THE WEBCOMICS REVOLUTION
The internet and digital technologies have profoundly impacted the way that comics and graphic novels are produced, distributed, and read because they no longer need to be produced and printed on paper and distributed to readers in that medium. A related development in this technological revolution is the emergence and proliferation of webcomics, a type of comic that has allowed creators to avoid having to rely on publishers for distribution and marketing. As Sean Kleefeld (2020) points out, webcomics differ from those digital comics and graphic novels which use the internet only as a means of distribution. For webcomics the creator’s intention lies at the root of this distinction as a webcomic’s creator intends for the web to be the only means of distribution. In addition, webcomics differ technologically, as they do not require proprietary software for reading. This course examines the webcomics revolution in a multifaceted way in order to understand how the internet and related technologies have allowed creators to produce and distribute comic narratives that address subjects neglected by the print and digital publishing industry. Because of webcomics absolute reliance on digital technologies for production and distribution, this course will consider those technologies as part of our investigation into what makes webcomics distinct from traditional print comics and graphic novels. As part of this investigation, we will look at how webcomics are built and distributed. We will therefore think about the ways that reading webcomics on a computer screen or smartphone differs from the experience of reading a printed comic or graphic novel. This will lead to a consideration of why webcomics are distributed in a single-page format as opposed to print and digital comics and graphic novels that can comprise hundreds of pages. We’ll think about how webcomic creators’ use of the single page as the smallest unit of information is not only connected to the production process but is also part of the need to use search engines and social media to help readers find and access the webcomics. To enhance these topical explorations, students will make webcomics and webpages to host them, in order to gain a practical as well as conceptual understanding. As the class considers these topics, the course readings will include selections from some of the most prominent webcomics in recent years. These selections have been chosen to represent a range of genres and page formats in order to allow students to consi
- MW 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
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Instructor:
Benjamin M Breyer
CULPA: 13
Info
- 3 points
Poetry-ish: Hybridity and Society
Poetry-ish: Hybridity & S
Poetry-ish is a class examining how poetry speaks to, merges with, or embeds itself in other
genres in order to make a multimedia social statement. We will look at the intersections between
craft and criticism, audience and experimentation, history and self-expression. Readings will
move from early examples of hybridity to postmodern experimentation to creative examinations
into such contemporary issues as climate change, A.I., and the structural racism that inspired
Black Lives Matter. Genres include legal treaties, programming code, comics, cinema, opera,
jazz, and of course, poetry. Students will be asked to write three short essays, take turns leading
class discussion, submit one longer research-based project, and engage in various creative and
critical writing exercises throughout the semester. Planned authors include Layli Long Soldier,
William Blake, Franny Choi, JP Howard, Vanessa Anglica Villarreal, Douglas Kearney, Daveed
Diggs, and Langston Hughes.
- TR 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Quincy Jones
Info - 3 points
THE ART OF THE ESSAY
Essay writing above the first-year level. Reading and writing various types of essays to develop one's natural writing voice and craft thoughtful, sophisticated and personal essays.
- W 11 a.m.-12:50 p.m.
- M 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
- W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Vrinda Condillac
CULPA: 28
Info
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Instructor:
Margaret R Ellsberg
CULPA: 54 Info -
Instructor:
Shelly Fredman
CULPA: 3
Info
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Instructor:
Margaret R Ellsberg
CULPA: 54 Info - 3 points
FICTION & PERSONAL NARRATIVE
Writing sample required to apply. Instructions and the application form can be found here:
https://english.barnard.edu/english/creative-writing-courses
. Short stories and other imaginative and personal writing.
- T 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
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Instructor:
Alexandra P Watson
CULPA: 16 Info - 3 points
INTRODUCTION TO FICTION WRITING
INTRO TO FICTION WRITING
Writing sample required to apply. Instructions and the application form can be found here:
https://english.barnard.edu/english/creative-writing-courses
. In this course, we will learn and practice essential concepts and techniques of writing fiction. We’ll break down the elements of the craft—everything from character, setting, and pacing to point of view, syntax, and imagery––and we’ll build an understanding of how stories work. Class time will include exercises and prompts; close reading of a wide range of published stories; discussions of process; and workshops of student stories. Come prepared to work hard, be open, and take risks.
