Sociology and Gender Studies Track
The Curriculum
Queer Studies: The Queer American Century
Instructor: Thomas March
U. S. high schools are only just beginning to incorporate the history of LGBTQ people in their History curricula, and many lag far behind. Without understanding the obstacles and discrimination that a group has faced, one cannot fully appreciate that their demand for equal treatment is in fact a struggle for civil rights. Covering queer U.S. History and Culture from the early 20th Century through the present, this course introduces students to how enforcement of and reaction against institutionalized discrimination have shaped the LGBTQ experience in this country. Students will learn not just about events but about often-overlooked people who shaped the course of this history—often heroically. Our study of historical sources will be supplemented by visits from influential and dynamic guest speakers in the arts and humanities. Students will have an opportunity to study our guests’ work in advance and discuss it with them when they visit. This course is not restricted to students who identify as LGBTQ—this history is important for everyone, so allies are welcome and encouraged!
Time: Mon, Tues, Wed, and Thurs 9:30 AM- 12:00 PM EST
Thurs afternoons from 2:00- 4:30 PM EST
Slavery, Resistance, & Public Memory
Instructor: Sonya Williams
This course will explore the vibrant history of activism and social organizing among African diasporic women in the Americas during slavery. It will begin by introducing important concepts in Gender and African Diaspora history, then the course will discuss vignettes of African descended women’s organizing during slavery in different areas of the Spanish Americas. Thus, exploring methods that range from cultural intellectual production, participation in the Spanish legal culture, the cultural arts and dress, religious, spiritual and military warfare, and other forms of intersectional political activism. The course will also explore key aspects of Latin American slave societies, the emergence of racial capitalism, and the complexity of racial identity from a transnational, local, and regional perspective. This course will also unpack issues of slavery and public memory in transatlantic sites throughout Europe, Africa, and the Americas.
Time: Mon, Tues, Wed, and Thurs 9:30 AM- 12:00 PM EST
Thurs afternoons from 2:00- 4:30 PM EST
Sex and Gender across Long Time
Instructor: Ross Hamilton
The idea of gender is a relatively recent formulation, often complicated by the ferocity distinction between the sexes found across history. This course (divided into two parts) uses art objects, literary texts, philosophy, psychology and finally film and digital media to interrogate the ideas of sex and gender, to explore the violent ways in which female sexuality has been denied or constrained, that same sex desire was erased or pathologized, and how the transgender experience, even as it works to deny sexual difference, complicates the relations between both sex and gender.
Time: Mon, Tues, Wed, and Thurs 9:30 AM- 12:00 PM EST
Thurs afternoons from 2:00- 4:30 PM EST
Race, Ethnicity, and U.S. Society
Instructor: Angela Simms
What is “race”? What is “ethnicity”? How are they related and how do they shape the life chances of people in the United States? In this class, we discuss racism’s origin story, particularly how capitalist interests motivated the creation of racial hierarchy. We focus on how White-controlled institutions and elite actors mediate racial and ethnic groups’ access to material and social resources, leading to Whites disproportionately benefiting from U.S. social processes. We investigate social processes through intersectional—noting relationships between race, class, and gender—and historical lens, highlighting how racism evolves over time in response to resistance. We also examine the consequences of racism across social domains. Our course concludes by grappling with the questions: (1) How effective have social movements, and other forms of social organization, been in resisting and ending racism? (2) What are the implications for current racial justice activism?
Time: Mon, Tues, Wed, and Thurs 9:30 AM- 12:00 PM EST
Thurs afternoons from 2:00- 4:30 PM EST
Fashion and Dress in World Cultures
Instructor: Zingha Foma
Fashion and dress are considered markers of individual and social identities, used to express religious beliefs, group association, class, ceremonial functions, domestic functions, gender dynamics, and sexuality dynamics. This course will explore global fashion and dress— focusing on textiles and body ornaments used in different cultures throughout history. The course will be organized geographically—Asia, Africa, the Americas, etc. — spanning from the early modern period to the contemporary era. The course will encourage students to engage with theoretical frameworks from material culture, anthropology, history, and textile and fashion study.
Sex, Power, God
Instructor: Ali Syed
Gayle Rubin’s seminal essay “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex” explores the “sex/gender system” by analyzing the history of women as objects of exchange between groups in society to facilitate alliances and kinship through their reproductive labor. For centuries this exchange has also thrived in the market of royal young women as widely chronicled by their representations in media. One such depiction is James Boulton’s gripping podcast on the history and historiography of the "Queens of England," which identifies the following criteria shaping a queen’s success in life and in legacy: sex – her ability to produce an heir to secure the peaceful transition of power; power – her ability to shape alliances and affect the flow of capital; and god – her ability to uphold the divine myths that justify her reign.
This course will also consider shifting notions of sex, power, and god that represent the increasingly complex relationship between identity, knowledge, and media in the modern era as we explore the concurrent changes in the social, political, and economic systems that made it possible for millions to worship the massive media culture icons of the 20th century: the Disney princess, First Lady Jackie Kennedy, and Princess Diana. By exploring these changes in the works of scholars like Tim Wu and Bernard Harcourt we will gain a deeper sense of contemporary sexual politics in “expository society” as we determine the criteria for evaluating the success of the modern celebrity. Finally, we will consider how the celebrity reality [tv] industrial-complex shifts notions of sex, power, and god by exploring the emergence of icons “famous for being famous” in the 21st century whose command of attention and social influence in the digital age represents power, capital, and divine myth befitting a queen: Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian.
REGISTRATION NOTES: please note that this course is recommended for rising juniors and seniors seeking rigorous college level work; daily reading may take students 2-3 hours; written assignments will take an additional 3-5 hours per week. A course schedule with readings has been provided to give students an insight into the course they are registering for and for those interested in exploring these materials before the start of the course. Some advance reading will be required.
