Courses
Participants of the CAST Climate Solutions Design Lab, fall 2022
Photo Credit: Toni Shapiro-Phim
Courses for the Creativity, the Arts, and Social Transformation minor are from the creative arts, humanities and social sciences.
For complete information on CAST courses, see the Online University Bulletin, and the Fall 2023 Schedule. Instructors, please see the guidelines on cross-listing courses and developing core courses with CAST.
Fall 2023 CAST Offerings
Core courses:
CAST 150B - Introduction to Creativity, the Arts and Social Transformation
Toni Shapiro-Phim | T 2:20-5:10 PM
How can music, theater, dance and visual and other arts contribute to community building, coexistence, and nonviolent social change? In the aftermath of violence, how can artists help communities reconcile? Students explore these questions through interviews, case studies, and projects. Usually offered every year.
CAST 181B - Ethics of Community Engagement Practicum
Toni Shapiro-Phim | T/Th 7:05 PM - 8:25 PM
Prerequisite: All CAST practicums are open by permission to students who have taken the core course, CAST 150b, regardless of whether they are enrolled in the minor. While only one practicum is required for the minor, any student who has taken CAST 150b can take both the fall and the spring practicums for credit. Yields half-course credit.
Combining theory and practice, this course supports students in the Creativity, the Arts, and Social Transformation (CAST) minor as they imagine and create a proposal for a particular project. Projects may involve local, regional, and even international collaborations, all helpful in fostering an empathetic and compassionate sense of people's and communities' situations, values, and choices. When this work is conducted within a non-profit organization, it is also a way to nurture future leaders and supporters of community-based and other associations aiming to constructively transform society. Ethical concerns must be at the forefront of the planning and implementation of all such endeavors. Usually offered every year.
Electives (see course catalog for prerequisites, university requirements fulfilled, and enrollment details)
Core Electives:
ENG 113B - Performing Climate Justice
Tom King | M/W/Th 1:20 PM–2:10 PM
Considers justice in relation to our ordinary and collective actions as these recreate or transform our social and material realities as human drivers of the Anthropocene. How can the embodied creation and transmission of knowledge and skills, by creative workers and change agents, help us imagine and create new, translocal ways of being and acting together no longer driven by fossil fuels? What happens to notions of the human, human civilization, and human history if we adopt a non-anthropocentric and biocentric approach to climate justice and climate ethics? Usually offered every fourth year.
FA 181A — Housing and Social Justice
Muna Guvenc | M/W 2:30-3:50 PM
Employs housing as a lens to interrogate space and society, state and market, power and change, in relation with urban inequality and social justice. It trains students to become participants in the global debates about housing. In doing so, it teaches students about dominant paradigms of urban development and welfare and situates such paradigms in the 20th century history of capitalism. It will explicitly adopt a comparative and transnational urban approach to housing and social justice, showing how a globalized perspective provides important insights into local shelter struggles and debates. Usually offered every second year.
LGLS 129A — Transitional Justice: Global Justice and Societies in Transition
Melissa Stimell | T/Th 2:20-3:40 PM
Introduces transitional justice, a set of practices that arise following a period of conflict that aim directly at confronting past violations of human rights. This course will focus on criminal prosecutions, truth commissions, and the contributions of art and culture. Usually offered every second year.
THA 138B — Creative Pedagogy
Jennifer Cleary | F 9:35 AM–12:25 PM
Explores the individual discovery in human creativity and how this journey impacts the quality and inclusivity of teaching and learning both inside and outside of educational spaces. Students will dig into their own educational experiences and their relationship to creativity in this creativity-engaged space. Using the theoretical stages of creativity, students read research, reflect on their own experiences, try new creative endeavors, and engage in creative collaboration with others with the lens towards inspiring and supporting learning. Students are asked in the course to expand their own creative reach and risk-taking capabilities. Usually offered every second year.
Creative Arts Electives:
CAST 160A — Provocative Art: Outside the Comfort Zone
Will Chalmus | F 2:20-5:10 PM
Presents, analyzes, and discusses art that provokes controversies, discomfort, and other strong responses. This class will focus on a broad range of artistic expressions, including visual art, theater, film, music, and literature with Brandeis faculty as well as visiting artists. Final project consists of students finding, articulating, and advocating for provocative art from multiple perspectives. Note: Students are responsible for attendance and assignments during the shopping period and must be present in those classes to be enrolled off the waitlist. Usually offered every semester.
FA 4A1 FA 4A3 (multiple sections) - Sculpture Foundation: 3-D Design I
Christoper Frost | M/W 11:15 AM - 1:05 PM
Tory Fair | T/F | 9:35 AM - 11:25 AM
Beginning-level course. Preference to first-year students and sophomores. May be repeated once for credit if taught by different instructors.
