Fall 2024 First-Year Seminar BC1764 section 001

On Friendships Between Women

ON FRIENDSHIPS BETWEEN WO

Call Number 00613
Day & Time
Location
MW 2:40pm-3:55pm
113 MILSTEIN CEN
Points 3
Grading Mode Pass/Fail
Approvals Required None
Instructor Elizabeth Weybright
Type SEMINAR
Course Description

How do we reflect on the intimacies of friendship, and what might be particular to such intimacies between women? What makes a friendship good or bad? What tensions or correspondences might we trace between friendship and adjacent categories of relationality—’frenemies,’ sisterhood, lovers? In this course, we will apply close analytical examinations of literary and cultural texts in order to theorize the various shapes friendship may take. Throughout the semester, we will question how the friendships we encounter are situated within and/or against a variety of cultural and socioeconomic contexts. In doing so, we will explore friendship’s conceptual role in narratives of emotional development, education and intellectual life, work, community, and domesticity. Literary and theoretical texts may include works by Jane Austen, Toni Morrison, Kamila Shamsie, Kali Fajardo-Anstine, Jean Chen Ho, bell hooks, Virginia Woolf, Anahit Behrooz, Roxane Gay, Audre Lorde, and Adrienne Rich. Selections from film and television may include the tv dramatization of Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend and Keira Knightley’s portrayal of Georgiana Cavendish in The Duchess, among others. In discussions and writing assignments both formal and creative, we will consider how the (un)friendly relationships represented in these texts shift, break, and thrive given the conditions under which they are conducted.

Web Site Vergil
Department First-Year Seminar Program @Barnard
Enrollment 16 students (16 max) as of 9:06AM Saturday, December 14, 2024
Subject First-Year Seminar
Number BC1764
Section 001
Division Barnard College
Open To Barnard College
Note Barnard 1st Year Students Only
Section key 20243FYSB1764X001