FYSB BC 1156x Legacy of the Mediterranean I

Investigates key intellectual moments in the rich literary history that originated in classical Greece and Rome and continues to inspire some of the world's greatest masterpieces. A lecture series featuring distinguished Barnard and Columbia professors provides a general historical framework, leaving time in the seminars for close readings of individual texts. Trips to museums and the opera situate the works in an interdisciplinary context available only in New York City. Texts include Euripides, The Bacchae; the Homeric Hymn to Demeter; Homer, Odyssey; Vergil, Aeneid; Dante, Inferno; Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales; Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe; Shakespeare [selection depends on NYC theatre offerings]; Madame de Lafayette, La Princesse de Cleves.
3 points

FYSB BC 1156y Legacy of the Mediterranean II

Investigates key intellectual moments in the rich literary history that originated in classical Greece and Rome and continues to inspire some of the world's greatest masterpieces. A lecture series featuring distinguished Barnard and Columbia professors provide a general historical framework, leaving time in the seminars for close readings of individual texts. Trips to museums and the opera situate the works in an interdisciplinary context available only in New York City. Works include Milton, Paradise Lost; Voltaire, Candide; Puccini, La Boheme[excursion to the Metropolitan Opera]; William Wordsworth (selected poetry); Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; Darwin, Marx, and Freud (selected essays); Joseph Conrad; Heart of Darkness; T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land; Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse; Zora Neale Hurston; Their Eyes Were Watching God.
3 points

FYSB BC 1164x Women and Culture I

Literary history often portrays women as peripheral characters, confining their power to the islands of classical witches and the attics of Romantic madwomen. This course offers a revisionist response to such constraints of canonicity, especially as they pertain to the marginalization of female subjectivity in literature and culture. We will therefore explore a more diversified range of intellectual and experiential possibilities. The curriculum challenges traditional dichotomies--culture/nature, logos/pathos, mind/body--that cast gender as an essential attribute rather than a cultural construction. Texts include: Aeschylus, Oresteia; Hymn to Demeter; Ovid, Metamorphoses; Sei Shonagon, The Pillow Book; Marie de France, Lais; Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales; Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, selected poetry; Shakespeare, As You Like It; Aphra Behn, Oroonoko; and Lady Hyegyong, The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong.

FYSB BC 1169x Legacy of the Mediterranean I

Investigates key intellectual moments in the rich literary history that originated in classical Greece and Rome and continues to inspire some of the world's greatest masterpieces. A lecture series featuring distinguished Barnard and Columbia professors provides a general historical framework, leaving time in the seminars for close readings of individual texts. Trips to museums and the opera situate the works in an interdisciplinary context available only in New York City. Texts include Euripides, The Bacchae; the Homeric Hymn to Demeter; Homer, Odyssey; Vergil, Aeneid; Dante, Inferno; Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales; Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe; Shakespeare [selection depends on NYC theatre offerings]; Madame de Lafayette, La Princesse de Cleves.

FYSB BC 1174y Legacy of the Mediterranean II

Investigates key intellectual moments in the rich literary history that originated in classical Greece and Rome and continues to inspire some of the world's greatest masterpieces. A lecture series featuring distinguished Barnard and Columbia professors provides a general historical framework, leaving time in the seminars for close readings of individual texts. Trips to museums and the opera situate the works in an interdisciplinary context available only in New York City. Works include Milton, Paradise Lost; Voltaire, Candide; Puccini, La Boheme[excursion to the Metropolitan Opera]; William Wordsworth (selected poetry); Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; Darwin, Marx, and Freud (selected essays); Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness; T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land; Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse; Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God.

FYSB BC 1182x Legacy of the Mediterranean I

Investigates key intellectual moments in the rich literary history that originated in classical Greece and Rome and continues to inspire some of the world's greatest masterpieces. A lecture series featuring distinguished Barnard and Columbia professors provides a general historical framework, leaving time in the seminars for close readings of individual texts. Trips to museums and the opera situate the works in an interdisciplinary context available only in New York City. Texts include Euripides, The Bacchae; the Homeric Hymn to Demeter; Homer, Odyssey; Vergil, Aeneid; Dante, Inferno; Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales; Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe; Shakespeare [selection depends on NYC theatre offerings]; Madame de Lafayette, La Princesse de Cleves.

