University Bulletin (2017-2018)

CAST 92a Internship and Analysis in Creativity, the Arts, and Social Transformation
Staff

CAST 98a Independent Study in Creativity, the Arts, and Social Transformation
Staff

CAST 150b Introduction to Creativity, the Arts, and Social Transformation
[ ss ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took PAX 250b in prior years.
How can music, theater, poetry, literature, and visual arts contribute to community development, 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.
Ms. Cohen

CAST 170a Documenting the Immigrant Experience
[ ss ]
Investigates documentary film as a genre, and explores the potential of the medium for engaging students with immigrant communities in Waltham through hands-on production experiences. Through the process of exchanging narratives with community members, students generate raw material for a film documentary. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Perdomo

CAST 150b Introduction to Creativity, the Arts, and Social Transformation
[ ss ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took PAX 250b in prior years.
How can music, theater, poetry, literature, and visual arts contribute to community development, 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.
Ms. Cohen

AAAS/FA 74b Introduction to African Art
[ ca nw ss ]
Surveys the visual artistic traditions of Africa. Investigates the different forms of visual art in relation to their historical and socio-cultural context. Symbolism and complexity of Africa's visual art traditions are explored through analysis of myth, ritual, cosmology, and history. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Hassan

AMST/MUS 39b Protest Through Song: Music that Shaped America
[ ca ss ]
Open to music majors and non-majors. Does not fulfill the Main Currents in American Studies requirement for the major.
Examines 20th and 21st century protest music to better understand the complex relationships between music and social movements. Through class discussions, reading, writing, and listening assignments, and a final performance students will discover how social, cultural, and economic protest songs helped shape American culture. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Musegades

FA 4a Sculpture Foundation: 3-D Design I
[ ca ]
Beginning-level course. Preference to first-year students and sophomores. May be repeated once for credit if taught by different instructors. Studio fee: $75 per semester.
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.
Ms. Fair and Mr. Frost

FA 4b Sculpture Foundation: 3-D Design II
[ ca ]
Beginning-level course. Preference to first-year students and sophomores. May be repeated once for credit if taught by different instructors. Studio fee: $75 per semester.
See FA 4a for course description. Usually offered every spring.
Ms. Fair and Mr. Frost

FA 12a Introduction to Printmaking: Intaglio
[ ca ]
Prerequisite: Experience in drawing is strongly recommended. Studio fee: $75 per semester. May not be taken for credit by students who took FA 105a in prior years.
Using the etching press in the Printmaking Studio, this course is an introduction to basic intaglio processes of drypoint and etching as well as monotype, carborundum prints and collograph. Students will work on metal, plastic or cardboard plates and make experimental, painterly images in both black and white, and color. Usually offered every year.
Staff

FA 12b Introduction to Printmaking: Woodcut and Relief
[ ca ]
Prerequisite: Experience in drawing is strongly recommended. Studio fee: $75 per semester. May not be taken for credit by students who took FA 105b in prior years.
Introduction to relief printmaking using linoleum and woodblock. Students become familiar with working in a print shop, how to use color in printmaking, planning images, direct drawing on wood, and how to critique printmaking in a group setting. Usually offered every year.
Staff

FA 33b Islamic Art and Architecture
[ ca nw ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took FA 39b in prior years.
Introduces architecture and arts of the Islamic lands from seventh-century Levant to post-modernism in Iran, India, and the Gulf states. Provides an overview of major themes and regional variations, and their socio-political and historical context. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

FA 61a History of Photography
[ ca ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took FA 76b in prior years.
The history of photography from its invention in 1839 to the present, with an emphasis on developments in America. Photography is studied as a documentary and an artistic medium. Topics include Alfred Stieglitz and the photo-secession, Depression-era documentary, Robert Frank and street photography, and postmodern photography. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Kalb

FA 69b Inventing Tradition: Women as Artists, Women as Art
[ ca ]
Provides an art-historical overview and a feminist critique of gender and representation followed by select case studies of the art and life of women artists. Examples include non-Western art. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Ankori

