Curriculum
First-Year Writing: Critical Conversations
First-Year Writing (FYW) courses invite students into the vibrant scholarly life of the college. Working in small, discussion-based seminar classes over the course of one semester, we read challenging literary texts and critical scholarship, helping students to develop fundamental skills in analysis and academic writing that allow them to take their place in vitally important scholarly conversations. Students may choose from a variety of special topics that focus on a particular literary tradition, theme, or phenomenon (see course descriptions for details).
A “critical conversation” is a conversation about ideas. It is sophisticated and thoughtful rather than one-sided and simplistic; it’s not about finding one right answer but rather about closely analyzing all of the evidence at hand and discovering something meaningful. By communicating what you discover clearly and cogently, you add to the broader scholarly conversation. When engaged in a critical conversation with other scholars, you consider their ideas in ways that help you develop your own thinking, rather than merely agreeing or disagreeing with what others have to say. The critical reading, discussion, and academic writing skills we focus on in First-Year Writing provide a foundation that crosses disciplinary boundaries and will help you in all of your courses.
First-Year Writing Workshop
First-Year Writing (FYW) Workshop is a four-credit course designed for students who feel they would benefit from extra preparation for the critical reading and writing that you will do at Barnard. FYW and FYW Workshop are equally rigorous -- both courses have the same critical reading and writing goals, and both courses satisfy your First-Year Writing requirement. FYW Workshop, however, meets 3 days per week instead of 2; it is worth 4 credits instead of 3; and the class sizes are smaller. FYW Workshop is only offered in the fall semester (not in the spring semester).
Students who are interested in one of the limited number of spaces in FYW Workshop should select "First-Year Writing Workshop" on the First-Year Experience Course Request Form and fill out the accompanying FYW Workshop Questionnaire (the First-Year Dean's Office will email you the form in mid-June). The FYW Workshop Questionnaire is required in order to be considered for FYW Workshop, and it is due by Monday, June 28 at 5:00pm ET. Please be aware that placement cannot be guaranteed. You will receive an email in your Barnard inbox before the first registration period letting you know if you have secured a spot.
Course Descriptions
*NOTE: All readings listed in the course descriptions below are subject to change. Days/times of each section will be available in the course directory mid-summer, before the first registration period.
The Teenage Strange
Teenagers inhabit a strange land: in exile from childhood, still immigrating to adulthood. How have different writers mapped the liminal territory of the teenage experience? In this class, we will step away from the rich tradition of realistic Coming-of-Age narratives and explore how genre frameworks—including speculative, horror, fairy tale, gothic, and quest traditions—have been used to illuminate the Teenage Strange. How have writers used the strangeness of genre to render this slice of time? How does genre capture the teenage intersection between public and private inquiry—between larger questions about the world, and more private questions about the self? How does genre construct questions about fear, desire, rage, shame, power, culture, and love? How does it deconstruct reality so it can be seen, investigated, and felt? Readings may include work by Angela Carter, Kelly Link, Alice Sola Kim, Viktor Shklovsky, Jeffrey Eugenides, Helen Oyeyemi, Jia Tolentino, Parul Sehgal, Lauren Berlant, Sara Ahmed, Sianne Ngai, Carmen Maria Machado, Ursula K. LeGuin, bell hooks, and others.
Contested Truths: Memory, Authority and History
This First-Year Writing course explores how science and technology shape contested truths about identity, memory, and ethics. Through literature, memoir, and nonfiction, we examine how race, gender, class, and scientific authority influence what counts as truth and whose experiences are validated. Core texts include Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, and Harriet A. Washington’s Medical Apartheid. Theoretical readings by Ruha Benjamin, Cathy Caruth, and Donna Haraway will guide our inquiry into how technologies both reflect and reproduce social hierarchies. Assignments build toward a research-based essay, as students learn to interpret complex texts, apply theoretical lenses, and engage with scholarly debates about truth, ethics, and representation.
