Provisional University Bulletin (2024-2025)

• Minor

The undergraduate minor in Creativity, the Arts, and Social Transformation offers a coherent academic sequence through which to explore theory and practice at the nexus of the arts (i.e., music, literature, dance, theater, visual arts, storytelling, digital art and broadcast media, architecture, conceptual art and folk expressions of all kinds); creativity; and social change. It challenges students to engage in, and reflect on, various modes of knowledge creation, including aesthetic, interpretive and analytical, as well as different modes of presentation, including creative, written, oral, and performative. It introduces them to a range of creative social change practices and the theories of change that are implicit in them, and encourages them to grapple with the ethical dilemmas inherent in the field. The minor supports students to imagine careers and vocations that link their talents and their interests both in the creative arts and social change with the needs of communities and issues of social justice. They will learn how artists, cultural workers and other change agents support communities to cultivate, restore and strengthen the capacities required to live creatively, sustainably, non-violently and ethically.

The minor in Creativity, the Arts, and Social Transformation will create a community of inquiry in which students and faculty members explore theories and practices at the nexus of the arts and cultural work, justice-seeking and peacebuilding, and creativity. Students will be introduced to a range of theories of change that link creative engagement with strategic thinking; acquire skills to think critically about artistic and cultural interventions; and begin to develop capacities to design, assess, enact, document and/or facilitate creative projects that contribute to more just and less violent communities.

Knowledge

The minor in Creativity, the Arts, and Social Transformation offers students an overview of recent interdisciplinary thinking about the nature of creativity and the conditions that give rise to it. In addition, they explore how movements for economic, racial, gender and environmental justice as well as initiatives to transform violent conflict have incorporated the arts and cultural work, both in the United States and globally. Students consider the range of contributions of the various art forms (music, theatre, dance, literature, poetry, visual arts, film, etc.) and cultural institutions (museums, theatre ensembles, festivals, radio stations, etc.) to more just, more resilient, and less violent communities throughout the world. They engage in, and reflect on, various modes of learning, including both aesthetic and analytical.

Skills and Capacities

Students will learn to:

1. Identify theories of change implicit in social movements and in creative practices.
2. Think critically about the possibilities and limitations of various artistic and cultural approaches to social transformation.
3. Analyze case studies of arts-based and culturally informed social change initiatives, articulating the relationship between aesthetic quality and socio-political efficacy, risks of doing harm, and other issues of ethics and impact.

Students will begin to develop capacities required to design, assess, enact, document and facilitate creative projects that contribute to more just and less violent communities. In addition to whatever artistic talents students may bring or cultivate through coursework, these include capacities to:

1. Inquire with multiple disciplinary frames of reference and multiple modes of knowledge-seeking and meaning-making.
2. Collaborate with teams of people from diverse backgrounds and disciplines.
3. Become aware of oneself as a listener and listen with qualities of presence that elicit difficult-to-tell stories.
4. Identify sources of resilience.
5. Combine analytic insights with creative acts.
6. Cultivate one’s own and others’ creativity.

Social Justice

Students will consider social justice within the larger frame of ‘social transformation’ including theories and practices from peacebuilding, development, restorative justice, non-violent social change, reconciliation, etc. Within the minor, students will:

1. Learn about, witness the works of, and engage with courageous and creative leaders of social transformation initiatives as well as socially engaged artists whose works explore themes of social transformation and inspire action toward social justice.
2. Explore the relationship between aesthetic excellence and socio-political efficacy. Students will be offered opportunities to express their own commitments to social justice in creative ways.

Rigor

Students enrolled in the minor will be expected to engage in a multifaceted but coherent inquiry in a rigorous fashion. As outlined below, the content of the introductory course, the distribution of the electives, and the capstone practicum, taken together, embody our understanding of rigor for an undergraduate minor in this field. Students should demonstrate:

1. Awareness of, and increasing capacities to act in accordance with, the ethical sensibilities required to engage communities in creative processes, including an understanding of ways to minimize risks of harm and awareness of one’s self and social positions in relation to the dynamics of the context.
2. The ability to bring into relationship aesthetic, analytic and strategic modes of knowledge-production with different modes of presentation, including creative, written, oral, performative, etc.
3. The ability to link theory with creative practice.
4. Knowledge of historical and culturally diverse perspectives on the public and communal functions of the arts and cultural production, including on how artists (of all genres) and cultural workers have engaged communities and contributed to social, economic, environmental and restorative justice, and to the creative transformation of conflict.

The program is open to all Brandeis undergraduates. Students should take the core course, CAST 150b Introduction to Creativity, the Arts, and Social Transformation, as early as feasible in their student career, preferably in the first or second year. Because this minor requires students to integrate different modes of knowledge-generation and meaning-making, students are strongly encouraged to apply for the minor before the end of their junior year, by meeting with the Undergraduate Advising Head. In consultation with the student, the Undergraduate Advising Head will assign each student an adviser, chosen from affiliated program faculty, who will assist the student in structuring a coherent course of study.

Toni Shapiro-Phim, Chair, Undergraduate Advising Head
(Creativity, the Arts, and Social Transformation)

Cameron Anderson
(Theater Arts)

Elizabeth Bradfield
(English)

Jen Cleary
(Education, Theater Arts)

Emilie Diouf
(English)

Caren Irr
(English)

Dorothy Kim
(English)

Thomas King
(English)

Robin Feuer Miller
(German, Russian, and Asian Languages and Literature)

Kristin Parker
(Program in Peacebuilding and the Arts)

Fernando Rosenberg
(Latin American and Latino Studies)

David Sherman
(English)

Faith Smith
(African and Afro-American Studies and English)

Ilana Szobel
(Near Eastern and Judaic Studies)

Sabine von Mering
(German, Russian, and Asian Languages and Literature)

Completion of the minor in Creativity, the Arts and Social Transformation requires the successful completion of 5.5 courses.