FA 164a The Re-Invention of Art
[ ca ]
By the 1960s, the United States was the art-world capital. Radical art, however, appeared everywhere. Examines US art of the 1960's-1970s in light of artistic production in, among other places, Germany, England, Italy, Brazil, Argentina, Senegal, and Japan. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Kalb

FA 165a Contemporary Art
[ ca ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took FA 152a in prior years.
After theories of power and representation and art movements of pop, minimalism, and conceptual art were established by the 1970s, artists began to create what we see in galleries today. This course addresses art at the turn of the twentieth century with attention to intersections of art and identity, politics, economy, and history. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Kalb

FA 169a Ecology and Art
[ ca ]
Provides a theoretical foundation and art historical background for discussion of contemporary art that draws attention to the ecologies, primarily natural but also cultural of which it and we are a part. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Kalb

FA 174a Art and Trauma: Israeli, Palestinian, Latin American and United States Art
[ ca ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took FA 154b in prior years.
A comparative and critical examination of the various ways in which personal traumas (illness, death, loss) and collective traumas (war, the Holocaust, exile) find meaningful expression in the work of modern and contemporary artists from diverse regions. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Ankori

FA 178a Frida Kahlo: Art, Life and Legacy
[ ca nw ]
Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) has become an international cultural icon. Her innovative paintings brilliantly re-envision identity, gender and the female body, inspiring celebrities from Madonna to Salma Hayek. This course explores the art and life of Frida Kahlo, as well as her immense influence on contemporary art, film and popular culture. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Ankori

MUS 3b World Music: Performing Tradition through Sound
[ ca nw ]
Open to all students. Required of all Cultural Studies track majors.
What are we listening to? Applies engaged listening skills and critical analysis for a deeper appreciation of (non-Western) music as a cultural expression. Focuses on particular traditions as well as social context, impact of globalization, cultural production, cultural rights, etc. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Eissenberg

MUS 86a Improv Collective
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.
Mr. Hall

MUS 86b Improv Collective
Continuation of MUS 86a. See MUS 86a for special notes and course description.
Usually offered every semester.
Mr. Hall

MUS 87a Music and Dance from Ghana
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.
Mr. Paulding

MUS 87b Music and Dance from Ghana
Continuation of MUS 87a. See MUS 87a for special notes and course description.
Usually offered every year.
Mr. Paulding

THA 40a The Art of the Visual Narrative
[ ca ]
Explores the process of creating visual narrative - how do we travel from idea to image to visual storytelling? We will learn to create evocative environments and visual metaphor that transport the viewer, transcend reality, and make stories. We will construct and deconstruct the idea of performance space both theatrical and site-specific. How do we create the psychological landscape of a story? What can an architectural detail tell us about character? What can we learn from objects? We will approach design from an interdisciplinary perspective that will challenge students to combine visual art, new media, performance, and space, in surprising and meaningful ways. Of interest to designers, actors, directors, film-makers, fine artists, and anyone interested in the process of creating a visual story line. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Anderson

THA 109a Improvisation for Theatre: Acting Unscripted
[ ca ]
An approach to acting through the stimulation of the actor's imagination and creativity, freeing the actor's impulses and faith. Improvisation breaks down the elements of scene work and, through a series of exercises, makes these elements more personal and accessible to the actor. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Krstansky and Mr. Troyanovsky

THA 126a Playing for Change - Community Building and Social Change on Stage
[ ca ]
Examines ways in which theatrical arts can create change in a variety of non-traditional situations. This course is grounded in the discussion/practice of theater activists such as Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed. For both theater and non-theater students, this course focuses on how and why this collaborative, useful art form can be introduced into sociological, psychological, political, cultural, educational, medical, and historical paradigms. Students will generate work surrounding social issues of importance to them. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Cleary