FYSB BC 1269x Americas I

Transcends the traditional and arbitrary distinction that separates North and South American literatures. The Americas emerge not as a passive colonial object but as an active historical and aesthetic agent. Emanating from what might be called the geographical site of modernity, American literature is characterized by unprecedented diversity and innovation. In addition to classic American novels, short stories, and poetry, the multicultural curriculum features genres ranging from creation myths and slave narratives to Gothicism and magic realism. Texts include:Popul Vuh; Shakespeare, The Tempest; Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Anne Bradstreet, and Phillis Wheatley, selected poetry; Madre María de San José, Vida; Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Huntly; Toussaint L'Ouverture, selected letters; Leonora Sansay, Secret History; Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano; William Apess, A Sonof the Forest; Esteban Echeverría, "The Slaughterhouse"; Herman Melville, "Benito Cereno."

FYSB BC 1271y Americas II

Offers a revisionist perspective by transcending the traditional and arbitrary distinction that seperates North and South American literatures. Emanating from what might be called the geographical site of modernity, American literature is characterized by unprecedented diversity and innovation. In addition to the classic American novels, short stories, and poetry, the following multicultural curriculum features genres ranging from slave narratives and manifestoes to gothicism and magic realism. A general lecture series dramatizes the historical vitality of American letter. Readings include Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Blithedale Romance; Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass; José Marti, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Bennett, and T. S. Eliot, selected poetry; Machado de Assis, Dom Casmurro; William Faulkner, Jorge Luis Borges, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, selected stories.
3 points

FYSB BC 1333y Women and Culture II

The course examines constraints on canonicity, especially as they pertain to the portrayal of women in literature and culture. The curriculum explores a diverse range of intellectual and experiential possibilities for women, and it challenges traditional dichotomies-culture/nature, logos/pathos, mind/body--that cast gender as an essential attribute rather than a cultural construction. A general lecture series, shared with Legacy of the Mediterranean, provides a broad historical context. Readings include Milton, Paradise Lost; Madame de Lafayette, The Princesse de Cleves; Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women; Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights; Emily Dickinson, selected poetry; Sigmund Freud, Dora; Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway; Gertrude Stein, Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights; Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star.

FYSB BC 1586y Global Literature: Thinking Latin America: How to Read about Globalization from the Margins

This course explores how Spanish America emerged as a laboratory of aesthetic, philosophical and political thought by questioning the ideological foundations of western global and technological expansion. In this course we will explore the writings of writers who examined the conditions of possibility of violence of Iberian imperial expansion from the sixteenth century to the present. It will provide a literary and historical genealogy of the modern and postmodern views on nature, ecology, animal and human bodies. We will be especially interested in the analysis of dichotomies that lay the foundations of the Iberian political and scientific views on nature as well as the modern technical administration of human life through interpretative analysis and close readings of texts. We will examine how dichotomies truth/falsity, civilization/barbarism, male/female, raw material/commodities, nature/technology, developed/underdeveloped countries, while taken for granted by the imperial project, were questioned from the periphery. The field of study will range from the 15th to the 20th century, as authors include Bartolomé de Las Casas, Ginés de Sepúlveda, José de Acosta, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Simón Bolivar, Doming Faustino Sarmiento, José Martí, Enrique Dusell, José Enrique Rodó, Domitila Barrios de Chungara, Rigoberta Menchú, Jorge Luis Borges.

FYSB BC 1601x Reacting to the Past
- M. Carnes
3 points

FYSB BC 1610x Reacting to the Past

- P. Stokes
3 points

FYSB BC 1617x Reacting to the Past


3 points

FYSB BC 1618y Reacting to the Past
3 points

FYSB BC 1618x Reacting to the Past
3 points

FYSB BC 1619x Reacting to the Past
3 points

FYSB BC 1620y Reacting to the Past
- F. Davidson
3 points

FYSB BC 1130y Myths of Maternity
This seminar will examine the way that the figure of the mother has been constructed in literature and culture. Special emphasis will be placed on the relation between mother and daughter. Readings include The Homeric Hymn to Demeter; The Book of Ruth, Hebrew Bible; Euripides, Electra and Medea; Apuleius, "Amor and Psyche" from The Golden Ass; Texts about the Virgin Mary; Madame de LaFayette, The Princess of Cleves; Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse; Toni Morrison, Beloved; Poetry about the mother-daughter relation; Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club; Alice Walker, "Everyday Use." Excerpts from Freud, Nancy Chodorow, Luce Irigaray, and Adrienne Rich. Film: A Dream of Passion and A World Apart.- H. Foley
3 points

FYSB BC 1137x The Summons to Adventure

Encounter with the marvelous and the otherwordly as a call to adventure. The individual's quest for spiritual fulfillment, for recognition of and relationship to the agencies that shape human destiny. Transformations of romance and its reemergence in modern fantasy. Works to be chosen from the following: The Odyssey, The Bacchae, Sir Gawain & the Green Knight, Hamlet, Romantic poetry and painting, Frankenstein, Alice in Wonderland, Idylls of the King, Heart of Darkness, Nietzsche, Kafka, Jungian psychology, Their Eyes Were Watching God, The Woman Warrior, Ursula Le Guin, Isabel Allende, Garcia Marquez, Edwidge Danticat, Salman Rushdie.

