Spring 2020 Courses

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In this course, led by critically acclaimed comedy writer Albert Samuels, students will participate in the in-process television pitch used by Samuels' cutting-edge improvisation group, Baby Wants Candy, including finalizing concept and script and developing a strong pitch. By the end of the semester, BWC will have a finished pitch package the group will present to Netflix, Amazon, Comedy Central and other networks/outlets. Students will develop their own original television concepts in groups and individually and also create shorter material - e.g., desk bits for late night shows, online content, etc.

Choreographer Rebecca Lazier, visual artist Janet Echelman, engineer Sigrid Adriaenssens, and sound artist Jess Rowland come together with students in a unique collaboration inspired by the activity in the understory, the hovering layer beneath a forest's canopy. They will create textile sculpture installations that will activate, and be activated by, movement and sound. Students will explore historical works that merge visual, choreographic, and sonic forms and examine intersections of architecture, engineering, and artistic practices. Themes of transcending boundaries and disorientation will unfold within suspended sculptural environments.

How do artists make art? How do we evaluate it? In this course, students of all levels get to experience firsthand the particular challenges and rewards of art making through practical engagement with five fields — creative writing, visual art, theater, dance, and music — under the guidance of professionals.

Practice in the original composition of poetry supplemented by the reading and analysis of standard works. Criticism by practicing writers and talented peers encourages the student’s growth as both creator and reader of literature.

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. Criticism by practicing writers and talented peers encourages the student's growth as both creator and reader of literature.

Students will choose, early in the semester, one author to focus on in fiction, poetry, or drama, with the goal of arriving at a 20-25 page sample of the author's work. All work will be translated into English and discussed in a workshop format. Weekly readings and will focus on the comparison of pre-existing translations as well as commentaries on the art and pratice of literary translation.

This is a course in factual writing and what has become known as literary non-fiction, emphasizing writing and including several reading assignments from the work of John McPhee and others. Enrollment is limited to 16 second-year students, by application only.

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.

A continuation of work begun in Introductory Playwriting, in this class, students will complete either one full-length play or two long one-acts (40-60 pages) to the end of gaining a firmer understanding of characterization, dialogue, structure, and the playwriting process. In addition to questions of craft, an emphasis will be placed on the formation of healthy creative habits and the sharpening of critical and analytical skills through reading and responding to work of both fellow students and contemporary playwrights of note.

Students will choose, early in the semester, one author to focus on in fiction, poetry, or drama, with the goal of arriving at a 20-25 page sample of the author's work. All work will be translated into English and discussed in a workshop format. Weekly readings and will focus on the comparison of pre-existing translations as well as commentaries on the art and practice of literary translation.

All literature is short — compared to our lives, anyway — but we'll be concentrating on poetry and prose at their very shortest. The reading will include proverbs, aphorisms, greguerias, one-line poems, riddles, jokes, fragments, haiku, epigrams and microlyrics. Imagism, contemporary shortists, prose poems, various longer works assembled from small pieces, and possibly even flash fiction.

How do we craft narrative from the material of another person's life? We will look at the oral history interview as an act of spontaneous literature - one that contains both the individual story, and the larger history.

This course will explore ways that language can take on material properties and how objects can have syntax and be “read.” Through studio assignments, readings, and discussions, students will investigate the idea of language as a tangible material that can be sliced, bent, inserted, reproduced, embedded, and scattered.

This course will introduce students to the foundational principles and techniques of screenwriting, taking into account the practical considerations of film production.  Questions of thematic cohesiveness, plot construction, logical cause and effect, character behavior, dialogue, genre consistency and pace will be explored as students gain confidence in the form by completing a number of short screenplays. The course will illustrate and analyze the power of visual storytelling to communicate a story to an audience, and will guide students to create texts that serve as "blueprints" for emotionally powerful and immersive visual experiences. 

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? Do fields like neuroscience help us understand the universal principals behind screenwriting and do tech advances that alter the distance between audience and creator, man and machine, also influence content of our stories?

