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.
Writing sample required to apply. Short stories and other imaginative and personal writing. Interested students should send a prose writing sample to
awatson@barnard.edu
by April 1st, 2025.
· Writing samples should be creative and appropriate to the courses requested: 4-6 pages of fiction or personal narrative
· They should be neat, typed, and double-spaced.
· They should not be expository or primarily analytical (like a literature paper).
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.
Russian Through Theater is a content-based language course designed for students who already have the equivalent of two semesters of college-level Russian and want to continue exploring their path as Russian language learners. This course is experimental in that it combines elements of traditional language learning with theatricality and creativity. A stress-free learning environment will stimulate language skills and fluency. Staging skits, theatrical pieces, short at first and longer by the end of the semester, will encourage students to focus on phonetics, intonation contour, and idiomatic expressions. In addition to performing skits and short plays, the course includes various forms of improvisation. Reading, listening and speaking - these three essential skills of language learning are constantly practiced. Incorporating theater into language learning not only makes the process enjoyable but also creates a rich, immersive environment that supports language development holistically. Various performative and ludic models, offered by the theater productions -- rehearsed and improvised alike – will help students with shaping a language persona, a skill that students may use in life situations. This skill adds confidence to their conduct of language and allows to communicate effectively with limited linguistic knowledge.
Classes will be conducted primarily in Russian, with sporadic instruction in English when necessary for clarification of assignments or for better understanding of terminology used during mini-lectures.
Writing sample required to apply. Instructions and the application form can be found here:
https://english.barnard.edu/english/creative-writing-courses
.
Spring 2026: Poetry Belongs With Us
As legend Lucille Clifton said, “poetry began when somebody walked out of a cave and looked up at the sky with wonder and said, “Ahhh.” That was the first poem.” In this class we will be demystifying the fundamentals of writing poetry by sharpening our most natural sonic and narrative instincts. We will use these instincts to guide our insights as we explore and practice specific craft elements and structural gestures—from the Ode, Elegy, and Sonnet, to Ekphrasis and Erasure. We’ll study the work of contemporary luminaries like Gwendolyn Brooks, Kaveh Akbar, Sharon Olds, Jenny Xie, June Jordan, Ocean Vuong, and more; using their example to inspire us on how best to understand and command the poetic line. Class time will include weekly writing prompts and share-outs, and each student will have one poem workshopped during the semester. And because there is no better way to understand the impact and power of poetry than to learn from its living practitioners, we will also have the pleasure of welcoming a few guest authors who will share their work and answer questions! Come prepared to take risks and foster curiosity.
This course traces the emergence and development of “New Wave” cinema in France in the 60s. Through a detailed analysis of some of its most iconic films: 400 Blows, Breathless, Hiroshima mon amour… the course will examine the radical artistic and social innovations of its major “auteurs”; Truffaut, Godard, Resnais et al. FREN BC1204: French Intermediate II or the equivalent level is required.
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.
This course is an introduction to the field of inquiry called The Problem of Evil, or Theodicy – that is, the investigation of God in the face of evil and suffering in the world. How do we justify God? How do we reconcile disaster, pain, and suffering with an all-good, all-knowing, all-compassionate God? This question arises in all religious traditions, but here we will study only four: the Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Hindu traditions, each of which proposes its own array of answers. Our emphasis will be on primary texts from each tradition, with introductory and interpretive secondary sources brought in as supplementary. These primary sources will be discussed in class, but especially in required section meetings. A sub-theme of the course is the “pastoral” dimension of answers to the Problem of Evil: to what extent are the answers we study comforting? This course has been created with the many crises presently afflicting our world – COVID-19, climate change, and the injustice of racism, to name a few – in mind.
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.
Prerequisites: Designed for but not limited to sophomores; enrollment beyond 60 at the discretion of the instructor.
Modern Architecture in the World is an introduction to different arenas in which architecture’s modern condition has been disputed in the last two centuries across different geographies. The course will address significant transformations in the built environment as well as the forms of practice, epistemic frameworks, and ideologies that led them. It will also attend to the forms of labor and economies that engendered new structures and organizations of space, the material resources and industries mobilized in their construction, the identities and forms of power they represented and imposed, the manifold embodiments that they hosted and shaped, the diverse socialites and politics they supported, and the ecologies they negotiated.
The course is organized around a number of key themes, with each class covering episodes spanning the whole period under consideration, up until the present. In this way, it will question the existence of a single line of development, a master narrative, or a teleological line of progress and will highlight instead the multiple, simultaneous, conflicting, and branching genealogies unfolding throughout the period. Students will gain knowledge of key buildings, artifacts, trends, and schools as they relate to those genealogies.
