SUPERVISED RSRCH IN GREEK LIT

Prerequisites: the director of undergraduate studies permission. A program of research in Greek literature. Research paper required.

• Department: Classics
• Instructor: John T Ma
  CULPA: 4 Info
• Instructor: Paraskevi Martzavou
  CULPA: 2 Info
• Instructor: Nancy Worman
  CULPA: 23 Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

SUPERVISED RSRCH IN LATIN LIT

Prerequisites: the director of undergraduate studies permission. A program of research in Latin literature. Research paper required.

• Department: Classics
• Instructor: Rosalie Stoner
  Info
• Instructor: Joseph A Howley
  CULPA: 7 Info
• Instructor: Kristina Milnor
  CULPA: 21 Wikipedia h-index: 10 Info
• Instructor: Katharina Volk
  CULPA: 7 Info
• Instructor: Gareth Williams
  CULPA: 7 Info
• 3 points

INDIVIDUAL STUDY I

Prerequisites: open only to qualified majors in the department; the director of undergraduate studies permission is required. An opportunity for research under the direction of an individual faculty member. Students intending to write a year-long senior thesis should plan to register for C3996 in the spring semester of their senior year and are strongly advised to consult the undergraduate studies as they plan their programs.

• Department: Sociology @Barnard
• Instructor: Deborah Becher
  CULPA: 8 h-index: 4 Info
• Instructor: Elizabeth Bernstein
  CULPA: 27 Info
• Instructor: Maricarmen Hernandez
  Info
• Instructor: Debra Minkoff
  CULPA: 6 h-index: 17 Info
• Instructor: Mignon R Moore
  CULPA: 9 h-index: 17 Info
• Instructor: Jonathan Rieder
  CULPA: 17 Info
• Instructor: Angela Simms
  Info
• Instructor: Amy Zhou
  Info
• Instructor: Faculty
  h-index: 37 Info
• 1-6 points

SENIOR THESIS IN RESEARCH

Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to senior Theatre majors. Combined and special majors may be considered under exceptional circumstances. Permission of the instructor required. In-depth research project culminating in a substantial written thesis on any aspect of drama, performance, or theatre research.

• Department: Theatre @Barnard
• Instructor: William B Worthen
  CULPA: 10 Info
• 4 points

SUPERVISED READINGS I

• Department: Language Resource Center
• Instructor: Nandipa Sipengane
  Info
• 1 points

SENIOR THESIS SEM IN ANTHROPOL

Prerequisites: The instructors permission. Students must have declared a major in Anthropology prior to registration. Students must have a 3.6 GPA in the major and a preliminary project concept in order to be considered. Interested students must communicate/meet with thesis instructor in the previous spring about the possibility of taking the course during the upcoming academic year. Additionally, expect to discuss with the instructor at the end of the fall term whether your project has progressed far enough to be completed in the spring term. If it has not, you will exit the seminar after one semester, with a grade based on the work completed during the fall term. This two-term course is a combination of a seminar and a workshop that will help you conduct research, write, and present an original senior thesis in anthropology. Students who write theses are eligible to be considered for departmental honors. The first term of this course introduces a variety of approaches used to produce anthropological knowledge and writing; encourages students to think critically about the approaches they take to researching and writing by studying model texts with an eye to the ethics, constraints, and potentials of anthropological research and writing; and gives students practice in the seminar and workshop formats that are key to collegial exchange and refinement of ideas. During the first term, students complete a few short exercises that will culminate in a substantial draft of one discrete section of their senior project (18-20 pages) plus a detailed outline of the expected work that remains to be done (5 pages). The spring sequence of the anthropology thesis seminar is a writing intensive continuation of the fall semester, in which students will have designed the research questions, prepared a full thesis proposal that will serve as a guide for the completion of the thesis and written a draft of one chapter. Only those students who expect to have completed the fall semester portion of the course are allowed to register for the spring; final enrollment is contingent upon successful completion of first semester requirements. In spring semester, weekly meetings will be devoted to the collaborative refinement of drafts, as well as working through issues of writing (evidence, voice, authority etc.). All enrolled students are required to present their project at a symposium in the late spring, and the final grade is based primarily on successful completion of the thesis/ capstone project. Note: The senior thesis seminar is open t

• Department: Anthropology
• T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Lila Abu-Lughod
  CULPA: 17 Wikipedia h-index: 48 Info
• 4 points

INDEPENDENT STUDY

Prerequisites: Open to majors who have fulfilled basic major requirements or written permission of the staff member who will supervise the project. Specialized reading and research projects planned in consultation with members of the Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures teaching staff.