- F 9 a.m.-10:50 a.m.
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Instructor:
Cleyvis Natera
Info - 3 points
INTRODUCTION TO POETRY WRITING
Writing sample required to apply. Instructions and the application form can be found here:
https://english.barnard.edu/english/creative-writing-courses
.
Varied assignments designed to confront the difficulties and explore the resources of language through imitation, allusion, free association, revision, and other techniques.
- T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
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Instructor:
Faculty
h-index: 37 Info - 3 points
PLAYWRITING II
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.
- T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
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Instructor:
Kathleen Tolan
CULPA: 1 Info - 3 points
STORY WRITING II
Writing sample required to apply. Instructions and the application form can be found here:
https://english.barnard.edu/english/creative-writing-courses
. Advanced workshop in writing, with emphasis on the short story. Some experience in the writing of fiction required. Conference hours to be arranged.
- R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Nellie G Hermann
Info - 3 points
FICTION WRITING
Writing sample required to apply. Instructions and the application form can be found here:
https://english.barnard.edu/english/creative-writing-courses
.
Assignments designed to examine form and structure in fiction.
- T 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
- W 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
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Instructor:
Sarah Wang
Info -
Instructor:
Faculty
h-index: 37 Info - 3 points
ADVANCED POETRY WRITING
Writing sample required to apply. Instructions and the application form can be found here:
https://english.barnard.edu/english/creative-writing-courses
. Weekly workshops designed to generate and critique new poetry. Each participant works toward the development of a cohesive collection of poems. Readings in traditional and contemporary poetry will also be included.
- W 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Faculty
h-index: 37 Info - 3 points
PUBLIC SPEAKING
Open only to undergraduates.
This course will introduce you to principles of effective public speaking and debate, and provide practical opportunities to use these principles in structured speaking situations. You will craft and deliver speeches, engage in debates and panel discussions, analyze historical and contemporary speakers, and reflect on your own speeches and those of your classmates. You will explore and practice different rhetorical strategies with an emphasis on information, persuasion and argumentation. For each speaking assignment, you will go through the speech-making process, from audience analysis, purpose and organization, to considerations of style and delivery. The key criteria in this course are content, organization, and adaptation to the audience and purpose. While this is primarily a performance course, you will be expected to participate extensively as a listener and critic, as well as a speaker.
- TR 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
- TR 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Daniela Kempf
Info - 3 points
ADVANCED POETRY WRITING II
Writing sample required to apply. Instructions and the application form can be found here:
https://english.barnard.edu/english/creative-writing-courses
. In this workshop, we will explore poetry writing as the pursuit and expression of a liberatory language– the language of our highest attention and freedom– shared between reader and writer, and consider the metaphysics and motivations for making meaning and making it our own. In addition to workshops, we will alternate between classes centered on formal and thematic explorations with others focusing on contemplative practices and our writing process. Readings will range diversely through eras and modes including works, among others, by Sun Buer, Audre Lorde, Hannah Emerson, Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, and Mónica de la Torre.
- F 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Farnoosh Fathi
Info - 3 points
CREATIVE NON-FICTION
Writing sample required to apply. Instructions and the application form can be found here:
https://english.barnard.edu/english/creative-writing-courses
.
In this class, you'll write two personal essays, about fifteen pages each. We'll spend each class discussing two student essays and one published essay. My goal in this class--besides building a community of people to talk about writing together--is for each student to figure out what drives them to write, what they're most driven to write about, and how their mind works. I like to find and bring out each student's strengths as a writer, storyteller, thinker.
I'm a comics artist (long-form) and cartoonist (short-form), and I encourage anyone with an interest in making comics or other kinds of visual narratives to do so. I can offer help with very nuts and bolts things like materials and computer programs, as well as help telling a clear story in a sometimes complicated medium.
I don't think there are clear, universal boundaries between non-fiction and fiction, personal essay and journalistic essay, fact and story (in a creative writing context, I mean!), long-form and short-form, written word and other modes of communication - and I like for students to start to figure out their own personal differentiations and definitions.