Each lecture will emphasize contending and shifting positions across geographies within the arenas explored, understanding hegemonic trends as well as dissenting positions. While different locations around the world will be highlighted in each class, the course positions modern architecture in the world by privileging an exploration of the cultural and material networks and hierarchies characteristic of the period—with attention to colonialism, coloniality, migration, resource extraction, and war, among others.
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):
Full course description forthcoming
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.
Writing sample required to apply. Instructions and the application form can be found here:
https://english.barnard.edu/english/creative-writing-courses
.
Muriel Rukeyser remarked that “American poetry has been part of a culture in conflict.” Indeed, culture worldwide is in conflict. This course will explore “the necessity of poetry” from a phrase by Adrienne Rich. It is organized to ensure the development of new work and further study of poetic practice for committed student writers. We will examine mostly contemporary poetry using specific poetry collections from poets as varied as John Keene, Rosa Alcalá, Megan Fernandes, Harryette Mullen, Ilya Kaminsky and Emily Lee Luan as well as ancestors: Rich, June Jordan, Gertrude Stein. In the classroom, student poems and ideas about poetics are shared, questioned, and critiqued. These selected readings explore different strands of poetics that will inform the in-class and assigned prompts allowing student writers to expand their interrogation of the genre and its many forms. You will read, listen, write, and make your own voice seen and heard.
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)
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
Prerequisite: FILM BC3201 or equivalent. First priority enrollment is given to senior Film Studies majors/concentrations. For more information on this semester's visiting instructor from the Artemis Rising Foundation Filmmaker Fellowship Program, visit: https://athenacenter.barnard.edu/arff
This screenwriting seminar provides students an in-depth understanding of the short form which will help them turn their ideas into a short film script (up to 10 pages in length). With a focus on studying contemporary international short films students will learn to write their own short screenplay, as well as learn to give and receive feedback and receive tips on revising their scripts. Homework assignments will include watching films, reading short stories, writing exercises and reading screenplays.
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.
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.
On her “Record of Freshman Interest” form, Zora Neale Hurston, Barnard class of 1928, wrote in response to the question of what vocation or profession she had in mind after graduation, “I have had some small success as a writer and wish above all to succeed at it. Either teaching or social work would be interesting, but consolation prizes.” No consolation prize was necessary as Hurston became one of American and African American literature’s finest writers, America’s first Black anthropologist, and a Black feminist ancestor and icon. A deep dive into Hurston’s work and writing life, this course reads Hurston as a narrative stylist and theorist in multiple genres: as poet, essayist, writer of short stories, novelist, playright, folklorist, and autobiographer. The goal of this class is to read Hurston closely and widely and to identify and examine her aesthetic philosophy and stylistic choices as one of the first African American women able to have a writing “career.”
In Spring of 2026, this class will center the cultural context in which Hurston wrote, using the New York Historical’s exhibition
Gay Harlem Renaissance
. Hurston was an active part of a coterie of artists and intellectuals who made up the “queer mentorship and gay-inclusive salons and friendship circles that helped sustain the Harlem Renaissance.” We will also partner with the Digital Humanities Center at Barnard, as well as Barnard Archives, in the preparation of final digital projects that can be shared with the college community.
Shakespeare's plays as theatrical events. Differing performance spaces, acting traditions, directorial frames, theatre practices, performance theories, critical studies, cultural codes, and historical conventions promote differing modes of engagement with drama in performance. We will explore Shakespeare's plays in the context of actual and possible performance from the Renaissance to the twenty-first century.
From love to anger to disappointment to hope, political activism mobilizes emotions towards certain ends but also generates new affective states and feelings along the way. This advanced seminar will familiarize students with feminist, anti-racist and queer scholarship on affect, feelings and emotion as intrinsic to politics and as crucial for understanding how political thought and action unfold in contingent and often unexpected ways. Mixing theoretical and cultural texts with case studies, we will look at how affect permeates structures of power and domination, embodiment and identity, and collective activist projects concerned with gender and sexual liberation. Students will have an opportunity to read theories of affect as well as to “read” activist movements
for
affect by working with archival documents (such as zines, manifestos, and movement ephemera) and other primary sources (such as memoir, photography and documentary film).
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.
