Spring 2020 Special Enrollment Procedures

ENGL BC3901 Senior Seminar: Women of Color in the US Public and Private Cultures. 4 points.
Enrollment limited to Barnard senior English majors.
This course will explore cultural production and consumption by "women of color" in the U.S., with a focus on the way various groups have negotiated the presumed gap between private experience and public or political form.  Historical, social, and cultural connections and disjunctions between African-American, Arab-American, Asian-American, Native American, Latina, and other women will be examined, especially in the context of feminism, cultural nationalism, and the scholarly discipline and practice of critical legal feminism and critical race studies.  We will explore the varied ways in which family, labor, and leisure practices can place women of color in social positions which blur the distinction between private and public culture, and which call for a reconsideration of the notion of "experience," itself. Authors and critics to be considered may include Louise Erdrich, Cherríe Moraga, Valeria Luiselli, Chela Sandoval, Maxine Hong Kingston, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Cathy Hong Park, Mohja Kahf, and Chandra Mohanty.
—Kristen Carter, R 4:10-6

ENGL BC3907 Senior Seminar: The Brontës. 4 points.
Enrollment limited to Barnard senior English majors.
In this course, we will closely study the works of the three Brontë sisters, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne. Although the Brontës are famous for their secluded lives on the moors of Yorkshire, their novels brilliantly engage many of the most urgent cultural concerns of the Victorian era, including poverty and social alienation; colonialism and empire; psychology, desire, and repression; religious belief and spirituality; the role of art and the imagination; and, especially, the social, economic, and political condition of women in the nineteenth century. We’ll explore these topics and others through readings of the Brontës’ major novels (Jane Eyre, Villette, Wuthering Heights, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall), as well as some of their less well-known works, including their poetry and their astonishing juvenile literary experiments. We’ll also consider the enduring influence of the Brontës' novels in film and literature; additional texts may thus include recent film adaptations of the novels, as well as works such as Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea and Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca.
—Jayne Hildebrand, R 10:10-12

ENGL BC3909 Sr. Sem: 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, M 4:10-6

ENGL BC3912 Senior Seminar: Intolerance, Tolerance, and Stories of Resistance. 4 points.
Enrollment limited to Barnard senior English majors.
Intolerance seems worse than ever these days, and comes in so many forms. This course is an effort to explore the issues from a historical and literary emphasis, taking a transhistorical and transnational scope. We begin in seventeenth century England (Donne, Milton, Locke) when the concept of and word "toleration" emerged. It initially concerned religious toleration 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 Mary Wolstonecraft’s Rights of Women, Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter (religion, sexuality, women), and then to the twentieth and twenty-first century, considering a variety of genres, mainly (but not exclusively) writings by women. Writers and texts may include: W.G. Sebold’s The Emigrants; Deborah Feldman’s Unorthodox; Toni Morrison’s Others and Ta-Nahisi Coates’ Between the World and Me; Tayari Jones, An American Marriage; Jeanette Winterson, Oranges are not the Only Fruit, Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things; Stephanie Land, Maid; and Tara Westhover, Educated.
—Achsah Guibbory, M 2:10-4

ENGL BC3917 Senior Seminar: Words and Pictures: The Intersection of Literary and Visual Art. 4 points.
Enrollment limited to Barnard senior English majors.
In this class we will explore literary texts that focus on visual experience, especially painting and sculpture. What kinds of questions do these texts raise about the nature of aesthetic experience? How does what we mean by aesthetic experience change through time? Our readings will range from ancient to modern: Homer, Ovid, Chaucer, Spenser, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Herder, Barthes, Woolf, Ishiguro, Dove, Howe, Sebald, among others. We will also read widely in the history of aesthetic philosophy and critical theory.
—Rachel Eisendrath, W 4:10-6

ENGL BC3924 Senior Seminar: Common Languages. 4 points.
Enrollment limited to Barnard senior English majors.
Are humans, alone among the species, caught in the clutches of a death drive?  This course revives “the dream of a common language,”* ways to elude the tragic trajectory of alienation.  Writers include Paul Auster, J. M. Coetzee, Mohsin Hamid, David Malouf, Claudia Rankine, *Adrienne Rich, Juan José Saer, and Virginia Woolf.
—Margaret Vandenburg, W 11-12:50

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.