diverse learners in urban schools. Teaching skills developed through weekly individual and/or group supervision meetings (to be scheduled at the beginning of the semester), conferences, and portfolio design. Requires 100 hours of teaching at two different grade levels, full-time for one semester. Note: Students are only permitted to leave their student teaching placements early twice a week, once for EDUC BC3064 and one other day for one additional course having a start time of 2 pm or later. Students are only permitted to take one additional course while enrolled in EDUC BC3064 and EDUC BC3065.
This course examines the aesthetic, psycho-sexual, and socio-political dimensions and implications of Surrealism, an international avant-garde movement that emerged in Paris in the wake of World War I. Focusing on artworks from a number of different genres, we will explore such issues as: the avant-garde reformulation, subversion, and/or destruction of pre-existing artistic conventions and practices; the development of an alternative literary tradition privileging the “humour noir” of such subversive authors as Jonathan Swift and the Marquis de Sade; the celebration of dreams, desire, and the unconscious, as conceived by Sigmund Freud; the rejection of “bourgeois” values such as order, rationality, morality, decency, patriotism, work, and “high culture”; the transformation of lieux communs into artistic dreamscapes; the rhetoric of violence and anarchy; and the politics of gender.
Must be supervised by a faculty member approved by te program adviser. This is the 2nd semester of a two-semester course sequence.
Claims of causality are nearly ubiquitous in scholarly work spanning the social sciences, journalistic products from media outlets, policy circles, and other social spaces. However, many of these claims are often subject to some of the well-documented econometric concerns of bias—including omitted variable bias, simultaneity, and other confounding influences. This course will introduce students to the fundamental concepts of causal inference and expose them to several contemporary econometric tools employed in an effort to make some of the aforementioned claims more credible. With randomized controlled trials (RCTs) serving as the gold standard for empirical work, students will learn how many econometric techniques and “natural” experiments attempt to emulate the best characteristics of well-executed RCTs.
In addition to problem sets and an in-class midterm exam, students will carry out a group research project on a topic of their choosing (in consultation with the professor) in order to demonstrate their proficiency in several key course concepts. This project remains critical to learning the scholastic (and practical) challenges in making rigorous causal claims, navigating the logistics of group collaboration, and learning how to critically evaluate empirical work.
Looks at the portrayal of women as unsettling figures in the Francophone Caribbean literary universe. Examining the uncanny heroines in the novels of both male and female writers, students will identify the thematic commonalities and specific configurative strategies that emerge in the fictional representation of women in the region. The symbolic import of zombies, schizophrenics, and other disordering characters will be analyzed as indicators of and reflections on broader social realities. FREN BC1204: French Intermediate II or the equivalent level is required.
This course samples works by women writers from the Middle Ages, interrogating questions of authorship and gender to situate these works in broader social histories. Selections center on western archives, where women’s voices have been extensively curated, but students will also survey non-western texts. This course is built around in-class discussion and the collaborative exploration of texts, complemented by a series of short papers in which students explore recurring themes. A visit to special collections and supplemental materials will also allow students to explore how premodern women projected their voices and views through manuscripts and visual culture. Students will select an additional text to explore individually for the final project, writing a short research paper and presenting a summary of their findings.
Experiments illustrating phenomenological aspects of the early quantum theory: (i) Hydrogenic Spectra: Balmer Series - Bohr-Sommerfeld Model; (ii) Photoelectric Effect: Millikans Determination of h/e; (iii) Franck-Hertz Experiment; and (iv) Electron Diffraction Phenomena. Substantial preparation required, including written and oral presentations, as well as an interest in developing the knack and intuition of an experimental physicist. This course is best taken concurrently with PHYS BC3006 Quantum Physics.
Prerequisites: Meets senior requirement. Instructor permission required. The instructor will supervise the writing of long papers involving some form of sociological research and analysis.
This is the second semester of a year-long senior capstone experience for Educational Studies majors. Over the course of the year, you will design and carry-out an inquiry project, and you will report on this project through an appropriate medium, for a specific purpose and audience.