Homework for this class is mostly reading. There's also a quick weekly writing assignment, graded pass/fail, just to keep you writing regularly. In our workshops, we go over the essays in draft form. I don't grade the essays until they're officially turned in at the end of the semester.
- W 11 a.m.-12:50 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Nina Sharma
CULPA: 5
Info
- 3 points
SHAKESPEARE IN PERFORMANCE
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.
- T 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
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Instructor:
Patricia D Denison
CULPA: 10 Info - 4 points
RESTORATION & 18TH-CENTURY DRAMA, PERFOR
PERFORMANCES/ADAPTATION
Performance practices, historical commentaries, and creative theories that focus, but not exclusively, on 1660 to 1790. These include re-imagined revivals, cross-cultural adaptations, transnational perspectives, and inventive investigations from the seventeenth century to the twenty-first century. In our seminar, we will investigate how people often think of themselves and others in terms of group identifications, which typically rely upon unexamined stereotypes. We will explore how dramatists create characters who not only play predictable roles but also play with these roles, often adapting them as well as adopting them. This enables dramatists to use inherited conventions to explore the realms of individual agency and social change. Playwrights may include William Wycherley, George Etheredge, Aphra Behn, Thomas Southerne, William Congreve, George Farquhar, Susannah Centlivre, John Gay, Oliver Goldsmith, Richard Sheridan, Bertolt Brecht, Timberlake Wertenbaker, April De Angelis, Biyi Bandele, and Tanika Gupta.
- W 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Patricia D Denison
CULPA: 10 Info - 4 points
EARLY 20TH-CENTURY UNITED STATES DRAMA A
EARLY 20TH-C US DRAMA & P
The beginning of the 20th century in the United States was a time of turbulence: the excitement of a new century mixed with the flurry of voices trying to define “What makes an American, American.” Theatre reflected and inflected discussions, arguments, debates and celebrations of identity and belonging. And, everything was up for debate: morals, religion, sexuality, gender roles, race–all factions clawing towards ideals of citizenship. In this seminar, we will explore early 20th-century American theater as a forum for these debates–plays and performances of all types assert visibility of both issues and bodies, politicizing both in the process. We will begin by looking at the end of the 19th century as the nation engaged with the end of legally enslaving African Americans, the Women’s Suffrage movement gearing up, and the national debates on immigration, morality and religion–and all made their way to the stages of theater and Performance in the United States. Topics in this seminar will include The Harlem Renaissance, The Little Theatre Movement, Comstock/Censorship Laws, Broadway Fare, Popular Entertainment, Female Playwrights, Queer Theatre, Popular Music (to name a few more than “a few”).
- W 10:10 a.m.-noon
-
Instructor:
Pamela Cobrin
CULPA: 6
Info
- 4 points
Jews in Christian Narrative
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.
- W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Wendy C Schor-Haim
CULPA: 11
Info
- 4 points
WALK THIS WAY
Whats in a walk? This course undertakes an interdisciplinary study of a fundamental human activity, focusing on philosophical and aesthetic treatments of human locomotion. After first examining the history of walking as a social, economic, religious, and political activity, the course will concentrate on urban walking and how it has been represented in text and image from ancient times to the present. Topics will include walking as introspection, escape, recreation, and discovery; walking and gender; the psychogeography of walking, walking in the city, etc. Readings from Austen, Wordsworth, Dickens, Thoreau, Whitman, Joyce, Woolf, OHara, De Certeau, and many others. Images from film, painting, and photography to be provided by student research. Ditto for musical strolls.