• Department: Asian and Middle East @Barnard
• Instructor: Rachel McDermott
  CULPA: 37 Info
• Instructor: Nicholas A Bartlett
  CULPA: 5 Info
• Instructor: Matthew L Keegan
  CULPA: 8 Info
• Instructor: Lili Xia
  Info
• Instructor: Nathanael P Shelley
  CULPA: 6 Info
• 1-4 points

INDEPENDENT STUDY

Application required:
https://english.barnard.edu/english/independent-studies
. Senior majors who wish to substitute Independent Study for one of the two required senior seminars should consult the chair. Permission is given rarely and only to students who present a clear and well-defined topic of study, who have a department sponsor, and who submit their proposals well in advance of the semester in which they will register. There is no independent study for screenwriting or film production.

• Department: English @Barnard
• MW 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• MW 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• TR 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Maura L Spiegel
  CULPA: 40 Info
• Instructor: Ken Chen
  Info
• Instructor: Monica F Cohen
  CULPA: 8 Info
• 1-4 points

INDEPENDENT STUDY

Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required. Examines the theory and practice of transnational feminist activism. We will explore the ways in which race, class, culture and nationality facilitate alliances among women, reproduce hierarchical power relations, and help reconstruct gender. The course covers a number of topics: the African Diaspora, suffrage, labor, development policy, colonialism, trafficking, consumerism, Islam, and the criminal justice system.

• Department: History @Barnard
• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• M 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• M 10:10 a.m.-noon
• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Matthew Delvaux
  Info
• Instructor: Nara Milanich
  CULPA: 15 Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: Angelo Caglioti
  h-index: 2 Info
• Instructor: Dale Booth
  Info
• 1-4 points

INDEPENDENT STUDY

Prerequisites: approval prior to registration; see the director of undergraduate studies for details. A creative/scholarly project conducted under faculty supervision.

• Department: Music @Barnard
• Instructor: Gail R Archer
  CULPA: 24 Info
• 1-4 points

GERMAN PEDAGOGY

Registration is by permission of foreign language departments only. Designed to offer training in foreign language pedagogy to teaching assistants (TAs) in the foreign language departments.

• Department: Germanic Languages
• Instructor: Jutta Schmiers-Heller
  CULPA: 19 Info
• 3 points

ADVANCED GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS

ADV GEOGRAPHIC INFO SYSTE

Prerequisite: Successful completion of URBS UN2200 Introduction to GIS Methods, or equivalent with instructor permission.

With the veritable explosion of urban data alongside the continued proliferation of new tools for its consideration, this course allows students to develop specialized approaches to spatial analysis while introducing a series of common advanced techniques and nuanced methodological questions. Aimed at covering a variety of topics with immediate relevance to urbanism in practice and in research, the course operates with a two-fold mission: (1) to critically discuss the theories, concepts, and research methods involved in spatial analysis and (2) to learn the techniques necessary for engaging those theories and deploying those methods. The class will work to meet this mission with a dedicated focus on the urban environment and the spatial particularities and relationships that arise from the urban context.

Among others, this course takes as a foundational premise that spatial analysis within geographic information systems is an incredibly powerful and double-edged weapon: it provides both the methods for answering complex spatial questions and the means for effectively communicating the results. Like any other weapon it can serve many ends, and as such an advanced course in spatial analysis must frame its use within the developing discourse on professional practice and responsibility.