A reading-based advanced fiction workshop designed to introduce students to the practice of imitation as a point of creative departure. Reading the works of a series of twentieth-century Italian masters — Ginzburg, Lampedeusa, Levi, Morante, among others — we will analyze a range of techniques and styles and focus our discussion on themes of linguistic crossing and hybrid identity. All readings will be in translation from the recently published Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories edited by Jhumpa Lahiri. Italian concentrators and certificate students will read the stories and produce all written work in Italian.

A workshop course designed to support advanced student theater and music theater writers in exploring possible performance of their writing. Students will investigate their writing with a focus on collaboration, performance and production. Individualized creative assignments will be suggested for each student. Students will be introduced to methodologies for producing new works and for theatrical collaboration, and will discuss the writer's point of view in the rehearsal room, physical staging, working with performers and character development, and exploring visual storytelling.

In this course, led by critically acclaimed comedy writer Albert Samuels, students will participate in the in-process television pitch used by Samuels' cutting-edge improvisation group, Baby Wants Candy, including finalizing concept and script and developing a strong pitch. By the end of the semester, BWC will have a finished pitch package the group will present to Netflix, Amazon, Comedy Central and other networks/outlets. Students will develop their own original television concepts in groups and individually and also create shorter material - e.g., desk bits for late night shows, online content, etc.

How do artists make art? How do we evaluate it? In this course, students of all levels get to experience firsthand the particular challenges and rewards of art making through practical engagement with five fields — creative writing, visual art, theater, dance, and music — under the guidance of professionals.

How does the use of one’s imagination spark social and systemic change in the world? What does it mean to devote one's life to this kind of work? Blurring the lines between the creative and political experience, students will be introduced to the radical contemporary practices that interdisciplinary artists use to build creative, impactful lives.

In this studio course open to all, we will: dive into experiences in which body and language meet; think about these from aesthetic, cultural, political, personal, and philosophical perspectives; play with the physicality of voice and the material qualities of words and sentences; look for literary structures in movement; explore language from, in, around, and about (our) bodies; question hierarchies between body and language; deliberately lose ourselves in situations in which words fail or fall away; move and create together using tools from dance, theater, visual art, improvisation, writing, and somatic practices.

A studio course introducing students to American dance aesthetics and practices, with a focus on how its evolution has been influenced by African American choreographers and dancers. An ongoing study of movement practices from traditional African dances and those of the African diaspora, touching on American jazz dance, modern dance, and American ballet. Studio work will be complemented by readings, video viewings, guest speakers, and dance studies.

Designed for students with minimal dance experience who are curious about contemporary dance techniques and choreography. Perfect for students who have taken other intro level dance courses and who want to broaden their dance knowledge and deepen their physical skill and experience.

In a universe filled with movement, how and why and where might we find relative stillness? What are the aesthetic, political, and daily life possibilities within stillness? In this studio course open to all, we'll dance, sit, question, and create substantial final projects. We'll play with movement within stillness, stillness within movement, stillness in performance and in performers' minds. We'll look at stillness as protest and power. We'll wonder when stillness might be an abdication of responsibility. We'll read widely within religions, philosophy, performance, disability studies, social justice, visual art, sound (and silence).

This introductory survey course gives equal weight to scholarly study and embodied practice, using both approaches to explore a range of hip-hop dance techniques, as well as the cultural and historical contexts from which these dances emerged. Special attention will be given to breaking – the most prominent hip-hop form – as a foundation for exploring other forms of movement. By critically exploring these physical and historical connections, individuals will adapt and apply their own philosophies to dance in order to develop a personalized style.

This introductory course gives equal weight to scholarly study and embodied practice, using both approaches to explore the flow, power and cultural contexts of Breaking. This course will focus on developing a clear foundational Breaking technique in order to build a strong basis for exploring other Hip-Hop forms. By critically exploring this form physically and historically, individuals will adapt and apply their own philosophies to dance in order to eventually develop a personalized style.

