MIGRATION & ECONOMIC CHANGE

Prerequisites: (Econ BC 3035) or (Econ BC 3033) This course examines a wide variety of topics about migration and its relationship to economic development, globalization, and social and economic mobility. At its core, this course reflects a key reality: that the movement of people--within regions, within countries, and across borders--is both the result of and impetus for economic change.

• Department: Economics @Barnard
• Instructor: Ashley Timmer
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 3 points

FINANCIAL ECONOMICS

Prerequisites: ECON UN3211 and ECON UN3213 and STAT UN1201 Institutional nature and economic function of financial markets. Emphasis on both domestic and international markets (debt, stock, foreign exchange, eurobond, eurocurrency, futures, options, and others). Principles of security pricing and portfolio management; the Capital Asset Pricing Model and the Efficient Markets Hypothesis.

• Department: Economics @Barnard
• Instructor: Jose Cao-Alvira
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 3 points

INCLUSIVE APPROACHES TO TEACHING LITERAC

LITERACY: THEORY & PRACTI

This seminar engages students in an exploration of how schools prepare students to be literate across multiple subject areas. Engaging students with theory and practice, we will look at how students learn to read and write, considering approaches for literacy instruction from early childhood through adolescence. Understanding that schools are required to meet the needs of diverse learners, we will explore literacy instruction for K-12 students with special needs, multilingual learners, and students from diverse cultural backgrounds. This course requires 60 hours of clinical experience (fieldwork).

• Department: Education @Barnard
• T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Lisa Edstrom
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 6 points

BIRD,PLANT &LAND-USE DYNAMICS

BIRDPLANT &LAND-USE DYNAMICS

Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 16 students. One year of college-level science. Primarily for Environmental Majors, Concentrators and Minors. This class looks at the response of wildlife (birds and plants) to climate change and land-use issues from the end of the last glaciation to the present. Case study topics are: (1) land-use and climate change over time: a paleoenvironmental perspective, (2) environmental transformations: impact of invasive plants and birds and pathogens on local environments and (3) migration of Neotropical songbirds between their wintering and breeding grounds: land-use, crisis and conservation. We visit wildlife refuges along a rural-suburban-urban gradient in order to observe and measure the role refuges play in conservation.  Format: lecture, student presentations, short labs, data collection/analysis and field trips (some on a weekend day in April in place of the week day meeting).

• Department: Environmental Sciences @Barnard
• W 1:10 p.m.-3:40 p.m.
• Instructor: Terryanne Maenza-Gmelch
  CULPA: 14 h-index: 5 Info
• 3 points

PARTIAL DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS

Prerequisites: (MATH UN2010 and MATH UN2030) or the equivalent introduction to partial differential equations. First-order equations. Linear second-order equations; separation of variables, solution by series expansions. Boundary value problems.

• Department: Mathematics
• TR 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Simon Brendle
  CULPA: 1 Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

IMAGERY AND FORM IN THE ARTS

Operation of imagery and form in dance, music, theater, visual arts and writing; students are expected to do original work in one of these arts. Concepts in contemporary art will be explored.

• Department: Art History @Barnard
• T 4:10 p.m.-5 p.m.
• Instructor: Jozefina Chetko
  Info
• 4 points

GENETICS

Prerequisites: BIOL UN2005 and BIOL UN2006. General genetics course focused on basic principles of transmission genetics and the application of genetic approaches to the study of biological function. Principles will be illustrated using classical and contemporary examples from prokaryote and eukaryote organisms, and the experimental discoveries at their foundation will be featured. Applications will include genetic approaches to studying animal development and human diseases. SPS and TC students must obtain the written permission from the instructor, by filling out a Registration Adjustment Form (Add/Drop form). https://www.registrar.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/content/reg-adjustment.pdf

• Department: Biological Sciences
• TR 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• 3 points

18TH CENTURY FRENCH FICTION

Prerequisites: FREN BC3021, BC3022, BC3023, BC3024, or the equivalent. Readings of novels and novellas by Prevost, Rousseau, Diderot, Charriere, Laclos, and Sade, with a particular focus on issues of selfhood, gender, sexuality, authority, and freedom. FREN BC1204: French Intermediate II or the equivalent level is required.

