Writing and Literature
The Writing and Literature track encourages writers to find their voice and share it with the world. Students will spend their mornings learning from Barnard instructors in courses such as Screenwriting, Dystopia in the Margins, and Poetry, on the same campus where writers like Greta Gerwig, Zora Neale Hurson, Jhumpa Lahiri got their start. Afternoons will be spent in intensives focused on developing a writing portfolio, getting published, and careers for writers.
Program Structure
Classes take place on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
Office Hours, Junior Junction and Leadership in Action Workshops will be held on Monday and Friday.
Student life activities will be held in the evenings after class.
The Curriculum
Screenwriting: The Art of Storytelling Through Film
Instructor: Bess Frankel
This course will give you the empowering tools to recognize a creative idea in your imagination, and use the medium of screenwriting to make it come to life. You will write, workshop, or refine your voice as a screenwriter, while watching films that will inspire and challenge you. We will explore the foundations of three-act structure, beat sheets, and the Young Hero’s Journey, before interrogating how to best tell stories in our own way. Throughout this course, we will explore questions like: What makes a great opening scene you can’t turn off? How can genres like science fiction or horror enhance a story about the human experience? How do we uplift our personal experiences through memoir writing? We will study almost a dozen films, widely varied in style and approach, but almost all of them exclusively made by and starring women. In addition to classroom screenings, we will make use of incredible opportunities across New York City; past field trips have included the Museum of Modern Art and the Metrograph Theater. By the end of the course, you will have written 3-4 short screenplays. Between watching, discussing, and writing, this course is an all-encompassing love letter to film and women’s place in it.
Dystopia in the Margins
Instructor: Mimi Wong
“Dystopia in the Margins” will explore dystopian fiction from the perspective of minority writers, specifically those belonging to the Asian diaspora. Over the course of three weeks, we will read and discuss three contemporary novels: Severance by Ling Ma, Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, and On Such a Full Sea by Chang-rae Lee. The course is designed to cultivate critical reading and writing skills, while engaging with topics such as identity, race, class, globalization, and the impact of capitalism.
The Instructors
Mimi Wong
Dystopia in the Margins
Mimi Wong writes about art, culture, and literature. For her work engaging with contemporary art by artists from the Asian diaspora, she was awarded the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. Her writing has been published in The Believer, Catapult, Electric Literature, Hyperallergic, Literary Hub, and Refinery29. She is Editor-in-Chief of the literary magazine The Offing and a part-time lecturer at The New School. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Bess Frankel
Screenwriting
Bess Frankel is a theatre-maker based in New York City, working as a playwright and a director (of both her own work and other artists' work). In addition to making new work, Bess loves reinterpreting classic works through a modern feminist perspective. She has a BFA in Theatre Directing from the University of Michigan (Go Blue), and an MFA in Playwriting from Columbia University.
Bridging Curriculum and Community
We believe student life does not start and end in the classroom. Each night after class, students can participate in activities led by our residential student staff.
Community Office Hours
Each Monday, students are invited to meet with any member of our Pre-College Programs team. Office hours emphasize PCP’s open door office policy and gives students a space to meet with their instructor, Peer Academic Leader, or a professional staff member.
Technology and Academic Support
Canvas and Email Access
Barnard PCP utilizes Canvas, an online platform, where students will find their syllabus, assignments, discussion boards, and access to message their instructor or peers outside of class.
Students will also receive a PCP email to use for the duration of the program.
Our team will go over technology usage in the student manual and during Orientation.