Young Women Writers Institute Online
The Program and Structure
Barnard’s Young Women Writers Institute 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 The Art of the Essay, Writing New York, and playwriting, 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 Dates: Sunday, June 27- Friday, July 16, 2021
-
Virtual Orientation: Sunday, June 27, 2021
-
First Day of Classes- Monday, June 28, 2021
Tuition and Fees- $3,125
Program Structure
This institute is completely virtual. Classes are delivered synchronously at a mutually beneficial time for our students on both the east and west coast. We understand this will be a strain for some of our international students and will work with on ways to make the most of your class schedule. Classes take place on Mon, Tues, Thurs, and Friday midday from 11:00 AM- 12:30 PM EST and Tues and Thurs afternoons from 2:00-3:30 PM EST. Enrichment and student life activities will be held in both the early day and evening time frames (10am EST- 8pm EST)
Learn more about how we are bringing the Young Women Writers Institute to you.
The Curriculum
This 3-week seminar is dedicated to the intersection of art and justice in our contemporary culture. We will touch on the following key social justice issues expressed and interrogated through visual and literary arts: racial justice, gender equity and intersectional feminism, climate change, land sovereignty and the prison industrial complex. Some of the artists and writers whose work we will explore are: Emory Douglas, bell hooks, Lucy Lippard, Claudia Rankine, Rebecca Belmore, Judy Chicago, Dr. Nicole Fleetwood, Hank Willis Thomas and many more. Students will be assigned readings, audio and video clips, and small projects throughout the seven weeks, culminating in a short research paper on a topic from our class. This class is for students who are interested in the root stories of political artistic practice, radical imaginations born in movement work, and the ways in which art and justice are indelibly intertwined.
Appropriate for Grade Levels: 9, 10, 11
Bring your love of truth, justice, mystery, and New York City history to this writing class. Studying the elements of the city’s well-known, and not so well-known crimes, can open a lens into the race, class, and gender structures at work in our metropolis, and reveal whom they benefit, and whom they harm. The current explosion in True Crime books, podcasts, blogs, and documentaries, and the fact that women are taking control of more of these narratives cannot be ignored. Students will choose an actual criminal case from New York’s recent or not so recent history (e.g. Typhoid Mary), and write a nonfiction story driven by their point of view, which will emerge from shorter pieces and research done during the class. The coursework will cover best writing practices, such as learning the skills of legally sound, ethical reporting, interviewing people on sensitive matters, and using public records—all in the interest of uncovering and shaping the raw material into a story that needs to be told, for victims who may not always have the tools to tell them. Readings will include Michelle McNamara’s I’ll Be Gone in The Dark, Becky Cooper’s We Keep the Dead Close, James Polchin’s Indecent Advances, and excerpts from Christopher Payne’s photography book, North Brother Island, the Last Unknown Place in New York City. We will take virtual tours of public archives, the Museum of the City of New York, Central Park, and The East River, listen to Laci Mosley’s Scam Goddess, and view documentaries and films such as Strong Island, The Witness (about Kitty Genovese), and Summer of Sam. Experts on various topics will also participate as occasional guest speakers in the class.
Appropriate for Grade Levels: 9, 10, 11
What is this course about? Well, it’s about witches…but what are witches about? Witches are about gender, sexuality, morality, fear, and authority, among other things. For millennia, females spirituality and female sexuality have been paired in ways that reveal deep-seated anxieties about the female body and its power. From ancient goddess worship to the frenzied witch hunts of early modern Europe to the child-devouring crones of folk tales from cultures around the world, we’ll delve into what the witch and those who name and pursue her reveal about deeply-held cultural beliefs and anxieties. We’ll work together to analyze the archetype of the witch across time and space and develop our own ideas about why she is so constantly compelling. We’ll also look at our own sociocultural moment and connect what we learn about witches to the world around us.
