Spring 2025 Courses

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Rooted in Professor of Creative Writing Patricia Smith's monumental book of poetry, Blood Dazzler, three award-winning artists (Patricia Smith, Davalois Fearon, and Paloma McGregor) will lead students in a collaborative creative process for building performance through poetry, dance, music, and visual art. Blood Dazzler centered on Hurricane Katrina, a deadly category 5 storm. Twenty years later, students will research the storm and its ongoing aftermath, including watching documentaries, conducting interviews, attending events, reading, and writing. Students will be given assignments based on the day's activity and discussion and develop performance works for presentation to the Princeton community on April 24, 2025.

Taught by Bridget Kearney (Lake Street Dive) and Bartees Strange with class visits from guest singer/songwriters and music critics, this course is an introduction to the art of writing words for music, an art at the core of our literary tradition from the Beowulf poet through Lord Byron and Bessie Smith to Bob Dylan and the Notorious B.I.G.. Composers, writers and performers will have the opportunity to work in small songwriting teams to respond to such emotionally charged themes as Gratitude, Loss, Protest, Desire, Joyousness, Remorse, and Defiance.

Led by Choreographer Kyle Marshall and Creative Director Edo Tastic, of dance company Kyle Marshall Choreography. This course will embrace an interdisciplinary approach to art making. Through movement, poetry and visual art, students will explore their individual and collective experiences of people living in the United States of America. Students will build their own choreographic structures, poetic works, and visual stories informed by American historical documents, iconic speeches and expansive poetry. The course will culminate in a final public multidisciplinary presentation with dance and speaking. All experience levels are welcome.

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.

This is a workshop in the fundamentals of writing plays. Through writing prompts, exercises, study and reflection, students will be guided in the creation of original dramatic material. Attention will be given to character, structure, dramatic action, monologue, dialogue, language and behavior.

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.

This is an intensive reading course, which focuses on the skills to read and reread like a writer. A wide selection of readings—novels, stories, plays, poetry—will be covered in the course, a guided tour of books and their authors. Students will be expected to read at least an hour a day, and the average weekly reading load will be between ten and fifteen hours. Students are expected to keep a detailed daily reading journal and participate in group discussions and class presentations.

Advanced practice in the original composition of poetry for discussion in regularly scheduled workshop meetings. The curriculum allows the student to develop writing skills, provides an introduction to the possibilities of contemporary literature and offers perspective on the places of literature among the liberal arts.

Advanced practice in the original composition of fiction for discussion in regularly scheduled workshop meetings. The curriculum allows the student to develop writing skills, provides an introduction to the possibilities of contemporary literature and offers perspective on the place of literature among the liberal arts.

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.

This course will introduce students to core screenwriting principles and techniques. 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.

We will explore the foundations of black performance theory, drawing from the fields of performance studies, theater, dance, and black studies. Using methods of ethnography, archival studies, and black theatrical and dance paradigms, we will learn how scholars and artists imagine, complicate, and manifest various forms of blackness across time and space. In particular, we will focus on blackness as both lived experience and as a mode of theoretical inquiry.

Movement permeates every aspect of life, whether within our bodies, minds, or the world around us. In this studio course open to everyone, we use tools from Laban Movement Analysis to develop ways to dance, improvise, make performance, and fully inhabit our lives. We dive into the roles of dancer, choreographer, audience member, and critic in relation to aesthetic questions, politics, identity, religion, and complex views of the human body. Students can apply our work together to dance in any style as well as to daily experiences like moving into an interview confidently and finding embodied practices for transforming stress.

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.

This course offers a broad, embodied introduction to the breadth of contemporary dance. We will be moving, reading, watching, and writing about dance. Contemporary issues, such as Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ rights, immigration, and American exceptionalism will be viewed through the lens of contemporary dance. We will try on the styles of essential creators in the field in an effort to understand their POV. We will create work ourselves (no experience necessary) to learn about the expressive and communicative potential of dance. We will be moving and meditating to release tension, increase personal awareness, and boost authenticity.

