Spring 2021 Special Enrollment Procedures

ENGL BC3902 Senior Seminar: New Millennial American Fiction. 4 points.
Enrollment limited to Barnard senior English majors.
Remember Y2K, the fear that the internet would implode at the stroke of midnight on January 1, 2000?  Conspiracy theories notwithstanding, have 9/11, COVID-19, and virtual reality derailed the American experiment?  Apocalyptic dread inspired by the new millennium may be a self-fulfilling prophecy, exacerbating the impact of increasingly virulent culture wars.  Have the form and content of American fiction been irrevocably transformed by such cultural cataclysms?  Novels by Don DeLillo, Emily Fridlund, Edward P. Jones, Chang-rae Lee, Ben Lerner, Valeria Luiselli, Jenny Offill, Kevin Powers, and Ocean Vuong.
—Margaret Vandenburg, W 11-12:50 ET (Semester-long)

ENGL BC3909 Senior Seminar: The Family in Fiction & Film: The Poetics of Growing Up. 4 points.
Enrollment limited to Barnard senior Film Studies majors and Barnard senior English majors concentrating in Film Studies.
We will look closely at 20th and 21st-Century stories of family life in novels, memoirs, a few children’s books, and movies in many genres, from melodramas to sitcoms. Authors include Gaston Bachelard (The Poetics of Space), D.W. Winnicott (On Playing and Reality), Ta-Nehisi Coates, Maggie Nelson, Toni Morrison, Alison Bechdel, Jonathan Franzen, J.D. Salinger, Astrid Lindgren and Vivian Gornick. Films by Sean Baker, Ingmar Bergman, Wes Anderson, Jennifer Kent, Barry Jenkins, Tamara Jenkins, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Elia Kazan, Richard Linklater, Lance Hammer, Mike Mills, King Vidor, Andrei Zvyagintsev, and others.  
—Maura Spiegel, R 4:10-6 ET (Semester-long)

ENGL BC3912 Senior Seminar: Intolerance, Tolerance, and Stories of Resilience. 4 points.
Enrollment limited to Barnard senior English majors.
Intolerance seems worse than ever these days, not just in the world but in America, which is more polarized than ever. It comes in so many forms, ever morphing into new forms, though it has a history, one we keep struggling to revise, to make our world and our society inclusive and embracing of difference. This course is an effort to explore the issue of intolerance from a historical and literary emphasis, taking a transhistorical and transnational scope.

We begin in seventeenth century England (very brief readings from Donne, Milton, Locke) when the concept and word "toleration" emerged. It initially concerned religion and freedom of "conscience," but later expanded to the issues of women's equality, race, and eventually sexuality (though religion is often never far from these issues). Though we begin with brief selections from the seventeenth century, we quickly move to various texts about resistance, resilience, and attempts to assess the damages and look towards change. We start with Mary Wolstonecraft on The Rights of Women, and then move to the twentieth and twenty-first century, considering a variety of genres, mainly (but not exclusively) writings by women. We will read a very brief selection from anthropologist Mary Douglas and then Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste (at least the first three sections, culminating in the "eight pillars of caste"). Wilkerson is particularly important as she triangulates caste in India, anti-Semitism, and racism/slavery in America.

Texts: W.G. Sebold’s The Emigrants (on the effects of the holocaust); Deborah Feldman’s Unorthodox (a woman’s resistance of Ultra Orthodox Judaism; there’s also a wonderful Netflix series based on this book and a second one); Toni Morrison’s Others; Tayari Jones, An American Marriage (complex intersection of racism, injustice, and the complexity of love and marriage); Jeanette Winterson, Oranges are not the Only Fruit (religion, homosexuality, and love between women); (optional) Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things; pehaps Stephanie Land, Maid (poverty); ending with Tara Westhover’s bestseller, Educated. I know this is too much. I’ve listed Land and Roy as books to consider. One theme of the course is that religion is never far from the issues of intolerance and racism. This is not to attack religion, but to suggest how often religion and the Bible have been (mis)used to bolster or legitimize intolerance. We will not have time for all of these books. Some are simply recommended, depending on your individual interest. Students in the class are encouraged to suggest other books. Each student will create a topic for their senior essay that allows them to explore their own interests.
—Achsah Guibbory, T 12:10-2 ET (Semester-long)

ENGL BC3919 Senior Seminar: Black EcoLiterature
Enrollment limited to Barnard senior English majors.
Questions of sustainability, ecology, and environmental justice have begun to garner much attention within the field of contemporary Black literary studies. This course investigates the various ways that notions of blackness and ecology converge. Throughout the semester we will become familiar with various textual representations of ecology and Blackness from across the African diaspora. We will explore the ways in which categories such as race, gender, nature, place, and technology cohere and become complicated within a contemporary catalog of texts that we might call Black ecoliterature. Central questions guiding the course include "How do our notions of blackness and gender inform our ideas of ecology?" and "In what ways does centering blackness and/or black subjects shift our extant understandings of environmentalism writ large?" Guiding authors will include Octavia Butler, Wangari Maathai, Nnedi Okorafor, Julie Dash, Wangari Maathai, Zora Neale Hurston, and Alice Walker among others.
—Chelsea Frazier, R 4:10-6 ET (Semester-long)

They are all capped at 10 students.

You can sign up as soon as registration opens for you.

That depends on the senior seminar.

For ENGL BC3909 Senior Seminar: The Family in Fiction and Film, you must meet the following requirements on myBarnard:

1. Your major is listed as either Film Studies or English with a Film Studies concentration.
2. Your expected graduation date is listed as May 2020 or February 2021.

For all other senior seminars, you must meet the following requirements on myBarnard:

1. Your major is listed as English (you may have any concentration).
2. Your expected graduation date is listed as May 2020 or February 2021.

If you do not meet these requirements, the computer system will not allow you to sign-up for these courses. It is therefore extremely important that you check that your major, concentration, and graduation year are correct on myBarnard BEFORE registration opens.

If this information is incorrect, please contact both Sarah Pasadino and the Registrar ASAP to correct it. Please note that if you wait until after registration opens to correct this information, you will not be able to register for senior seminars until this information is corrected in the registration system.

If you do not fulfill these requirements but have extenuating circumstances that require you to take a senior seminar, please see question 6.

First, check to see if your major and expected graduation date is correct on myBarnard for the seminar you are trying to register for. If they are and you still cannot register, please email Sarah Pasadino with a description (and, if possible, a screenshot) of your issue.

Before registration opens up, please email Sarah Pasadino a short explanation of why you need to take your senior seminar early and cc your major adviser.

Please sign up for one of the literature senior seminars to ensure that you definitely have a senior seminar to take. Then email Sarah Pasadino a short explanation of why you'd like to take the film seminar. Sarah will maintain a waiting list of interested non-film students in case space becomes available. Note that first priority enrollment will always go to Film Studies majors/concentrators.

Please sign up for one of the other senior seminars to ensure that you definitely have a senior seminar to take. Then join the electronic waiting list for your preferred section.

Please join the electronic wait list for the seminar(s) that works for your schedule. Then email Sarah Pasadino a short explanation of your scheduling conflict and cc your major adviser. Sarah will work with you and your adviser to resolve the problem.

Please join the electronic wait list for the seminar(s) that works for your schedule. Then email Sarah Pasadino to let her know about your issue and cc your major adviser. Sarah will work with you and your adviser to place you in a senior seminar.