1. The core course, CAST 150b Introduction to Creativity, the Arts, and Social Transformation. Ideally, this should be the first course taken for the minor, since it offers students an overview of the contributions of arts and cultural work to social justice and to the creative transformation of conflict, and frameworks that will help them bring subsequent courses into relationship. In any case, students are urged to take this course as early in their academic program as feasible.
2. Four elective courses, according to the following distribution: 
   1. One course from the creative arts.
   2. One course from the humanities.
   3. One course from the social sciences.
   4. One additional elective from any of the three schools associated with CAST (CA, HUM, SS). Note that at least one of the four electives must be a "core elective." Core electives are courses that strongly link theory and practice and are offered in all of the three schools. See Courses of Instruction below for the elective listings.
   Students may take two approved 2-credit electives to satisfy an elective requirement.
   
   In addition to the 5.5 courses required for the minor, CAST students are encouraged to take at least one course in disciplines such as Creative Writing; Film, Television and Interactive Media; Studio Art; Music; and Theater Arts that engage students in 'hands-on' art-making in any genre. CAST students are also encouraged to take one or more additional courses in critical paradigms relevant to CAST, including but not limited to courses in conflict analysis and intervention; critical race studies; postcolonial studies; feminist, LGBT, and queer studies; disability studies; environmental studies and movements; immigration and refugee studies; histories of radical thought and social change movements; human rights; urban planning; and the politics of representation in various media. Particularly when offered by CAST affiliated faculty, and facilitating sustained attention to the role of art and creativity in analyzing, critiquing, and transforming social structures, power relations, conflict, and/or violence, such courses will be considered for substitution toward the four elective courses required for the minor.
   
   One CAST internship or directed reading course, supervised by a member of the CAST affiliated faculty, can count as an elective towards the minor.
3. A two-credit practicum, either CAST 181b Ethics of Community Engagement Practicum, offered every fall semester, or CAST 189a Project Design Practicum, offered every spring semester.
   1. The practicum is normally taken after completing all five required four-credit courses for the minor, or in the same semester that the students will complete those requirements.
   2. Supervised projects in both practicums provide opportunities for minors to reflect on and integrate learning from the five required courses; to propose, design, and implement projects in the field of arts, culture, and social transformation; to work in and engage community ethically; to provide and learn from peer feedback; and to develop skills in documenting and evaluating projects.
   3. CAST minors may take both practicums, if they wish. CAST 181b Ethics of Community Engagement Practicum, offered each fall semester, may be of interest especially to students planning to work in community as researchers, activists, documentarians, artists, and other practitioners, and who would benefit from a group process of developing and evaluating projects. While it explores similar issues and offers a similar group process, CAST 189a Project Design Practicum, may be of interest especially to students already in the process of undertaking a significant individual project.
   4. Students enrolling in either practicum are required to speak with the instructor prior to enrolling in the course to discuss a potential project.
   5. All students will be required to give a presentation about their project in a setting open to members of the campus community.
4. Students wishing to complete the requirements for the minor with a course other than one listed below should petition the Undergraduate Advising Head for permission to substitute a different course for one of the electives.
5. No course with a grade below C- can count toward fulfilling the minor requirements in Creativity, the Arts, and Social Transformation.
6. No course taken pass/fail may count toward the minor requirements.
7. Students may normally fulfill one CAST elective with transfer credit. Students wishing to transfer a second course toward the minor should petition the Undergraduate Advising Head, demonstrating the relevance of the course to their program of study.

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

Staff

THA 27a Wellness and Sustainability in the Theatrical Process
[ hwl2 ]

Prerequisite: THA 2a or THA 10a.

Focuses on the experiential research and applied practice of wellness models for theater-makers. Students gain theoretical and practical knowledge around various roles, responsibilities, boundaries, and priorities within a rehearsal and production process. The course conceptualizes theater as both an art form and a wellness/healing practice within communities, cultures, and in therapeutic/milieu settings, while simultaneously investigating the ways in which the wellness conceptualization applies for theater-makers in practice. Why do theater-makers engage in this work? What brings us into the profession, and what keeps us there? How does identity and empowerment show up in these spaces? How might new professional roles centered around wellness, equity, diversity, inclusion, and safety (such as intimacy direction) move the field forward into a more sustainable wellness model? The course engages with artistic tensions such as: process and product; self-care and community care; teamwork and boundaries; aesthetics, time, and success. Students gain foundational skills in group process, communication, collaboration, boundary-setting, conflict resolution, and in generating one’s own professional and personal artistic goals. Students will imagine ways in which they can implement these models in their artistic communities. Usually offered every year.

Jennifer Cleary

CAST 110b Dance and Migration
[ ca deis-us djw nw ]

Highlights the aesthetic, political, social, and spiritual potency of dance forms and practices as they travel, transform, and are accorded meaning both domestically and transnationally, especially in situations (or in the aftermath) of extreme violence and cultural dislocation. Usually offered every third year.
Toni Shapiro-Phim

CAST 125a Confronting Gender-Based Violence
[ ca deis-us djw ]

Engaging with multiple forms of creative expression and several different social change frameworks as they address and counter various aspects of gender-based violence in discrete cultural and historical contexts, this course explores gender-based violence as a grave violation of human rights, and the creative, innovative and meaningful methods through which particular communities and individuals counter such violation, including as it intersects with race and socioeconomic status. These methods might range from art installations in galleries or public spaces to formal theatrical productions, from the choreography of street protests to graffiti, films, pop-up concerts and podcasts, many involving survivors of gender-based violence in the creative process. We'll focus in particular on the experiences of those who identify as women, have been assigned to or perceived of as members of that category, or who identify and present as femme. Usually offered every third year.
Toni Shapiro-Phim

CAST 126b Dignity in Motion
[ ca deis-us djw ]

Explores ways in which humanity affirms its dignity through creative expression rooted in the body, in particular, dance, pageantry/puppetry, and ritual, as it addresses and counters various aspects of global and local experiences of oppression and violence – authoritarianism, legacies of settler-colonialism and enslavement, stifling social norms, and war and migration. The Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares that … recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world. This course explores how the body, in collective and individual movement, can affirm human dignity, thereby contributing to the subversion or dismantling of oppressions and rights violations, including the rise of authoritarianism, racism, gender violence, and civil and international conflict. Usually offered every third year.