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.

This seminar is designed for junior students pursuing the minor who are planning to choreograph a senior independent project. 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. A practical lighting workshop and other workshops of particular interest to the class prepare students for some of the directional, collaborative and interpersonal challenges involved in leading a significant choreographic enterprise.

How did concert dancers and choreographers respond to the aesthetic, social, and political economic shifts we call 'modernism'? How does dance enter the archive? We pursue these questions by examining the ways gender, nationalisms, race, and sexuality shaped ideas of the modern. Key figures include Isadora Duncan, Vaslav Nijinsky, Katherine Dunham, Sada Yakko, Martha Graham, Zora Neale Hurston, and others. We begin with dance modernisms in China, Japan, Mexico, and Europe before turning to US cases, with an emphasis on how dance artists negotiated their authority as state actors and public intellectuals.

This intensive workshop explores performance as a site for an evolving, transdisciplinarity that is in mindful relationship with artistic movements, cultural continua, contemporary resonances, and individual agency. Rather than fetishize the urgent development of a legible, "authentic", or (impossibly) unique artistic identity, we will instead strive toward a practice of radical honesty, fluid curiosity, fierce courage, intentional consumption, and rigorous reflection. To that end, students will regularly create, perform, and document original solo & group work that syncretizes multiple disciplines.

Students from across fields who are interested in slowing down the art-making process to explore the nature of devising, developing, revising, and performing are invited to join this studio course. We'll make an expansive artist residency together and delve into the often-intermingled roles of creator, performer, designer, and audience member. We'll use embodied tools to generate material and hone collaborative processes. We'll question why and how and in what contexts we create. We'll look at forms like the lecture-performance, the happening, concert dance, and one-person shows. Culminates in student-created performances at the end of term.

This advanced studio course explores the interplay between foundational modern dance techniques such as Dunham, Graham, Humphrey/Limon, Horton, and Cunningham, alongside contemporary practices including Contact Improvisation, Gaga, Flying Low, and Umfundalai. Through intensive physical training with rotating faculty, students engage in a comparative, embodied approach to develop personal movement research. The course blends historical and contemporary perspectives, encouraging critical reflection on how dance engages with evolving ideas about the body, identity, and performance, offering a comprehensive view of contemporary dance.

If you're in a hip-hop student dance group, have tried the hip-hop co-curricular classes, or have enjoyed dancing in a hip-hop club, then this course is for you! Develop your own personal relationship to hip-hop culture and its influences in this course structured around a series of workshops with guest dancers from a range of hip-hop traditions. Taught by Breaking practitioner and award-winning choreographer Raphael Xavier and hip-hop scholar Joe Schloss. Appropriate for any dancers who consider themselves beyond absolute beginners.

A studio course in Contemporary Ballet technique for advanced dancers, with explorations into neoclassical and contemporary choreography through readings, viewings, and the learning of and creation of repertory. Through visits with prominent guest artists, students will examine the shifts that "Ballet" is making to stay relevant and meaningful as a "21st" century art form.

Rooted in Professor of Creative Writing Patricia Smith's monumental book of poetry, Blood Dazzler, three award-winning artists (Patricia Smith, Davalois Fearon, and Paloma McGregor) will lead students in a collaborative creative process for building performance through poetry, dance, music, and visual art. Blood Dazzler centered on Hurricane Katrina, a deadly category 5 storm. Twenty years later, students will research the storm and its ongoing aftermath, including watching documentaries, conducting interviews, attending events, reading, and writing. Students will be given assignments based on the day's activity and discussion and develop performance works for presentation to the Princeton community on April 24, 2025.

Led by Choreographer Kyle Marshall and Creative Director Edo Tastic, of dance company Kyle Marshall Choreography. This course will embrace an interdisciplinary approach to art making. Through movement, poetry and visual art, students will explore their individual and collective experiences of people living in the United States of America. Students will build their own choreographic structures, poetic works, and visual stories informed by American historical documents, iconic speeches and expansive poetry. The course will culminate in a final public multidisciplinary presentation with dance and speaking. All experience levels are welcome.