Dance/Theater Pedagogy Seminar explores the connection between engaged dance and elementary school literacy, mathematics and social studies while allowing students the opportunity to be civically engaged and contribute to the community.

This seminar is designed for junior dance certificate students to investigate current dance practices and ideas. Part study and discussion of the processes, aesthetics and politics involved in dance making and viewing — part independent creative practice and critique — this course invites students to a deeper understanding of their own art making perspectives and to those of their classmates.

Dance is an under-recognized political tool despite the use of performance to project national identity and soft power on the global stage. It also offers strategies for choreographing state initiatives and protest. This course investigates dance as both a state and a resistant practice of mobilization and identity construction. Forms studied include hula, Soviet ballet, modern dance during WWII and the Cold War, and others.

Hip-Hop is one of the most important cultural movements of the last half-century. But although hip-hop culture comprises a wide range of artistic practices – including music, dance, theater and graphic arts – its cultural politics are almost always analyzed through the lens of rap music. This seminar, by contrast, will explore the social and historical implications of hip-hop culture through its dance forms.

The seminar is dedicated to the reconstruction of ballets of the 19th century with emphasis on Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. Our task is to understand the composition and staging of a select group of ballets from the essential primary source materials, both those that reflect the work of 19th century balletmasters (Saint-Leon, Bournonville, Gansen, and Petipa) and the institutions with which they were affiliated.

This hybrid studio/seminar course progresses in two tracks: one of embodied movement practices and the other of theoretico-historical critique. The canon of modern dance — arguably an American trajectory — is the source material for our interdisciplinary work. We will mimic and examine landmark choreographies in order to explore foundational tenets of modern art and modernity at large. Ableism and nihilism, sovereignty and sexuality, race and gender, are some of the themes that we will face along the path of analyzing the work of Martha Graham, Alvin Ailey, Bob Fosse, Merce Cunningham, George Balanchine, and Vaclav Nijinsky.

This studio class will explore a broad range of approaches to art-based performance: from instruction pieces and happenings/events, the body as language and gestures, to various forms of lecture performance.

In this advanced studio course, dancers will study experiential anatomy in conversation with a variety of approaches to contemporary dance. Students will train in Contact Improvisation, experimental J-Sette, and repertory by Lar Lubovitch and Robert Battle. Students will explore relationships between scientific information, aesthetic priorities, training goals, and creative practices. We'll consider ways of optimizing movement drawn from somatic and conditioning techniques such as Pilates, neuromuscular patterning, PNF, and visualization. Drawing and journaling will clarify personal goals and understanding of movement capacities.

A studio course in Classical and Contemporary Ballet technique for advanced dancers, with explorations into neoclassical and contemporary choreography through readings, viewings, and the learning of and creation of repertory.

Choreographer Rebecca Lazier, visual artist Janet Echelman, engineer Sigrid Adriaenssens, and sound artist Jess Rowland come together with students in a unique collaboration inspired by the activity in the understory, the hovering layer beneath a forest's canopy. They will create textile sculpture installations that will activate, and be activated by, movement and sound. Students will explore historical works that merge visual, choreographic, and sonic forms and examine intersections of architecture, engineering, and artistic practices. Themes of transcending boundaries and disorientation will unfold within suspended sculptural environments.

How do artists make art? How do we evaluate it? In this course, students of all levels get to experience firsthand the particular challenges and rewards of art making through practical engagement with five fields — creative writing, visual art, theater, dance, and music — under the guidance of professionals.

How do artists make art? How do we evaluate it? In this course, students of all levels get to experience firsthand the particular challenges and rewards of art making through practical engagement with five fields — creative writing, visual art, theater, dance, and music — under the guidance of professionals.

This course introduces students to set and costume design for performance, exploring theater as a visual medium. Students will develop their ability to think about the physical environment (including clothing) as key components of story-telling and our understanding of human experience. Students will expand their vocabulary for discussing the visual world and work on their collaborative skills.

