First-Year Seminars initiate students into the academic life of the College by offering intellectually engaging experiences in which students and faculty from a wide range of home departments work through challenging material, often across disciplinary lines. Each one-semester seminar is designed to develop essential skills for college work, such as the ability to read critically and analytically, to speak clearly and effectively, and to write logically and persuasively.
First-Year Writing courses work from the belief that writing is an essential tool in every discipline – one that challenges you to develop meaningful, nuanced questions and complex ideas. Working closely with your instructor and peers, you will learn to translate those complex ideas into clear, precise, and persuasive essays. You will analyze a variety of novels, myths, memoirs, and short stories, along with other historical texts and scholarly articles that enrich your literary and cultural analyses. Readings in each course are inspired by one of three rubrics: Legacy of the Mediterranean, Women & Culture, and The Americas.
Courses in the French Department have a twofold objective: to perfect fluency in the written and spoken language, and to develop an understanding and appreciation of the literature and culture of France and French-speaking countries.
The German Program offers a variety of courses, from the elementary to the advanced level, to guide students in becoming versatile writers, competent interpreters, and confident speakers of the language. The Program also introduces students to the literatures, histories, and cultures of Germanophone countries or communities in a European and global context.
History encompasses the whole of human experience, helping us understand ourselves in the context of our times and traditions through the study of times and traditions other than our own. History means not only the record of the past but also the discipline of investigating and interpreting the past. The study of history develops habits of critical thinking and effective writing, as well as it cultivates the careful analysis of various types of quantitative and qualitative evidence. It should be of value not only to undergraduates who intend to pursue advanced degrees in the field, but also to students interested in exploring the diversity and complexity of the human past, even as they hone their analytical and expository skills.
With the proliferation of human rights institutions over the past half century and the centrality of human rights in current debate topics, human rights standards have become crucial touchstones of contemporary ethics and politics. The program in human rights seeks to provide the basic insights and skills needed for young women to become cogent, life-long advocates for human rights.
This interdisciplinary program is designed to be pursued alongside a major in one of the departments with a disciplinary or area studies focus. These include, but are not limited to Africana Studies, American Studies, Anthropology, Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures, Comparative Literature, English, French, German, History, Italian, Political Science, Psychology, Religion, Slavic, Sociology, Spanish, and Women's Studies.
A major in Italian offers the advantages of closely supervised work for a small number of students. Through the senior tutorial, students pursue research in a chosen area of Italian culture under the guidance of a specialist.
The Barnard College Program in Jewish Studies is a dual-major program that enables undergraduates to acquire a thorough knowledge of the most important aspects of Jewish culture, civilization, and history in an interdisciplinary setting. The purpose of the program is to help the student identify resources for constructing rigorously detailed and methodological majors.
The program begins from the assumption that a meaningful major can be most profitably framed in one of the existing departments—such as, but not limited to, American Studies, Ancient Studies, Anthropology, Art History, Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures, Classics, Comparative Literature, English, History, Music, Religion, Sociology, and Women’s Studies. The program director works with the student to ensure that the subject matter of that major contains enough interest in Jewish subjects and is rigorous enough in methodology.
Mathematics is wonderful training for the mind, a great training if you are thinking of being a lawyer for example, and it has an increasing range of applications, from the study of the genome and climate change to financial mathematics and medical statistics. Mathematics has always been the language of physics, and, with the advent of computer modeling, is an essential component of almost all science. An undergraduate degree in mathematics opens the door to many professions and to graduate study in a wide variety of disciplines.
The Medieval and Renaissance program at Barnard College is designed to enable students to acquire both a broad knowledge of the European Middle Ages and/or Renaissance and a richer and more detailed understanding in one area of concentration chosen by the student. Students can elect to concentrate in one of the following disciplines: art history, history, literature, philosophy, romance languages and cultures, music, or religion.
The Barnard Music Program provides the vocal program for the university, which includes the Barnard-Columbia Chorus and Chamber Choir, solo studio voice lessons and two levels of limited-enrollment vocal classes, Technique in Singing, and the Vocal Repertoire Class. In addition, the program provides a music history course, Introduction to Music, which is a year-long survey of Western European art music, from sixth-century Gregorian Chant to the work of living composers. The course fulfills the Fine and Performing Arts requirement of the General Education Requirements and also serves as a pre-requisite for the music major. Students may complete a senior project in music repertoire by presenting an hour-long recital, or may write a fifty-page thesis project in music research. The successful student will gain professional level performance skills though studio lessons and the theory and ear training sequence, and gain a comprehensive knowledge of music history from the courses in historical musicology and ethnomusicology provided by the Music Department at Columbia University.