The course is designed with a combination format. Early weeks are predominantly lecture-style presentations supplemented with discussion and technical demonstration and exercises. Students are expected to complete these exercises outside of class (as homework), bringing their questions to our discussion. The latter half of the course is a project-based seminar. Seminar-style presentation and discussion will rely heavily on student participation and preparation to consider the variety of spatial methods available and their implications on urban research and intervention. Woven throughout the semester is the development of a self-driven research project, through which students will engage and compare the methodological advantages and disadvantages of several assumptions, approaches, analyses, and datasets.

• Department: Urban Studies @Barnard
• M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Leah M Meisterlin
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 3 points

GENEALOGIES OF FEMINISM

Genealogies of Feminism:
 
Course focuses on the development of a particular topic or issue in feminist, queer, and/or WGSS scholarship. Open to graduate students and advanced undergraduates, though priority will be given to students completing the ISSG graduate certificate. Topics differ by semester offered, and are reflected in the course subtitle. For a description of the current offering, please visit the link in the Class Notes.

• Department: Women's and Gender Studies
• T 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Sarah Haley
  Info
• 4 points

CORE STUDIO SEMESTER I

• Department: Architecture, Planning and Preservation
• MWF 2 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Mireia Luzarraga
  Info
• 9 points

CORE STUDIO SEMESTER III

• Department: Architecture, Planning and Preservation
• W 1:30 p.m.-3:30 p.m.
• 9 points

ADVANCED STUDIO V

• Department: Architecture, Planning and Preservation
• W 1:30 p.m.-3:30 p.m.
• 9 points

SELECTNS FROM GREEK LIT

Prerequisites: GREK V1201 and V1202, or their equivalent. Since the content of the course changes from year to year, it may be taken in consecutive years.

• Department: Classics @Barnard
• MW 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Nancy Worman
  CULPA: 23 Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

LATIN LIT PROSE SELECTIONS

Prerequisites: LATN V3012 or the equivalent. Since the content of this course changes from year to year, it may be repeated for credit.

• Department: Classics
• TR 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Katharina Volk
  CULPA: 7 Info
• 3 points

LOTUS SUTRA/E ASIAN BUDDHISM

• Department: Asian and Middle East @Barnard
• W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: David L Moerman
  CULPA: 18 Info
• 4 points

JAPANESE BUDDHIST VISUAL CULTR

This course explors the principal modes, media, and contexts of visual culture in Japanese Buddhist history. Through the analysis of selected case studies, the course examines of the modalities of perception, materiality, and reception that distinguish the form and function of visual media in Japanese Buddhist contexts. Students are expected to have completed preliminary coursework in relevant areas of East Asian history, religion, or art history.

• Department: Asian and Middle East @Barnard
• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: David L Moerman
  CULPA: 18 Info
• 3 points

SENIOR SEMINAR

Intensive study of a philosophical issue or topic, or of a philosopher, group of philosophers, or philosophical school or movement. Open only to Barnard senior philosophy majors.

• Department: Philosophy @Barnard
• Instructor: Taylor Carman
  CULPA: 40 Wikipedia h-index: 19 Info
• 4 points

SENIOR ESSAY

A substantial paper, developing from an Autumn workshop and continuing in the Spring under the direction of an individual advisor. Open only to Barnard senior philosophy majors.

• Department: Philosophy @Barnard
• Instructor: Caroline D Bowman
  Info
• 3 points

OBJECT HISTORIES

• Department: Anthropology
• W 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Vanessa L Agard-Jones
  CULPA: 3 Info
• 3 points

Modes of Living: Feminist and Critical

Feminist & Critical Appro

Connecting cultural and social issues to ethical questions, this course in feminist and critical interdisciplinary studies offers students the opportunity to consider the relationship between values and value in different modes of living. All too often in public discourse ethical values are invoked but not clearly articulated in terms of their meaning, parameters, and relation to each other. This research seminar investigates values through a semester-long consideration of a single overarching question. This version of the course focuses on the environmental humanities, but other instantiations may use this method to consider different issues. Here, the values commonly invoked in public discussions of the environment are considered in relation to each other, placed in larger analytic contexts, and applied. The final section of the course brings the study of values together with a study of major environmental issues, with a focus on inter-relations amongst those issues. The course uses these interdisciplinary and critical approaches that have become central to feminist ethics as the basis for students developing a major semester-long research project on a question of their own choosing.