Exploration of three-dimensional aspects of form, space, and composition utilizing a variety of materials and sculptural techniques. Emphasizes students' inventing of images through the use of modern materials and contemporary ideas about sculpture. Assignments are based on abstract thought and problem solving. The intent of this course is to give students a rich studio experience and promote a fresh and meaningful approach to visual concepts. Usually offered every fall.
FA 181A — Housing and Social Justice
Muna Guvenc | M/W 2:30-3:50 PM
Employs housing as a lens to interrogate space and society, state and market, power and change, in relation with urban inequality and social justice. It trains students to become participants in the global debates about housing. In doing so, it teaches students about dominant paradigms of urban development and welfare and situates such paradigms in the 20th century history of capitalism. It will explicitly adopt a comparative and transnational urban approach to housing and social justice, showing how a globalized perspective provides important insights into local shelter struggles and debates. Usually offered every second year.
MUS 86A 1 /86A 2XC- Improv Collective
Thomas Hall | T 6:30 PM - 9:30 PM
Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. Yields half-course credit. Placement auditions will be held at the start of the semester. A maximum of four course credits will be allowed for all enrollments in Ensemble (80a,b ' 88a,b) alone or Private Instruction and Ensemble together. May be undertaken as an extracurricular, noncredit activity by registering in the XC section.
Open to all Brandeis students who play an instrument or sing, regardless of skill or experience in improvising, the Improv Collective focuses on both individual creativity and group improvisation. The semester culminates with a performance in Slosberg Recital hall. Usually offered every semester.
MUS 87A / 87A 2XC- Music and Dance from Ghana
Benjamin Paulding | M/W 5:40 PM - 7:00 PM
Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. Yields half-course credit. A maximum of four course credits will be allowed for all enrollments in Ensemble (80a,b ' 88a,b) alone or Private Instruction and Ensemble together. Instruments will be supplied by instructor.
Students in this course will study and perform a repertory of traditional music and dance of a variety of ethnic traditions from Ghana, West Africa. The drum ensemble includes bells, rattles and drums. The vocal music features call-and-response singing in local languages. The dances have choreographic formations as well as opportunity for individual expression. Drumming and dancing are closely intertwined; work will culminate in a final performance. Usually offered every year.
THA 138B — Creative Pedagogy
Jennifer Cleary | F 9:35 AM–12:25 PM
Explores the individual discovery in human creativity and how this journey impacts the quality and inclusivity of teaching and learning both inside and outside of educational spaces. Students will dig into their own educational experiences and their relationship to creativity in this creativity-engaged space. Using the theoretical stages of creativity, students read research, reflect on their own experiences, try new creative endeavors, and engage in creative collaboration with others with the lens towards inspiring and supporting learning. Students are asked in the course to expand their own creative reach and risk-taking capabilities. Usually offered every second year.
THA 142B — Women Playwrights: Writing for the Stage by and about Women
Adrianne Krstansky | M/W 4:05 PM–5:25 PM
Introduces the world of female playwrights. This course will engage the texts through common themes explored by female playwrights: motherhood (and daughterhood), reproduction, sexuality, family relationships, etc. Students will participate in writing or performance exercises based on these themes. Usually offered every second year.
THA 144B — Black Theater and Performance
T/F 11:10 AM–12:30 PM
Explores aesthetic innovations and transformations in African American theater and performance and examines the crucial role the stage has played in shaping perceptions and understandings of blackness. Usually offered every second year.
THA 145A — Queer Theater
Th 2:20 PM–5:10 PM
Explores significant plays that have shaped and defined gay identity during the past 100 years. Playwrights span Wilde to Taylor Mac. Examining texts as literature, history, and performance, we will explore cultural change, politics, gender, the AIDS epidemic, camp, and coming out. Usually offered every third year.
Humanities Electives:
AAAS 155B — Hip Hop History and Culture
Chad Williams | M/W 4:05 PM–5:25 PM
Examines the history of hip hop culture, in the broader context of U.S., African American and African diaspora history, from the 1960s to the present. Explores key developments, debates and themes shaping hip hop's evolution and contemporary global significance. Usually offered every second year.
AAAS/ENG 80A — Black Looks: The Promise and Perils of Photography
Faith Smith | T/Th 3:55 PM–5:15 PM
Formerly offered as ENG 80a.
Explores photography and Africans, African-Americans and Caribbean people, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. This course will examine fiction that refers to the photograph; various photographic archives; and theorists on photography and looking. Usually offered every third year.
