Consortium for Critical Interdisciplinary Studies

AFRS BC2005 CARIBBEAN CULTURE ＆ SOCIETIES. 3.00 points.

This course offers a chronological study of the Anglophone, Hispanophone, and Francophone insular Caribbean through the eyes of some of the region’s most important writers and thinkers. We will focus on issues that key Caribbean intellectuals--including two Nobel prize-winning authors--consider particularly enduring and relevant in Caribbean cultures and societies. Among these are, for example, colonization, slavery, national and postcolonial identity, race, class, popular culture, gender, sexuality, tourism and migration. This course will also serve as an introduction to some of the exciting work on the Caribbean by professors at Barnard College and Columbia University (faculty spotlights)

AFRS BC3020 Harlem Crossroads. 3 points.

Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

Studies Harlem in the context of African-American and African diaspora culture and society as well as American urbanization. Primarily focusing on Harlem of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the course offers students opportunities to discuss political economy, immigration, migration and the role of the city in social life.

AFRS BC3055 Slave Resistance in the United States from the Colonial Era to the Civil War. 3 points.

Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

Analyzes the multifaceted nature of slave resistance, its portrayal and theorization by scholars.  Critically examines the various pathways of resistance of enslaved Africans and African-Americans, both individually and collectively (e.g., running away, non-cooperation, theft, arson, as well as verbal and physical confrontation, revolts and insurrections).  Considers how gender shaped acts of resistance.

AFRS BC3110 THE AFRICANA COLLOQUIUM. 4.00 points.

Prerequisites: Students must attend first day of class and admission will be decided then. Enrollment limited to 18 students. Priority will be given to Africana majors and CCIS students (Africana Studies, American Studies and Women's Studies majors; minors in Race and Ethnic Studies).
This course is concerned with two interrelated topics: 1) the long, complicated history of voyages to Latin America; and 2) the myriad and evolving ways voyagers to the region have portrayed its landscapes, people, food, festivals, and more. The course will move chronologically from the 15th century to the present, with each week devoted to grappling with a type of voyage characteristic of a given era, including: conquest voyages undertaken by figures such as Christopher Columbus and Hernán Cortés settler-colonial voyages undertaken by Iberians seeking new lives in the New World captive voyages undertaken by Africans destined for enslavement in households, cities, and rural environs freedom voyages undertaken by African Americans escaping from slavery sex-tourism voyages undertaken by North Americans and Europeans We will view these topics through a combination of different forms of media (such as letters, travel accounts, features, and films) and traditional scholarly sources that will help contextualize them

AFRS BC3120 History of African-American Music. 3 points.

Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

Survey interrogates the cultural and aesthetic development of a variety of interconnected musical genres - such as blues, jazz, gospel, soul, funk, R&B, hip-hop, classical and their ever changing same/names - viewed as complex human activities daringly danced at dangerous discourses inside and outside the American cultural mainstreams.

AFRS BC3146 African American and African Writing and the Screen. 4 points.

Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

Focuses on the context and history of representations of African Americans and Africans in early American and other cinematographies; the simultaneous development of early film and the New Negro, Negritude and Pan African movements; and pioneer African American and African cinema.

AFRS BC3148 Literature of the Great Migration. 3 points.

Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

(Also ENGL BC 3148) Examination of fiction, poetry, essays and films about the Great Migration (1910-1950) of African-Americans from the rural South to the urban North, focusing on literary production in New York and Chicago. (This course satisfies the Harlem Requirement for the Africana Studies major).

AFRS BC3150 RACE ＆PERFORMNCE IN CARIBBEAN. 4.00 points.

Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Sophomore Standing. Enrollment limited to 18 students.

Analysis of the shifting place and perception of Afro-Caribbean performance in Caribbean societies. This course takes a cross-cultural approach that examines performance through the lens of ethnography, anthropology, music and literary criticism.

AFRS BC3550 GAY HARLEM. 4.00 points.