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

CORE STUDIO I - TUTORIAL

• Department: Architecture, Planning and Preservation
• Instructor: Virginia A Black
  CULPA: 1 Info
• Instructor: Kevin H Pham
  Info
• Instructor: Carlos Medellin Sanchez
  Info
• Instructor: Oscar A Mayorga Caballero
  Info
• Instructor: Emma F Sumrow
  Info
• Instructor: Galen J Pardee
  Info
• Instructor: Mireia Luzarraga
  Info
• 0 points

CORE STUDIO III - TUTORIAL

• Department: Architecture, Planning and Preservation
• 0 points

CORE STUDIO III - TUTORIAL

• Department: Architecture, Planning and Preservation
• 0 points

CORE STUDIO III - TUTORIAL

• Department: Architecture, Planning and Preservation
• 0 points

CORE STUDIO III - TUTORIAL

• Department: Architecture, Planning and Preservation
• 0 points

CORE STUDIO III - TUTORIAL

• Department: Architecture, Planning and Preservation
• 0 points

CORE STUDIO III - TUTORIAL

• Department: Architecture, Planning and Preservation
• 0 points

CORE STUDIO III - TUTORIAL

• Department: Architecture, Planning and Preservation
• Instructor: Galia Solomonoff
  Wikipedia Info
• 0 points

ADV STUDIO V - TUTORIAL

• Department: Architecture, Planning and Preservation
• 0 points

ADV STUDIO V - TUTORIAL

• Department: Architecture, Planning and Preservation
• Instructor: Amale Andraos
  Wikipedia Info
• 0 points

ADV STUDIO V - TUTORIAL

• Department: Architecture, Planning and Preservation
• 0 points

ADV STUDIO V - TUTORIAL

• Department: Architecture, Planning and Preservation
• Instructor: Ziad Jamaleddine
  Info
• Instructor: Michael Bell
  Wikipedia h-index: 12 Info
• 0 points

ADV STUDIO V - TUTORIAL

• Department: Architecture, Planning and Preservation
• 0 points

ADV STUDIO V - TUTORIAL

• Department: Architecture, Planning and Preservation
• Instructor: Hilary M Sample-Meredith
  Info
• Instructor: Mario A Gooden
  Wikipedia Info
• Instructor: David E Benjamin
  Info
• 0 points

ADV STUDIO V - TUTORIAL

• Department: Architecture, Planning and Preservation
• 0 points

ADV STUDIO V - TUTORIAL

• Department: Architecture, Planning and Preservation
• Instructor: Emanuel Admassu
  Info
• 0 points

ADV STUDIO V - TUTORIAL

• Department: Architecture, Planning and Preservation
• 0 points

ADV STUDIO V - TUTORIAL

• Department: Architecture, Planning and Preservation
• 0 points

ADV STUDIO V - TUTORIAL

• Department: Architecture, Planning and Preservation
• 0 points

ADV STUDIO V - TUTORIAL

• Department: Architecture, Planning and Preservation
• Instructor: Marc Tsurumaki
  Wikipedia Info
• 0 points

ADV STUDIO V - TUTORIAL

• Department: Architecture, Planning and Preservation
• 0 points

HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE I

Prerequisites: at least two terms of Greek at the 3000-level or higher. Readings in Greek literature from Homer to the 4th century B.C.

• Department: Classics
• MW 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Elizabeth K Irwin
  CULPA: 7 Info
• 4 points

LAT LITERATURE OF THE REPUBLIC

Prerequisites: at least two terms of Latin at the 3000-level or higher. Latin literature from the beginning to early Augustan times.

• Department: Classics
• MW 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Katharina Volk
  CULPA: 7 Info
• 4 points

RELIGION LAB

In their research, scholars of religion employ a variety of methods to analyze texts ranging from historical documents to objects of visual culture. This course acquaints students with both the methods and the materials utilized in the field of religious studies. Through guided exercises, they acquire research skills for utilizing sources and become familiarized with dominant modes of scholarly discourse. The class is organized around a series of research scavenger hunts that are due at the start of each week's class and assigned during the discussion section (to be scheduled on the first day of class). Additional class meeting on Thursdays.

