Courses

Prerequisites: no previous knowledge of German required, but some background is strongly recommended. This accelerated survey of German grammar, reading techniques, and dictionary skills is designed primarily for graduate students preparing for reading proficiency exams or wishing to do research in German-language literature. In addition to translation, the course focuses on strategies for extracting general and specific information from German texts (skimming and scanning) and judging their relevance for a specific research purpose. Reading texts take students' fields of study into consideration. Although this course does not satisfy any part of the foreign language requirement for degree candidates, successful completion of the translation on the final exam fulfills the German reading proficiency requirement in most graduate programs. Students are advised that this course is a full-time commitment. Students should expect to study 2 hours every day for every hour spent in the classroom and additional time on weekends. Students who would like to gain speaking and listening skills are advised to enroll in the Intensive Elementary German I and II, or another appropriate German course. The Department of Germanic Languages will assist in selecting the appropriate course. 

This course is designed as travellers guide to medieval Europe. Its purpose is to provide a window to a long-lost world that provided the foundation of modern institutions and that continues to inspire the modern collective artistic and literary imagination with its own particularities. This course will not be a conventional history course concentrating on the grand narratives in the economic, social and political domains but rather intend to explore the day-to-day lives of the inhabitants, and attempts to have a glimpse of their mindset, their emotional spectrum, their convictions, prejudices, fears and hopes. It will be at once a historical, sociological and anthropological study of one of the most inspiring ages of European civilization. Subjects to be covered will include the birth and childhood, domestic life, sex and marriage, craftsmen and artisans, agricultural work, food and diet, the religious devotion, sickness and its cures, death, after death (purgatory and the apparitions), travelling, merchants and trades, inside the nobles castle, the Christian cosmos, and medieval technology. The lectures will be accompanied by maps, images of illuminated manuscripts and of medieval objects. Students will be required to attend a weekly discussion section to discuss the medieval texts bearing on that weeks subject. The written course assignment will be a midterm, final and two short papers, one an analysis of a medieval text and a second an analysis of a modern text on the Middle Ages.

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.

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.

Capitalism shapes every aspect of our daily lives. Thinkers on both the left and the right of the political spectrum agree that capitalism structures our economic, social, and political relationships. Yet, there is little agreement as to the definition of capitalism and its normative implications. The definition and interpretation of capitalism differs across time and space, always evolving in response to challenges, crises, and contradictions. The aim of this course is to provide students with analytical tools to think critically and historically about the concept of capitalism. By studying how philosophers, economists, and political theorists have defined and described the concept of capitalism throughout its history (from the early seventeenth century to the present), students will be provided with a set of terminologies and analytical frameworks that enable them to interrogate the various dimensions of capitalism. The readings in the course are selected to illustrate the fact that capitalism has always been controversial. We will read texts authored by both proponents and critics of capitalism. We will explore how various canonical figures have thought about private property, markets, money, economic growth, injustice, inequality, alienation, and socialism.

This course charts the expansion of U.S. military power from a band of colonists to a globe-girdling colossus with over 2.1 million personnel, some 750 bases around the world, and an annual budget of approximately $754 billion — almost half of federal discretionary spending, and more than the next nine nations combined. It introduces students to the history of American military power; the economic, political, and technological rise of the military-industrial complex and national security state; the role of the armed services in international humanitarian work; and the changing role of the military in domestic and international politics. A three-point semester-long course, compressed into six weeks; visit bobneer.com for a complete syllabus.

This course examines the processes of colonization and decolonization that define the making of a modern, integrated world (c. 1500 to the present). We will study primary source materials.  We focus on the instruments of colonization—the treaty, the charter, the map, the ethnology—and the engines of decolonization—the manifesto, the resistance, the solidarity with the colonial, the demand for self rule. We are interested in the processes and contents of social and cultural contact and exchange, the development of knowledge, and how they shape relations of power; the place of colonialism in the development of western capitalism; and the elements of colonial power and resistance, including ideologies of liberal political philosophy, social Darwinism, and nationalism.  We will consider how ideas about race, civilization, religion, self and other, and freedom have evolved over time and shaped the making of the modern world.