- TR 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
-
Instructor:
William C Sharpe
CULPA: 12
h-index: 11
Info
- 3 points
DANTE AND CHAUCER
Geoffrey Chaucer, “the father of English literature,” was also the first known English reader of Dante – generally regarded as the greatest poet in a modern European language – and the question of how to respond to the legacy of his powerful predecessor left its mark on many of Chaucer’s works. Was “Chaucer,” the self-identified hero of The Canterbury Tales, based on “Dante,” the poet pilgrim who, in the Commedia, claims to have personally visited Hell, Purgatory and Paradise? And if so, as seems likely, what do we make of Chaucer’s rejection of Dante’s “beautiful style,” and his comparative emphasis on irony, incompleteness, and bodily humor? Reading these foundational authors side-by-side sheds unexpected light on each. Could it be that Chaucer was Dante’s canniest reader? In this
seminar we will read generous extracts from Chaucer in the original Middle English, as well as the Commedia of Dante, and additional short texts, in modern English translation.
- W 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Eugene A Petracca
Info - 4 points
THE ENGLISH COLLOQUIUM
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.
- R 9:10 a.m.-10:50 a.m.
- T 11 a.m.-12:50 p.m.
- W 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
- M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Ross T Hamilton
CULPA: 25
Info
-
Instructor:
Achsah Guibbory
CULPA: 17
Info
-
Instructor:
Jayne Hildebrand
CULPA: 3
Info
-
Instructor:
Andrew L Lynn
CULPA: 17
Info
- 4 points
MEDIEVAL LOVE LITERATURE
Love dominates, according to received opinion, the literature of the Middle Ages, a period that indeed saw the emergence of courtly romance and Troubadour poetry. But medieval love literature is not all brave knights pining for haughty ladies. Love, for medieval writers, could be sacred or transgressive, irrational or philosophical, transcendent or debasing – and often it was several of these things at once. On the other hand, in a time when everything claims to be about love, one may sometimes be tempted to wonder if nothing is, and the topic certainly provided a space for medieval writers to explore a number of related themes such as gender, class, cultural difference, nature, and truth. In this course we will consider a selection of these rich and paradoxical texts, as we read in a variety of
genres by authors across Europe including but not limited to: Abelard and Heloise, Ibn Hazm, Marie de France, Chretien de Troyes, Boccaccio, Petrarch, and Christine de Pisan.
- TR 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
-
Instructor:
Eugene A Petracca
Info - 3 points
SHAKESPEARE II
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.
- TR 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Rachel Eisendrath
CULPA: 6
Info
- 3 points
17TH-CENTURY PROSE & POETRY
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
- TR 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Achsah Guibbory
CULPA: 17
Info
- 3 points
LITERATURE AND PSYCHOANALYSIS
Love him or hate him—or both, as is more often and more fittingly the case—you must admit that Freud turned the world upside-down. Against the supposed supremacy of rational consciousness, he found the power of the unconscious. At the heart of civilized order, he uncovered ever more sophisticated mechanisms of repression. Where the world saw the march of progress, he saw the death drive. And he discovered all of this through a new invention, a science of narrative, called psychoanalysis. According to this science, we are the stories we tell. And this means that we, our lives, our joys and anxieties, our past and our future, are like any story: always open to interpretation. In this course, we turn this lens back upon psychoanalysis, opening its clinical history and fundamental concepts to critical, literary interpretation. Beginning with Freud but moving beyond him, we will read foundational psychoanalytic texts alongside plays, poetry, novels, short stories, and films that corroborate, complicate, and contest the Freudian framework. We will consider the intrinsically literary qualities of psychoanalysis and, inversely, we will ask what literature, literary criticism, and literary theory gain or lose in this critical relation to psychoanalysis.
- TR 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Nathan Gorelick
Info - 3 points
Marxist Materialisms: Change the World
Philosophers have only interpreted the world, wrote Marx in the
Theses on Feuerbach
: the point is to change it. Perhaps this is the origin of
theory
. In this seminar we will examine theories that both explain the world and help us change it, to make it more peaceable, sustainable, equal, and just.