THA 132a The Collaborative Process
[ ca ]
Formerly offered as THA 32a. May be repeated once for credit.
An exploration of the process of collaborative creation from the idea to performance. Students work as performers, directors, writers, and designers to create original theater pieces based on current events, literature, theater, genres, and personal obsessions. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Krstansky

THA 138b Creative Pedagogy
[ ca ]
Focuses on creativity in pedagogy from a theatrical lens and is meant for anyone who wishes to teach anyone just about anything! This course will focus on the building of community and confidence that takes place within any learning environment that utilizes creative and theatrical arts as a modality. We will discuss the foundation and theories behind teaching, learning, and creative expression, allowing students to ground their own work in what has and hasn't worked in the past, as well as to expand their own creative reach and risk-taking capabilities. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Cleary

THA 142b Women Playwrights: Writing for the Stage by and about Women
[ ca wi ]
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.
Staff

THA 145a Queer Theater
[ ca ]
Explores significant plays that have shaped and defined gay identity during the past 100 years. Playwrights span Wilde to Kushner. Examining texts as literature, history, and performance, we will explore religion, poiltics, gender, the AIDS epidemic, and coming out. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Troyanovksy

THA 156a Making Mirth: Building Resilience and Creating Balance
[ ca pe-1 ]
Aims to build resilience through dance, movement, storytelling, comedy, improvisation and the power of play. Students will learn various methods for obtaining calm and balance while learning about the body and students will learn various methods for obtaining calm and balance while learning about the body's natural abilities in creating resilience. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Dibble

AAAS 79b Afro-American Literature of the Twentieth Century
[ hum ss wi ]
An introduction to the essential themes, aesthetic concerns, and textual strategies that characterize Afro-American writing of this century. Examines those influences that have shaped the poetry, fiction, and prose nonfiction of representative writers. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Abdur-Rahman or Ms. Smith

AAAS 125b Caribbean Women and Globalization: Sexuality, Citizenship, Work
[ ss wi ]
Utilizing perspectives from sociology, anthropology, fiction, and music to examine the relationship between women's sexuality and conceptions of labor, citizenship, and sovereignty. The course considers these alongside conceptions of masculinity, contending feminisms, and the global perspective. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Smith

AAAS 155b Hip Hop History and Culture
[ ss ]
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.
Mr. Williams

ENG 18b Writing the Holocaust
[ hum wi ]
Examines fiction, poetry, memoir, diaries, letters, testimonials, interviews, and historical records; explores written representations of the Holocaust. Considers the role second, third, and fourth generation responses to the Holocaust, including the responses of students, who will write their own post-Holocaust narratives. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Skorczewski

ENG 57b Writing the Nation: James Baldwin, Philip Roth, Toni Morrison
[ hum ]
An in-depth study of three major American authors of the twentieth century. Highlights the contributions of each author to the American literary canon and to its diversity. Explores how these novelists narrate cross-racial, cross-gendered, cross-regional, and cross-cultural contact and conflict in the United States. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Abdur-Rahman

ENG 58a Literature and Medicine
[ hum wi ]
How has literature grappled with illness, healing, and the patient-doctor encounter? How can poetry and storytelling communicate with experience of bodily pain--and how does the body seek to communicate its suffering without language? We examine literary responses to the body's biological vulnerabilities, and seek to contextualize the vulnerable body within the cultural and political fields that shape medical knowledge and practice. Readings in fiction, poetry, essay, and drama will suggest the art, or craftsmanship, involved in the healing sciences, as well as the diagnostic nature of literary criticism. Reading for new approaches, generated by the literary imagination, to controversial issues in medical ethics. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Sherman

ENG 60a Storytelling Performance
[ hum oc ]
This experiential course is a workshop for students to craft and perform stories for live audiences at Brandeis and elsewhere in the Boston area. Through a series of collaborative exercises and rehearsals, students will develop a repertoire of several kinds of stories, including autobiographies, fictions, folk tales, and local history. We will tell our individual and group stories, as a team, at youth programs, open mics, and other public spaces. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Sherman