Modern American Drama and Performance in an era of cultural contestation. What is united about the United States? How are the important claims of cultural difference related to the intercultural claims of shared community? Is there a place for historical continuity in the modernist pursuit of change? How have these issues been addressed in the emergence and development of modern drama and performance in America? Questions such as these will be addressed in the context of theatrical exploration, performance history, and social change. Canonical and experimental playwrights include Rachel Crothers, Susan Glaspell, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Eugene O’Neill, Clifford Odets, Thornton Wilder, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Lorraine Hansberry, Edward Albee, Suzan-Lori Parks, Sarah Ruhl, and Dominique Morisseau.
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.
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.
This course is for the 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.
The objective of this class is to examine a given topic and relate it to a number of literary texts. Students will examine a variety of literary genres and to an equally wide variety of cultural, linguistic, and historical contexts.
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.
Even as students learn to be scientists, there is a need to learn how to write about science, translating the science for a general readership. In this seminar we will develop writing skills by, first, close reading and analysis of science writing (on research about humans, non-human animals, and non-animals) for the non-specialist, as well as some of the original research papers from which the pieces arose. We will simultaneously begin an iterative process of composing pieces of different lengths and different genres, based on recently published science papers. Assignments will include a short news summary, book review, an audio interview, and a final feature print or audio story; some of these assignments will involve multiple drafts or stages. Guest speakers and a recording practices intensive from IMATS will complement the readings and writing assignments. We will focus on concept translation, storytelling, and other elements of narrative craft in this writing-intensive seminar. We will also emphasize proper citation practices. Final projects will be a long-form feature or a podcast.
Jacques Derrida was one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century and his impact on literary studies was enormously significant. The objective of this course is to take stock of Derrida’s contribution to literature, and to do so by assessing the intricate relations he establishes between literature, philosophy, economic and political theory, gender studies, translation studies, postcolonial theory, and theology. The course is divided into six parts. Part 1 introduces Derrida’s approach to ‘deconstruction,’ particularly as regards his engagement with the fundamental concepts of Western thought and the importance he confers upon the notion of ‘writing’ itself. Part 2 examines Derrida’s autobiographical texts wherein he positions himself as a subject for deconstruction, interrogating his own gender, his sense of being an organic, creaturely life-form, the relationship he has to his own language, and the matter of his identity as French, but also as Algerian, and Jewish. While the majority of the Derrida texts we will be reading are excerpts from larger works or short essays and interviews, in this section we will read a full-length text –
Monolingualism of the Other
– so that we can trace Derrida’s train of thought from beginning to end. In Part 3 we will use an interview conducted by Derek Attridge, “This Strange Institution Called Literature,” as a template for thinking about Derrida’s relation to literature, and in Part 4 we will read our second full-length text by Derrida, namely
Given Time 1: Counterfeit Money
, an in-depth analysis of a prose poem by the French poet Charles Baudelaire. Part 5 considers an aspect of Derrida’s work that reveals the extent of his embrace of provisional, in-between positions for thought in general, and for literary texts in particular, namely translation. For deconstruction is keenly invested in words beginning with ‘trans’: transposition, transplant, trans-valuation, and indeed trans-gender. Translation provides Derrida with a scenario whereby crossings and transits can be imagined – for literary texts, and for identities that wish to remain un-determined by fixed poles or normative values. The course finishes with an assessment of Derrida’s reflections on death, mourning, and the matter of leaving a legacy. In Part 6, we therefore read more of the essay “Living On,” and also Derrida’s final interview, “Learning to Live, F
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.
Worldmuse Ensemble delves into compelling music from many genres such as world music, gospel, classical--old and new. We perform without a conductor, increasing awareness and interaction among ourselves and our audience. We collaboratively integrate music, dance, and theatre traditions (masks etc.). For experienced singers, and instrumentalists and dancers who sing.
Discussion section for SOCI BC3248: Race, Ethnicity, and Education in the US
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 in the modern era. Course undertakes careful study of the practices of performance, and of the sociocultural, economic, political, and aesthetic conditions animating representative performances in 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 emerging forms and critical practices of performance analysis. 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.
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.
This class is a close reading of postcolonial plays, both as they form a recognizable canon, and as counters to it. Through a grounding in postcolonial theory, students will explore how the colonial encounter leaves a lasting impact on language and performance. How do these playwrights tackle questions of authenticity, influence, inspiration and agency? What stories do they adapt, translate or reimagine? Also, we read in equal measure male and female playwrights, attending to the ways in which power and authority are negotiated by them. This class looks both at plays that are seminal to postcolonial writing and also newer ones that unsettle the position of the greats. Do we then understand postcolonialism as a historically bound literary trend or an ongoing process of exploration? Fundamentally we ask, in our efforts to decolonize the theatre, how do we find new ways or reading? Course fulfills lecture/seminar in drama studies, theatre studies, performance studies requirement for Theatre major.
