5 courses with the subject AFEN, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
AFEN 3135001/00606 T 2:10pm - 4:00pm Monica Miller 4.00 19/22
119 Milstein Center ENGL BC3141 MAJOR ENGLISH TEXTS I. 3.00 points. A chronological view of the variety of English literature through study of selected writers and their works. Autumn: Beowulf through Johnson ENGL BC3142 MAJOR ENGLISH TEXTS II. 3.00 points. A chronological view of the variety of English literature through study of selected writers and their works. Spring: Romantic poets through the present ENGL BC3146 Walk This Way. 3 points. What's in a walk? This course undertakes an interdisciplinary study of a fundamental human activity, focusing on philosophical and aesthetic treatments of human locomotion. After first examining the history of walking as a social, economic, religious, and political activity, the course will concentrate on urban walking and how it has been represented in text and image from ancient times to the present. Topics will include walking as introspection, escape, recreation, and discovery; walking and gender; the psychogeography of walking, walking in the city, etc. Readings from Austen, Wordsworth, Dickens, Thoreau, Whitman, Joyce, Woolf, O'Hara, De Certeau, and many others. Images from film, painting, and photography to be provided by student research. Ditto for musical strolls. ENGL BC3147 INTRODUCTION TO NARRATIVE MEDICINE. 3.00 points. require instructor permission. Narrative competence is a crucial dimension of health-care delivery; this includes the capacity to attend and respond to stories of illness and the narrative skills to reflect critically on the scene of care and its contexts. Narrative Medicine explores and builds the clinical applications of literary knowledge. The objectives of this foundations course include furthering close reading skills and exploring theories of self-telling and relationality. At the center of this project is the medical encounter. To help clinicians fulfill their "receiving" duties more effectively, we will turn to narrative theory, autobiography theory, psychoanalytic theory, trauma scholarship and witnessing literature. Classwork integrates didactic and experiential methodologies to develop a heightenedawareness of self and others, and to build a practical set of narrative competencies. Readings will include works by Toni Morrison, W.G. Sebald, Lucy Grealy, Kazuo Ishiguro, Alison Bechdel, Maggie Nelson, Judith Butler, Arthur Frank, Paul Ricoeur, Jonathan Shay and Jens Brockmeier ENGL BC3151 Bad Feelings: The Uses of Literature in Difficult Times. 4 points. This course will explore the purposes of literary study--and, by extension, humanistic education--during periods of turmoil. Working in sustained dialogue with one another, we will explore the treatment lment of emotions such as despair, anxiety, loss, fury & ecstasy in a wide variety of literary texts, ranging from literature that is ancient (e.g., Sophocles, Euripides) to early modern (William Shakespeare, Margaret Cavendish) to modern (Virginia Woolf, Ralph Ellison, Elena Ferrante). In the process, we will explore various schools of critical theory, such as Aristotle’s Poetics (including the ancient theory of catharsis), psychoanalysis, and feminism, in a context where the stakes of these intellectual traditions will come to the fore. ENGL BC3154 Chaucer Before Canterbury. 3 points. Chaucer's innovations with major medieval forms: lyric, the extraordinary dream visions, and the culmination of medieval romance, Troilus and Criseyde. Approaches through close analysis, and feminist and historicist interpretation. Background readings in medieval life and culture. ENGL BC3155 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 3.00 points. Chaucer as inheritor of late-antique and medieval conventions and founder of early modern literature and the fiction of character. Selections from related medieval texts. Spring 2026: ENGL BC3155 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment
Enrollment limited to 25 students. Enrollment limited to 25 students. Enrollment limited to 40 students. Enrollment limited to 15 students. Post-bacc students
AFEN 3196001/00605 T Th 6:10pm - 7:25pm Maleda 4.00 13/2
405 Barnard Hall Belilgne ENGL BC3204 WORLD LITERATURE REVISITED. 3.00 points. As a discipline, World Literature dates back to the early 19 th century and Goethe’s concept of weltliteratur. Yet, despite the fact that Goethe was well-versed in the literature of the “Orient” and emphasized their centrality in weltliteratur, the languages that he spoke of and underlined within the formation of this literature were mostly German and Romance languages. Institutionally speaking, not much has changed over the past couple of centuries. More often than not, studying the literature of locations such as the Middle East, Africa, and East and Southeast Asia takes place in Area Studies departments, and offerings of these areas’ literatures even in Comparative Literature departments are few and far in between. This course looks at a sample of texts that might be studied within the rubric of World Literature in an English department. We will examine foundational genres in English literary studies, such as epic and lyric poetry and free verse, dramatic literature, and the novel, and study variations of