Our point of departure is therefore Marx and his understanding of equality rooted in economic justice. We will familiarize ourselves with concepts such as capital and class consciousness, reification, commodification, totality, and alienation, and explore how they have been used to rethink literary and mass cultural forms and their ongoing transformations in a changing world system. Other theorists may include J-J Rousseau, Sigmund Freud, Franz Fanon, Eric Williams, Georg Lukács, Mikhail Bakhtin, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, C.L.R. James, Frantz Fanon, Amílcar Cabral, Edward Said, Antonio Gramsci, Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Louis Althusser, Guy Debord, Gayatri Spivak, Vivek Chibber, Achille Mbebe, Kohei Saito, Giovanni Arrighi, Pascale Casanova, Slavov Zizek, and Melinda Cooper. Seminar members are invited to bring examples from texts – poems, novels, art, film, media, and digital culture –that reveal, through their depictions of injustice, what justice might be.
- R 11 a.m.-12:50 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Ross T Hamilton
CULPA: 25
Info
- 4 points
AMERICAN LITERATURE 1800-1870
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.
- MW 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Lisa Gordis
CULPA: 15 Info - 3 points
MODRN BRITISH & AMERCAN POETRY
Poetry written in English during the past century, discussed in the context of modernism, postmodernism, literary theory, and changing social and technological developments. Students will participate in shaping the syllabus and leading class discussion. Authors may include Yeats, Williams, Eliot, Moore, Bishop, Rich, Ginsberg, Stevens, O Hara, Plath, Brooks, Jordan, Walcott, Alexie, and many others.
- TR 8:40 a.m.-9:55 a.m.
-
Instructor:
William C Sharpe
CULPA: 12
h-index: 11
Info
- 3 points
POSTMODERNISM
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.
- TR 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Kristi-Lynn Cassaro
Info - 3 points
CRITICAL WRITING
(Formerly called Literary Criticism - Theory.) Provides experience in the reading and analysis of literary texts and some knowledge of conspicuous works of literary criticism. 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.
- TR 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
- TR 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
- MW 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
- TR 5:40 p.m.-6:55 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Atefeh Akbari Shahmirzadi
Info -
Instructor:
Kristi-Lynn Cassaro
Info -
Instructor:
Andrew L Lynn
CULPA: 17
Info
-
Instructor:
Eugene A Petracca
Info - 4 points
THE 'GLOBAL' NOVEL
"Yes, globalization can produce homogeneity, but globalization is also a threat to homogeneity." --Kwame Anthony Appiah, "The Case for Contamination," New York Times Magazine, 2006
Thinking through the arguments both in favor of and against globalization, particularly in the realm of cultural productions, in this course we will discuss the "global" novel. To that end, we will read essays from
The Global Novel: Writing the World in the 21st Century
about works such as
Americanah, Snow,
and
The Reluctant Fundamentalist
(along with the novels themselves) to investigate what is meant by "global" and what the criteria for including novels in this categorization are. We will also consider whether there is an erasure of cultural difference and nuance in reading novels using a globalizing perspective in order to render them more approachable for a (primarily) US audience.
In order to think through and challenge this category of the global, we will also read novels that can be roughly categorized as postcolonial. We will thus consider how struggles for independence and the desire to locate one’s identity either within freshly liberated nation-states or in the process of immigrating to former metropoles could give rise to cultural and psychological anxieties. We will also consider the manner in which late-stage capitalism could indeed push toward homogenized senses of self that manifest in a category such as the "global novel" and whether arguments could be made in favor of such homogenization. Ultimately, we will think about the politics of globalization and the desire to include in or exclude from the “global” certain locations, cultural products, or peoples.
- TR 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Atefeh Akbari Shahmirzadi
Info - 3 points
AMERICAN LIVES, AMERICAN STORIES
AMER. LIVES, AMER. STORIE
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"?
- R 10:10 a.m.-noon
-
Instructor:
Maria D Hinojosa
Info - 3 points
NINETEENTH-CENTURY THRILLERS
This class will investigate the ways in which the nineteenth-century novel is shaped by the forces of horror, sensation, suspense and the supernatural. We will ask how the melodramatic imagination, the rhetoric of monstrosity, and the procedures of detection mark high narrative realism with the signs of cultural anxieties building up around nineteenth-century revolution, industrialization, capitalism, bigamy, Catholicism and immigration. Looking at representative samples of the Romantic neo-gothic novel, mid-century ghost stories, the highly popular and controversial sensation novels of the 1860’s along with their spectacular iterations on the Victorian stage, we will come away with a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the intersection between the novel and popular entertainment. Readings will probably include Austen’s
Northanger Abbey,
Brontë’s
Villette,
Braddon’s
Lady Audley’s Secret,
Collins’s
The Woman in White,
Dickens’s
Bleak House,
Stoker’s
Dracula,
plays by Boucicault, Hazelwood, Lewis, and Wood, and ghost stories by Edwards, Gaskell, Hood, and Mulock.