This course examines Asian American experience through the lens of theatre and performance. These performances are often critical sites where members of the community preserve their cultural legacies and negotiate American racial politics. By discussing representative works by Asian American playwrights, performance artists, and filmmakers, we will cover the following topics: key events in Asian American history; immigration and citizenship; identity and community formation; intersectionality of race, gender, and sexuality; generational differences in Asian American culture; trauma and memory; U.S. imperialism and social justice. This course examines Asian American experience through the lens of theatre and performance. These performances are often critical sites where members of the community preserve their cultural legacies and negotiate American racial politics. By discussing representative works by Asian American playwrights, performance artists, and filmmakers, we will cover the following topics: key events in Asian American history; immigration and citizenship; identity and community formation; intersectionality of race, gender, and sexuality; generational differences in Asian American culture; trauma and memory; U.S. imperialism and social justice.
This is the fieldwork component for the proposed course described below.
Using the overarching theme of “Computer Science in the City,” this course will build participants’ knowledge of pedagogical methods for the teaching of computer science while exploring ways to use the City as a resource for teaching and learning. Course participants will have an opportunity to gain an understanding of concepts and practices appropriate for K-12 students as they explore the New York State Learning Standards.
As we explore the multitude of opportunities for teaching computer science in New York City, we will also take into consideration the diversity of the students that course participants teach or are preparing to teach. We will examine the social and political contexts that learning and teaching happen in, and consider the implications of these contexts for different groups of students. As participants develop an understanding of what it means to be literate in computer science, they will explore ways to make computer science education more meaningful and accessible to all students by infusing it with students’ daily and cultural experiences. We will explore notions of social justice and the implications for teaching computer science for social justice by addressing barriers to engagement, persistence, and achievement in mathematics.
Working in teams to plan for Computer Science Enrichment lessons, participants will explore ways to teach computer science using a constructivist approach while being responsive to the demands of the NYS Next Generation Standards, Universal Design for Learning (UDL), growth mindsets, critiques of growth mindsets, and tenets of justice and caring. Participants will also have an opportunity to build positive computer science mindsets for themselves and for K-12 students as they engage in experiential learning, plan for Computer Science Enrichment sessions that incorporate ways to visualize and communicate computer science content and skills, and evaluate the efficacy of their planning and teaching in light of their students’ learning outcomes.
This is the fieldwork component for the proposed course described below.
Using the overarching theme of “Computer Science in the City,” this course will build participants’ knowledge of pedagogical methods for the teaching of computer science while exploring ways to use the City as a resource for teaching and learning. Course participants will have an opportunity to gain an understanding of concepts and practices appropriate for K-12 students as they explore the New York State Learning Standards.
As we explore the multitude of opportunities for teaching computer science in New York City, we will also take into consideration the diversity of the students that course participants teach or are preparing to teach. We will examine the social and political contexts that learning and teaching happen in, and consider the implications of these contexts for different groups of students. As participants develop an understanding of what it means to be literate in computer science, they will explore ways to make computer science education more meaningful and accessible to all students by infusing it with students’ daily and cultural experiences. We will explore notions of social justice and the implications for teaching computer science for social justice by addressing barriers to engagement, persistence, and achievement in mathematics.
Working in teams to plan for Computer Science Enrichment lessons, participants will explore ways to teach computer science using a constructivist approach while being responsive to the demands of the NYS Next Generation Standards, Universal Design for Learning (UDL), growth mindsets, critiques of growth mindsets, and tenets of justice and caring. Participants will also have an opportunity to build positive computer science mindsets for themselves and for K-12 students as they engage in experiential learning, plan for Computer Science Enrichment sessions that incorporate ways to visualize and communicate computer science content and skills, and evaluate the efficacy of their planning and teaching in light of their students’ learning outcomes.
As an introduction to the field of medical anthropology, this seminar addresses themes of health, affliction, and healing across sociocultural domains. Concerns include critiques of biomedical, epidemiological and other models of disease and suffering; the entwinement of religion and healing; technocratic interventions in healthcare; and the sociomoral underpinnings of human life, death, and survival. A 1000 level course in Anthropology is recommended as a prerequisite, although not required. Enrollment limited to 30. 4 units
Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to Barnard English majors. In the Enlightenment colloquium we will look at English and European imaginative and intellectual life during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. During this period, writers tried in new ways to reconcile the tensions between reason and religion. Categories of thought that underlie our world today were taking shape: secularity, progress, the public and the private, individual rights, religious tolerance. Writers articulated principles of equality in an era of slavery. Literary forms like the novel, which emerges into prominence during this period, express in irreducibly complex ways these and other changes. In this intensive course, we will study from multiple angles a variety of authors that may include Hobbes, Dryden, Locke, Spinoza, Lafayette, Defoe, Swift, Pope, Richardson, Voltaire, Fielding, Johnson, Diderot, Sterne, and Wollstonecraft, among others.
Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 60 students. Critical and historical introduction to selected comedies, histories, tragedies, and romances by Shakespeare. 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.
Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 16 students.
Course surveys the wide range of genres and categories addressed by the practice of modern "performance studies"; it introduces a number of performance practices, as well as relevant interdisciplinary methodologies. Students consider live performances as well as a number of mediated works, learning to think critically and creatively about the relation between text, technology, and the body. Course may fill
either
the Theory requirement,
or
one (of two) required courses in dramatic literature/theatre studies/performance studies for Theatre/Drama and Theatre Arts major, but not both.
The seventeenth century was a century of revolution, giving birth to modern ways of thinking, and calling into question many of the old ways. In the early years, many were affected by melancholy, some believing the world was approaching the endtimes. England experienced plagues, particularly in London, and other catastrophes. So we might find some affinity with our own current situation, facing new challenges, our world turned upside down, which is what many people felt during that time. Out of all of this turmoil, however, came great literature including lyric poems by John Donne and others exploring love and desire, doubt and faith, sex and God. Donne also wrote a series of
Devotions
grappling with mortality over a course of 23 days when he was suffering from typhus or relapsing fever and almost died. Others turned to find solace in the natural world and friendship (Amelia Lanyer, Katherine Philips, Henry Vaughan). Robert Burton wrote a book on melancholy, which he kept adding to. Francis Bacon thought a revolution in science could redeem the world. Thomas Browne, a physician as well as writer, tackled the problem of intolerance and religious conflict. Thomas Hobbes thought only a firm (authoritarian?) government could reestablish peace and security, while Gerard Winstanley (a “Leveller”) thought that owning land (and money) was the source of all war and misery. Transgressive women had their own ideas. The Quaker leader Margaret Fell defended women's right to preach. We will read selections from these and other writers, understanding them in their historical context and with a sense of their current resonance.The seventeenth century was a century of revolution, giving birth to modern ways of thinking, and calling into question many of the old ways. In the early years, many were affected by melancholy, some believing the world was approaching the endtimes. England experienced plagues, particularly in London, and other catastrophes. So we might find some affinity with our own current situation, facing new challenges, our world turned upside down, which is what many people felt during that time. Out of all of this turmoil, however, came great literature including lyric poems by John Donne and others exploring love and desire, doubt and faith, sex and God. Donne also wrote a series of
Devotions
grappling with mortality over a course of 23 days when he was suffering from typhus or relapsing fever and almost died. Others turned to find solace in the natura
This undergraduate course covers deep learning basics, related math and the fundamental theory and application of AI algorithms that are popular in the field of computer graphics. Programming assignments will help students develop GPU programming skills while implementing concepts learned in lectures and readings using deep learning APIs on a GPU cluster. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for colorizing black and white movies is an example. Pre-Requisites: COMS W3157 Advanced Programming, Linear Algebra (UN2010), and Calculus I or higher.
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.
Texts from the late Republican period through the Civil War explore a range of intersecting literary, political, philosophical, and theological issues, including the literary implications of American independence, the status of Native Americans, the nature of the self, slavery and abolition, gender and woman's sphere, and the Civil War. Writers include Washington Irving, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, Frederick Douglass, Margaret Fuller, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Jacobs, and Emily Dickinson.
This course considers how Postmodernisms profound distrust of language and narrative transforms the form and function of literature. Writers include Stoppard, Pynchon, Didion, Morrison, Robinson, Coetzee, Ishiguro, Wallace, Ashbery, and Hejinian.
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.
Home to Harlem focuses on the relationship between art, activism and social justice during the Harlem/ New Negro Renaissance. Exploring the cultural contexts and aesthetic debates that animated Harlem in 1920s to 1930s, the course discusses the politics of literary and theatrical production, while exploring the fashioning and performance of New Negro identity through fiction, poetry, essays, and artwork. Topics considered include: role of Africa/slavery/the south in New Negro expression, patronage, passing, primitivism/popular culture, black dialect as literary language, and the problematics of creating a “racial” art in/for a community comprised of differences in gender, class, sexuality, and geographical origin.