An exploration of theatrical sound design and engineering, this class will explore sound for both theater and music theater. We will investigate text from the point of view of sound, and learn how to communicate the ideas, palette and arc of a design to others. We will explore developing a creative process and turning our ideas into sounds that can be used onstage.

This course will explore the history and practice of musical theatre. Starting with the American musical's roots in minstrelsy and burlesque, the class will continue with Show Boat, the musicals of Rodgers & Hammerstein, Stephen Sondheim, and contemporary shows. Alongside the history of the musical, students will learn about the musical and theatrical tools of the genre, with an emphasis on directing and acting.

Song. Dance. Man. Woman. These are the basic components of the Broadway musical theatre. How have musical theatre artists, composers, lyricists, librettists, directors, choreographers, and designers worked with these building blocks to create this quintessentially American form of art and entertainment? This course will explore conventional and resistant performances of gender and sexuality in the Broadway musical since the 1940s. Why are musicals structured by love and romance?

A workshop course designed to support advanced student theater and music theater writers in exploring possible performance of their writing. Students will investigate their writing with a focus on collaboration, performance and production. Individualized creative assignments will be suggested for each student. Students will be introduced to methodologies for producing new works and for theatrical collaboration, and will discuss the writer's point of view in the rehearsal room, physical staging, working with performers and character development, and exploring visual storytelling.

This course is designed to provide students with the experience of doing social and historical research in the service of creating theatrical content, in collaboration with alumnae artists, around the fiftieth anniversary of undergraduate co-education at Princeton. Students will be paired with working artist alumnae, and together will begin research at the university archives, and be led in historical research and social analysis studying the lives of women who graduated from Princeton in the early years of undergraduate co-education.

This course provides students with a rigorous and challenging experience of creating theater under near-professional circumstances. A faculty or visiting professional director will lead the process. This involves an extensive rehearsal and technical rehearsal period, requiring more time than a typical student production. Students cast in the show or taking on major production roles such as stage manager or designer will receive course credit.

How do artists make art? How do we evaluate it? In this course, students of all levels get to experience firsthand the particular challenges and rewards of art making through practical engagement with five fields — creative writing, visual art, theater, dance, and music — under the guidance of professionals.

An introduction to the craft of acting through spoken text, scene study and, finally, a longer scene drawn from a full length play, to develop a method of working on a script. Emphasis will be placed on honesty, spontaneity, and establishing a personal connection with the scene's substance.

In this studio course open to all, we will: dive into experiences in which body and language meet; think about these from aesthetic, cultural, political, personal, and philosophical perspectives; play with the physicality of voice and the material qualities of words and sentences; look for literary structures in movement; explore language from, in, around, and about (our) bodies; question hierarchies between body and language; deliberately lose ourselves in situations in which words fail or fall away; move and create together using tools from dance, theater, visual art, improvisation, writing, and somatic practices.

A course on works of dramatic literature whose comparative dimension is theatrical performance. We will consider four Shakespeare plays covering a range of theatrical genres; the emphasis will be on the ways in which Shakespearean meaning can be elucidated when the reader becomes a performer. Students will move from the reading/performing of individual speeches to the staging of scenes to the question of how an overall theatrical conception for a play might be a key to the fullest understanding of the text.  Students will write papers about their readings and performances; grades will be based on both the writing and the performing.

This course introduces students to set and costume design for performance, exploring theater as a visual medium. Students will develop their ability to think about the physical environment (including clothing) as key components of story-telling and our understanding of human experience. Students will expand their vocabulary for discussing the visual world and work on their collaborative skills.

Most playwrights never intended to have readers. Their work was meant to be experienced in the theater. This course uses both live theatrical productions and online resources to discuss interpretive issues raised by the acting, directing, and design choices made in specific productions of classic plays as well as the larger question of what the proper object of critical inquiry is for those interested in drama. The word "drama" derives from the Greek word for "action". Do we "deactivate" drama with a phrase like "dramatic literature"? Does our usual conception of "performance" falsely rely on the pre-existence of a thing to "act"?

