Being a student in NYC means you have easy access to:
A. The world’s most exciting museums
B. The world’s most important libraries
C. The world’s greatest cultural centers
D. Digital archives, collections, and other groundbreaking research
E. All of the above ✓
The Barnard Teaches: Real Place + Digital Access initiative takes advantage of the College’s proximity to the unparalleled institutions of New York City together with cutting-edge digital resources. Barnard faculty collaboratively develop courses with New York City curators, archivists and collections specialists, allowing students incredible “behind the scenes” access.
Students studying in Prof. Anne Higonnet’s “A Virtual Enlightenment” class regularly travel to The Metropolitan Museum of Art to learn from Met curators and handle artwork normally unavailable to the public. In Prof. Kim Johnson’s “New York City’s Gilded Ages” class, students work with representatives from The New York Historical Society to conduct in-depth historical research of objects and documents. And in “The Worlds of Ntozake Shange and Digital Storytelling,” Prof. Kim Hall partners with specialists from The Schomburg Center for Research on Black Culture to give students an opportunity to explore the extensive archives firsthand.
Barnard Teaches classes also empower students with digital storytelling skills that allow them to frame their academic research for a modern audience. Students learn basic coding and web design as well as digital photography and photo editing. Several professors collaborate with experts from the International Center for Photography. Rather than writing a research paper, participants conclude their Barnard Teaches experiences with a visually compelling web story that displays research in a digestible way for a museum-going audience.
To learn more about the program, visit Barnard Magazine's winter 2016 issue, where writer Jessica Gross reports on the initiative in depth.