• Department: French @Barnard
• MW 1:10 p.m.-2:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Caroline Weber
  CULPA: 8 Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

Writing and Power in the Roman Empire

Writing & Power Roman Emp

Despite low literacy rates in the ancient world, engagement with writing concerned all socioeconomic groups across the Roman Empire, from public documents and tax receipts to personal letters and magical spells. The Roman government placed considerable importance on the written word, a vital component to political, social, religious, economic, and cultural life, both at the center of the empire in Rome and in the provinces. Between Roman authorities and provincials, writing was used by ruler and ruled in various ways as a tool of power to exploit, secure social mobility, resist, maintain ideological power, protect, legitimize, empower, and communicate. This interdisciplinary course explores the theme of writing and power in the Roman Empire during the period of the High Empire (30 BCE to 235 CE), taking both macro and microhistorical approaches. Through close analysis of papyrus documents, inscriptions, archaeological sources, ancient histories, and coins, we will consider how power and control were exercised through and over writing, the various groups interested in the power of writing and to what ends, the elaborate system of archives imposed and maintained across the empire, Roman censorship practices, and the value of studying writing and power to the history of imperialism, provincial resistance, administration, literacy, social mobility, personal and civic identity, and culture in the Roman Empire. In addition to the capital city of Rome, we will study four eastern provinces (Egypt, Greece, Asia Minor, and Syria) and two western provinces (Britain and Gaul), allowing us to consider certain power structures in both the center and periphery. We will have opportunities to visit papyrus documents at the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library in Butler as well as Greek, Roman, and Egyptian artifacts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

• Department: Classical Studies
• M 11:10 a.m.-1 p.m.
• Instructor: Susan Rahyab
  Info
• 3 points

ENVIRONMENTAL LAW

Process-oriented introduction to the law and its use in environmental policy and decision-making. Origins and structure of the U.S. legal system. Emphasis on litigation process and specific cases that elucidate the common law and toxic torts, environmental administrative law, and environmental regulation through application and testing of statutory law in the courts. Emphasis also on the development of legal literacy, research skills, and writing.

• Department: Environmental Sciences @Barnard
• F 8:40 a.m.-11:10 a.m.
• Instructor: Dana Neacsu
  h-index: 8 Info
• 3 points

GENDER, SEXUALITY, AND SCHOOL

GENDER SEXUALITY AND SCHOOL

Broadly, this course explores the relationship between gender, sexuality, and schooling across national contexts. We begin by considering theoretical perspectives, exploring the ways in which gender and sexuality have been studied and understood in the interdisciplinary field of education. Next, we consider the ways in which the subjective experience of gender and sexuality in schools is often overlooked or inadequately theorized. Exploring the ways that race, class, citizenship, religion and other categories of identity intersect with gender and sexuality, we give primacy to the contention that subjectivity is historically complex, and does not adhere to the analytically distinct identity categories we might try to impose on it.

• Department: Education @Barnard
• M 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Ileana Jimenez
  Info
• 4 points

THEATER OF THE ABSURD

Close reading and occasional screening of major plays associated with the Theater of the Absurd. Philosophical and literary origins of the concept of the absurd; social and political context of its emergence; theatrical conventions of early performances; popular and critical reception. Authors include: Adamov, Artaud, Beckett, Camus, Ionesco, Jarry, Maeterlinck.

• Department: French @Barnard
• TR 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Peter T Connor
  CULPA: 13 Info
• 3 points

COMPLICATING CLASS: EDUCATION AND THE L

EDUCATION & LIMITS EQUITY

In this course, we start from the premise that a failure to understand what social class is and how social class matters in daily life stops us from having conversations about the possibilities and limitations of schooling and, as such, prevents us from doing what we can to improve the schooling experiences of poor and working-class students. Throughout the semester, we will work to “complicate class”, reconsidering what class is, why class matters, and how we can best think about the relationship between social class and schooling. You will develop a language for talking about class, considering the affordances and constraints of various conceptions of class. You will also leave with critical questions about the possibilities and limitations of relying on schools as a solution to social problems. Recognizing restraints, we will conclude by reflecting on how we might work toward creating more equitable learning environments for poor and working-class students.

• Department: Education @Barnard
• T noon-1:50 p.m.
• Instructor: Rachel Throop
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 4 points

COLL: CAPITALISM AND ITS CRITICS

COLL: CAPITALISM & ITS CR

Capitalism is usually thought of as an economic system, but what does it have to do with politics? This course examines how thinkers of contrasting perspectives have understood capitalism politically. Some have celebrated the market as an escape from coercion, while others criticize it as a source of disguised domination; some see capitalism as leveling social hierarchies, while others point to its creation of class and racial hierarchy; some see capitalism as an engine of wealth creation and heightened living standards, while others emphasize its destruction of existing ways of life and production of inequality; some see capitalism as an engine of peace, while others emphasize its reliance on violence. In particular, we will consider the relationship between state and market, moral critiques of markets and exchange, analyses of the role of force and violence in accumulation, and theories of freedom and domination.

