Barnard English

10/29/2025

Barnard English alumna Melissa Clark on choices:

We had started a listless discussion about LSATs and GMATs when the waiter arrived to take our dessert order.
I hesitated.
It would be sensible to split one, almost profligate to order two. Then I noticed Bernard smiling at me.
“Melissa,” he whispered conspiratorially, “don’t you see? We need to have it all.”
I knew exactly what he meant.
Why just one or two desserts? Why a career in law or finance when food occupied our whole hearts? Why not a cookbook and a restaurant? We were adults. We were paying. We could get whatever we wanted.
We ordered all four desserts.
Surprisingly, that red-wine pear turned out to be the best, glowing like garnets beneath a snowdrift of whipped cream.

These unforgettable poached pears set a food writer on her trajectory.

07/27/2023

https://barnard.edu/news/greta-gerwig-06-portrait-artist-undergraduate

With the premiere of the alumna’s Barbie movie, Gerwig’s professors reflect on the student and the program that helped inspire her.

10/26/2022

Submissions to Meliora, Barnard College's premier academic journal for English theses, have been extended! Meliora is an open access, peer-reviewed journal that aims to amplify undergraduate voices in scholarly discourse, and in doing so, forge a more accessible academic community. Submit your thesis from the past two years at https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/meliora/about/submissions.

04/28/2021

Congratulations to the editorial board of Meliora: A Barnard Journal for English Theses on the publication of their first issue!

Meliora is Barnard College’s premier, undergraduate-run, open access literary journal committed to publishing peer-reviewed, original English senior theses on a bi-annual basis.

02/02/2021

Submissions to Meliora, Barnard College's premier academic journal for English theses, open today! Meliora is an open access, peer-reviewed journal that aims to amplify undergraduate voices in scholarly discourse, and in doing so, forge a more accessible academic community. Apply on our website until February 8th: https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/meliora/index

01/31/2021

This is so exciting! Congratulations to the first editorial board of Meliora!

Meliora is Barnard College’s premier, undergraduate-run, open access literary journal committed to publishing peer-reviewed, original English senior theses on a bi-annual basis. In doing so, Meliora allows students and academics alike to utilize and expand upon authors’ ideas, forging a more acc...

12/22/2020

Congratulations to Lauren Sandler '96.

PEN America is honored to announce the longlists for the 2021 PEN America Literary Awards.

07/15/2020

Our own Nina Sharma was profiled in Barnard Magazine this week!

Adjunct professor Nina Sharma ’05 writes about the power of play during a time of personal and global transition.

05/28/2020

Professor Achsah Guibbory has written a beautiful essay about teaching *Paradise Lost* this spring.

I’ve been teaching Milton’s “Paradise Lost” for decades, but this semester it was an entirely new experience for me, perhaps one of the best in all my years of teaching and I think for my students as well.  If John Donne’s “Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions” resonate so closely wi...

05/22/2020

A wonderful interview with one of our fantastic instructors this year, Nina Sharma.