ENG 64b From Libertinism to Sensibility: Pleasure and the Theater, 1660-1800
[ hum ]
Investigates the exchange between performance texts and contemporaneous discussions of class, nationality, and political party. Emphasizes the emergence of modern gender and sexual roles and the impact of the first professional women actors. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. King

ENG 80a Black Looks: The Promise and Perils of Photography
[ hum ]
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.
Ms. Smith

ENG 107a Women Writing Desire: Caribbean Fiction and Film
[ hum ]
About eight novels of the last two decades (by Cliff, Cruz, Danticat, Garcia, Kempadoo, Kincaid, Mittoo, Nunez, Pineau, Powell, or Rosario), drawn from across the region, and read in dialogue with popular culture, theory, and earlier generations of male and female writers of the region. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Smith

ENG 111b Postcolonial Theory
[ hum ]
Seminar in postcolonial theory with relevant background texts, with an emphasis on the specificity of its theoretical claims. Readings from Spivak, Said, Bhabha, Appiah, Mudimbe, Marx, Lenin, Freud, Derrida, Césaire, and Fanon, among others. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Anjaria

ENG 139a Publishing Workshop: Literary Editing and Publishing
[ hum wi ]
Offered exclusively on a graded basis. Students will be selected after the submission of an introductory letter including student's major, previous art/creative writing experience, previous experience in public projects (art or other), why public art is of interest to them, what public art has moved them. Please refer to the Schedule of Classes for submission formats and deadlines within the Registration periods.
Editing and publishing a literary journal -- either digital, print, or in more experimental forms -- can be an important component of a writer's creative life and sense of literary citizenship. This experiential learning course will engage students with theoretical and historical reading as well as provide practical hands-on tools for literary publishing. Broadsided Press (www.broadsidedpress.org) will be used as a case study. A group publishing project will be part of the coursework, and this can be tied into journals already being published on campus. By the end of the semester, students will have a fuller sense of the work, mindset, difficulties, strategies, and values of a literary publisher. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Bradfield

ENG 151a Queer Studies
[ hum ]
Recommended preparation: An introductory course in gender/sexuality and/or a course in critical theory.
Historical, literary, and theoretical perspectives on the construction and performance of queer subjectivities. How do queer bodies and queer representations challenge heteronormativity? How might we imagine public spaces and queer citizenship? Usually offered every second year.
Mr. King

ENG 151b Performance Studies
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: A course in dramatic literature and familiarity with theatrical production.
The theater, etymologically, is a place for viewing. Theory, etymologically, begins with a spectator and a viewing. Reading theories of theater and performance against paradigmatic dramatic texts and documents of social performance, speculation, and spectatorship are reviewed. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. King

ENG 170b Contemporary Theatre and Performance: Between Rights and the Post-Human
[ hum ]
Surveys English-language drama and performance after the innovations of Beckett and Brecht, investigating theater and performance artists' engagement of human rights, identity politics, decolonization, state, and interpersonal violence, environmental justice and climate change, and performance after the Anthropocene. Usually offered every year.
Mr. King

ENG 197b Within the Veil: African-American and Muslim Women's Writing
[ hum ]
In twentieth-century United States culture, the veil has become a powerful metaphor, signifying initially the interior of African-American community and the lives of Muslims globally. This course investigates issues of identity, imperialism, cultural loyalty, and spirituality by looking at and linking contemporary writing by African-American and Muslim women. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Abdur-Rahman

ENVS 43b Visions of the American Environment, Images to Action
[ hum ss ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took FYS 43b in prior years.
Explores the role of the natural environment in the North American vision through the lens of books and selected readings, films and art. We focus on the 1800's to present as we consider how these works reflect our relationship with the environment over time and shape our treatment of natural resources as we address daunting environmental challenges. As we examine a series of broad environmental themes and issues, including environmental justice concerns and the meaning of "place" and "home" in the American vision, our field trips and hands-on work with local groups help bring our studies to life and meaning. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Goldin