The Artemis Rising Short Course in Filmmaking is a two to four-week course offered each semester on a special topic of filmmaking presented by an Artemis Rising Foundation Filmmaker Fellow (ARFF). This series was endowed by the Artemis Rising Foundation to bring world-class filmmakers with hands-on experience and fresh perspectives to Barnard to connect with students interested in filmmaking as a vocation and media literacy.
It can only be taken for pass/fail for 1 point.
Students must attend all four class sessions and write a final paper in order to receive credit for this course.
To see the dates/times that the Artemis Rising Short Course will meet this semester, the current course description, and the biography of the visiting filmmaker, please visit the ARFF website:
https://athenacenter.barnard.edu/arff
.
This course centers
disability
in its many manifestations and meanings – as an embodied, social, and cultural experience, as an organizing discourse in local and global contexts, as an analytic framework, and as a position from which to approach, think about, and engage in the world. Together, we will seek to understand disability in diverse settings and contexts through ethnographic texts, autobiography, documentary film, and essays, drawing primarily from works in anthropology but also more broadly from the interdisciplinary traditions known as (Critical) Disability Studies.
Throughout the semester, we will move between considering disability in more and less specific and categorical terms. We will ask what the stakes are – intellectually, socially, politically - for different ways of doing, thinking, and representing disability. What becomes apparent when we consider, say, the experiences of deaf young adults in India working together to learn Indian Sign Language, or physically disabled adults in the United States whose disabilities must be situated within histories of racialized poverty and urban neglect? What happens – what are the resonances and the tensions – when we put these settings into conversation? Through our engagements with materials analyzing these and many other instances, we will think together about what it means to study and think with disability from different disciplinary perspectives, different methods, and different media.
The Artemis Rising Short Course in Film Production is a one-point credit short workshop presented by an Artemis Rising Foundation Filmmaker Fellow (ARFF). It consists of four workshops on a special aspect of film production and one final project. This series was endowed by the Artemis Rising Foundation to bring world-class filmmakers with hands-on experience and fresh perspectives to Barnard to connect with students interested in filmmaking as a vocation and media literacy.
It can only be taken for pass/fail for 1 point.
Students must attend all four class workshops and produce one final project in order to receive credit for this course.
To see the dates/times that the Artemis Rising Short Course will meet this semester, the current course description, and the biography of the visiting filmmaker, please visit the ARFF website:
https://athenacenter.barnard.edu/arff
.
French majors will write their senior thesis under the supervision of the instructor.
This course can be worth 1 to 4 credits (each credit is equivalent to approximately three hours of work per week) and requires a Barnard faculty as a mentor who has to provide written approval. The course entails a scholarly component; for this, a research report is required by the end of the term. The research report can take the form that best suits the nature of the project. The course will be taken for a letter grade, regardless of whether the student chooses 1, 2, 3, or 4 credits.
An introduction to the study of language from a scientific perspective. The course is divided into three units: language as a system (sounds, morphology, syntax, and semantics), language in context (in space, time, and community), and language of the individual (psycholinguistics, errors, aphasia, neurology of language, and acquisition). Workload: lecture, weekly homework, and final examination.
The course addresses the works of women writers of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia from the 19th century to the present. All assigned readings will be in English. The purpose of the course is to become familiar with the struggles and concerns of these authors, as well as the general features of their lives and cultural contexts. Most readings assigned are primary texts. These will be supplemented during course meetings: the instructor will bring in various materials that would be obscure if assigned to students outside of class, but with live explanations in-class, will enrich their understanding of the primary readings.
Essay writing above the first-year level. Reading and writing various types of essays to develop one's natural writing voice and craft thoughtful, sophisticated and personal essays.
