Margaret R. Barrow

Associate Professor
English

Office: N-751F

Office Hours:

Phone: +1 (212) 220-8000;ext=7282

Dr. Margaret Barrow is a full-time faculty member in the English Department. She is also the Deputy Chair. Since her arrival she has been involved in a number of BMCC initiatives: She directed the Coordinated Undergraduate Education Project as Coordinator in the English Department and participated in the Title V Advisement Initiative, Cohort B. She has served on the Teaching Learning Center Board as Co-Chair of the Grants Committee and was a member of the Academic Support Services Committee, a member of the Coordinated Undergraduate Committee and a volunteer member of the Women’s Studies Project.

She has presented papers at TYCA-NE, Conference on College Composition and Communication, NJCEA, NYCEA, and CUNY General Education Conference. She has also hosted the Maya Angelou Tribute coordinated by the Student Government Association (spring 2006) and served on the SGA Leadership Scholarship Committee from 2008-2009.

In 2012, Dr. Margaret Barrow co-designed and coordinated the Transitions and Transactions: Literature Pedagogy in Community Colleges Conference at BMCC. She is currently organizing another conference with a continued focus on teaching literature in the community with her colleague, Manya Steinkoler. The conference is scheduled to take place in Spring 2014.

At the moment, she is co-editing a book based on the proceedings from the 2012 conference. Her article “Developing Discussion as a Learning Resource: Discussion Practices in the Community College” will be published. She is also working on her first novel,The Bond Between Us, Hope, which is about a brother and sister, who after surviving the foster care system search for their little sister who was adopted 20 years ago. In 2011, she co-wrote a STEM grant that was awarded a half a million dollars. In the STEM program, she conceptualized a new program, Mid-STEP which expands the current STEP programs at BMCC to include middle school students.

Doctor Barrow completed her dissertation at Columbia University, Teachers College in 2009. Her dissertation title is:Talking About Literature: Student Perceptions and Experiences in the Community College Literature Classroom.

Expertise

Teacher Education, Pedagogy, English Education, Creative Writing

Degrees

B.A. English, City College, City University of New York,1996
M.A. Literature, City College, City University of New York,2000
Ed.D. English Education, University, Teachers College,2010

Courses Taught

3 CRS.3 HRS.NULL LAB HRS. ENG 333 ENG 333 (The Short Story): This course acquaints students with the wide range and varied forms of the short story as it developed in America, Europe, and other continents. Readings will include works by male and female authors of different periods and nationalities, and some attention may be paid to the historical development of the short story as a genre, as well as the cultural contexts in which the assigned stories were written. Pre-Requisite: ENG101 and ENG201 or ENG121
Course Syllabus

Research and Projects

Transitions and Transactions III: Literature and Journalism Pedagogies in Community Colleges Conference. Margaret Barrow and Manya Steinkoler are currently planning the 3rd Transitions and Transactions Conference: April 22-23, 2016 at BMCC.

Literature and Creative Writing Pedagogies in Community Colleges Conference, April 25-27, 2014: Continuing our work developing a community of engaged teachers interested in improving their practice by sharing pedagogical questions, concerns, successes, theories, and intellectual curiosities about the ways in which teaching and learning happens and does not happen in the community college literature and creative writing classroom, we invite a large field of inquiry: student and faculty populations, physical environments, social media and technological dependency, resistances, disruptions and distortions to teaching and learning, institutionalized educational policies, and (dis)abilities and mental illness awareness in teaching.

In addition, in light of the rise in recent violence that uses the educational environment as a global stage, we invite papers that theorize violence at education institutions and violence in education and ways that college students have engaged with these questions in literature classes. We are pleased to include the teaching of creative writing as a new topic for our conference.

We’ve added creative writing pedagogy as a way to engage in and add our voices to this important field of scholarship. Specific to the community college, we would like to address how faculty teach creative writing when literacy and literary familiarity and preparation vary widely.

Publications

People and Places: The English 088 Reader (Eds. Caroline Pari-Pfister and Margaret Barrow), Cengage Publishing

“Discussion as a Learning Tool in the Community College Literature Classrooms”. Teaching Literature in Community College Classrooms: Traversing Practices. 204-219., McGraw-Hill

The Sweetest Candy–Education! BMCC Inquirer Journal. , Borough of Manhattan Community College.

Teaching Literature in Community College Classrooms: Traversing Practices (Eds. Margaret Barrow and Manya Steinkoler), McGraw-Hill

“Beyond Image”. People and Places: The English 088 Reader. Eds. Caroline Pari-Pfister. 39-41., Cengage PublishingBasic Writing: A Classroom Text for College Students, Bedford/St. Martin

Honors, Awards and Affiliations

Chancellor’s Scholars Institutional Award 2015
Transitions and Transactions II: Literature and Creative Writing Pedagogies in Community Colleges Conference April 2014
Minority Scholarship Awards in 2003-2009, Columbia University, Teachers College
Walter Sindlinger Writing Award Nominee, Research Paper: “Is Silence Really Golden? Native Chinese Learners in American English College Classrooms, 2005
Chancellor’s Salute to Scholars Award
Transitions and Transactions I: Literature Pedagogies in Community Colleges Conference, April 2012