FREN 139a Bad Girls / Les Filles de mauvais genre
[ fl hum ]
Prerequisite: FREN 106b or the equivalent, or permission of the instructor.
Through a selection of literary texts, articles, images and films, students will explore how works from the Middle Ages to present day depict female figures in the French and Francophone world who have failed to conform to expectations of their gender. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Harder

HECS 42b Literature and Human Rights in Latin America
[ hum nw ]
Taught in English.
Examines literature, fiction and non-fiction, from Latin America in relation to the construction and uses of the narrative of human rights. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Rosenberg

HISP 160a Culture and Social Change in Latin America
[ fl hum nw wi ]
Prerequisite: HISP 109b or HISP 111b, or permission of the instructor.
Examines the relationship between the arts (including literature, film, and fine arts) and society in Latin America during the twentieth century by focusing on three historical conjunctures when this relationship was particularly rich: the political and artistic vanguards of the 1920s (with particular attention to the Mexican Revolution and its aftermath); the 1960s, marked by the historical turning point of the Cuban Revolution; and the decade of the 1990s, characterized by the transition to democracy, the emergence of human rights and other social movements. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Rosenberg

JAPN 130a The Literature of Multicultural Japan
[ hum nw ]
"Multicultural" may not be an adjective that many associate with Japan, but as we will find in this class, Japan's modern literary and cinematic tradition is rich with works by and about resident Koreans, Ainu, Okinawans, outcasts, and sexual and other marginalized minorities. Why then does the image of a monocultural Japan remain so resilient? Usually offered every third year.
Mr. Fraleigh

NEJS 173a Trauma and Violence in Israeli Literature and Film
[ fl hum ]
Taught in Hebrew.
Explores trauma and violence in Israeli Literature, film, and art. Focuses in man-made disasters, war and terrorism, sexual and family violence, and murder and suicide, and examines their relation to nationalism, Zionism, gender, and sexual identity. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Szobel

NEJS 184b Disability in Israeli Literature, Film, and the Arts
[ hum ]
Explores representations of disability within Hebrew and Israeli culture. By focusing on literature, film, dance, and visual art, it pursues various applications of phyiscal, mental, and emotional disability experiences and theories to Zionist, Jewish-Israeli narratives and rhetoric. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Szobel

NEJS 194b Sufi Teachings
[ hum nw ]
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.
Staff

AAAS/FA 74b Introduction to African Art
[ ca nw ss ]
Surveys the visual artistic traditions of Africa. Investigates the different forms of visual art in relation to their historical and socio-cultural context. Symbolism and complexity of Africa's visual art traditions are explored through analysis of myth, ritual, cosmology, and history. Usually offered every second year.
Mr. Hassan

AMST 102aj Environment, Social Justice, and Empowerment
[ oc ss wi ]
Yields six semester-hour credits towards rate of work and graduation.
This community-engaged course involves students first-hand in the legal, policy, science, history and social impacts of current environmental health issues challenging individuals, families and communities today, with a particular focus on low-income, immigrant communities and the profound and unique roles played by women. Students will engage directly in the topics through field trips, visiting speakers and discussions with stakeholders themselves, taking on vital issues with some of the most disadvantaged communities from inner-city Boston and Waltham to the rural coal mining mountains of Appalachia. Students will address issues such as toxic exposure, access to safe housing, healthy food and clean water. Offered as part of JBS program.
Ms. Goldin

AMST/MUS 39b Protest Through Song: Music that Shaped America
[ ca ss ]
Open to music majors and non-majors. Does not fulfill the Main Currents in American Studies requirement for the major.
Examines 20th and 21st century protest music to better understand the complex relationships between music and social movements. Through class discussions, reading, writing, and listening assignments, and a final performance students will discover how social, cultural, and economic protest songs helped shape American culture. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Musegades