• Department: Political Science @Barnard
• W 11 a.m.-12:50 p.m.
• Instructor: Alyssa Battistoni
  Info
• 4 points

DISCRETE TIME MODELS IN FINANC

Prerequisites: (MATH UN1102 and MATH UN1201) or (MATH UN1101 and MATH UN1102 and MATH UN1201) and MATH UN2010 Recommended: MATH UN3027 (or MATH UN2030 and SIEO W3600). Elementary discrete time methods for pricing financial instruments, such as options. Notions of arbitrage, risk-neutral valuation, hedging, term-structure of interest rates.

• Department: Mathematics
• MW 6:10 p.m.-7:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Mikhail Smirnov
  CULPA: 16 Info
• 3 points

PROJECT LAB-MOLECULAR GENETICS

Multicellular animals contain a diverse array of cell types, yet start from a single cell. How do cells decide what kind of cell to be? In this lab course, we will use the tools of molecular biology and genetics to explore this fascinating question. We will use the nematode
Caenorhabditis elegans
, a powerful model organism used in hundreds of research labs. The course will be divided into three modules:
C. elegans
genetics, molecular cloning, and genetic screening. Laboratory techniques will include PCR, gel electrophoresis, restriction digest, ligation, transformation, RNAi, and
C. elegans
maintenance. Students will pursue original projects; emphasis will be placed on scientific thinking and scientific communication. SPS and TC students may register for this course, but they must first obtain the written permission of the instructor, by filling out a paper Registration Adjustment Form (Add/Drop form). Prerequisites: UN2005/UN2401 and UN2006/UN2402, or the equivalent at a different institution.

• Department: Biological Sciences
• MW 12:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Michelle Attner
  Info
• 5 points

MATH & THE CITY

Prerequisites: the instructors permission. In partnership with NYC public school teachers, students will have opportunities to engage in mathematical learning, lesson study, curriculum development, and implementation, with a focus on using the City as a resource. Students will explore implications for working with diverse populations. Non-math majors, pre-service elementary students and first-year students welcome. Fieldwork and field trips required. Note: Students in the Childhood Urban Teaching Program may use this course as a pedagogical elective.

• Department: Education @Barnard
• M 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Ishrat Ahmed
  Info
• 4 points

ARTS AND HUMANITIES IN THE CITY:CRITICAL

ARTS & HUMANITIES IN THE CITY

Using the theme of “Arts and Humanities in the City”, this seminar will build participants’ knowledge of critical literacy, digital storytelling methods, and ways to use New York City as a resource for teaching the Arts (Dance, Theatre, Music, and Visual Arts), Social Studies, and English Language Arts in grades K-12. Critical literacy is an approach to teaching and learning that focuses on developing students’ abilities to read, analyze, understand, question, and critique hidden perspectives and socially-constructed power relations embedded in what it means to be literate in a content area.

• Department: Education @Barnard
• F 10:10 a.m.-noon
• 4 points

STUDENT TEACHING/URBAN SCHOOLS

Prerequisites: completion of EDUC BC2052 or EDUC BC2062 and EDUC BC2055, with grades of B or better. NYCDOE Fingerprinting. Corequisites: EDUC BC3064. Enrollment limited. Supervised student teaching in elementary schools includes creating lesson plans, involving students in active learning, using cooperative methods, developmentally appropriate assessment, and meeting the needs of diverse learners in urban schools. Teaching skills developed through weekly individual and/or group supervision meetings (to be scheduled at the beginning of the semester), conferences, and portfolio design. Requires 100 hours of teaching at two different grade levels, full-time for one semester. Note: Students are only permitted to leave their student teaching placements early twice a week, once for EDUC BC3064 and one other day for one additional course having a start time of 2 pm or later. Students are only permitted to take one additional course while enrolled in EDUC BC3063 and EDUC BC3064.