Introduction to Theater Making is a working laboratory, which gives students hands-on experience with theater's fundamental building blocks — writing, design, acting, directing, and producing. Throughout the semester, students read, watch and discuss five different plays, music theater pieces and ensemble theater works.

We will explore the foundations of black performance theory, drawing from the fields of performance studies, theater, dance, and black studies. Using methods of ethnography, archival studies, and black theatrical and dance paradigms, we will learn how scholars and artists imagine, complicate, and manifest various forms of blackness across time and space. In particular, we will focus on blackness as both lived experience and as a mode of theoretical inquiry.

This course develops skills needed to successfully approach all acting styles and centers the actor as a lead creative artist. We will concentrate on how the voice, body, and imagination can build a performance.

This is a workshop in the fundamentals of writing plays. Through writing prompts, exercises, study and reflection, students will be guided in the creation of original dramatic material. Attention will be given to character, structure, dramatic action, monologue, dialogue, language and behavior.

Movement permeates every aspect of life, whether within our bodies, minds, or the world around us. In this studio course open to everyone, we use tools from Laban Movement Analysis to develop ways to dance, improvise, make performance, and fully inhabit our lives. We dive into the roles of dancer, choreographer, audience member, and critic in relation to aesthetic questions, politics, identity, religion, and complex views of the human body. Students can apply our work together to dance in any style as well as to daily experiences like moving into an interview confidently and finding embodied practices for transforming stress.

Intro to Theatrical Design is an interactive course where students will explore the world through a design lens to develop visual literacy and investigate how visual cues shape our understanding of the world. This studio course will explore scenic, costume, lighting and sound design. Students will take on the role of designer across disciplines, developing analytic, research and collaborative skills, and exploring and questioning power structures in the process. This hands-on course will emphasize communication and collaboration within creative and production teams in support of bringing design visions to life.

This seminar offers an intensive introduction to the principles and practices of dramaturgical and performance analysis of stage plays as written works, as blueprints for theatrical performance, and as exercises in world making. This seminar also rehearses how the techniques of dramaturgical and performance analysis might be applied to modes of embodied enactment—whether historical or contemporary, whether in art or everyday life—beyond the theatrical frame. In Spring 2025, the course will focus on the life, work, and legacy of the pathbreaking Cuban-American playwright, director, designer, and teacher María Irene Fornés (1930-2018).

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.

This course allows students, working at their own experience level, to analyze, rehearse and perform songs from the canon of dramatic musical theater.

How do you tell a story about climate change that dynamically engages its audiences without overwhelming or boring them? We will explore this question and others through readings and discussions, and we will make an original work of theater. Employing the methods of investigative theater, the class will create a script or performance text by pursuing a creative inquiry into some aspect of climate change.

This course will introduce you to the art and craft of scenic design. It will be an exploratory and hands-on course in the use of physical scenery as a way to tell a story, introducing you to the processes and tools of scenic design as a way of gaining greater understanding of theatrical texts.

"Revenge my foul and most unnatural murder!" A ghost compels his conflicted son, Hamlet, to address something rotten in the state of Denmark with these words in Shakespeare's great tragedy. Whether or not you have read Hamlet, or have seen it performed, you probably know the story. This course aims to recontextualize Hamlet in early modern English theater history. Through study of other "revenge tragedy" plays from this period, seminar participants will gain new perspective on Hamlet's embeddedness in a culture and an art form probing the ethics of seeking justice through violence.

This course introduces students to physical acting techniques, which unleash playfulness and expand expressive potential in performance. Games, improvisation, acting exercises and theater masks cultivate freedom, joy, courage, and stage presence. An exploration of the rules of story through movement analysis, along with embodied approaches to text and practical methods to creating characters, prepare for work on monologues and scenes.