• Department: Religion @Barnard
• Instructor: Meghan E Hartman
  Info
• 4 points

LANG DOCUMENTATION/FIELD MTHDS

• Department: Slavic Languages
• TR 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Meredith Landman
  CULPA: 1 h-index: 5 Info
• 3 points

KAFKA (ENG)

• Department: Germanic Languages
• Instructor: Mark M Anderson
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 3 points

BLACK GEOGRAPHIES

Far from obvious renderings of place, maps are spatial arguments about who belongs where and how living should be defined. This course approaches place as something that is contested daily in the U.S. through the struggle of who gets to lay claim to a way of life. From the landscapes of dispossession to the alternative ways marginalized people work with and against traditional geographies, this course centers Black place-making practices as political struggle. This class will look at how power and domination become a landed project. We will critically examine how ideas about “nature” are bound up with notions of race, and the way “race” naturalizes the proper place for humans and non-human others. We will interrogate settler colonialism’s relationships to mapping who is and isn’t human, the transatlantic slave trade as a project of terraforming environments for capital, and land use as a science for determining who “owns” the earth. Centered on Black feminist, queer and trans thinkers, we will encounter space not as a something given by maps, but as a struggle over definitions of the human, geography, sovereignty, and alternative worlds. To this end, we will read from a variety of disciplines, such as Critical Black Studies, Feminist and Intersectional Science Studies, Black Geographies and Ecologies, Urban Studies and Afrofuturist literature. (Note: this class will count as an elective for the CCIS minors/concentrations in F/ISTS, ICORE/MORE, and Environmental Humanities.)

• Department: Women's, Gender, Sexuality Studies @Barnard
• Instructor: Marisa Solomon
  Info
• 4 points

Literature and Money

Money in its multiple forms has received renewed attention in recent decades, especially since the financial crises in 2008 and the emergence of new cryptocurrencies. Money has been described as a means of exchange, a store of value, a measure of debt, a commodity, a social institution, or a tool in the formation of identity. In all of these instances, money fuses economic purposes with social and cultural practices. Exploring the intersections between economics and aesthetics, this course will juxtapose some of the most influential theories of money from Adam Smith to the present with contemporaneous literary texts that reflect on various aspects of money in their poetics on a thematic or formal level. Literary texts include Shakespeare, Goethe, Balzac, Zola, Thomas Mann, and Martin Amis.

• Department: Germanic Languages
• Instructor: Oliver Simons
  CULPA: 4 Info
• 3 points

AESTHETICS & PHIL OF HIST(ENG)

This course offers an introduction to German intellectual history by focusing on the key texts from the 18th and 19th century concerned with the philosophy of art and the philosophy of history. Instead of providing a general survey, this thematic focus that isolates the relatively new philosophical subspecialties allows for a careful tracing of a number of key problematics. The texts chosen for discussion in many cases are engaged in lively exchanges and controversies. For instance, Winckelmann provides an entry into the debate on the ancients versus the moderns by making a claim for both the historical, cultural specificity of a particular kind of art, and by advertising the art of Greek antiquity as a model to be imitated by the modern artist. Lessings Laocoon counters Winckelmanns idealizing approach to Greek art with a media specific reflection. According to Lessing, the fact that the Laocoon priest from the classical sculpture doesnt scream has nothing to do with the nobility of the Greek soul but all with the fact that a screaming mouth hewn in stone would be ugly. Herders piece on sculpture offers yet another take on this debate, one that refines and radicalizes an aesthetics based on the careful examination of the different senses, especially touch and feeling versus sight.—The second set of texts in this class deals with key enlightenment concepts of a philosophical anthropology informing the then emerging philosophy of history. Two literary texts will serve to mark key epochal units: Goethes Prometheus, which will be used in the introductory meeting, will be examined in view of its basic humanist program, Kleists Earthquake in Chili will serve as a base for the discussion of what would be considered the end of the Enlightenment: be that the collapse of a belief in progress or the critique of the beautiful and the sublime. The last unit of the class focuses on Hegels sweeping supra-individualist approach to the philosophy of history and Nietzsches fierce critique of Hegel. Readings are apportioned such that students can be expected to fully familiarize themselves with the arguments of these texts and inhabit them.

