Professor of Classics: Helene Foley
Professors of English: James Basker, Lisa Gordis
Professors of History: Rosalind N. Rosenberg, Herbert Sloan
Senior Lecturers in English: Patricia Denison, Margaret Vandenburg
Senior Lecturer in French: Laurie Postlewate (Acting Director)
First-Year Class Dean: Lisa Hollibaugh
Assistant Provost: Hilary Lieberman Link
Instruction in the First-Year Seminar Program is provided by the following regular members of the Barnard College faculty:
Professors: Taylor Carman (Philosophy), Mark Carnes (History), Flora Davidson (Political Science and Urban Studies), Lisa Gordis (English), Laura Kay (Physics and Astronomy), Kimberly Marten (Political Science), Robert McCaughey (History), Stephanie Pfirman (Environmental Science), Richard Pious (Political Science), Anne Prescott (English), Jonathan Rieder (Sociology), Rosalind N. Rosenberg (History), Herbert Sloan (History)
Associate Professors: Mindy Aloff (Dance), Celia Deutsch (Religion), Sharon Harrison (Economics), Kristina Milnor (Classics), Patricia Stokes (Psychology), Caroline Weber (French), Guobin Yang (Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures)
Assistant Professors: Stephanie Beardman (Philospohy), Ronald Briggs (Spanish and Latin American Cultures), Deborah Coen (History), Rebecca Stanton (Slavic), Dylan Thurston (Mathematics)
Lecturers and Other Faculty: Manu Chander (English), Laura Ciolkowski (English), Pamela Cobrin (English), Dorothy Denburg (Dean of the College), Patricia Denison (English), Margaret Ellsberg (English), Georgette Fleischer (English), Lisa Hollibaugh (First-Year Class Dean), Mara Kaspher (Slavic), Ariella Lang (Italian), Katherine Levin (English), Linn Cary Mehta (English), John Pagano (English), Stefan Pedatella (English), Sonia Pereira (Economics), Cary Plotkin (English), Laurie Postlewate (French), Timea Szell (English), Maxine Weisgrau (Anthropology)
For a complete list of
faculty on leave see:
http://www.barnard.edu/provost/facleavelist.html
Purpose and Structure
Every Barnard first-year student is required to take a First-Year Seminar during her first or second semester at Barnard. The purposes of the First-Year Seminars are threefold:
1. To develop further the essential and prerequisite skills a student brings to Barnard in the critical reading and analysis of important texts, in effective speaking, and in writing well–this last especially.
2. To develop these skills within an intellectually challenging context where students and teacher alike, through a close examination of important and relevant texts, engage in an extended consideration of a theme central to human concerns and which goes beyond departmental boundaries.
3. To develop these skills and encounter this intellectual challenge in a small-class setting with instruction by a regular member of the Barnard faculty who has chosen to participate in the program. As such, First-Year Seminars should provide entering Barnard students with an early sense of community.
Accordingly, all First-Year Seminars share a common structure:
- Each will meet twice a week in regularly scheduled class periods and earn 3 points.
- Each will have an enrollment of approximately 16 students.
- Reading assignments will consist of a maximum of six book-length assignments or their equivalent (about 2,000 pages).
- Writing assignments will consist of a minimum of an assignment every other week. These assignments will vary in character (e.g., an assigned topic; a selected topic; reworking a previous assignment; editing the work of others) and length.
- The regular grading practices of the College will be followed. Upon completion of the course, students will have an opportunity to evaluate their First-Year Seminar and to offer suggestions as to how it might be improved in subsequent offerings.
Printable VersionThe First-Year Seminar program consists of approximately 36 seminars, organized into three categories:
I. Reinventing Literary History
A. The Legacy of the Mediterranean
B. The Americas
C. Women and Culture
D. Global Literature
II. Reacting to the Past
III. Special Topics
These categories identify thematic concerns or textual emphases common to more than one seminar, while reflecting varying levels of faculty collaboration that went into the development of the individual seminars. They are also intended to facilitate the process by which a student selects her seminar. (Procedures for selecting First-Year Seminars are described in the First-Year registration materials.)
Please visitthe First-Year Seminar website for an updated listing of courses.