Why do people love Broadway musicals? How do audiences engage with musicals and their stars? How have fan practices changed since the 1950s alongside economic and artistic changes in New York and on Broadway? In what ways does "fan of" constitute a social identity? How do fans perform their devotion to a show, to particular performers, and to each other? This class examines the social forms co-created by performers and audiences, both during a performance and in the wider culture. Students will practice research methods including archival research, ethnographic observation, in-depth interviewing, and textual and performance analysis.

This intensive workshop explores performance as a site for an evolving, transdisciplinarity that is in mindful relationship with artistic movements, cultural continua, contemporary resonances, and individual agency. Rather than fetishize the urgent development of a legible, "authentic", or (impossibly) unique artistic identity, we will instead strive toward a practice of radical honesty, fluid curiosity, fierce courage, intentional consumption, and rigorous reflection. To that end, students will regularly create, perform, and document original solo & group work that syncretizes multiple disciplines.

Students from across fields who are interested in slowing down the art-making process to explore the nature of devising, developing, revising, and performing are invited to join this studio course. We'll make an expansive artist residency together and delve into the often-intermingled roles of creator, performer, designer, and audience member. We'll use embodied tools to generate material and hone collaborative processes. We'll question why and how and in what contexts we create. We'll look at forms like the lecture-performance, the happening, concert dance, and one-person shows. Culminates in student-created performances at the end of term.

How do you apply your creative skills and artistry to different educational settings? Using the example of prisons, specialized schools and community-based organizations, lecturer and veteran teaching artist Chesney Snow will guide students through studying and practicing the craft of teaching artistry. Students will understand the history of teaching artistry and how it fits into the structures of today's educational systems and society as well as understanding best practices in the development of teaching artist pedagogy and classroom management.

Plays produced in the United States from the second-wave feminist movement of the 1960s to the Black Lives Matter Movement of the 2010s, we will identify and analyze various themes, approaches, and concerns within feminist plays. Employing script and dramaturgical analyses and performance techniques, students will learn how to contextualize plays from the race, gender, class, sexuality, and politics of the playwright and contextualize plays within their larger historical, social, and cultural milieus. In doing so, students will learn about the different lineages, politics, and aesthetics of feminist theatre.

In this course, students will develop and implement a personal philosophy of music ensemble direction. Students will connect practice-based learning with broader theories of art-making, exploring questions about why, how, and with whom people make music. For those who dream of directing a vocal group, conducting an orchestra, music directing a musical, or even inventing a new ensemble, this process-driven course will create an environment for experimentation, risk-taking, and musical and personal growth. A background playing an instrument, singing, conducting, or composing music is required.

This course is an acting intensive offering students the opportunity to engage in a rigorous rehearsal process with a professional theater director. The course emphasizes exploration and embodiment of character, and culminates in a staged production with simple technical elements, the focus on the ensemble. This semester, the topic of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" will be explored through an immersive production staged in the Drapkin Studio in April. This production will explore the dynamics of queer identity using the complex backdrop of a contemporary Texas nightclub scene. The course is inclusive for every identity and ability.

Rooted in Professor of Creative Writing Patricia Smith's monumental book of poetry, Blood Dazzler, three award-winning artists (Patricia Smith, Davalois Fearon, and Paloma McGregor) will lead students in a collaborative creative process for building performance through poetry, dance, music, and visual art. Blood Dazzler centered on Hurricane Katrina, a deadly category 5 storm. Twenty years later, students will research the storm and its ongoing aftermath, including watching documentaries, conducting interviews, attending events, reading, and writing. Students will be given assignments based on the day's activity and discussion and develop performance works for presentation to the Princeton community on April 24, 2025.

The great thing about drawing is you can do it anywhere! This course approaches drawing as a way of thinking and seeing. We'll introduce basic techniques while also encouraging experimentation, with a focus on both drawing from life and drawing as an expressive act. Students will be introduced to the basics of line, shading, proportion, composition, texture and gesture. You'll also maintain a drawing journal, and use it as a regular space for observation and personal expression. Through exposure to a variety of mediums and techniques, you'll gain the skills and confidence necessary to develop an individual final project of your choosing.