This course explores representations of queer Harlem in African American literature, sonic culture, and performance. We will consider the history and making of Harlem, key figures of the Harlem Renaissance, and the aesthetic innovations of writers and artists who defied the racial, sexual, and gendered conventions of their time. We will be guided by an intersectional approach to the study of race, gender, and sexuality and the methods of Black queer studies, African American and African diaspora literary studies, as well as sound and performance scholarship. We will ask when, where, and what was/is gay Harlem; how we might excavate its histories; map its borders; and speculate on its material and imagined futures

AFRS BC3570 Africana Issues: Diasporas of the Indian Ocean. 4 points.

Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

The Indian Ocean has been called the cradle of globalization, a claim bolstered by seasonal monsoon winds and the trade that these enabled. We will consider the aesthetic histories of such trade by engaging literary and other cultural exchanges (including film, visual arts, music, and dance). What did the Zulu prophet Isaiah Shembe learn from Gujarati poets? Other than a major slaving center and source of spices, what role did Zanzibar play in the development of music and literary forms that look to Oman as well as the East Coast of Africa? We focus on four sites: Durban (South Africa), Bombay (India), Zanzibar (Tanzania) and Port Louis (Mauritius). This course will be taught simultaneously between Barnard in New York and the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Students from both campuses will be encouraged to interact electronically and to establish a blog and website. The course will also have live-streamed guest speakers from chosen sites around the Indian Ocean.

AFRS BC3589 BLK SEXUAL PLTCS U.S.POP CLTR. 4.00 points.

Black Feminism(s)/Womanism(s)

ANTH UN3160 THE BODY AND SOCIETY. 4.00 points.

Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

Prerequisites: A 1000 level course in anthropology is strongly recommended but not required as a prerequisite
As an introduction to the field of medical anthropology, this seminar addresses themes of health, affliction, and healing across sociocultural domains. Concerns include critiques of biomedical, epidemiological and other models of disease and suffering; the entwinement of religion and healing; technocratic interventions in healthcare; and the sociomoral underpinnings of human life, death, and survival. A 1000 level course in Anthropology is recommended as a prerequisite, although not required. Enrollment limited to 30. 4 units

ANTH UN3300 Pre-Columbian Histories of Native America. 3 points.

CC/GS/SEAS: Partial Fulfillment of Global Core Requirement
Enrollment limited to 40.

This course explores 10,000 years of the North American archaeological record, bringing to light the unwritten histories of Native Americans prior to European contact. Detailed consideration of major pre-Columbian sites is interwoven with the insight of contemporary native peoples to provide both a scientific and humanist reconstruction of the past.

ANTH V3810 Madagascar. 4 points.

Enrollment limit is 15.Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

Prerequisites: Non-Anthropology majors require the instructor's permission.

Critiques the many ways the great Red Island has been described and imagined by explorers, colonists, social scientists, and historians—as an Asian-African amalgamation, an ecological paradise, and a microcosm of the Indian Ocean. Religious diasporas, mercantilism, colonization, enslavement, and race and nation define key categories of comparative analysis.

ANTH V3928 Religious Mediation. 4 points.

Enrollment limited to 16. Instructor's permission is required.Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

Reading theories of media and of religion, we will examine how transformations in media technology shift the ways in which religion is encoded into semiotic forms, how these forms are realized in performative contexts, and how these affect the constitution of religious subjects and religious authority. Topics include word, print, image, and sound in relation to Islam, Pentecostalism, Buddhism and animist religions.

ANTH V3988 Race/Sexuality Science and Social Practice. 4 points.

Enrollment limited to 26.Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

Prerequisites: the instructor's permission.

Scientific inquiry has configured race and sex in distinctive ways. This class will engage critical theories of race and feminist considerations of sex, gender, and sexuality through the lens of the shifting ways in which each has been conceptualized, substantiated, classified, and managed in (social) science and medicine.

CSER W1012 History of Racialization in the United States. 3 points.

BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Cultures in Comparison (CUL).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

The History of Racialization in the United States examines the development of race and racism through the study of significant historical circumstances that define the institutional structure of American Empire and of the resulting interactions among its peoples. Race is not static. Consequently, it is not an ahistorical object, nor a predetermined identity, nor a uniform category of analysis. Traditionally, the history of American race relations is the contact between racially defined groups over time and space of the effort required to maintain social and economic differences among them. Racialization, then, refers to the process by which one population group or many are "placed" in distinct racial categories. 

CSER V3440 The Changing American City. 4 points.

Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

After decades of economic disinvestment, physical decline and social out-migration, the 1990s ushered in an era of urban revitalization in many U.S. cities, the effects of which resonate today. How can we situate these recent changes within a longer trajectory of urban change in the United States? What do we make of the contested claims on space, belonging and identity made by, or on behalf of, people living in changing urban places? How should we evaluate development interventions whose end results seem so often to diverge from their intentions?     This course will develop practical inroads into the problem of the changing American city that will both complement and complicate commonplace intuitions about the urban change we witness unfolding around us. Readings stay close to anthropological and ethnographic perspectives. We will consider how focusing on the meanings and experiences of everyday life in urban spaces can problematize ideals often associated with urban living, including various forms of diversity. Additional readings will introduce students to analytical perspectives on urbanism, race, ethnicity, space and citizenship. Taken together, readings, primary materials, discussions and a field trip will equip students with the tools to approach contemporary urban change with an anthropological lens.

CSER W3510 Novels of Immigration, Relocation, and Diaspora. 4 points.

CC/GS/SEAS: Partial Fulfillment of Global Core Requirement
Course listed as ENGL W3510.

The master narrative of the United States has always vacillated between valorizations of movement and settlement. While ours is a nation of immigrants, one which privileges its history of westward expansion and pioneering, trailblazing adventurers, we also seem to long for what Wallace Stegner called a “sense of place,” a true belonging within a single locale. Each of these constructions has tended to focus on individuals with a tremendous degree of agency in terms of where and whether they go. However, it is equally important to understand the tension between movement and stasis within communities most frequently subjected to spatial upheavals. To that end, this course is designed to examine narratives of immigration, migration, relocation, and diaspora by authors of color in the United States.

CSER UN3904 Rumor and Racial Conflict. 4 points.

This course will take a transnational look at the strange ways that race and mass rumors have interacted. From the judicial and popular riots in the U.S. justified by recurrent rumors of African-American insurrection, to accusations that French Jews were players in the 'white slave trade,' to tales of white fat-stealing monsters among indigenous people of Bolivia and Peru, rumors play a key role in constructing, enforcing, and contesting regimes of racial identity and domination. In order to grasp rumor's importance for race, we will need to understand how it works, so our readings will cover both instances of racialized rumor-telling, conspiracy theories and mass panics, and some key approaches to how rumors work as a social phenomenon. The instructor will expect you to post a response to the reading on Courseworks each week and to engage actively in class discussion. There will be an in-class midterm exam, and you will be able to choose between writing an independent research project or doing a take-home exam.

CSER W3906 Race in Scientific and Social Practice. 4 points.

Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

This class presents a genealogy of the development of the race concept since the 19th century. Most centrally, we will examine the ways in which race been conceptualized, substantiated, classified, managed and "observed" in (social) science and medicine. We will read that history of science in tandem with philosophical, anthropological, and historical literatures on race and the effects of racial practices in the social and political world writ large. This class will address a series of questions, historical and contemporary. For example, how has the relationship between "race" and "culture" been articulated in the history of anthropology in particular, and in racial theory more broadly? How and why were particular phenotypes understood to signify meaningful biological and social differences? Can there be a concept of race without phenotype—a solely genotypic racial grouping? More broadly, we will examine how particular scientific projects have intersected with, authorized, or enabled specific social and political imaginations.

CSER UN3928 COLONIZATION/DECOLONIZATION. 4.00 points.

CC/GS/SEAS: Partial Fulfillment of Global Core Requirement
Enrollment limited to 22.