these genres in other literary traditions. Given that we’re reading many of the texts in translation, the issue of translating literary texts into English is a central component of our discussion. Specifically, we will think about llment the role that translation plays in the production and politics of World 0 Literature and how the issue of translation differentiates between the disciplines of Comparative Literature and World Literature. We will also study adaptations of and artistic responses to canonical works. Some questions we will tackle include: What/where/whom constitutes the world in World Literature? Traditionally, why have some types of writing and inscription been privileged over others when determining the category of literature? How do we read similarities and differences in the texts while placing them in their particular contexts and histories? ENGL BC3205 WORLD LITERATURE REVISITED II. 3.00 points. (Please note that you do not need to take ENGL BC3204 World Literature Revisited I and ENGL BC3205 World Literature Revisited II in sequence; you may take them in any order.) As a discipline, World Literature dates back to the early 19th century and Goethe’s concept of weltliteratur. Yet, despite the fact that Goethe was well-versed in the literature of the “Orient” and he emphasized their centrality in weltliteratur, the languages that he spoke of and underlined within llment the formation of this literature were mostly German and Romance 3 languages. Institutionally speaking, not much has changed over the past couple of centuries. More often than not, studying the literature of locations such as the Middle East, Africa, or East Asia takes place in Area Studies departments, and offerings of these areas’ literatures in Comparative Literature departments are few and far in between. In World Literature Revisited I, we imagined what a survey of World Literature in a literary studies department could look like, as we dealt with ancient texts until around the 14th century, with a focus on origin stories and epic narratives, lyric poetry, historical narratives, and sacred/religious texts. In World Literature Revisited II, we will continue to investigate and challenge the categories of “Eastern” and “Western” literature and think through the categories of “world” and “literature” in the course title. In this part of the course, we will work on (classical, early modern, and modern) drama, modern poetry, and the novel, with a particular focus on reading in comparison adaptations, appropriations, and literary responses. What/where/whom constitutes the world in World Literature? How can we read and trace literary influence across these literatures without reducing them to a mere repetition of the same themes and ideas? Finally, we will think about the role that translation plays in the production and politics of World Literature, particularly when it comes to adaptations and appropriations, and how the issue of translation differentiates between the disciplines of Comparative Literature and World Literature
AFEN 3816This hands-on, project based course introduces students
to the use of digital tools and sources to organize and manage their archival research, creatively interpret their findings, and communicate their results to the public. This semester, the course is somewhat different from the usual research course in that, rather than simply going more deeply into the course focus, you will be asked to apply your knowledge to make new things. Working with the Barnard Digital Humanities Center, you will develop projects that teach some aspect of Shange's work and or feminist movements. But while making these new things, we will have ongoing discussions about the nature of digital life and evolving protocols for digital work. You will make plans to visit the archive appropriate to your project (in most cases this will be the Barnard Archives, but they might include sites such as The Billy Rose Theatre Division at the NYPL, or the Amiri Baraka collection at Columbia University) as well as doing background reading for your project. By the end of the semester, you'll have sharpened your research skills while also acquiring digital, teamwork, and project management skills that will be useful in other classes and beyond.
AFEN 3817002/00753 T 4:10pm - 6:00pm Kim F Hall 4.00 9/15
405 Barnard Hall ENGL GU4010 THE CANTERBURY TALES. 3.00 points. This course has several parallel purposes. First and foremost, we explore an enormously ambitious and brilliant work of literature, both in its local variety (the individual tales, their prologues and epilogues, their self-conscious placement within late medieval cultural conventions), and in its overarching structures. This of course involves learning about the language in which Chaucer wrote, Middle English. Second, we think about Chaucer’s position in late medieval literary culture, especially in England, and in the social world of his own day: at once a minor royal functionary and increasingly recognized as an important writer; an innovator in his immediate literary context but an historical situation of our own readership, for which Chaucer has become “Chaucer” (as he started to be in his own day), even many kinds of “Chaucer,” which continue to evolve as our reading culture does Senior Seminars and Senior Project in
