Hadley Suter (French) - Anti-colonial Discourses of the Francophone World 

This course aims to feature voices outside of France, aiming to introduce students to the seminal canon of francophone anti-colonial discourse with writers like Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire, René Depestre, and Albert Memmi. In this course, Professor Suter will approach literature thematically rather than purely regionally, meaning that students will study authors, artists, and theorists from across the francophone world, rather than just from the Caribbean. The other regions will include Vietnam, Québec, the Maghreb, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Furthermore, approaching this literature and theory from the cultural lens of art, activism, and food will allow students to consider colonial structures of oppression as they are lived at the granular level, as well as to investigate the legacies of these structures as they exist today within various communities of New York. This class will host three speakers and embark on cultural outings across NYC.  

Alice Reagan (Theatre) - Zora Neale Hurtson & Black Performance 

This course begins with focused attention on select plays of Zora Neale Hurston and her

critical writing on performance. The course will then take Hurtson’s aesthetics, politics, and provocations as a lens to study Black performance, broadly defined. The course will consider the contexts in which Hurston pursued a career as playwright and theater maker, and the influences that found their way into her plays including spiritual narratives and voodoo. We will turn our attention to key writers of the Harlem Renaissance to learn where Hurston first made her mark, and the milieu to which she ultimately turned her back. Each week’s content will include primary sources, such as Hurston’s plays and dramaturgical statements, as well as scholarly criticism of those works or genre. The final weeks of the course will take up Black performance in the realms of dance and song from the early 20th century, and finish with more recent plays and visual art. This class will attend one performance as well as host an in-class session with an artist.

Randa Serhan (Sociology) - Surveillance, BC 3956

Surveillance has become a ubiquitous term that either conjures images in works such as George Orwell’s 1984, or is dismissed as an inconvenience and a concern of only those who engage in criminal activity or have something to hide. This course begins by contending with the usage and (re)production of bifurcated dystopian and disinterested views of surveillance. Our focus will remain on the unevenness of surveillance across communities, spaces, and identities, and the inequalities it not only perpetuates, but produces in the process. This course will have several guest speakers over the course of the semester including a civil liberties lawyer who routinely sues the government over invasion of black and brown community’s privacy, an attorney who works with the Director of National Intelligence, and the director of S.T.O.P. (Surveillance Technology Oversight Project). These individuals will offer us different vantage points on surveillance and its impact as practitioners who can take us beyond our readings. 

Linn Mehta, Nathan Gorelick, and Ross Hamilton (English/First Year Seminar) - Slowing Violence: Humanistic Approaches to Climate Change 

Based in the English department, this Environmental Humanities will introduce students to the literary and historical study of the environment. This course will engage a series of guest lecturers from Barnard and Columbia who focus on environmental justice and changing representations of nature. We know that our most vulnerable communities are hit the hardest by the impacts of the climate crisis. There is still a narrow window to take action that will avoid the most catastrophic impacts of this crisis, but we cannot afford to wait. Barnard must address this critical moment in all of its departments, whether the Humanities, STEM or Social sciences.

Christina Van Dyke (Philosophy) - Antiracial enhancement of “The Ethics of Identity” and “Introduction to Philosophy” courses

Van Dyke will revise and enhance two courses in the Department of Philosophy with a DEI lens: The Ethics of Identity and Introduction to Philosophy.” With the support of a Research Assistant, new course materials will be found and incorporated into the syllabi, course activities will be revised, and two speakers–one each per course–will be invited to the classroom. The revisions will be guided by gender, race and disability lenses.

Hadley Suter (French) - Decolonizing Surrealism

In order to decolonize the Surrealism course in the French Department, Suter will revise the canonical list of readings that exclude non-white artists and writers, and invite three speakers with expertise in the fields of Caribbean and Arab Surrealism. The funding will cover honoraria for speakers, and daycare for Dr. Suter’s son for the two months during which she will develop the course content. Through the revised content, including the lectures of invited speakers, Suter will teach Surrealism not only as “a literary and artistic practice focused on the individual’s psycho-creative potential,” but also as an umbrella term that includes “the collective, revolutionary intentions that defined Black and Arab iterations of the movement” (in Suter’s words).

Javier Pérez-Zapatero (Spanish and Latin American Cultures) - An Online Didactic Archive on LGBT+ and Intersectional Issues

The main goal of this project is to launch a website under the name and (already existing) domain www.contextoelegtbplus.com (Español Lengua Extranjera en el contexto LGTB+ [Spanish as a Second Language in the LGBT+ Context]). In Pérez-Zapatero’s words, this will be “a site for professionals with a repertoire of authentic and academically relevant documents related to the LGBT+ context for teaching Spanish as a Second Language.” Unlike a conventional digital textbook or an online course, it will be an easy-to-navigate gateway to a variety of content on LGBT+ issues that will help users learn Spanish as a Second Language by adopting multiple and DEI-informed modes of thinking. Some of the costs the grant will cover include web design, web launching, domain maintenance, research expenses, and conference participation expenses for Pérez-Zapatero to present and improve this work.

Lesley Sharp (Anthropology) - A Pedagogy of Incarceration

Sharp will revise and teach her course “Absent Bodies” (to be renamed “Absence/Presence”) as a semester-long exchange between complementary cohorts of Barnard and Columbia students, and of incarcerated men enrolled in the Bard Prison Initiative’s (BPI) “College Behind Bars” Program. Over the course of the summer, Sharp will reconfigure the course content, and develop inclusive pedagogical strategies and tactics that are tailored to the specificities of her radically diverse student body. While doing so, she will build on her expertise in medical anthropology and her experience in teaching as a BPI instructor.