CAST 150b Introduction to Creativity, the Arts, and Social Transformation
[ ss ]

How can music, theater, dance and visual and other arts, and forms of cultural expression contribute to community building, coexistence, and nonviolent social change? Students explore these questions through interviews, case studies, and projects. Usually offered every year.
Toni Shapiro-Phim

CAST 160a Provocative Art: Outside the Comfort Zone
[ ca ]

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.
William Chalmus

CAST 170a Documenting Immigrant Experiences
[ 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.
Jenny Alexander and Maya Jamaleddine

CAST 181b Ethics of Community Engagement Practicum

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. Ethical concerns must be at the forefront of the planning and implementation of all such endeavors. Usually offered every year.
Toni Shapiro-Phim

CAST 189a Project Design Practicum

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.

Each student applies theories, skills, information, and critical questions to an individual or group project that engages with social transformation concerns in creative, practical, and ethically-sound ways. Although many students undertake independent projects, this is a collaborative practicum in which all students help each other imagine and problem-solve. Usually offered every year.
Toni Shapiro-Phim

CAST 150b Introduction to Creativity, the Arts, and Social Transformation
[ ss ]

How can music, theater, dance and visual and other arts, and forms of cultural expression contribute to community building, coexistence, and nonviolent social change? Students explore these questions through interviews, case studies, and projects. Usually offered every year.
Toni Shapiro-Phim

AAAS 124a After the Dance: Performing Sovereignty in the Caribbean
[ hum oc ss ]

Utilizing short fiction, essays, plays, poetry, and the visual arts, this class theorizes movement and/as freedom in the spectacular or mundane movements of the region, including annual Carnival and Hosay celebrations. Usually offered every third year.
Faith Smith

ANTH 130b Visuality and Culture
[ dl 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.

Patricia Alvarez Astacio or Ellen Schattschneider

ANTH 159a Museums and Public Memory
[ oc 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.
Ellen Schattschneider

CAST 110b Dance and Migration
[ ca deis-us djw nw ]

Highlights the aesthetic, political, social, and spiritual potency of dance forms and practices as they travel, transform, and are accorded meaning both domestically and transnationally, especially in situations (or in the aftermath) of extreme violence and cultural dislocation. Usually offered every third year.
Toni Shapiro-Phim

CAST 125a Confronting Gender-Based Violence
[ ca deis-us djw ]

Engaging with multiple forms of creative expression and several different social change frameworks as they address and counter various aspects of gender-based violence in discrete cultural and historical contexts, this course explores gender-based violence as a grave violation of human rights, and the creative, innovative and meaningful methods through which particular communities and individuals counter such violation, including as it intersects with race and socioeconomic status. These methods might range from art installations in galleries or public spaces to formal theatrical productions, from the choreography of street protests to graffiti, films, pop-up concerts and podcasts, many involving survivors of gender-based violence in the creative process. We'll focus in particular on the experiences of those who identify as women, have been assigned to or perceived of as members of that category, or who identify and present as femme. Usually offered every third year.
Toni Shapiro-Phim

CAST 126b Dignity in Motion
[ ca deis-us djw ]

Explores ways in which humanity affirms its dignity through creative expression rooted in the body, in particular, dance, pageantry/puppetry, and ritual, as it addresses and counters various aspects of global and local experiences of oppression and violence – authoritarianism, legacies of settler-colonialism and enslavement, stifling social norms, and war and migration. The Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares that … recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world. This course explores how the body, in collective and individual movement, can affirm human dignity, thereby contributing to the subversion or dismantling of oppressions and rights violations, including the rise of authoritarianism, racism, gender violence, and civil and international conflict. Usually offered every third year.

CAST 170a Documenting Immigrant Experiences
[ 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.
Jenny Alexander and Maya Jamaleddine

COML/ENG 191a Environmental Aesthetics
[ djw hum oc ]

Explores major schools of thought about nature, ecology, and art. Usually offered every third year.
Caren Irr

ENG 113b Performing Climate Justice
[ deis-us hum oc ]

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 139a Publishing Workshop: Literary Editing and Publishing
[ dl hum oc ]

Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. Students will be selected after the submission of an introductory letter including student's major, writing/editing experience, why publishing is of interest to them, any experimental literary publications/performances they've experienced. This course fulfills a workshop requirement for the Creative Writing major and minor. 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.
Elizabeth Bradfield

ENG 143a The History of Mediascapes and Critical Maker Culture
[ deis-us dl hum oc ]

Class has a required lab component and yields six semester-hour credits towards rate of work and graduation.

To consider how to decolonize book history and “maker culture,” the class examines colonial erasure, colonial knowledge production, race, gender, disability, neurodiversity, sexuality in making an alternative book history that includes khipu, girdle books, wampum, pamphlets, zines, and wearable media technology. Usually offered every third year.
Dorothy Kim

ENG 151b Performance Studies
[ dl hum ]

Explores paradigms for making performance inside and outside of institutionalized theater spaces, with an emphasis on the performance of everyday life. Students read theories of theater and performance against paradigmatic dramatic texts and documents of social performance. Combining theory with practice, students explore and make site-specific and online performances. Usually offered every third year.
Thomas King

ENG 161a Literature and Counterculture
[ hum ]

Explores alternative, subversive publics created through literature and art. Readings into avant-garde movements and their legacies, with a focus on creative political engagements with public spheres. We'll consider writing, experimental theater, visual art, and musical performance at the cultural edges and outsides. This is creative expression that plays with textual circulation and political subversion. Usually offered every third year.
David Sherman

ENG 169a Eco-Writing Workshop
[ hum wi ]

Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. Enrollment is by instructor permission after the submission of a manuscript sample. Please refer to the schedule of classes for submission information.

A creative writing workshop focused on writing essays and poems that engage with environmental and eco-justice concerns. Readings, writing assignments, and class discussions will be augmented by field trips. Usually offered every second year.
Elizabeth Bradfield

ENG 170b Contemporary Theatre and Performance: Between Rights and the Post-Human
[ hum oc ]

Students will explore two pressing questions: How do contemporary theatre artists work to rehumanize those denied humanity? During a global climate emergency, how can the theatre, which is traditionally defined by the co-presence of humans, relocate the human as only one of many lifeforms--not the center of everything but rather entwined with other organic, inorganic, and spiritual agencies? Usually offered every second year.
Thomas King

FA 181a Housing and Social Justice
[ ca deis-us dl ss ]

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.
Muna Guvenc

HISP 142b Literature, Film, and Human Rights in Latin America
[ djw hum nw wi ]

May be taught in English or Spanish.