Prerequisites: Open to CSER majors/concentrators only. Others may be allowed to register with the instructor's permission.
Prerequisites: Open to CSER majors/concentrators only. Others may be allowed to register with the instructors permission. This course explores the centrality of colonialism in the making of the modern world, emphasizing cross-cultural and social contact, exchange, and relations of power; dynamics of conquest and resistance; and discourses of civilization, empire, freedom, nationalism, and human rights, from 1500 to 2000. Topics include pre-modern empires; European exploration, contact, and conquest in the new world; Atlantic-world slavery and emancipation; and European and Japanese colonialism in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. The course ends with a section on decolonization and post-colonialism in the period after World War II. Intensive reading and discussion of primary documents

CSER UN3940 COMP STUDY OF CONSTITUTNL CHAL. 4.00 points.

This course will examine how the American legal system decided constitutional challenges affecting the empowerment of African, Latino, and Asian American communities from the 19th century to the present. Focus will be on the role that race, citizenship, capitalism/labor, property, and ownership played in the court decision in the context of the historical, social, and political conditions existing at the time. Topics include the denial of citizenship and naturalization to slaves and immigrants, government sanctioned segregation, the struggle for reparations for descendants of slavery, and Japanese Americans during World War II

DNCE BC3570 Latin American and Caribbean Dance: Identities in Motion. 3 points.

BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: The Visual and Performing Arts (ART).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

Examines the history and choreographic features of Latin American and Caribbean dance forms. Dances are analyzed in order to uncover the ways in which dancing shapes national, racial, and gender identities. Focuses on the globalization of these dances in New York City.

DNCE BC3578 Traditions of African-American Dance. 3 points.

BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: The Visual and Performing Arts (ART).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

Traces the development of African-American dance, emphasizing the contribution of black artists and the influence of black traditions on American theatrical dance. Major themes include the emergence of African-American concert dance, the transfer of vernacular forms to the concert stage, and issues of appropriation, cultural self-identification, and artistic hybridity.

DNCE BC3980 Performing the Political: Embodying Change in American Performance. 4 points.

Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

Prerequisites: An introductory course in dance or theatre history or permission of instructor. Enrollment limited to 12 students.

Exploration into the politics of performance and the performance of politics through the lens of 20th-century American dance.

ENGL BC3129 Explorations of Black Literature: Early African-American Lit. 1760-1890. 3 points.

Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 18 students.

Poetry, prose, fiction, and nonfiction, with special attention to the slave narrative. Includes Wheatley, Douglass, and Jacobs, but emphasis will be on less familiar writers such as Brown, Harper, Walker, Wilson, and Forten. Works by some 18th-century precursors will also be considered.

ENGL BC3134 CREATIVE NON-FICTION. 3.00 points.

Writing sample required to apply. Instructions and the application form can be found here: https://english.barnard.edu/english/creative-writing-courses. In this class, you'll write two personal essays, about fifteen pages each. We'll spend each class discussing two student essays and one published essay. My goal in this class--besides building a community of people to talk about writing together--is for each student to figure out what drives them to write, what they're most driven to write about, and how their mind works. I like to find and bring out each student's strengths as a writer, storyteller, thinker. I'm a comics artist (long-form) and cartoonist (short-form), and I encourage anyone with an interest in making comics or other kinds of visual narratives to do so. I can offer help with very nuts and bolts things like materials and computer programs, as well as help telling a clear story in a sometimes complicated medium. I don't think there are clear, universal boundaries between non-fiction and fiction, personal essay and journalistic essay, fact and story (in a creative writing context, I mean!), long-form and short-form, written word and other modes of communication - and I like for students to start to figure out their own personal differentiations and definitions. Homework for this class is mostly reading. There's also a quick weekly writing assignment, graded pass/fail, just to keep you writing regularly. In our workshops, we go over the essays in draft form. I don't grade the essays until they're officially turned in at the end of the semester

ENTH BC3144 Black Theatre. 4 points.

Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 16 students.