FYSB BC 1157x Love

What is love? What are philosophical and literary interpretations of the course and nature of love? This seminar will discuss various ideas and concepts of love that have developed throughout history from Confucius and Plato, to the idea of romantic love in the age of chivalry, and to the concepts of love in the modern world. The readings will consist only of works of literature. They include: Euripides, Medea; Sophocles, Antigone; Plato, Symposium; excepts from the Old and New Testament; Baccaccio, Decameron; Pushkin, Eugene Onegin; Turgenev, First Love; Tolstoy, Kreutzer Sonata; Checkhov, The Lady With the Pet Dog, and others.

FYSB BC 1166y The Art of Being Oneself

Transparency in writing is a creation. It conveys the sense that the writer is putting all of his or her cards on the table, that the voice is candid and reasonable, that the person writing is knowable in an essential respect. Although in recent decades such a prose style has not been especially cherished in literature, it has characterized works that endure and that survive translation. Great artists in whatever medium tend to write clearly, vividly, concisely, and memorably about such complicated subjects as aesthetics, technique, political identity, the workings of society, and the shadings of emotion that galvanize human action. This course will look at examples ranging across time, space, and literary medium: the essay, the lecture, the autobiography, the journal, the letter, and the short story. Readings in the past have included The Personal Essay(edited by Phillip Lopate), TheJournals(Eugene Delacroix), Letters (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart), Home and Exile(Chinua Achebe), Private Domain(Paul Taylor), and One Writer's Beginnings(Eudora Welty).

FYSB BC 1181y The American Supernatural

Considers 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 represent these events as supernatural or natural, divine or diabolical. We'll then explore American writers who use the supernatural to investigate the mind, issues of class and gender, and questions of identity. Finally, we'll close by considering ghost stories in performance. Texts include Cotton Mather, Wonders of the Invisible World; Melville, "The Apple-Tree Table"; James, The Turn of the Screw; Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables; Hopkins, Of One Blood; Tan, The Hundred Secret Senses.

FYSB BC 1203x Crisis of Authority

Governing authority can be defined as the relationship between ruler and ruled in which the framing of issues, the myths and narrative history of the state, and the reasoned elaboration of the government's decision are accepted by the citizens of subjects of the state. The crisis of authority occurs when this relationship is disrupted. In this seminar we will examine such crises in Ancient Greece, Renaissance Western Europe, twentieth-century United States, and post-communist Eastern Europe, through the writings of such authors as Plato, Machiavelli, Milton, Mill, de Tocqueville, King, and Michnik.

FYSB BC 1228x Ethnicity and Social Transformation

Novels, memoirs, films and fieldwork based on the American experience of immigration during the twentieth centure. Readings will include works by Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth, Christina Garcia, Julia Alvarez, Fae Ng, Gish Jen, Langston Hughes, Toni Morrison, and Malcolm X.
3 points

FYSB BC 1256y Chaos

A typical dictionary definition of the word chaos is "a state of utter confusion." However, the earliest examples of chaos depict it as emptiness, while modern mathematicians might define it as "a state of orderly disorder." We will study chaos as defined each of these ways, with applications in the social and physical sciences, literature, the arts and modern life. We will see these definitions and applications not as distinct, but as overlapping and intimately related. Readings will include John Milton's Paradise Lost, which we will compare and contrast with Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park; and Tom Stoppard's play, Arcadia.

FYSB BC 1284y Staging American Identity

Competing constructions of American identity in the United States date back to the early republic when, following a violent and successful quest for independence, a newly emerging America struggled with the question: What makes an American American? This seminar explores the way in which American performance texts reflect and project ever shifting notions of self, "other," and nation, which always occur at the intersection of race, class, and gender. Over the course of the semester we'll examine how American identity has been staged in theatres, novels, political treatises and art as well as how those images have traveled through time, from the early republic to the present. We'll examine texts treating Native American identity by Mary Rowlandson (1682) and John Augustus Stone (1829); texts treating women's role in politics including political treatises and suffrage speeches as well as plays such as Spirit of 1776(1868) and The Parrot Cage(1913); and texts treating African American identity by looking at Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin and texts responding to it including adaptiations, vaudeville, Bill T. Jones 1990 dance performance "Last Supper at Uncle Tom's Cabin: The Promised Land," and Spike Lee's 2000 film Bamboozled.