Appropriate for Grade Levels: 9, 10, 11
In this poetry writing workshop, students will explore the poem as a place for expressing what is essential about the self—and as a process for discovering the truth. The study of a variety of poetic forms will reveal how each offers a framework for clarifying one’s own understanding of the world on the way to inviting readers to share it. Class time will consist of workshops and close readings of exemplary poems. My workshop approach focuses on developing a safe and supportive climate for feedback in which we practice how to respond in ways that respect the goals and intentions of the poet as well as how to receive feedback with an open mind and confident heart. Afternoon special sessions will also feature craft talks and readings by other award-winning contemporary poets, followed by Q&A with students. During office hours, students will receive individual poetry consultations—focused on helping their poems be the poems they want them to be. At the end of the course, students will have a portfolio of poems ready to submit to journals, contests, and writing programs. For those who wish to begin publishing, there will be advice on how to create effective cover letters and target submissions strategically.
Appropriate for Grade Levels: 9, 10, 11
What is a play? Where does a play come from? This course will embrace the live performance event in the widest possible terms through reading, writing, feedback, and discussion. Students will engage in daily writing exercises, as well as extended writing operations. We will become adept at giving and receiving feedback. We will read and dissect both classic texts and contemporary plays. We will engage with theatre artists living and working in New York City, and view and discuss theatre in the online environment. Successful students will possess a sense of adventure and willingness to experiment.
Appropriate for Grade Levels: 9, 10, 11
From the Sans-Culottes to Pantsuit Nation, fashion has moved from being an expression of class status to a declaration of self. Fashion has also been weaponized and used as a call-to-arms for political, social, gender, and economic reform. This course examines the role of fashion (Victorian to Modern) as a barometer of cultural consciousness, especially in times of oppression and social unrest. Students will create digital mood boards and learn how fashion designers use them, analyze descriptions of fashion in literature, and read about the evolution of fashion from seminal critics including Roland Barthes, Margaret Atwood, and Valerie Steele. We will view virtual museum exhibitions devoted to fashion, create a framework to analyze the role of fashion in modern life, examine fashion magazines, blogs, and Instagram posts through a critical lens, and learn about the design studios of New York fashion designers. Fashion has been dismissed as frivolous by critics, however women including Virginia Woolf and Anna Wintour have refuted that statement. By the end of the course, students will come to their own conclusions, exploring the reasons people might dismiss the role of fashion in culture.
Appropriate for Grade Levels: 9, 10, 11
The Instructors
Erica Cardwell
Art and Justice: Imagining a New World
Erica Cardwell is writer and radical educator based in New York. She teaches English and Literature at the Borough of Manhattan Community College/CUNY and a social justice capstone at The New School. She received her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Sarah Lawrence College and is has been awarded fellowships and residencies by the Lambda Literary Foundation and Vermont Studio Center. Her essays and criticism have appeared in The Believer, Hyperallergic, Rewire, Green Mountains Review and elsewhere. Erica is a board member of Radical Teacher Journal. She is writing a nonfiction novel about the life of her late mother and the Black imagination.
Jill DiDonato
Is Fashion Frivolous?
Jill Di Donato has taught a range of liberal arts courses in the Barnard Pre-College Program since 2010. She is a member of the faculty at the Fashion Institute of Technology and has taught at Columbia University and City Tech. A former fashion editor, she writes about fashion and beauty as a barometer of cultural consciousness and has been published in the Los Angeles Times, NYLON, Refinery 29, VICE, Byrdie, and Salon. She founded and curates a series on beauty,The Vanity Project, for Huffington Post. A Barnard alumna, she holds an MFA from Columbia University.
Thomas March
Poetry Writing Workshop: The Poem, The Self, and The Truth!
Thomas March is a poet, teacher and critic based in New York City. His work has appeared in The Believer, Bellevue Literary Review, The Good Men Project, The Huffington Post, New Letters, Pleiades, and Public Pool, among others. His poetry column, "Appreciations," which offers appreciative close readings of poems from recent collections, appears regularly in Lambda Literary Review. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in poetry, and he is a past recipient of the Norma Millay Ellis Fellowship in Poetry, from the Millay Colony for the Arts. Aftermath, his first poetry collection, was selected by Joan Larkin for The Word Works Hilary Tham Capital Collection and will appear in Spring 2018.