• Department: Education @Barnard
• W 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Lisa Edstrom
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 6 points

SECONDARY STU TCHNG URB SCHLS

Prerequisites: Completion of EDUC BC2052 or EDUC BC2062 and EDUC BC2055, with grades of B or better. NYCDOE Fingerprinting required. Corequisites: EDUC BC3064. Enrollment limited. Supervised student teaching in secondary schools includes creating lesson plans, involving students in active learning, using cooperative methods, developmentally appropriate assessment, and meeting the needs of diverse learners in urban schools. Teaching skills developed through weekly individual and/or group supervision meetings (to be scheduled at the beginning of the semester), conferences, and portfolio design. Requires 100 hours of teaching at two different grade levels, full-time for one semester. Note: Students are only permitted to leave their student teaching placements early twice a week, once for EDUC BC3064 and one other day for one additional course having a start time of 2 pm or later. Students are only permitted to take one additional course while enrolled in EDUC BC3064 and EDUC BC3065.

• Department: Education @Barnard
• W 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• 6 points

Education, Crisis and Futures

Education is a social project of making futures. It is a field where people imagine selves and worlds to come
while navigating current constraints and past legacies. Even in the face of various crises that disrupt
educational systems globally, education is often understood as a crisis response and charged with the task of
forging alternative futures and driving social and economic progress.
In this course, we will interrogate the politics of crisis and futurity in education. First, we will explore how
notions of crisis are mobilized to define problems and solutions in education research and policy. In this
exploration, we will ask how histories and politics of domination along lines of race, class, gender, and other
social categories are articulated or silenced in discourses of educational crisis. We will attend to how crises
create both danger and opportunity by considering how they serve to justify violent, dispossessive restructuring
and how they lay bare structures of inequality in ways that generate collective action and transformation.
Next, we will Interrogate education’s futural orientations. We will probe familiar progress narratives and explore
what roles education plays in shaping how marginalized communities imagine and enact futures beyond the
status quo, attending to both its affordances and limitations. Throughout the course, we will draw on
speculative fiction and on scholarship in anthropology, Black studies, and comparative education to investigate
the politics of crisis and futurity in diverse educational contexts. We will engage study as speculative practice
through collaborative and independent exercises that invite us to develop praxes for just futures of education.

• Department: Education @Barnard
• T 11 a.m.-12:50 p.m.
• Instructor: Amelia S Herbert
  Info
• 4 points

HISTORY OF THE FRENCH LANGUAGE

This seminar examines the history of the French language, both in France and in the many areas of the world in which French is a primary language. In the first part of the semester we engage in a chronological study of how the language emerged from a fusion of late medieval Latin with Germanic dialects to become a strong national institution. The development of the language is contextualized by consideration of the social and political history of France. We also devote two weeks of discussion to the situation of the French language today, with topics such as linguistic legislation, regional languages and dialects today, and gender inclusivity. This diachronic approach is carried over into the second part of the semester in which we concentrate on French in several regions outside of France including the Caribbean, North Africa, Central Africa, and North America.  Here we examine how the language was first introduced, what it represented at different moments in history, the relation of French to other languages, and the situation of French in the region today. Work for the course includes a digital project (digital timeline and map, and website) to document visually the presence of French in the world, across history and in the 21st century.

• Department: French @Barnard
• W 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Laurie Postlewate
  CULPA: 17 Info
• 4 points

Black Women's Freedom Narratives

Black Women's Narratives

During the journey of this course, we will individually and collectively utilize myriad
materials to examine the intricacies, nuances, and trajectories of freedom,
primarily in literary texts grounded in the United States. However, a couple
of required books are centered beyond the geographical and imaginary
boundaries of the United States. Even though one of the texts for this course
is a “traditional” slave narrative of a previously enslaved woman of African
descent in the Caribbean (The History of Mary Prince), we will examine
different narratives of Black women from the colonial period to the
contemporary era that engage and reckon with the processes of freedom-
imagining, freedom-creating, and freedom-making. We will approach the
subject matter utilizing a variety of genres (e.g., slave narratives, oral
histories, speeches, essays, poems, as well as novels (epistolary and science
fiction). For this course, students will submit 2 short essays and a final
paper/project. Small groups of 2-3 students will also co-lead some sections
of class discussions on selected reading assignments.

• Department: Africana Studies (AFSB)
• W 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Celia E Naylor
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 4 points

INDIVIDUAL SENIOR PROJECTS

Prerequisites: Meets senior requirement. Instructor permission required. The instructor will supervise the writing of long papers involving some form of sociological research and analysis.