The Neuroscience and Behavior (NSB) major at Barnard College provides a strong background in the biological underpinnings of behavior and cognition. Students electing this major are offered introductory and advanced courses in neuroscience and behavior, as well as the possibility of taking courses in cognate disciplines including psychology, biology, chemistry, and physics. Students learn to think analytically and how to conduct research through experience in laboratory courses as well as working in faculty laboratories, both during the academic year and summer. Majors must choose one of two areas of concentration. The behavior concentration places greater emphasis on behavioral and systems neuroscience, while the cellular concentration places greater emphasis on cellular and molecular neuroscience.
Philosophy is an effort to see how things – not just objects and persons, but also ideas, concepts, principles, and values – hang together. Philosophical questions explore the foundations and limits of human thought and experience. What is there? What can we know? What is good? How should we live? What is a person? What is reason? How do words have meaning? The philosophy major introduces students to central concepts, key figures, and classic texts so they may broaden and deepen their own understanding as they learn how others have approached foundational questions in the past. An education in philosophy also teaches students to think and write with clarity and precision – intellectual resources essential to future study and rewarding professional lives.
The Physical Education Department subscribes fully to the College’s commitment to help women realize their full potential. Through regular participation in guided physical movement, the student gains enhanced physical fitness, improved self-esteem, and stress management techniques. Physical Education and the extra-curricular programs address the body-mind connection as the student learns skills that will influence the quality of her life currently in academic achievement and in all future endeavors.
In cooperation with the faculty of Columbia University, Barnard offers a thorough pre-professional curriculum in both physics and astronomy. The faculty represents a wide range of expertise, with special strength and distinction in theoretical gravitational and condensed matter physics, and observational astrophysics.
Separate majors in physics and astronomy are offered. A major in astrophysics is also possible. Furthermore, there are many special interdisciplinary majors, such as biophysics, chemical physics,engineering physics, mathematical physics, and astrochemistry. There is a physics minor as well. Students should consult members of the department early on in their undergraduate careers in order to plan the most effective course of study.
Political science explores questions about power: what it is, where it comes from, who exercises it, and how it is legitimized and challenged. We work to understand how political institutions and processes developed in history, how they operate today, and how they might change in the future--here in the United States, in other countries around the world, and internationally in the global system. Key topics include democracy and authoritarianism, good governance and corruption, inequality and protest, conflict and cooperation, and war and peace.
The Department of Psychology offers a rigorous exposition of the study of the mind in action. In classroom courses, in instructional laboratories, and in research conducted with the faculty, students explore intellectual perspectives and empirical methods expressed across the discipline of psychology. The department also links our students to many forums in the College and University for discussion and refinement of scientific work.
As the twenty-first century unfolds, religion plays a central role in virtually every aspect of human society around the globe. The Religion department's curriculum offers students the opportunity to explore the histories, texts, and practices of many of the world's religious communities and to consider both the profound ways in which religion has worked historically and how it continues to inform and affect the cultural, political, and ethical debates of the current moment. In addition, our classes invite students to reflect on the vexing theoretical questions that are generated by the category "religion" itself, an abstract category that has its own complicated history. The academic study of religion is self-consciously interdisciplinary, drawing upon the methods and insights of literary studies, historiography, social analysis, and cultural comparison. Moreover, the study of religion reminds us that religious identities demand sustained critical analysis, intersecting complexly as they do with race, class, gender, and ethnicity, among other categories of affiliation and identification. In its teaching, research projects, and public programming, the Religion department promotes engaged intellectual inquiry into the rich diversity of religious institutions, rituals, ideas, and communities both past and present.
As part of the College's mission to prepare scientists, policy-makers, and an educated citizenry for the moral challenges presented by future scientific advances, Barnard offers a unique collection of courses focusing on issues at the frequently volatile intersection point where science, public policy, and societal concerns collide. These courses are interdisciplinary in nature, team-taught by Barnard faculty from a variety of departments, and held in seminar format with limited enrollments, typically juniors and seniors. Recent topics concern ecological vs. financial imperatives in developing Third-World biodiversity, manipulation of the human genome, privacy issues and ethical dilemmas arising from genetic testing, misguided eugenics programs and race science, the Manhattan Project, as well as the Cold War build-up of nuclear arsenals in the United States and former Soviet Union.
The Barnard-Columbia Slavic Department offers instruction in six Slavic languages and literature (Russian, Bulgarian, Czech, Polish, Serbian/ Croatian/ Bosnian, and Ukrainian), with particularly extensive offerings in Russian. The department prides itself on giving students a strong foundation in language study, which serves as invaluable preparation for future graduate work in literature, history, economics, or political science, as well as for careers in government, business, journalism, or international law.
The department offers four major tracks in various aspects of Russian or other Slavic cultures, and a minor in Russian for those wishing to combine the study of Russian with a specialization in a different department.