In a universe filled with movement, how and why and where might we find relative stillness? What are the aesthetic, political, and daily life possibilities within stillness? In this studio course open to all, we'll dance, sit, question, and create substantial final projects. We'll play with movement within stillness, stillness within movement, stillness in performance and in performers' minds. We'll look at stillness as protest and power. We'll wonder when stillness might be an abdication of responsibility. We'll read widely within religions, philosophy, performance, disability studies, social justice, visual art, sound (and silence).

Dramatists in the 20th and 21st centuries have repeatedly adapted classical literature to performance on the contemporary stage. In this course we'll ask after the particular uses, pleasures, and challenges of classical adaptation: why adapt ancient material in the first place? How have contemporary dramatists deviated from their sources, and how have they remained "true" to them? We'll consider these and other questions in a survey of a century of performance, ranging from early 20th-century modernism to Hadestown.

A continuation of work begun in Introductory Playwriting, in this class, students will complete either one full-length play or two long one-acts (40-60 pages) to the end of gaining a firmer understanding of characterization, dialogue, structure, and the playwriting process. In addition to questions of craft, an emphasis will be placed on the formation of healthy creative habits and the sharpening of critical and analytical skills through reading and responding to work of both fellow students and contemporary playwrights of note.

Dance/Theater Pedagogy Seminar explores the connection between engaged dance and elementary school literacy, mathematics and social studies while allowing students the opportunity to be civically engaged and contribute to the community.

An introduction to the art and craft of lighting design for the stage and an exploration of light as a medium for expression. Students will develop an ability to observe lighting in the world and on the stage; to learn to make lighting choices based on text, space, research, and their own responses; to practice being creative, responsive and communicative under pressure and in company; to prepare well to create under pressure using the designer's visual toolbox; and to play well with others-working creatively and communicating with directors, writers, performers, fellow designers, the crew and others.

An exploration of theatrical sound design and engineering, this class will explore sound for both theater and music theater. We will investigate text from the point of view of sound, and learn how to communicate the ideas, palette and arc of a design to others. We will explore developing a creative process and turning our ideas into sounds that can be used onstage.

This course will explore the history and practice of musical theatre. Starting with the American musical's roots in minstrelsy and burlesque, the class will continue with Show Boat, the musicals of Rodgers & Hammerstein, Stephen Sondheim, and contemporary shows. Alongside the history of the musical, students will learn about the musical and theatrical tools of the genre, with an emphasis on directing and acting.

This course offers a practice-based overview of theater-making in the twenty-first century through an intensive study of contemporary Latinx dramatists, companies, and movements in the United States. Through weekly readings, discussions and independent research/writing exercises, the seminar will investigate the cultural, artistic, social and political interventions of twenty-first century US Latinx drama.

This studio class will explore a broad range of approaches to art-based performance: from instruction pieces and happenings/events, the body as language and gestures, to various forms of lecture performance.

A workshop course designed to support advanced student theater and music theater writers in exploring possible performance of their writing. Students will investigate their writing with a focus on collaboration, performance and production. Individualized creative assignments will be suggested for each student. Students will be introduced to methodologies for producing new works and for theatrical collaboration, and will discuss the writer's point of view in the rehearsal room, physical staging, working with performers and character development, and exploring visual storytelling.

This course is designed to provide students with the experience of doing social and historical research in the service of creating theatrical content, in collaboration with alumnae artists, around the fiftieth anniversary of undergraduate co-education at Princeton. Students will be paired with working artist alumnae, and together will begin research at the university archives, and be led in historical research and social analysis studying the lives of women who graduated from Princeton in the early years of undergraduate co-education.

August Wilson completed what many consider the most ambitious project of any American playwright. His cycle of ten plays, one for each decade, chronicles African American life in the 20th century. We will explore all ten plays as individual drama and depictions of history. We will read standard histories to gain background and context.