Exploration of Black Theater, specifically African-American performance traditions, as an intervening agent in racial, cultural, and national identity. African-American theatre artists to be examined include Amiri Baraka, Kia Corthron, W.E.B. Du Bois, Angelina Grimke, Langston Hughes, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Adrienne Kennedy, Suzan-Lori Parks, Adrian Piper, and August Wilson. Fulfills one (of two) required courses in dramatic literature for Theatre/Drama and Theatre Arts major.

ENWS BC3144 Minority Women Writers in the United States. 3 points.

BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Literature (LIT).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

Literature of the 20th-century minority women writers in the United States, with emphasis on works by Asian, Black, Hispanic, and Native American women. The historical and cultural as well as the literary framework.

ENGL BC3190 Global Literature in English. 3 points.

BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Cultures in Comparison (CUL)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Literature (LIT).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

  Selective survey of fiction from the ex-colonies, focusing on the colonial encounter, cultural and political decolonization, and belonging and migration in the age of postcolonial imperialism. Areas covered include Africa (Achebe, Aidoo, Armah, Ngugi); the Arab World (Mahfouz, Munif, Salih, Souief); South Asia (Mistry, Rushdie, Suleri); the Carribean (Kincaid); and New Zealand (Hulme).

ENGL BC3196 HARLEM RENAISSANCE LITERATURE. 4.00 points.

Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

In the summer of 2021, Home to Harlem will focus on the writing and collaboration of Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes in the 1920s. We will explore the cultural history and aesthetic debates that animated Harlem in the 1920s by reading them through the work (poetry, fiction, essays, plays) of Barnard and Columbia’s own, who, for a time juggled student life in Morningside Heights and the joys and challenges of being major players in the Harlem or New Negro Renaissance. Hurston and Hughes navigated the demands of being an artist and representative of "the race" in both similar and different ways. They worked together to shape the Renaissance according to their radical visions and were friends and collaborators until they famously fell out. The goal of this class is to plot the individual and collective artistic growth and experimentation of Hurston and Hughes, as well as create a digital timeline and rendering of their individual and collaborative development. To that end, this class will use either or both of the digital tools Scalar and Timeline.js in creative and collaborative ways. The class will partner with the Digital Humanities Center at Barnard for workshops on these digital tools that will be linked to all of the course assignments and final projects. No prior experience with these tools is necessary.

HIST BC2321 COLONIAL ENCOUNTERS. 3.00 points.

Examines the shaping of European cultural identity through encounters with non-European cultures from 1500 to the post-colonial era. Novels, paintings, and films will be among the sources used to examine such topics as exoticism in the Enlightenment, slavery and European capitalism, Orientalism in art, ethnographic writings on the primitive, and tourism

HIST BC2840 Topics in South Asian History. 3 points.

BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC I)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

Prerequisites: Some background in non-Western history is recommended.

Examines caste and gender as an important lens for understanding the transformations of intimate life and political culture in colonial and post-colonial India. Topics include: conjugality; popular culture violence, sex and the state; and the politics of untouchability.

HIST BC2980 WORLD MIGRATION. 3.00 points.

Overview of human migration from pre-history to the present. Sessions on classical Rome; Jewish diaspora; Viking, Mongol, and Arab conquests; peopling of New World, European colonization, and African slavery; 19th-century European mass migration; Chinese and Indian diasporas; resurgence of global migration in last three decades, and current debates

HIST BC3546 The Fourteenth Amendment and Its Uses. 4 points.

BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.

The role of the 14th Amendment in shaping the modern American Constitution; theories of judicial review; the rise and fall of economic due process; the creation of civil liberties; the civil rights revolution; and the end of states' rights.

HIST BC3587 Remembering Slavery: Critiquing Modern Representations of the Peculiar Institution. 4 points.

BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).

Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.

The enslavement of people of African descent signifies a crucial historical and cultural marker not only for African-Americans but also for Americans in general. We will interrogate how and why images of slavery continue to be invoked within the American sociocultural landscape (e.g., in films, documentaries, historical novels, and science fiction).

HIST BC3669 Inequalities:Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Latin America. 4 points.

Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required. A general background on Latin America recommended but not absolutely required. Course limited to 15 students.

Latin America has long been characterized by extreme and enduring inequalities - of class, income, race, and ethnicity. Examines patterns of inequality from different disciplinary perspectives, both historically and in the present. Examines not only causes and solutions but how scholars have approached inequality as an intellectual problem.

HIST BC3672 Perspectives on Power in 20th Century Latin America. 4 points.

BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC I)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.

Examination of recent Latin American historiography concerns with power in the context of 20th-Century Latin America. Focus on such diverse topics as the Mexican Revolution and migrant culture in Costa Rica, labor mobilization in Chile and the dirty war in Argentina. Themes include the relationship between popular culture and the state; the power of words and the power of symbols; structure and agency; the role of the law; the relationship between leaders and followers; and the intersections of gender, race, and power.

HIST BC3791 Lagos: From the Pepperfarm to the Megacity. 4.00 points.

Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required.
Lagos: The City Is… the unofficial capital of Nigeria the go-slow capital of the world Rem Koolhaas’ planning mystery George Packer’s mega-city nightmare Above all, as social scientist Margaret Peil once said, Lagos: The city is the people. At last count, over 15 million people to be (in)exact which makes Lagos the second most densely populated city in Africa. How does a city like Lagos come into being? What are its origins? What is its history in regional, continental, and global context? How does it ‘work’ and what work does it do for our understandings of cities, urbanization, urbanism, colonialism, globalization, trans-nationalism, and the spatial factor in Africanist historical analyses? This course examines the many Lagoses that have existed over time, in space, and in the imagination from the city’s origins to the 21st century. This is a reading, writing, viewing, and listening intensive course. We will be reading scholarly, policy-oriented, and popular sources on Lagos as well as screening films and audio recordings that feature Lagos in order to learn about the social, cultural, and intellectual history of this West African mega-city

HIST BC3870 GENDER＆ MIGRATN:GLOBAL PERSPC. 4.00 points.

Prerequisites: Permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 15. Preregistration required. Sophomore Standing. Explores migration as a gendered process and what factors account for migratory differences by gender across place and time; including labor markets, education demographic and family structure, gender ideologies, religion, government regulations and legal status, and intrinsic aspects of the migratory flow itself

RELI V2615 Religions of Harlem. 3 points.

Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

Through a range of field exercises and classroom guests, this course will introduce students to the rich religious history of Harlem, while also challenging them to document and analyze the diversity of Harlem's contemporary religious scene.

RELI W4215 Hinduism Here. 4 points.

Historical, theological, social and ritual dimensions of "lived Hinduism" in the greater New York area. Sites selected for in-depth study include worshipping communities, retreat centers, and national organizations with significant local influence. Significant fieldwork component

RELI W4620 Religious Worlds of New York. 4 points.

This seminar teaches ethnographic approaches to studying religious life with a special focus on urban religion and religions of New York. Students develop in-depth analyses of religious communities using these methods. Course readings address both ethnographic methods and related ethical and epistemological issues, as well as substantive topical issues of central importance to the study of urban religion, including transnationalism and immigration, religious group life and its relation to local community life, and issues of ethnicity, race and cosmopolitanism in pluralistic communities.

SOCI V3247 The Immigrant Experience, Old and New. 3 points.

BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC I)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Cultures in Comparison (CUL).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

The immigrant experience in the United States. Topics include ideologies of the melting pot; social, cultural, and economic life of earlier immigrants; the distinctiveness of the African-American experience; recent surge of "new" immigrants (Asians, Latinos, West Indians); and changing American views of immigration.

SOCI V3324 Poverty, Inequality, and Policy: A Sociological Perspective. 4 points.

Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

Prerequisites: Introductory course in Sociology is suggested.

Examination of poverty, the "underclass," and inequality in the United States. Part 1: The moral premises, social theories, and political interests shaping current debates about the poor. Part 2: A more concrete analysis of the lives of the poor and the causes of family breakdown, the drug economy, welfare, employment, and homelessness.