• Department: Germanic Languages
• Instructor: Dorothea von Muecke
  Info
• 3 points

Retranslation: Worlding C. P. Cavafy

Focusing on a canonical author is an immensely productive way to explore translation research and practice. The works of Sappho, Dante, Rilke, Césaire or Cavafy raise the question of reception in relation to many different critical approaches and illustrate many different strategies of translation and adaptation. The very issue of intertextuality that challenged the validity of author-centered courses after Roland Barthes’s proclamation of the death of the author reinstates it if we are willing to engage the oeuvre as an on-going interpretive project. By examining the poetry of the Greek Diaspora poet C. P. Cavafy in all its permutations (as criticism, translation, adaptation), the Cavafy case becomes an experimental ground for thinking about how a canonical author can open up our theories and practices of translation. For the final project students will choose a work by an author with a considerable body of critical work and translations and, following the example of Cavafy and his translators, come up with their own retranslations. Among the materials considered are commentary by E. M. Forster, C. M. Bowra, and Roman Jakobson, translations by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard, James Merrill, Marguerite Yourcenar, and Daniel Mendelsohn, poems by W.H. Auden, Lawrence Durrell, and Joseph Brodsky, and visual art by David Hockney, and Duane Michals.

• Department: Classics
• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Karen Van Dyck
  Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

GENDER, GLOBALIZATION AND EMPIRE

Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 20 students. Study of the role of gender in economic structures and social processes comprising globalization and in political practices of contemporary U.S. empire. This seminar focuses on the ways in which transformations in global political and economic structures over the last few decades including recent political developments in the U.S. have been shaped by gender, race, sexuality, religion and social movements.

• Department: Women's, Gender, Sexuality Studies @Barnard
• Instructor: Manijeh Moradian
  Info
• 4 points

EXPLORING THE SHARIA: ISLAMIC LAW

The platform of every modern “Islamist” political party calls for the implementation of “the shari‘a.” This term is invariably (and incorrectly) interpreted as an unchanging legal code dating back to 7th century Arabia. In reality, Islamic law is an organic and constantly evolving human project aimed at ascertaining God’s will in a given historical and cultural context. This course offers a detailed and nuanced look at the Islamic legal methodology and its evolution over the last 1400 years. The first part of the semester is dedicated to “classical” Islamic jurisprudence, concentrating on the manner in which jurists used the Qur’an, the Sunna (the model of the Prophet), and rationality to articulate a coherent legal system. The second part of the course focuses on those areas of the law that engender passionate debate and controversy in the contemporary world. Specifically, we examine the discourse surrounding Islamic family (medical ethics, marriage, divorce, women’s rights) and criminal (capital punishment, apostasy, suicide/martyrdom) law. The course ends by discussing the legal implications of Muslims living as minorities in non-Islamic countries and the effects of modernity on the foundations of Islamic jurisprudence. This class is designed for students interested in a close examination of the Islamic legal system; it is not a broad introduction to the Islamic religion. The format of the class will vary from topic to topic but students should anticipate *extensive* participation through in-class debates.

• Department: Religion @Barnard
• Instructor: Najam I Haider
  CULPA: 8 Info
• 4 points

EMBODIMENT AND BODILY DIFFERENCE

EMBODIMENT & BODILY DIFFE

At once material and symbolic, our bodies exist at the intersection of multiple competing discourses, including the juridical, the techno-scientific, and the biopolitical. In this course, we will draw upon a variety of critical interdisciplinary literatures—including feminist and queer studies, science and technology studies, and disability studies—to consider some of the ways in which the body is constituted by such discourses, and itself serves as the substratum for social relations. Among the key questions we will consider are the following: What is natural about the body? How are distinctions made between presumptively normal and pathological bodies, and between psychic and somatic experiences?  How do historical and political-economic forces shape the perception and meaning of bodily difference? And most crucially: how do bodies that are multiply constituted by competing logics of gender, race, nation, and ability offer up resistance to these and other categorizations?

