Courses
Spring 2016 Courses
Creative Writing
Practice in the original composition of poetry supplemented by the reading and analysis of standard works.
The curriculum allows the student to develop writing skills, provides an introduction to the possibilities of contemporary literature and offers a perspective on the place of literature among the liberal arts.
Practice in the translation of literary works from another language into English supplemented by the reading and analysis of standard works.
This studio course will introduce students to the essential aspects and skills of graphic design, and will analyze and discuss the increasingly vital role that non-verbal, graphic information plays in all areas of professional life, from fine art and book design to social networking and the Internet.
This studio course introduces students to graphic design with a particular emphasis on typography. Students learn typographic history through lectures that highlight major shifts in print technologies and through their engagement in studio design projects.
This is a course in factual writing and what has become known as literary nonfiction, emphasizing writing assignments and including several reading assignments from the work of John McPhee and others.
Advanced practice in the original composition of poetry for discussion in regularly scheduled workshop meetings.
Advanced practice in the original composition of fiction for discussion in regularly scheduled workshop meetings.
How can screenwriters prepare for the evolving challenges of our global media world? What types of content, as well as form, will emerging technologies make possible?
How does a screenwriter, organize and develop the ideas that will form a feature narrative script?
This advanced screenwriting course will introduce students to the post 1990’s “golden age of television” and outline the differences between writing for film and a scripted TV series.
Dance
From grand plié to grand jeté, Introduction to Ballet is for students with a curiosity for the study of classical ballet.
Designed for people with little or no previous training in dance, the class will be a mixture of movement techniques, improvisation, choreography, observing, writing, and discussing.
This course provides laboratories and cross-genre dance technique to facilitate a somatic understanding of kinesiology.
This course will be divided in units focusing on Jerome Robbins, Antony Tudor, and other 20th century choreographers. Students will be coached by internationally known guest artists, Robert LaFosse, Amanda McKerrow, John Gardner, to master and understand the diverse styles of each piece of repertory learned.
Theater & Music Theater
An introduction to the craft of acting through scene study monologues and, finally, a longer scene drawn from a play, to develop a method of working on a script.
Advanced French Theater Workshop is a continuation of FRE/THR 211, French Theater Workshop.
This course maps some benefits and perils of theater made for, by, or about people of color in the United States. We will investigate the difficult-to-theorize and contested space between politics and artistic craft.
An introduction to the art and craft of lighting design for the stage and an exploration of light as a medium for expression.
A hundred years ago, an armed group of Irish nationalist rebels took over public buildings in Dublin, declared a Republic and held out for a week against the British army. After those leaders were executed, the Rising was embraced as a ritual of sacrifice, the most effective piece of public theater yet staged. In this course we look at what happened in Easter Week, 1916, how it was imagined at the time and how it was later reflected in drama, in poetry and in fiction.
From the 1920s until the 1950s Ireland locked up people who did not fit the state's desired image in a vast complex of institutions. In this course we consider how this system was reflected in plays, fiction and film, sometimes in direct testimony by survivors, sometimes in the most surprising ways.
This seminar explores how iconic pieces of theatre can be re-explored for modern audiences. The course will examine various aspects of how an artist can think out-of-the-box and the mechanisms the artist can use to do so.
A practical, hands-on introduction to acting and directing in musical theater.
This course addresses when and why producing political theatre matters. We will look specifically at contemporary and canonical plays from around the globe that take on various political crises (e.g., the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, Chile under Pinochet, the Liberian Civil War, the Arab Spring).
An exploration into verse, prose, and song and how they have been central to the way theater works.
Visual Arts
This course approaches drawing as a way of thinking and seeing. Students will be introduced to a range of drawing issues, as well as a variety of media, including charcoal, graphite, ink, oil stick, collage, string, wire and clay.
An introduction to the materials and methods of painting. The areas to be covered are color and its interaction, the use of form and scale, painting from a model, painting objects with a concern for their mass and interaction with light.
An introduction to the processes of analog photography through a series of problems directed toward the handling of film-based cameras, light-sensitive paper, darkroom chemistry, and printing.
This studio course introduces students to aesthetic and theoretical implications of digital photography, with an emphasis on mastering digital equipment and techniques, managing print quality, and generally becoming familiar with all aspects of the digital workspace.
This studio course will introduce students to the essential aspects and skills of graphic design, and will analyze and discuss the increasingly vital role that non-verbal, graphic information plays in all areas of professional life, from fine art and book design to social networking and the Internet.
This studio course introduces students to graphic design with a particular emphasis on typography. Students learn typographic history through lectures that highlight major shifts in print technologies and through their engagement in studio design projects.
A studio introduction to sculpture, particularly the study of form, concept, fabrication and the influence of a wide variety of materials and processes on sculpture and its consequences.
Through hands-on studio work, screenings, critical readings and group critiques, this course teaches the basic tools and approaches for film production with digital media including writing, camerawork, sound, editing, and postproduction.
This course introduces students to documentary film production using digital video, with an emphasis on the practical challenges of working in the real world.
This course introduces techniques of copper plate etching, and relief printing. Assignments focus on applications of various printmaking techniques, while encouraging independent development of subject matter.
This course looks at the way Italy has expressed its cultural, political, and social individuality in major cinematic works from the 1980s to the present.
An introduction to the art and craft of lighting design for the stage and an exploration of light as a medium for expression.
How can screenwriters prepare for the evolving challenges of our global media world? What types of content, as well as form, will emerging technologies make possible?
How does a screenwriter, organize and develop the ideas that will form a feature narrative script?
This advanced screenwriting course will introduce students to the post 1990’s “golden age of television” and outline the differences between writing for film and a scripted TV series.
This class will investigate the idea of "manipulation" in photography and examine different approaches to controlling form and content. Class lectures will look at the work of such artists as James Welling, Collier Schorr, Arthur Jaffa, and Boris Mikhailov, among others.
In this course, each student will determine a specific theme that they will poke, prod and refine throughout the semester, ultimately completing three fully realized, thematically-linked sculptures and/or installations.
A script is only the beginning. Then come the interesting decisions: the actors, the visual style, and the sound design. In this class, each student will be given one segment of a script which they can interpret in any way they choose.
With roots in activities as diverse as mural painting, sports, street fairs, or community activism, publicly engaged art inserts itself into specific contexts and directly engages its audience-often with the hope for social change. This class will investigate the evolving practice of art by creating objects designed to interact with people and spaces around campus.
Artists have long deployed language as a kind of satellite hovering in the vicinity of their artworks, influencing their reception.