• Department: Sociology @Barnard
• Instructor: Deborah Becher
  CULPA: 8 h-index: 4 Info
• Instructor: Elizabeth Bernstein
  CULPA: 27 Info
• Instructor: Maricarmen Hernandez
  Info
• Instructor: Debra Minkoff
  CULPA: 6 h-index: 17 Info
• Instructor: Mignon R Moore
  CULPA: 9 h-index: 17 Info
• Instructor: Jonathan Rieder
  CULPA: 17 Info
• Instructor: Angela Simms
  Info
• Instructor: Amy Zhou
  Info
• Instructor: Randa B Serhan
  CULPA: 2 Info
• 4 points

Senior Research Seminar: Inquiry

SENIOR RESEARCH SEMINAR I

This is the second semester of a year-long senior capstone experience for Educational Studies majors. Over the course of the year, you will design and carry-out an inquiry project, and you will report on this project through an appropriate medium, for a specific purpose and audience.

• Department: Education @Barnard
• T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Thea R Abu El-Haj
  Info
• 4 points

ARTEMIS RISING SHORT COURSE IN FILMMAKIN

ARTEMIS COURSE IN FILMMAK

The Artemis Rising Short Course in Filmmaking is a two to four-week course offered each semester on a special topic of filmmaking presented by an Artemis Rising Foundation Filmmaker Fellow (ARFF). This series was endowed by the Artemis Rising Foundation to bring world-class filmmakers with hands-on experience and fresh perspectives to Barnard to connect with students interested in filmmaking as a vocation and media literacy.

It can only be taken for pass/fail for 1 point.
Students must attend all four class sessions and write a final paper in order to receive credit for this course. 
To see the dates/times that the Artemis Rising Short Course will meet this semester, the current course description, and the biography of the visiting filmmaker, please visit the ARFF website:
https://athenacenter.barnard.edu/arff
.

• Department: Film @Barnard
• W 11 a.m.-1:50 p.m.
• Instructor: Alice A Reagan
  CULPA: 1 Wikipedia Info
• 1 points

ARTEMIS RISING SHORT COURSE IN FILM PROD

ARTEMIS COURSE:FILM PRODU

The Artemis Rising Short Course in Film Production is a one-point credit short workshop presented by an Artemis Rising Foundation Filmmaker Fellow (ARFF).  It consists of four workshops on a special aspect of film production and one final project. This series was endowed by the Artemis Rising Foundation to bring world-class filmmakers with hands-on experience and fresh perspectives to Barnard to connect with students interested in filmmaking as a vocation and media literacy.

It can only be taken for pass/fail for 1 point. 
Students must attend all four class workshops and produce one final project in order to receive credit for this course. 
To see the dates/times that the Artemis Rising Short Course will meet this semester, the current course description, and the biography of the visiting filmmaker, please visit the ARFF website:
https://athenacenter.barnard.edu/arff
.

• Department: Film @Barnard
• W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Alice A Reagan
  CULPA: 1 Wikipedia Info
• 1 points

SENIOR THESIS

French majors will write their senior thesis under the supervision of the instructor.

• Department: French @Barnard
• T 6:10 p.m.-7:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Brian D O'Keeffe
  CULPA: 28 Info
• 4 points

More than Real: Dreams, Imagination, and

More Than Real

This course is thematic, though a loose history of dreaming, imaginative praxis, and virtual reality environments across South Asia will emerge through the networked conversations across texts. The advantage of a thematic course allows us to cover various genres such as: ritual manuals; epic; poetry; philosophical argument; biographical accounts; prophecies; conversion stories; and medical textbooks to name a handful. At the end of the course, we will see how the texts encountered in the first part have been repurposed to speak to social justice movements around caste - both within South Asia and the diaspora population in the U.S. The thematic of dreaming and imagination also provides flexibility in method: because students will have the opportunity to study conversations between different historical actors across religious traditions about dreams, they will also have the opportunity to revise problematic accounts of religious pluralism and communalism in South Asia. Students will read primary texts from Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, and Sikh traditions to name a handful. Students can look forward to reading about worlds within rocks; falling asleep and waking up as another person only to die in the dream world, wake up and then realize your dream-life family is somehow real and looking for you; how to finally interpret those pesky dreams about teeth falling out; dismembered bodies generating the universe; daydreaming about a cloud that thinks mountain peaks look like nipples; how to build a mind-temple that Shiva prefers to the physical one with fancy rock; and much more!