Writing the Queer/Trans Self
How do queer and trans authors negotiate the written self amidst a culture which seeks to erase trans and non-binary realities, selves, and identities? In this class we will explore a handful of contemporary American literary texts written by queer and trans authors to explore how language is used, challenged, rejected, and reclaimed to constitute new literary selves and possibilities. For example, we will explore the reclamation of they/them pronouns, and the ways in which non-binary selves write themselves into binary colonial languages. The class will engage fundamental scholarship on race, gender, disability, and culture within the field of Trans studies.
Hidden in Plain Sight: Ideology and the Self
How does culture create and codify beliefs and norms so that they appear natural and difficult to identify without close analysis? In this course, we will explore aspects of our society that are hidden in plain sight through the forces of ideology. We will study works that challenge us to look closely at the things we think we already know. We will probe the aspects of society which seem to be true, natural, and common sense, and learn to unpack them. In doing so, we will dive into pop cultural moments (such as brat summer and the like) and probe their power relations and identity formations which otherwise remain hidden. We will analyze music videos, songs, poems, short stories, as well as popular phrases.
We will learn about structures of power through theories on race, gender, sexuality, identity, and culture itself. We will ask how we were given our genders, races, and other aspects of ourselves, and think critically about how that process works at both the granular and societal level. This course includes a field trip to Van Cortlandt Park wherein we will learn about how racial ideology is expressed through architecture and landscaping.
Attention!
Attention is the foundation of investigation, action, and intention. It means concentration and deliberation. It can also mean distraction and confusion. Quietly reading a difficult work of literature, puzzling over a math problem, revising a paper for class, or cooking an elaborate meal are forms of attention. So is endlessly scrolling through social media, binge-watching a television series, or strolling aimlessly through the city. Where and how we use our attention is the foundation, the bedrock, of nearly everything we think and do. It is therefore unsurprising that gathering and directing our attention is also an enormous, lucrative industry. In this course we will study the science and philosophy of attention alongside the history of the "attention economy" and evolving techniques and technologies of attention harvesting. We will explore these subjects while reflecting upon and writing about our own habits of paying attention. By paying attention to attention, we will nurture a brighter awareness of the many interests vying for our time, mental engagement, money, our very lives, and of our abilities to scrutinize, critically examine, or resist our entrapment within the modern attention industry.
Women of Color in Speculative Literature
"The Future is Female" except in science fiction, where it still looks pretty white and male. What happens when women of color take on such tropes as space exploration, cybernetics, superpowers, and the end of the world? How can women of color change the way we not only think of the future, but think of the present as well? In this class we’ll look at how speculative literature looks at the intersections of race, gender, class, sexuality, technology, and environmental concerns. Readings will include work from such authors as Octavia Butler, Franny Choi, Sam Chanse, G Willow Wilson, and Tananarive Due with potential critical readings from Lisa Yaszek, Charlotte E Howell, and bell hooks.
Field too Large: War, City, System
How does one represent things that seem too large, or too complex, to understand? What rhetorical strategies of compression, exemplification, typification, or visualization do we need to make such events or objects comprehensible? And what sorts of risks—aesthetic, ethical, political—do we run in trying to do so? In this course, we’ll move through a number of writers who have grappled with these basic problems of representation, focusing our attention on three particular kinds of excessively large objects: wars, cities, and economic systems.
Objects in this course may include: literature from Caryl Churchill, Teju Cole, Arthur Conan Doyle, Amitav Ghosh, Patricia Highsmith, Homer, Jamaica Kincaid, Edgar Allan Poe, and Virginia Woolf; maps from Charles Joseph Minard and John Snow; criticism and theory from Jane Jacobs, Immanuel Kant, Georg Lukács, Franco Moretti, Georg Simmel, Susan Sontag, and Raymond Williams. Course costs will not exceed $30.
