To register for Center Courses, please call 212.854.2067 or email bcrw@barnard.edu.

Seeking Your Voice: Poetry Workshop

with Patricia Brody and Eva Miodownik Oppenheim
Dates: Wednesdays: 2/17, 3/3, 3/17, 3/31, 4/14, 4/28
Time: 7:00 - 9:00 PM
Fee: $200
BCRW, 101 Barnard Hall

Explore ways to open up your voice, bring breath and space to your poems, make new discoveries, and take greater risks. We'll also look at the works of three contemporary poets and suggest exercises/assignments to stretch your work. We welcome and have successfully engaged poets of all levels and backgrounds, from graduate students steeped in literature study, to physicians just starting to write.

Patricia Brody's new collection, American Desire, was selected by Finishing Line Books for the 2009 New Women's Voices Series. Brody practices family therapy in NYC and is editing Survival of the Soul: Artists Living with Illness. She teaches American Literature at Boricua College in Harlem.

Eva Miodownik Oppenheim is the author of a book of poems, Things as They Are, and a memoir, The Stork. Her poems have appeared in numerous anthologies and literary journals. An editor and PR writer, she served as a senior administrator in alumnae affairs at Barnard College for 18 years.

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The following courses are in progress from last semester. No new registration is permitted for this semester.

From Spectacle to Spectator: Feminist Performance as Activism

with Elizabeth Whitney
Dates: Mondays: 10/5, 11/9, 12/7, 1/25, 2/15, 3/15, 4/12, 5/10
Time: 6:30 - 8:30 PM
Fee: $260
BCRW, 101 Barnard Hall

From poetry slams to music festivals to burlesque, feminism is a present force in a wide variety of contemporary performance forms. Participants in this course will have the opportunity to discuss recent histories of and contemporary trends in feminist performance, and the ways that such performance offers a vehicle for social justice activism. We will look at work by artists including (though certainly not limited to) The Guerrilla Girls, Spider Woman Theatre, Split Britches, Karen Finley, Holly Hughes, The Sex Workers Art Show, The Harlem Shake, The Femme Show, Big Moves, Kate Bornstein, Lenelle Moise, Kimberly Dark, Staceyann Chin, Michelle Tea, and Alix Olson. There will be a reading list as well as online materials to view, and some sessions may take place at live performance venues in New York City.

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Women's Cultures / Women's Lives

with Leslie Calman
Dates: Tuesdays: 9/22, 10/20, 11/17, 12/15, 1/12, 2/9, 3/9, 4/6, 5/4, 6/1
6:30 - 8:00 PM
Fee: $350
BCRW, 101 Barnard Hall

Another year—our 19th—of experiencing the modern world from the comfort of home, complete with spirited discussion among smart women devoted to good books and laughter. This year's reading brings us New Yorkers by way of Holland and Pakistan, native Americans, American slaves and slaveholders, Parisians, British, Australians, Ukrainians, Japanese, Mexican Jews in Berlin, straights, gays. Among the authors: some veterans, many prizewinners, a few first-timers. Join this lively, satisfying group in which you'll probably love the books—but you'll always love the discussion.

Leslie Calman is former Director of the Barnard Center for Research on Women and current Executive Director of the Mautner Project: The National Lesbian Health Organization.

Reading List:
Joseph O'Neill, Netherland
Marianne Wiggins, The Shadow Catcher
Toni Morrison, A Mercy
Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog
George Eliot, Middlemarch
Alison Bechdel, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
Joan London, The Good Parents
Marina Lewycka, A Short History of the Tractor in Ukrainian
Yoko Ogawa, The Housekeeper and the Professor
Chloe Aridjis, Book of Clouds

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Multicultural Memoirs: Class, Culture and Creativity in Women's Lives

with Lori Rotskoff
Wednesdays: 9/16, 10/14, 11/18, 12/16, 1/20, 2/24, 4/7, 5/5, 6/2
Time: 7:00 - 8:30 PM
Fee: $315
BCRW, 101 Barnard Hall

This class explores contemporary memoirs by women from a range of cultural and national backgrounds. Women's personal narratives are profoundly shaped by differences in class, race, ethnicity, and religion. This course will introduce you to well-crafted memoirs written by historians, educators, poets, novelists, journalists, artists, and activists. How does a writer's social position and geographical history affect how she understands and constructs her life story? How do authors translate lived experiences of social mobility, immigration, and expatriation into compelling works of literary non-fiction?

Our discussions will explore how women have shaped their life stories into literature, and address how we, as readers, can enrich our own lives by reflecting on them. Participants of all ages and professional backgrounds are welcome to join the class. Come share your thoughts, opinions, and questions with other passionate readers, and gain new insights into women's history and creative expression. Lori Rotskoff is a cultural historian of American family life. She holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University, and has written articles and reviews for the Chicago Tribune, Reviews in American History, and The Women's Review of Books. This is her fifth year teaching at the Barnard Center for Research on Women.

Reading List:
Mary Childers, Welfare Brat
Carolyn Kay Steedman, Landscape for a Good Woman
Esmeralda Santiago, When I Was Puerto Rican
Jill Ker Conway, The Road from Coorain
Kim Barnes, Out of the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country
Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman
Lucette Lagnado, The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit
Jennifer Baszile, The Black Girl Next Door
Aline Kominsky Crumb, Need More Love

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