• Department: Women's, Gender, Sexuality Studies @Barnard
• Instructor: Rebecca Jordan-Young
  Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

GERMAN FILM AFTER 1945

This introduction to German film since 1945 (in its European contexts) deploys a focus on feelings as a lens for multifaceted, intersectional investigations of cinematic history. We will explore how feelings have been gendered and racialized; how they overlap with matters of sex (as closely associated with political revolt in Western Europe, while considered too private for public articulation in the socialist East, especially when queer); and how they foreground matters of nation and trauma (for example via the notions of German ‘coldness’ and inability to mourn the Holocaust). Simultaneously, the focus on feelings highlights questions of mediality (cinema as a prototypically affective medium?), genre and avant-garde aesthetics: in many films, ‘high-affect’ Hollywood cinema intriguingly meets ‘cold’ cinematic modernism. In pursuing these investigative vectors through theoretical readings and close film analysis, the course connects affect, gender, queer, and cultural studies approaches with cinema studies methodologies. The films to be discussed span postwar and New German Cinema, East German DEFA productions, the ‘Berlin School’ of the 2000s, and contemporary transnational cinema.

• Department: Germanic Languages
• Instructor: Claudia Breger
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 3 points

Literati Culture in Pre-Modern China

Literati Cult. Pre-Mod. C

Premodern Chinese literati have long been regarded as active historical agents who shaped “This Culture of Ours”—a metonym for civilization in the premodern Sinitic context—while they also fed from, partook in, and influenced popular and foreign cultures. Besides “literary writings” like poetry and prose, literati also engaged in calligraphy, painting, and antiquarianism under the umbrella term of “literary or cultural arts.” In turn, the creation and appreciation of artwork were intrinsic to the aesthetic life of literati community and further established their self-identity. At the same time, social exclusivity, (self-)doubt and identity crises, along with the looming threat of cultural decline, have continually haunted this literati community throughout the ages.

Covering the long trajectory of imperial China, this course reveals the birth and development of literati culture. In particular, we take an interdisciplinary approach, introducing intellectual and poetic discourses, socio-historical contexts, literary criticism, visual and material culture, to envision a “common ground” for their civil world. Textual, visual sources plus material objects are meant to have conversations with each other in this course. Important issues include historical transformations of the elite class, cultural geography in different eras, materiality and visuality of elite calligraphy and painting, literati self-expression through aesthetic practice, the roles of the court and literati in producing and preserving art, as well as other relevant issues such as gender studies, vernacular literature, and commodity society.

This course is cross-listed in AMEC and CPLT. For undergraduates, no background in Chinese language is required in this course, and all reading materials—either translation of primary sources or secondary scholarship—are accessible in English.

• Department: Asian and Middle East @Barnard
• W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Lili Xia
  Info
• 4 points

PHONETICS & PHONOLOGY

• Department: Slavic Languages
• TR 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Meredith Landman
  CULPA: 1 h-index: 5 Info
• 3 points

Eugenics

For almost two hundred years, people around the world have sought to perfect society through scientifically directed breeding. Though often described as a thing of the past, contemporary life is suffused with fears over declining birth rates and dreams of producing perfect “designer babies.”

In this class we will explore the long history of attempts to remake reproduction and regulate population across U.S. History (with some excursions into India and Germany), through a study of a range of interdisciplinary scholarship. Together, we will ask: why have panics around population emerged under specific circumstances, and who pushed them? How and why did eugenics explode into popularity at the turn of the century, and how was it adopted into and by various social movements? What, exactly, is (and was) eugenics? What is the relationship between it and earlier efforts to scientifically categorize and remake society? What role did it play in the development of twentieth-century politics? Why did states engage in campaigns of mass sterilization across the first half of the twentieth century? Why did they stop? How have different groups sought to remake reproduction since?