Examines literature, film (fiction and non-fiction) and other artistic expressions from Latin America, in conversation with the idea of human rights'from the colonial arguments about slavery and the 'natural rights' of the indigenous, to the advent of human rights in the context of post-conflict truth and reconciliation processes, to the emergence of gender and ethnicity as into the human rights framework, to the current debates about rights of nature in the midst of a global ecological crisis. Usually offered every third year.
Fernando Rosenberg

HISP 160a Culture/Media and Social Change in Latin America
[ djw fl hum nw wi ]

Prerequisite: HISP 109b or HISP 111b, or permission of the instructor.

The central topic of this class is the role of the creative arts (creative writing, visual arts, music, film, performance) in their role as fostering political change in Latin America. We will examine key eras of 20th and 21st century cultural production in relation with shifting mass-media landscapes, from the revolutionary impetus of the early 20th century avant-gardes in literature and visual arts, popular music in the 1940s, documentary film during and the 1960s guerrillas, artistic resistance to the dictatorship, to the street art accompanying human rights and grass roots identity movements of the 2000s. Usually offered every second year.
Fernando Rosenberg

HISP 165b The Storyteller: Short Fiction in Latin America
[ djw fl hum nw ]

Prerequisite: HISP 109b or HISP 111b, or permission of the instructor.

Through a study of Latin American short stories, some of them by consecrated writers, some of them by less well-known, we will reflect on the power of storytelling and narrative to shape subjectivity and community. We will examine topics that traverse Latin American cultures and are expressed in these stories, such tensions between literacy and oral traditions, hegemonic and minority voices, cultural diversity, ethnicity, class, migration, as well as contemporary concerns around issues of gender and sexuality, and in relation to the natural world. This class has an optional creative writing component, as students will have the chance, if so inclined, to write fiction applying concepts and themes studied in class (instead of critical/analytical assignments). Usually offered every third year.
Fernando Rosenberg

LGLS 129a Transitional Justice: Global Justice and Societies in Transition
[ djw ss ]

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, reparations, memorials, and the contributions of art and culture. Usually offered every second year.
Melissa Stimell

MUS 3b Global Soundscapes: Performing Musical Tradition Across Time and Place
[ 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.
Staff

NEJS 173a Trauma and Violence in Israeli Literature and Film
[ deis-us djw fl hum oc ]

Taught in Hebrew.

Explores trauma and violence in Israeli Literature, film, and art. Focuses on 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.
Ilana Szobel

NEJS 184b Disability Cultures: Art, Film and Literature of People with Disabilities
[ deis-us djw hum oc ]

Explores cultural representations of disability in Israel, Europe, and the US. By focusing on literature, film, dance, and visual art, it explores physical, mental, and emotional disability experiences, and their relations to gender, sexuality, nationalism, and identity politics. Usually offered every second year.
Ilana Szobel

NEJS/WGS 110a Sexual Violence in Film and Culture
[ deis-us djw hum oc ]

Explores the effects of sexualized violence in society. While exploring representations of gender-based sexual violence in documentaries and features, stand-up comedy, memoirs, poetry, and visual art, this course will offer a critical discussion on Rape Culture in the 21st century, with particular attention to the intersections of gender, race, sexuality, class, and disability in the construction of sexual violence. Usually offered every second year.
Ilana Szobel

SOC 155b Protest, Politics, and Change: Social Movements
[ deis-us ss ]

Introduces major sociological theories about leadership, political context, culture, and identities in social movements in transnational perspective. Examines historical and contemporary cases of social movements through the lenses of race, gender, class, and sexuality. Usually offered every year.
Gowri Vijayakumar

THA 40a The Art of Visual Narrative and Production Design
[ 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.
Cameron Anderson

THA 126a Playing for Change - Community Building and Social Change on Stage
[ ca djw ]

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.
Jennifer Cleary

THA 132a Collaborative Creation
[ ca ]

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.
Adrianne Krstansky and Mitsu Salmon

THA 138b Creative Pedagogy
[ ca oc ]

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.
Jennifer Cleary

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.
Staff

AMST/MUS 39b Protest Through Song: Music that Shaped America
[ ca oc 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.
Staff

CAST 110b Dance and Migration
[ ca deis-us djw nw ]

Highlights the aesthetic, political, social, and spiritual potency of dance forms and practices as they travel, transform, and are accorded meaning both domestically and transnationally, especially in situations (or in the aftermath) of extreme violence and cultural dislocation. Usually offered every third year.
Toni Shapiro-Phim

CAST 125a Confronting Gender-Based Violence
[ ca deis-us djw ]

Engaging with multiple forms of creative expression and several different social change frameworks as they address and counter various aspects of gender-based violence in discrete cultural and historical contexts, this course explores gender-based violence as a grave violation of human rights, and the creative, innovative and meaningful methods through which particular communities and individuals counter such violation, including as it intersects with race and socioeconomic status. These methods might range from art installations in galleries or public spaces to formal theatrical productions, from the choreography of street protests to graffiti, films, pop-up concerts and podcasts, many involving survivors of gender-based violence in the creative process. We'll focus in particular on the experiences of those who identify as women, have been assigned to or perceived of as members of that category, or who identify and present as femme. Usually offered every third year.
Toni Shapiro-Phim

CAST 126b Dignity in Motion
[ ca deis-us djw ]

Explores ways in which humanity affirms its dignity through creative expression rooted in the body, in particular, dance, pageantry/puppetry, and ritual, as it addresses and counters various aspects of global and local experiences of oppression and violence – authoritarianism, legacies of settler-colonialism and enslavement, stifling social norms, and war and migration. The Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares that … recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world. This course explores how the body, in collective and individual movement, can affirm human dignity, thereby contributing to the subversion or dismantling of oppressions and rights violations, including the rise of authoritarianism, racism, gender violence, and civil and international conflict. Usually offered every third year.