An introduction to the materials and methods of painting, addressing form and light, color and its interaction, composition, scale, texture and gesture. Students will experiment with subject matter including still life, landscape, architecture, self-portraiture and abstraction, while painting from a variety of sources: life, sketches, maquettes, collages, photographs and imagination. Students will progressively develop personal imagery that will inform an individual final project. Princeton will provide all materials for the painting class.

An introduction to the processes of photography through a series of problems directed toward lens projection, the handling of light-sensitive material, and camera operation. The processes will begin with cyanotypes and culminate with large format film exposure and processing, and printing. These processes trace the origins of photography. Final projects will examine new potentials in photographic expression including images that hybridize analog and digital interfaces. The goal of this course is to make art, and by doing so, understand the necessity for the invention of photography.

This studio course introduces students to the aesthetic, philosophical and theoretical implications of digital photography. Emphasis is on understanding digital equipment and protocols, print management, and familiarity with the digital workspace. The “afterlife” of analogue photography in digital media will be emphasized. Slide lectures, readings, and class discussion of texts and with student work in critique format will augment critical and conceptual understanding of recent contemporary photography and art.

This class will be a studio introduction to sculpture, with particular emphasis on the study of how form, space, and a wide variety of materials and processes influence the visual properties of sculpture and the making of meaning. A balance of indoor, outdoor, and/or transient assignments will lead to the development of an understanding of contemporary sculpture, as well as basic technical facility with found objects, common materials, natural earthworks, ergonomics, and three-dimensional design.

Intro to Theatrical Design is an interactive course where students will explore the world through a design lens to develop visual literacy and investigate how visual cues shape our understanding of the world. This studio course will explore scenic, costume, lighting and sound design. Students will take on the role of designer across disciplines, developing analytic, research and collaborative skills, and exploring and questioning power structures in the process. This hands-on course will emphasize communication and collaboration within creative and production teams in support of bringing design visions to life.

This course takes an exciting approach to color photography using methods of cameraless and lens based analog photography. We will experiment with Lumen Printing, analog color printing and Polaroids. Participants are encouraged to experiment, using the medium to convey observations and ideas. The possibilities of color in photographs are endless and together we will expand the ability to interpret color. The class is augmented by lectures, readings, critiques, and a visiting artist.

This course is an introduction to the fascinating history of collage. Students study techniques employed in the iconography of China and Medieval Europe, and expand to its historical resurgence in the form of keepsakes and scrapbooks. Students evaluate the relationship of collage to historical advancements in photography, assemblage, and décollage. Students discover collage's relationship and technical developments to the radical histories of trauma, disruption, and desire by studying contemporary artists. Projects are structured around mixed media drawing, printmaking, painting, along with found object sculpture.

Create your own unique books! An experimental book making class that correlates texts and books into sculptural form. Students will acquire skills of various bookmaking techniques, enhance their writing skills, and focus on sculptural craft with different mediums to think beyond traditional binding methods. We will learn about various artists that include bookmaking as part of their practices, the artist's book organizations, independent publishers and book fairs. Guest visits and field trips to book art spaces will support in expanding the possibilities of bookmaking.

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.

In a digital world, this course promotes hand-made printed images. Students will examine two kinds of printmaking: relief and intaglio. To make images that matter, students will learn to cut blocks, fashion stencils, plan and execute color layers, etch and drypoint copper plates, and understand the range of mark making possibilities available in printmaking. Students are encouraged to draw regularly to cultivate themes and content, and to develop a basic knowledge of print in contemporary art. Woodblocks have been around since the 8th century; etchings for 500 years. Students will make something completely new from something old.

This course will introduce you to the art and craft of scenic design. It will be an exploratory and hands-on course in the use of physical scenery as a way to tell a story, introducing you to the processes and tools of scenic design as a way of gaining greater understanding of theatrical texts.