This course is designed for participants who are interested in learning more about the role of humor in 20th/21st-c. literature and film. The survey begins with an introduction to key elements of the comical in literature and film, including slapstick, clowning, mime, or stunts. Discussions revolve around the issue of how or whether humor is universally recognizable or whether it is regionally, historically, and culturally defined. To shed light on this difficult question we will consider both historical and geographical settings. In close studies of popular films and literary texts we will examine the characters’ proclivities and discuss their gender-based perspectives as well as the influence of racial, religious or age-related identities. Our weekly readings—which include excerpts from major novels, selected scenes from films as well as short stories--provide us with rich and instructive examples of how eating habits, choice of food, calendrical events (holiday vs. weekday) may be related to the formation and expression of cultural identity. Romantic comedies reveal not only personal preferences and the joy of eating—they also signal collective taste patterns and indicate what kind of fantasies or constraints have governed the daily or festive dietary practices from the early 20th c. on. While the comical is first and foremost represented in time-honored genres such as comedies or jokes, we will concentrate on the modern tradition in this course. This approach allows us to address the social, political, and cultural issue of multiculturalism and to build bridges between individual text/film and their historical contexts in the German-speaking countries. The emphasis of the course lies on a critical investigation of how cultural identity is related to self-expression and to physical interaction on the page, the stage or the screen. The course is taught in English, all readings are in English, and there are no prerequisites.
Writing sample required to apply to the course. Please send a writing sample of up to 5 pages of prose (double spaced) to
awatson@barnard.edu
.
Spring 2026: Fiction and Personal Narrative: Crafting the Narrative "I"
In this workshop, we will practice taking creative risks, writing fiction and nonfiction. We will examine four key craft areas: voice, characterization, imagery, and arrangement, both in contemporary published writing and in the writing of the people in this class. In small and large group workshops, we will consider each writer’s work with care and attention to the writer’s vision. By discussing each work-in-progress on its own terms, we will help our fellow writers deepen the meaning and impact of their work. Through risk-taking, and building a creative community, we will also grow and deepen our personal relationships to craft. Model readings will be contemporary short stories or personal essays, mostly written in the first person, including work by Kali Fajardo-Anstine, Tony Tulathimutte, K-Ming Chang, Cleyvis Natera, Melissa Febos, Ling Ma, and Deesha Philyaw.
A workshop in which students from the BC/CU community collaborate with a team of students from the École Normale Supérieure-Lyon on two translation projects. In addition to video-conferenced group sessions, students will work virtually with their translation partner in France, and consult in-person with their Barnard instructor. Prerequisite: completion of at least Intermediate II level of French.
Through readings in language philosophy, translation studies, and critical animal studies,
Translating the Animal
explores how translation, language, and reason have historically worked together to maintain speciesism, preventing human animals from perceiving their commonalities with, and attunement to, sentient nonhuman beings.
Writing sample required to apply. Instructions and the application form can be found here:
https://english.barnard.edu/english/creative-writing-courses
.
The most exciting, and the most terrifying, aspect of writing fiction is that there are no rules that cannot, under certain conditions, be broken. Good fiction makes and lives by its own rules. In this course, we will discuss common tenets of fiction writing—regarding character, plot, point-of-view, and more—and also examine cases in which writers break rules for the better. This course involves attentive reading of stories by various authors, discussions of craft, in-class writing, and workshops of student fiction. Readings may include Shirley Hazzard, Elias Khoury, James Wood, Elena Ferrante, Federico Garcia Lorca, and Sylvia Townsend Warner, among others.
The Africana Studies Department offers special topics courses every year as colloquia. These colloquia provide opportunities for students to explore areas of particular interest within African Diasporic Studies in a seminar environment. Students earn 4 credits for these courses. There are multiple colloquia offered by the department every year. Some of the topics for these colloquia have included Critical Race Theory, Indian Ocean Diaspora, The New Black, Caribbean Women, and Black Shakespeare. As the topics change, students should check with the Chair of the Africana Studies Department if they have any questions about the topics for a particular academic year.
Writing sample and application required to apply. Instructions and the application form can be found under
Applying to Creative Writing Courses on the English Department website.
.
Varied assignments in poetry designed to explore the resources of language through imitation, allusion, free association, revision, and other techniques. For a more detailed, instructor-specific description,
please see our Course Offerings packet
. If you are a Columbia student, please note that you will need to submit an access request to view the document containing instructor-specific course descriptions. All requests will be approved within 24 business hours.
Writing sample required to apply. Instructions and the application form can be found here:
https://english.barnard.edu/english/creative-writing-courses
. What makes a play alive? Often a playwright is surprised into their strongest work. The practices of experimentation and analysis, curiosity and audacity lead to new possibilities. Students will read and respond to plays, identifying elements and strategies, and each week bring in fragments and scenes written in response to weekly prompts. By the middle of the semester, students will choose the piece that feels the most viable and develop it into what in most cases will be a thirty page play. NOTE: Playwriting I (ENGL BC3113) is NOT a prerequisite, and students need not have written a play before.