This course provides students with a rigorous and challenging experience of creating theater under near-professional circumstances. A faculty or visiting professional director will lead the process. This involves an extensive rehearsal and technical rehearsal period, requiring more time than a typical student production. Students cast in the show or taking on major production roles such as stage manager or designer will receive course credit.

In this course, led by critically acclaimed comedy writer Albert Samuels, students will participate in the in-process television pitch used by Samuels' cutting-edge improvisation group, Baby Wants Candy, including finalizing concept and script and developing a strong pitch. By the end of the semester, BWC will have a finished pitch package the group will present to Netflix, Amazon, Comedy Central and other networks/outlets. Students will develop their own original television concepts in groups and individually and also create shorter material - e.g., desk bits for late night shows, online content, etc.

How do artists make art? How do we evaluate it? In this course, students of all levels get to experience firsthand the particular challenges and rewards of art making through practical engagement with five fields — creative writing, visual art, theater, dance, and music — under the guidance of professionals.

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 and oil stick. Subject matter includes still life, the figure, landscape and architecture. Representation, abstraction and working from imagination will be explored.

An introduction to the materials and methods of painting. The areas to be covered are specifically color and its interaction, the use of form and scale, painting from a model, painting objects with a concern for their mass and its interaction with light.

Operating at the intersection of art, science and technology, this course investigates how scientific theories shape aspects of culture and society. We will engage in the practice of "speculative design", creating sculptures, wearables, and objects that envision different futures, while reflecting on social, political, and ethical implications of various technologies. Students will develop skills in industrial design, physical computing, and fabrication, as well as sensing and responsive technologies (including hardware/software integration, sensors, micro-projection, biometric sensing, etc), while applying them to critical social discourse.

This course introduces students to set and costume design for performance, exploring theater as a visual medium. Students will develop their ability to think about the physical environment (including clothing) as key components of story-telling and our understanding of human experience. Students will expand their vocabulary for discussing the visual world and work on their collaborative skills.

This course introduces students to techniques for decoding and creating graphic messages in a variety of media, and delves into issues related to visual literacy through the hands-on making and analysis of graphic form.

This course engages students in the decoding of and formal experimentation with the image as a two-dimensional surface. Students take a hands on approach to formal experimentation through an array of modes and technologies including the photocopier, the computer, the camera, letterpress and silkscreen printing to address the most basic principles of design, such as visual metaphor, composition, hierarchy, and scale.

This studio production class will engage in a variety of timed-based collage, composition, visualization, and storytelling techniques. Students will be taught the fundamental techniques of 2D animation production.

A studio introduction to sculpture, particularly the study of form, space, and the influence of a wide variety of materials and processes on the visual properties of sculpture.

This studio course investigates video installation as an evolving contemporary art form that extends the conversation of video art beyond the frame and into live, hybrid media, site-specific, and multiple-channel environments.

This introductory course focuses on the technical, historical, cultural, and artistic aspects of color photography. Students will experiment with form and content, using the medium to convey observations and ideas. Students will work in an analog color darkroom and use hybrid methods of analog and digital photography in order to understand how color is translated by photographic material.

An introduction to narrative and avant-garde narrative film production through the creation of hands-on digital video exercises, short film screenings, critical readings, and group critiques. This course teaches the basic tools and techniques for storytelling with digital media by providing technical instruction in camera operation, nonlinear editing, and sound design paired with the conceptual frameworks of shot design, visual composition, film grammar and cinema syntax.

What is contemporary art? What defines its contemporaneity? And in which sense can it be called art when it defies categories of modernist art theory? How to define the plural of art when the old art genres have dissolved into countless hybrid forms? And what follows from the artistic destabilization of the border between art and non-art? What are the aesthetic and political implications of an art that addresses its audience and its institutional frameworks as well as questions of globalization, digitalization, historiography, and nature? The seminar will discuss these problems by looking at philosophy, art criticism, and artist writings.

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.