• Department: Religion @Barnard
• R 10:10 a.m.-noon
• Instructor: Meghan E Hartman
  Info
• 4 points

INDEPENDENT STUDY

This course can be worth 1 to 4 credits (each credit is equivalent to approximately three hours of work per week) and requires a Barnard faculty as a mentor who has to provide written approval. The course entails a scholarly component; for this, a research report is required by the end of the term. The research report can take the form that best suits the nature of the project. The course will be taken for a letter grade, regardless of whether the student chooses 1, 2, 3, or 4 credits.

• Department: Neuroscience & Behavior @Barnard
• Instructor: Peter D Balsam
  CULPA: 25 Info
• Instructor: Elizabeth P Bauer
  CULPA: 3 h-index: 21 Info
• Instructor: Bj Casey
  Info
• Instructor: John Glendinning
  CULPA: 23 h-index: 39 Info
• Instructor: Gabrielle J Gutierrez
  Info
• Instructor: E'Mett McCaskill
  CULPA: 38 Info
• Instructor: Kara Pham
  CULPA: 9 Info
• Instructor: Russell D Romeo
  CULPA: 9 Info
• Instructor: Rae Silver
  Wikipedia h-index: 69 Info
• Instructor: Alex White
  h-index: 13 Info
• Instructor: Alexis S Hill
  Info
• 1-4 points

FUNDAMENTALS OF GLOBAL HEALTH

Many of the greatest challenges in public health are global. This course uses a multidisciplinary approach to discuss the major underlying determinants of poor health and the relationship between health and political, social and economic development. Drawing upon the sciences, social sciences, and humanities, students will be introduced to the evolution of modern approaches to the setting of global health priorities, the functions and roles of health systems, an overview of current global health practices, and the major institutional players in global health. The first unit of the class will focus on establishing the foundations for a public health approach to understanding the challenges of global health. This will involve exploration of the factors shaping the global distribution of disease and their connection with issues of social, economic, and political development, as reflected in the Millennium Development Goals. The second unit will explore in further detail a number of major health priorities. A significant goal of the class will be to identify common sources of vulnerability and challenge across health risks, and the consequent need for a systemic approach to their being addressed. The third and final unit builds upon this analysis to demonstrate the multi-disciplinary, multi-level approach required to effectively address global health priorities, and the political and organizational cooperation required to achieve this. The class concludes with an analysis of the major challenges and threats to global coordination regarding such threats as pandemic influenza and emerging health threats related to climate change. Offered in the spring.

• Department: Columbia College
• MW 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Rachel Moresky
  CULPA: 4 Info
• 3 points

INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS

An introduction to the study of language from a scientific perspective. The course is divided into three units: language as a system (sounds, morphology, syntax, and semantics), language in context (in space, time, and community), and language of the individual (psycholinguistics, errors, aphasia, neurology of language, and acquisition). Workload: lecture, weekly homework, and final examination.

• Department: Cognitive Science @Barnard
• TR 5:40 p.m.-6:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Maya Barzilai
  Info
• 3 points

WOMEN WRITERS OF E EUR: BELARUS,UKR,&RUS

WOMEN WRITERS OF EASTRN E

The course addresses the works of women writers of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia from the 19th century to the present. All assigned readings will be in English. The purpose of the course is to become familiar with the struggles and concerns of these authors, as well as the general features of their lives and cultural contexts. Most readings assigned are primary texts. These will be supplemented during course meetings: the instructor will bring in various materials that would be obscure if assigned to students outside of class, but with live explanations in-class, will enrich their understanding of the primary readings.

• Department: Slavic Languages @Barnard
• TR 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: John C Wright
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 3 points

ADVANCED DUTCH II

see department for details

• Department: Germanic Languages
• TR 1:15 p.m.-2:30 p.m.
• Instructor: Wijnie de Groot
  CULPA: 11 Info
• 3 points

ACADEMIC WRITING INTENSIVE

Academic Writing Intensive is a small, intensive writing course for Barnard students in their second or third year who would benefit from extra writing support. Students attend a weekly seminar, work closely with the instructor on each writing assignment, and meet with an attached Writing Fellow every other week. Readings and assignments focus on transferable writing, revision, and critical thinking skills students can apply to any discipline. Students from across the disciplines are welcome. This course is only offered P/D/F. To be considered for the course, please send a recent writing sample to 
vcondill@barnard.edu
, ideally from your First-Year Writing or First-Year Seminar course, or any other writing-intensive humanities or social sciences course at Barnard (no lab reports please).