Writing sample required to apply. Instructions and the application form can be found here:
https://english.barnard.edu/english/creative-writing-courses
.
Spring 2026
Story Writing II is an advanced workshop in writing, with emphasis on the short story. Some experience in the writing of fiction is required. Each week we will read and analyze a variety of published short stories with an eye for craft and authorial decisions that might be applied to our own work. Writers we will read may include: Jean Stafford, Yiyun Li, Bryan Washington, Garth Greenwell, Lorrie Moore, Jamel Brinkley, Ling Ma, Cesar Aira, Mavis Gallant, and more. Exercises and in-depth workshop letters will push students to think more deeply about their own choices and the many layers that make up each work. Conference hours to be arranged.
Note: Designed for but not limited to sophomores; enrollment beyond 60 is at the discretion of the instructor. Co-requisite: ARCH UN3118.
How has architecture been “modern”? This course will introduce students to this contentious and contradictory concept emerging across the world during a time in which ideas and tools similar to ours were used for seeing and ordering constructed environments and architectural thinking. It introduces students to the history of modern architecture as an art of building as well as a discursive field, whose historical consciousness played a part in its historical development.
The course is structured chronologically and encourages experiential learning around episodes that informed the development of the built environment and the architecturally “modern.” Students will gain hands-on practice in researching and writing architectural history, theory, and criticism: skills that lie at the basis of conceptual architectural practices. While a one-semester course will not provide a full survey of buildings, events, and people associated with modern architecture, students will develop the critical tools to identify, approach, and comprehend such histories. The following areas of focus anchor the course, and students learn about each by understanding the establishment and institution of structures nourishing and supporting them, which have persisted into the present:
Architecture as made, thought, and taught—enmeshed with power and ideas, social concerns, intellectual and public debates, and diverse forms of cultural production
Makers, thinkers, and organizers of the designed or built environment
Designed constructions as the material ends and means of extraction, refinement, trade, and the labor associated with each
Sites, institutions, media, events, and practices that have come to hold meaning in architectural discourse
Concerns with both the past and the future as a basis for architectural theory
Modernization, modernism, and modernity as drivers for events, their historical narration, and the dissemination of these architectural narratives
The conceptual writing practices of history, theory, and criticism
The course is designed to accommodate multiple styles of learning. Course components include weekly lectures and discussions of assigned readings; re
Writing sample and application required to apply. Instructions and the application form can be found under
Applying to Creative Writing Courses on the English Department website.
Assignments designed to examine form and structure in fiction. For a more detailed, instructor-specific description,
please see our Course Offerings packet.
If you are a Columbia student, please note that you will need to submit an access request to view the document containing instructor-specific course descriptions. All requests will be approved within 24 business hours.
N/A
N/A
N/A
Writing sample and application required to apply. Instructions and the application form can be found
under Applying to Creative Writing Courses on the English Department website.
Weekly workshops designed to generate and critique new poetry. Readings in traditional and contemporary poetry will be included. For a more detailed, instructor-specific description,
please see our Course Offerings packet.
If you are a Columbia student, please note that you will need to submit an access request to view the document containing instructor-specific course descriptions. All requests will be approved within 24 business hours.
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)
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.
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.
This course begins with focused attention on select plays of Zora Neale Hurston and her critical writing on performance, then takes ZNH’s aesthetics, politics, and provocations as a lens to study Black performance, broadly defined. We will consider the contexts in which Hurston pursued a career as playwright and theatremaker, and the influences that found their way into her plays including spiritual narratives and voodoo. We will turn our attention to key writers of the Harlem Renaissance to learn where ZNH first made her mark, and the milieu to which she ultimately turned her back. Each week’s reading/viewing will include primary sources (ZNH’s plays and dramaturgical statements) as well as scholarly criticism of those works or genre. The final weeks of the course will take up Black performance in the realms of dance and song from the early 20th century, and finish with more recent plays and visual art. In addition to short weekly response papers, students will complete a long-form research paper that may, if they choose, include a creative element.
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?