SOCI BC3907 COMMUNITIES AND SOCIAL CHANGE. 4.00 points.

Examines how changes in the economy, racial composition, and class relations affect community life-how it is created, changed and sometimes lost-with a specific focus on the local urban context. Student research projects will address how contemporary forces such as neoliberalization, gentrification and tourism impact a communitys social fabric

SOCI BC3909 Ethnic Conflict and Unrest. 4 points.

Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

Prerequisites: Sophomore Standing. SOCI BC1003 or permission of the instructor. Enrollment limited to 20 students.

Post-1965 immigration in the U.S. has prompted conflicts between new immigrant groups and established racial and ethnic groups. This seminar explores ethnic conflict and unrest that takes place in the streets, workplace, and everyday social life. Focus is on sociological theories that explain the tensions associated with the arrival of new immigrants.

SOCI BC3913 Inequalities: Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality in U.S. Law and Society. 4 points.

This class will examine the historical roots and ongoing persistence of social, economic, and political inequality and the continuing role that it plays in U.S. society by examining how such issues have been addressed both in social science and in law.

SPAN BC3470 Latin(o) American Art in New York City: Critical Interventions, Institutions, and Creative Lives. 3 points.

Prerequisites: Third-year bridge course (W3300), and introductory surveys (W3349, W3350).

Considers the trajectory and intervention of Latin(o) American art in New York City's artistic landscape. We will map the relation between Latin(o) American art and key art institutions, study critical receptions, and look at some of the lives and works of Latin(o) American artists in NYC. 

SPAN BC3990 SENIOR SEMINAR. 4.00 points.

Prerequisites: SPAN UN3300SPAN UN3349SPAN UN3350 Prerequisites: Course intended to be taken by all Spanish majors during the fall of their senior year. Third-year bridge course (UN3300), and introductory surveys (UN3349, UN3350).
This course is a requirement for all majors and is taken in the Fall semester of the Senior year; students may register for the Barnard or Columbia (3991) section. In this academic writing workshop students develop individual research projects under the guidance of the course’s instructor and in dialogue with the other participants’ projects. The final assignment of the senior seminar (6000 words) is the senior essay. It is written in Spanish

WMST BC2140 Critical Approaches in Social and Cultural Theory. 3.00 points.

This course examines the conceptual foundations that support feminist and queer analyses of racial capitalism, security and incarceration, the politics of life and health, and colonial and postcolonial studies, among others. Open to all students; required for the major in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) and the Interdisciplinary Concentration or Minor in Race and Ethnicity (ICORE/MORE)

WMST BC3121 Black Women in America. 4 points.

BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Historical Studies (HIS).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

Prerequisites: Students must attend first day of class and admission will be decided then. Enrollment limited to 20 students.

Examines roles of black women in the U.S. as thinkers, activists and creators during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Focusing on the intellectual work, social activism and cultural expression of African American women, we examine how they understood their lives, resisted oppression and struggled to change society. We will also discuss theoretical frameworks (such as "double jeopardy," or "intersectionality") developed for the study of black women. The seminar will encourage students to pay particular attention to the diversity of black women and critical issues facing Black women today. This course is the same as AFRS BC3121 Black Women in America.

WMST BC3132 GENDERED CONTROVERSIES. 4.00 points.

Love and sex have long been studied as historical constructs influenced by social, political, and economic dimensions. This course aims to expand this discourse by incorporating the often-overlooked lens of technological mediation. Beginning with the premise that romantic love is deeply shaped by the affordances of the technology of the time, a critical awareness of technological mediation in romance –especially of digital technologies, i.e. online dating, social media, or cybersex— allows for a deeper understanding of how social categories such as gender, race, class, ability, or sexuality are technologically-mediated, thereby informing our societal and cultural perceptions of love, dating, and sex. Sandra Moyano-Ariza is Term Assistant Professor of WGSS and Research Director at BCRW. Her research works at the intersection of pop culture, philosophy, and digital technologies, with interests in the fields of media studies and digital scholarship, contemporary feminist theory, critical race theory, posthumanism, and affect theory

WMST BC3134 Unheard Voices: African Women's Literature. 4 points.

BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Cultures in Comparison (CUL)., BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Literature (LIT).
Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 14 students.

How does one talk of women in Africa without thinking of Africa as a ‘mythic unity’? We will consider the political, racial, social and other contexts in which African women write and are written about in the context of their located lives in Africa and in the African Diaspora. This course is the same as AFRS BC3134 Unheard Voices: African Women's Literature.

WMST BC3510 Interpreting Bodies: Engendering the Black Body. 4 points.

Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

Prerequisites: Students must attend first day of class and admission will be decided then. Enrollment limited to 20 students.

This course examines how the body functions as an analytic model and a process of embodiment by focusing on the black female body in particular. Looking at feminist theorizing of the black body, it explores how the black female body has been marked in particular ways and with profound effects.

WMST BC3518 STUDIES IN U.S. IMPERIALISM. 4.00 points.

Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 20 students.
Historical, comparative study of the cultural effects and social experiences of U.S. imperialism, with attention to race, gender and sexuality in practices of domination and struggle

WMST UN3915 GENDER, SEXUALITY ＆ POWER IN TRANSNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES. 4.00 points.

Enrollment limited to 15.

Prerequisites: Instructor approval required
This course considers formations of gender, sexuality, and power as they circulate transnationally, as well as transnational feminist and queer movements that have emerged to address contemporary gendered and sexual inequalities. Topics include political economy, global care chains, sexuality, sex work and trafficking, feminist and queer politics, and human rights. If it is a small world after all, how do forces of globalization shape and redefine the relationship between gender, sexuality, and powerful institutions like the state? And, if power swirls everywhere, how are transnational power dynamics reinscribed in gendered bodies? How is the body represented in discussions of nationalism and in the political economy of globalization? These questions will frame this course by highlighting how gender, sexuality, and power coalesce to impact the lives of individuals in various spaces including workplaces, the academy, the home, religious institutions, the government, and civil society, and human rights organizations. This course will enable us to think transnationally, historically, and dynamically, using gender and sexuality as lenses through which to critique relations of power and the ways that power informs our everyday lives and subjectivities

WMST W4303 Gender, Globalization, and Empire. 4 points.

BC: Fulfillment of General Education Requirement: Social Analysis (SOC I).

Prerequisites: Enrollment limited to 20 students.

Study of the role of gender in economic structures and social processes comprising globalization and in political practices of contemporary U.S. empire. This seminar focuses on the ways in which transformations in global political and economic structures over the last few decades including recent political developments in the U.S. have been shaped by gender, race, sexuality, religion and social movements.

WMST W4305 Feminist Postcolonial Theory. 4 points.

Prerequisites: Critical Approaches and/or permission of instructor. Enrollment limited to 20 students.

Examines important concerns, concepts and methodological approaches of postcolonial theory, with a focus on feminist perspectives on and strategies for the decolonization of Eurocentric knowledge-formations and practices of Western colonialism. Topics for discussion and study include orientalism, colonialism, nationalism and gender, the politics of cultural representations, subjectivity and subalternity, history, religion, and contemporary global relations of domination.

WMST W4308 SEXUALITY AND SCIENCE. 4.00 points.

WMST W4320 Queer Theories and Histories. 4 points.

Enrollment limited to 20.Not offered during 2023-2024 academic year.

The course will cover a range of (mostly U.S. and mostly 20th-Century) materials that thematize gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender experience and identity. We will study fiction and autobiographical texts, historical, psychoanalytic, and sociological materials, queer theory, and films, focusing on modes of representing sexuality and on the intersections between sexuality and race, ethnicity, class, gender, and nationality. We will also investigate connections between the history of LGBT activism and current events. Authors will include Foucault, Freud, Butler, Sedgwick, Anzaldua, Moraga, Smith. Students will present, and then write up, research projects of their own choosing.