This course endeavors to understand the development of the peculiar and historically conflictual relationship that exists between France, the nation-states that are its former African colonies, and other contemporary African states. It covers the period from the 19th century colonial expansion through the current ‘memory wars’ in French politics and debates over migration and colonial history in Africa. Historical episodes include French participation in and eventual withdrawal from the Atlantic Slave Trade, emancipation in the French possessions, colonial conquest, African participation in the world wars, the wars of decolonization, and French-African relations in the contexts of immigration and the construction of the European Union. Readings will be drawn extensively from primary accounts by African and French intellectuals, dissidents, and colonial administrators. However, the course offers neither a collective biography of the compelling intellectuals who have emerged from this relationship nor a survey of French-African literary or cultural production nor a course in international relations. Indeed, the course avoids the common emphasis in francophone studies on literary production and the experiences of elites and the common focus of international relations on states and bureaucrats. The focus throughout the course is on the historical development of fields of political possibility and the emphasis is on sub-Saharan Africa. Group(s): B, C Field(s): AFR, MEU

This course aims to introduce students to classic and more recent literature on the intellectual and cultural history of the Enlightenment. The field has expanded far beyond the cohort of free-thinking philosophes around which it was initially conceived to encompass broader cultural, economic, and religious preoccupations. Given these tendencies, how has the significance of the Enlightenment shifted as a historical period and interpretive framework? In what ways do scholars explicate its origins, outcomes, and legacies? The readings trace the development of Enlightenment thought and practices from their early manifestations in Britain and the United Provinces before shifting attention to France, the geographical focal point of the movement by mid-century. Topics to be addressed include the relationship of traditional political authorities to an emerging public sphere, the invention of society as a means of mediating human relationships, the entrepreneurial and epistemological innovations made possible by new media, the struggles of the philosophe movement for legitimacy, debates surrounding luxury consumption and commercial society, the rise of political economy as field of knowledge and practical platform, and arguments between Christian apologists and radical atheists over the status of religious truth.

This course will provide a wide-ranging survey of conceptual foundations and issues in contemporary human rights. The class will examine the philosophical origins of human rights, contemporary debates, the evolution of human rights, key human rights documents, and the questions of human rights enforcement. This course will examine specific civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights and various thematic topics in human rights.

The human rights movement is one of the most successful social justice movements of our time, establishing universal principles that govern how states should treat citizens and non-citizens. The movement strengthens, and is strengthened by, a complex web of institutions, laws, and norms that constitute a functioning global system that builds on itself progressively, animated by strong NGOs. The course will address the evolution of the international human rights movement and on the NGOs that drive the movement on the international, regional and domestic levels. Sessions will highlight the experiences of major human rights NGOs and will address topics including strategy development, institutional representation, research methodologies, partnerships, networks, venues of engagement, campaigning, fundraising and, perhaps most importantly, the fraught and complex debates about adaptation to changing global circumstances.

Per its mission statement, “Barnard College aims to provide the highest-quality liberal arts
education to promising and high-achieving young women… They graduate prepared to lead
lives that are professionally satisfying and successful, personally fulfilling, and enriched by a love
of learning.” This course finds its roots in the connection posited here, between undergraduate
study and professional life. Students will be asked to revisit a foundational text they have
encountered in their major, and use it as a mode of exploration and reflection on an internship.
They will consider how the text’s themes and ideas can be reinterpreted and recontextualized in
the working world, and think about what practical, moral, political, aesthetic and personal
insights it affords. More broadly, students will be prompted to consider the relationship of the
liberal arts degree (which purports to prepare students for no particular career) to their chosen
career path. This course will further hone the critical thinking and writing skills that are
translatable to any profession, and enables a Barnard student to put into practice the
complexities they have learned in the classroom, by encouraging them to analyze the
professional world from different perspectives, and in the context of other ideas and traditions.
The text will be selected from a list provided by the student’s major department, and will be
subject to approval from the course instructor.
On a weekly basis, in this discussion-based class, the student shares their ideas about their text
and how it relates to their internship. They respond to and engage with their classmates. They
are required to spend about two hours with their text per week. They are also required to
create a presentation, to be shared with the full group. The group is also
responsible for providing feedback on the presentation. The presentation ultimately evolves
into a final paper that explores the line of inquiry from their text as it is
instantiated in their work experience. Students are graded on their discussion (40%),
presentation (25%), and final paper (35%).