- W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Monica F Cohen
CULPA: 8
Info
- 4 points
ILLEGAL IS NOT A NOUN: DISRUPTING NARRAT
This course engages with narratives about detention and deportation in the modern United States, with special attention to the stories of Latinx people. We will analyze how journalistic writing, documentaries, and personal narratives shape public policy and American attitudes about the "the immigrant experience." What are these narratives, how are they told, and what are their implications? How do writers disrupt these narratives? We will develop four scholarly essays over the course of the semester to investigate these questions.
- R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
-
Instructor:
Maria D Hinojosa
Info - 4 points
Changing Climate, Changing World
Changing Climate and Worl
An interdisciplinary course focused on environmental humanities and based in the English department, “Changing Climate, Changing World” will examine the representation of nature across time and its implications for global warming and biodiversity from multiple perspectives, emphasizing issues of climate change and environmental justice. The course will provide a conceptual framework for reading and critiquing the representation of nature in the context of historical, economic, social, cultural, scientific and political change.
The course design asks students to address climate change in the context of the industrial revolution before discussing environmental issues in a pre-industrial and finally a post-industrial context. We will begin in media res by addressing issues of industrialization and colonialism in the mid-18th and 19th century before considering indigenous, medieval, and renaissance representations of nature. In the second half of the course, we return to examine contemporary issues from the early 20th century to the present.
The course will meet twice weekly in Spring 2025. One of these meetings will include a lecture with a guest faculty member from Barnard and Columbia, or occasionally with other experts, artists, and activists from New York and beyond, followed by questions from the audience on the lecture. The second meeting will emphasize student discussion of the lecture and associated readings, with the purpose of integrating each lecture into the total course framework. Since all the participating faculty are teaching full time, we will aim to schedule lectures in the late afternoon or evening to minimize conflicts. We would also like to open some of the lectures to the public, either virtually or in person, so that their impact could be felt beyond the class itself.
- MW 5:40 p.m.-6:55 p.m.
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Instructor:
Linn C Mehta
CULPA: 18
Info
- 4 points
PERSIAN POETICS IN WORLD LITERATURE
Through a transcontinental network of poets and poetics from Iran and Russia to Germany and the United States, in this course we will: 1) learn about classical Persian poetry that was translated widely and contributed to the development of World Literature (the cornerstone of which was Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s
weltliteratur
) and to study different translations and adaptations of this poetry; 2) study world poetry that Iranian poets had translated into Persian and analyze how these translations may have affected modern Persian poetics; 3) read in comparison modern Persian poetry and African diasporic poetry, discuss the intersections of the power structures of gender, class, race and ethnicity, and analyze how these power structures manifested themselves in pre-revolutionary Iran (and ultimately, what can be learned from including this historical context in contemporary Caribbean and African American studies).
On a broader scale, this course aims to place Persian poetry and poetics within a world literature discourse, both in terms of
its
historical contributions to this discourse as well as the discourse’s contributions
to
Persian poetics. It is meant to encourage you to investigate the role that translation plays in world literary studies; at the same time, it acknowledges the limits of global markets of literature and their politics of translation. Weeks eight through thirteen of the course in which Iranian poetry is put into conversation with African diasporic poetry, therefore, demonstrate the possibilities that open up in world literary studies when scholars expand their focus beyond proven literary connections and underscore cultural provenance as a basis for comparison.