Women on the Verge
The "Mad Woman" is an archetype with enduring appeal in storytelling. Inimical forces conspire to curb her agency or prohibit the pursuit of her desires; how does she survive or strike back from such a disadvantaged position? How is her “madness” represented as the effect of her oppression and a consequence of her femininity? How does she weaponize the very terms by which her existence is disqualified? Moreover, under what conditions does she subject others to the same suffering imposed on her, and to what cost? This course considers the ways women of all kinds negotiate life “on the verge,” in states of extreme precarity or with the threat of violence lurking around them. What do their complicities, rebellions, and fantasies reveal about sexual difference materialized within patriarchal societies? To be “on the verge” is to hover in a liminal space between “here” and “there,” perhaps to be even something not quite human. This unique vantage point offered by this eclectic collection of women will orient our critical approach to this seminar. Possible texts include Euripides’s Medea, Aeschylus’s Oresteia cycle, Valerie Solanas’s SCUM Manifesto, Andrea Dworkin’s Right-wing Women, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Pedro Almodóvar’s Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, and Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance.
The Body as Border
In our course, we'll examine the legacy of the body as a boundary that defines and separates categories like self and other, sanctioned and forbidden, and male and female. How and why has the body become the site of difference and distinction? What happens when a body crosses boundaries and collapses categories—what is threatened, what made possible? Readings will likely include John Milton's Paradise Lost, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Nella Larsen's Passing, Akwaeke Emezi's "Who is Like God?", and essays and articles by scholars including Susan Stryker, bell hooks, Judith Butler, and Jeffrey Jerome Cohen.
Reading the Future
How do we think about the future? Why do we develop the hopes and fears that we do? How do present conditions and discourses inform, influence, or limit our senses of personal and political possibility? In this section of First-Year Writing, we will explore conceptions of the future in 19th through 21st-century literary fiction. We will begin by close reading 20th-century short stories that evoke hopes and fears for the future on individual, social, and global scales. We will then turn to H.G. Wells’ classic novella The Time Machine and place its portrayal of the future in the context of late Victorian science and socioeconomics. Finally, we will consider how contemporary literature reflects and responds to the accelerating climate crisis, and explore fiction’s role in helping us apprehend the potential for radical environmental disruption.
Lives in Translation
This class focuses on the theme of translation and what happens when texts and people cross national, cultural, linguistic, racial or gendered borders. Through our classroom discussions and essays, we will explore the following questions: Why or how do texts lend themselves to or resist translation? How do encounters with dominant discourses necessitate acts of self-translation or resistance to translation, especially for people of color, immigrants or queer communities? How do literary narratives change when translated across cultures and time periods? What is the role of the translator in these acts of remaking? Drawing on postcolonial, feminist and translation theory, we will consider how writers have pushed back against dominant narratives through texts that cross and complicate linguistic, cultural and national borders. Readings are subject to change but will likely include a selection from following: a novel by Jean Rhys or Virginia Woolf, fiction and poetry by Sappho, Fatimah Asghar, Irena Klepfisz, Marjane Satrapi, as well as various English translations of the 1001 Nights; scholarly texts by Gloria Anzaldúa, Edward Said, bell hooks, Friedrich Schleiermacher and Jorge Luis Borges. Course costs will not exceed $20; access to books can also be made available to students who need them.
Feminist Fairytales
In this class we will read and discuss feminist fairy tales: adaptations of classic tales and newly-imagined stories which—rather than promising a simple and tidy “happily ever after”—privilege female agency and offer up critiques of patriarchal structures. In dialog with texts that center women and other intersecting identities, we will talk about colorism, colonialism, sexuality, desire, misogyny, motherhood, and more. Analyzing how these texts unmask and challenge various forms of oppression, we will explore how and why the magical and often didactic nature of the fairy tale genre lends itself to thinking critically about our current world and to envisioning more equitable futures. Readings, subject to change, include texts by Nalo Hopkinson, Carmen Maria Machado, Luisa Valenzuela, Suniti Namjoshi, Helen Oyeyemi, and Kelly Link.