FYSB BC 1286y Culture, Ethics and Economics

What if humans were only cable of caring for their own interests? What kind of economic world could we expect to find? One in which the common good would be attained by market forces, or one in which many would be left behind? This course uses a diversity of sources to examine the interplay of culture, ethics and economics. The starting point is Adam Smith's work. Economists and policy makers have focused on one side of Adam Smith's work represented by self-regarding behavior and the supremacy of the invisible hand in market functioning. However, Adam Smith also pointed out that one of humans' central emotions is "sympathy", a natural tendency to care about the well-being of others. In light of the recent events as well as research this other side of Adam Smith's work appears now more relevant. We analyze evidence of cooperative versus self-regarding behaviors and its relationship with the economy, human evolution and cultural values in a variety of settings. Readings include works from Adam Smith, Milton Freedman, Charles Dickens, David Rockefeller and Chris Gardner.

FYSB BC 1288y Race, Democracy, and Education
In this seminar we will explore historical and contemporary ideas about education, race and democracy. Drawing on multiple disciplinary frameworks, we will examine conceptions of the role of education in a democracy and the tensions between ideals of democracy, the exclusionary treatment of particular groups, and their struggles for inclusion in the democratic polity at different points in our history as a nation. We will consider the ways public education reproduces as well as challenges inequality and discuss its potential to provide skills and dispositions for democratic citizenship in our increasingly diverse society - L. Bell
3 points

FYSB BC 1289y Violence and Justice
What is the relationship between violence and justice? Are these mutually exclusive terms or do they at times overlap? Is violent disobedience of law unjustifiable at all times? How about violence used by to draw attention to questions of injustice? This first year seminar aims to inquire into these challenging questions by studying the theoretical debates on the relationship between violence, politics, and justice (e.g. Sorel, Fanon, Arendt, Zizek), analyzing different conceptions of civil disobedience (e.g. Plato, Thoreau, Marcuse, Rawls, Habermas), looking at examples of political struggles (e.g. civil rights movement, student protests of late 60s, labor movement, anti-colonial struggle, anti-globalization protests, suffragettes), and grappling with the question of how representations of violence affect our judgment about its legitimacy (e.g. Conrad's Secret Agent). - A. Gundogdu
3 points

FYSB BC 1290y The Social Movement Society

Introduces students to the important ideas and issues of social movements, and seeks to discover what social movements mean for our everyday life and contemporary world. By examining works that employ different research methods and literary styles, incorporating various media products, and reenacting in the classroom the dilemmas activists face in real social movement situations, we also aim at exploring the socio-political, cultural, and biographical aspects that give meanings to social movements. We will explore works on social movements that span across different times and continents, from the revolutionary manifesto of the proletariat movement in 19th century Europe (Karl Marx) to biographical accounts of women participating in protests in contemporary Argentina (Javier Auyero). Other works include historical analysis of the relationship between protest and democracy (John Markoff), study of the feminist movement post-War U.S. (Nancy Whittier), first count observation and analysis of the Tienanmann protests in 1989 China (Craig Calhoun), discussion of anti-globalization protests (Valentine Moghadam), and much more.

FYSB BC 1436x Families, Feminisms and States

Throughout history political and economic events reverberate in states' visions of household, family, and gender norms. Women's roles in families and society are particularly the focus of state policy and strategy. Social and political actors continually revise and redefine the norms and structures of marriage and family life, at times reinforcing and at other times resisting state ideology. This seminar examines how the construction of family--throughout human time and cross-culturally--normalizes gendered sets of behaviors that become encoded in nationalism, social practice and law. We will examine the shifting construction of family in a variety of cultural and historical settings as well as academic disciplines: fiction (Buschi Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood); sociology and anthropology (Hilde L. Nelson, ed., Feminism and Families); and history (Frances and Joseph Gies, Marriage and the Family in the Middle Ages). We will also examine recent American court cases that grapple with defining parenthood and appropriate family practices in light of new reproductive technologies, same-sex marriages, and immigrant cultures in America.
3 points