CAST 160a Provocative Art: Outside the Comfort Zone
[ ca ]

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.
William Chalmus

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.

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 semester.
Tory Fair and Christopher Frost

FA 33b Islamic Art and Architecture
[ ca djw nw ]

Through case studies of cities, sites, and monuments, the course presents an overview of the art and the architecture of the Islamic world beginning from the seventh century up to the present. Some of the themes include, but are not limited to, Islamic material culture, orientalist imaginations, systems of governance and the colonial present, search for the local identity, urban modernity and nationalism, and globalization. Usually offered every second year.
Muna Guvenc

FA 61a History of Photography
[ ca ]

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.
Peter Kalb

FA 86b Museum Studies
[ ca dl wi ]

May not be taken for credit by students who took FA 85b in prior years.

An experiential learning seminar focused on the art object in the context of the museum; the history of museums (architecture, educational mission, curatorial presentation); museum ethics and provenance studies; new theories of museums and their expanded role in the community. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

FA 164a The Re-Invention of Art
[ ca djw ]

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.
Peter Kalb

FA 165a Contemporary Art
[ ca ]

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 millennium with attention to intersections of art and identity, politics, economy, and history. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

FA 169a Ecology and Art
[ ca dl ]

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.
Peter Kalb

FA 181a Housing and Social Justice
[ ca deis-us dl ss ]

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.
Muna Guvenc

FA 187a Approaches to Architecture and the City
[ ca ]

Trains students in developing the ability to conduct architectural and urban analysis of the built environment. Through a comparative case-study approach, based on selected readings, real spaces, and creative projects, students will better understand architectural and urban design in relation to social, cultural, human, and political aspects. Usually offered every year.
Staff

MUS 3b Global Soundscapes: Performing Musical Tradition Across Time and Place
[ 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.
Staff

MUS 86a Improv Collective

Join the Brandeis Improv Collective and learn how to become more fluidly and joyfully creative, both individually and in a group, through an exploration of musical improvisation. This ensemble is suitable for any student with an interest in having fun playing with other people, regardless of previous experience in improvising or instrumental skill level. 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 (MUS 80a,b; MUS 88a,b) alone or Private Instruction and Ensemble together. May be undertaken as an extracurricular, noncredit activity by registering in the XC section.

The semester culminates with a performance in Slosberg Recital hall. Usually offered every semester.
Thomas Hall

MUS 86b Improv Collective

Continuation of MUS 86a. See MUS 86a for special notes and course description.

Usually offered every semester.
Thomas 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.
Benjamin 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.
Benjamin Paulding

THA 40a The Art of Visual Narrative and Production Design
[ 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.
Cameron 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.
Adrianne Krstansky and Dmitry Troyanovsky

THA 126a Playing for Change - Community Building and Social Change on Stage
[ ca djw ]

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.
Jennifer Cleary

THA 132a Collaborative Creation
[ ca ]

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.
Adrianne Krstansky and Mitsu Salmon

THA 138b Creative Pedagogy
[ ca oc ]

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.
Jennifer Cleary

THA 142b Women Playwrights: Writing for the Stage by and about Women
[ ca deis-us 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.
Adrianne Krstansky

THA 144b Black Theater and Performance
[ ca deis-us ]

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.
Staff

THA 145a Queer Theater
[ ca deis-us ]

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.
Staff

THA 146a Theater and the Holocaust
[ ca djw ]

THA 150a Global Theater: Voices from Asia, Africa, and the Americas
[ ca djw nw wi ]

Explores dramatic literature and performance traditions from across the globe. Examines the ways various artists have engaged theater to express, represent, and interrogate diversity and complexity of the human condition. Usually offered every second year.
Staff

THA 180a Multimedia and Video Design for Live Performance
[ ca dl ]

Explores the convergence of multimedia theater, installation art, and video design. Students will learn about the use of technology in visual storytelling, and the cross-disciplinary and hybrid practices of multimedia design including sound, video, light and space. How can we use technology to enhance, frame or even reveal new perspectives on the stories we tell? Students will learn about tools and techniques from design professionals, and will engage directly and collaboratively with technology and space to design full-scale experiences focused around performance. No experience in performance, theater, or design expected. Usually offered every second year.
Cameron Anderson

AAAS 79b African American Literature of the Twentieth Century
[ hum ss wi ]

An introduction to the essential themes, aesthetic concerns, and textual strategies that characterize African 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.
Brandon Callender or Faith Smith

AAAS 124a After the Dance: Performing Sovereignty in the Caribbean
[ hum oc ss ]

Utilizing short fiction, essays, plays, poetry, and the visual arts, this class theorizes movement and/as freedom in the spectacular or mundane movements of the region, including annual Carnival and Hosay celebrations. Usually offered every third year.
Faith 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.
Faith 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.
Chad Williams

AAAS/ENG 80a Black Looks: The Promise and Perils of Photography
[ deis-us djw hum wi ]

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.
Faith Smith

AAPI/ENG 102a Transpacific Science Fiction
[ djw hum ]

Through critically acclaimed examples of science fiction set in the vast, multitudinous site of the Pacific and its continental edges, this course explores the intersection of technology and the humanities through a range of topics including scientific colonialism, techno-orientalism and dystopia, racial formation in the post-apocalypse, artificial intelligence, and environmental destruction. Some of the course materials include films (Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell), novels (Chang-Rae Lee, Ruth Ozeki), and a graphic novel. Usually offered every third year.

Howie Tam

AMST/ENG 167b Writing the Nation: James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Toni Morrison
[ deis-us hum ]

May not be taken for credit by students who took ENG 57b in prior years.