Arts of Resistance
How can the arts, particularly the literary arts, serve as tools for liberation and social change? How can writing be an act of defiance against forces of oppression? In this class, we will engage with texts that challenge dominant ideologies, resist oppressive structures, and envision new communities. We will attend to subtle and overt subversion in both the form and content of the works we discuss. The literary and theoretical works we read will provide models for creative intervention in public conversations around race, gender, sexuality, and class. Literary works may include works by Layli Long Soldier, Hala Alyan, Solmaz Sharif, Jamaica Kincaid, Sandra Cisneros, Octavia Butler, Isabel Allende, and others. Theory may include writings by Saidiya Hartman, Toni Morrison, Frantz Fanon, Judith Butler, Laura Mulvey, Audre Lorde, bell hooks, and others.
Fashion and Fabric
Clothing is a part of everyone’s daily life, and what one wears is often considered to be an expression of individuality. Yet, while a wardrobe may involve deeply personal choices, the textiles available to us and the styles we gravitate toward can also reflect our historical moment. Like other art forms, fashion is political, and its materials—textiles—have historically been at the heart of global trade. In this course, we will ask: what can literature show us about cultural and political histories of fashion trends and the textile industry? Just as importantly, how can understanding historical context for the textiles, needlecrafts, and garments that appear in the pages of a story offer insights into character, setting, and theme? As a class, we will consider some of the ways fashion and the global circulation of textile goods have been bound up in relationships between nations and empires as well as relationships between individuals, society, and the environment. Readings are subject to change but may include fiction by Virginia Woolf, Ntozake Shange, Elizabeth Gaskell, Oscar Wilde, Jane Austen, and Elizabeth Inchbald. Other readings will draw upon fashion theory and scholarship on textile history by scholars such as Lisa Lowe, Hilary Davidson, Monica Miller, Suchitra Choudhury, Amber Butchart, and others. We will also consider costuming as a part of worldbuilding and character development in film and television examples such as Bridgerton, and we will put our discussions of historical text(ile)s into conversation with recent work in fashion activism.
*NOTE: All readings listed in the course descriptions below are subject to change. Days/times of each section will be available in the course directory mid-summer, before the first registration period.
Haunted Americas
In this course, we will encounter ghosts and hauntings in the fiction of Latin American and Caribbean writers. A Cuban exile is haunted by the life he left behind; a teenager in Argentina explores her queer identity and confronts the ghosts of state violence; a young woman courts colonial power and becomes a ghost herself. We will look to theories of hauntology to investigate the ways in which the characters in these stories reckon with, or fall prey to, legacies of colonialism, war, and migration. Readings may include literary works by Mariana Enriquez, Edwidge Danticat, Daniel Alarcón, Jean Rhys, and Ana Menéndez.
Feminist Fairytales
In this class we will read and discuss feminist fairy tales: adaptations of classic tales and newly-imagined stories which—rather than promising a simple and tidy “happily ever after”—privilege female agency and offer up critiques of patriarchal structures. In dialog with texts that center women and other intersecting identities, we will talk about colorism, colonialism, sexuality, desire, misogyny, motherhood, and more. Analyzing how these texts unmask and challenge various forms of oppression, we will explore how and why the magical and often didactic nature of the fairy tale genre lends itself to thinking critically about our current world and to envisioning more equitable futures. Readings, subject to change, include texts by Nalo Hopkinson, Carmen Maria Machado, Luisa Valenzuela, Suniti Namjoshi, Helen Oyeyemi, and Kelly Link.
Seeing, Surveilling, and Performing
In this course, we will study the way culture influences how we make sense of what we see. We will examine how power is exercised by making people feel as though they are always being seen, how this surveillance polices the way gender, race, class, and sexuality are expressed, and how people perform their identities to reinforce or push back against this policing. Literary texts will include Passing by Nella Larsen, "The Husband Stitch" by Carmen Maria Machado, Fantomina by Eliza Haywood, and the films Paris is Burning and Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Secondary texts will include John Berger, Talia Bettcher, Judith Butler, W.E.B Dubois, Frantz Fanon, Michel Foucault, Jack Halberstam, bell hooks, Audre Lorde, and Laura Mulvey.