Alice Reagan
Playwriting
Alice Reagan is Associate Professor of Professional Practice in the Barnard College Theatre department. She has directed plays at Shakespeare & Company, Dobama Theatre, Portland Experimental Theatre Ensemble, Profile Theatre, Boom Arts, La Mama, Brave New World Rep, HERE Arts Center, The Chocolate Factory, and Target Margin Theater. She has directed new plays by Julia Jarcho, Gab Reisman, Mac Wellman, Dipika Guha, Chiori Miyagawa, and LM Feldman, and developed and leads the commissioning program New Plays at Barnard. Her primary interests are feminist plays and adaptations that challenge and subvert traditional narrative forms. MA Performance Studies: NYU/Tisch, MFA: Columbia.
Mary Roma
Citizen Sleuth: Writing Compelling True Crime Stories from New York City Cases
Mary Roma is an Instructor of English and Writing at New York University and Empire State College, and has taught for Teen Ink Magazine’s Summer in New York City Writing Program. She is a Curriculum Consultant for the mentoring organization, Girls Write Now, and leads writing workshops for teens at the New York Public Library. A native New Yorker, she has also traveled to Europe, Asia, and South America, especially Colombia. Her writing has been published in TRIPS magazine and she is a copy editor for the iPad based publication, PERISCOPE. In her spare time (and during spring migration), she takes bird walks in Central Park and hunts for foodie delights throughout New York City's multi-ethnic boroughs. She earned her Master of Arts in English and American Literature from New York University, and her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Bard College.
Wendy Schor-Haim
Goddesses, Crones, and Evil Stepmothers: Exploring the Archetype of the Witch
Wendy Schor-Haim is the Director of the First-Year Writing Program at Barnard and teaches in the English Department and in the First-Year Seminar Program as well as in First-Year Writing. She did her Ph.D. in History at NYU, where she studied religious minorities in medieval Western Europe. Her research and teaching interests include academic and personal essay writing, women and minorities in the medieval world, and gender and feminist studies. She's very happy to be teaching again in the Pre-College Program!
Nina Sharma
No Name Mind
NINA SHARMA is a writer and performer from Edison, New Jersey. Her work has been featured in Electric Literature, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Hematopoiesis, Anomaly, Longreads, The Grief Diaries, Banango Street, The Margins, The Blueshift Journal, Teachers & Writers Magazine, The Asian American Literary Review, Drunken Boat, Certain Circuits Magazine, The Feminist Wire, Reverie: Midwest African American Literature, and Ginosko Literary Journal. She was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize for her essay, “Not Dead.” Her essay, “The Bride’s Goodbye” was nominated for Best of the Net 2017 anthology. Her essay “The Way You Make Me Feel” won first place in the 2016 Blueshift Prizes for writers of color, judged by Jeffrey Renard Allen and appears in The Blueshift Journal‘s Brutal Nation feature. She was recently awarded a fellowship a diversity scholarship from The Magnet Improvisation Theater, where she has participated in longform improvisation shows such as “We Just Might Kiss: A Female Improv Event” and “You Are Not Alone: An Uplifting Show About Depression.”This past March, the performed in the 2018 Diverse as Fuck Comedy Festival. She is formerly the Director of Public Programs at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and with Quincy Scott Jones, she co-created the Nor’easter Exchange: a multicultural, multi-city reading series. She has an MA from Columbia University’s American Studies, Liberal Studies program and an MFA from Columbia’s School of the Arts writing program, where she concentrated in nonfiction. She was awarded a fellowship to teach in Columbia’s Undergraduate Writing Program, where she was a lecturer in the interdisciplinary pilot program, University Writing: Human Rights. A 2017 and 2018 Asian Women Giving Circle grantee, she leads her AWGC-funded workshop, “No-Name Mind: Stories of Mental Health from Asian America” at The Asian American Writers’ Workshop.
Technology and Academic Support
IMATS/ Canvas/Zoom
Barnard PCP utilizes Canvas, an online classroom, where students will find their syllabus, Zoom links to their class sessions, assignments, discussion boards, and access to message their instructor or peers.
All classes and workshops are hosted via Zoom. Our instructors have worked to create robust lessons that utilize various technology capabilities and platforms such as Zoom breakout rooms, Twine, Canva, and even apps developed by our professors!
Our team will go over technology usage and etiquette extensively in the student manual and during Orientation.
Course Assistant
Each course has the added support of a Course Assistant (CAs), a current Barnard student (or a recent graduate). CAs assist faculty with administrative tasks, classroom management, and facilitate office hours to help students.
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.