This intermediate-level studio course will build on the foundations of animation covered in Animation I. Students will investigate a wider range of techniques and technologies, while experimenting with varied modes of audiovisual storytelling, time-based collage, and motion graphics. For the final project, each student will direct a short film using a blend of analog and digital materials and tools, explored during the semester. Screenings and class discussions will dive more deeply into the history and potential of animation, as well as its connections to other forms of visual art, filmmaking, computation, and design.

This course is designed for students who are interested in learning the fundamentals of working with clay. A wide variety of hand-building will be taught, enabling students to make utilitarian vessels as well as sculptural forms. Students will learn about glazing and colored engobe application methods and how to operate electric and gas kilns. Studio work will be complemented by readings, field trips, and slide presentations.

This course will introduce students to core screenwriting principles and techniques. 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.

This intensive workshop explores performance as a site for an evolving, transdisciplinarity that is in mindful relationship with artistic movements, cultural continua, contemporary resonances, and individual agency. Rather than fetishize the urgent development of a legible, "authentic", or (impossibly) unique artistic identity, we will instead strive toward a practice of radical honesty, fluid curiosity, fierce courage, intentional consumption, and rigorous reflection. To that end, students will regularly create, perform, and document original solo & group work that syncretizes multiple disciplines.

This class will focus on how contemporary painting considers the human figure. Portraits without people, the selfie, imagined figures, forgotten figures, fragmented figures, figures from our lives, abstract figures, cyborgs, crowds, and composite figures will be considered within a structure of exploratory painterly approaches. This class will not focus on "how to" paint the figure. No experience painting the figure is necessary.

This course focuses on the development of various approaches in observational drawing from the human figure. These methods include using line, value, perspective, scale, and proportion. Emphasis is placed on perceptual drawing from life through live models and in the world at large. Throughout the semester students will work in a range of media as the elements of drawing are investigated through the study of anatomy, composition, and drawing technique. Historical and contemporary conventions of representing the figure will be recurrent topics.

This materials-driven studio course will be a series of investigations in relation to the human body. Through laboratory experiments with rigid, semi-rigid, and flexible structures, students will translate these properties into two preliminary objects: a cushion and a prosthetic. After break, the primary activity will involve conceiving, designing, making, and critical analyzing a singular everyday object - a bed - made exclusively from ash wood. Studio work will be augmented by lab work and lectures on materials, structures, and the history of beds as a site for art, aesthetics, utility, sexuality, fantasy, cultural identity, and politics.

This class features weekly screenings by experimental filmmakers working in 16mm film in a variety of idiosyncratic forms, often with handmade methods using unconventional materials.

This sculpture class will engage contemporary approaches to the figure with an emphasis on the figure as body. 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 constitutes the body and figuration in contemporary sculpture through the process of class discussions and making sculpture.

Students will investigate ceramics in relation to the archive through numerous studio-based projects, museum visits, historical precedents, and understanding contemporary ceramics as a serious artistic pursuit. Ceramics serves as an ideal archival material and therefore has been a record of time and place over thousands of years. Students will research source material from the history of ceramics, and by creating their own personal archives. Student projects include analysis of bricks as universal symbols of the grid, image in ceramics, ornament and narrative in historical vessels, and using clay as a meaningful record of the body.

This intensive workshop explores performance as a site for an evolving, transdisciplinarity that is in mindful relationship with artistic movements, cultural continua, contemporary resonances, and individual agency. Rather than fetishize the urgent development of a legible, "authentic", or (impossibly) unique artistic identity, we will instead strive toward a practice of radical honesty, fluid curiosity, fierce courage, intentional consumption, and rigorous reflection. To that end, students will regularly create, perform, and document original solo & group work that syncretizes multiple disciplines.

In this course, students will develop and implement a personal philosophy of music ensemble direction. Students will connect practice-based learning with broader theories of art-making, exploring questions about why, how, and with whom people make music. For those who dream of directing a vocal group, conducting an orchestra, music directing a musical, or even inventing a new ensemble, this process-driven course will create an environment for experimentation, risk-taking, and musical and personal growth. A background playing an instrument, singing, conducting, or composing music is required.