Lisa Edstrom (Education) - Enhancing the “Families, Communities & Schools” course in the Education Program

This project aims to revise and improve the content of the course entitled “EDUC 3034: Families, Communities & Schools” in order to transform it into a community-based learning experience. The course focuses on the relationships between families and schools with a special attention on the situatedness of both in local communities. The course has a fieldwork component, which will be supported by the grant. The grant will also cover the costs of the resources to build strong and lasting partnerships with the schools in Community School District 5 of the NYC Department of Education, located in Harlem, NY, as well as the cost of digital and technological tools for students from all backgrounds to be able to create multimedia projects. 

Meenakshi Rao (Chemistry) - Academic Bridge program for students in the HEOP and  CSTEP programs 

This project aims to complement the mandatory summer bridge (pre-orientation) program offered by Access Barnard to students who are socioeconomically disadvantaged. Through this program, international and first-generation and/or low-income, HEOP (Arthur O. Eve Higher Education Opportunity Program), and CSTEP (Collegiate Science Technology Entry Program) students begin the transition to Barnard College. Dr. Rao aims to support the development of the science identities of minority and disadvantaged students in STEM. To do so, this project will offer exclusive office hours for these students in order to enhance their meaningful  and pedagogically enriched engagement with faculty members. The grant will cover the stipends of Dr. Rao and a student assistant who will coordinate this program throughout the 2023-24 academic year.

Roberto Sirvent (Political Science) - Enhancing the “Slavery and its Afterlives” course

The goals of this project are the revision of the content of the “Slavery and its Afterlives” course, and the creation of a community resource guide, titled “Teaching About Resistance, Revolts, and Revolution Through Comic Books, Graphic Novels, and Animated TV” (in collaboration with the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.). Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sirvent will invite to the classroom guest speakers who can offer their analyses and insights on anti-Blackness in today’s political climate. Meanwhile, the community resource guide that will be created with the support of two research assistants will be made available to the general public. Other than the stipends of these two assistants, the grant will cover honoraria, comic books for community research guide research, and books for course preparation.

Celia E. Nailor (Africana Studies) - Transforming “Introduction to African-American History”

Celia E. Naylor received one of the Fund for Innovation in Teaching grants for her project to transform “Introduction to African-American History"; this is one of the courses she has been teaching since her tenure at Barnard began in 2010. Fundamental to the curriculum at Barnard, this (or a similar) course was not taught prior to 2010. As part of the project, Naylor will redesign assignments with an emphasis on the interdisciplinary dimensions of African-American Studies; explore potential avenues for community engagement projects that can enrich the course; invite at least three guest speakers; and organize a “field trip” in the New York area. A Barnard student who previously took the course with Naylor (Mikayla "Mika" Moaney, Class of 2024) worked as the undergraduate student assistant for this project. Moaney worked collaboratively with Naylor in order to revise the course; her previous experiences with the course helped with decisions regarding the various changes related to this project. Moaney will continue to work with Naylor in the fall of 2022.

Erika M. Kitzmiller (Education) - Revising and Reimagining Pedagogy to Advance Anti-Racist Inquiry and Practice

Erika M. Kitzmiller will revise and reimagine three courses as part of her funded project. While she will revise and develop “Purposes and Aims of Educational Policy (EDUC 3032)” and “Arts and Humanities in the City (EDUC 3055),” she will design a new course, titled “Grace Lee Boggs Learning Lab" that she will co-teach with Dr. Saima Akhtar Spring 2023. Additionally, Kitzmiller is in the process of creating an online public course and digital humanities website for her book, The Roots of Educational Inequality (Penn Press, 2022). The Fund supported the fees of consultants and educator guest speakers, the wages of research and teaching assistants, and the purchase of resource materials.

Jon Snow and Jessica Goldstein (Biology) - Introductory Biology: Using Small Group Discussions for Community Building and Contextualizing Biology within Society

Jon Snow and Jessica Goldstein of the Biology Department will restructure the curriculum of the introductory biology sequence in order to initiate a STEM- oriented community building space at Barnard College. Their primary aim is to support students in their early STEM careers with inclusive pedagogical strategies that enhance active learning and create a sense of belonging among students. The Fund supported the fees of pedagogy workshops facilitators, the guest speaker fees, travel expenses, and the summer salary of one project lead. 

Meenakshi S. Rao (Chemistry) - CSTEP Intensive Research Track Workshops

The Grant Supported Meenakshi Rao’s project to design and hold Intensive Research Track Workshops as part of CSTEP (The Collegiate Science and Technology Entry Program) during the academic year, for students who were enrolled in the summer Intensive Research Track Workshop. The project aims to increase the number of women of color who come with marginalized and FLI backgrounds in the field of STEM and research, as well as to increase the retention of all underrepresented students in Barnard STEM majors. The Fund supported the travel expenses of speakers, refreshment expenses, and the stipend of the instructor. 

Paul Scolieri  (Dance) – Anti-Racism in Dance

The Fund supported the Department of Dance to collaborate with the diversity strategist and arts consultant Theresa Ruth Howard. Throughout 2021-2022, Howard led workshops and lectures on anti-racist approaches to dance curation, research, and the creative process. 

Alexandra Watson (First-Year Writing) - Cite Black Barnard Faculty

The main goal of Alexandra Watson’s project was to create an immersive and collective digital resource, titled Cite Black Barnard Faculty (CBBF), in order to promote the increased recognition and citation of the works of Black Barnard faculty. The project's activities included a faculty and staff "cite-a-thon" in which participants engaged with and wrote annotations of texts by Black faculty; a multimedia exhibit in Barnard's Movement Lab; and the first Black Faculty Salon, featuring Professors Monica Miller and Kim Hall. The Fund supported student support; website design and development; and website hosting. The resource, which includes a robust list of texts by Black Barnard faculty, may be found here.