ANTH 26a Communication and Media
[ ss ]
An exploration of human communication and mass media from a cross-cultural perspective. Examines communication codes based on language and visual signs. The global impact of revolutions in media technology, including theories of cultural imperialism and indigenous uses of media is discussed. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. McIntosh

ANTH 130b Visuality and Culture
[ ss ]
Introduces students to the study of visual, aural, and artistic media through an ethnographic lens. Course combines written and creative assignments to understand how culture shapes how we make meaning out of images and develop media literacy. Topics include ethnographic/documentary film, advertising, popular culture, viral videos and special effects, photography, art worlds, and the technological development of scientific images. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Alvarez Astacio and Ms. Schattschneider

ANTH 140a Human Rights in Global Perspective
[ ss ]
Explores a range of debates about human rights as a concept as well as the practice of human rights work. The human rights movement seeks the recognition of universal norms that transcend political and cultural difference while anthropology seeks to explore and analyze the great diversity of human life. To what extent can these two goals--advocating for universal norms and respecting cultural difference--be reconciled? The course examines cases from various parts of the world concerning: indigenous peoples, environment, health, gender, genocide/violence/nation-states and globalization. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Ferry

ANTH 159a Museums and Public Memory
[ ss ]
Explores the social and political organization of public memory, including museums, cultural villages, and memorial sites. Who has the right to determine the content and form of such institutions? Working with local community members, students will develop a collaborative exhibition project. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

ANTH 184b Cross-Cultural Art and Aesthetics
[ nw ss ]
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.
Mr. Urcid

CAST 170a Documenting the Immigrant Experience
[ ss ]
Investigates documentary film as a genre, and explores the potential of the medium for engaging students with immigrant communities in Waltham through hands-on production experiences. Through the process of exchanging narratives with community members, students generate raw material for a film documentary. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Perdomo

ECON/FA 87a Economics and the Arts
[ ca ss ]
Prerequisite: ECON 2a or 10a; FA 30a, 57a, 59a or 62a. The FA course may be taken concurrently with ECON/FA 87a.
Economics and art history provide dual lenses for studying the mechanics of art auctions and building collections. The course will focus on the intersection of history and patronage of specific artists and works of art with the marketplace. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Graddy and Ms. Scott

ED 158b Looking with the Learner: Practice and Inquiry
Does not satisfy a school distribution requirement--for education studies core course credit only. Lab fee: $40.
Links theory to practice in learning through the visual arts through three types of experiences: 1) looking at art; 2) museum-based interactions with students from Stanley Elementary School in Waltham; and 3) documenting our experiences as lookers, learners, and teachers. What can we learn about art, artists, ourselves, and young learners through the processes of looking at art? How can we best support students in their own encounters with art and learning? How can museums serve as a model for education in various settings? Usually offered every year.
Ms. Bernson

ENVS 43b Visions of the American Environment, Images to Action
[ hum ss ]
May not be taken for credit by students who took FYS 43b in prior years.
Explores the role of the natural environment in the North American vision through the lens of books and selected readings, films and art. We focus on the 1800's to present as we consider how these works reflect our relationship with the environment over time and shape our treatment of natural resources as we address daunting environmental challenges. As we examine a series of broad environmental themes and issues, including environmental justice concerns and the meaning of "place" and "home" in the American vision, our field trips and hands-on work with local groups help bring our studies to life and meaning. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Goldin

HIST 112a Nationalism in the Middle East
[ nw ss ]
Seminar examining the history of nationalism in the modern Middle East. Covers divergent theories and practices of nationalism in the region, and explores the roles of gender, memory, historiography, and art in the formation and articulation of Middle East nationalisms. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Sohrabi

LGLS 130a Conflict Analysis and Intervention
[ oc ss ]
Examines alternatives to litigation, including negotiation and mediation. Through simulations and court observations, students assess their own attitudes about and skills in conflict resolution. Analyzes underlying theories in criminal justice system, divorce, adoption, and international arena. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Stimell