- W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Atefeh Akbari Shahmirzadi
Info - 4 points
THE AMERICAN SUPERNATURAL
In this course, we'll consider American texts about the supernatural. We'll begin in the colonial period, when many New Englanders interpreted surprising events as divine or demonic interventions. We'll look at texts about Salem witchcraft and colonial revivals, comparing the way authors argue that these events are supernatural or natural, divine or diabolical. We'll then consider American writers who use the supernatural to explore the human mind, issues of class and gender, and questions of history and identity. Throughout the course, we’ll also consider the way that supernatural stories function as entertainment, and consider the implications of choosing to entertain ourselves and each other with fear and wonder.
- W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Lisa Gordis
CULPA: 15 Info - 4 points
DEPRESSION
Depression has existed for all time. But our explanations of it has shifted, from sin, to an imbalance of the humours, and a poetic inspiration; from the eighteenth-century mechanistic understanding of the self, to the Freudian family romance that generates trauma, and to our current neuro-genetic understanding of the mind as a machine that can achieve happiness with pharmaceutical intervention. We will follow these permutations, even as we read novels, poems, plays, and view film (and art) for their diagnostic awareness of mental suffering. And we will also ask the question: what if depression comes not from within but without, the intelligent response of aware minds to a world that has become undone.
- W 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
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Instructor:
Daphne Miriam Merkin
Wikipedia Info - 4 points
LITERARY APPROACHES TO BIBLE
Interpretive strategies for reading the Bible as a work with literary dimensions. Considerations of poetic and rhetorical structures, narrative techniques, and feminist exegesis will be included. Topics for investigation include the influence of the Bible on literature.
- M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Margaret R Ellsberg
CULPA: 54 Info - 4 points
SENIOR PROJECT IN CREATIVE WRITING
SENIOR PROJ: CREATIVE WRI
Enrollment limited to Barnard senior English majors with a concentration in creative writing.
This creative writing workshop represents an opportunity for creative writing concentrators to focus on one large project that will serve as a capstone senior project. As in a typical writing workshop, much of the focus will be on sharing and critiquing student work. Unlike other workshops, in this class students will focus on building out a longer project—such as a more ambitious full-length story for fiction and creative nonfiction writers and a chapbook for poets. This means students will discuss work by writers who may not share their own genre. We will focus on generating new work, developing your writing process, and creating new possibilities and momentum for your piece, as well as trying to create a sense of community among the concentrators. We will also conduct in-class writing exercises in response to short reading assignments and class lectures. Students should be aware of two important notes: (1) This class is limited to senior English majors who have already been approved to be creative writing concentrators; and (2) this course fulfills the requirement for concentrators to finish a senior project, but not the academic senior seminar requirement. This class is about your own writing and that of your classmates. This class will be what you make of it!
- W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Hisham Matar
CULPA: 2 Wikipedia Info - 4 points
SENIOR SEMINAR IN ENGLISH
SR SEM: WORDS & PICTURES
Enrollment is limited to Barnard senior English majors. To see the current course description for each section, visit the English Department website:
https://english.barnard.edu/english/senior-seminars
- W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Rachel Eisendrath
CULPA: 6
Info
- 4 points
SENIOR SEMINAR IN ENGLISH
SR SEM: WRITE TO VOTE
Enrollment is limited to Barnard senior English majors. To see the current course description for each section, visit the English Department website:
https://english.barnard.edu/english/senior-seminars
- R 11 a.m.-12:50 p.m.
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Instructor:
Jennie Kassanoff
CULPA: 20
Info
- 4 points
SENIOR SEMINAR IN ENGLISH
SR SEM/FILM: CITYGIRLS
Enrollment is limited to Barnard senior English majors. To see the current course description for each section, visit the English Department website:
https://english.barnard.edu/english/senior-seminars
- R 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
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Instructor:
Maura L Spiegel
CULPA: 40 Info - 4 points
SENIOR SEMINAR IN ENGLISH
SR SEM: VICTORIAN LIT&SCI
Enrollment is limited to Barnard senior English majors. To see the current course description for each section, visit the English Department website:
https://english.barnard.edu/english/senior-seminars
- T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
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Instructor:
Jayne Hildebrand
CULPA: 3
Info
- 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.
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Instructor:
Atefeh Akbari Shahmirzadi
Info - 1-4 points