• Department: English @Barnard
• T 11 a.m.-12:50 p.m.
• Instructor: Meredith A Benjamin
  CULPA: 5 Info
• 4 points

THIRD-YEAR RUSSIAN II

Prerequisites: RUSS UN2102 or the equivalent and the instructors permission. Enrollment limited. Recommended for students who wish to improve their active command of Russian. Emphasis on conversation and composition. Reading and discussion of selected texts and videotapes. Lectures. Papers and oral reports required. Conducted entirely in Russian.

• Department: Slavic Languages
• MWF 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Tatiana Mikhailova
  Info
• 4 points

Power, Politics & Society-DISC

POWER, POLITICS & SOCIETY

Discussion section for SOCI UN3203: Power, Politics, and Society

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

Power, Politics & Society-DISC

POWER, POLITICS & SOCIETY

Discussion section for SOCI UN3203: Power, Politics, and Society

• Department: Sociology @Barnard
• Instructor: Faculty
  h-index: 37 Info
• 0 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.

• Department: English @Barnard
• W 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• M 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• T 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• W 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Shelly Fredman
  CULPA: 3 Info
• Instructor: Margaret R Ellsberg
  CULPA: 54 Info
• Instructor: Vrinda Condillac
  CULPA: 28 Info
• Instructor: Monica F Cohen
  CULPA: 8 Info
• 3 points

FICTION & PERSONAL NARRATIVE

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).

• Department: English @Barnard
• T 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Alexandra P Watson
  CULPA: 16 Info
• 3 points

Transatlantic Translation

TRANSATLANTIC TRANSLATION

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.

• Department: French @Barnard
• MW 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Laurie Postlewate
  CULPA: 17 Info
• 3 points

Translating the Animal

TRANSLATING THE ANIMAL

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.

• Department: Comparative Literature and Society @Barnard
• W 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Hana Worthen
  Info
• 4 points

Russian Through Theater

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.

• Department: Slavic Languages
• W 5 p.m.-6:40 p.m.
• Instructor: Tatiana Mikhailova
  Info
• 2 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.

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

THE OTTOMAN PAST IN THE GREEK PRESENT

Almost a century after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, the Ottoman past lives on in contemporary Greece, often in unexpected sites. In the built environment it appears as mosques, baths, covered markets, and fountains adorned with Arabic inscriptions. It also manifests itself in music, food, and language. Yet Ottoman legacies also shape the European present in less obvious ways and generate vehement debates about identity, nation-building, human rights, and interstate relations. In this course, we will be drawing on history, politics, anthropology, and comparative literature as well as a broad range of primary materials to view the Ottoman past through the lens of the Greek present. What understandings of nation-building emerge as more Ottoman archives became accessible to scholars? How does Islamic Family Law—still in effect in Greece—confront the European legal system? How are Ottoman administrative structures re-assessed in the context of acute socio-economic crisis and migration?

• Department: Classics
• T 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Dimitris Antoniou
  h-index: 5 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
.

Spring 2026:

Section 1, taught by Angel Nafis: 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. Come prepared to take risks and foster curiosity.

 

Section 2, taught by Miranda Field:
 
This class approaches poetry as a practice energized as much by playful provocation as by engagement with urgent issues of the day. In-class writing and weekly prompts designed to provoke creative ingenuity will keep you writing, ensuring everyone has new poems to workshop regularly. A list of quotes headed “
What is This Thing Called Poetry?
” starts the class off with a discussion intended to open our minds and challenge pre-conceived notions on the topic. This will be followed by other, more focused questions and propositions, providing discussion topics for each class: How do artifice and raw reality intertwine in a poem’s making? In what ways can poems deepen our understanding of ourselves, each other, and the world we share? How do we, as poets, unlock the full potential of our chosen medium, language? What do we mean by “voice” in a poem, and when and how does “voice” emerge? Required readings are central to our work together, and specified titles and volumes must be acquired by the third week of the semester. Supplemental material will be provided as handouts and distributed in class.

• Department: English @Barnard
• T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• R 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Angel Nafis
  Info
• Instructor: Miranda Field
  Info
• 3 points

FRENCH NEW WAVE CINEMA

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.

• Department: French @Barnard
• TR 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Anne Boyman
  CULPA: 16 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.

• Department: English @Barnard
• T 4:10 p.m.-6 p.m.
• Instructor: Kathleen Tolan
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 3 points

WHY DO BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE?

WHY BAD THINGS GOOD PEOPL

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.