ENG 52A — Refugee Stories, Refugee Lives
Emilie Diouf | M/W 2:30 PM–3:50 PM / W 4:05 PM–5:15 PM
Examines the functions of storytelling in the refugee crisis. Its main objective is to further students' understanding of the political dimensions of storytelling. The course explores how reworking of reality enable people to question State and social structures. Usually offered every third year.
ENG 113B — Performing Climate Justice
Tom King | M/W/Th 1:20 PM–2:10 PM
Considers justice in relation to our ordinary and collective actions as these recreate or transform our social and material realities as human drivers of the Anthropocene. How can the embodied creation and transmission of knowledge and skills, by creative workers and change agents, help us imagine and create new, translocal ways of being and acting together no longer driven by fossil fuels? What happens to notions of the human, human civilization, and human history if we adopt a non-anthropocentric and biocentric approach to climate justice and climate ethics? Usually offered every fourth year.
ENG 142B — Black Queer Literatures
Brandon Callender | T/Th 5:30 PM–6:50 PM
Examines various works by black queer critics and cultural producers, beginning in the early twentieth century and continuing into the present. While we largely focus upon the attempt to create the shared sense of a world and a tradition in common, we also attend to important divisions brought about by various forms and feelings of difference (including race, gender, class, nation, age and ability). Usually offered every third year.
GECS 188B — Human/Nature: European Perspectives on the Climate Crisis and What to Do About It
Sabine von Mering | T/Th 3:55 PM–5:15 PM
Open to all students.
Introduces European attitudes towards climate change as reflected in policy, literature, film, and art, with a focus on workable future-oriented alternatives to fossil-fueled capitalism. Usually offered every second year.
HISP 158A — Latina Feminisms
María J. Durán | T/F 9:35 AM–10:55 AM
Taught in English.
Explores the theoretical frameworks and literary productions of feminisms developed by Latina/xs. It introduces students to a diversity of backgrounds and experiences (Chicana, Dominican American, Cuban American, Salvadoran American, and Puerto Rican authors) as well as a variety of genres (i.e. novel, poetry, short stories, drama). Using intersectionality as a theoretical tool for analyzing oppressions, students will explore the complex politics of gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity, and race in the lives of Latina/xs. They will also explore Latina/x feminists' theoretical and/or practical attempts to transcend socially-constructed categories of identity, while acknowledging existing material inequalities. Usually offered every third year.
NEJS 136A — Israeli Popular Culture: Language, Gender, and Politics
Shayna Weiss | M/W 2:30 PM–3:50 PM
Ever wondered why Israeli television is all over Netflix, or why Sabra hummus came to dominate your supermarket shelves? In this course, we will examine multiple forms of popular culture, including television, music, cookbooks, social media, fashion, and more, to understand contemporary Israeli society, with a focus on debates over language, gender, and politics in a global context. Special attention will be paid to cultural production from Israel's minorities, including Israeli Palestinians, Orthodox Jews, and Mizrahim (Jews from Arab and Islamic lands.) Course readings will combine theory, primary sources, and popular criticism. No previous knowledge of Israel, Judaism, or the Middle East is required, and all materials will be provided in English translation. Usually offered every second year.
NEJS 194B — Sufism: Mystical Traditions in Classical and Modern Islam
T 2:20 PM–5:10 PM
An examination of the teaching and practices of the Sufi tradition. Explores the foundations of Sufism, its relation to other aspects of Islam, the development of Sufi teachings in both poetry and prose, and the manner in which Sufism is practiced in lands as diverse as Egypt, Turkey, Iran, India, Malaysia, and Europe. Usually offered every second year.
Social Sciences Electives:
AAAS 155B — Hip Hop History and Culture
Chad Williams | M/W 4:05 PM–5:25 PM
Examines the history of hip hop culture, in the broader context of U.S., African American and African diaspora history, from the 1960s to the present. Explores key developments, debates and themes shaping hip hop's evolution and contemporary global significance. Usually offered every second year.
ANTH 184B — Art in the Ancient World
Javier Urcid | T/Th 2:20 PM–3:40 PM
A cross-cultural and diachronic exploration of art, focusing on the communicative aspects of visual aesthetics. The survey takes a broad view of how human societies deploy images and objects to foster identities, lure into consumption, generate political propaganda, engage in ritual, render sacred propositions tangible, and chart the character of the cosmos. Usually offered every second year.
LGLS 129A — Transitional Justice: Global Justice and Societies in Transition
Melissa Stimell | T/Th 2:20-3:40 PM
Introduces transitional justice, a set of practices that arise following a period of conflict that aim directly at confronting past violations of human rights. This course will focus on criminal prosecutions, truth commissions, and the contributions of art and culture. Usually offered every second year.