An exploration of alternative theoretical approaches to the study of religion as well as other areas of humanistic inquiry. The methods considered include: sociology, anthropology, philosophy, hermeneutics, psychoanalysis, structuralism, genealogy, and deconstruction. (Previous title: Juniors Colloquium)
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.
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.
Prerequisites: Students required to have taken THTR UN3200 Directing I or THTR UN3203 Collaboration: Directing and Design, or equivalent. Enrollment limited to 14 students. Permission of instructor given at first class meeting. Course focuses on developing an individual directorial style, placing emphasis on visual research, and the use of different staging environments: end-stage, in the round, environmental. Class is structured around scene-work and critique, and each student will direct at least three fully-realized scenes. Material typically drawn from European avant-garde.
Prerequisite: ARCH UN3201. Advanced Architectural Design II culminates the required studio sequence in the major. Students are encouraged to consider it as a synthetic studio where they advance concepts, research methodologies and representational skills learned in all previous studios towards a semester-long design project. Field trips, lectures, and discussions are organized in relation to studio exercises.
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 Determinants 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” Determinants of Health. This shift is in recognition that it is the underlying structures (laws, material infrastructure) that impact 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. An analysis that focuses upstream reveals that government policies and social structure are at the core of health disparities. Through the lens of New York City and its health systems, this course will cover a wide range of topics related to race and health, including: racial inequalities in housing and homelessness, biases in medical institutions, and the unconscious bias that lead providers to have racialized perception of an individual’s pain tolerance. In addition to exposing these inequalities the course will also provide innovative solutions that seek to mitigate these barriers including: home visiting programs, medical respite programs for homeless patients and food as medicine in health care systems. Students will demonstrate their knowledge through individual writing, and class discussion. The course revolves around important readings, lectures, and podcasts that illustrates how one’s class position and the color of one’s skin can influence the access to healthcare one has as well as their experie
Power, Politics, and Society
introduces students to the field of political sociology, a subfield within sociology that is deeply engaged in the study of power in formal and diffuse forms. Using sociological theories and current events from the US and around the world, this course is designed to help students analyze their social worlds, and understand the significance of the old adage, “everything is political.”
In this course, we will examine the relationship between government and the governed in the United States. To what extent and under what circumstances do elected officials consider public preferences in making policy? To what extent and under what circumstances might we want them to? What kind of power should the public have in American democracy? Thinking about the second and third, more normative questions leads us to other empirical questions. What shapes public preferences? How well can we measure them? How much do people know and care about politics? How do they evaluate their representatives? What constitutes high quality representation? We will examine these kinds of questions broadly, and also consider how they play out in particular policy areas and historical moments. We will also discuss the dynamics of public opinion across population subgroups (e.g. by race, sex, income, party, urbanity, etc.), and questions surrounding representation at the group level. In addition to engaging scholarly literature on public opinion and representation, students will also learn to access, manage, and analyze data measuring the composition of the public (e.g. the U.S. Census) as well as public views on political candidates, officeholders, institutions, and issues (e.g. survey data). These skills will help to prepare students for research projects in other courses and beyond Barnard. To balance the different aims of the course, our class time will be split between lecture, discussion, and hands-on lessons in a computer lab.
Analysis of the complex relationship among race, art, organizations, economics, social movements and identity. Emphasis is on shifting conceptions of identity and changing roles of race and racism in the spirituals, gospel music, minstrelsy, rhythm and blues, rocknroll, soul music, Hip Hop and contemporary popular music.
Emphasizes foundations and development of black communities post-1940, and mechanisms in society that create and maintain racial inequality. Explores notions of identity and culture through lenses of gender, class and sexual orientation, and ideologies that form the foundation of black politics. Primarily lecture with some discussion.