• Department: Asian and Middle East @Barnard
• M 10:10 a.m.-11:25 a.m.
• Instructor: Rachel McDermott
  CULPA: 37 Info
• 4 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
. 

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.

• Department: English @Barnard
• T 11 a.m.-12:50 p.m.
• Instructor: Nellie G Hermann
  Info
• 3 points

MOD ARCHITECTURE IN THE WORLD

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.

• Department: Architecture @Barnard
• TR 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Anooradha I Siddiqi
  CULPA: 1 Info
• 4 points

FICTION WRITING

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

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

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

• Department: English @Barnard
• T 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• R 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Sarah Wang
  Info
• Instructor: Gina Apostol
  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
. 

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.

• Department: English @Barnard
• W 6:10 p.m.-8 p.m.
• Instructor: Monica Sok
  Info
• 3 points

SCREENWRITING FUNDAMENTALS

SCREENWRITING FUNDMENTALS

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

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

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

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

• Department: Film @Barnard
• R 5:40 p.m.-8:30 p.m.
• Instructor: Peter Nickowitz
  Info
• 3 points

CITY,LANDSCAPE, & ECOLOGY

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

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

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

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

• Department: Architecture @Barnard
• 3 points

ADVANCED SCREENWRITING

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.

• Department: Film @Barnard
• R 2:10 p.m.-5:30 p.m.
• Instructor: Danielle T Douge
  Info
• 3 points

PUBLIC SPEAKING

Open only to undergraduates. 


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

• Department: English @Barnard
• TR 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• TR 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Daniela Kempf
  Info
• 3 points

INTRO TO SEXUALITY STUDIES

• Department: Women's and Gender Studies
• MW 2:40 p.m.-3:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Jack Halberstam
  Wikipedia Info
• 3 points

CREATIVE NON-FICTION

DRAWING CARTOONS & COMICS

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

Spring 2026: Drawing Cartoons and Comics

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

• Department: English @Barnard
• W 11 a.m.-12:50 p.m.
• Instructor: Liana Finck
  CULPA: 3 Info
• 3 points

Zora Neale Hurston: A Writing Life

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.

• Department: Africana Studies (AFSB)
• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Monica L Miller
  CULPA: 10 Info
• 4 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.

• Department: English @Barnard
• T 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Patricia D Denison
  CULPA: 10 Info
• 4 points

AFFECT AND ACTIVISM

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).

• Department: Women's, Gender, Sexuality Studies @Barnard
• T 2:10 p.m.-4 p.m.
• Instructor: Manijeh Moradian
  Info
• 4 points

BALLET V

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

• Department: Dance @Barnard
• MW 8:40 a.m.-9:55 a.m.
• MW 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Kate A Glasner
  CULPA: 31 Info
• Instructor: Cynthia Anderson
  Info
• 2 points

MODERN AMERICAN DRAMA & PERFORMANCE

MOD AMERCN DRAMA & PERFOR

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.

• Department: English @Barnard
• W 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Patricia D Denison
  CULPA: 10 Info
• 4 points

INTRODUCTION VOCAL REPERTOIRE

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

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

VOCAL REPERTOIRE, TECHNIQUE

VOCAL REPERTOIRE TECHNIQUE

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

• Department: Music @Barnard
• TR 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Jean-Paul Bjorlin
  Info
• 3 points

Advanced R in Biology

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

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

BALLET VI

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.

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

TOPICS COMPARATIVE LIT

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.

• Department: Comparative Literature and Society @Barnard
• TR 1:10 p.m.-2:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Daniella Gitlin
  Info
• 3 points

CLASSIC VARIATIONS

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

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

Science Writing

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.

• Department: Psychology @Barnard
• T 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Alexandra C Horowitz
  CULPA: 23 Wikipedia Info
• 4 points

DERRIDA & LITERATURE

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

• Department: Comparative Literature and Society @Barnard
• TR 4:10 p.m.-5:25 p.m.
• Instructor: Brian D O'Keeffe
  CULPA: 28 Info
• 3 points

Jews in the Christian Imagination

Jews in Christian Imagina

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

• Department: English @Barnard
• W 12:10 p.m.-2 p.m.
• Instructor: Wendy C Schor-Haim
  CULPA: 11 Info
• 4 points

WORLDMUSE ENSEMBLE

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.

• Department: Music @Barnard
• TR 11:40 a.m.-12:55 p.m.
• Instructor: Jean-Paul Bjorlin
  Info
• 3 points