An introduction to the art and craft of lighting design for the stage and an exploration of light as a medium for expression. Students will develop an ability to observe lighting in the world and on the stage; to learn to make lighting choices based on text, space, research, and their own responses; to practice being creative, responsive and communicative under pressure and in company; to prepare well to create under pressure using the designer's visual toolbox; and to play well with others-working creatively and communicating with directors, writers, performers, fellow designers, the crew and others.

This course will explore ways that language can take on material properties and how objects can have syntax and be “read.” Through studio assignments, readings, and discussions, students will investigate the idea of language as a tangible material that can be sliced, bent, inserted, reproduced, embedded, and scattered.

This course will introduce students to the foundational principles and techniques of screenwriting, taking into account the practical considerations of film production.  Questions of thematic cohesiveness, plot construction, logical cause and effect, character behavior, dialogue, genre consistency and pace will be explored as students gain confidence in the form by completing a number of short screenplays. The course will illustrate and analyze the power of visual storytelling to communicate a story to an audience, and will guide students to create texts that serve as "blueprints" for emotionally powerful and immersive visual experiences. 

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? Do fields like neuroscience help us understand the universal principals behind screenwriting and do tech advances that alter the distance between audience and creator, man and machine, also influence content of our stories?

This studio class will explore a broad range of approaches to art-based performance: from instruction pieces and happenings/events, the body as language and gestures, to various forms of lecture performance.

This class will focus on how current painting considers the human figure. Portraits without people, the selfie, the figure as composite, imagined figures, forgotten figures, figures from our lives, abstract figures, non-consensual portraits, and technologically advanced figures will be considered within a structure of exploratory painterly approaches. This class will NOT focus on "how to" paint the figure.

This class examines ways in which lens-based media can frame the figure within different social, cultural, and emotional landscapes.

This studio course builds on the skills and concepts of the 200-level Graphic Design classes. VIS 415 is structured around three studio assignments that connect graphic design to other bodies of knowledge, aesthetic experience, and scholarship. The class always takes a local concept or event as the impetus for investigations. Studio work is supplemented by critiques, readings and lectures. Students will refine their approaches to information design and visual problem solving, and to decoding and producing graphic design in print and electronic media.

This class concentrates on the editing process. Students will re-edit samples from narrative and documentary films and analyze the results. We will also critique ongoing edits of your own thesis films. Guest speakers will come to talk about rough-and find-cut editing, sound design, and sound mixing. Editing is about shaping the story through image, dialogue, additional sound and music. No matter how well (or badly) a film is directed and shot, its final result depends profoundly on the artfulness of its editing. This course will give you a better understanding of how many ways there are to approach and solve the puzzle of editing a film.

This class will engage contemporary approaches to the figure and the various ways that artists contest, assimilate, and reckon with the human body in sculpture. With the advent of postmodernism, the singular forms of classical and modern sculpture have fractured into composite, disjointed figures-even cyborgs-in keeping with the era of the "post human." Students will take a multivalent approach to the historical precedents from which current representations have emerged and explore the limits of what might be considered figurative at all.

In this course, led by critically acclaimed comedy writer Albert Samuels, students will participate in the in-process television pitch used by Samuels' cutting-edge improvisation group, Baby Wants Candy, including finalizing concept and script and developing a strong pitch. By the end of the semester, BWC will have a finished pitch package the group will present to Netflix, Amazon, Comedy Central and other networks/outlets. Students will develop their own original television concepts in groups and individually and also create shorter material - e.g., desk bits for late night shows, online content, etc.

Choreographer Rebecca Lazier, visual artist Janet Echelman, engineer Sigrid Adriaenssens, and sound artist Jess Rowland come together with students in a unique collaboration inspired by the activity in the understory, the hovering layer beneath a forest's canopy. They will create textile sculpture installations that will activate, and be activated by, movement and sound. Students will explore historical works that merge visual, choreographic, and sonic forms and examine intersections of architecture, engineering, and artistic practices. Themes of transcending boundaries and disorientation will unfold within suspended sculptural environments.