FYSB BC 1457x The Beautiful Sea

Consideration of mostly American texts that--and writers who--share a central engagement with the sea, seafaring and coastal life. Particular attention to the sea as workplace and as escape. Texts include Homer, The Odyssey; the Book of Jonah; St. Brendan, Navigations; Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation; Mather, "Surprising Sea Deliverances"; Franklin, "Maritime Observations"; Dana, Two Years Before the Mast; Melville, Moby-Dick, or The Whale; Thoreau, Cape Cod; Twain, Life on the Mississippi; Chopin, The Awakening; Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs; Slocum, Sailing Alone Around the World; Beston, The Outermost House; Carson, Under the Sea Wind; Rich, "Diving into the Wreck"; Casey, Spartina.
3 points

FYSB BC 1460y Memory
Memory is arguably the most important faculty that we possess. Not surprisingly, memory has been a ubiquitous topic in poetry, science, fiction, and in the media. Ironically, memory's value is perhaps best understood when it ceases to exist. Indeed, it isn't hard to imagine the devastation that comes with memory loss. In this course, we will survey various components of memory, including its role in writing and history, and its existence in various non-human populations. In addition, we will explore the fragility of memory, including distortions, unusual memories, and basic forgetting. Readings will include poems, theoretical essays, scientific articles, and fiction. Assignments will consist of essays, opinion pieces, and creative stories. Students will also participate in a final in-class debate. Readings will include works from William Blake, James Joyce, Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, Emily Dickinson, Ben Jonson, Mary Carruthers, Francis Yates, Aristotle, William James, Elizabeth Loftus, Spinoza, Luria, J.L. Borges, S. Freud, Oliver Sacks, Truman Capote - L. Son & A. Horowitz
3 points

FYSB BC 1546x Shapes and Shadows of Identity

A look at the elusive meaning of "black," "white," and other group identities in the United States and the forms--novel, literary essay, stand-up comedy, ethnography, performance, film, television, magazines, radio, memoir, sermon--through which such identities are depicted. Readings will include: Johnny Otis; Upside you Head; Upsky; Bomb the Suburbs; Nelson George, The Death of Rhythm and Blues; Mary Waters, Black Identities; James McBride, The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother; Ann Douglas, Mongrel Manhattan; selected sermons and speeches of Martin Luther King Jr.

FYSB BC 1566y Exploring the Poles

Experience the Arctic and Antarctic from the perspective of the early polar explorers: Nansen, Scott and Amundsen, Shackelton. Study the effect of extreme environmental conditions on expedition planning and implementation. Consider the relative importance of luck and skill in ultimate outcomes. Read classic works and journal accounts, including Nansen's Farthest North, Lansing's Endurance. Explore the dynamics of expeditions and the role of varying environmental conditions through role play. Use a web-based exploration tool to follow varying polar conditions during the expeditions and discuss emerging issues. Course web site: http://www.phys.barnard.edu/~kay/exp/.

FYSB BC 1568y Mortals, Creatures and Subjects

Examines concepts of the self in ancient, medieval, and modern philosophy and literature. The Greeks saw human beings as mortals, in contrast to the gods. Christians in the Middle Ages regarded themselves as immortal creatures reflecting the image of God. Since the seventeenth century we have come to understand selves very differently, namely as subjects defined by selfreflection, self-determination, self-definition, inwardness, and irreducible psychological complexity. Authors include, Homer, Plato, Augustine, Montaigne, Descartes, Pascal, Camus, and Sartre.

FYSB BC 1572x Animals in Text and Society

Interdisciplinary examination of the intimate and fraught connections between animals and humans in literature, philosophy and culture. We will consider topics such as the historical constructions of species boundaries and of the multiple meanings and uses of animals in human life; animal and human identity; emotions evoked by animals; and conceptualizations of animals as colonized "others." Readings include Aesop, Edward Albee, Angela Carter, John Coetzee, Geoffrey Chaucer, Gustave Flaubert, Jean LeFontaine, Marie de France, Michael Pollan, Ovid, selections from Genesis (in the Hebrew Bible), and Virginia Woolf.

FYSB BC 1705y Immortality, Death, and the Meaning of Life

Exploration of how death is perceived and how various conceptions of the self are tied to notions of temporality and mortality. Views of the coherence and desirability of immortality in both its literal and metaphorical senses. In what manner might one 'live on' through one's creations? Does the prospect of death render life meaningless, or does it give meaning to life? Works include readings by Plato, Tolstoy, St. Augustine, Virginia Woolf, as well as poetry, artwork, film, and opera.