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.
Staff

COML 122b Writing Home and Abroad: Literature by Women of Color
[ hum nw ]

Examines literature (prose, poetry, and memoirs) written by women of color across a wide spectrum of geographical and cultural sites. Literature written within the confines of the "home country" in the vernacular, as well as in English in immigrant locales, is read. The intersections of race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, and class as contained by the larger institutions of government, religion, nationalism, and sectarian politics are examined. Usually offered every third year.
Harleen Singh

COML/ENG 70b Environmental Film, Environmental Justice
[ djw hum ]

Examines films that address nature, environmental crisis, and green activism. Asks how world cinema can best advance the goals of social and environmental justice. Includes films by major directors and festival award winners. Usually offered every third year.
Caren Irr

COML/ENG 191a Environmental Aesthetics
[ djw hum oc ]

Explores major schools of thought about nature, ecology, and art. Usually offered every third year.
Caren Irr

ENG 12a Decolonizing Tongues: Language in African Literature
[ deis-us djw hum wi ]

A comparative exploration of the politics of language in postcolonial African Literature and its impact on literary production. It locates the language question in anglophone and francophone African Literature within the context political independence. Usually offered every third year.

Emilie Diouf

ENG 20a Bollywood: Popular Film, Genre, and Society
[ djw hum nw ]

An introduction to popular Hindi cinema through a survey of the most important Bollywood films from the 1950s until today. Topics include melodrama, song and dance, love and sex, stardom, nationalism, religion, diasporic migration, and globalization. Usually offered every third year.
Ulka Anjaria

ENG 20b Literary Games
[ deis-us dl hum oc ]

Addresses a long durée history of the games through the lens of transmedia. This then is the start pointing to examine how transmedia theory may help unpack issues in what I call 'literary games' from the medieval chess board, dice game, to digital multi-player video games now. Within a discussion of transmedia we will address the various theories about narrative and play that have animated discussions about games from the Middle Ages to contemporary media. This class will also center race, gender, sexuality, disability, class in thinking through the issues of transmedia and the gaming cultures that have most recently been in the political mainstream news in relation to far-right politics. Usually offered every third year.
Dorothy Kim

ENG 28a Environmental Literature in an Age of Extinction
[ deis-us dl hum ]

Explores literature's role in shaping modern understandings of environmental change and damage, as well as the possibility of ecological restoration. Works include environmental classics by Thoreau, Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson as well as contemporary genres including dystopia, the thriller, and climate fiction. Usually offered every third year.
Caren Irr or Jerome Tharaud

ENG 43b Medieval Play: Drama, LARP, and Video Games
[ djw hum oc ]

Works with a selection of medieval mystery plays, medieval-themed video games and participatory live-action role play to explore: play structures and design; alternative-world creation by way of immersion; the significance of gender, race, disability, and sexuality in performance. Usually offered every third year.
Dorothy Kim

ENG 52a Refugee Stories, Refugee Lives
[ deis-us djw dl hum nw oc ]

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.
Emilie Diouf

ENG 58a Literature and Medicine
[ dl 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.
David 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.
David Sherman

ENG 62b Contemporary African Literature, Global Perspectives
[ djw dl hum nw oc ]

What is "African" in African literature when the majority of writers are somehow removed from the African societies they portray? How do expatriate writers represent African subjectivities and cultures at the intersection of Diaspora and globalization? Who reads the works produced by these writers? Usually offered every third year.
Emilie Diouf

ENG 66b Contemporary Global Dystopias
[ djw hum wi ]

Explores the sources, moods, and effects of dystopian fiction from around the world. Usually offered every third year.
Caren Irr

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.
Faith Smith

ENG 107b Literary Witnessing and the Poetics of Memory
[ hum wi ]

Investigation of the memorial function of modern literature as a response to historical trauma. How is the present haunted by the past; how is literature haunted by the dead? Historical contexts are primarily slavery in the Americas and European genocides. Readings will include theoretical and philosophical considerations of the role of the witness, collective memory, and historical evidence. Usually offered every third year.
Staff

ENG 111b Postcolonial Theory
[ djw hum wi ]

Introduces students to key concepts in postcolonial theory. Traces the consequences of European colonialism for politics, culture and literature around the world, situates these within ongoing contemporary debates, and considers the usefulness of postcolonial theory for understanding the world today. Usually offered every third year.
Joshua Williams

ENG 113b Performing Climate Justice
[ deis-us hum oc ]

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 128a Race and US Cinema
[ deis-us hum ]

Explores the central role film plays in the construction and policing of racialized identities in the US. We will focus primarily, but not exclusively, on the Black/white binarism. The course is structured as a survey. US cinema originates in the white depiction of Blacks or in the white deployment of blackface, and racialized bodies continue to serve as a ubiquitous (if frequently unacknowledged) source of fascination and anxiety in contemporary cinema. We will begin with early 'whitewashing' films and D.W. Griffith's foundational epic, The Birth of a Nation, and conclude with new queer Black cinema and contemporary Black filmmakers. Usually offered every third year.
Paul Morrison

ENG 137b Women and War
[ djw dl hum nw ]

Examines how African women writers and filmmakers use testimony to bear witness to mass violence. How do these writers resist political and sociocultural silencing systems that reduce traumatic experience to silence, denial, and terror? Usually offered every third year.
Emilie Diouf

ENG 139a Publishing Workshop: Literary Editing and Publishing
[ dl hum oc ]

Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. Students will be selected after the submission of an introductory letter including student's major, writing/editing experience, why publishing is of interest to them, any experimental literary publications/performances they've experienced. This course fulfills a workshop requirement for the Creative Writing major and minor. 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.
Elizabeth Bradfield

ENG 142a Blackness and Horror
[ deis-us djw hum ]

Cannot be taken by students who previously took ENG 42a.

Examines the tense and transformative place that blackness has within the horror tradition, beginning with the late nineteenth century and moving into the present. In addition to documentaries and critical texts, we will analyze literature, films, and various aspects of material culture that explore the relationship between blackness and horror. Usually offered every third year.
Brandon Callender

ENG 142b Black Queer Literatures
[ deis-us djw hum ]

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.
Brandon Callender

ENG 143a The History of Mediascapes and Critical Maker Culture
[ deis-us dl hum oc ]

Class has a required lab component and yields six semester-hour credits towards rate of work and graduation.