Although Victorian fiction is best known today for its realist commitment to representing the world “as it really is,” especially in genres such as the courtship novel and the Bildungsroman, Victorian novelists also wrote during an age of enthusiastic scientific inquiry that questioned and revised the very fabric of the reality that realist genres purported to represent. This course will accordingly explore the more adventurous and speculative fiction of the Victorian period that was most closely attuned to these new ways of representing and thinking about reality. How did new scientific developments such as evolutionary theory in biology, and the atomic theory in physics, reshape how writers viewed the relationships between human and animal, self and other, space and time, body and mind? How did departing from traditional realist modes enable Victorian science fiction writers to explore the ethical, social, and political implications of scientific theories in ways that scientific prose may not have envisioned? In this course we will read major works of Victorian fiction, by such authors as Mary Shelley, H.G. Wells, H. Rider Haggard, Robert Louis Stevenson, and others, alongside selections of scientific prose in such fields of Victorian science as biology, physics, mathematics, anthropology, and psychology. Throughout the course, we will understand “science” to include both major developments in the history of science, such as the emergence of evolutionary thought, as well as more eccentric Victorian areas of inquiry, such as phrenology, mesmerism, telepathy, and degeneration. The first three units into which the course is divided each explore a major field of Victorian science alongside a major conceptual category that it challenged and altered: biology and the nature of the human; psychology and the constitution of the self; the physical sciences and the nature of space and time. In each unit, we will investigate how writers’ engagements with these conceptual questions led them to experiment with literary categories such as character, narration, and plot. The course will close with a unit on texts that more broadly address Victorian conceptions of progress, technology, and development. In addition to these specific thematic and formal questions, we will think broadly about how the Victorians understood the value of science and technology in relation to the arts and to literature, and ask what their answers to these questions can offer us as we navigate similar questions today. Wh
This class examines different religious histories of New York City from the early 1800s through the 1950s. We will explore how different religious traditions were shaped by the city and its diversity, and how those people and institutions left their imprints on the city we live in today. The first half of the semester focuses on intersecting themes of religion and capitalism, religion and gender and sexuality, and on the social dynamics of the city’s symbolic meanings as place of refuge and liberation (for domestic and foreign migrants) or as a locus of sin in need of moral reform. The second half of the semester turns to case studies of different neighborhoods including Harlem, the Lower East Side, Williamsburg, and Flushing. How did different religious communities conceptualize “the neighborhood” in relation to the larger city, and how did they grapple with diversity and change? Students will also be introduced to archival collections of the East Harlem Protestant Parish and several settlement houses located at the Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary and at Butler Library.
The revolutionary period (1905-1938) in Russia was not only one of extreme social upheaval but also of exceptional creativity. Established ideas about individuality and collectivity, about how to depict reality, about language, gender, authority, and violence, were all thrown open to radical questioning. Out of this chaos came ideas about literature and film (just for example) which have shaped Western thought on these subjects to this day. In this course we will study a variety of media and genres (poetry, manifestos, film, painting, photomontage, the novel, theoretical essays) in an effort to gain a deep understanding of this complex and fascinating period in Russian cultural history.
Two epic novels, Tolstoys War and Peace and Dostoevskys The Brothers Karamazov, will be read along with selected shorter works. Other works by Tolstoy include his early Sebastopol Sketches, which changed the way war is represented in literature; Confession, which describes his spiritual crisis; the late stories Kreutzer Sonata and Hadji Murad; and essays on capital punishment and a visit to a slaughterhouse. Other works by Dostoevsky include his fictionalized account of life in Siberian prison camp, The House of the Dead; Notes from the Underground, his philosophical novella on free will, determinism, and love; A Gentle Creature, a short story on the same themes; and selected essays from Diary of a Writer. The focus will be on close reading of the texts. Our aim will be to develop strategies for appreciating the structure and form, the powerful ideas, the engaging storylines, and the human interest in the writings of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. No knowledge of Russian is required.
This seminar critically reexamines the ancient world from the perspective of gender archaeology. Though the seedlings of gender archaeology were first sown by of feminist archaeologists during the 70’s and 80’s, this approach involves far more than simply ‘womanizing’ androcentric narratives of past. Rather, gender archaeology criticizes interpretations of the past that transplant contemporary social roles onto the archaeological past, casting the divisions and inequalities of today as both timeless and natural. This class challenges the idea of a singular past, instead championing a turn towards multiple, rich, messy, intersectional pasts. The ‘x’ in ‘archaeolxgy’ is an explicit signal of our focus on this diversity of pasts and a call for a more inclusive field of practice today.
Writing sample required to apply: https://english.barnard.edu/english/creative-writing-courses
In this class we will discuss the narrative of the "American" story, and how stories of immigrants and minority identities redefine and complicate it. The goal of the class is to investigate how writers frame a sense of identity in relation to the "American ideal". We will explore this theme through three creative non-fiction pieces each focusing on a different perspective of place, person, and personal experience. What are your stories, and what makes them "American"?
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This seminar considers what it means to be of a place and to think with and be committed to that place—environmentally, politically, and spiritually. After locating ourselves in our own particular places and place-based commitments, our attention turns to the Indigenous traditions of North America, to accounts of tribal emergence and pre-colonial being, to colonial histories of land dispossession, to ongoing struggles to protect ecological health and land-based sovereignty, to the epistemological and moral systems that have developed over the course of many millennia of living with and for the land, and to the contributions such systems might make to our collective future. The seminar’s title is borrowed from an essay on “Indigenous place-thought” by Mohawk/Anishinaabe scholar Vanessa Watts.