Time: Mon, Tues, Wed, and Thurs 9:30 AM- 12:00 PM EST
Thurs afternoons from 2:00- 4:30 PM EST
In this track, students will explore gender and its relation to class, race, ethnicity, and sexuality. Students will use these concepts to analyze the human experience throughout history in politics, culture and economics.
Program Structure
This track is residential with the option of commuting. Classes take place on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 9:30 AM- 12:00 PM and Tuesday and Thursday afternoons from 2:00- 4:30 PM EST. Enrichment and student life activities will be held in both the early day and evening time frames (10am EST- 8pm EST)
The Instructors
Thomas March
Queer Studies: The Queer American Century
An essayist, performer, and poet, Thomas March is the author of Aftermath (2018), which Joan Larkin selected for The Word Works Hilary Tham Capital Collection. OUT Magazine praised its “diamond-sharp lyricism” and hailed it as “a stimulating, if sober, tonic for our times.” His work has appeared in The Account, The Adroit Journal, The Believer, Bellevue Literary Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, The Good Men Project, The Huffington Post, New Letters, OUT, Pleiades, RHINO, and Verse Daily, among others. Since 2018, he has been the host and curator of Poetry/Cabaret, a bi-monthly “variety salon” performance series. Nominated for four Broadway World Cabaret Awards (including “Best Variety Show or Recurring Series” and “Best Host or Emcee”), the show brings together the city’s top poets, comedians, and cabaret performers to share their responses to a common theme. Broadway World has called Poetry/Cabaret “a daring, edgy, and divinely human way of looking at art and artists.” With painter Valerie Mendelson, he is the co-creator of A Good Mixer, a character-based dramatic poetry and visual art hybrid project based on an obscure 1933 bartender’s guide of the same name. He has recently become a Contributing Editor to GRAND, a literary journal launched in 2021 and founded by Aaron Hicklin, Editorial Director of Document and proprietor of One Grand Books. A past recipient of the Norma Millay Ellis Fellowship in Poetry, from the Millay Colony for the Arts, he has also received an Artist/Writer grant from The Vermont Studio Center.
Ali Syed
Sex, Power, God
Ali Syed holds an M.A. in sociology from City College and a B.A. from the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at NYU. He has taught at Barnard as an Instructor for the Pre-College Programs since 2019 and as a Teaching Assistant in the Departments of Sociology and Political Science since 2015. Since 2010 Ali has also taught courses as a lecturer in sociology, political science, urban and ethnic studies, gender and sexuality, social theory, research methods, and law and society at: NYU, the Macaulay Honors College at City College, Hunter College, BMCC, FIT, and the Bard College Prison Initiative Microcollege at the Brooklyn Public Library. Finally, he is also an experienced educator of “early advanced learners” in the CUNY College Now program and also serves as an examiner for the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme of which he is a graduate. He is also a doctoral candidate in sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center.
Sonya Williams
Restoration and Resistance: Black Women's Social and Political Organizing in the African Diaspora
Sonya Williams graduated from Howard University in 2017 with a Bachelor's degree in History. In 2020, she received her Master's in the History of Women and Gender at New York University and is currently enrolled in her second-year as a Phd student in the African Diaspora History program at NYU. Her dissertation research will center questions and analyses of race, gender, and class as well as the historical memory of slavery in social movements and radical activism in the Spanish Americas.
Zingha Foma
Fashion and Dress in World Cultures
Zingha Foma is a UCSB alumnus and currently a fourth-year history Ph.D. candidate at NYU, studying African history. She studies eighteenth-century textile trade and fashion between the English and West Africans on the Gold Coast. She examines the eighteenth-century Atlantic trade between the English and Africans on the Gold Coast to uncover how commercial relationships and trade goods transformed the accumulation of wealth, the (under) development of local industries, and fashion on the Gold Coast. Zingha is also an African designer and business owner who handmakes African clothes that are culturally significant and historically relevant.
Ross Hamilton
Sex and Gender across Long Time
Ross Hamilton specializes in metahistorical patterns from the Reformation to Romanticism, as well as the shift from natural philosophy to early modern science. He is also interested in the Annales historians and their influence. He was a prize teaching fellow at Yale, and held a post-doctorate fellowship at Johns Hopkins University.
His first book, Accident: A Literary and Philosophical History (University of Chicago Press, 2008), traces the transformations and mutations of Aristotle's notion of the accidental or inessential from Sophocles to late 20th century film. It won the Harry Levin Prize from the ACLA for best work of literary history in 2007-8. A second book, Falling: Literature, Science and Social Change, explores literary analogues to the paradigm shift from natural philosophy to early modern science described by Thomas Kuhn, among others.
In addition to editing Tom Jones, he has written articles on Wordsworth, Erasmus Darwin, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the eighteenth century culture of gambling, theater and the rise of the novel, and the paintings of Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
Angela Simms
Race, Ethnicity, and U.S. Society
Community Office Hours
Each Monday at 2:00 PM EST students are invited to meet with any member of our Pre-College Programs team. Office hours are meant to mimic the PCP’s open door office policy and give students a space to meet with instructors, course assistants, or a professional staff member.
Bridging Curriculum and Community
Community Building Programming
We believe student life does not start and end in the classroom. Each night after class students can choose from 2-3 evening activities led by our Program Assistants.
Program Assistants
Program Assistants are current Barnard students who manage small cohorts of student teams. Your PA is a resource for you to ask questions about non academic issues (remember: your Course Assistant is your point of contact for academics). PAs plan and facilitate nightly community building activities such as self care nights, Netflix parties, Broadway shows, and much more.