To consider how to decolonize book history and “maker culture,” the class examines colonial erasure, colonial knowledge production, race, gender, disability, neurodiversity, sexuality in making an alternative book history that includes khipu, girdle books, wampum, pamphlets, zines, and wearable media technology. Usually offered every third year.
Dorothy Kim

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.
Thomas King

ENG 151b Performance Studies
[ dl hum ]

Explores paradigms for making performance inside and outside of institutionalized theater spaces, with an emphasis on the performance of everyday life. Students read theories of theater and performance against paradigmatic dramatic texts and documents of social performance. Combining theory with practice, students explore and make site-specific and online performances. Usually offered every third year.
Thomas King

ENG 161a Literature and Counterculture
[ hum ]

Explores alternative, subversive publics created through literature and art. Readings into avant-garde movements and their legacies, with a focus on creative political engagements with public spheres. We'll consider writing, experimental theater, visual art, and musical performance at the cultural edges and outsides. This is creative expression that plays with textual circulation and political subversion. Usually offered every third year.
David Sherman

ENG 168b Plotting Inheritance
[ djw dl hum ]

Examines novels published in the last two decades set during slavery and indenture in the British Caribbean, alongside (and as) theorizations of accumulation, inheritance, and freedom. How does fiction account for and plot material, moral and emotional worth? Usually offered every third year.
Faith Smith

ENG 169a Eco-Writing Workshop
[ hum wi ]

Offered exclusively on a credit/no credit basis. Enrollment is by instructor permission after the submission of a manuscript sample. Please refer to the schedule of classes for submission information.

A creative writing workshop focused on writing essays and poems that engage with environmental and eco-justice concerns. Readings, writing assignments, and class discussions will be augmented by field trips. Usually offered every second year.
Elizabeth Bradfield

ENG 170a Nigerian Movies in the World
[ hum nw ]

Introduces students to Nigeria's film industry, one of the world's largest. It focuses on both the form and the content of Nollywood films. Examines how Nollywood films project local, national, and regional issues onto global screens. Usually offered every third year.
Emilie Diouf

ENG 170b Contemporary Theatre and Performance: Between Rights and the Post-Human
[ hum oc ]

Students will explore two pressing questions: How do contemporary theatre artists work to rehumanize those denied humanity? During a global climate emergency, how can the theatre, which is traditionally defined by the co-presence of humans, relocate the human as only one of many lifeforms--not the center of everything but rather entwined with other organic, inorganic, and spiritual agencies? Usually offered every second year.
Thomas King

ENG 171b African Feminism(s)
[ djw hum nw ]

Examines African Feminism(s) as a literary and activist movement that underlines the need for centering African women's experiences in the study of African cultures, societies, and histories. Usually offered every third year.
Emilie Diouf

ENG 172b African Literature and Human Rights
[ hum nw ]

Human rights have been central to thinking about Africa. What do we mean when we speak of human rights? Are we asserting a natural and universal equality among all people, regardless of race, class, gender, or geography? Usually offered every third year.
Emilie Diouf

FREN 139a Bad Girls and Boys: Du 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 male and female figures in the French and Francophone world who have failed to conform to expectations of their gender. Usually offered every second year.
Hollie Harder

GECS 188b Human/Nature: European Perspectives on the Climate Crisis and What to Do About It
[ djw hum oc wi ]

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.
Sabine von Mering

HISP 142b Literature, Film, and Human Rights in Latin America
[ djw hum nw wi ]

May be taught in English or Spanish.

Examines literature, film (fiction and non-fiction) and other artistic expressions from Latin America, in conversation with the idea of human rights'from the colonial arguments about slavery and the 'natural rights' of the indigenous, to the advent of human rights in the context of post-conflict truth and reconciliation processes, to the emergence of gender and ethnicity as into the human rights framework, to the current debates about rights of nature in the midst of a global ecological crisis. Usually offered every third year.
Fernando Rosenberg

HISP 158a Latina Feminisms
[ deis-us djw hum ]

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.
María J. Durán

HISP 160a Culture/Media and Social Change in Latin America
[ djw fl hum nw wi ]

Prerequisite: HISP 109b or HISP 111b, or permission of the instructor.

The central topic of this class is the role of the creative arts (creative writing, visual arts, music, film, performance) in their role as fostering political change in Latin America. We will examine key eras of 20th and 21st century cultural production in relation with shifting mass-media landscapes, from the revolutionary impetus of the early 20th century avant-gardes in literature and visual arts, popular music in the 1940s, documentary film during and the 1960s guerrillas, artistic resistance to the dictatorship, to the street art accompanying human rights and grass roots identity movements of the 2000s. Usually offered every second year.
Fernando Rosenberg

HISP 165b The Storyteller: Short Fiction in Latin America
[ djw fl hum nw ]

Prerequisite: HISP 109b or HISP 111b, or permission of the instructor.

Through a study of Latin American short stories, some of them by consecrated writers, some of them by less well-known, we will reflect on the power of storytelling and narrative to shape subjectivity and community. We will examine topics that traverse Latin American cultures and are expressed in these stories, such tensions between literacy and oral traditions, hegemonic and minority voices, cultural diversity, ethnicity, class, migration, as well as contemporary concerns around issues of gender and sexuality, and in relation to the natural world. This class has an optional creative writing component, as students will have the chance, if so inclined, to write fiction applying concepts and themes studied in class (instead of critical/analytical assignments). Usually offered every third year.
Fernando Rosenberg

JAPN 130a The Literature of Multicultural Japan
[ djw 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.
Matthew Fraleigh

NEJS 136a Israeli Popular Culture: Language, Gender, and Politics
[ hum ]

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.
Shayna Weiss

NEJS 173a Trauma and Violence in Israeli Literature and Film
[ deis-us djw fl hum oc ]

Taught in Hebrew.

Explores trauma and violence in Israeli Literature, film, and art. Focuses on 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.
Ilana Szobel

NEJS 174a Minorities and Others in Israeli Literature and Culture
[ djw fl hum ]

Taught in Hebrew.