SOC 119a Deconstructing War, Building Peace
[ ss ]
Ponders the possibility of a major "paradigm shift" under way from adversarialism and war to mutuality and peace. Examines war culture and peace culture and points in between, with emphases on the role of imagination in social change, growing global interdependence, and political, economic, gender, social class, and social psychological aspects of war and peace. Usually offered every year.
Mr. Fellman

SOC 154a Community Structure and Youth Subcultures
[ ss ]
Examines how the patterning of relations within communities generates predictable outcomes at the individual and small-group level. Deals with cities, suburbs, and small rural communities. Special focus is given to youth subcultures typically found in each community type. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Schor

SOC 155b Protest, Politics, and Change: Social Movements
[ ss ]
Utilizes case studies of actual movements to examine a variety of approaches to contentious politics. Covers collective behavior, resource mobilization, rational choice, and newer interactive models. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Vijayakumar

ANTH 130b Visuality and Culture
[ ss ]
Introduces students to the study of visual, aural, and artistic media through an ethnographic lens. Course combines written and creative assignments to understand how culture shapes how we make meaning out of images and develop media literacy. Topics include ethnographic/documentary film, advertising, popular culture, viral videos and special effects, photography, art worlds, and the technological development of scientific images. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Alvarez Astacio and Ms. Schattschneider

ANTH 159a Museums and Public Memory
[ ss ]
Explores the social and political organization of public memory, including museums, cultural villages, and memorial sites. Who has the right to determine the content and form of such institutions? Working with local community members, students will develop a collaborative exhibition project. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

CAST 170a Documenting the Immigrant Experience
[ ss ]
Investigates documentary film as a genre, and explores the potential of the medium for engaging students with immigrant communities in Waltham through hands-on production experiences. Through the process of exchanging narratives with community members, students generate raw material for a film documentary. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Perdomo

ENG 151b Performance Studies
[ hum ]
Prerequisite: A course in dramatic literature and familiarity with theatrical production.
The theater, etymologically, is a place for viewing. Theory, etymologically, begins with a spectator and a viewing. Reading theories of theater and performance against paradigmatic dramatic texts and documents of social performance, speculation, and spectatorship are reviewed. Usually offered every third year.
Mr. King

SOC 154a Community Structure and Youth Subcultures
[ ss ]
Examines how the patterning of relations within communities generates predictable outcomes at the individual and small-group level. Deals with cities, suburbs, and small rural communities. Special focus is given to youth subcultures typically found in each community type. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Schor

SOC 155b Protest, Politics, and Change: Social Movements
[ ss ]
Utilizes case studies of actual movements to examine a variety of approaches to contentious politics. Covers collective behavior, resource mobilization, rational choice, and newer interactive models. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Vijayakumar

THA 126a Playing for Change - Community Building and Social Change on Stage
[ ca ]
Examines ways in which theatrical arts can create change in a variety of non-traditional situations. This course is grounded in the discussion/practice of theater activists such as Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed. For both theater and non-theater students, this course focuses on how and why this collaborative, useful art form can be introduced into sociological, psychological, political, cultural, educational, medical, and historical paradigms. Students will generate work surrounding social issues of importance to them. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Cleary

THA 132a The Collaborative Process
[ ca ]
Formerly offered as THA 32a. May be repeated once for credit.
An exploration of the process of collaborative creation from the idea to performance. Students work as performers, directors, writers, and designers to create original theater pieces based on current events, literature, theater, genres, and personal obsessions. Usually offered every year.
Ms. Krstansky

THA 138b Creative Pedagogy
[ ca ]
Focuses on creativity in pedagogy from a theatrical lens and is meant for anyone who wishes to teach anyone just about anything! This course will focus on the building of community and confidence that takes place within any learning environment that utilizes creative and theatrical arts as a modality. We will discuss the foundation and theories behind teaching, learning, and creative expression, allowing students to ground their own work in what has and hasn't worked in the past, as well as to expand their own creative reach and risk-taking capabilities. Usually offered every second year.
Ms. Cleary