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.
Examines the ways sociologists have studied the field of medicine and experiences of health and illness. We cannot understand topics of health and illness by only looking at biological phenomena; we must consider a variety of social, political, economic, and cultural forces. Uses sociological perspectives and methods to understand topics such as: unequal patterns in health and illness; how people make sense of and manage illness; the ways doctors and patients interact with each other; changes in the medical profession, health policies and institutions; social movements around health; and how some behaviors but not others become understood as medical problems. Course is geared towards pre-med students as well as those with general interests in medicine, health and society.
This course explores the sociology and history of race and racism, ethnicity and ethnocentrism, and unequal access to education in the United States through readings, films, audio, and multimedia. Experiences of students in public and private K-12 schools, colleges and universities, and alternative and informal educational settings will be considered. Movements by students and communities to fight discrimination and injustice, demand equal opportunities and resources, and to realize the promise of education as a means of achieving personal and collective liberation will also be examined. Case studies may include: boarding schools for Indigenous children; Reconstruction-era public schools; the settlement house movement; Freedom Schools of the Civil Rights Movement; the Black Panther Party’s educational initiatives; community-controlled schools; Black, Mexican American, Puerto Rican, and Ethnic Studies programs; urban educational reform, public school closures, and charter schools; the school-to-prison pipeline; standardized testing and advanced placement courses; and more.
In This JAZZ llI Level Course,
You will develop a solid understanding within your body that demonstrates advanced fundamentals, rhythm, technique, connectivity and phrasing necessary to communicate each movement. You will learn new phrases and dynamic material while continuously applying technical information. We will delve deeper into technique preparing your body to perform more efficiently and effectively at a higher rate while reducing the risk of injury.
Prerequisites: DNCE BC2248 DNCD BC 2249 or permission of instructor.
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.
This seminar examines the social, economic, and political landscapes of Latin American cities through ethnographic literature. It explores key themes such as migration, urban poverty, marginality, violence, informality, urban segregation, grassroots movements, urban citizenship and neoliberal urban governance. Students will read both classic and contemporary ethnographies to gain an in-depth understanding of how cities are lived and experienced. The course also unsettles the category of Latin America, to introduce a discussion of the “Latinization” of U.S. cities. We will interrogate ethnographic and audiovisual materials (included to complement the readings) from a postcolonial perspective. We will discuss the politics of knowledge production and representation in ethnographic studies and popular culture, the impact of colonialism in transnational flows of knowledge and labor, as well as the contributions to urban theory from the perspective of cities located in the Global South.
Prerequisites: POLS W1201 or an equivalent. Not an introductory course. Not open to students who have taken the colloquium POLS BC3302. Examines the first amendment rights of speech, press, religion and assembly. In-depth analysis of landmark Supreme Court rulings provides the basis for exploring theoretical antecedents as well as contemporary applications of such doctrines as freedom of association, libel, symbolic speech, obscenity, hate speech, political speech, commercial speech, freedom of the press and religion. (Cross-listed by the American Studies Program.)
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.
What does it mean to be intelligent? Recent years have seen rapid advances in artificial intelligence technology that enables computers and machines to simulate human learning, comprehension, problem solving, creativity and autonomy. At the same time, we have become more aware of other forms of intelligence—some which have been with us all along. Through a selection of fiction and nonfiction texts and films, students will deepen their understanding of the multifaceted nature of intelligence and the fascinating, uncanny, and multiple ways of existing on, off, and in the earth.
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.
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.
Prerequisites: 1 year of Introductory Biology, 1 year General Chemistry, and 1st semester Organic Chemistry. Biochemistry is the study of the chemical processes within organisms that give rise to the immense complexity of life. This complexity emerges from a highly regulated and coordinated flow of chemical energy from one biomolecule to another. This course serves to familiarize students with the spectrum of biomolecules (carbohydrates, lipids, amino acids, nucleic acids, etc.) as well as the fundamental chemical processes (glycolysis, citric acid cycle, fatty acid metabolism, etc.) that allow life to happen. The course will end with a discussion of diseases that have biochemical etiologies. In particular, this course will employ active learning techniques and critical thinking problem-solving to engage students in answering the question: how is the complexity of life possible? NOTE: While only the 1st semester of Organic Chemistry is listed as a pre-requisite, it is highly recommended that you take all of Organic Chemistry beforehand.
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.
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.
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.