An exploration of poetics and identity in modern Hebrew literature. By offering a feminist and psychoanalytic reading of various Hebrew texts, this seminar explores questions of personal and national identity, otherness, visibility, and marginality in the Israeli context. Usually offered every second year.
Ilana Szobel

NEJS 184b Disability Cultures: Art, Film and Literature of People with Disabilities
[ deis-us djw hum oc ]

Explores cultural representations of disability in Israel, Europe, and the US. By focusing on literature, film, dance, and visual art, it explores physical, mental, and emotional disability experiences, and their relations to gender, sexuality, nationalism, and identity politics. Usually offered every second year.
Ilana Szobel

NEJS 194b Sufism: Mystical Traditions in Classical and Modern Islam
[ 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

NEJS/WGS 110a Sexual Violence in Film and Culture
[ deis-us djw hum oc ]

Explores the effects of sexualized violence in society. While exploring representations of gender-based sexual violence in documentaries and features, stand-up comedy, memoirs, poetry, and visual art, this course will offer a critical discussion on Rape Culture in the 21st century, with particular attention to the intersections of gender, race, sexuality, class, and disability in the construction of sexual violence. Usually offered every second year.
Ilana Szobel

SAS 130a Film and Fiction of Crisis
[ hum nw ]

Examines novels and films as a response to some pivotal crisis in South Asia: Independence and Partition, Communal Riots, Insurgency and Terrorism. We will read and analyze texts from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka in an effort to examine how these moments of crisis have affected literary and cinematic form while also paying close attention to how they contest or support the narrative of the unified nation. Usually offered every third year.
Ms. Singh

AAAS 124a After the Dance: Performing Sovereignty in the Caribbean
[ hum oc ss ]

Utilizing short fiction, essays, plays, poetry, and the visual arts, this class theorizes movement and/as freedom in the spectacular or mundane movements of the region, including annual Carnival and Hosay celebrations. Usually offered every third year.
Faith 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.
Faith 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.
Chad Williams

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.
Staff

AAAS/WGS 136a Black Feminist Thought
[ deis-us oc ss ]

Formerly offered as AAAS 136a.

Critical examination of the historical, political, economic, and ideological factors that have shaped the lives of African-American women in the United States. Analyzing foundation theoretical texts, fiction, and film over two centuries, this class seeks to understand black women's writing and political activism in the U.S. Usually offered every second year.
Shoniqua Roach

AAPI/WGS 137b Performing Asian/American Women on Screen and Scene
[ deis-us ss ]

Examines performances of Asian/American women and how they have changed over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We analyze American film, television, and stage performances to trace the shifting, yet continuous participation of Asian/American women on screen and scene in the United States. Important issues include Orientalism and representation, race and racism, immigration and diasporas, militarism and hypersexualization, yellow face practices then and now, as well as assimilation and resistance. We ask: what have dominant representations of Asian/American been like from the silent film era to the current digital age? How have the figures of the lotus blossom, the dragon lady, the trafficked woman, the geisha, the war bride, the military prostitute, the orphan, among other problematic tropes emerged to represent Asian/American women? How has the changing political, social, and cultural position of Asian/Americans shaped their participation in media production, as well as their media representations in the United States broadly speaking? Students will leave this course with a strong understanding of how media and culture shapes the racial and sexual formation of Asian Americans, as well as how to interact with that media and culture beyond just consumption but instead towards analysis and critique too. Usually offered every second year.
Yuri Doolan

AMST/MUS 39b Protest Through Song: Music that Shaped America
[ ca oc 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.
Staff

ANTH 26a Communication and Media
[ dl ss ]

A wide-ranging exploration of the human communicative capacity, starting with verbal and visual communicative modalities and culminating in the study of communication through mass and social media. Usually offered every second year.
Janet McIntosh

ANTH 130a Filming Culture: Ethnographic and Documentary Filmmaking
[ djw dl nw ss ]

Introduces the history, theory and production of ethnographic and documentary filmmaking. This course traces how ethnographic and culturally-inflected filmmakers have sought to depict cultural difference, social organization, and lived experiences. Students will learn the basics of non-fiction film production. Usually offered every second year.
Patricia Alvarez Astacio

ANTH 130b Visuality and Culture
[ dl 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.

Patricia Alvarez Astacio or Ellen Schattschneider

ANTH 140a Human Rights in Global Perspective
[ djw 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.

Elanah Uretsky

ANTH 159a Museums and Public Memory
[ oc 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.
Ellen Schattschneider

ANTH 184b Art in the Ancient World
[ djw 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.
Javier Urcid

CAST 170a Documenting Immigrant Experiences
[ 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.
Jenny Alexander and Maya Jamaleddine

LGLS 129a Transitional Justice: Global Justice and Societies in Transition
[ djw ss ]

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, reparations, memorials, and the contributions of art and culture. Usually offered every second year.
Melissa Stimell

SOC 155b Protest, Politics, and Change: Social Movements
[ deis-us ss ]

Introduces major sociological theories about leadership, political context, culture, and identities in social movements in transnational perspective. Examines historical and contemporary cases of social movements through the lenses of race, gender, class, and sexuality. Usually offered every year.
Gowri Vijayakumar

WGS 107b In and Beyond the Powwow Arena: Introduction to Native American Indigenous Dance
[ deis-us ss ]

Introduces history, contemporary practices, and cultural contexts of Native American Powwow dancing within the United States and Canada. The first half of the semester will focus on Native American Powwows and Powwow dances in their emergence. The second half of the semester will focus on examining contemporary practices and iterations of Powwow dancing outside of the Powwow arena. This course will touch on topics of gender and gender expansiveness, decolonization, body sovereignty, sexual sovereignty, and the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous women, Girls, Two Spirit and Trans people (MMIWG2ST). Special one-time offering, fall 2022.

Evangelina Macias

CAST 181b Ethics of Community Engagement Practicum

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. Ethical concerns must be at the forefront of the planning and implementation of all such endeavors. Usually offered every year.
Toni Shapiro-Phim

CAST 189a Project Design Practicum

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.

Each student applies theories, skills, information, and critical questions to an individual or group project that engages with social transformation concerns in creative, practical, and ethically-sound ways. Although many students undertake independent projects, this is a collaborative practicum in which all students help each other imagine and problem-solve. Usually offered every year.
Toni Shapiro-Phim