• Department: American Studies @Barnard
• Instructor: Dani Joslyn
  Info
• 4 points

COLUMBIA COMMONS SEMINAR

RELATIONSHIPS OF CARE

• Department: Dental and Oral Surgery
• 0 points

ITALIAN CULTURAL STUDIES I

An interdisciplinary investigation into Italian culture and society in the years between Unification in 1860 and the outbreak of World War I. Drawing on novels, historical analyses, and other sources including film and political cartoons, the course examines some of the key problems and trends in the cultural and political history of the period. Lectures, discussion and required readings will be in English. Students with a knowledge of Italian are encouraged to read the primary literature in Italian.

• Department: Italian @Barnard
• Instructor: Nelson Moe
  CULPA: 10 h-index: 6 Info
• 3 points

NAPLES: PORTRAIT OF A CITY

• Department: Italian @Barnard
• Instructor: Nelson Moe
  CULPA: 10 h-index: 6 Info
• 3 points

Islam in Popular Culture

This course interrogates seminal issues in the academic study of Islam through its popular representation in various forms of media from movies and television to novels and comic books. The class is structured around key theoretical readings from a range of academic disciplines ranging from art history and anthropology to comparative literature and religion.

The course begins by placing the controversies surrounding the visual depiction of Muhammad in historical perspective (Gruber). This is followed by an examination of modern portrayals of Muslims in film that highlights both the vilification of the “other” (Shaheen) and the persistence of colonial discourses centered on the “native informant” (Mamdani). Particular emphasis is given to recent pop cultural works that challenge these simplistic discourses of Islam. The second half of the course revisits Muhammad, employing an anthropological framework (Asad) to understand the controversies surrounding Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses. The obsession with a gendered depiction of Islam is then examined through an anthropological framework that sheds light on the problems of salvation narratives (Abu Lughod). The course ends with a look at the unique history of Islam in America, particularly the tension between immigrant and African-American communities.

• Department: Religion @Barnard
• Instructor: Najam I Haider
  CULPA: 8 Info
• 4 points

Protect the Dolls: Trans Panics and Quee

Life as a trans person can feel like an unrelenting cacophony of hammers. Around the world, fascist
parties and paramilitaries have set their sights on transgender people and through a torrent of
accusations of crime and depravity all but authorized violence against trans people. Through
explorations of trans* history and social movements in the United States, Turkey, India, and Pakistan
(and to a lesser extent Argentina), this course will provide a space to both understand the global
anti-gender and anti-trans panic and to relate ourselves to the strategies that trans people have used
to both survive and the demands that they have made for structural change and liberation. The goal
of this course will be to provide a space of critical study and a site of learning to be in community as
well as to equip you with both the knowledge and capacity to understand and intervene in
contemporary trans panics wherever you encounter them. Assignments will be a combination of
collaborative skill-building, self-reflections, and analyses of the tactics and strategies employed by
social movements.

• Department: American Studies @Barnard
• Instructor: Dani Joslyn
  Info
• 4 points

Topics in Moral Psychology

Intensive study of a particular topic in Moral Psychology.

• Department: Philosophy @Barnard
• Instructor: Francey Russell
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 3 points

CHINA AND POLITICS OF DESIRE

A recent American newspaper headline announced that China has become “the most materialistic country the world.” Globally circulating narratives often interpret Chinese consumers’ demand for commodities as an attempt to fill a void left by the absence of the Maoist state, traditional religious life, and Western-style democracy. But things aren’t as simple as they appear. This course explores the intertwined questions of “Chinese” desire and the desire for China. Avoiding reductionist understandings of desire as either a universal natural human attribute or a particular Chinese cultural trait, we will track the production and management of desire within a complex global field. Drawing on ethnographies, films, short stories, and psychoanalytic and postcolonial theory, this course will explore the shifting figure of desire across the Maoist and post-Maoist eras by examining how academics, government officials, intellectuals, and artists have represented Chinese needs, wants and fantasies. From state leaders’ attempts to improve the “quality” of the country’s population to citizens’ dreams of home ownership, from sexualized desire to hunger for food, drugs and other commodities, we will attend to the continuities and disjunctures of recent Chinese history by tracking how desire in China has been conceptualized and refracted through local and global encounters.

• Department: Asian and Middle East @Barnard
• M 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Nicholas A Bartlett
  CULPA: 5 Info
• 4 points